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CONVERSATIONS IN A CAR V

Ashok Niyogi




If life had taken a left instead of a right
I wouldn’t have had to write,
And this hassle would be out of the way,
And we could have had quiet conversations
In quieter cars.
But I would not have smelled of vodka
And after-shave anymore.

Healthy people have body odour
And pyorrhoea in the mouth
And instead of sanity they talk of vanity,
Instead of valour they have pallor.
No smoking inside the house,
But I wished they used their dental insurance better.
Preservation is the fashion
And yet they die
They also die
And miss the evenings when bottles
Rolled under the bed
And we ate salads from plastic boxes
And listened to Louis Armstrong ’s horn,
And then took the car to a forest
Dappled with pale sunshine
And trudged a foot or two in winter snow.

A visit to the Renok where we bought a leg of lamb,
Evenings at the kitchen table
With vodka and water and bottles of wine,
Your totally expert dicing of the onions,
My advice on the chilli and the turmeric-
These were evenings of magic
Not meant for us I’m sure.
We just happened to chance by them
Watching “Dog Show” on television.
And then the culture channel from St. Petersburg
Alternated with scores of deaths in Chechnya
And in Moscow, a rape or two,
Talking of events that will become memories,
Carefully skirting past problems
That we know cannot be solved.

The wine was necessary, I can now understand
Why should life not be such a beautiful haze?
You and me watching dachshunds on television,
Why should life not be a walk in the snow,
Where should people like us go?
In which cave should we hide?
Or is it that we should never come out of the tube station,
Constantly travel from here to there on the metro
And admire the chandeliers and the pillars?

We searched constantly, if unconsciously, for permanence
And yet everything is temporary, you see,
As you are fond of saying-
“Islands in the stream
That is what we are”.

And then one island breaks itself against the rocks
And comes up with bloody fragments
Which cannot be repaired with vodka or wine.
And even though the islands are intertwined
The current of the water carries the other away.

So everything is temporary,
Nothing is permanent,
And yet through our relationship
We were looking for permanence
Which got reflected
In our conversations in the car.

I have decided to recite and not worry about what I say.
It’s a habit that grows upon you the difficult way.
Not to attempt to be Shakespeare,
Everyone thinks he has a Shakespeare in him anyway.
Not to attempt to be Bill is even more difficult
Because of the trappings you think will come your way.
But to attempt to be yourself is the most difficult of all-
You have to peel away so many masks,
You have to deal with so many tasks,
You have to shed an ocean of tears to cleanse yourself
And you have to learn to laugh like a child.

Those lazy sunny afternoons on the embankments,
Those whispering nothings in the ear,
That naughty wind
Those yachts bobbing up and down near the Fortress of Peter and Paul
The portico of Mon Plaisir in the afternoon sunlight
And the endless north.
What the eye cannot see the mind does not comprehend
Even if the brain sends signals
The mind does not comprehend,
It can but send signals back.
It can waive the necessities of the logistics,
It cannot transform simple hours of a sunny afternoon into magic
And send up balloons in the air.
Or we can stare at parachutists descending
And exhibitions of different kinds-
Actually an exhibition of the waters and the mind.

You go around the porch in front of our house after sunset
Very deliberately
You have to light each candle, you see
And yet a solitary gust of wind smothers one flame,
It spoils your symmetry.
As we mark our footsteps in the snow
I totter slightly because of inebriation, you know.
In the tottering also there is a pattern of abandon
Of things to be done which should not be done logically.
And yet the wavering of the footsteps as they are left behind
Disturbs your sense of symmetry.
As summer comes, the morning light
Falls on one side of the tree-
On this side the leaves vigorously grow.
It’s not that they do not grow on the other side
But they are weak and pale in comparison
Because they get the afternoon light.
This difference in the colour of the leaves
Disturbs your sense of symmetry.
Coconut palms should stand tall and straight
And yet on Miramar beach they curve in back towards the land
As if they are afraid
Of the sea.
On the island a hundred metres away
Everything is fine, though.
The palms are as they should be.
But this curving in towards the land
Disturbs your sense of symmetry.
I trim my moustaches with the greatest care
But the hand does not distinguish between the left and the right
And sometimes they are a little cock-eyed,
Not awkward but cock-eyed.
If you measured them with the centimetre tape
Then maybe you would find
A millimetre or two off.
Sometimes in the metro the sweater rides up my back
Because I am precariously holding on to a rod.
You sit and pull my sweater back
And frown all day at my moustache
Because it disturbs your sense of symmetry.
Now that life is asymmetric
What will you do?
Now that it’s all topsy-turvy and the best years are gone
What will you do?
I know what you will-
You will find a new pattern in this chaos that is life.
I know the geometry is horrible in life turning the other way
But it can be explained by a theorem
And in the end you can write QED
Even if you don’t always agree.
Matters tend to get worse when winter comes
The bones, they crackle more,
A strange lethargy sets in
When even the daily ablutions are a chore.
If I had to choose between the snow and the sun
I would choose both,
The snow and the sun
And if my wish were granted
Would it not be great fun?

Last winter, the wind blowing off Lake Tahoe
Was not pleasant at all.
I thought I was a veteran Russian
So what can California and Nevada do to me?
So I left my mittens and cap in the car
And walked on the ice-
Walked is not the right word,
Slipped on the ice right up to the lake,
The embankment at least.
And then in about two minutes I felt as if I had no ears.
The wind came up right from the freezing waters
And the snow had been packed by footprints into ice.
I have noticed before but I don’t know whether you have
There’s something comforting about the snow
And there’s something alien about ice.

There was a little sun that day but little enough.
I know my girls and boys had warned me not to be so tough,
They even bought me a new pair of mittens from a gas shop.
We do not know how frail we are,
We do not know what trails we leave behind us of our frailty.
We cannot fly and have to learn to swim
In heated pools in the gym
And then we do the treadmill
And exercise with weights
To lose a few pounds.
We acquire habits and traits that are destructive
And that’s an understatement.
We fall in love
And we fall out of love;
We have hunger and anger,
We have separate beliefs
And fight for them and carry posters
To Trafalgar Square past Downing Street
And yet we hold coronations at Westminster Abbey
And have a statue of Ram Mohan Roy beside the cathedral in Bristol.
We fish for trout and then examine the level of pollution in the water.
We exercise clout and then display humility;
We do a deal and if the deal goes right, it’s ours;
If it goes wrong we try to shift responsibility.
We take money to send students
To Manchester and Birmingham and Toronto.
When they come back, what will they do?
Teach in Munger
Or work in a power plant in Chattisgarh?
There must be at least 30 institutes teaching IELTS
In Nehru Place which is two steps from my house -
But I am yet to find a Hindi dictionary in Delhi
Which is the heart of Hindi.
I have to travel for 25 kms
And then find no parking.
Strange twists and turns!

Someone taught me how to cook meat in the jungle
Just boil red chillies and the meat on a simmer for a long long while.
Someone taught me how to jump,
And skip and hop across cold, cold streams
Running by roads on the Himalayas.
But no one taught me how to watch Indian cable TV,
How to sift the garbage from the garbage
And in the sifting of the garbage pick up a rare song,
A dance that didn’t go wrong.
No one taught me how to fly
But I fly.
No one taught me how to dance
But I can take a step or two.
No one taught me how to cry
But I can still shed tears.
There’s only one thing that everyone taught me how to do -
How to die
And yet I cannot die.

If I had to find you wherever you went
I would still find you
Because the mind connects with the mind
But I want you to find me first,
To search and look and trust for me
And if you do,
On one sunset
I will find you.
There’s construction going on in the floor above.
The chisel hits hammer incessantly
Or is it otherwise?
Actually we look at the hammer as being so aggressive
But the chisel weasels into concrete.
Now how would you prefer to die,
With a chisel or a hammer on your head?







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