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The Road: A Harrowing, Riveting Read

Posted on December 26, 2011

I woke up around 2 am. My hands unconsciously sought my iPhone beside my bed. Curled up in a foetal position under the covers, I continued reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It was around 4.00 am or so when I turned the last page.

In Memoriam, A Fourth

Posted on June 26, 2011

by Dinesh Dutt

Dear Kitty,

Do you remember our neighbor’s dog ? You may remember him as that big German Shepherd who barked when your wanderings took you close to his house. Well, a few days ago, he joined you where you are. You may have seen him there. The dog followed my friend so much, even as a puppy, that they named him Shadow. One thing about him that I remember is his start in life. My friends got him from a friend who found him abandoned on the median divider of a highway. I can’t imagine the heartlessness of those who left him that way. I remember the heartlessness with which your owners abandoned you. But I thank that heartlessness, bless it often, because it led you to us. He died short of ten years with them, a few days short of the anniversary of the day you left us. And in his death, I was reminded again of the days and months and years that I spent feeling bereft when you left us.

The other day, I came home late from work, after Maya was home from her jaunts with the nanny. When I opened the front door, I heard Maya’s little feet go pitter-patter as she raced to the front door calling me. “Papa, papa, you’re home”. I remembered how you would come racing the same way, the evenings I returned from work, meowing your delight. Most days of course you had already smelt my coming and would be waiting by the garage door.

My eyes usually don’t tear when I think of you, haven’t in a while. I smile when I think of you. But the memory of your departure is a wound that has not fully healed. Every now and then, I feel the scar of that moment, a kind of terror and fear I’ve never felt before or after. I finger it gently, for I know that I haven’t yet fully learnt the lesson of death. Despite all this time.

When you go away the wind clicks to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years – When You Go Away, W.S.Merwin

I’m a reading a book now, Kitty. It is a science fiction book, a kind that I haven’t read in a long time. The book is called “The City and The City”. It is a strange, weird book, set somewhere in the broken regions that once were part of the Soviet empire. It is strange because it is set in this city called Beszel that has an alter-ego city, Ul Qoma. The two cities occupy the same space and time, but the residents of one city do not acknowledge or treat the other as being part of the same space and time.

I thought of the various parables that the two cities may represent. One that struck me, maybe because it is so close to your anniversary, is that maybe the living and the dead occupy the same space and time, but do not, cannot, acknowledge each other. I found strange comfort in the thought that maybe you’re still sitting by my side, its just that I cannot see, hear, smell or feel you. Oh! I do miss you still, Kitty, and I suppose I always will. I suppose I can never unlearn the lessons you taught me, especially that there are things I must accept, they’ll always be the way they are.

I know you cannot read my letters or hear my thoughts. But maybe where you are, there is a babelfish, a translator that can translate my memories of you into meows that you can understand. And maybe you can still feel the love I feel for you.

Yours, as always,

Dinesh

Poems For A Father’s Day

Posted on June 17, 2011

by Dinesh Dutt

So far, I’ve managed to forget Father’s Day every single time. This year, I’ve been reminded a few times in the past week that Father’s Day is this weekend. Poems that I had read in the past year about fathers seemed an appropriate way to mark the day.

I read this poem in a collection that I don’t remember. But the poem immediately left its mark. I’ve often wondered about the casual indifference with which we treat our parents or at least, I treat mine. I often wonder of the things they’ve done to ensure that I had a good childhood. While my father wasn’t a blue collar worker and we didn’t live in cold places, his love for me was lonely in its own way. I can’t get over the phrase “of love’s austere and lonely offices”.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices? – Those Winter Sundays, Robert Hayden

I’ve often been surprised by how much I imitate my father. The way I brush the hair off Maya’s face, the way I hug her, the way I read to her. Sometimes in a moment of the act, I find myself remembering my father and my action was a faint, distant echo of his. Even in the ways I’m different, its as if my action is the opposite of what he did. Not different, but the deliberate opposite. I wonder about the things that I mocked him about. I came across Edward’s Hirsch’s poem in the recently released collection of his life’s works, “The Living Fire“. Reading it, I was left wondering again how much I am my father’s son.

I used to mock my father and his chums

for getting up early on Sunday morning

and drinking coffee at a local spot

but now I’m one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations

but they go on dragging through my sleep

like a string of empty tin cans rattling

behind an abandoned car.

It’s like this: just when you think

you have forgotten that red-haired girl

who left you stranded in a parking lot

forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing

around the corner of your dream

on someone else’s motorcycle

roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit

café full of early morning risers

where the windows are covered with soot

and the coffee is warm and bitter. – Early Sunday Morning, Edward Hirsch

This last one is special for two reasons. It is a poem by my current favorite poet, W.S. Merwin. The other reason maybe clear from the poem itself. Many people say that after reading this poem, they’re moved to reconnect with their fathers. Bill Moyers, the respected journalist and public commentator had this to say after hearing Merwin read the poem: “I have missed my father often since his death in the 1990s. But I never missed him more so than when I heard you read that.” I think of my father, far away and alone and sometimes wonder about the choices I’ve made. The cost of those choices and who gets to pay them.

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father’s hand the last time

he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don’t want you to feel that you
have to
just because I’m here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don’t want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do – Yesterday, W.S. Merwin

Sylvia Plath never really got over her father’s death. He died when she was just eight. In her most famous poem in which she speaks of how she tried killing herself over her never ending sorrow of his death, she writes:

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look – Daddy, Sylvia Plath

And finally, she curses him with one of the most quoted stanzas in poetry:

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through. – Daddy, Sylvia Plath

So, do I have any lighter poems to celebrate Father’s Day ? This poem, by Edgar Albert Guest, somehow makes me think that this is how Maya will remember me.

My father knows the proper way

   The nation should be run;

He tells us children every day

   Just what should now be done.

He knows the way to fix the trusts,

   He has a simple plan;

But if the furnace needs repairs,

   We have to hire a man.

My father, in a day or two

   Could land big thieves in jail;

There’s nothing that he cannot do,

   He knows no word like “fail.”

“Our confidence” he would restore,

   Of that there is no doubt;

But if there is a chair to mend,

   We have to send it out.

All public questions that arise,

   He settles on the spot;

He waits not till the tumult dies,

   But grabs it while it’s hot.

In matters of finance he can

   Tell Congress what to do;

But, O, he finds it hard to meet

   His bills as they fall due.

It almost makes him sick to read

   The things law-makers say;

Why, father’s just the man they need,

   He never goes astray.

All wars he’d very quickly end,

   As fast as I can write it;

But when a neighbor starts a fuss,

   ’Tis mother has to fight it.

In conversation father can

   Do many wondrous things;

He’s built upon a wiser plan

   Than presidents or kings.

He knows the ins and outs of each

   And every deep transaction;

We look to him for theories,

   But look to ma for action. – Father, Edgar Albert Guest.

Teach A Man To Fish

Posted on June 14, 2011

by Dinesh Dutt

A wise friend told me about the modern variation to the old adage about fishing and feeding. The new version goes like this: “Feed a man a fish and you’ll have to feed him for the rest of his life. Teach a man to fish and he’ll wipe out the fishes.”

I thought this was catchy, but didn’t know how true it was. Last week, via a link from kottke.org, I came across this shocking visual put together by David McCandless, author of a blog on the UK daily, The Guardian.

Vanishing Fish by David McCandless

David explains the picture:
“This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered.”

David explains another very crucial and chilling point, about memory and public policy. He says that most of us who’re trying to protect these fishes don’t even know how rich the seas were once upon a time, because we have no memory of them, the damage done before our generation was born. So, whatever policies we come up with are already poor. As W.S. Merwin wrote in the poem, Witness:

I want to tell what the forests
were like

I will have to speak
in a forgotten language

If you thought, well that is why I eat farmed fish, you’re out of luck. Following a link from David’s blog, I came across this 1 minute video that succinctly summarizes why eating farmed fish isn’t better, it might be worse!

Eating Fish from Nigel Upchurch on Vimeo.

When Maya and her children question our carelessness and profligacy, the bereft land that we bequeath them, how shall we answer ?

Gray Whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours
- A Coming Extinction, W.S. Merwin

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Thanksgiving 2010

Posted on November 27, 2010

by Dinesh Dutt

Shanthala's Thanksgiving Dinner

We hosted dinner for some friends this Thanksgiving, our first such event. We did have invitations to be at the table at some other friends’ houses, but we wanted to stay home, especially after a week away.

This of course entailed a lot of work on Shanthala’s part and she was busy most of the day cooking. We had returned from Hawaii the previous night, but thanks to our friends, our refrigerator was already well stocked with all the things Shanthala needed for the dinner. A friend from India who was staying at our place while we were in Hawaii pitched in with some shopping, but our friend, Brad, armed with Shanthala’s shopping list, did most of the work. The friends who came brought wine and some salad with them.

What a difference this year’s Thanksgiving was, compared to the rather gloomy one two years ago, when Maya was still an infant.

The food menu:

Sweet Potato & Brie Phyllo
Brie Crostini
Sprouted Moong & Cranberry Salad (Sameer/Vaishali made this)
CousCous & Mushroom Salad (Sameer/Vaishali)
Butternut Squash, Carrot and Ginger Soup
Sauteed Brussel Sprouts (with Garlic and Olive Oil)
Vegetable Pulao
Parathas from Lovely Sweets
Chana Dal with Louki
Apple Pie

The wine list:

Chianti Classico Red Wine, Incanto Riserva 2005
Menage a Trois Red Wine
Moscato Dessert Wine, Sutter Home

Gratitude is Healthy

The new science of “positive psychology” is demonstrating an increasing amount of evidence that gratefulness is a healthy thing. In 2003, Dr. Robert A. Emmons and his colleague Michael E. McCullough conducted three studies that showed that people who expressed gratitude were demonstrably happier than those who did not. This included even people struck down with chronic illness such as neuromuscular diseases. In a study done by one of the founders of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and his colleagues, in which they followed people up to 6 months after they had started practising gratitude, they concluded that those who were grateful were less depressed than those who were not.

Each year, some major periodical or the other touts further new evidence on the virtues of gratefulness. This year, The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article highlighting the benefits of being grateful. From the article :

“In an upcoming paper in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Dr. [Jeffrey J.] Froh and colleagues surveyed 1,035 high-school students and found that the most grateful had more friends and higher GPAs, while the most materialistic had lower grades, higher levels of envy and less satisfaction with life. ‘One of the best cures for materialism is to make somebody grateful for what they have,’ says Dr. Froh.”

In a country based on the myth of self-reliance, we may find it difficult to practice gratitude because it makes us more aware of the ways we rely on others in our lives, how our lives are enhanced by the actions of countless faceless, nameless people.

How can we practice gratefulness ? One way is to be specific about what we’re grateful for: I’m grateful for my health, for the beautiful crane that glided past me as I ran this morning, for waking up. The WSJ article has a thoughtful piece on how to practice gratefulness:

“A Buddhist exercise, called Naikan self-reflection, asks people to ponder daily: “What have I received from…? What have I given to…? and What trouble have I caused…?” Acknowledging those who touched your life—from the barista who made your coffee to the engineer who drove your train—and reflecting on how you reciprocated reinforces humbleness and interdependence.”

Gratitude In Infants

What about Maya ? Is she old enough to know what gratitude is ? I often wonder about this especially when we seem to insist that as soon as they can speak, children learn to say “please” and “thank you”. We may get them to say the words, but do they know what the feeling is ? Are the words merely social makeup ?

Melanie Klein, an Austrian psychoanalyst theorized that infants understand gratitude thanks to their mother’s breast milk. Many child development experts however postulate that a child can understand gratitude only when it understands empathy, which is around 7 years. But can we cultivate the practice early ? From the WSJ article:

“To help lay the groundwork for gratefulness, Dr. Froh says he asks his 4-year-old son, James, each night what was his favorite thing about the day and what he is looking forward to tomorrow.”

For me, gratitude is also about a lack of entitlement, not viewing the bounty as deserving or not. I’ve had close encounters with lives suffered because of this belief in entitlement and moans over how they have not been given what was their just due.

As I write this article, in the still hours of the morning (it is 4:30 am), this year I want to especially thank the work of hundreds of thousands of people on whose free service so much of what I write rests. My blog runs on WordPress software, a free software. I am writing this article within Firefox, a free browser, running on Ubuntu Linux, another free service.

Most days I wake up with thanks on my lips, grateful for the life I have, for the lives breathing beside me, for the blessing of hearing someone call me “Papa”, for Shanthala who is the source of so much that is good in my life and my parents, who showered me with love and encouragement.

Other Related Links:

Why Gratitude Is Good by Robert Emmons
10 Ways To Become More Grateful
What Are You Grateful For ?
Better Mood From Gratitude: 2 Minute Exercise

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions
...
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is                          - Thanks, W.S. Merwin

P.S: Click on a picture to view a bigger version.