Rajasthani Romanticism

Jaipur is insatiably beautiful. From beneath the squalor and decay, can still be felt the pink sands of time and matter that form the legacy of this ancient city that juggles with some grace, the modern and the antiquated.

The cities beauty stands out for me because it is an unadorned one: its certainly not an obvious beauty, in fact its a rather oblivious one.
But at some level, it is also a taken-for-granted regal, yet unnoticed one.
Beauty is in the bones of Rajasthan.

I have the pleasure of being here at a time when the city is host to both a Literary Festival as well as a Heritage Festival. These are run in parallel, creating a rather combustable creative energy. And sparks fly! Like when Prof Nandini Sundar of Delhi University says, "Fuck the State! We will be heard!" or when Hanif Qureshi says, "when all those rather confused pieces come together to make sense of identit(ies), then we call that literature" and even more so when Asma Jehangir says that she's disappointed with India's arrogance while admitting that Pakistan is 'the menace'. Or Girish Karnad's comment earlier today when he said that VS Naipual must have been stone deaf. Why? Because he wrote about India, but he failed to write anything at all about music, and it's indelible influence and meaning in the Indian context.

Sparks fly, indeed, when you find yourself at the core of a melting pot of grand ideas, challenging minds and fanciful collaborations.

I've also managed to see two plays at the Birla Auditorium, thanks to the Heritage Festival and the Jaipur Virasat Foundation. One, 'Salesman Ramlal' is the Hindi adaptation of Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman', and features a cast including Satish Kaushik as Ramlal and his wife played by Seema Biswas... and the other was directed by Naseeruddin Shah. Comprehensive reviews to follow. I'm not quite quenched with this cup of Jaipur dynamism, drink on, drink on!

With much love from my moonlit hotel room,
at almost 2a.m. Indian time,

S

the lure of the desert

Sometime early December, I made my way to Dubai for a wedding. The reason was festive, a wedding in the extended family, and the meeting of many known faces for the same reason. We loved the energy there, and it was a great way to end the year.

Two weeks later, the father of the bride drowned in a jet ski accident in Lake Malawi.

Life and death are cyclical. Of course, we know this. But the proximity of these events in dimensions of time, space and relativity make for a surreal mosaic: What a way to begin the year!

Time is a treadmill at high speed.
Another trip to Dubai this evening, feels like the spiral draws and engulfs, the wheel turns and the hamster runs it.

Not a wedding, this time, but festive all the same, considering the oasis in the desert born of stories beyond the 1001 Arabian Nights.

There's certainly something to be said about the lure of the Arabian sands and the passage of time.

Inertia, Utopia, CHaOs

I cannot recall a year that went by so quickly, it felt like it had barely begun. Not for lack of having accomplished anything, though. In fact, precisely because of the years adrenalin-filled happenings, do I feel that sense of inertia still making me reel to and fro, and for the most part, vivid images meld into a belligerent blur.

This is a reflection. Not quite the customary year-end ramble.
Which is probably why I cannot find the words to express the stop-start feeling.
And, as luck and fate and the powers that be might have it,
its not over yet.

Do I sound like I'm complaining?

Hardly that.
I'm reading yet another visa script as I type; ready to set off to a desert rendezvous for a week of partying and festivity to round up the year that was.
While Dubai World crashes around us left to the folly of the markets and wanton players, some with tails between their legs, our lot might do the economy a small boost in our lavish outpourings for the next week. Shamelessly said, I know.
Such is the bane and the boon of the clad and shackled.

Ah, its been a year of abundance.
Words flow.
Joy bursts at the seams.
The trickles of sadness, loss and illness linger; keeping a necessary humility in place.
And the mirage of a brighter future looms at eye level.
2010 will be a year of togetherness.
A year of partnering on an equal ground; the dust on the battlefields will settle.
And it will be yet another year to reflect on, to learn from, and to celebrate for its lavish layers of utopia and chaos, in similar measures that maintain our humanity; that sustain all but a crass sanity.

Its not quite goodbye, yet.
But its almost there...

Love and Light,
Shafs

http://shafinaaz.com

Copyright Shafinaaz Hassim (C) 2009

ramadaan kareem

Its that time of year again. Pre-Ramadaan. Johannesburg is abuzz with activity, shoppers are filling up on sweets and savouries and the hype of all things spiritual. Relatives are holding dinners and lunches and teenyboppers are making their way to the bowling alleys and movies for last minute stocking up on entertainment they might not get to partake in over the next month or so. I wont get into the discussion regards that whole abstenance thing. Theres lines in the sand in every game of make belief that life is made up of.. and we all draw them and even draw upon them when it best suites us. But, undoubtedly, theres an essence about the mental and menial preparation for this upcoming few weeks that I look forward to. Theres something to be said about the spirit of unity, the glint of a yearning for redemption perhaps, and the fortitude that awaits in a notion of having our demons chained someplace in the oceans darkest depths. Aah, the promise of free spiritedness. The promise of freedom to do and be soul content and fulfilled as such. The promise within the choice to abstain from the desires of ego. The licence to fly light. The reason we need to be seated with the joy of our souls. Maybe, just maybe.. Thats all it takes.

Heres wishing you and yours beauty in the search for spirit..

Ramadaan Kareem..

With love..