Part one: Love letter to Lahore

Dear Lahore,

You are not mine. Nor am I yours.

Tumse lakh darje zyada purisrar shehr aur haseen wadian mera intezaar kerti hain. Aur tum jese shehr mein aik main hi tou nahin jo tumhari alambardar banni phirti rahay. You have tons of lovers, my promiscuous friend. Most of them,unable to keep a secret. They write about you. Almost everyday. The young women I know. They write about you like you died. They write about you like they even lived you. They recount tales of 'bravery' when they scrunched up their pants and delved deep, touched upon your pulse, knew your most innermost secrets... they mean they dined at that famous restaurant of yours that claims to be representative and were awestruck by the view (It is carefully sculpted especially for them, after all). Of course cheap prostitutes become mythical poetic creatures if they are part of the landscape, you know. As long as you can look at them, wouldn't they simply lay their nature bare? There is a common nature to them, right? Besides, Badshahi Mosque always looms imposingly in the distance, stepping in to rescue the romance as soon as the novelty wears thin. What a viable plan B!

Or maybe it is the glamorous new food street, complete with musicians playing violin to the absent rhythm of their clinking cutlery. Actually, I doubt if there is any cutlery involved. It's all indigenous, you know. Except the violins, because after all, someone has to drown out the buzz of Lahori mosquito and musicians with stoic faces would do just fine.

This gentle delightful crease on your skin, they call 'Old' Lahore. Do you get offended? I would if I was you. But you are flattered, aren't you? You pretentious fuck of a city. I can see the blush warming your cheeks. You wallow in these delusions of grandeur; in these ghosts of a glorious past resurrected unknowingly by those who know you only as much as I know Sanskrit: there is just this vague unarticulated sense of ownership without the ability to read or understand it.

You see, I can't even write this properly. Tumhari baat chirtay hi loag apne aap hi rang badalne lagtay hain aur mere liyay do zubnain bhi nakaafi ho jaati hain. I'm upset with you. I'm upset because I'm not upset often enough and it's your fault! Every time, my blood boils, you laugh in my face, skip a step and tell me, 'I've seen worse, darling; it could be worse.' Mirth dances in your eyes, you old hag. As 'security' barriers rise like the tower of Babel, breaking out across your face as unwelcome as acne, mirth dances in your eyes.

I want you to see you are shrinking. I want you to feel like you are tossed into a spinning laundry machine, silently almost unnoticeably losing volume. You house museums whose exhibits are not to welcome visitors. Can you imagine the irony? I scaled you for hours on end, walking along your unlit footpaths, your many numb limbs. Unlit, because one isn't really supposed to feel ants crawling over a limb, let alone facilitate them. And then you have those terribly lit side walks (white light, not yellow) upon which if feet are to tread, sirens start blaring. They remind me of padded rooms, you know. They remind me of padded rooms in such a way that I'm convinced such rooms were once a real memory of mine. Another lifetime, perhaps.
'Utar jao idhar se, jao. Baaji sunti nahin ho, jao', says the voice awfully overridden with static. I almost laugh at the address. Baaji. Like that makes it easier. I keep walking.


Love,
A slightly envious M.

Itch

Her fingers itched. Not the way an itch is supposed to itch. Not persistent or urgent like an unexpected doorbell rung by an impatient but unwelcome visitor. No, her fingers itched dully and softly. An itch so soft that her heart sank in it. She dug her nails into the space between those damned fingers and willed them to stop. Disobedient as the itch was, it paid no heed. It became impossible for her to sit still. Restlessness set in the room as a gas would silently leak through an unnoticed breach in careful plumbing.   She paced and tried to sleep. Alternately. Many times.
Finally, faint shoots of daylight crept in through the pores in the wire nets that covered the windows, gently parted the curtains and silently curled around her toes. At dawn then, she knew for sure the itch would never leave her; it was hers to keep. And who could she blame but herself? She had always impertinently wanted to tell more stories than she could.

A name.

Three syllables, not easy to pronounce. It took me a while to befriend her name despite the fact that I made polite advances every day. It was scribbled meticulously across the drawing board that her boyfriend of the time carried everyday to class. By the time I spoke to her for the first time, her name was like a childhood memory. Familiar but forgotten. And how can you not like someone who doesn't put you through the awkward but necessary exchanges of associating the person to an unrelated piece of text?
"A*****", she would have said in such a conversation. I wouldn't catch it but I wouldn't ask again for names, like clarity, come if you linger long enough for the ripples to die.

Her persistent late night gloom and my unchanging reasonable sane advice, 'Soo jao.' Too reasonable, too sane.

Her ability to love many ways but hate linearly. Equally passionately. Her efficient use of memory by which she remembers and forgets at will. Some chapters she writes till her pen runs out or her tongue gets tied. Many stories are abuzz, all of which she narrates with painful attention to details, particularly the names and the conversations. At other times, she pretends like it didn't happen, almost daring anyone to argue. But even targeted bombs have collateral damage, don't they? She painfully remembers the list of things she is busy forgetting.

The strange men she knows, many of which don't really know her. The stranger men she falls for, and the strangest who fall for her.

The night time adventures that regularly unfold in front of her, her inexplicable magnetism for a crop of ethereal intangible people who come and go as they please, the images getting sharper or hazier.

How she is utterly inept when faced with silence, her sure response is to beckon speech to rescue her from this quiet oblivion.

How she never reads but is good with words.

How she doesn't really know that language is becoming to her.

How she once read a book for someone and fell in love. With the book and the man.

Her ominous dreams that could, one day, threaten her uneasy truce with sanity.

How we told each other about our unusual, lone and fantastic childhoods on a train we caught barely in time as it rumbled out of the station. We never paid the coolie.

Her infatuation with the city by the sea, 'Saray achay loag wahin rehte hain', always looking for those, achay loag.

Her slouching protruding spine which might land her a role as a starved monk one day for it looks so good on camera.

The toes she is ashamed of for they are uneven in length.

How she doesn't really have a 'taste' in music which allows her to listen to all kinds of tasteful music, really.

Her movie recommendations that remain insistent despite the fact that they were never paid any heed.

Her dark dark skin against which a nosepin glitters in rebellion.

How she can tell without being told, how she is often told because she won't tell.

Her prized collection of many different kinds of paper and how she often spreads them out in the middle of the night.

How easily she envies, how believable I would find it if she crafted a poisonous apple one fine day.

The indecisions that cling to her like clothes to perspiring bodies, as she lingers in echoing corridors.

And yet, her mad rush. To get...there. To find...it.  (Some things she can never articulate)

Her preoccupation with herself (Kehne ko tou duniya mein aur gham hazaron hain. Bas kehne ko) on ordinary days (unlike extraordinary days jab zamanay bhar ke gham weigh her down).

Her voice lit with childlike excitement when she shreiked, "Can you please write something about me?"

None of it jumps to my mind when I hear your name. For my mind is already imprinted with an image of pastel marks on drawing board. Read over and over again. Meaningless for all intents and purposes.

Lunch

His colleagues had fine appetites. At lunch times, they took meticulous care to not leave any uncivil unfinished bits shamelessly lying around. Clinking cutlery; raucous laughter; intermittent talk of sport, politics, the other gender and belligerent superiors: all generic yet subtle distractions from the real task at hand. With surgical efficiency, they carried out this sole task accompanied by a sour smell, the sharper edge of which was metal and the sickening wobble was poetically contributed by rotting meat. He might miss meetings but he was always dutifully present at lunch for at lunchtimes, his colleagues devoured him.

Punchlines

Side by side, they sit on a couch bathed in the neon glow of a television. He flips channels just before commercials deliver punchlines. Aching for the certainty of sparkling white shirts washed with the best of all detergents, she ferociously protests in a language she does not know. But he knows better than to tell her, for he is burdened with the knowledge that there is a better selection of words than the best. And punches aren't very pleasant, are they?

Part One: 'You are like a restless grasshopper.'

 For an artist to gain relevance in our times, one work must provide legitimacy to another. I think this is partly because artists have understood the influence of dwindling attention spans and their inadvertent heartless side effects upon individual works of art. Our axes are blunting and to fell a tree we must strike again and again upon the same spot. Of course, I can not fully disregard that the stimulation may be intrinsic as well. It is only natural that if an individual has few significant concerns in life, they will seep in as his/her strongest concerns in art. It is also true that many successful artists pursue an individual, often customized style in execution and/or media. Again, very understandable for many fruits are borne of a prolonged association with a singular mode of work. There is a quality of performance involved in the making of a work when the artist is delving deep into a particular medium. Looking at it later, such work reminds me of the sonorous quality of certain words that beg to be uttered aloud. Palimpsest, hullabaloo, mellifluous, quintessential, pastiche, gargoyle (Note to self: make a recitation list for tougher times)... deliciously rolling, sometimes smacking tongue (on second thoughts, discard listing idea for it's accidental potential of providing ground for analysis). Not to discount the fact that such a stamp of originality is all very romantic. It tickles our fancy to entertain the idea of denting the strenuous fabric of time or rising above sheer numbers by discovering some kind of unique uncharted territory that comes to be defined as ours. So, I fully understand why one would pursue uniformity in a way that gives anchors to a drifting ship. I understand and I often admire. But I do not see the absolute necessity of such practice. Drifting ships are responsive lovers, the winds tell me. How can one not envy the sincerity and abandon that comes with treating every whimsical idea respectfully and fully engaging it in work?
Seemingly, my visuals, at first, appear diffused. I'm having difficulty creating a 'body of work'. What does a 'body of work' even mean? I have half a mind to try good old spit to put it all together. Or homemade Lahori lai that seems to be out of a job now that after a few centuries of lulling us into a sweet habit, Basant has suddenly ceased to exist. But intuition warns me that of such a quest and I let lai remain on its honourable pedestal for it never fails.
Instead, I am letting it be. I am going to remain receptive to every idea without trying to size it upto premeditated standards. I know that consistency is to be found, not to be forced. Hopefully, what will emerge is a worldview which shall underline my work. In the course of events, some moments will linger while others fleet. Some tales will wound up getting retold. Some always just are.

Ladybirds

Two ladybirds. Neither ladylike, nor birdlike. Proudly spotted and standing too straight (as straight as a ladybird might). Converse with each other under the shade of a giant green leaf (as much of a giant as a leaf might be, but not really as green).
 They talk about art and artists; about the burdens of image making and its fruits; about formal aspects and conceptual concerns; about the impossibility of originality and its relentless pursuit; about fame and oblivion (What is more charming of the two, they muse). They gesture wildly with their hands (real hands, more real than the hands a ladybird might have).
They talk about cultural identities; transformations; contexts; powerful things, interesting things. Heck, these things could very well be called post-modern in character (ladybird intuition tells them so). In their passion, they splutter but never stammer. Conversation has never been easier, ideas seem to be plucked from the ladybird mind of one and planted effortlessly into the ladybird mind of another.
They talk about screws and paintballs and matchsticks and polka dots (oh, but ladybirds must!) and soap operas and pocket watches and pillows and chairs and dentists and ready made meals and the recent abundance of pickpocketeers and ants for they have stronger trade unions than ladybirds. Somethings are sort of, somethings they feel like.
They stand too straight and speak all day. Just as they will for many many days to come. They change Everything and Nothing. No one rudely interrupts them to say that their houses may be on fire.





Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,


Your house is on fire,


Your children shall burn!