South Asia Daily

As if they were not memories but creeping vines that wrapped around the Banyan tree

His Holeyness Mayank Chhaya

MC by MC

Warning: Avoid reading if squeamish about the human anatomy.

Grossness alert: Extremely High.

It is just as well that men do not get pregnant because I had a C-section this Wednesday and delivered a six-inch-long piece of infected colon. It was a result of a long-planned colon resection surgery.

As I emerge from the surgery and remain in what my surgeon calls the “red zone” while the healthy ends of the colon, stapled with some 90 tiny titanium staples form a natural tissue bond over the next few months, it is obvious none of what happened was ever envisioned by me happening to me.

Let me begin with the experience of being under sedation for two consecutive days on Tuesday—for half an hour for a colonoscopy, and Wednesday, for over four hours for colon resection. The latter ranks as the most weirdly thrilling experience of my life as I gradually came out of it after the surgery. It was so strikingly visual for me that just as soon as I am steady on my feet I plan to paint it.

While the post-colonoscopy emergence from sedation was a charming and relaxing experience, what preceded it in terms of flushing my system with the prep fluid was anything but. A frugal eater even normally, I had scaled down my food intake only to liquids two day prior to the flushing. That helped in mitigating the pressure on my digestive system. However, it still triggered some 25 visits to the toilet, fourth onward of which it was just the same fluid was getting discharged, the last being at 1 a.m.

Next morning at the local surgery center, I was down to that ridiculously ill-fitting hospital robe which I suspect is designed to humiliate all patients by the medical powers-that-be. It flaps around exposing oneself in the most unexpected of ways.

If someone had told me that a time might come in my life that in a span of 24 hours I would have a probe and a catheter inserted through my two most intimate parts of the body, I would have scoffed. That is precisely what happened.

We all know where the colonoscopy probe goes. Mercifully, one is fully sedated and has no concept of the invasion. To make matters light for the seasoned team of the surgeon, anesthesiologists and nurses, I said this before going under. Although they see that as a matter of routine, several times a day, I said, “I apologize for what you are about to see of me. You will discover that I am no Will Smith.” The last bit was a reference to a recent recording of his own colonoscopy by the global superstar. The team laughed as I explained the reference.

The thing about sedation is that that particular period of time goes completely missing from your life. It is as if you never existed during that time. It is a strangely exhilarating feeling.

The next day was the big day as it brought the main surgery. I knew broadly what was in store except one stunning detail about which a few sentences later. There were the usual inordinately cheerful visits from the nurses and anesthesiologists reassuring me that I was in good hands and it would be over before I knew it. That last bit was true. It was over before I knew because I did not know at all thanks to a combination of Propofol and other anesthesia gas or gases that was administered to me.

A great deal of work was done on my colon while I was under which I have described a bit in the beginning. Waking up was the most memorable visual experience of my life. The recovery room where I was kept came alive in sharply defined but splintered vertical silos of uneven sizes. The whole scene was refracted geometrically—nurses, walls, beds, overhead lights, curtains. For some reason the predominant hue was light hazy purple of the kind one sees in Claude Monet’s paintings of London. I remember blabbering and slurring with two nurses who sounded amused. I must have been saying something funny, I suppose. I wish it were recorded à la Will Smith. But like I said I am no Will Smith.

Soon afterwards, I discovered the second invasion of my most private area with a catheter tube inserted through my penis. I had no foreknowledge of it. There was another drain inserted through the side of my stomach, apart from those there were five other incisions, including the C-section, not to mention the two holes from my previous drains.

I am sure as major surgeries go, mine was quite middling but any body cuts have its reverberations. The young and cheerful surgeon, whose name I am not using because I have not sought his permission, told me that contrary to his expectations my infected colon piece turned out to be “quite run of the mill.” So there, even my ailments are quite run-of-the-mill. That reminded me of the opening lines of a poem I wrote recently.

साला अपना सब औसत

जीत भी औसत

हार भी औसत

बीमारी में

बुखार भी औसत

(Damn! Everything about me is middling

My triumphs are middling

My defeats are middling

Even in ailment

My fever is middling)

However, given the number of holes in my body I have the short-lived satisfaction that for a few more days I can call myself His Holeyness.

Out of commission

To those who read my blog out of choice as well as serendipity, I will be out of commission through this week.  

The sky that was in tatters, I darned with light

पारा पारा जो आसमान था

वोह रौशनीसे मैंने रफ़ू  किया 

The sky that was in tatters

I darned with light

--Mayank Chhaya

A very short reminiscence on 30th anniversary of Kashmiri Pandit exodus

Although the ferment that led to it was brewing much before today in 1990, this Sunday is widely marked as the 30^th anniversary of the beginning of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir amid unnerving violence. This month also marks the 30^th anniversary of my having first reported the exodus out of flash points such as Anantnag.

As among the first journalists to do a cover story on the exodus and exile of the Pandit community from their generational homeland from four datelines of Anantnag, Srinagar, Jammu and New Delhi, I think I may have some extra insights into what is now largely a political fetish without any real regard for a lasting solution.

The first sign for me that the state of affairs for Kashmiri Pandits was terribly grim was when a young Muslim hothead in Anantnag corrected me with a puffed-up chest in English, “This is Islamabad and not Anantnag.” He then went onto incoherently spout all the talking points which today would be called jihadi drivel. He identified himself as just Ghulam and said there was no longer room for the Pandits in “Islamabad” unless they converted to Islam. “Otherwise?” I asked him. “Otherwise blood,” he said and pulled away from me on his motorcycle.

For some reason, “Ghulam” pulling away on his motorcycle in Anantnag remains etched in my memory and as a visual signifier of a huge tragedy that remains mostly unhealed three decades hence.

To be fair, there were many voices even within Anantnag’s and Srinagar’s Kashmiri Muslim community who strongly rejected the impending exodus citing “Kasmiriyat”, a rich local tradition of harmonious and syncretic co-existence among Hindus and Muslims. Some of them seemed genuinely pained at the unfolding tragedy. However, that constituency, which may have been quite significant, was either drowned out by the nascent jihadi upsurge or became tacit approvers. Also, there is also a tendency to overstate the prevalence of “Kashmiriyat” even though it was an intrinsic part of Kashmir for centuries.

Apart from the motorcycle-bound “Ghulam” speeding away, another enduring visual memory for me is of the shoddily put together camps for Pandit refugees in Jammu as well as Delhi. Faces after worried and crestfallen faces blurring in and out of my line of sight on the Jammu camp are still vivid. The overarching emotion at the Jammu camp, if there was one, was one of tragic incomprehension at what had just visited them as a community.

I can do a much bigger piece but Ghulam’s ominous “Otherwise blood” pretty much tells this unresolved and largely uncared for tragedy of independent India.

Life’s a dick

Life’s a dick. It throws experiences at you, you never thought existed and were in store for you.

I had one this morning. It snowed yesterday quite a bit. My generous neighbor Kerry did what he frequently does when it snows. He used his snowblower to clear the sidewalks making my life so much easier. However, that is not life’s dickishness. That is Kerry’s unfailing generosity. I am as always grateful to him.

I still had to shovel my driveway manually with a shovel. It so happened the snow was quite wet and therefore painfully heavy to push.

The experience I am talking about is having two catheters dangling from my stomach like obscene otherworldly appendages and pushing infuriatingly heavy snow with them. It was as if the snow soaked up with water was pushing right back at me. A point came where I was not sure whether I was shoveling the snow or the snow was shoveling me. A few choice profanities were let out by me—one of them my own favorite coinage “Fuckchutiya hai life.”

The two catheters, now in me for over three months and since last July for a total of about five months, have become like my own limbs. I am beginning to suspect that they have started forming their own tissue bridge with my body and may refuse to leave me. With my upcoming surgery on Tuesday for colon resection, they will be finally taken off. Hopefully.

As recently as seven months ago I would not have envisioned a situation in my life with two catheters and shoveling water-heavy snow. Hence, life’s a dick. It throws experiences at you, you never thought existed and were in store for you.

Half in surprise, half in amazement

 

आधी कटी हेरत में, आधी हैरानगी में

जिंदगी फिर भी गुज़री, पूरी दीवानगी में

--Mayank Chhaya

 

 

Steps

Mind is both a friend and enemy of self

उद्धरेदात्मनात्मानं नात्मानमवसादयेत् |

आत्मैव ह्यात्मनो बन्धुरात्मैव रिपुरात्मन: ||

(उध्धरेद आत्मन आत्मानम नात्मन मव सादयेत

आत्मैव हयात्मानो बंधुर आत्मैव रिपु रात्मनह)

For as long as I remember from my early childhood this particular shlok from the Bahgvad Gita has been around my family. It was my father Manharray’s favorite verse from the book that he read regularly.

Asa child I could recite it without understanding a word of it wherein lies the incantatory beauty of Sanskrit. I, of course, went on to understand its meaning a little later. I remember the verse this morning because the other day I spoke to my uncle Bhaskarray, my father’s younger brother, who is now 90. A voracious reader in his younger days like my father, he said these days he was again reading the Gita and it was in that context that I mentioned the shlok. It remains inscribed under my father’s photograph in Bhaskarkaka’s home in Rajkot.

As is the case with much of what the Gita says, this one too is sharp and succinct in its wisdom.

In its essence, the shlok says this:

Elevate self through the power of your mind and not debase self

For the mind is both a friend and enemy of self

The Gita’s brilliance above all else is that it is clinically clear in its exposition. It is shorn of melodrama and distilled in its wisdom.

The idea that one’s mind is both a friend and an enemy depending on how one uses it may seem rather meh now but it is still brilliant for its originality.

My father lived his short life of 42 by this wisdom. It is a tribute to the upbringing in my family that none of this was never handed down to, let along forced upon, us. If one picked up some of it through the process of osmosis, so be it. It is pretty clear I did considering I am writing about it nearly five decades after Manharray’s death.

काट डालेगा गांजा एक ही झटके में, लाइफ पे अपुन ने सुपारी लियेला है

With life being life in not working out for me, I must revisit my Tapori Shayari or Mumbai Gangsta Poetry that I wrote in August, 2018.

August 22, 2018

Sometime in 1981 I was firmly introduced to what is now known as Mumbaiya or Bambaiya Hindi. I have been an admirer ever since. Accustomed to speaking Hindi the way it should be spoken, I approached a taxi driver for a ride from Juhu to Dalal Street.

“आप दलाल स्ट्रीट चलेंगे?” (Would you take me to Dalal Street?), I asked.

He looked at me somewhat bewildered and said, “शायरी क्या करता है? आप बीप. बैठ.” (Stop being so poetic. Just get in.)

I was a bit confused about his apparent annoyance. I later found out that my use of the term “Aap”, which is a respectful way of addressing another person in Hindi, irritated him. He thought I was being too sophisticated and therefore  ““शायरी क्या करता है? आप बीप.”

It did not take me much time at all to understand that the Bombay of the street had its unique patois which, as it unfolds, has a very impressive literary range. It is very inventive and yet very business-like. It is direct to the point of coming across as rude but still often remarkably moving.

Of course, Bambaiya or Mumbaiya has been popularly associated with the city’s underworld known as “Bhailog”. “Bhais”, literally brothers, are gangsters of varying reach and criminal propensities but are often united by their language. Or so the legend goes. In my days of reporting crime in the city I did not come across too many “bhais” who spoke the way Hindi cinema portrays them but every once in a while one would pop up to completely justify the stereotype.

There was a pimp in Colaba area who could be a character that might have escaped the script of a B grade Hindi crime drama. His language was almost exactly like what is popularly represented. I know because he threatened me in Bambaiya for doing a story about his racket. “Apun ka chalta hai bhai logon se. Kabhi raat ko niklega idhar se ludka dalega.” (I am pally with mob bosses. If you ever venture out at night here, you will be dealt with—killed)” he said. Of course, it was more bluster than anything else.

Since the 1980s I have been fascinated by that street language but it is only this morning around 4 that I thought of actually writing poetry in it. There is a term called tapori to describe these waif-like young men, who are often available for hire for minor criminal errands. I have called this new genre ‘Tapori Shayari’. Here is the first one born early this morning.

 

टपोरी शायरी

 

काई कु भेजे का करेला बना रेला है

लाइफ की रेस में अपुन का नंबर पेला है

 

ताली मार साले क्या शायरी बोलेला है

मालूम, अपुन ने कितनो को ऊपर धकेला है

 

सब की अपनी बिजली सब का अपना करंट

यह देख बाप जेब में क्या घोडा रखेला है

 

यह क्या पेहेन के निकली तू आज चमेली

तेरी आखी बॉडी पे बगीचा खिलेला है

 

तू ले ले तेरे कु जितना जो मिला

क्यूँ लंड के माफ़िक अकड़ेला है

 

काट डालेगा गांजा एक ही झटके में

लाइफ पे अपुन ने सुपारी लियेला है

 

--मयंक छाया उर्फ़ गांजा पिस्तूलवाले