Managerie

Rajeev lives with his wife and his daughter in a house swallowed-up by forest. A small path off the red road indicates " way to Rajeev's". If you miss this little off the road pathway, you never reach the man and his menagerie. You enter. Four dogs bark. But the sound comes off the ground level. So you look up. Up on the terrace, silhouetted against the rainy sky are four canine heads. You are safe! ENTER. A small shed suggests that you park your bike therein. Do it. Get in. Walk a few steps, in the direction of twittering of love birds. There are several love birds. Mostly green. And there is a pair of African love-birds. In the same cage there are two white rabbits, ruby-eyed and withceaseless activity of their noses. Towards your right you think you heard a pigeon call. So you look. Yes indeed! Pigeons- about fifteen in a roomy cage. They all are common pigeons with a dirty brown and white feathers. In the same cage there are rabbits. Black this time, and other colours. Rajeev is by your side by then. He lets you enjoy the animals and birds. Just as you become aware of his presence you hear a strange call. You almost know it is a wild fowl, though not exactly which kind. The call sounds like a "croullt..." It is very close to where you are standing. You swirl, alarmed, responding habitually, warned by the preconditioned caution about wild life. It is a turkey! A smart looking white old fellow with his mate in tow, strutting about with a peculiar and showy gait. And from time to time he sort of jerks forward with an almost inaudible hiss. And when you look at him he looks back. Not straight, frank look, but the uncertain look of a conman. But it is an effective look. It says,"don't mess with me." So you try not to be too impressed, but then Rajeev tells you that it is just a bluff. "He is very friendly actually" he says, going towards the turkey stroking him lovingly. The female is totally ignored. And she is thankful. There are ducks. Many ducks and some geese. Is that all? No way. Rajeev has fish tanks. There are many fishes, but you have seen more impressive aquariums elsewhere. The thing that made me linger there was that one of the pairs(I don't know what kind of fish it was, but it was flat silvery white, about three inches long)has spawned. Tiny brownish tadpole like babies shoal about their parents. Parents look vary of the other, bigger fish. Rajeev's wife notices. She tells him with her mother's instinct, to separate the bigger ones from the small fish. Rajeev goes about doing precisely that. Daughter goes in quietly brings the net Rajeev takes the big fish out and puts them in a green bucket. Then he shows a collection of snakes. Snakes are beautiful creatures. I wonder why we fear them. They are dry, and cold and smooth. They are beautiful. Rajeev has a kookri(?), and two wolf snakes just now. He catches them, keeps them with him for a few months and then releases them back into the wilderness. I remember, he had caught a cobra once. I had gone with him to release it in the canyons. I have recollections of Rajeev's body language as he was opening the mouth of the sac in which the serpent was. It said a lot about the venom, the deadly cobra bite, the danger! But today there was nothing to worry about. Wolf snakes don't bite. In fact they don't even tickle. About an hour plus has elapsed. Nature makes you lose track of time. Lunch is ready. It is delicious. The visit to my friend, the man with the menagerie has paid off. You feel you belong to the universe.

takin't in

Today. I had to meet a poet client first thing this am. I had my breakfast, then met him in his wonderfully empty home. His home looks like...remember the farm house (sic)or (barn yard or something like that!) by Walt Witman. There is one line among the four of so lines in that short poem..yes,the one that ends with "haze and vista". well! Say haze and Vista to yourself about ten times, eyes shut. A picture will emerge. The essense of that pic is my poet friend's wonderfully empty house! Empty, except that he has started collecting paintings. And then he has these two heavy marble-like-topped rattan tables- one round and other rectangular. And he has a couple of durable, very useful chairs. Sit in them and you relax! Apart from these and his computer(with a special, spacious, comfortable looking chair)there is a mat spread on the floor. That's it. Then there is a door that leads to his antechamber. Is that how you say it? The inner room/s, I meant. His girlfriend lives entangled in some long cloth - off-white I imagine,- somewhere within the inner room. The Sanctum. The Sanctorum. Anyways,we met. The meeting was about a sketch I am asked to do for his forthcoming booklet( bookling) of poems. This was our third meeting already. He has given me a photograph of his hut where he used to live before coming to this wonderfully empty house. A capsule, it is called. It is a simple structure with a keet roof, common in south India. The hut or the capsule is seen surrounded by wilderness. Green green all over and craning through the forest are a few palms. He wanted me to do a line drawing. I'd done several sketches(twice already)as per his brief. 'Simple' sketches are not so simple afterall. I showed him my new sketches. He sat there pondering. I knew the deep "feeling thing" my sketches were undergoing.I know the man well. So I decided to look at his walls. He has acquired a new painting by someone I don't remember. The painting is a small canvas. Acrylics. Red tiny squares submerged beneathe a matt white, obviously applied with a roller or a squeezee. He likes the painting. He likes it so much that he paid quite a bit for it. As I said I don't remember the painter. I prefer,rather, not to remember. But this gave me an indication of where we are at with Art today. Everybody paints now a days. Reminds me: About four years back an old acquaintance-a student really, of mine introduced me to a young overpainted, underdressed, carefully careless girl. I said hullo expecting to shake hands. My student introducing me to her as "*** is a painter". This carefully careless lass ignored my extended hand and said, "Yeah, everybody is a painter now a days!" I felt my bristles rising, but she was sexy. So I agreed with her saying" you are right. Wasn't so in my days" etc. Not that I am that old, but this little upstart obviously had seen the world. Took me four more years to see the part of the world she had already seen. Or else, my understanding of the word painter has not changed with the fast changing times. 'Painter', to me, signifies or signified something grand, almost sacred and magical, like the name Piero della Francesca. Not this common run of the mill trash. A painter has to be deep. A painter has to be necessarily a philosopher. To my mind his mind is engrossed in the depth of things profound. And he works meticulously at his art, fashioning images with significant rhythms. And then I see that. The painting. On my poet friend's wall. It disturbs. It disturbs the wonerful emptiness of the ambiance. I look away. I don't tell him anything. I don't want to say anything about it.We discuss his book jacket some more and then I leave. But then I had to get it out of my system. Puke it out into a blog. Hence this! Agreed, it is not greatly thought provoking. But blogs, I imagine, may not all be for profound, it is enough that it comes from the depths- De profundis.