Abstract

My efforts to click the moon the other night led me back to the night I knighted the moon as my first boyfriend from beneath the pomegranate tree in our wild garden.

I had just begun my tryst with poetry and loved relishing the endless potential of words and what the mind could make an inanimate object into. Neruda was still unknown and as a sixth grader, I was still meandering through Wordsworth, Shakespeare and a handful of Indian poets.

I felt most alive during poetry classes but it dawned upon me only in retrospection. Back then I was still struggling with an identity crisis and loved to escape into an imaginary world, where the moon became a friend and then a boyfriend.

Moon was never a silver-footed woman or a chanda mama to me. He could never be a clumsy uncle in a pajama. He could never be a seductress. He was the perfect knight, elusive yet so close, delicate yet brave.

It was peaceful to look up and feel a secret bond with one who belonged to the whole world. I never vied for attention because I knew he was there for me. All I had to do was to slip out at night and lie under the pomegranate tree and reach out to him.

Over the years as I grew older, I pushed him to the back of my mind. The pomegranate shrub dried up, we changed houses and life grew too murky and complicated to hold on to an early teen fascination.

At the university, I sought him out again during long solitary walks, while sitting hunched on a rock listening to crickets deep into the night or sipping chai on a foggy early morning. He was there, dutifully making a presence.

Many moon nights have passed since then.

Somewhere along, I remember searching the nights for Poes’s menstrual moon, aghast at the comparison yet possessed with the metaphor.

I remember a poornima night at my aunt’s place in Mumbai. From a French window on Marine Drive, I witnessed one of the most perfect visions- a ripe full moon shining on seawater looking a cocktail of silver, grey and the fierce.

The last I remember was spent with my mother watching the HK skyline from a concrete bench next to a fountain. I wish I could have told mom in the most scandalous of words then that the moon reminded me of a Kalidas poem celebrating a woman’s physical beauty.

It had taken me months to understand it but when I did, I laughed at the grossness of its English translation. I remembered a line from it…the lilies of her mounds…. Watching the moon that night in a foreign sky, I remembered the lilies and the mound. For once in so many years I thought of the moon as a lily.

Times bring new perspectives and times change the thought and the gaze. Like a pining lover fulfilled, I have moved on and seek new thrills.

I look back and see nights of whispering secrets to him, I myself did not know and I looked up last night and had nothing to say but yawn about a whirlwind day.

In Hong Kong, typhoons are special

Like pakodas on a rainy day, a weekday typhoon always whets the monsoon appetite. T8=holiday.

When the mighty and not so mighty typhoons or tropical cyclones descend on HK between May and November, hits on the observatory website go up substantially. The office chatter post lunch is upbeat, telephone traffic peaks and furious speculations on chances of a T8 fly to and fro on chat windows.

A year ago, when we were initiated into the ritual, it was fun to check the typhoon progress every two minutes. P got three days off and when I started work, I managed to sneak out early on two days.

The Hong Kong observatory begins to issue warnings as soon as a typhoon comes within 800 kilometres of Hong Kong. Typhoon signal number one is immediately hoisted outside every shopping complex, office and residential building.

The observatory releases information on the typhoon’s position, intensity, wind speed, movement and expected rainfall.

Typhoon signal three is issued if a typhoon breaches the 800 kilometre distance, sea level wind speed goes up to 41-62 km/hour and gusts blow at or above 110 km/hour.

As the typhoon closes in, wind speed increases to 63-117 km/hour and gusts blow at or above 180 km/hour, typhoon signal eight is hoisted.

Check the link for more information on typhoons-

http://www.hko.gov.hk/informtc/tcsignal.htm

The baap of signals- Typhoon signal 10 is issued when a cyclone is just 100 kilometres off Hong Kong.

T8 signals on a working day are enough for the sleepy office goers to whoop in joy, do a jig and head back home.

Train and ferry services are usually suspended and you will only venture out if you like battling flying trees (if there are any), signboards or maybe a local considering how light they look.

However, before you let that feeble hope broaden into a smile, remember - the typhoon must make its presence felt early morning and stay put till late noon.

Bosses in HK are notorious for hurrying you to work in the morning and by the time the typhoon empties its bowels, you have nothing to do but work on boss killing charms in a near empty office. If the typhoon goes limp by noon, you will be expected to report for work post lunch.

PS: Usually the wailings of the exhaust fans warn me about the storm ahead. It is amazing to stand at my window and watch the sea changing colours. From a picture perfect blue on a sunny morning to dark grey as a thunderstorm approaches, the sea faithfully mirrors every mood swing of the heavens above.

It is achingly beautiful to watch a raging typhoon from the safety of my apartment when I know that elsewhere people would be fighting lost battles to salvage a bit of their lives being ravaged by a cyclone.

The world right now is an opaque grey. It was a T9 last night and the weather has been rough since then. Last night as I lay awake, I could imagine all stormy nights, I read about in classic novels. I wondered about Catherine of the Wuthering Heights and what it would be like to nurse a broken heart on such a night.

Harry Potter-6

The kids are no more innocent and there is more on their minds than Voldermort! Quidditch has taken a back seat and so has Snape’s deviousness, defence against dark classes, covert visits to Hagrid’s lair and spats between Malfoy and Potter on the Hogwarts train.

Death Eaters are on a rampage and attacking muggles as well. Bellatrix’s witchy laughter rings in the background as they swish about their business. Since the Dark Lord does not make an appearance, the movie's highlight is Dumbledore’s death.

Am I, the Indian moviegoer of the Bollywood gharana happy? Nooooo! How could Dumbledore be struck down by a casual Avada Kedavra?

If you have seen Tulsi kill her evil son in kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahi thi, you would understand my pain at Dumbledore’s fall to death. Miss Kapoor get over Mahabaharat and work your charms on Hollywood.

The movie overall is a good watch but not worth rotten tomatoes. A movie on a story as leviathan as Harry’s can never be satisfactorily made. Nonetheless, I am thankful it is made as I get a chance to hold on to a magical tale as adulthood squeezes the last ounce of innocence out of me.

Jhaakam jhaak

The threat to privacy emanates no more from a hidden camera in a changing room or a leering neighbour. The threat now is just a mouse click or a remote button away.

If unconvinced, consider the success of reality shows and the wide range of audience they are managing to target.

While deriding the tamasha that TV is making of an ordinary person’s life is easy, so many of us are going ahead and doing things that add to a market researcher’s understanding- ‘peek a boo’ clicks with all.

If it did not, Big Boss would never have Rahul Mahajan and Monica Bedi on board. If it did not, Miss Sawant could never pass off as a swayamvar worthy bride.

If it did not, people would choose not to twitter minute to minute account of their lives or post orkut, facebook and gmail status messages.

I almost spat my coffee when some girls I was meeting for the first time, casually discussed, what some celebrities were up to according to their twitter updates. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

When orkut became trendy, all it took was an anonymous profile, invisible status, name search and reading through scrapbooks to know the life puran of that girl you had met briefly on the train. When orkut came up with the option to lock scrapbooks, many people were forced to find an alternative pastime.

Facebook like the wordpress came up with more fun options but made privacy sound a bit more like the dodo. I suddenly was receiving emails informing me of what a friend’s friend was doing on her birthday night without even spooking around. Consider this-I have 25 facebook friends. The 25 friends on an average have 60-80 friends. If I post a picture on facebook, atleast 2000 people could be viewing it for no reason but that it popped on their facebook sidepage.

Blogging with its more verbose and graphic style takes voyuerism a step forward.

While I cannot controvert the talent of some of the bloggers, I will maintain that for many of us, blogreading is spicy due to the reams of personal details that bloggers carelessly let out in their posts. (ise kehte hai aa bail mujhe maar strategy!).

I am not against social networking and voyeurism but the lack of control on who can be privy to my information scares me at moments.

The level of hypocrisy it creates, appalls me too. There was a time when friends asked me for my opinion, because they believed it was genuine. Today the number of goody responses to photos and declarations of what one believes in or is doing, has made that ‘touch’ unnecessary’ and unwanted.

Does it make a difference?

The public joy over the Delhi High Court’s nod to consensual sex between people of same sex made me stretch beyond my armchair espousal of the cause and see if it will make a real difference to me, my family, friends and my extended acquaintance tree.

I know that no one expects this ruling to bring legitimacy and acceptance of homosexuality as "normal". But beyond the point that it will help a same sex couple to escape jail by shoving the law of the land into the world's face, I do not see much coming out of it.

Apart from the smoke spewing, liberated women in university whom I grudgingly admired for their unabashed assertion of their sexual identity and preferences, I am uncertain if it will bring happiness to the rich builder back home who I heard is getting his son treated for abnormal effeminate behaviour.

I have almost no hope that the senior and not so senior members of my huge family will stop clucking with a sneer, ‘uska beta ya beti gay hai’.

Will it bring a smile to girls in my all girls college who did not know if they were lesbians, bisexuals or in throes of virgin passion when they chose to fall in love and be with a girl. Some of them are married now. Some are worrying about how to deal with it as a closet homosexual and play a happy wife. Some are over it as a hippie stage of their life. Will it help any of them to come out in the open with their preferences?

Small towns have an eerie way of clamping on your sense of freedom. In a UP university where once upon a time only de-feminised looking girls escaped the roving eyes and sometimes fingers of boys unsure of how to deal with their testerone drives, an open display could still be disastrous.

I cannot comment on men and what they go through as I have never been close enough to anyone to know what emotional turmoil they go through trying to wed their reality with the one that the world wants them to adopt. But I can imagine a certain guy who swayed gracefully as he walked down the campus road, swirling in mock contempt at those who laughed at him, taking it all in his stride.

Will it stop a policewallah on the evening beat from not badmouthing a same sex couple cosying in a public garden unable to afford the refuge of an expensive place?

What about all the new senas and dals that will crop up to war with the sins of the mankind and especially the womankind.

I personally am unsure how will I react if I unknowingly love a person who is not straight in the public eye. Pardon my disgusting admission but that is the truth.

I have trembled at the thought of a son wanting to pluck brows or wanting to wear thongs or lusting after a boy in his class or a daughter declaring she hates stilettos and makeup and would prefer to feel J-Lo’s ass than getting one like her. This is an extreme end of my imagination and I am trying to have fun at the cost of the feelings of lots of people out there.

But just like you all deserve to come out I deserve a chance to speak too. That said at the end of the day, I will still stand by what a friend, family or relative chooses to be.

As I wept tears burdened by new understandings,
Smoothened the knots into a stress free ride,
Looked away from stars to focus on the ground beneath,
Gave up on sweet smell of flowers to sweat over bigger goals,
As all that mattered was to be successful,
Poetry left me.