Three Bombay Poems

re: Harish

Yaar, where were you? Need to establish hailing frequencies with you. Contact me at ferozk@las.edu.pk and we can catch up on the missed fun and games!

Writing poems, are you? Hope all is well with ``R`` and please send my salaams and best wishes that way.

Ciao

Harish,

Not exactly...even Dali`s prose is a great deal more restrained than this piece. My suggestion remains the same-less is more-the effect might surprise you.

Puyu,

Thanks for liking them. I read Malayalam ...just about...three initial years was at a village school...i cannot read enough to appreciate Chullikad. I read most Malayalam stalwarts in English only. Bahseer/Vijayan Anand etc...

t,

Have sent one more...sometime back...should make it eventually.

Samina,

You have raised a very clearcut, and obvious point. I really do not disagree with you...it is specially true of the first poem. However, it is some of the exact things that you point out that were the salient features of Dali`s work...sceraming, loud, lurid, scatological...etc. In fact some of the words I have used, felatinuous, succulent...etc are also his refrains. For a sampler...try his Diary of a Genius... or some of his statements...here`s one of my fav ones...

``Every morning, upon awakening, I am filled by the supreme pleasure, the supreme pleasure of being Salvadore Dali. And I ask myself, wonderstruck, what act of genius is he going to accomplish today....this Salvadore Dali.`

does it not clearly accomplish... lurid gleeful judgement, repulsion, and in fact, in some readers...sanctimonious acceptance.

After he was thrown out by Andre Breton from the Surealist movement...his response.

``The only difference between me and the surrealists...is that I am the integral surealist``

The fallout happened because Dali painted Hitler...though in a surreal mode. Breton and his friends thought that it was political...not surrealist...there was a fight...and i do not remember too many details...but it ended with Dali saying...``If my Hitler has four balls and something similalry disgusting...who is Breton to demand I paint him any differently...etc...


Thanks for the critique. I appreciate it.

Harish

Where these poems fail are the use of overwrought adjectives and verbs; i.e. sadistic, ugly, blood red...these words are considered cliche-it takes a special effort to lift a word like ``beautiful`` or ``ugly`` of its common usage and defamiliarize it.

Also, I dontunserstand how the lurid -and I think that lurid best describes the gleeful judgement in this poem-narratives are supposed to have any effect on the reader besides repulsion or sanctimonious agreement. There are some good lines here:

Ten million scavenger ants dream

Their delirious dream

Of feasting on the chief minister`s

Succulent ,gelatinous body

but then, why do you have two words that require four syllables each with different stressors? Where is the flow? Those two adjectives should have been edited out. And the rest should be revised.

Harish:

...think it is about time you submit a few more poems?

...t

dear harish,
loved every bit of it!!
Some of the images reminded me of Chullikkad.
Do you read/write in malayalam?
regards
p

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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry on OPRAH show

Jan. 24, 2001

http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/tows_2002/tows_past_20020124.jhtml?promocode=002

http://www.oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/rohinton_mistry/obc_pb_20011130.jhtml

http://www.oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/rohinton_mistry/obc_20020124_discussion.jhtml

A Fine Balance Discussion

Rohinton Mistry took an unflinching look inside India during The Emergency and brought a new cultural awareness to our lives. Read the highlights from our on-air discussion.

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry Announced November 30, 2001

The time is 1975; the place is India, in an unnamed city by the sea. The corrupt and brutal government has just declared a State of Emergency, and the country is on the edge of chaos. In these precarious circumstances, four strangers are forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

Interview with the Author

Rohinton Mistry

``I`ve been asked why I keep writing about India, and specifically Bombay even though I left 26 years ago. It remains my focus and makes it all worthwhile because of the people…their capacity for laughter, their capacity to endure.``

``Perhaps my main intention in writing this novel was to look at history from the bottom up, from the point of view of people like Ishvar and Om. The dispossessed. The hungry. The homeless. [I wanted to] see what it meant to them to live during this time of The Emergency.``

An Unflinching Look Inside Bombay

``I suppose anyone from the West landing in Bombay would first be hit by the crowds. The density of the population—14 million people in a small city and half of them living on the streets or in slums.

The next thing might perhaps be the great contract between wealth and poverty.

The problem of homelessness is worse now than in 1975, because the population has almost doubled. There must be twice as many people living on pavements, in slums and in rudimentary dwellings. People keep coming every day from villages because there is no prospect, they feel.

The street is controlled by the local gang leader who might extract some kind of token payment from a beggar or a pavement dweller. People lay claims to corners and pieces of the pavements just as they would to a sturdier dwelling.

Traffic in the streets of Bombay is chaotic at best. Riding a bicycle is a dangerous occupation. However, there are hundreds of them on the streets competing with the cars and buses and lorries because it is the poor man`s mode of transport.

The train stations in Bombay are crowded…One needs to be physically fit to do the daily commute by train. People travel hanging out of trains, sitting on top of trains, and there are casualties every day.``

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

Announced November 30, 2001

About The Author

Born in Bombay in 1952, Rohinton Mistry immigrated to Canada in 1975 and was employed in a Toronto bank. He began writing stories in 1983 while attending the University of Toronto. He won two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine`s annual Contributor`s Prize in 1985. In 1987 he published a collection of 11 short stories, Swimming Lessons, and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag (1987), which describes the daily lives of the inhabitants of a Bombay apartment complex.

Rohinton Mistry`s first novel, Such a Long Journey, creates a vivid picture of Indian family life and culture as well as tells a story rich in subject matter, characterization and symbolism. It is set in 1971 Bombay, when India went to war over what was later to become Bangladesh. Mistry skillfully parallels public events involving Indira Gandhi with the misfortunes of the novel`s principal characters. When Such a Long Journey was published in 1991, it won the Governor General`s Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was short listed for the prestigious Booker Prize, and for the Trillium Award. It has been translated into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese. Such a Long Journey was made into a movie in 2000, starring Om Puri and Roshan Seth.

A Fine Balance won the L.A. Times Book Award for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writer`s Prize, Canada`s prestigious Giller Prize and was a 1996 Booker Prize Finalist.

Mistry lives with his wife in Toronto. His new novel Family Matters, will be released by Knopf in 2002.

I must confess I read and reread this as a travelogue, surreal Lonely Planet-like, full of tantalizing references.

Speaking of surrealism as a tool of `antiestablishment` activism, hope the all-powerful M`bai filmy glitz and glamour gets its due share of this, someday.

Sadhana

Well, if any of you has any intentions of pleasing your Bengali friends give him your good wishes today `coz today is Anjali, one of the most important day of Durga Pooja.(And not me, I am not a Bengali).

Cheers

Well, if any of you has any intentions of pleasing your Bengali friend give him your good wishes today `coz today is Anjali, one of the most important day of Durga Pooja.(And not me, I am not a Bengali).

Cheers

Dear T,

Looks like:

1. You (and by extension the ISI) know more about Mumbai that I do.

2. You (and by extension the ISI) have been to Mumbai more recently than I.

So I (and by extension the RAW) hereby humbly surrender.

As they say in Bombaiya, ``Tu Shivaji``.

And I concur with your opinion of the city.... the squalor is intimidating and the apparent misery of the sheep like droves far more pervasive than those few and far between for whom the pipe dream bears fruition.

Harish:

Attribute this to the best traditions of covert co-operation between the oxy-moronish ISI & RAW.

the happy one #28:

Had an old edition of ISI`s Bombay Handbook. Thanks. Will have it updated :)

Sad for Shankar dada. Though happy for his `marial tattoos.`

Badhshah still there?

It wasn`t Julie.

Was there recently. Planned a stay of five days. Rushed out in two. Couldn`t hack it. Have the same problems with NYC. Find both too over whelming now.


shankar #27:

Thanks. Will check them out when ISI sends me on an errand. Or RAW. Am an equal opportunity employee.

zerozerosevenish,

temporal

Dear Temporal,

You have got it all wrong! Have you ever been to Bombay? How can you make such baseless assumptions?

Firstly, that Faluda place has no branches whatsoever! It says so on big bold red letters right on the stall!

Secondly, Shankar dada (Shankar Vitthalrao Apte) no longer circles ponies around the Bandstand. Uskoo bhot shantee se samjayela tha ki jiyadaa shanpatti nai chodne ka our Shakeel bhai ko hafta dena ka ... lekeen buddha saala sathiya gaya our Shakeel bhai se lafda le liya... abhi voheej bandstand pe baith ke bheekh mangtela hey! Bola tha salle ku!

Thirdly, Qayyum Bhai the Kababwala passed away many years ago... his eldest Maqbool now runs the show.

Fourthly, Julie (The Bolshoi Beaver) who used to practice her ballet in the buff lived on the seventeenth floor and not the third/ fourth!! And she wasn`t that cute either... in fact the sight of bouncing flesh with awkward ballet moves was quite grotesque!

So dear Temporal... as you can well see, you are wrong on all counts!

If you visit Bombay you will see it is nothing like you accuse it of being.

Artlessly yours,

The `Appy One

P.S: You have to excuse Aakar and I for going off on nostalgic trips. Aakar used to be a dear friend in school and I still cant get over the fact that we ran into each other again here on Chowk!

temporal,

If you ever visit Bombay, try the kebabs from the street hawker on the rocky Breach Candy beach. Its to die for.

aakar and `appy:

To help harish, I suppose I can ask if that faluda/ice cream place across from Crawford Market and later a branch probably at the far end of Marine Drive is still there?

Or the full name of Shankar dada who used to rent ponies circling the Band Stand traffic island for the kids on Sundays.

Or the name of the Kebabwala who sets up his pavement kiosk behind the Taj late into the evening.

Or the cute one from behind the third floor window (fourth if you are in North America) on Marine Drive who used to..........

innocently,

temporal