Finding Friends

I spent my twenties looking for love. For the perfect soul mate, I would spend the rest of my life with. I wasn't alone. We were all looking for love! My friends, my flatmates, my swim buddies and my Yoga friends. As we moved, with our nimble limbs and unbroken ligaments, through relationships we thought would "end" in family, we cheered each other on. We talked to each other into the wee hours of the morning, across timezones, sorting through intense emotions. Somebody would break up on a Monday morning and they would be back together by Wednesday. But we would all be there for them through Monday and Tuesday. 

We had our own little rituals. When one of us was upset, the other would make her a bubble bath. Then she would sit on the edge of the tub with a glass of wine. Drinking in the bath-tub was the luxury which came with extreme sadness or derilious happiness. There would be happy times too. When we went off on road trips, got lost and blamed the GPS. Taking coffee breaks in godforsaken places and blaming American coffee. Hooking up our phones to the car and playing Adele over and over. Sometimes choking her with our own voices. 

We were sharing angst. We were sharing uncertainty, but we never fully grasped the completeness of our friendship. 

Then we got all that we dreamed of! Soul mates and children. We kept up. Sending little booties in mail. Calling, skyping, whatsapping, Facebooking. But we gasped for breath and realized we needed some local friends. 

For the first time in our lives, perhaps after kindergarten, we set out to find new friends. Without a toolkit or a self help book. Without a procedure, we were thrown into a world full of people who were out for friends. Not love. 

And we realized just how hard it is! After losing touch with so many, after falling off with a few, after spending two hundred evenings straight reading aloud the Very Hungry Caterpillar, we set out to make friends who'd want to sit down and have a glass of wine with us. And talk about adult things. Like what? Was Adele still cool? 

It was just like dating. All over again. 

There were a lot to go through whom we didn't match with at all! Some asked us how much we earned. Some were too right-of-the-center. Some weren't really looking for friendship, and we didn't want anything else. At least with them! Some kept talking about kids and we were trying to run away from ours! Some became competitive, right away. Some searched for and revived the therapist in us. 

We were annoying too. We took too much space. No filters. Oversharers. Over thinkers. Attention seekers. Too previleged. Out of touch. 

But it was much better to be not liked in our thirties. We could shrug and turn around. Return to our babies and read the Very Hungry Caterpillar for the three hundredth time. We could tell ourselves that it is a good thing it didn't work out. We could read that book now. We could get more sleep. Smuggle some rum in our tea. Get our nails done. 

It was easier to get betrayed when we were younger. It was easier to get bullied. It was easier to overlook a rivalry. It was easier to forgive. It was easier to cry and rush into the arms of a friend. It was easier to vent and not worry about being betrayed. 

Now I need a band for my knee sometimes. For the ligament I tore, running on concrete in my twenties. It is the same for friendship. But for every ten people I meet, I find one. Who'd sit next to me with a glass of wine, on the edge of the tub, and talk me out of my confusion. 

Crowfall

 

Right after I read her autobiography - One Foot On The Ground, I ordered Shanta Gokhale's 'Crowfall'. This is an English translation of her original novel "त्या वर्षी", which won the Maharashtra State Literary Award in 2008. Since this translation has been done by the author herself, I hesitate to call it a translation. Perhaps when I read the original, I would be better informed to label it. 

Before I started reading it, I looked for reviews online. It has been repetitively described as a "portrait of Mumbai". Although this description is what we scientists often call 'fit for purpose', this book is so much more than just Mumbai. It is a story about a group of artists living in Mumbai in turbulent times. 'That year' is the year 2004 - based on the events in the book, but the characters relive their childhoods through their parents' youth, making it an account of  post-independence India. 

Ashesh and Anima are siblings, raised by a Gandhian father and a reluctantly secular mother. They are the central characters of this novel. Ashesh is an artist - a painter and Anima, a school teacher. Stumbling through personal tragedies, both of them have found a life of their own in Mumbai. They have found a family in their artist friends. All of them together, are witnesses to the socio-political transformation of Mumbai through the 90s. 

Shanta Gokhale has unfolded all the shades of the act of human grieving for the reader. When people lose their loved ones to death or failed relationships, the grief stays back with them and grows up for the rest of their lives. It is like they birth an entity at the end of the relationship which haunts them forever. How you remember the one you have lost changes with time. The intensity of the grief wanes and the mind sometimes re-organizes your memories. It is quite possible for two people related to the same dead person to have two diametrically opposing memories about them, often prompting you to wonder, if they are indeed talking about the same person. She captures this process of living in memory of someone. She has done it so brilliantly that it flies out of the novel and reads like something universal, which even I can experience as I read. 

Art is the carrier of this story. But this book is as much about the technical aspects and the philosophy of art, as it is about the humans who create it. I was taken aback, when I came to a point where Shanta Gokhale confidently spends an entire chapter on describing the proceedings of an art conference to the readers. Who takes these kinds of risks in a novel? But I read the entire chapter with as much interest as I had in the burgeoning romance of two characters in the novel. 

Through the storyline, this books tackles fundamental questions about human creativity, starting with something as basic as, what is art? It also gives the reader a peek into the politics within the art community. Visual art is no exception to other human activities. There's fame to be sought, there's money to be made. Gokhale obviously comes from a position of rich experience in the area, hence is able to show us all the faces of the Mumbai art circle. 

A recurring theme in the novel is  the struggle of the young to break free of their mentors. This happens in every generation, yet every generation feels utterly dismayed at the way the younger generation is going about their lives. This struggle, to break free and keep your peace as well, with your gurus, your parents, your audience is also a process of constant negotiation. The negotiation is with ourselves as much as it is with others. This books unravels that process for the reader without making it overly dramatic. 

Some parts of the book make you wonder if a poet is writing this prose. There's a description of Laburnum Road in Gamdevi leading up to Mani Bhavan. I have never been there, but the words literally took me there. Which brings me to the most important part of this novel. Above all the human entanglements and art, or the vivid portraits of Mumbai, it is perhaps more importantly than anything else, about the slow, steady yet viciously persistent process of dismantling Gandhi in an independent India. It began in 1948 and has continued doggedly, bringing us to the India of 2021. We see a nation today where Mahatma Gandhi has almost successfully been replaced by Ram. All the things he stood for vanish in front of our eyes as we become helpless observers. I wonder if the author was aware of just how ominous her metaphors were going to be!