Truth, Fiction & Satori

My primary language is English. In my Japanese class, my classmates and I seem to undergo a personality transformation when we try to make broken conversation about our weekends or hobbies in Japanese - a second, third, or fourth language for some of us. 

When we started this particular activity a few months ago, vocabulary was limited, confidence was fragile and it was apparent that our lives were a lot more interesting in English. But now we have learnt some new grammatical forms and ways of expression, our conversations are more fluid.

Personalities also seem to transform when people switch to their native language; fuelled, I imagine, by this unbridled expanse of expression that is open to them. Seeing my Japanese friends change their personalities in English provides a great sense of reassurance. I imagine that in a few years, these friends and I will reach a sort of middle-ground-Japanese-English personality when we have learnt enough not to be beginners anymore but still some years away from first-language-fluency.

Learning a language gives you a heightened sense of awareness of other languages too. You are more curious about the colloquial words in French, the non translatable words in Tamil, the formal form of Kannada, the news in Hindi, the French-Spanish sound of Catalan, the common words in Italian, Spanish and French, the similarity of Japanese and Chinese characters, the philosophical phrases in German.

Some days ago, with the aid of my German flatmate and his visiting friends, I discovered that Germans have specific philosophical phrases that they use in daily conversation. Like Der Ernst des Lebens which translates as ‘The Serious Side of Life’. In our conversation, one of the guys in the group used the phrase to describe his sister’s entry into life after university. This reminded me of another German philosophical-phrase I had heard before - Sturm und Drang or 'Storm and Urge' - which I understand to be a German literary movement characterised by works that mostly deal with an individual's conflict with society.

On learning about these phrases, I finally knew how to categorize the Weekly Skype Call (WSC) with my parents.

These Skype Calls have gained ceremonious levels of significance in our lives. With the occasional guest appearance of my brother, these calls just-about-manage to replace the gap left in our lives by the absence of our old, weekly Long Drives.

Everything used to happen in the car – important conversations, important decisions, big-arguments, big-peace-making-sessions and ice-cream. Now, everything happens online.

At times, someone’s face is stuck in a strange expression in a video frame or someone’s lips are moving long after they have stopped speaking. Despite these effects, our online conversations are sacred.

So only by permitting myself the crime of oversimplification can I admit that after almost seven years of living apart, our conversation normally ends up as one of these scenarios.

Scenario 1: La Dolce Vita

The Rents: How are you insert-endearment-term-of-week?

Me: Great, list-all-the-great-things-about-the-week. You?

The Rents: Great, list-all-the-great-things-about-the-week.

All together: Exchange silly jokes or general news-about-nothing-in-particular, laugh-a-lot.

Scenario 2: Der Ernst des Lebens, Und Sturm und Drang

The Rents: How are you insert-endearment-term-of-week?

Me: All good… I guess.

The Rents: So what news?

Me: Whine

The Rents: Words of comfort and unfailing support

Me: Whine

The Rents: Exchange philosophical dialogue on life ambitions, happiness and peace. Provide Sound Advice

Me: Epiphany and gratitude

The last week, for reasons that still escape me, was one of tiny, forgettable, annoyances. In our WSC I was ready with my broken record and sad violin. After some patient listening and encouragement, my parents pointed out that in their generation, the problem was that of too little and in my case, it was that of too much.

When they were in their mid twenties, my parents thought twice before buying cinema tickets and gained great pleasure from the activity because of this, while I, on the other hand, was worrying about whether I should watch a Japanese anime, an English Comedy or an Italian Crime Drama.

In order to silence some of my ill-feeling-for-no-real-reason, their Sound Advice was for me to do something completely new, phone-less.

I had made plans before our conversation but now I decided to treat my plans with reverence. At the end of the day, I would think about the elements of the day that had lifted off my Sturm Und Drang.

It was Open-House-Saturday which meant a lot of closed buildings were open to the public. So I went off to visit a waste recovery unit some miles from home. In addition to learning about something I had always wanted to know about, I also inaugurated my new-old-second-hand-bike. After an hour of playing around in the waste management education center, drinking free coffee, eating free cake, and a forty minute tour inside the facility, I came home satisfied. I cooked a small meal and ate it with relish. Then I made some tea, put it in my new flask and took it with me to the park.

Sitting cross-legged on a bench on a mini hill, I realized that the main event of visiting the waste center was great. I was also amazed by my own expression of my non-problem using a different language and that my parents had given me such a simple solution. 

But none of this mattered as much as the cycle ride in new territory, the free unexpected refreshment of the afternoon, and the fact that the tea I was drinking was still piping hot.

With so many ways of expression and communication available to us today, and our ease of access to these ways, I wonder if one day we will have a sort of middle-ground-super-language-personality similar to the one I imagine with my Japanese friends but taking personalities and words from different languages. These complex, modern elements of our lives are undoubtedly thrilling. 

But perhaps the shanti (the Sanskrit term for Inner Peace) providing elements of the lives of people in my parents’ generation and mine aren't that different after all. 

Things happen in this house. 

Sometimes the skylight is open and the rain comes in.  We don’t hear it for we are sitting in the living room listening to Chopin on the radio.  

Or maybe it isn’t raining and there are guests in the kitchen – passing visitors or some neighbours locked out of their house – sitting around the dining table, having a cup of tea. But the children of these visitors are bored and come running into your room because talk of your children’s book collection has reached the end of the street. Or so you wish. In reality, you only have a handful of books and the children have all read them anyway. But you are good at stalling and this skill comes in handy – there is no way you are missing out on a conversation with a child of about nine possessing an overarching knowledge of Pippi Longstocking.

Things happen in this house even on weekends. 

At the first acceptable time in the morning, the coffee machine is turned on and the smell of freshly ground coffee beans is everywhere. Someone may have baked their bread in the bread machine overnight and the smell of warm bread is now in competition with the smell of fresh coffee.

Maybe the day passes in non consequential bliss – cleaning the conservatory, climbing the tree in the garden, hanging your laundry.

Soon it is Saturday night and anything of any consumable delight, chocolates included, is placed on the table, ready to be assembled with efficiency on to plates on trays, to be taken to the couch to watch some subtitled crime drama from Scandinavia.

Laziness on Saturdays prepares us, because on Sundays, things happen outside the house, in the garden, while you are sipping coffee, eating some ice-cream and plotting an escape to the seaside. Maybe there is a barbeque and everyone from the street comes or maybe there is a gathering outside on the street. 

Things happen all the time in and outside this house, but sometimes nothing happens too.

That time when it isn't raining, when the skylight is closed, and you can’t really remember what day it is anymore. Then you sit with your feet propped up on your desk, watching the sun set outside your window and wonder about all the things that happened or will happen in this house.

Danny had stumbled onto his job at Branburys - quality seafood since 1930 - by accident. He had been on his way to interview for the post of a ‘retail assistant’ at a new clothes shop.  It was a crappy job description but he needed to make some money for the summer while he looked for a real job. The supermarket was in an unfamiliar place and he had taken a wrong turn, finding himself outside a small seafood shop, sitting snug on the ground floor of an old Victorian building.  On the window was a sign announcing an urgent vacancy for a shop assistant. Danny’s love for seafood far outweighed his indifference to clothes. It was an easy choice.

Five years later, Danny was a salmon, trout and freshwater specialist at Branburys. His passion for fish was boundless and this was evident in all his exchanges with customers or staff. Bream, tilapia or perch, he knew them all and he sold them well. Not only did he know what kind of fish would suit the weather of the day but he also had interesting suggestions for cooking them. Regular customers recommended him to their friends and the store had seen a rise in profits since he started. He was a valued employee.

Despite his success, Danny was down to earth. He loved his job but he was mostly interested in the fish and the sort of people who came to Branburys to buy them. As the shop was tucked away and hard to find, the people who shopped there had either chanced upon it as he had or heard about it from a friend. Branburys didn’t market themselves in any other way.

Danny tried to be optimistic about the variation in his customers. The truth, however, was that his clientele consisted mostly of affluent middle aged men and women, shopping for some cod for their weekend treat of fish and chips.

It was a pleasant change for Danny when one Saturday evening, a young woman walked in and asked for a whole silver carp. Something about the woman appealed to Danny immediately. Her thick black curls and her hazel eyes helped, but what struck him the most about her was the conviction with which she stated her demand. The lady had no interest in anything except silver carp.

Her name was Claire. She turned up every Saturday at the same time and asked for a single whole fish. It was always a fish that people generally didn’t bother about and it was always something exotic.

The two struck up a sort of acquaintance, if not friendship, the topics of their brief conversations ranging over a varied range of things. But mainly, they spoke about fish. It never occurred to Danny that he should ask her out. He was content with these short rendezvous.

One afternoon, Danny was looking for a place to buy some lunch when he spotted Claire going inside the Japanese takeaway next door. He was about to walk in but something kept him from calling out to her and greeting her. He decided to observe her from a distance. He saw her walk up to the counter and waited for her to pick a dish from the long list of sea food items that the place had on display. But instead she ordered a vegetarian meal, the only one on the menu.

He wanted to ask her about this strange vegetarian streak in her but she stopped coming to the shop. He had no contact of her and didn’t understand why things had to turn out this way. He missed her and their random conversations.

One Saturday evening, after a few weeks, Claire walked into the shop at the same time as usual.

She had come to say goodbye. She was going away. Could Danny come to her house tomorrow? She gave him a letter and asked him not to open it till he arrived at her place. Before he could ask her any more questions, she was off again.

Danny felt a bit dejected. He couldn’t understand why she had suddenly turned so cold and more importantly, so vegetarian. Since when do people who talk about fish all the time start having vegetarian lunches? He was curious. There was something odd about this situation and he wanted to find out more.

The next evening, he found himself knocking on a door of a small apartment, some miles away from Branburys. The door didn’t seem to be locked and Danny let himself in.

The apartment looked unnervingly clean and barren. Danny had walked into the living room, where there was a desk and a single chair, both of which were white.  The air had a thick, strong scent of something that smelt suspiciously like formaldehyde.

Danny turned around, and then he saw it. A huge case with hundreds of bottles stacked up neatly. The bottles seemed to be arranged in some specific order. It took him a while to realize what was in them, but after a quick moment of bewilderment, Danny saw the minuscule, inconspicuous object bobbling up and down in each bottle. Each bottle had a single eye.

Hands trembling and heart beating wildly, Danny remembered Claire’s letter. He slowly opened the crumpled up paper in his hand. It was a list; a list containing the names of several different species. There was a small tick mark against the first three - insects, reptiles and fish. 

Time slowed down for Danny, as he began to realize that Claire, in her crude, twisted,  way, was trying to make her way through the evolutionary chain and that in due time, one of his kind, would be the last tick on the list.

Danny dropped the piece of paper and began to run outside.

First published in Livemint & Wall Street Journal India, May 11, 2013

I first fell in love with Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. I had seen copies of the paintings before but seeing them as they had been created, in large oval rooms, cast a strange sort of enchantment, one that left me with the feeling of finishing an open-ended book I had been reading for days.

On the first viewing, in the manner of some other impressionist art work, the paintings had reminded me of the lightness of spring. But as I looked at them from different angles and from different points in the room, they had put me in a meditative state, giving rise to many questions.

Were the lilies floating on the water or were they reflections? Were they real or were they imagined? Where had Claude Monet found these flowers and what power had they possessed for the artist to spend over thirty years of his life painting them?

The answers, of course, at least to some of those questions, lay in Giverny, a place that Monet discovered from the window of a train and lived in for forty-three years, until his death in 1926. It was here that he bought a house and created a magnificent garden that inspired him to produce over three hundred paintings.

In a letter to the French critic, Gustave Gefroy, Monet wrote, “I have again taken up something impossible – water with grass rippling at the bottom. It’s fine to look at, but it’s madness to want to paint it. Oh well, I’m always getting into such things.”

Driven by curiosity, my family and I decide to go to Giverny. When we arrived, we were greeted with an overwhelming burst of colour. It was a hot summer’s day, all the flowers in the garden - poppies, hibiscus, hydrangea, roses, lilies - were in full bloom and people were in their sunniest clothes, making it hard to tell the dashing green of a little girl’s dress from the painted bamboo of the Japanese bridge on the water lily pond. Monet’s house itself was a cheerful place with a pink façade, adding to this vibrant dose of colours with a yellow dining room and a blue kitchen.

We found that there were copies of work by famous Japanese ukiyo-e artists like Utagawa Hiroshige displayed all around the house. We discovered later that Monet started collecting Japanese prints in the 1860’s and had over 230 ukiyo-e paintings.

 Ukiyo-e translates as pictures of the floating world. Monet’s garden is said to have been inspired by these floating pictures. Researchers claim that the famous landmark in the garden, Le Pont Japonais or the Japanese bridge seems to have sprung out of Hiroshige’s print Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine.

Every year, over half a million visitors come to appreciate the garden and there was no doubt as to why the place was so popular. My Father and I even joked about how every photo we took, however badly focused or technically faulty, would be perfect, for the objects themselves seemed so perfect.  It wasn’t just the flowers but also the small thrill of finding a yellow butterfly trying to hide amongst bright red poppies, or catching a glimpse of large fish swimming in the pond. Children sat around with sketchbooks, trying to express the garden in their own way. Life, it seemed, was thriving everywhere in this perfect cross section of designed nature.

But after a leisurely walk around the garden, walking along river Seine’s tributary Epte, it was hard not to see the whole place as a gigantic painting, one that Monet himself referred to has his ‘greatest masterpiece’. Much like the fleeting beauty of an ukiyo-e, the garden seemed to have a foundation that was built around providing pleasure and nothing else. For what was the garden but Monet’s canvas? He had crafted every part of the space almost as though he could foresee what he wanted to paint and perhaps as a result of this, the space seemed controlled and manicured.

But then I remembered that for all the time he spent in this dreamscape, Monet had painted the same scenes from his garden again and again.  I found myself thinking about what the garden looked like in autumn when fallen leaves would dominate the space and all the plants would start dying, in winter, when the flowers would have died out completely, in spring when life would start its course once again.

One could perceive Monet’s later paintings as an embodiment of his garden, for as the garden changed, catching the light at angles, evolving with seasons, Monet’s paintings had to change too. And so they did. They changed with the setting of the sun, with the withering of the flowers, with the passing of each minute.

Monet once remarked, "And I tell myself that whoever says he has finished a painting is terribly arrogant. Finished means complete, perfect, and I am working hard without moving ahead, searching, feeling my way without achieving much..."

I went back to the bridge to look at the water lilies again. As I stared at them, they began to blur out of focus, just as they had in the museum in Paris, till the image I was left with, filled me with a beauty that was entirely intangible.

Towards the end of his life, Monet was affected by cataracts in both his eyes. He continued to paint from his garden in Giverny, his water lilies becoming redder and more shapeless as his disease progressed, but deterring him in no way in his obsessive chase for that complete and perfect painting.

People have spoken of leaving Giverny with a renewed love for nature. I can’t say I derived that out of my visit. But I left, I think, with a slightly better understanding of who I deem to be one of the greatest artists of our age. I nurtured a hope that maybe Claude Monet had indeed discovered the truth of his life’s work and at worst, merely not realized it. But more than anything else, I left with a strong feeling of wanting to return again, at another time, in another season, just to see how my beloved water lilies would have changed.

The weekend and the weather are the two most favored topics of conversation in Britain. In all my three and a half years here, I don’t think I have had a single interaction, however intimate the nature of that interaction might have been, where there hasn't been some mention of either or both of these two things.

At work, the two ‘W’s contribute to so much conversation, that sometimes, I wonder if any life exists in between these crests and troughs of Saturday nights, Sunday brunches and the innumerable types of rain - slanting, straight, slow, fast, heavy, drizzle, pissing-it-down, hail-stone-y, sleet-y, spit-like, misty, hanging-in-the-air…ad infinitum.

Perhaps the BBC should consider adding these descriptions to their daily weather forecast, because of course, we all check the forecast religiously, every morning.  There is no other explanation for that fantastic-fashion-phenomenon when the temperature, after being consistent at around 4 degrees Celsius for ten days, suddenly spikes to around 12 degrees on the eleventh day, and everyone, after all those days of winter coats, woolen hats, thick gloves, is now in their spring gear; light jackets, sandals and all.  It is no surprise then that the whole nation seems to improve its mood collectively on the two days of sunshine that we have in a year.

I love OD-ing on some Vitamin D and having time off work just like everyone else, but at times I wonder if life might be a bit more pleasant, at times, even more bearable, without all this classification.

One of my favorite activities of the day, whatever day it is, is to go for a wander without any real purpose. When I’m at work, I love to go out for a small stroll. It doesn't matter that it might be just for twenty minutes. It doesn't matter that the temperature might be in negatives, a trait I picked from some hikers I once met who went on long distance walks every Sunday whatever the weather might be. 

To me, my daily stroll is an adventure, or has the potential of one; an adventure of the smallest and perhaps the most trivial kind, but an adventure nevertheless.

Today, it was raining continuously the whole day. I’m not sure what sort of rain it was; maybe a concoction of misty, drizzle, and heavy.  By lunchtime, as the conversations about plans for the coming weekend were being initiated, and the rain got heavier, I took my umbrella and went for a walk in a small park close to the office.

On a sunny day or even a cloudy/drizzle day, the children’s play area in the park probably has the power to cut through the stoniest of hearts – mothers pushing babies in body suits on the baby-swing, small children in bright clothes playing on the see-saw, some curly haired child asking her nanny about why the pigeon was so fat. The rest of the park would be full of people having their lunch on benches under towering oak trees. If it was an exceptionally sunny day, there would be people lying on the grass, reading a book, couples walking around holding hands, students sitting in a circle listening to music...

But today it was raining misty-drizzle-heavy and the park was deserted. I was the only one there and boy was it magnificent.

I walked around the park thrice; thinking about nothing in particular. For twenty minutes, the rain on my umbrella, the smell of blooming roses, the sight of daffodils sprouting from the ground, the sound of a robin singing without a pause, the feel of spring around me, were all mine. In that time, and even after that time had passed, it was impossible to think about what day tomorrow was and what I would be doing if there was a chance of rain and a wind speed of 8 mph. 

Perhaps then, although it is easier in theory than in practice, it is not that difficult after all, to have a pleasant moment, in that time between weekends and sunshine.

The Opera is a place for pretense, even if it may be the kind that doesn't mean to cause any harm.

Why seek the stage for entertainment when the act starts at the entrance?  Your ticket is the cheapest available, a mere fiver, but you are dressed (or you think you are dressed) as though it could have cost five times that.

In fact, you aren't interested in the opera at all; the singing and the acting together involve far too much make-up. You are here to watch the ballet instead; with a live orchestra, geometric patterns dancing against the light, and no singing, it has an appeal of a different kind.

The inside of the Royal Opera House is like an overwhelming stage set. People in their best costumes participate wholeheartedly and unknowingly in an impromptu drama. The old and the rich sip their champagne on the ground floor, young nervous men escort their girlfriends to the restaurant for a pre-ordered, pre-rehearsed meal and everyone else moves in dizzy speeds, hurrying to get to their seats. As you go higher up, the ticket prices get cheaper and the ambiance becomes more and more normal. When you arrive at the final floor of the opera house, snatches of conversation establish your fellow amphitheater audience to be similar to you in that they are deal seeking, arts craving, ballet synopsis reading souls with that cruel habit of generalization.  

Like them, you think you are smart and have read about the ballet beforehand. You know that the story is about a girl, Tatyana’s unrequited love for an independent, selfish boy, Onegin who doesn’t know himself. The story sounds like a cliché but you are willing to forgive that aspect of the drama in light of everything else you expect to receive from the evening.

A bell rings, the doors open and you are inside. The hall is dressed up too but with its aquamarine ceiling, gold carvings and red lampshades, the garishness of everything else, if at all, ceases to be of any consequence.

The orchestra starts playing Tchaikovsky. The musicians are hidden away in a basement without a roof. You notice they receive no introduction, and so do I.

From my seat, I can’t see a small section of the stage but I can see the orchestra and I can see a slice of 19^th century Russia as trained ballet dancers with strange body shapes, recreate Pushkin’s Onegin for our pleasure.

Most parts of the ballet only excite some surface based emotions in me. The music is the same for it’s not the original opera that Tchaikovsky wrote, but an adaptation for the ballet. Onegin, the indifferent, only receives my indifference. Tatyana, the romantic, only receives some of my sympathy. The characters don’t receive much from me, just as I don’t receive much from them.

As we go into the second act, Tatyana’s love for Onegin has been rejected. We were expecting this and now that it has happened, you don’t care too much and neither do I.

Then the music changes. And heaven knows why, but now I’m crying.

Perhaps I cry for all the dancers who are portraying someone else’s emotions in someone else’s clothes, for the musicians who provide the impression that they can’t wait to go back home from this dreary half-basement job of playing someone’s orchestra to perfection without applause, for the fear that you, me and our garish friends, who are so desperate to appreciate someone else’s work from another time with such little understanding that it seems unlikely even if pessimistic, that we will ever create anything substantial of our own.

Or perhaps it is because of what I finally receive from this evening - music that is so exceptionally beautiful in parts; that once belonged to Tchaikovsky but now belongs to me.