the journey through invisible cities

the book, when it starts… It started like a fountain of plastic pot pouri jetting out on my face… with a speed that you are unable to appreciate the beauty of each object separately…

(or my exact words which I wrote when I was just down with first chapter, at home in this puja break
... Just down with one chapter in the first tos reading which was given long back by our young female teacher making a colourful and mysterious wrapper printed with words of great appreciation for the author in which she gifted all of us this book which I accepted as more like a fun reading assignment than any usual submission. But when I opened it to read and receive what it contained, its contents just kept falling non-stop on my head… they were all sort of objects, of all sizes and all colours but never seen before, and created more than one images at a time with a speed that all those images kept jumbling up with each other and then after they all would fall down, I’d have to arrange them once again relating them with their respective places... from where they fell and what each were about… )

But then.. as the conversation between kublai and polo grew and polo described more and more cities one after another i started getting the flow and progression keeping in mind that in which category each one is falling, city of desires, of memories, eyes, dead, hidden etc.,... though till a good extent I was still assuring myself every moment that what am reading through is not ‘nonsense’.

Its painted all over by imageries, allegories and metaphors, though in some cities its easily comprehensible… you know where the metaphor lies, and in some cities its not so easy to see through, and maybe I couldn’t even find in many but there is still a hint and a feel that you know it is there in it and also what it is. Every element and oddity of the cities can be taken with fascination and one may get driven to find some hidden implication, or try to relate it with something happening in known and real lives.

[
“No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused
with the words that describe it. And yet between the one and the other there is a
connection.”

‘Olivia’…there's a metaphor, a sort of message.. ‘falsehood is never with the words, its with the things’. Then in Leandra, the two gods Lares and Penates and their endless debate. And in procupia… exaggeration … to show population explosion
]

The book has surely pushed my realms of imagination, have gifted me many images of places utopian and where I would like to be and experience (like armilla.. forest and water pipes), and I already did as far as I could by travelling through it… It has changed rules and questioned some, what i may call as 'design principles' and made me relate some of it with my own desires and memories… for eg. When I read through the city of Esmeralda, where one has got numerous options of zigzag routes leading to the same destination… i had to stop in the middle to write something it reminded me from my school days… that is of all the different options, and they too zigzagged, which me and my brother would have, daily on our way back home from school… (continued in the part within the dotted line which may be skipped)
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from the point on the main road where our school bus would drop us. In fact I had three options in the dropping point itself. The first would branch to two out of which the first branch would meet the second dropping point route, and the other would then further branch to two, one of which meets the first again… well it goes on with lefts and rights till you reach a dead end and land right in front of my house… and we would sometimes take different paths and see who reaches first... and each would take equal time (if neither cheats :),)... or we would dribble a stone passing each other all the way from the bus stop till our home taking different routes different days, and in the end when we reach home mutual passing will turn into ‘who-puts -the-stone-in-the-goal’ sort of thing, where the goal will be our elevator well.
Or in diwali night I remember we friends standing on the terrace would take pride on the location of our building for the fact that even if we burst loud-banned crackers police would not be able track our house fast for they’d have to first make their way out through a maze.
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‘and so inhabitants of Esmeralda are spared by the boredom of following the same route everyday’

(after I read of phyllis). If I try to figure out how marco polo imagined of his cities and made a picture in his mind step by step which remained intact as long as he wished it to be.. then here I present a way to understand how he processed each image… there’s a blank sheet or screen… on which first those elements flash and appear at their respective meaningful or may be not meaningful spaces, and with each one of them there is a certain memory attached which was born or has remained more than others because of certain desires, or which has remained as a conscious memory for perhaps a story or just an instance had got attached with them, right at the moment he had seen or just desired to see… for if I say ‘he has seen’ then it becomes real, is it?… no, these are invisible cities?... sorry I couldn’t!

(stage - backstage)
And he says that he has been describing Venice all this while… all those desires and images coming in his mind which he is aware of, he has made them come by his will… ‘the story he has presented on the stage and directed it’…which shows that he knows that the only city which he has understood very well and which is implicit in his mind is his own where he was born and where he has lived his life… a city of which he was a part and not a passer-by, so at the backstage the city which is established there got expounded to its finest details of its scape and stories is only venice.

“
'Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,' Polo said.
'Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps,
speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.'__

”
true !

the book has reached extremities of exaggeration and imagination… has gone beyond infinity. Calling them impossibility will be an understatement.

like

• “it has earth instead of air.”…

• “The sky is filled with stars. There is the blueprint.’”

 
(just after I finished reading till a ‘trade’ part)
If I had been at Kublai khan’s place than may be at one point I had given up angrily and saying that this crazy guy is just bullshitting… but the fact that Kublai, the great khan isn’t saying it rather it sometimes seems that he joins with him in his (fourth-word-in-the-last-line), will always make the reader believe that this is something of high philosophy very deep whose essence can’t be captured just be reading through once… and you do feel that you are getting nearer to it yet never being able to grasp it. And even if you do grasp then its not tight enough, you'll keep losing it.

This book should come along with a label ‘read it with caution, its injurious to your mind.’
For its mind boggling… I mean it really boggles your mind.. and you feel that it (your brain) may burst out screaming and shouting and begging you to give it some rest for its too much of freaking imagination…
Read it slowly with immense concentration almost as if you are meditating… and you’ll get ‘high’ slowly... it can trigger the wildness in you… make you behave crazily… and you may start hallucinating without ..(ahem)

The essence of the book can be understood from the following words of kublai khan to marco polo

'At times I feel your voice is reaching me from far away, while I am
prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have
reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they
may assume. And I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities
live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again.'

(thanks to ma'am and looking forward to read more of italo calvino)

iqbal maidan in night

it was past 10 in night when i was sitting at the boundary wall of the iqbal maidan watching the local boys play football. i also wanted to play for i felt like i can continue doing the same thing

                                                   even while travelling

                                                  what i had kind of started in hostel in the last few days...

                                                  and i went to ask one of them

                                                  in the middle of the game,

                                                  (while the ball was quite away from him)

                                                  'kya main aap logon ke saath khel sakta hoon'...

                                                  but he was too engrossed in the match,

                                                  and there was an instant sign of negation at his face, and he said   

                                                  'nahi... unse puchho',

                                                  i smiled and traced back to my same place, i didn't want to ask anyone again. it felt good watching the whole place awakened and liven up after the its long afternoon siesta. i also liked that i didn't miss to see old men playing chess sitting at the plinth on the other side of the stage. there were about six chess boards lined up ,

            from the corner of the gate

            which leads down to the lake,

            and each surrounded by a small audience

            other than the two who played.

            and i thought that instead of chess

            if they had been playing cards

            it wouldn't have given that ‘nawabi  andaaz’ which still links to the history of the place. (this just now reminds of a movie called ‘shatranj ke khiladi’, directed by satyajit ray starring faarukh sheikh, shabana azmi, saeed jaffery, sanjeev kumar which is all about two nawabs indulged in a game of chess,day and night, whatever the conditions be. even when they were forced out of their homes, they continued their game in mosquito-ridden outdoors) 

but another contrast or irony that i now see in what i saw is this

when in bright hot day all men, like me

were seeking shade to rest

and by the khirni tree and another on the boundary

their tired souls get blessed

                                                                                                       

then at night, boys play football in whatever light

that came from one lamp, alone in the dark lane

and a little more from another on the main road side.

and old men gathered in their own small place

defined by light from another lamp at the corner

and sat like nawabs on the plinth, to play chess.  

Both the games with an enthusiasm no less

than what you'd find in a club or complex.

invisible cities

tos, book review, '1984'

tos, book review

name of the book: '1984'

author: gege orwell

written in the year 1949 by george orwell, this book '1984' picks you up by your collar and drops you down into a world where you live no better than a toy soldier whose key is in the hand of one man known by the name of 'big brother'.

Big Brother is the leader of the ruling party, the dictator, who governs the people incepting in their mind his dark ideology which is very well put in the three slogans of the party,

'war is peace

freedom is slavery

ignorance is strength

with this he runs a country which is like a 'negetive utopia' , where you don't even have freedom of thoughts, where hatred is celebrated.

Though london is the name of the city where the author has established his imaginary world the city scape gives a grimy picture contrary to what we know london as. The streets on which you walk, stepped into the shoes of the protagonist, 'Winston Smith', are very dusty, lined by old broken houses, rather sick and dead buildings falling into pieces, one of which is yours, ironically named 'Victory Mansions'.

You enter your house, feel more sick by the smell of boiled cabbage and old rag mats in the hallway, and come face to face with the large face of 'Big brother' with eyes looking deep into you from the poster appropriately captioned 'big brother is watching you' and tacked on every other wall. You enter your own flat, oh sorry, there is no place which can be called 'your own' for on one wall a part is covered by what is called a 'telescreen' whose 'buckwaas' goes on for 24x7 for its not devised to be turned off completely. more over you could be seen as well as heard if he is in its field of vision which is practically the entire room.

 "you had to live-- did live, from habit tht became instinct-- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized"

you look out of the window facing your back to the telescreen but still you wont be able to avoid the gaze of big brother. if not from the posters than it could be felt from the large pyramidal buildings, rather fortresses of the four ministries of the party -- named antonymous to their function, Truth, Peace, Love, Plenty-- which soared about 300m up in the air standing out in the horizon, overpowering the rotting nineteenth century surrounding architecture.

 "... windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions. and the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken houses."

The architecture reflects that the quality of the life of people is not just neglected but has been brought to a full stop and that their life is controlled in every aspect by the party which is synonymous to the 'big brother'.

you work for the very party you hate and are adressed as 'comrade' as are all commoners who live in houses like 'victory mansions' in dingy flats under filthy conditions, with usual smell of boiled cabbage. a place where one would hate to live, but so it is, for the people live to love 'hatred'

"he felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in the monstrous world where he himself was the monster"

"... the world outside looked cold... though the sun was shining and the sky was blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere"

 BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.