Mayank Chhaya Daily

Splintering into many pieces

बिखरता जाता हूँ मैं कई हिस्सों में

सुनाया जाऊंगा इतिहास के किस्सों में

--मयंक छाया

I am splintering into many pieces

Raconteurs of history might tell my stories

--MC

Cocoon wraps by MC

Always start your day with something creative. Mine begins with a new line of cocoon wraps at VIDA. This particular one, named Three Women, is based on the following painting of mine.

Waking up to interdeterminate state

The Desk by MC

Being a creature of routine because of the nature of my current preoccupation as a ghost writer, I often wonder about the “reality” I wake up to every morning. On the face of it, not much seems to change.

I wake up anytime between 4 and 5 a.m.; cleaning and voiding functions are completed in about 5-8 minutes, the computer is switched on after that and while it boots up I generally make myself a cup of masala tea of the Wagh Bakri brand, an exercise that takes two minutes and 30 seconds during which I step out into my front yard to take in some fresh air, then pick up my cup of tea and return to the desk by which time the computer has fully booted up.

The desk and things on it, including the monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, reading glasses all look exactly what they looked like the night before. At times I wonder what if the macro world that we live were like the quantum world. Would our world be subject to things such as wave function collapse? By that I mean when I go to sleep do things in the house, on Earth and the universe generally dissolve into one gigantic indeterminacy which gets resolved when I wake up the next morning and interact with them?

In all their essential details material objects, including myself, appear exactly the same except that in my case the clothes are different and the length of my stubble varies as do emotions. There is one constant every morning that I wake up with among a jumble of emotions—which bill has not been paid and which creditor to placate. That does not vary at all. What varies is which service to pay for at the last moment and creditor to plead with.

In all of this the point is that there has to be my reality and the reality that the universe maintains and observes. One can only guess that what I see/perceive/ experience/resolve must be quite close to, if not altogether exactly the same, as the universe maintains it. Like I said, my immediate physical surroundings remain pretty much the same as long as I do not change them, such as moving my desk or putting in fresh flowers in my vase every morning and such things.

One feels increasingly discommoded by these questions. Wave functions must be perpetually collapsing in the universe from the universe’s standpoint. Things must be getting resolved and turning indeterminate (While typing indeterminate, I misspelled it to “interdeterminate”, which I quite like) all the time. Is the universe a constant loop of resolution and indeterminacy? How about coining a new term interdeterminacy? I am not quite sure of the definition yet but let us go with the working one that says it is a state between being resolved and indeterminate. It sounds quite profound even if meaningless. It is in keeping with my lifelong weakness for lines that sound profound albeit meaningless.

It would certainly appear that I have written this new post this morning. So that is a variable to the seemingly fixed objective reality constituted by things such as the desk, monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad and so on. Beyond this point who knows what is in store for me this Monday, if that is what it is—a Monday. The universe does not recognize it to be a Monday or June 18, 2018. We do for our own practical convenience. The universe operates on a wholly unfathomable time scale and timeline. That brings me back to my favorite poser that must be asked in Hindi. “यार, यह जुपिटर करता क्या है?” Dude, what does Jupiter do?

Of course, in the Milky Way’s scheme of things, let alone the cosmic scheme of things, Jupiter is an utterly inconsequential thing. But I use it as a metaphor to sum up my eternal question—What does the universe really do? “वोह सब तो ठीक है लेकिन पॉइंट क्या है?” All that is fine but what’s the point?

It is good to conclude on this indeterminate point.

P.S.: While selecting the image above, for some reason the PC took a few seconds to resolve it into the image that you see. Everything is in an interdeterminate state.

Trufa by Trambak Tanpure

I write so much that I often forget a lot of what I have written. Take for this germ of an idea for a story I wrote on November 4, 2013. I chanced upon it yesterday and feel prompted to republish it.

November 4, 2013

It did not really matter what name I was given by my father because our family name would always make any name before it sound like an incongruity.

Our last name is Taanpure, the ‘t’ soft and ‘re’ as ray at the end. As if to compound my life and foreclose all my career options from the get-go my father, named Pundrik, christened me Tryambak.

Try saying the whole name with a purist’s delight—Tryambak Taanpure. We should all be grateful that my father was not a spy thriller writer in the league of Ian Fleming. “The name is Taanpure, Tryambak Taanpure” would have killed any villain with pure hilarity, I suppose.

My name is not the point of this short story, of course. With a name like that I had only a couple of career options— become a writer or a painter. I became a writer who tries to paint using words. The only change I made was to simplify the spelling of my name to Trambak Tanpure. This short story is about the actual process of plotting a short story by a writer named Trambak Tanpure.

(On visit to Los Angeles once to pitch a story to a producer I had to inevitably bear the brunt of some terrible punning on “tan” and “pure”. It was even suggested that I start a tanning franchise with that name.)

I don’t quite know where I live but wherever I do there is a lushly flowered Gulmohar tree, one of whose branches extends into the window of my study. It is a flaming orange intrusion into my life that I do not mind at all. I can, of course, trim that branch but in the last couple of years it appears to have reached its optimal length. I can always shift my house a foot or so away but that does not seem practical. The only downside to this arborous invasion is that I cannot close my window throughout the year. Among its many upsides is that I can eat its buds before they explode into flamboyant flowers. I digress.

As a device to create a short story I have decided that its characters arrive by various means of transport depending on their economic background. As their creator I go to a local train station, airport and bus station to receive them over a period of a few days. The main character is a young woman enigmatically called Trufa who arrived this morning.

Other than knowing that she is the only heir to a massive ancestral fortune built over centuries I do not know much about her. Despite the fact that she could have flown in her own private jet with a couple of others follow right behind with no one onboard in a show of eccentricity of her ilk, Trufa has chosen to travel like the hoi polloi. I wanted to use the word swinish multitudes but she said that would be derogatory. I told her I am one of those swinish multitudes.

Trufa called me a couple of days ago to give me the details of her arrival. She said she was booked on coach S6 of the Puranik Express reaching Tulapur at 6 a.m. That’s how I found out the name of the town where I live—Tulapur. Since I am the one conceiving her character I might as well make her a stunningly beautiful 24-year-old. Her beauty surrounds her like a golden hued force field which clears any and all obstacles in her way. When she moves the world shifts a bit to make way for her. Her path is always evenly paved and her ambient air always fragrant with the fragrance of her choice. In case you cannot see her from quite a distance because of the golden glow, you can always smell Trufa from miles away. So I did not quite understand the rationale of telling me the coach number.

I reached the Tulapur station at 5.55 a.m. after confirming that the Puranik Express was on time. However, I had begun to smell the delightful jasmine from about 3 a.m. Her impending arrival had robbed me of my sleep because although I had a clear conception of what she must look like, I was anxious to see whether she actually lived up to my imagination. For some reason I had forgotten that she was my creation and did not have to come to me fully formed and fleshed out. I can always nip and tuck as it were. But then we all want our approximate imagination of beauty to be delivered fully detailed.

The jasmine fragrance did not grow stronger as the train approached the platform, thereby defying the Doppler effect. I could see her fabled golden hue radiating in the middle of the train. A couple of hundred people waiting for the train to pull in were transfixed by the surreal mixture of light and fragrance. The coach S6 stopped precisely where it was marked on the platform floor. It appeared that the whole train was empty except S6. The door opened gently and the fragrant golden glow rolled down. There was a slight bounce to it but it settled down in a couple of seconds.

The rest of the people looked bewildered as they gathered right behind me to see this spectral sight. I did not see Trufa inside the glow as I stood stupefied by my own creation. A few seconds later a hand tapped on my right shoulder. I turned around and found her standing there, statuesque and yet so full of life.

“Shall we?” she said as she held my left hand. When she spoke it felt as if the voice was coming from inside the fragrant golden glow.

We began walking towards the exit. I noticed that even though she was moving it appeared as if there was nothing underneath her feet. Earth seemed to have disappeared just under her. We stepped out of the station and waited for my driver to bring up the car. That’s when she suggested:

“Get inside the glow.”

I hesitated a bit but did get inside. The next thing I saw was that I was sitting in my study with Trufa holding a plateful of Gulmohar buds.

“Try one,” she said with a mischievous smile.

As I took my first bite the golden glow began to disintegrate.

“The first rule of my being here. The more you eat the buds, the more diminished I become. So no more eating Gulmohar buds. Let them bloom into full flowers. Trees don’t eat your babies, do they?”

Trufa had surpassed my imagination.

Cristiano Ronaldo

I understand football in all its aesthetics and physics if not all in its terminologies. By football I mean the game played with two feet around the world and not as in anything but two feet here in America. Football is soccer here.

With an assignment to finish I started watching the spectacular Spain V. Portugal match yesterday when it was already 3-2 in favor of the former. Cristiano Ronaldo was trying to do his best to equalize it. Only two minutes remained in the game and having earned a free-kick everything rested on his feet like it often does. I had no particular outcome in mind as Ronaldo prepared to kick the ball. And then he did.

One is tremendously grateful for multiple camera angles and replays as one could see the ball’s flight actually bending in solo motion and landing plum into the upper right hand corner of the net. Bending it like (David) Beckham may have been a thing but bending it like Ronaldo is genius. And bending it like that on a hat-trick? Absolutely spectacular.

After the equalizer I felt that it was no longer necessary to continue watching the World Cup because what would be the point after that goal? It was as if Ronaldo had put his life’s work into that one free-kick. But I suppose he does it with every goal that he scores. That is why he is who he is.

When you play the goal in slow motion several times you get to see how unconsciously Ronaldo’s body positions itself at an angle such that when he kicks the ball would bend inflight. I am sure this comes from relentless practice. If it looks easy, it is because for him it is and for the rest it is impossible.

With that out of the way, let me watch the World Cup in defiance of my own pledge not to after Ronaldo’s masterstroke.

A few observations about Natsamrat

*Some spoiler alerts. Don’t read if you have not seen the movie yet.

The central existential dilemma was forever captured by Shakespeare and never to be surpassed in terms of its brevity and brilliance. To be or not to be is indeed and will perhaps always be the question.

That is, in fact, also the central dilemma of Ganpat Ramchandra Belwalkar, the protagonist of ‘Natsamrat’ (The King of Theater or the Actor King) directed by Mahesh Manjrekar.That is not least because Ganpat, Nana Patekar, is a Shakespearean actor. He seems the kind of man who would ask the question to be or not to be even if he were a postman.

‘Natsamrat’ is one of Marathi’s most celebrated and acclaimed plays which originally featured the legendary actor Dr. Shriram Lagoo. Dr. Lagoo’s is considered a benchmark performance against which actors have been judged over the decades. If there was any actor for whom the role was meant other than Dr. Lagoo’s, it would easily be Nana Patekar. Of course, there are many other worthies in the inordinately rich world of Marathi theater such as Vikram Gokhale or even Dilip Prabhavalkar who could acquit themselves with exceptional success. However, there is something to the demeanor of the character of Ganpat that appears to wrap around Patekar like a second skin. He wears it ever so lightly. Incidentally, Gokhale also features in the important role of Rambhau in the movie as a crusty and cynical foil to the flamboyant and grandiloquent Ganpat.

Although Manjrekar’s version of the play was made and released in 2016, I happened to watch it on Netflix only yesterday. Marathi is not my mother tongue but having lived in Bombay/Mumbai for ten years and begun my journalistic career there in 1981, not to mention my profound friendship with Shireesh Kanekar—a brilliant exponent of the language—I have a fairly good grasp on it.

This is by no means a review of the film because I do not review any creative pursuit. It is a futile exercise. What this is my immediate unfiltered response to Manjrekar’s interpretation of the original play by the greatly respected Marathi poet, playwright and novelist Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar, better known as Kusumagraj. Notwithstanding some mawkish touches here and there Manjrekar handles his core material and actors with considerable passion and ingenuity. Himself a very competent if underexploited actor he knows both sides of the camera well.

The basic plot is about a grandly successful stage actor retiring and attempting to return to happy domesticity with his wife Kaveri, Medha Manjrekar, and two children, a son and a daughter. While Ganpat thinks he has retired from theater, theater has not retired from him. There is inherent theatricality to the man’s composure and idiom. He is abrasively self-assured given to often caustic tongue-lashing to life and its many absurd situations and characters. In an impulsively emotional and patriarchal move he transfers his mansion to his son Makrand (Ajit Parab) and other assets to daughter Vidya (Mrunmayee Deshpande). You know that it is a decision fraught with parental regret and anguish as the plot unravels.

I found the domestic discords triggered by Ganpat’s surly and patronizing conduct a bit archaic and too 1960s but they still work as a pop entertainment device from the standpoint of the movie’s commerce. Manjrekar can be excused for building that in with one eye firmly on the box office. What is important is that he deals with the core conflict of a self-absorbed theater grandee with considerable success.

While all characters in the movie produce largely effective performances—a measure of the well-known depth of Maharashtra’s art world—it is Patekar, Gokhale and Manjrekar who carry the movie with such consummate passion. Medha, whose real life marriage to Mahesh may or may not be a factor in her remarkable performance other than a general intuitive understanding between the two carried over from home. She is eminently watchable against the gifted patekar.

Gokhale, a much respected Marathi and Hindi cinema actor, has always had the heft to execute a wide variety of characters. Here in the movie, as a sort of fading second fiddle to Ganpat, he produces some truly extraordinary moments that are subtle and nuanced. He excels when he cuts Ganpat down to size with his barbs. His gestures are in keeping with a combination of diffidence and a measure of bitterness of an actor who did not attain the popular heights of Ganpat’s.

Ganpat and Rambhau are very close friends who come across almost like siblings. In scenes where the two are mildly inebriated and ribing each other about this, that and the other are perhaps the finest examples of how to act tipsy without losing grip on their sobriety that I have seen. One can see two actors at the pinnacle of their craft in those scenes. The two are brilliant as Rambhau is on deathbed and are letting out their favorite lines from their plays. It struck me how well Gokhale dies in that scene only to find Patekar matching that later on towards the denouement of the movie. He also dies exceptionally well.

The highlight of the film, of course, is Patekar whose performance is deeply affecting. Despite the fact that the character inherently displays some grandiosity, which can easily fall prey to melodrama, Patekar draws on everything he has an actor to rein it it. It is just the perfect amount of melodrama which he pulls back from the edge of becoming maudlin and sentimental goo. This must rate as one of Patekar’s career defining roles. The fact that he is an actor in it who is conflicted between the many identities of the characters he has played over the years and in the process might have lost his own core is conveyed powerfully by him throughout the film.

At moments such as when his wife dies by the roadside or when a policeman thrashes a fellow waif inside a burnout theater Patekar brings to bear the full force of his extraordinary talent. There are quite a few moments like that in the film.

As is my wont I tweeted my compliments to both Patekar and Manjrekar yesterday. Manjrekar was gracious enough to expeditiously respond saying, “Thank you. It’s people like you who give me strength to make such movies.”

A turmeric moon in purple skies

Yellow moon-MC

It has been a while since I felt excited about an entirely digital painting of mine. I do about this one. My test for any piece of painting is whether I would like to be a part of the scene or be at the place it depicts immediately. The answer for this one is a yes. So much so that I wrote a quick verse in Hindi as well.

हल्दी सा चाँद उभरा

जामुनी आकाश में

टिमटिमाते जुगनूओं की

रौशनी की आड़ में

(Haldi sa chand ubhra

Jamuni aakash mein

Timtimatey jugnuon ki

Roshni ki aad mein)

A turmeric moon rose

In purple skies

Behind zigzagging

And glowing Fireflies

Of witness consciousness and suchlike

My unplanned and unintended forays into the esoteric continue to give me some stimulating rewards. The latest is Sakshi Chaitanya or witness consciousness. It is an ancient Indian idea about a form of consciousness that is described as a "self-illuminated reality" which is witness to all the conscious and unconscious states of the empirical mind.

While looking for some more literature about Bhartrhari, regarded as one of the most original philosophers of language and religion of India who lived between 450 and 510 C.E., I chanced upon Gorakshnath, one of those intriguing personages of ancient Indian history whose existence might feel like a fable rather than real.

I first became aware of Gorakshnath while filming my documentary ‘Gandhi’s Song’ about the 15th century poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta around Junagadh in Gujarat. Mount Girnar, around which Junagadh exists, is among the sites associated with Gorakshnath. It was considered as a favorite haunt of Gorakshnath. Of course, I have not gone into any serious historical research to establish the veracity of any of this but if generational memory of the people in the region is any indication, he is not an altogether inconceivable presence.

I did hear about Gorakshnath frequently while loafing around the foothills of Girnar, where Mehta composed some of his finest philosophical poetry. While searching for literature about him on the Internet, I came across a 1962 book titled ‘Philosophy of Gorakshnath with Goraksha –Vacana-Sangraha’ by Akshay Kumar Banerjea. It hardly surprised me to find that the book was first published by Mahant Dig Vijai Nath Trust in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

Gorakshnath is regarded as a great scholar, with some calling him a “Mahayogi.” The body of scholarly literature flowing from him and attributed to him is large. Much of it deals with Yoga generally and the state of Samadhi particularly. Of course, while I may not necessarily be interested in all that, I am certainly drawn to the sheer cerebral aspects of his rumination.

One of them was the concept of Sakshi Chaitanya or witness consciousness, which is regarded as the " soul of the psycho-physical organism", a changeless mind.

Let me go off on a tangent here a bit before I forget. Raghupati Sahay, better known as Firaq Gorakhpuri, arguably one of the greatest poets and language scholars of India whose poetry is considered to be of the same level as Ghalib, was born in Gorakhpur too.

Coming back to witness consciousness, what I am stimulated by is not so much whether it has a basis in science—although it is widely believed even here in the West that it does—but the sheer fact that over a millennium and a half ago there were those who were so deeply immersed in such profoundly esoteric ideas. I am not as much concerned with the rational or even scientific underpinnings of these ideas—although many of them have been later found to be credible—but the fact that there were minds who were willing to take these leaps.

I have just begun reading literature about witness consciousness and am quite captivated by the idea of a changeless mind that sits atop, as it were, over our everyday empirical mind that helps navigate through life. At some point soon, I will elaborate on some of these ideas and see if they have anything in common with the latest idea in neuroscience as propounded by scientists such as Anil Seth, a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Among the things that Prof. Seth talks about is the human brain hallucinating reality.

Banerjea argues in his book that, “Without assuming the existence of such an
underlying Witness-Consciousness (Sakshi-Caitanya), the phenomena of the
conscious and sub-conscious and unconscious mind and what is called the
empirical consciousness (Vritti-Caitanya) cannot be rationally accounted
for.” (Incidentally, I spell Caitanya as Chaitanya, the popularly used version.)

Finally, about the illustration for the post. While doing my ritual morning surfing of the art world, I came across a ring about the sculptor Anish Kapoor on Sotheby’s website. It features Kapoor’s work titled ‘Water Ring’ circa 2007 which will be auctioned on June 15. The ring is quite a piece which prompted me to do my own version. His is an actual ring while mine just an artwork.

Water Ring by Anish Kapoor

An illusion of possibilities on the horizon

Horizon--MC

जीवन की क्षितिज पर शक्यताओं का आभास है

There is an illusion of possibilities on life’s horizon.

That is all for today.

Vaishnav Jan To

Mayank Chhaya at Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad while shooting ‘Gandhi’s Song’

As I rev up pushing the case for a wider viewing of my documentary ‘Gandhi’s Song’, it is heartening to read this op-ed piece in the Free Press Journal by Jagdish Rattanani today.

Jagdish and I were once colleagues at the Free Press Journal in Mumbai in the 1980s and share our admiration for many of the philosophical underpinnings of the Indian civilization.* Jagdish gives a broader context to ‘Vaishnav Jan To’ (The truly righteous one), the nearly six-centuries-old song written by the great poet-philosopher Narsinh Mehta.

At a minor level, it is joyous to know that I figure as a subject of an op-ed in the newspaper where I began my journalistic career in 1981/82. I recommend you read the piece from which I quote the specific reference to the documentary here.

“No official telling, however strong the arc lights, can match up to the pull and power of citizens taking the message forward and making it a part of their lives and their mission to live it and tell it. Take the example of a song like Vaishnav Jan To, which was played in Singapore as (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi listened in. The rendition was beautiful; the setting was just perfect and the message as always flawless. But Vaishnav Jan To is powerful because it needs none of the imagery to shine through and live on in eternity, as it has five centuries after it was first sung in Gujarat by Narsinh Mehta, who lived 1414-1480.

Consider this: Somewhere in faraway Chicago, an Indian journalist battling difficult times in the news media business found strength and comfort in this very song, which is also celebrated as Mahatma Gandhi’s most loved prayer. So, keeping aside his troubles, the journalist put together a team, flew down to Gujarat and successfully wrote, directed and produced a 68-minute documentary titled “Gandhi’s Song”. It tells us the story of the song, its philosopher-poet and a lot more about the wealth of the Indian ethos. The journalist, who produced the film is Mayank Chhaya, 57, a news writer who has a flair for free flowing prose and is noted for his best seller on the Dalai Lama, Man, Monk, Mystic. Here is an ordinary, everyday person, telling in his own small way a big story for humankind. It’s a story captured in the simple and powerful idea of what constitutes right conduct – to understand the pain of another, to help those in distress and to serve with humility. Gandhi’s song moves people.

The documentary merits mention against the high profile global events if only to point out and celebrate the magnetic pull to a life lived by a set of values. These values are at the heart of Indian scriptures and teachings. Across time and geographies, people of all hues have been attracted to the timelessness and simplicity of the messages. They tie in together as a spiritual path, or spirituality as distinct from religiosity. This is a source of strength for India and a reflection of our rich ethos.”

* Jagdish and I have been friends for close to three decades now.