Re-union, Part Deux

I feel it already..like the 'Exodus' has begun.
Ever since I came back from Portland..
It was no coincidence I took the book with me there.

I feel like the system has blown and the lid has come off.
It is happening as we speak..
The lid of fake covers, IDs, layers, bourgoise ghettos, death, smell of decay, 'morals' and 'rituals'..
We have taken them apart.
You and I.
Since that day in Berlin, when we last met, we had black coffee together. and promised.
We would find each other again.
My anarchist revolutionary and your Karpinski Leah.

We were torn apart.. but never separate.
We kept the promise.
It is time to redeem that pledge.

Live fearlessly.

(And isn't it interesting, that I stopped at the 'Zeitgeist' cafe of all places, en route to Portland? The smell of dark coffee, books and revolutionaries in the air..a la Seattle)

Bliss

Woke up to a morning of such mystic bliss..
the esctasy blew my mind..
Sunrise and the soft sun of dawn.
Walking on the rose feet of the grass in Portland's Farmer's Market.
It was heavenly summer
and the smell of roasting kielbasa sausages
and your feet in the grass.
even though you were physically elsewhere
you know where you were.

Then the sun filled the air with this dappled light
and the people with the liberal eyes filled my soul.

And I so wanted to be home..
A home is a state of mind.
not a claustrophobic bourgouise walled garden..
I will not be in a walled garden.

I will be with you.
Always.
in the dappled sunshine,
reading books
by the kielbasa sausages
in the farmers market.
As you walk with your feet
in the dappled sunshine.
 

Berlin Diary, Part Deux

I am holding a 61 year-old copy of William Shirer's classic, 'Berlin Diary' in my hands.
Found it in the history section of the famous Powells in Portland.
Holding it feels weird.

Feel like I am witnessing history, a la Marcus Aurelius, witnessed the 'Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Marcus was there, as Caeser rode into Rome.

Shirer witnesses the stand of the last revolution, standing on its feet in Germany, France, Spain, as the communists, fascists, democrats fight it out on the streets in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. He is there, standing in the Place de la Concorde, as the gendarmes spray bullets on the Communists and social democrats. It is fascinating, as he describes those very moments we read about in history, sitting in a cafe in Berlin, sending dispatches to the Chicago Tribune that he worked for.

He describes the 'Anschluss', the takeover of Austria, by Berlin
and the erstwhile 'Americans in Paris', the Gatsbys/Fitzgeralds, Hemingways..
hanging out with them and having 'A Moveable Feast' with the Spanish intellectuals, who carried the flame of freedom through the darkening '30s.

How the war correspondent turned into a witness of history
unfolds though the the pages of this 61 year-old book,  that I hold in my hands.
It is bizarre to read about Dolfuss, the tottering Austrian dictator and how he hangs the last vestiges of democracy in Austria, and the social chaos that ensues, leads to the rise and fall of Europe..
Little did he know, that the little dispatches he wrote,  sipping dark coffee
in a Paris cafe,
would become a witness to history..
that an Indian girl would read in the middle of the night, in a hotel in Portland
dark coffee in her hands..

Voyageur, Part Deux

Are you and I
linked forever
together in Paris..
when I wore dark lipstick
and you picked up Le Monde
for me?

Bringing me black coffee
as I fermented revolution
through my pen?

You pined and sighed
for me
through
the bourgoise boredom
and the black print
of the burning papers
kept our love
alive,
through the centuries.

Burning
brightly
through
the burning centuries

You and I
and black print..
can it ever be snuffed out?

As long as freedom is alive,
our love
with burn through the centuries
burning brightly
like the flame
of flight..

 

Voyageur

I am here in Portland.

In the middle of the night..
With black coffee, books and loved friends.
Reading William Shirer in the middle of the night.

Decaf black coffee.
Nothing could be better..
than books and dispatches, a la foreign correspondent
in the middle of the night.

I feel like I am an erswhile traveller
in the the 1930s
travelling through the French Riviera
and Morroco..Casablanca.

My loved one
with me,
reading his paper
avec cafe noir
hands in the air
gesticulating fo democracy.
As I watch him from a distance.

My journalist
from the 30s..

Gatsby is always
with me.
Since the 1930s
we've been together.

Travelling
through
Europe
America
Bon voyages
Berlin
The sea
Baghdad
Bahamas
His eyes
are always with me.

Drinking black coffee
he watches
me from a distance
wherever I go..


 

Birth pangs

The Birth of the Buddha
is writ with painful labor,
bloostained
removal of angst
and opening of the heart chakras..
without the layers
of darkness
covering
the light.

Open the doors
and you will see
the light.

The riddled shining light
that streams
through the doorways
of your life.

The light of medicine and healing
that conceals
beneath,
all your lust and greed for money..
killing patients instead of curing.

The capitalist system
at best
owns your soul..
like the Third Reich, without the slave camps.

You still feed the system
of the Matrix
watching the women come and go
with their trophies
men's libidos
in their hands,
but no more
shall you serve the Reich.
Burn the Reichstag
so you can be
born anew.
Buddha.

Freedom is sweet,
But birth is bitter..
but labor on,
labor on
beneath the layers..
the Light
shines.

Be born
anew.
Buddha.

 

The one who finds his own Path

The one who finds his own path (Siddh-artha)

---

When Siddhartha sits in one place,

he doesnt budge.

Until he has opened the gates and achieved the goal

he doesnt flinch.

 

 

He lets the arrows of Mara slip by..

driving lust, desire and lures away

the sweet-tongued traps.
 

He doesnt flinch until he has opened the doors of Truth,

and revealed the gaze of light

within himself.
 

His own conquest

makes the universe faint

and walk away.
 

"The young prince who abandoned his inheritance to discover his true calling..and changed the world forever.."

 

 When was the last time, you made a Siddhartha of yourself?

Mochas with medicine and the revolution: Where Stanford and Berkeley unite

I have dreamed of a republic, such as the world would adore.
- Camille Desmoulins, French journalist, 1789

I am still feeling the buzz and the glow from my trip to Stanford and Berkeley this year - an incredbile homecoming. My two favorite universities in the world.. but back in the '90s it was a dream for a middle-class Indian student to be able to afford them, without a full scholarship.
 

I hung out with Camille Desmoulins and other journalist-revolutionaries in Berkeley’s cafes. It's smell was strong in the air. The dust, hoof beats and sound of cymbals. The streets were paved with rocks, aimed for the intifada. It was an interesting experience.. to hang out in cafes with professors from NPR and personal friends of Jon Stewart. Intellectual PhD students walked around with Lyapanov and control theory texts in their bags, while I deciphered the intricacies of calculus, as Coldplay played in the background. In my favorite 'Brewed Awakenings' cafe, tripping on their hot chocolate mocha. I could have written my entire Ph.D proposal there, with my pals in the Mech. and Bio. Engg. departments, but the practicalities of life.. At least I deciphered the clarity of my soul and academic dreams..As my dear friend M, calls it, my 'avant-garde French revolution' writing place. In Seattle, it's the 'B n Espresso' in buzzy Capitol Hill, but that's another story.

 

Beyond the poetic rhapsodization, I swung between Berkeley and Stanford in that one week and absorbed two worldviews..both equally lovable in a strange sense. Though they are traditionally supposed to be the classic rivals, ad infinitum.

Stanford is the Renaissance, with the arches and domes and furrowed students walking past the long promenades. Whenever I am there, I am dazzled by the dust in the air, emanating an air of regality/ elegance. The talks by the med school Professors on their literary genres and hanging out with my close friend R in the Stanford bookstore. buying 2 dollar Thomas Manns. He is my friend from Delhi and good old DU, who literally lives in the NASA center next door and caffeine and books. His work was part of the flight to Mars, so that was an incredible high in itself.

And Berkeley is the Paris of the 1780s..brewing coffees and 'intifadas' in its innumerable cafeterias, bookstores and meet-up clubs. Clubs. Clubs is where it all began. The French revolution began with the Jacobin Clubs, the Enlightenment version of the modern day 'meet up' where journalists, intellectuals and like-minded activists hung out.. and planned the overthrow of the European order. I was reminded of it from the innumerable AID meetings (Association for India's Development) to literary and film societies.. teeming all over the place, like rugs. I didn't have enough time to do justice to all of them, though I did hang out with one, at the 'Au Coco Lait' cafe in Berkeley - another caffeinated hub of the intellect and the arty avant-garde types.

The graduate programs in both places are equally intricate as a maze, but complement each other in incredible ways. The brilliant Alexandr Lyapunov and his systems theory is common to both of them, being some of the top centers of control theory in the world. Lyapunov is one of my heroes, intellectual, scientific and social. A Russian revolutionary in the true sense of the word. A brilliant mathematician and the father of modern control theory, an incredible social idealist - and romantic, who killed himself after the demise of his wife.

Systems biology, being the newest conceptual breakthoughs in science, which will change its face for the next century. A field which exquisitely combines science, math and medicine into one jigsaw whole. Peering into cells, molecules, entire body systems and diseases with calculus. Modeling pregnancies, TB and brain tumours - and developing some of the most cutting-edge medicines for them..already saving lives. How cool is that.. pure unadulterated math making medicine. With that excruciating calculus component which I am always trying to conquer, it fascinates me as the new face of science. Just as cell biology and quantum physcis were at the turn of the century.

My Ph.D and revolution and literary dreams linger there ..and the labs of UCSF, the other medical hub, smelling of cadavers which give life. A medical university which combines global health, social conscience and cutting-edge research, with some of best looking residents I have seen. Incredible dinners and parties on Embarcadero with conversations from bioscience and colonialism in the Middle East. UCSF smells of medicine. Pure, anatomical and cadaver-ridden, medicine. It reels your senses and is not for the faint-hearted. I interviewed in one of their labs for a corpus-callosum study on brain imaging..and the fragility of the grant system came through. Of places which fund the biotech hedge-funds of the world. How ironic, that capital markets live off the intellectual capital, of places that are deprived of capital.  But that is another story. To be continued..

 

 

Ishq-wala Love

I see it coming.

The face of sunshine in the snow.

The smile of love in the snow.

Snowflakes fill my soul.

With Ishq-wala Love.

I'm coming home..

To Ishq-wala Love.
Isn't that the only thing that matters?

Honest feedback

I recently got some honest feedback from well-intentioned friends, about how much of my blogs were talking about "religion" and "inter-faith" issues. I am grateful for these friends, who brought me to this insight. Like throwing cold water to the face.
I looked at my blog and I was shocked.
A single, independent woman with two Masters degrees from Europe and America -  and publications in the Guardian and a multi-cultural background like mine.
Yes, it would have seemed odd. Very odd.

Then I realized that I was letting that one experience, which shook my world 10 years ago, still affect my life.
Being caught in this insane 'religious' violence in India, facing a life and death situation, in 2002. My hand shakes talking about it. Seeing victims of the most inhumane atrocities in the relief camps in my beloved Delhi. Which changed my world.. and what I thought of it. I haven't talked about it since.. though it simmers in my words on my blog and other places. The festering wound of how human beings can slaughter each other in the name of "religion" and justify it. I cannot repeat the atrocities which were witnessed and are well-documented.
How my "feminist" co-worker, researching female foeticide, looked at gang-rapes of pregnant women and said, "THEY asked for it.. these people are all traitors anyways.."
That broke my back.
But like many war journalists, who witness violence first hand, there is a journey to healing.. and recognising it is the first step.
The couldnt-care less Delhiite with neon dreams and the desire to conquer space..felt in those few days that nothing one achieved or how liberal one was, mattered to those mobs.
But I decided, that I will not let this control my life anymore, without realizing how much subconsciously I still was.
I thank these amazing, insightful and honest friends for throwing the cold water in my face.. and I wake up, look at myself and wonder what became of me.
For realizing a wound, is the first step to healing it.. and sometimes honest feedback, however brutal, works like bitter medicine, long needed.

This 'freedom' of mine is a hard earned freedom. With blood, toil and passionate motivation, When I was returning to the US for my second Masters, AFTER the above experiences, I was told time and again to "get married" to some nice guy, yaar. There were plenty of options from my friends and family circle. But none took my heart.."Why do you need to do this on your own. You have the looks, brains and so forth.You can always go to grad school AND be married". But somehow, I felt repelled by the idea of planning a marriage for 'security'. Somewhere in me, the idealist persisted - and how it's brought me beautiful experiences I wouldnt want to trade for a bourgoise ring. I am NOT a bohemian libertine from any angle.. but then why does a woman need to justify her dignity and independence of spirit?  Yes, I had my insecurities due to my traumatic experiences, but then who doesn't? But I didn't trade my soul or crack..but kept on believing. It maybe easy for guys who have not fought these battles, to see me with that fragile 'good-looking' face, which only shows the girl who did modeling assignments during her undergrad days - and keeps the happy smile of the Delhi girl. Which she will always be at heart.

I prefered to starve, than ask my loving and gentle ex for any financial help, when I was job-hunting. He never knew..despite being a management consultant a top-notch firm. He never knew.. when I could have asked him for gifts and job references, about how hard I worked to make ends meet during grad school and afterwards during the recession. I never asked him for the Prada bags and Gucci shoes, when he could have showered them on me.. his love was enough for me.

Someday the men will also understand, that we women have the spirits of a warrior beneath the high cheekbones.

My friend Siddartha

"Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, the return was inevitable.."
- Hermann Hesse, Nobel Laureate in 'Siddartha'

Today, I am missing my friend Siddhartha. A lot.
Siddartha is the name of some of my closest friends in Delhi, my buddies through life and Pink Floyd songs and driven dreams of Ivy Leagues and Latin America and spiritual trips in Nepal. And my current screen favorite in India, Siddartha Malhotra; who epitomizes that cool vibe for me. The hip Delhi streets, with Dylan t-shirts, blazing ambition and self-belief. I can't believe that drive is still fueling me. That desire to achieve greatness. Be it a Nobel or Pulitzer or a tenure at an Ivy League. Even a contract with an international music company or an Investment banking firm with fair motives.

Siddartha is a Pali word that means "One who is meaning, in himself."
But on a different note.. Siddartha is my favorite book by Hermann Hesse. His hero for me. The one who went on a quest and found himself.
This was the only book that ever resonated with me. Though I looked at others through the years..I almost bought into a lot of the authoritarianism, but..

None. I saw none of the authoritarian texts that made sense to me, as much as this one little book written by a bespectacled German in the 1930s. I respect all 'systems', but Siddhartha stayed with me.
It started my first love story. It ended my second one.
I remember reading it in one go, when I was 16.
The best part about it was the 'not following' anyone.
I loved that Siddhartha refused to join the Buddha’s order. Become part of any organized institution.
Weird, when I feel into the same ‘maya/illusion’, but I kept a part of me intact.
My first love, who read Siddhartha with me in one go and how we called each other 'Siddhartha'. We said we would never give in. We would seek and find. And how we almost forgot.. and fell..but are awakening.
My second love is still seeking. It’s brutal, but he will find the way.

Siddartha is the power and force of believing in yourself.
Siddartha is me at 23, walking through Paris on my own, discovering the revolution beaneath the Place de la Bastille.
To get lost in an insane 'religious' conflict, almost die and yet escape unscathed. To heal yourself..
To keep it intact through the innumerable 'Aunties' and institutions and 'get married' and labels. And standing up to patriarchy and identity. Little did I know when I read Siddhartha, how much 'he' would be tested. Being a girl in a South Asian culture made me a ready candidate for the test. A girl who only believed in love and not labels. Who thought an 'registered' marriage would be the only way she would 'institutionalize' her true love, felt guilty about not having big desi wedding. Who me? It's not fancy.
Being a hardworking graduate student in an MS Engineering program, living with your loved one, without seeking approval of people..despite the close-knit community of your 'home' culture. I dont't even think it is such a big deal for two adult human beings in grad school.but don't know how slowly I fell into the same trap of cultural pressure. And being 'dumped' for not being the right 'religion' after giving 9 years of your life to someone..it's not fancy. At least I realize it now. I put words to it. Broken, scared but still writing.

Me, for whom love was the smoky cold breath in the snow. Walking hand in hand in long coats..it still is. How did it happen? And now it is coming back.. all that. The snow. The winter. The hand in hand. I can see it coming :) And am so excited..no more pressures.. just being me and Being with my Siddartha.

And it’s strange how Love, connects you to things. For me love has been a connection of quests. I have never loved anybody who didn’t have that.
Sometimes with love, you don’t have to do anything, but awaken each other. Bring out the soul within each other, like a beautiful melody from a lute. Both times, in my life, love has brought those precious blessings. Not ownership, but belonging.

Siddartha is someone I miss a lot..a crazy, seeking soul-mate, who is still searching, But doesnt find the peace beneath the bourgoise veneer of Prada bags and Gucci shoes.
Siddartha is that Ivy League vibe I love.. walking through the snow with a long black coat and a cool love next to me, throwing snowflakes at each other. And reading poetry from Lorca, as we go out to conquer our lab.
Siddartha is me.
And sometimes he is caught..and sometimes he is free. But continues on his quest. To break free of the shackles, that aren't really there.
And there is another Siddartha.. a flesh and blood one.. who is looking for me and I am looking for him. He wear a coat with a muffler and drinks a croissant with a black coffee, looking back at his ex-girlfriends and walks on, with me.
After all, isnt love about awakening the Siddartha in each other?

A Trip to the Rainforest

Yesterday I made a trip home to the Amazon rainforest.
As part of a trip to the .. Zoo, it was amazing walking though the simulated trees, parakeets, adders, fiches and monkeys of the Amazon.
and then to the African savannah, where the giraffes run. along side the gazelles..

more to come.

Plum brandy and Gauloise

is the foundation of the modern republic.
Vive la republique!

Class

I have finally arrived in a class-less society.
Capitalist but classless.

I like the idea of waiting tables
and throwing out my own trash.
Inventing an algorithm
driving my own car through
the streets with no name.

The sense of oppression I felt in South Asia
is gone.
Boom.
Kaputt.
It's a place where people cook their own meals
and wash their own clothes.
How lovely.

Life is Beautiful

Weekend with Bolsheviks, Frida and Anne Frank.

And some black coffee.

Life is beautiful.

Haiti: Part Deux

I am always amazed at the good old Guardian, the bastion of the British Left, which never ceases to open my eyes and shake me out of my bourgoise complacency.

Here is what I read this morning, though I knew the general gist of Haiti's colonial past and the Marisposas in neighboring Dominican Republic. I just had to reproduce these parts, they say it all. It's a familiar story..from Iraq to Vietnam. "Colonize" and then "aid".

Quote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
(From: Our role in Haiti's plight, by Peter Hallward)

Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.

Haiti is routinely described as the "poorest country in the western hemisphere". This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression.

It is this poverty and powerlessness that account for the full scale of the horror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti's agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums. Although there are no reliable statistics, hundreds of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents now live in desperately sub-standard informal housing. The selection of the people living in such places and conditions is itself no more "natural" or accidental than the extent of the injuries they have suffered. Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.

The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this "investment" towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the ­distribution of international "aid".

The same storms that killed so many in Haiti in 2008, hit Cuba just as hard but killed only four people. Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform", and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster. If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board. Along with sending emergency relief, we should ask what we can do to facilitate the self-empowerment of Haiti's people and public institutions. If we are serious about helping we need to stop ­trying to control Haiti's government, to pacify its citizens, and to exploit its economy. And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done.

unqoute.
still figuring that one out..

My songs..

petrovski: "1. ...Nach Gro�wardein (Hermann Rosenzweig / Anton Groiss) - New Budapest Orpheum Society"

Moritz, Sebastian et al

SO, what is with me and these uber-cool European men?
Seems like I have a proclivity to find/fall for the Moritz and Sebastian Koch type. My prototype of L'homme Ideal et al.

Nor surprising, since I dated a couple of lookalikes way back as misty eyed grad student..the intelligence ridden eyes with the uber-hotness, but in a suave understated way. I do not fall for many of the usual icons of Bollywood.. the SRKS and all. Aamir Khan though was and is a favorite. but I love him like a a cutie pie, 'Bade Mamu' (and 'Sunju' of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar).

But Moritz, aah is a different thing. Those life infused days in Paris, sleeping at the Sorbonne and walking through the Montmatre landscape, lounging students around, and my ex-calling me and asking me sweet questions in his German infused English. I wish I hadnt gone down the desi route..back to the idiot I was dating in school. Stupid desi baggage, I am still trying to unload. My whole idea of relationships, has come back home..to the girl I used to be. To the Moritzes and Berndts and Jans. Thing with them is that they dont have the machismo, (at least most)the air of male bravado, which even the cutest Latin guys may carry. I'd like the breakfast making, slightly feminine male, who is male enough to acknowledge his female side, and sparkles with the incandescent intelligence of a New York Times editorial, smoothing from Revolution to baking a linzertorte when I am in the mood and walking by the Seine in a beret, hot coffee in his hands. Anyways, I have held the bliss of Moritz in my life..and so much happier for it. :)

A relationship like an avant-garde postcard, backpacking in the Himalayas or Andes, smooth as silk and risky as a high rise cliff, but you've never felt safer..

Revolution aka Bhagat Singh

He's always been my guy. :)
Featured in the much touted 'Rang de basanti', he influenced me years before.
My grandmom was a little girl in Lahore they day he was hanged. By the British rulers, at the tender age of 23. He gave himself up to the Brits, after exploding a sound bomb in the Lahore Assembly and shouting 'Inquilab zindabad'(Long live the revolution), which became the slogan for the anti-imperialist movement, which brought down the British empire.
A towering intellectual, poet and revolutionary, his prison writings, from Urdu and Perisan poetry to European revolutionary thought is eye-opening. His essay 'Why I am an atheist' shakes one up and makes one think..again.

--

'By Revolution we mean that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice must change. Producers or labourers, in spite of being the most necessary element of society, are robbed by their exploiters of their labour and deprived of their elementary rights. The peasant who grows corn for all, starves with his family; the weaver who supplies the world market with textile fabrics, has not enough to cover his own and his children's bodies; masons, smiths and carpenters who raise magnificent palaces, live like pariahs in the slums. The capitalists and exploiters, the parasites of society, squander millions on their whims.

- Bhagat Singh, Indian revolutionary, 1907-1931

To Sofia

Sofia Kovaleskaya, creator of the Kovalesky therom, was the first woman to earn her doctorate in mathemetics in all of Europe and Russia, despite not being allowed to attend classes..
- Dr. Ann Liebowitz, Women in Science

We've worked hard to get here
despite sweating blood every month.