identity-i dent it easily

talk about idenity theft and the world becoming flat-a very fascinating article about a vicar in england, who wrote under a pseudonym 'rahila khan' and published stories about south asian identity in england. once the publishers caught on, they canned the book. the irony is that the stories, apparently, are quite authentic. again, click on the title folks.

a snippet-

The vicar’s understanding of the tragic world of Muslim girls living in British slums, caught between two cultures and belonging fully to neither, possessing little power to determine their own fates, seems to me to be equally accurate. Indeed, he explores this world with considerable subtlety as well as sympathy.
The girls are vastly superior, morally and intellectually, to their white counterparts. Their problem is precisely the opposite of that of the white youths: far from nihilism, it is the belief in a code of ethics and conduct so rigid that it makes no allowances for the fact that the girls have grown up and must live in a country with a very different culture from that of the country in which their parents grew up. In the eyes of their parents, the girls are easily infected with, or corrupted by, the dream of personal freedom, and since the only result of such personal freedom that the parents see around them is the utter disintegration of the white working class into fecklessness and slovenly criminality, where every child is a bastard and families are kaleidoscopic in their swiftly changing composition, they become even more rigidly conservative than they might otherwise have been. They cling to what they know, as to a plank in a storm at sea.

if you feel gulity about not writing enough, read this

a fun article that behenji stumbled across about the so-called 'prolific' writer. here's a glimpse-

then along comes a chap like Alexander McCall Smith, who seems to regard book writing not as some rarefied art but as a form of daily exercise, like sit-ups or squats. Where most authors sweat to produce 1,000 words a day without self-mutilation, McCall Smith has been known to bang out three times that in a single sitting. He’s a living rebuke of the notion that novel-writing is the least bit arduous.

i feel marginally better now, about not having written my novel. the link is above in the title folks, until my shift and ctrl keys start working again....and now as the clock nears midnight here in the west coast, bon nuit, as they say in paris.

whatcha readin...

is it me, or are there others who read multiple books at a time. sometimes i really do feel that ADD-attention deficit disorder-is not codswallop. but i do know quite a few bookworms, who have multiple books going and somehow they get finished...if they are good. despite the books gathering dust on my shelf, couldn't help but go to the local library and pick up some more to read. currently languishing on my bookshelf are v.s. naipaul's 'magic seeds, ' nadeem aslam's 'map for lost lovers, ' gregory david's 'shantaram' and uzma aslam khan's 'tresspassing'-all fine books. what did i get from the library, you might ask-well, i got anita rao badami's 'hero's walk' and 'tamarind woman,' adrienne rich's 'arts of the possible' and a book called 'giving their word- conversations with contemporary poets.' i am so excited to metamorphose into bookworm behenji.

am currently savoring tarun tejpal's 'alchemy of desire' like a glass of cabernet sauvignon or bottle rather. speaking of cabernet, i have yet to see the ending of SIDEWAYS. woe is behenji...in a good way. sorry i can't provide links to any of these books. behenji's keyboard refuses to cooperate, mainly the shift and control keys. a new computer is on the way, courtesy of panditji. until then, go check out your favorite bookstore or else...what else...the library.

rushdie's pen

a few sundays ago, rushdie had an essay in the NYT, which sadly, i only got a hold of today. a quote that leapt out at me:

In many parts of the world -- in, for example, China, Iran and much of Africa -- the free imagination is still considered dangerous.

something to think about, bhaiyo and beheno...

a knot in the plot

behenji, in the hopes of trying to write a novel--much like tarun tejpal's 'secretly maligned by the media' protagonist--has been sputtering, starting then fizzling as far as anything remotely close to a plot goes. for inspiration i have called on mj rose's blog backstory. i really enjoyed reading about the genesis of a novel by various writers and can see that it takes a few, before you hit the right/write note. behenji thinks she is better off polishing her poetry at the moment. but nonetheless, she is armed with pen, paper and an open mind for whenever the novel writing muse wishes to pay a visit.

swimming in shit, the french way

came across this review from the folks at http://www.about.com/ i've always loved gay paris and love reading about ex-pats, from hemingway to...well, to this guy, whoever he is. the book is called 'a year in the merde.' and for those of you, not literate in french, merde means shit, crap, doodoo, poopoo...you get my point. its written by stephen clarke, an english businessman, who while working in france, was inspired by his own experiences to write a fictional memoir of an ex-pat. the reviewer, who seems to be of french descent, if not french, by the sound of his name, says the following-

'Merde recounts the fictional adventure and misadventures of Paul West, an English businessman sent to Paris to create and open an English tea room as he encounters the language and culture of Paris. This is not A Year in Provence,nor does it have the sweetness of Under the Tuscan Sun or its progeny. Clarke's full bodied approach (think smelly French cheese) makes this novel all the more delightful. '

'Merde is both real and metaphor. Dogs deposit 15 tons of poop onto the streets of Paris each year, resulting in the hospitalization of 650 people after a slip and fall. Clarke's account of learning to cope with the omnipresent poop provides one of the many hilarious learning opportunities. Of course, the metaphorical merde runs throughout the novel. One finds oneself deep into it in business, sex, or buying a house in the country. Curiously, West's boss intersects across each of these areas as Paul learns the nuances of French life. '

now, behenji is a french ex-pat wannabe, as pretentious as that may sound. the city definitely has many things going for itself, despite its paradoxes-cultural or otherwise. you can read more about paris and live vicariously through amardeep's blog post at http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/blog.html, look under may 08, as i did, a few days ago. and then go out and read a year in merde. or else you can try and snag a last minute flight and send behenji a picture from in front of le towering eiffel.

a box of one's own

has it come to this--the hobo-ization of writing? read an article in the nyt today, from yesterday--yes behenji reads day old news-- in which the private and public spaces of writing are tested by 3 authors, who are under deadline to write a novel by june 4, within the creepy confines of white plastic panels-resembling shoji screens- all of 140 sq. feet. the goal, you ask-

'to constantly consider the relationship between life and art.'

behenji just has to twirl once, before her hips knock down those screens. and yet hip, hip hooray to those brave yet pretentious souls, who will toil before realizing 'you can't box art.' buying boxed art, however....ah, now there's another story.

miss me, miss me...now you have to...

ok, so the last thing you want to do is kiss behenji...especially since she has gone into hibernation. but behenji's ego was recently stroked by a friend, as she reprimanded behenji for not updating this blog. 'you have fans,' she said. 'yes,' i said. 'one, over my dining table. hahaha.' behenji's friend was not amused.

anyway, behenji is slightly shame-faced but ever obliging. so here goes...

stats right now-

bookworm behenji-currently reading the alchemy of desire by tarun tejpal. and yes, it is every bit what the critics say. it's definitely ' sex and sensuality,' or rather a new sense and sensibility for the new millenium. sorry if i've ruffled jane austen's petticoat for saying so.

bawarchi behenji-currently exploring moroccan cuisine and tapas

sufi behenji-listening to rabbi, who is not jewish, sing 'bullah ki jana main kaun'

bmw behenji-yes, she drives a beamer. all by herself. behenji finally got her license to roam the roads of california, after 32 years of road fright. and that too on the first attempt. now behenji parks between the lines...and reads between them too.

and hopefully behenji will write more lines too..in the very near future.

susan sontag: above the obits

a topic which soniah and i have discussed : the various obits of susan sontag and how many praised her or booed her. i found this article very interesting because it talks about how the media can manufacture a life after death.

burning the midnight oil....environment friendly ofcourse!

a wonderful article in the washington post about writing at night, in one shot, or atleast trying to ride the wave of inspiration till one is knocked down.

God of Small Inspirations, are you reading this? behenji needs something fast and furious;)

(cosmic chuckles then the sound of a pin dropping)

behenji on men

its raining and behenji has some time to ruminate as she listens to water slip, slide and gurgle.

so what is it about men and words? i mean men in terms of emotion and writing down their feelings. while men can be emotional in person and promise you different parts of the universe (the stars, the moon, one of saturn's rings) try getting something in print (electronic or otherwise). and if you are one of those unlucky men that do commit your feelings to paper, your sexuality is questioned.

i guess i'm recalling a discussion on an online literary group regarding michael ondaatje and his poem the cinammon peeler. i post it here for your reading pleasure:

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under the rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

this is one of my favorite poems, for many reasons-the sensuality, the language, the awakening of our olfactory senses through ondaatje's images. one is almost envious of the cinnamon peeler's wife.

but how did some south asian men react to this? questions such as 'is ondaatje gay?' comments such as 'this prose is too flowery to be written by a straight man.'

behenji asks you this: can a straight man not feel passion like this and articulate it? or is it fear? of confronting one's own feelings? is there such a thing as a male ego? and if so, how does that affect a man's writing?

behenji needs a cup of chai now;)

no more juicy, juicy mangoes please!

happy happy, joy joy. 2005 is here. a little older, a little bolder, may the new year bring us a little kick in our coffee, a little more whiskey in our bailey's;) its raining here in the bay and i feel like belting out 'barkha ritu aaiee.'

anyway, behenji has had it up to here (hand right under my nose), with 'easy exotic' south asian literature. they either roll out the magical realism carpet, trying to imitate the two great R's (Roy & Rushdie) or else the characters and plots are crazily convoluted to up the cool quotient. its been a long time since a South Asian book has come into the scene quietly and gently swept me (and probably others) off my feet. or made me fall off my chair, jump out of bed, or sit on the toilet for hours for that matter. where are the experimentors of language? the outlaws of plot ? the genre benders? someone who is being touted as the literary offspring of R&R and the god child of Kundera is Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi . while I haven't read the book, I have heard mostly negative comments from other South Asians along the lines of 'not original,' ' language too flowery,' 'magical realism copycat' or else 'Siddharth who?'. Which really does make me wonder what is going on? I went to Shanghvi's website and was suprised by the pink in it, the glorious peacock on the left of the page, and this photo of the author. what I wanted was an excerpt of the book, a flavor of this much touted author's prose that could not be had through peacocks, turbans or that killer silver necklace around Shanghvi's neck! a summary of the book can be found here. somehow, a line from The Beatles' song 'Baby You're a Rich Man' comes to mind:

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

dance me to the end of 2004

behenji's posts have petered off into lalaland. a barrage of bad weather and good people prevent me from writing. would it help if i said i was ruminating all this time? where did this year go? and what a way for it to end--mother nature decides to show us her stuff...and now tsunami is a household word for most of us. limbs of wood and flesh floating in water, coasts slapped across the face by sheer force. and all those faces that once walked the beach, rode on cycles, watched sunsets and sunrises--gone. jettisoned into the afterworld.

on a lighter note, i recently discovered madeleine peyroux's velvety voice and acquired her latest album, careless love, via itunes. dance me to the end of love, with peyroux's voice and leonard cohen's words, make a song that is simply a slice of heaven.

the words:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Happy New Year everyone!!!

do you have duende?

a few weeks back, i was doing some research on my favorite Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. I stumbled upon his brilliant lecture 'theory and play of the duende' and was giddy with excitement after reading it.

Here is an excerpt from the lecture:

The duende…Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things

When Lorca brought the dark creative force he called Duende into the open, he articulated what many of us, who committed to making words our daily, lifelong pursuit, ironically have no words for. Duende is what Lorca calls ‘a power and not a behaviour…a struggle and not a concept… of blood, of ancient culture, of creative action.’ It is that elusive, often erratic pulse that I want to capture in my poetry and which I feel artists go insane chasing after.

football shootball

today my son, who is almost 3 and a half, wanted to eat kidney beans (rajma) and rice. since he couldn't remember the name, he told me he wanted the beans that looked like a football. isn't that so cute?

hark, who goes there? behenji is that you?

its been awhile and i have so many excuses...so let's not go there. but i so miss blogging. lots to write. so much flurry and activity in matters literary and otherwise. for starters behenji is acting in a play. after many years of her costumes and various persona gathering dust, behenji is brushing off her wigs and boots and coming out of the closet straight into the spotlight. shakespeare, eat your heart out. the world is a fucking beautiful stage! yes, behenji uses the 'f' word when the occasion calls for it. behenji donned the hat of playwright as well and wrote a small 10 minute play, which was recieved without sniggers.
what else, what else....my fellow bloggers have been burning the midnight oil and making my blog look like an empty shelf at a grocery store that no one wants to restock. here are some things which caught behenji's eye:

an article in the christian science monitor on ee cummings' biography . I have always loved ee cummings disregard for punctuation. in some ways he reminds me of gertrude stein except cummings focussed on meaning more than sound. his play of words is just enough so that his poems are playful and yet powerful. amardeep singh mentions him in his blog as well, along with a link to a lovely anti-war poem which i wish i had written.

speaking of bloggers, my friend Soniah, a talented writer who has a book coming out with penguin in 2005, has a blog of her own called Incidently Speaking, Soniah which is definitely an asset to the literary blog world. go visit her and tell her behenji sent you;) her mommy post rings so true for me. try writing with one little bohemian hanging from your boob and another refusing to let go of your leg. the husband ain't much help either, being two continents away. but c'est la vie, as they say in paris!

hurree babu has brought to light the term 'curry covers' in his blog with photos. how many south asian writers have sarees on the covers of their books?: apparently monica ali, rupa bajwa (but understandably so. after all her book is called 'the sari shop.'), and others too like cb divakaruni. well, i think sarees are beautiful and can represent mystery and sensuality in a woman. but it is about time that south asian writers started breaking 'far from the mango crowd,' if i may so butcher the title of Mr. Thomas Hardy's book.

have much more to say about the mango crowd but will have to wait till dinner is cooked and served

behenji blows...her nose

cough. sputter. haaaaachooo! the little bohemians are down too. cough cough.

vasudhaiv kutumbakam-the whole world is one family

little cultural amazements, nostalgic twangs of home in this sultry suburb of california. the other day after dropping the kids at school, i was walking home and chanced upon two old indian men waiting at the bus stop. as they were chatting, i heard strains of Omkarnath Thakur and looked around to see where it was coming from. There in one man's hand was a tape recorder. both gentlemen were nodding and smiling and talking while a beautiful raaga became the background score for life in America, for this small bustop next to the railroad tracks. i realized then how home is a state of mind that you can carry with you everywhere.

then this morning, a stone's throw from the bus stop, a man was wheeling in his garbage can after trash collection, whistling a very catchy 'tujhe dekha to yeh jaana sanam.' without realizing it, i started humming the song and couldn't stop.

why do these little things touch me so much? why do they comfort me? and yet i feel this is what life boils down to. where all the answers can be found. this is what i want to capture in my words, my verse. this joy for all things simple. finding love in living, in all living things. from rotten peaches hanging to unripe lemons and apples, to the stray brown cat that sits in front of our house every evening, and to the humming birds that eat our figs.

i think it is neccesary to be humbled by nature, to realize/feel greater forces at work and most of all to feel the world is one big family.

proof of poetry

yes, i am actually going to post a poem. proof that behenji churns out poems, gets hand cramps from spinning the wheel.

poetry poachers beware: you can call the words yours, but you can't steal the mind they came from! enjoy!

FEAR OF FLOWERS

In one hand
angry violets
And in the other
a Kukri knife
glowing green
of fresh floral kill

the flowers are for myself
my pleasure, my eyes
you say, holding them
a little too tight
and now your hands
green
smell faintly
of death
as you hold our faces
kiss us goodbye

two men and a tree

walking home this afternoon after picking up my son from pre-school, i came upon two chinese men perched on the sidewalk. i could tell they were gardeners from their wide brim hats and the pickup parked at the curb with garden tools jutting out. they had a bucket of some sort and i thought they were pulling weeds with their hands. as i came closer i saw it was a plastic cooler. on top of the cooler were two porcelain bowls and in the gardeners' grass stained hands chopsticks. the two looked so tranquil under the shade of a tree: eating, smiling, talking...and so at home while far away from home. i felt like i was watching a poem go by.