The gift of thinking visually

I am primarily a word person. Having said this, I notice images. I love to play with design software. Photography is a special pleasure. And many museum visits in the last decades have diminished the exam anxiety-tedium-tension that many of us Indians grow up feeling around art. I even have photo blogs (yes, although some are secret and some I simply don't share).

Nevertheless, when I come here to write, I do not think about illustrations. I think about topics--when I am struggling, that's usually where I start and meander. I think about arguments or points I want to make. I think about structure. I do not think, now which picture can I post along with this?

I just started using Pinterest with a view to understanding how it can be used. Apparently it's a good way to direct traffic to your blog. But it needs an image. This is what has got me thinking about thinking visually.

Forget illustrating blogs as if they were picture books, one of the niftiest new ways to communicate is the infographic. A friend writes notes as if creating an infographic... brilliantly! I would like to do this. I can do posters. I can write factsheets. I can create presentation modules. But I cannot think like an infographic creator. How I wish I could! And no, it's not the software, because design programmes will do that for you--it's thinking through an idea visually.

Or maybe I can do this. In the meanwhile, I should probably find an illustration for this post... on the other hand, this is not a post for which I will be drumming up traffic anywhere. 

The thing about lit fests...

...is that they also seem to become society events.

I love books and the city where I live is home to a literary festival. I should be excited and rushing to hang out all the time, right? Instead, I only go to the sessions that feature friends (and there are always several of those) and run back as if escaping from an evil dragon's lair.

I often wonder why. I see people I know so I could have company. There is food. There are toilets, presumably usable. So why am I unable to linger?

Actually, it's the people. In two ways. First, lit fests seem so much about being seen at the lit fest that they don't seem very bookish. They strike me as being about the clothes, the greetings and the air-kissing (okay, the last may be an exaggeration in this town). To be fair, there are also hundreds of quiet book-lovers who sit patiently in the galleries, waiting for one panel after another to speak. They must be the heart of the festival, I am sure.

Second, it's the people. The book-lovers I have known have by and large been introverts, and to be around so many milling, gushing social people when you could be alone with a book, just seems wrong. This is what happens to me. I get that 'alone in a crowd' feeling and I also want to run away really badly from the very same crowd and be truly alone.

Lit fests also sell themselves as places to hear ideas but the reality of scheduling is that the sessions are short and there are too many speakers. You rarely hear more depth than you would in a blurb because there just is no time. How frustrating that must be for writers, unless they have been forced out of their shells into these appearances. But then, can you imagine what a bore it would be without that discipline--with some speakers (I won't specify gender), holding a microphone makes time stand still. Depth or discipline? I think I'll take the latter, thank you, and make a quick escape into my own head.

I wonder whether the money spent on promoting all those books actually makes a difference to their sales. But that's not my problem. The festivals and launches certainly benefit the people who make banners and sell snacks and so on, so someone still does well.

And let's not forget the main reason I go--to see the old friends who fly down for one day to do their session before jet-setting off. This year, I am away and I will miss seeing the people I only see fleetingly before and after their festival appearances. I will miss the odd coffee, every other year, with a Twitter friend who has published a book. I will not miss deep conversations because those do not happen in the rush from session to snack to session to brief selfie schmooze to session.

Anyway, that's my two-paise worth which does not matter. 

Cross-currents

I have been looking at the sea and listening to conversations about democracy.

As my mind wanders, I notice that the waves, even in low tide, do not come in a single direction. They come from different places, moving in different trajectories. When they come together, they sometimes merge. Sometimes, they bump into each other--oops!--and then they flow away along their original path.

There is constant motion, in low tide and high, and an inner swell that suggests that something is always brewing. And yet, storms are still rare enough to be events. Day after day, hour after hour, the waves just keep coming, doing their work without fuss, without pause.

Everytime I look at the sea, it inspires me with its quiet, tireless endeavour. A little envious, I wish I could bring the same quality to my work.

And as I listen to people talk about democracy, I think about those waves that despite not moving in the same direction, still do not stop the ocean from going about its business.

Dilli Dur Ast

(An old rant parked in the Drafts folder, posted today.)

Dilli Dur Ast. True for all lesser Indians.

One reason it was easy to write about secessionist movements with an open mind was that I did not grow up in the capital city. I grew up in Bombay, watching Delhi kids get every fun opportunity; Delhi roads improve on each holiday, and Delhi get all the hype--acutely aware that we paid more tax. Even when I was in school, I knew that.

Growing up in Maharashtra, with stories about Shivaji's rebellion against the Mughals, resentment towards the imperial centre was part of one's inheritance. The story of Shivaji's alienation and isolation in the Aurangzeb darbar captured the non-Delhi Indian's continuing daily alienation in so many ways. Early encounters with Delhi bureaucracy (mainly in libraries) reinforced that. I love that story; it rings so true.

Today, living in Tamil Nadu, everyday a stubborn-if-irrelevant holdout for the idea of India in the face of an almost isolationist, Tamil-only nationalism, I watch how this continues in every sector. After starting the NGO, I realised that all the funders are Delhi-based, and so one had to go to Delhi to meet them. Even so, Delhi organisations seem to have first dibs on funding. But that's one thing, and since we do not have FCRA, it quickly became irrelevant to us.

Now, I watch with varying degrees of irritation and resentment--varying with how hot Chennai is mostly--the Delhi-centrism of my colleagues in the social sector. When statements for 'Indian women' and the 'Indian women's movement' emerge, and have been drafted entirely by a small cluster of Delhi women; when they acknowledge each other's work, while loads of others remain invisible and unheard; when they nominate each other to this and that... it seems the rest of us do not exist. Sour grapes? Envy? Resentment? Check all of the above. But remember the kernel of truth somewhere within: Delhi is so far away that we only start to count when we move there or stand with them. On listservs, social networks or other platforms, we can only speak for the exotic and distant, never for India.

I want to say, I am not really from Tamil Nadu because I did not grow up here. I inherited Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and India, so don't put me in a box. No matter how clearly I speak, I feel like I have to shout to be heard. No matter how prescient my writing, it has to be written by someone from Delhi to matter. (And I am not even raising gender here, that cross-cutting, all-crushing reality!)

On a panel on nationalism many years ago, my colleague presented a paper titled with a quotation, "I have seen India, and it is us." The paper was about UP politics, but really it is in Delhi and around Delhi-ites that I have remembered it most.

Yes, Delhi is today far more cosmopolitan than when I was growing up, and the truth is that some of my best friends are Delhi-ites, even though they might prefer to think of themselves as Delhi-based. But the Delhi charter continues to say to others, "Oh, you're there?" in a tone of surprise. Is there really life beyond the Yamuna and the Aravalli? Non-Hindi speaking life?

It is now possible to commute to Delhi, going in the morning and coming back by the end of the work-day. But is it possible to communicate with Delhi--with official and non-official Delhi? I am not sure.

Delhi is still too far away from all of us. And this is a rant from someone who has Delhi connections and can speak Hindi. How must this feel for others? What are the ramifications when this alienation comes from a federal system in a centralising political culture--for language and culture, for finances, for political autonomy? We all know the answer.