My latest short story published by Writers Asylum (Aug 2014)

My latest short story 'Pobon and the Hazarika Household' has been published by Writers Asylum. 

Synopsis of the story: It is about Pobon, a domestic help at a household in Guwahati, and how lives connect at that household.

An excerpt:

He had worked in the Hazarika household for fifteen years. The mornings began early with him opening the huge lock on the gate, sweeping the entire periphery of the house, watering the plants, dusting, sweeping and mopping the double-storied house, washing the car, taking his bath and then attending to tasks like chopping the vegetables, cleaning the fish, washing the utensils and clothes, etc. In times when finding a reliable domestic help in Guwahati was becoming a pain, Pobon was like a blessing to the Hazarika household. Reba Hazarika’s brother, a manager at the Sessa Tea Estate in Dibrugarh, was the Samaritan who sent Pobon, the tea garden “boy” who was already thirty five years of age when he came. 

Mrigen Hazarika and Reba Hazarika took an instant liking to this honest man, who worked without complain, was always cheerful and thought of himself as a member of the family. When Prerona, the eldest Hazarika daughter, came on holidays with her American husband, Pobon would spruce up the garden and gather fruits and vegetables in advance, not letting anyone eat them. “These are for Prerona Baideo and her husband,” he would say, “And you will get to eat these only when they arrive.” When Momi, the second Hazarika daughter, came home on weekends, Pobon would have prepared jars of delicacies like narikal ladoo, til pitha and narikal pitha for her to be taken to her house at the Gauhati University campus. Both she and her husband taught Botany at the university. Gaurav, the youngest of Mrigen and Reba Hazarika’s three children, would get up in the mornings calling out for Pobon and stealthily pass on a ten rupee note to him, so as not to catch the attention of his parents, to fetch him cigarettes from the shop at the mouth of the road. The cigarettes, he would then, smoke in the bathroom attached to his room and flush out the butt in the commode. And on days when Gaurav came back home with the smell of alcohol in his breath, Pobon would quietly let him in and tell his parents that the lad had eaten and gone off to sleep.

Every Sunday morning, Pobon would carry two bags and leave for the Beltola Sunday market with Mrigen Hazarika. They would return with the week’s vegetables. Reba Hazarika only had to go to the prayer room after her bath. Pobon would have kept a bucket of water ready for Reba Hazarika to clean the tiny prayer room with; and he would also pick flowers from the garden and keep them ready for Reba Hazarika to offer them to the Gods and Goddesses. Such were the rituals in the Hazarika’s lives and thus was how Pobon an integral part of every ritual. After a year or two of Pobon’s arrival, when familiarity shed all formalities, Pobon had to bear the harsh words of the Hazarika men and women too. With the years, just as the feeling that Pobon would now not go anywhere else settled in, he was increasingly nagged and shouted at for this and that. Never by Prerona though; which is why she and her American husband remained Pobon’s favorite till the end. Fifteen years passed by and Pobon became indispensable to the household, even after the harsh words and a little clumsiness on his part at times. And then one day, just like that, he disappeared.

Read the rest of the story at http://www.writersasylum.in/2014/08/fiction/pobon-and-the-hazarika-household/

on 'katibs' and calligraphy (Deccan Herald, 15 June 2014)

Lettering beauty

(http://www.deccanherald.com/content/413599/lettering-beauty.html)

Juanita Kakoty, June 15, 2014, DHNS:

There once lived a group of artistes called ‘katibs’ whose calligraphy was so fine that queues formed to have their writing on invitation cards and notes. They even wrote for newspapers and religious texts. Juanita Kakoty traces their interesting story.

As I glance at books that spell excellence in calligraphy, Khalid Alavi, a well-known name in Urdu literature, educates me about a long forgotten, highly skilled class of artistes: the katibs. Flipping through a rare edition of Kulliyat-e-Iqbal in his possession, beautifully handwritten by Naeem Farooqui, Alavi Sahab tells me, “In Delhi, the calligraphers or katibs par excellence were found at all the printing presses and newspaper offices. They wrote books and newspapers, and their work was in great demand! All these calligraphers have now disappeared.”

Calligraphy or the adornment of lettering reached its peak in India in the beginning of 20th century. “There was a point in time,” Alavi Sahab informs, “When calligraphy was the only way in which the Koran was written.” 

Urdu calligraphy began in India in 1836, when Urdu became the national language, and the first newspaper in Urdu came out. Before this, calligraphy was in Persian. 

Flourishing art

The craft flourished in the 60s and 70s with innovation in print technology doing justice to what was being drafted by the hand. Katibs, in fact, did good business till the 1980s, as major newspaper houses and printing presses continued to print text that was handwritten. 

Not too way back, in the early 1900s, the bi-weekly newspaper Madina, published from Bijnor, used to go to distant countries like Saudi Arabia. It was as well-known for its calligraphy as for the great personalities who wrote for it. The BBC used to give its reference. 

Reminiscing about old times, Alavi Sahab says, “When I started out as a writer, I used to get the text handwritten by a katib and then send it for print. What worth it held! The katibs made each book unique, unlike books projecting almost the same kind of styles by computers today. Two very well-known katibs of our times were Anis Siddiqui from Pakistan and Khalique Tonki from Tonk, in Rajasthan. Khalique Tonki used to sit at the Ghalib Academy at Nizamuddin, in Delhi.” He tells me that the big cultural centres for Urdu calligraphy were Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad. 

He also conveys that the Mughal emperors had a penchant for calligraphy. “The last popular calligrapher among the Mughals was Bahadur Shah Zafar. Aurangzeb was a renowned calligrapher too and so was Razia Sultan’s brother and Sultan of Delhi, Nasiruddin Mahmood.”

‘Katibs’ of Old Delhi

Urdu Bazaar in Old Delhi, bursting with people and activity, was once famous for its katibs who wrote wedding invitations and posters. “There used to be a hundred katibs here once, but now there are only four or five,” says the aged Nizamuddin who owns a shop in the area. He shows me a stretch of shops starting right from the Taj Hotel in front of Jama Masjid to the mouth of the lane that brings one to Urdu Bazaar. “This whole stretch used to be full of katibs who had clients at their doorsteps urging them to write a few things to be framed. During elections, they used to write the posters.” He tells me what I have heard before — “And they displayed a lot of nakhra because their work was so appreciated.” 

The state of things is so dismal now that not only have the katibs disappeared, but also the shops once famous for calligraphy. Nizamuddin points out Nazir Ahmed’s once-famous shop that now sells cassettes. In that busy lane, during peak work hours, I could find just one katib. As I asked around, people in the shops directed me to Nizamuddin’s, where they said I could find one. There, sitting in the corner was Ghalib, waiting for somebody to turn up for his first piece of work that day. “Business is bad. I am doing this because it is the only thing I know to do,” he tells me. “My sons actually run the household. None of them is in the calligraphy business.”

Ghalib pays no rent to Nizamuddin for sitting in a corner of his shop. And the latter is only too eager to provide space to what he perceives as “the last of the katibs of Urdu Bazaar”.     

Vanishing with time 

Today, as interest in calligraphy has dwindled, so has its demand. And with computers doing what they did, the katibs have long perished. The Urdu Department in Delhi University has a publication division and it had a katib, Jafar Zaidi, who was from Lucknow. After his retirement, his place was taken by a gentleman who used to be a katib but now did his work on the computer. The Urdu Academy in Delhi has a school that teaches calligraphy. There are a few students learning this dying art for the pure love of it.

Unfortunately, there are no more katibs at Ghalib Academy, which had once been the bastion of the great Khalique Tonki. 

And in Urdu Bazaar, Ghalib, along with the rest of the dying tribe, have been reduced to a pitiable existence.

My short story 'Dancing the Bihu' selected for 2014 New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology

My short story 'Dancing the Bihu' has been selected for the 2014 New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology. 
Summary of the story: This is the tale of a boy whose life is beyond the boundaries of masculinity and femininity. A gifted Bihu dancer, he dares to participate as a female dancer in a Bihu dance competition of his town. The way his dance is received by the audience is all about questioning what is natural and normal in a world that seeks to set order amidst chaos.

Read the story at http://www.new-asian-writing.com/dancing-the-bihu/

Christian Potenza talks about 'Last Car Standing' (Deccan Herald, 30 March 2014)

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/395495/mad-wheels.html

Mad about wheels

Juanita Kakoty, March 30, 2014:

In conversation

“Last Car Standing is unique because the contestants are using and competing with their own property, in the hope for upgrades for that same property. It isn’t like they go on a show with nothing and gain something.
They go on a show with something that belongs to them, with the hope that they can improve it. And that sets this show apart from any other competition show,” is what Christian Potenza, the host of Discovery Turbo’s automotive series, had to say.

Last Car Standing pitted proud owners of lousy cars against each other in a sequence of escalating driving challenges. The temptation was a $10,000 upgrade for the driver of the last car standing; or, the $10,000 upgrade could be passed on for a chance to compete in a playoff episode for a complete $50,000 automotive resurrection.

Potenza says, “Proper Television sent out a national call to find people with decrepit cars that they loved. From there, they narrowed it down to the best people for the competition. The contestants and their cars were meant for each other. They had a special bond. The first thing I saw was the love and pride that they had for their cars, which made me confused and empathetic at the same time.”

In each episode, cars were grouped according to class: From rusty old boats and sub-standard subcompacts to faltering 4x4s to rundown vans. Each of these cars must have been a pristine showroom beauty at some point in time; but over the years, these automobiles have been allowed to fall apart. The cars in each group were put through four elimination rounds and the challenges started with a race around the treacherous Hot Lap; then a gruelling climb, tow, or launch up LCS’s giant adjustable hydraulic ramp.

Then there was a head-to-head battle up and down the dreaded Drag Strip Challenge; and finally the Beater Buster showdown, which is the ultimate, punishing, automotive obstacle course designed to push each car’s capacity to its breaking point.

Hosting such a show takes a lot of energy and composure. In Potenza’s words, “There was so much chaos on set and I had to react while at the same time get the shot. And you can’t write or do another take of something that can only happen once.

The biggest challenge was learning to keep up with the energy of the show, yet remain calm and centered so I could do my job as the host.” He also gives a lot of credit to the crew of the series. “It was absolutely amazing. I have never done anything like this before and it was a learning process.

The crew was absolutely incredible, supportive, and enthusiastic. It was a real joy to come to work every day and all we did was smile! Everybody loved their job that summer. That show was a bunch of moving parts that had to work together at different times and different speeds. And everybody was in charge of their own parts. The crew ran like a well-oiled machine. It was a real pleasure to work with those people.”

Last Car Standing has given him, what he calls, “a bouquet of assorted flowers” for memorable experiences. He remembers, “In our second episode of shooting, a BMW shot out four foot flames on either side of it.

And then another moment, which I’ll always remember, was during the head-to-head race, when a 4x4 ricocheted off an obstacle and came directly towards me. And then there was this time when I saw a grown man cry after watching his beloved truck hoisted three stories in the air and then impaled. I have never seen a grown man cry.”

And talking of hosting a series where five drivers go through four high-impact elimination rounds until there is a sole survivor, Potenza says, “The most exciting part for me was watching these people go and push themselves out of their comfort zone and do something they have never done before and just fight for the honour of their car. To share that human experience of ‘I’m going to win and my car is the best’ was amazing.”

My short story "The Call" published by Writers Asylum...

My short story "The Call" has been published by Writers Asylum. An excerpt:

"Roshan met Maya through a common friend. She had that thing about her. Long after you met her, her smiling eyes and shy smile stayed with you. She was staying at Malviya Nagar with a few friends and preparing for “IAS”. He was a senior in the field and introduced to her as somebody who could guide her. So for one whole year, she came to his room every day and studied as well as did other things with him. He told her about his not much adventurous lower middle class life in a joint family in a small town; and she told him about her childhood sweetheart Pawan and how she pined for him every day, separated as they were by continents. He was in the United States for close to a decade now, pursued a Master’s in engineering there and stayed on for a job. To Maya, he was beginning to seem like a virtual character, yet she had warned Roshan, “Don’t ever forget I belong to Pawan.” He understood. “I will marry Pawan.” He said, yes. “You comfort me, this is a practical arrangement between us, but once Pawan is back, you will have to move out of my life and never be in touch again.” He had said, yes.

Neither of them cleared the Prelims that year. The next year, Roshan joined this call centre at Delhi City Teleshopping and since he was available only in the nights, Maya started living in with him."

Read rest of the story at http://www.writersasylum.in/2014/03/fiction/the-call/

Zaara and I in the land of the Holkars, Feb 2014

Zaara and I just made a short trip to Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Indore is like any other north Indian city dotted with old havelis that now stand pressed against ugly concrete buildings on all sides. The old part of the city is hugely dense with people, houses and shops and cows in the narrow lanes who were touched in obeisance by people who passed by them. And then there was more to the city. The palaces and chatris of the gorgeous Holkars. I felt a tremendous positive vibe in that place. Indore has been charming. The new part of it is neat. But the old part is where the charm lies. 

I thought of coming up with this photo-essay, dedicated to that trip I made with my two year old daughter.

 We landed in Indore early morning. The Indore sky was lovely when it greeted us.

 The Indore airport at a distance.

 Zaara at the hotel, all set for sight-seeing.

 She carries my camera like her bag. Hence, I had to take all these pictures with my phone!

 I was informed that if I were in Indore, I couldn't miss Chappan Dukaan for namkeens and chaats. I thought it was just one shop, one 'dukaan'. But when I reached there I saw that it was one whole line of shops that was callled 'Chappan Dukaan'. 

We settled at a place that had been awarded for its chaats.

The shop had some tempting sweet drinks too.

People inside and outside the shop.

 Next, we visited Rajwada - the magnificent palace built by the Holkars in the 1700s. The palace exhibits a blend of Maratha and Mughal styles. Near the entrance is a courtyard, adjacent to a hall for Lord Ganesha, with Mughal arches. The palace has a number of jharokhas (hanging balconies) with Mughal ornamentation.

At the entrance of the beautiful Rajwada Palace.

Here at the entrance, as one enters, up ahead is the Ganesha Hall with Mughal arches.

Being directed where to visit the Holkar's museum.

Some corner of the palace.

Very peaceful it was. Not many people around. And there was a lovely breeze blowing.

Beautiful chandeliers in the gallery upstairs.

Beautiful pillars and arches.

Reflections on the floor caught my eye.

Regal.

Here I sat for a long time while Zaara caught a quick nap in my lap.

peaceful sky... embroidered by the birds.

The space outside Rajwada palace.

An old haveli near Rajwada stand in line with commonplace buildings, transformed into an office or something.

This is at Lal Bagh palace, the erstwhile residence of the Holkars. Royalty drips from every corner of this palace. Awesome architecture and interiors. Pity cameras or photography is not allowed inside. Let me give you a glimpse of the palace's grandeur through a picture I have sourced from the Internet (http://www.travelindore.com/story_description.php?s_id=24):

There was a little lift inside the palace. An official informed that the palace did not have a kitchen. Its kitchen was located across the River Khan, on the banks of which the palace was built. There was a tunnel from the palace to the kitchen. The food would come from across the river through this tunnel to the pantry in the palace's basement. Once the food was warmed in the pantry, it was moved up through the lift. Thus, the lift was not for people, but for food! This is perhaps the only 'food lift' I've ever come across in my life!  

This is Zaara and me at the garden of Lal Bagh palace. 

We were sitting along with many mermaids that ornamented the garden :)

Lives blessed by 'barkat'

I shifted to Shaheen Bagh with my husband in 2012. At that time, Shaheen Bagh was the only place in the whole of Delhi NCR where we could afford to buy an apartment. I was a little skeptical, not quite knowing how my life would be in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. Now I know. It is not any different from the kind of life I have led before in different parts of Delhi or Assam or elsewhere. Yes, may be, there are more women to be seen in the hijab, and a few other outwardly "Muslim" characteristics; but other than that, life has been as usual. Just that, I have been fortunate to have amazing neighbors. And now, I really don't want to shift out of this place until and unless my neighbors shift out too :)

My two closest friends here are Rashida Baji and Munni Baji. Both of them are tailors and they are so good with their work! What is extraordinary about them is not just their work, but how they live their lives and inspire me and others who come in touch with them. I dedicate this photo essay to them.

Munni Baji and Rashida Baji at the terrace of Rashida Baji's building

These is a lot to learn from these two women. Munni Baji's husband has been ill for almost a decade now. His health does not permit him to move much out of the house. Hence, the onus of earning this household's livelihood now rests on Munni Baji. She has three children: One girl is still in high school; her son is in Mumbai with his uncle since last year after he passed his high school, learning the trades of his uncle's business; and her eldest daughter joined work last year. So, for quite some time, it was Munni Baji who was running the household. And she has been living in Shaheen Bagh with her family since 1996, before the real estate boom hit it in the 2000s and turned an idyllic piece of land into the clutter that it is now. "I can't tell you the beautiful life we led here," she tells me. "It was almost like we were living in a village with lots of open space for my children to play and for me to grow vegetables!"         

Munni Baji with her husband Islam Bhai in the courtyard of their house 

The courtyard has several trees and cats. And many children from the neighborhood have grown up here. I am glad that my child is growing up here too, in the midst of sand, trees, plants and cats. This is such a blessing in Delhi!

Rashida Baji moved to Shaheen Bagh with her husband and two little daughters in 2002 and took up a place on rent near Munni Baji's house. The two women became friends and soon started working together. They work in a small room by a corner in Munni Baji's courtyard. They work very hard and proudly run their households. 

There is a term called 'barkat', which means a blessing of abundance. Munni Baji and Rashida Baji's households have 'barkat'. Always and for everyone, there is good food coming out of their kitchens. There is a lot of warmth for whosoever visits them. And they look after the road in front of their houses. Both these two women and their husbands. They clean it by themselves every morning. Not only are their houses clean, but the road outside too. This sense of ownership for the road and the neighborhood is something that I have not even seen "educated" people in Delhi maintain. And for keeping the area clean, if they have to shell out of their pockets, they are not even complaining! Has anyone seen many "educated" people do that? Only a few days ago, Islam Bhai got a few people to clean the manholes in the lane. He paid extra of course because despite many rich and educated people living in the flats around, they refused to pay for work being done on the road. Which they say is the government's job! But of course when Islam Bhai pays from his pocket to keep the road well and clean in front of their houses, they have no objections!       

My toddler cries at late in the night and these two households, where people go to bed early, call me up to find out if all's well and if they should come over to help. There is 'barkat' in everything they offer, even in their generosity.

I am so happy that they have included me in their circle of family. 

Rashida Baji and Munni Baji at their workstation

Rashida Baji's husband owns an auto and he runs it in Noida. Very recently, some newspaper had covered the story of how he had tracked one of his passengers who had left behind a suitcase full of thousand rupee notes in his auto and returned it to the man without a single note missing. The man was overwhelmed and offered him some token money as gratitude. Rashida Baji's husband, Samneer Bhai, refused and came back with satisfaction at having located the man. The man spoke about this fortunate incident to a few journalist friends and soon they covered the story of this hero for their papers.  

Sameer Bhai and Rashida Baji with their daughters and two young neighbors, plus my daughter Zaara on Eid  2013 

celebrating Eid 2013 with my two closest friends in Shaheen Bagh

Rashida Baji and her sunshine smile just like her sunshine persona :)

What I have learnt most from these two women is that nothing can and should come in between a life that is lived with generosity, kindness and gratitude.