Good Djinns

City of Djinns - William Dalrymple

I treasure an old copy of William Dalrymple's "City of Djinns" that I have in my possession. It belonged to my mother. A voracious reader and history teacher, she chose to mark her copy of that wonderful love letter to Delhi with a bindi on the cover, the red dot often worn by Indian women symbolizing the third eye, open only for those with great wisdom and internal energy. In times when I miss her energy, departed from my universe for more than 4 years now, I draw comfort from glancing through a random page within the book. Whether it opens out to the Nigambodh Ghat or New Delhi sections of the book is immaterial. To me and to anyone else who has ever understood how history weaves, both of those and all the Delhis in between will remain Delhi.

Maa was a city-raised Calcutta girl with a soft spot for all fellow creatures, human and non-human. Rescuing kite-string embroiled crows, insisting on non-lethal mouse traps, stern reprimands to our miniature Dachshund (Putputti) when she would fetch moles from our garden in Kolkata - those were her kind of interactions with Nature. She was vehemently opposed to the concept of Nature that is red in tooth and claw, often scolding me for spending too much time watching the 'violence' of a lion hunt on a Discovery Channel documentary and reminding me that 'exposure' to such images can only desensitize the mind. I can only imagine how strongly she would have reacted to that first sweeping order of the Supreme Court on the mass removal of street dogs from Delhi and its use of cowboy language such as "...when it's time to shoot, shoot".

As for me, I am one of them. The kind that MUST pet and talk gibberish to every friendly dog everywhere, street or otherwise and peek into "Beware of Dog" signed houses just to glance at the pre-announced canine resident. I identify with dogs - identify with their diverse personalities, their toxic optimism for life and their relentlessly dumb sniffy curiosity. There is hardly a time after chicken at a roadside eatery that I won't carry the bones in my pajama pocket in hopes of meeting a canine wanderer and I know each house in my neighbourhood only by the name of the dog that lives there, not the family name. I agree with stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais when he says "I do not believe in God but I believe in dog." A lot like my Dad was, I am obsessed with dogs including my two adoptees at home. And a lot like Baba, my love for dogs is very different from how my Maa loved dogs.

This is because I understand why some people are terrified of dogs and can partially understand that fear too. As someone not fond of dogs once said, to him dogs looked like "a fireburst of emotions armed with lots of teeth". The ominous growl that my own dog lets loose when he thinks I am moving his filled food plate is proof enough that there is enough of the wolf in there amidst the buffoonery and cuteness. On morning walks with my dogs, I watch their alliances and rivalries with other dogs wax and wane, a canine Game of Thrones if you will. I am well aware of their irrational dislikes (the clip-clop of horses, society's exploited rag-pickers and the rumble of distant autorickshaws amongst others). As much as it makes my blood boil, the timid queries of "Kaatega toh nahin? (He won't bite, right?" when my happy mutts are just walking down the road (leashed!) probably have its roots in some long-ago acquired trauma or a brainwashed worldview that all dogs can do and will do is bite you without rhyme or reason.

My aim is NOT to make a case for those irresponsible citizens who dump buckets of waste food in neighbourhoods outside their own fostering gangs of semi-wild dogs while they themselves disappear into gated colonies having earned their punya (good karma). They are wrong. My aim is NOT to make light of the horrors that delivery boys, early morning service providers, children of street-dwellers and senior citizens have faced due to (a) bad dog ownership or (b) aggressive dog packs. Such incidents have no place in civil society and every effective step needed to be taken must be. As someone with long personal experience of dealing with the canine universe and a veteran of two dog bites myself, the only deposition I am making is that certain draconian measures to address the 'dog problem' seem to me more about picking soft targets and defenceless scapegoats (scapedogs?) as opposed to handling the larger societal issues that the 'dog problem' is bringing to the fore.

For starters, the burgeoning street dog population is a direct result of notoriously corrupt Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme non-implementation and extreme mismanagement of garbage by our municipalities, both of which can go hand-in-hand to dramatically reduce the number of dogs on our streets. Clean cities and a natural reduction in canine populations - win-win couldn't have a better example. Add to that the simple fact that it would be the friendlier dogs which are likely to be caught up in any sweeping catch and imprison forever judgement implementation (now thankfully overruled). The wilder dogs on the other hand would turn ever more aggressive and reticent compounding the issue. The logistical nightmare or practical feasibility of housing and sustaining the results of a "Catch 'em all" drive I am not even getting into.

Then there is the slightly thornier issue of "Community dogs" where I have had disagreements with some fellow pet-dog owners. Are community dogs even a thing, they ask? Aren't all dogs supposed to be attached to a human and/or human family who take FULL responsibility? If Singapore can get rid of its street dogs, shouldn't we aim to too? We are not Singapore, I tell them. In certain matters, I hope we will never be. I deeply regret that they grew up without the animal joy of knowing a 'community dog' in their own neighbourhoods. In our country lined with difficult days and half-born dreams, those happy faces, those familiar wags waiting for you OUTSIDE your home - free spirits that like you but do not bind you, bring the neighbourhood together like only dogs can. Yes, those dogs do ride on harsh fate but in the right neighbourhood, there is always shelter from rain and in return, for many unable to afford the privilege of keeping a dog a canine balm for pain.

They disturb your beauty sleep, you say, barking at random hours at things unseen? Tens of thousands of years together but beyond their basic motivations, we only know their universe as we would know a djinn's. For all we know, they may be barking at fellow djinns, spirits of uncertain provenance and intentions from a time before we had the security of four walls and concrete jungles. An age-old partnership based on trust, space and mutual understanding that you can now happily jettison but they cannot. 

Not all of the dogs came into the cave next to the crackling fire of your ancestors as they were torn between the call of the wild and the urge of gratitude to the leftover feeders snoring inside. In Delhi, they now have acquired names like Sheru, Laddoo, Rani and Tommy but to them we all owe them a debt going back to a time when history was not yet history or even prehistory, we the Yudhishtirs, Tomars, Tughlaqs, and Supreme Court judges of this mega-metropolis. As the blood moon rises tonight in Delhi and the eclipse takes over, think of all the complaints we make these days of having 'lost connection with nature'. Can we afford to be so relentless in our march to so-called progress that we sweep away even this most basic of bindings to where we began? Can we concretize our hearts against these very good djinns?

Good Djinns

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2025/09/good-djinns.html]

Audience

The premise was interesting, very interesting. A bank-heist caper set in the small towns and urban villages of Bengal in the mould of a genius criminal vs dogged cop drama. The output was fantastic too. Tense camerawork, authentic acting and locale worthy music brought together the story with impact and verve. "Bohurupi", a movie which I watched yesterday without even seeing its trailer or reviews delivered entertainment in spades for Baba and me. Not exactly a Childrens' Day movie though we watched it on the day, it pushed a message that becomes all the more clearer as you grow older, that for capable and sincere 'professionals' pushed into corners by unfair circumstances, the 'moral' choice is not default. Baba's end of movie statement that "Bangla cinema kothai pouchey geyeche... baaki der theke ONEK oporre [Look where Bengali cinema has reached... the others will never be able to catch up]" was the typical unwarranted over-the-top declaration without which Bengaliness remains uncertified. Nonetheless, I would recommend watching it. Worth your time.

But the reason I write this post is that all through the movie, I couldn't stop thinking about what would people on whom the movie is based feel about the same? The memorably portrayed independent pick-pocketeer Jhimli with a sharp tongue and seductive eyes. Would she feel represented through the movie or would she think that 'her' character was a simplified novelty meant for city viewers? The small town 'chor' [thief] guru Salim who is a master at his craft but only in the small world that he inhabits - he is no suave Danny Ocean whom international audiences (claim to) admire and (aspire to) relate to, chor or not. Would he judge the directors Shiboprasad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy for projecting expertise on themes they don't have it on? The bohurupis [quick-change folk artists who travel in troupes performing in town and village squares which are usually off the 'in' circuit] themselves, skilled in 'overacting' and melodrama of the kind that sells to a less urbane and therefore less cynical audience. Would they feel proud that audiences in Kolkata, and possibly the globe, would now know of them or are they also well aware that their caricaturish passionate performances which form the baseline of the film will not make its urban audience actually attend in person their rapidly fading world of street performances to support or to save it? But then again, through the centuries they have been master shape shifters/spies/survivors and for them success is not dependent on such fickle support driven by Netflix trends and corporate YOLO mantras. For them, a new story arc and a new beginning is one snappy costume change away.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/11/audience.html]

Airport

 

PC: Dall-E, Open AI

Maybe because it was December, her favourite month - with its cool weather, her birthday and Christmas in sequence. Maybe because it was seeing the variety of people streaming out of Dehradun airport - all manner of personalities and styling choices. She would have had an observation on all of them - funny and/or deep. As I waited at the exit gate to receive a senior conservationist for a work conference (someone whom I always look forward to meeting), a wild wish bubbled up unbidden. What if Maa also emerged from the gate? Wouldn't that be awesome? The impossible, the illogical wish should have induced a chuckle in the always rational me. I knew that it was a ridiculous thought.

As the wait grew longer, the wish grew bolder. The more I pushed it away, the more it popped up front-and-centre. My brain was outright refusing to co-operate with reality. With a drying throat, my eyes scanned the gate ever more intensely. Could it be her? Would it be her? Every burst of laughter, every embrace of the travellers and those waiting for them added more detail to the wish. How she would emerge (a slightly harried expression on her face, as long journeys usually made my otherwise high-enthu Maa feel), how she would smile (when scanning the crowd, she would spot me), how she would wave (both arms fully committed to the cause, as she was in every other aspect of life).

Come on. Get a grip. I told myself. It's been so long since she's gone. Don't you remember how you tried - not acknowledging her limited time, insisting that her comeback was just around the corner - in the fierce belief that not talking about it would keep her here forever? Don't you remember the searing failure of that 'plan'? Don't you remember all the details of your rushed journey home? Don't you remember the nightmarish wait outside the ICU, not allowed into that cold world of expertise, knowing that inside she was slipping away? Physically I was at the airport, but inside my little boat of logic battled huge swells of emotion. It tried, it fought, it lost.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2023/03/airport.html]

One Shake of Many

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2020/01/one-shake-of-many.html]

A Dark Kind of Art

"Luna mein hain no tension -trumpety music-

Chalane mein hain no tension -trumpety music-

Maintenance mein no more tension"

[Luna gives you no tension, in riding and in maintenance]

That's the one. Or something like it.

This was the first advertising jingle to find permanency in my head. A very humble two-wheeler, the 50 cc moped that was the Luna even gave its rider an option of pedalling to the next petrol station with its radical in-built cycle option. Back in its day, it wasn't without its quota of cool and the fact that my older brother, 11 years my senior, commanded one was no small matter of pride. This, I need not remind you, was in pre-liberalisation, single TV channel India.

To date, I am yet to ride the Luna except as a passenger (it was sold long before I reached riding age). I have had the unhappy and possibly unique experience of being dragged by one, knees scraping along the road, for a good 10-15 metres as a bump on the road dislodged me from the pillion seat and unlike Jack of Titanic fame, I refused to let go. I have also been sent flying by one, on a routine road crossing to catch the school bus, at a tender age (early primary school) when it was still physically feasible for a Luna to send me flying as it ran into me. The central message being that there is absolutely no reason for me to look upon it fondly but even then, that jingle... it never quite left me in the three decades since.

Advertising, at its dark core, is mass mind manipulation. It is designed to stamp an impression on impressionable minds and at its most nefarious, force us to buy things that we don't need at all. Want is created where there was none, greed where there was peace.

Be that as it may, advertising is also an outlet for storytelling which tries to tap into the moods of the time. The underlying wish to push their product notwithstanding, it is difficult not to appreciate the genuine effort put into channeling the right notes. 

The fruit drink company, Paper Boat, for example, seems to have mined that rich vein of nostalgia for those of us who remember a time when long railway journeys were a family institution, and a pocket-friendly adventure rolled into one (Read aforementioned 'Luna Days'). I wouldn't waste words on why these images work. They just do, and for that generation at which these ads are targeted, any explanation is superfluous.

I, for one, am yet to buy a Paper Boat product but I think the universe is a happier place if, after all the dust from the board-room meetings, sales targets and distribution networks has settled down, a creative managed to sneak out a story and a smile for someone who isn't even a customer.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-dark-kind-of-art.html]

A house on Ripon Street

No, it’s not even on Ripon Street. Ripon Street actually ends at Lower Circular Road but in the long standing tradition of locating themselves on the nearest modish sounding address, the occupants of the house often do the same. Haji Lane just doesn’t have the same ring.

The house is old. Some say that the ground floor base of the house is 150 years old and was the studio of noted painter Abanindranath Tagore. Like that of the blue-eyed Englishwoman said to have been seen by some domestic servants, this story about the house is yet to be confirmed.

For a functionally focussed house, so much so that it wasn’t given a name, it has its fair share of stories. The tall cool walls and their wooden shuttered windows, watched over by the brilliant red in spring krishnachura tree, have enclosed within them many a memory – newly married couples tentatively learning the ropes of matrimony; happy childhoods by the dozen as experience and an experienced pool of grandparents allowed them to be; and re-unions of re-animated cousins as they talk of them days past whilst the latest generations make latest memories.

A first-time visitor might note the long first floor verandah, once open to the streets and neighbourhood burglars but now protected by a grill of elaborate design, where the sunlight casts all manner of patterns through the day and where it is possible to daydream looking out onto the ultra-busy street, with a distance more emotional than physical.

Then there’s the roof, that is open to the breezes from the Ganga and the azaan calls of numerous mosques. With whimsical views both distant and near, there is never quite a wrong time to go up to the third floor in search of innumerable imaginary stories.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/10/a-house-on-ripon-street.html]

Addicted

The inquisition is an everyday reality.

“Don’t you have any *real* friends?”

“Staring at a computer screen for hours together?”

“Get away, get outside, before you go crazy!”

The parents. Forever overreacting.

They see partial benefits though. Dad has discovered the world’s greatest library of WW2 documentaries, also known as YouTube. Mom has committed herself to that blue and white temple of baby announcements and perfect(ly staged) wedding pictures, also known as Facebook.

Yet they cannot bring themselves to see their son’s Internet usage as anything other than addiction. The lack of any business formals on my person in my newly chosen career as freelance writer has them convinced that their son is now that anti-social, work-shirking, manic-depressive Internet person that the newspapers sound warnings about.

So, when a severe thunderstorm conked out the Internet connection at home one morning, an opportunity to relive those golden pre-Internet days presented itself. The crew would take at least a day or two to restore services, I was told. I dusted out an old book or two, long kept in a forgotten queue. I stood for long in the verandah watching the rain pelt down. It was glorious.

My parents? All through the outage, every couple of hours they would ask me about the status of the Internet connection. After restoration, I ran upstairs to let them know.

I was late to the party.

Two senior citizens were already hunched over the blue glow of their respective smartphones, surfing with the devil.

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/10/addicted.html]

Pujo Pondogol [Part 3 of 4] - Central

Now this is home territory. Central Calcutta with its incessant honking and claustrophobic lanes may not be to everyone's taste but I have lived here long enough to sieve the character from the chaos. Durga Puja here is no less of an occasion here and the pandal makers here just will not be outdone by others.

First up, the oddly named Mohammad Ali Park pandal. Actually I take that back. In Bengal, it is not that odd. To have a park instituted in the name of a Muslim host one of the most prominent pandals for the Hindu festival of Durga Puja. Despite many a attempt to prove otherwise via fake news and sustained hate promotion, it will stay that way.

The theme as may be guessed from the pictures was Africa. They actually had a live exotic bird inside one corner of the pandal.

The image of the Goddess herself was one quite distinct. A very tribal looking goddess with close resemblance to Mother Earth taking on the demon of pollution/industrialization personified as Mahisasura.

A very unique theme and executed with passion and detail.

Then comes the College Street Puja Pandal. Derived from what I believe is an Hungarian palace, it had a stately presence at the edge of the pool which headlines the geography of College Square. However the famous roshogollas at Putiram's with their sweet spongy heavenliness continue their business as usual of bringing unedited smiles on anyone's face, Puja or no Puja.

College Street also happens to be the world's largest second hand book market and once a year thanks to the 4-5 days of the Puja, Bengalis mob something else other than books on College Street. 

I don't even know the name of this Pandal which nearly made me jump out of the auto-rickshaw I was in... in sheer visual shock. 

This was smack on Mahatma Gandhi Road running through the heart of the city connecting the two massive rail-heads of Sealdah and Howrah. I daresay that no one passing by could have not looked at it. And the heart of the city might have skipped a beat or two.

I feel that they may have involved or idealized Govinda and his 90s movies in selecting the colour combinations.

All things considered, it really "stood out" and that in my opinion was the aim of every Puja Pandal anyway. Everyone tries it but very few achieve it. This one did... by means fair or fluorescent foul.

The next pandal on show is the Entally Market Pandal. 

The pictures probably do not do any justice to the beauty of the pandal.

It was really early morning, i.e. even-the-alarm-cock-is-asleep AM when we stepped into this pandal. 

No crowds, no competition - only the powerful call of the conch, the dhaki's insistent drum beats and exquisite craftsmanship to create these Rajasthani themed version of the Goddess and her family.

Still early early morning and even-the-alarm-cock-is-asleep'o'clock is when we move to the next pandal, the Santosh Mitra Square one.

Central Calcutta, as I said before, is the Florida of all lanes claustrophic. It is the Promised Land where all less than 20 feet wide, persecuted by heavy traffic lanes have found their way to.

They continue to be persecuted by heavy traffic. But they also offer a genuinely decent canvas for changing pandal lights to paint on.

And then to discover the spaceship was a bit of a surprise. The mellow lights on the way in had given no indication that this was suddenly turn Predator on me and launch into alien invasion mode.

Master Chief has arrived!

Yet the idol and her extended family were of a very traditional style. Seems like the aliens like to keep the religious bit of their life uncomplicated and by the book. A combination of an eerie spaceship commanded by Halo's Master Chief and the comforting grace of a towering Durga within it - a combination to be found only inside a Bengali mind's fevered imagination  - had found physical realization with very remarkable degree of finish quality in both.

The Force of the Chandeliers continued to be strong. In the South, in the North, in the Central, in the outskirts - everyone wanted chandeliers and everyone got them. Some, like the one in the Mullick Bazaar pandal seen below, went a fair way in making the mood of the pandal.

The last of the Central Calcutta pandals that I will share images from is the Taltala Puja Pandal, an across the road hop from Entally Market. While I knew of many famous pandal names, this one flew under the radar somehow. I'll let the images do the talking below but rest assured, I was quite stunned one particular evening, to literally stumble upon this one, while on a mundane mission to buy tea leaves from Entally.

[These pictures are from the Durga Puja pandals, temporary structures of magnificent complexity, of 2015.

Parts 1, 2 and 4 can be found here.]

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2017/07/pujo-pondogol-part-3-of-4-central.html]