Toes and stones

I was taking my usual rounds near my house, listening to music and thinking about few deeper aspects of life when my dear brother (cough) came along demanding that I should return back his flip flops, the ones that I was wearing, immediately. Sighing, I gave them back and did not make an effort to walk back to my house to put replacement chappals  on. I continued walking, bare feet on the ground for some strange reason. Curiously enough, I did not feel weird or strange walking bare feet on the ground. In fact, I begun to enjoy the experience. I paid close attention the sense of those cold stones beneath my feet, of different shapes and sizes. I sensed, closely, the granules of sand and I begun to discover so many small aspects about the ground that I was walking on. How the temperature differed slightly from one spot to another, the amount of sand sprawled across the ground. I begun to feel and notice every feeling that encountered my feet, the piercing sensation of stones, the slippery softness of the sand. Everything. 

That is when I begun to realize that if i hadn't removed the foot wear I probably wouldn't have experienced all these sensations on my feet. Do we even remember how the ground feels like at all? With our shoes on all the time, do we remember the sense of our feet? Of touch and feeling? 

For all those who haven't got it yet, i'm basically using walking bare feet as a metaphor. Somewhat. I wish to emphasize on the fact that we have somewhat forgotten what it feels like to feel and experience raw human senses. Something like walking bare feet, sitting cross legged (for those who are used to sitting like this), lying down lazy, etc. We as human beings, still find ourselves riveted comfortably with these raw human senses. Over the years of growth, materialization, we brought ourselves to a certain level of subtleties where we forgot how it feels like to be the core, raw you, experiencing all basic human sensations. Do you remember that time, when as kids we used to run around amuck and now we don't. Do you remember how, even picking your nose was pleasing at one point :P . Wondered why? Now we live in a time where necessities arose and we had to wear foot wear and it became a habit. Our feet have, somehow become numb, and forgotten the sense of ground, the earth. 

I'm not basically making this blog to criticize materialism nor am I supporting it in anyway. You can say that im actually talking about the sober fact that we have forgotten these senses. Of touch, and feelings as we grow into our own subtleties. Few of them, inevitable, and few others were something we choose to forget in order to please ourselves on some higher planes of living. Personally, I would say that it feels good, wait not just good, but eternally pleasing to sense these senses. Basically because, its just SO you, SO us, and SO each one of us. Get what I mean? 

Just last night I was having a conversation, discussing this blog with Shreeharsha and stumbled upon so many questions! I had even planned on not writing the blog at all since, well, I hadn't thought about this topic through and through. Or so I realized. Anyway, I decided to type down what I had in mind in hopes that the readers might get what i'm trying to say. At least few percents of it. =D 

~ Renuka Kulkarni

Bow Wow Ewww...

Three months after my sister was married, her old cupboard was finally mine. It smelt strongly of cosmetics and little did I know that the perfume of oriflame would eventually help me in understanding dogs. Yeah… it makes less sense, but let’s keep going. I had had the almirah for two or three months, and there wasn’t much I actually wanted to keep inside an almirah. My mom made use of this, she needed a place to keep her herbal tea stock; and since I didn’t have the almirah full by then, my mom stocked a full shelf with her herbal tea. Since then I would be greeted by the scent of tea and herbs as I opened the doors. I should say here, I really missed the scent of oriflame.  

Moving on, just a few weeks back my dad needed a place to store his gifts. Gifts as in wooden mementos. So quite easily he took another empty shelf and filled it with his mementoes. I know!! I really need to stuff things into that almirah! So now the cupboard smelt of wood varnish. I would wrinkle my nose and make a bad face whenever I opened the closet. Actually it was this repelling scent that made me think how important the sense of smell is, and how stimulating it can be. I started thinking about how dogs always sniffed around other dogs’ pee, or I had heard that male star tortoises travelled for miles to the scent of a female tortoise in heat. I started to think that maybe the sense of smell is wasted on us, and of course a lot of other crazy weird shit; but that’s when it hit me! I finally realized why I was being chased by dogs, or why Rani, the dog in our street was thought to be a bad dog or why the number of dog bites had increased in the metros. It was smell! 

I knew that dogs are rarely aggressive towards humans, but the number of Dog bite cases has had an increasing trend over the years.  I had been chased by dogs myself on a few occasions, I really didn’t care to think about it, but I did see a pattern, I saw that on the days I wore an Adidas, ‘sport’ deo(marketed by Calvinkare in India) I noticed dogs barking at me and on two occasions aggressively perused . A dog with a limp near my friend Pinky’s house, which is otherwise the most peaceful dog also seemed to want a piece of me. I though, the deo was bad luck and stopped using it. But It was the scent!  

I was chased again by Rani, this was right after I had had a bath; I had used my mom’s VS shampoo... I thought the shampoo smelled really good, and after I came out of the bath, my mom was seriously mad at me for using too much of her VS shampoo. That was probably worse than Rani’s chase, but the point is, it could be possible that Rani was repelled or felt threatened by the weird smell of my mom’s shampoo.

Rani, was also known for barking at fast traveling cars; and she would really get mad at the two guys who had wicked looking Bullet bikes in our street. 

There were reports of dogs attacking infants. It really seemed threatening, and many organizations plus the government took to the streets to sterilize, move and even kill dogs. Maybe, a lamenting infant in the hands of a funny smelling woman with shopping bags full of more smelly things scared him. Just a thought.

In our fit to be metro, we are confusing and threatening these poor creatures. The sense of smell, sight and sound are all that these playful creatures base their life on, and all the different smells, sounds, sizes and shapes that we create or have these days are harming the creatures we share our ecosystem with.  If we can talk about being sensitive to nature, we can surely think why animals do what they do.

The next time you are chased or attacked by a dog, just smell yourself

 

Rights Wrong Write

Its an age old belief that Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth follows and always comes after saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. The wise and well read also said that the true lustre of knowledge and wisdom, the sheer brilliance of art and literature is often found to shine from underneath the clutter of poverty and obscurities.

 There might be a few exceptions to the latter statement, but the bare sense of rating Saraswati over Lakshmi holds a lot of meaning. Have we somehow lost this teaching? Or has the teaching itself lost upon us? Whichever might be the voice used, lakshmi clearly seems to be leading the way today, and the ‘New Age Indian Authors’ who are also the point of talk in this article, are the staff holders of this lakshmi led regime. 

As common as it is for people to want to be heard, it is also quite common for people to have stories; not to mention the crave for fame and the desire to tame success. A mix of all this is what gives rise to the tragedy called “The New Age Indian Author”. Yeah, what follow is going to take an aggressive turn against the new age Indian authors, so if you like the Chetan Bhagats and Rashmi Bansals, you stop here. 

Everyone has stories, and everyone likes to be heard, the more people hear you the more happy you feel and if popularity, success and money come along, then who wouldnt want to become a writer? My question to these authors is- doesn’t writing have a purpose?  are just money, success or popularity reasons enough for writing books? Or do they even care about any of this?

When I first thought I could also turn author, I came up with an attractive and a fairly interesting prologue. Thrilled at this, I showed it to my dad, who is again an author,  but by no means has new or age on his side

.

‘It’s not bad. I think you might have an interesting story to tell, but I wouldn’t give a good review, you have a story and you mean well but thats not enough. You also know Kannada well, but not quite enough to be an author. Be more descriptive, romance a little with the words, make reading a pleasure. Make it look like literature and not a news report.’ Said my father.

I was not surprisingly, crushed and a little hurt; which led me to conclude that my father was too old for lite reading.  Only now I realise that this ‘lite reading’ is a bug. A bug that is one of the reasons for the encroachment of these new age authors on an enchanted lane of literature paved long before there existed a ‘lite reading’. 

While speaking to my aunt on this topic, she seemed to be outraged, her exact words were

‘Just because you have a lot of money and know people in publishing, it doesn’t give you right to put crap on paper. That’s reader abuse!’

True, I thought. How many IIMs have you seen turning into authors? Or as my aunt said, serve crap on paper. You take the names, but it holds good for most. This is where we see lakshmi taking lead over Saraswati. Just because you are rich and have an IIM diploma it doesn’t mean you have what it takes to write. I wouldn’t want to go on to explain how bad the writes can get, mostly because I don’t want to get in trouble, and also because I don’t want my post to turn too big. 

All said and done, I do believe people are good at heart, even if you’re an IIM. So just stick to being good.

Reminds me of a song that translates to ‘A Bird that spans the skies doesn’t expect an award for being what she is’ 

Are we so obsessed with success and popularity that we expect recognition for being selfless? Does that even count as being selfless? Or has selflessness become another qualification to sell yourself?

What started off as an expression of dissatisfaction for bad books and poor literature by these story sellers has manifested into something much different. Nonetheless it is worth thinking. Do we need to accept and implement these new found definitions and meanings of selflessness? Or would we use it as a cynical complement? Think!

Oh yeah..  I almost forgot... Don’t buy their books if you like English