Bhawana Somaaya

Almost everybody turns nostalgic when they talk about their childhood. They describe the days gone by in glorious terms, filled with innocence and abandon. I disagree. I believe that people who tend to romanticize the past are people who are unable to deal with the present.

I can deal with my present and I have no hesitation to admit that childhood for me was far from the carnival it is made out to be. And thank God I’m not alone in this thought process. Pt. Ram Shastri, F.Scot Fitzgerald, Javed Akhtar, Sant Gyaneshwar have written extensively about their early anguished days. In fact it is believed that most creative people have a troubled past because of which they transform into artistes.

We have been reared to believe that childhood is blissful while in reality childhood is an extremely turbulent, lonely and often frightening phase of our life. It is a phase when you have too many questions and almost no answers.

Psychiatrists say that if adults peeped into the hearts and minds of their children they will never recognize themselves. Hindi films portray the young hero and heroine running into forests and plucking jamuns from a tree. In reality the sepia images are far from lyrical.

On many occasions I have tried to recreate my past in to postcards but unlike our films the images get blurred and dissolve. When I concentrate harder, incomplete visuals fall like dew-drops on my blank canvass and I weave my own story, part fact and part perspective.

I recall hazy images…

…A two year-old huddled inside a cradle placed in the centre of the room often filled with guests and conversations. Young as I am, I understand that getting out of my space will be an invasion into the adult world. So I stay inside without stirring sometimes for hours…Only once in a while when the guests overstay and I’m uncomfortable I call out to my mother and ask, “Ma have the guests left..?” The guests are amused by my shyness and the family almost proud of my self control. “It is extra-ordinary to depict such restraint at such a tender age” they say.

It is the beginning and how strange that nobody pauses to ponder what goes on in a child’s head…Why I behave the way I do..? Can it be because most of the time adults are too busy and don’t pay adequate attention to children or perhaps they don’t sense anything amiss in their surrounding..?

If I jog my memory further I recall a rope swing tied to the balcony door of our old home facing a crowded street. Every evening I’m put on this swing and spend my time watching the hawkers and the people pass by. At dusk when my elder brother returns home after a tired day’s work he gently pushes my saddle and says to mother, “She sits there looking out of the window day after day…wonder what she thinks.”

We assume most of the time that children are day-dreaming but my brother had given thought to my silences and he was right. I was thinking. Day after day I worried about the vendors on the street… I worried about how they would carry their belongings and find their way home… Now when I think of it I feel that children absorb more than we credit them. It is just that they are not equipped to express themselves and thank God for if they did they would frighten their parents..!

Today as I sit at my desk to write this article many montages play in my mind…

I remember my first visit to a Railway Station accompanied by my father. He bought our tickets at a modest window and then led me through a crowded passage to a tall bridge. It was a mighty iron bridge with circular design on the steps. I refused to climb the bridge for I feared slipping down from the little holes. My father was worried. He pushed three fingers inside the circular design and demonstrated why I can never fall down from the steps. “You can only fall if the bridge collapses…” he explained.

I remembered that and after that I prayed every night that the bridge must never collapse. One day, I forgot to pray. I was certain that the bridge had collapsed! In the morning I rushed to the balcony and was surprised to find the bridge in place. I felt betrayed. Had I wasted my precious time in worrying about an unworthy cause? My mind was restless with questions but there was nobody to provide me the answers.

I assumed I would resolve all my conflicts when I attended school but those were hectic days burdened with accountability. The school bag, the rain coat, the water bottle…One had to remember to wear the canvass shoes for the PT class, the salwar and ghungroos for the dance class, the Guide uniform for the extra curricular activities…Every day the time-table had to be checked, the home-work completed, uniform ironed and shoes polished.

There was too much to learn in too little time…How to walk in the rain and balance in the floods, how to catch the bus on time and solve the Algebra sum, how to wash the lunch box and wrap it in the plastic bag, how to cover the books and put the labels, how to remember the lessons, recite poetry and make presentation on the annual day.

It was a turbulent phase filled with self doubt and as time went by the anxieties only multiplied. The pressure for better grades, the pain of puberty, the rivalry in the class room, the embarrassment of a new pimple, the changing body language and the gaze around you. There was too much to cope and too little support.
Childhood was a lonely world…

Then one day, I still remember clearly, the family was travelling to a relative’s home by the BEST bus. As children we were trained to grab an empty seat to prevent from falling down in a moving vehicle. So that day like every time I charged towards an empty seat and was about to plonk when my older sibling pulled me up and seated my mother instead. I was confused and when we got off at our destination immediately asked her about it. “Because” she explained, “You are a big girl now and Mother has turned old. It is her turn to be protected by us.”

I wasn’t sure if I had heard it right but when I looked up, the skyline appeared a different colour. My sister’s words reverberated in my ears and in days to come there was ample proof of it. Anupam Kher once said in my interview that when we grow old it is usually others who make us aware of it. How true because a few days later for the first time Father sought my opinion on purchasing a new dinning table…Suddenly the older girls in the building did not stop whispering when I joined them…Suddenly I stopped enjoying being with my younger cousins.

Finally, the umbilical chord with childhood was broken. Finally, I had my passport to adulthood. Finally, I was free to inhale and exhale, to make my choices and pursue my vision without seeking permission. I was free to make judgements, follow my path and speak my mind without interference. I was free to live my life and make mistakes, to regret or rejoice, to exercise caution or be reckless.

Unlike school and college, life as an adult was a ride without trappings. It provided all the answers I had been looking for. Now I shopped my own clothes, purchased my jewellery, decided the menu and also my investments. There were hardly any doors I didn’t know how to open or conflicts I didn’t know how to resolve. I knew how to win friends and influence people. I knew how to negotiate a better deal or restore faith when relationships soured.

As time went by I felt I was in control of my life. I was no more weighed down by domestic or moral dilemmas. There were frequent blockages but I accepted them as part of destiny.

I never missed my childhood and never craved for those days to return. Perhaps people who do are people who fear looking ahead. They fear getting old. I don’t because the older I get the wiser I turn. Yes there are a few grey strands in my hair today and my reflexes are slower too but I’m less anxious today than I was as a child.

According to me the real picnic begins now. If MFHussain…Dev Anand…Lata Mangeshkar and Amitabh Bachchan can lead a wholesome life at 66 and beyond so can all of us.
It is time we stop glorifying flashback scenes where the young hero and heroine ran into dense forest.Who cares for the sepia tones. I want to lead my life in rainbow colours complete with Dolby sound. I don’t want to look back…Only forward.

Bhawana Somaaya(Critic, Columnist, Author)
Web-www.bhawanasomaaya.com
Email-contact@bhawanasomaaya.com

Today is Janamashtami and as offering to the deity I reproduce the concept note and some excerpts from Krishna -The the God Who Lived as Man published by Pustak Mahal. Originally written as Krishnaayan by Kaajal Oza-Vaidya it is my first attempt in fiction and translation.

After the torturous Yadava yatra to Somnath where Krishna witnesses the devastation of his entire lineage, he arrives with a bleeding foot to Prabhas Kshetra. It is here resting beneath a peepal tree before the river Trivenisangam that Krishna reflects on the four most important relationships in his life — his wives (Rukmini and Satyabhama), beloved (Radha) and friend (Draupadi). Four contrasting personalities but bonded in a magnificent obsession, Krishna. Borrowing from the fable but original in structure and content, the book is fictional and a chronicle of man-woman equations. It is not the love story of Krishna or any one God. It is the story of every charismatic individual in contemporary times that dared to love many and was in return clamoured by several. It is the story of any arresting and sensitive person, intensely involved with his life.

***

The excerpts:

It was as if the river was overflowing with peacock feathers. They grew in heaps and added in numbers. Its texture and its innumerable colours drew unusual patterns in Krishna’s mind and the patterns entwined innumerable motifs from innumerable relationships…

Krishna who never knew leisure in his lifetime, today waited for time to take him across. And time deliberately moved slowly as if testing Krishna’s patience.

Krishna lingered on the heaps of peacock feathers. He wondered how many colours were imbibed in the feather… three… four… five… or were they innumerable…?

Colours of passion… of deprivation… of anxiety… of longing… of separation… of affection… of indecision…. of acceptance… of compassion… of surrender… of faith… of retreat… and of resignation…. It was as if all the colours had intermingled…. They conjured and erased different images in his mind….

So much can unfold before closed eyes… and so much was unfolding!

Krishna rolled his tongue over his dry mouth and was surprised to taste it salty. In a way unknown to him, his lips had drenched in his own tears.

***

Resting beneath the tree with his eyes closed it was as if Krishna was travelling the streets of Gokul… visiting the palace of Indraprasth.

Draupadi’s sparkling and questioning eyes stared at him from the sunlight in the sky… and asked, “Who are you thinking about at this moment, sakha?”

A little later, Rukmini’s faithful eyes, full of love but drenched in sorrow floated on the waves and trickled beneath Krishna’s feet as if stroking him to gently ask, “Are you too much in pain, my Lord?”

A while later Satyabhama’s dark, seductive eyes full of desire as if caressing every fibre of his body but full of pain and complain seemed to ask, “Why did you betray me, Prabhu?”

Radha’s limpid eyes as deep as the water in river Yamuna and as restless as a fish were covered with dark clouds of anxiety, anger and fear…. They bent over Krishna’s face like a peepal branch swaying in the breeze and asked, “Kaanha, you lied to me, didn’t you? You deceived me and didn’t come back after all…?”

The four images seemed to intermingle before Krishna’s eyes…. He tried hard to separate them but it was like separating the rivers entwined into Trivenisangam…. He tried though but like rivers Hiranya, Kapila and Saraswati, the images of Radha, Rukmini, Satyabhama and Draupadi blended and floated before Krishna’s eyes turning them moist from time to time…. Krishna made one more effort but it was futile…. He opened his eyes.

It was mid afternoon. The changing tides in the river and the scorching sunlight fluctuated like a flickering flame…. The peepal leaves fluttered in the cold breeze of the sea…. Krishna closed his eyes and waited in anticipation for that one voice…

A voice that would wake him up from this trance…. He was reminded of his own words again…

Sarganmandir Tashva Madhya Chaiyahmarjunah|
Adhyatmavidha Vidhana Vaadah Pravadtamahamah||

Akshranmakarodism Dwandvasamaskiya Cha|
Ahmevakshyah Kalo Dhataha Vishwatomukhah||

Dandah Damyatamasmi Nitirasim Jigishatomah|
Maunanchaivasmi Grihanagyanan Gyanavtamahomah||

Courtesy: www.bhawanasomaaya.com/003-books-authored.html
www.pustakmahal.com