Poornima Manco

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Hasta la vista baby!

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Two years ago, I had made a loose commitment to myself regarding my blog. I had mentally aimed to write one post a week. Not a major task I’d surmised. After all, writing was easy enough for me, and there were enough topics that piqued my interest, and I could trot out piece after piece without breaking a sweat. Well, haha to that. What I had forgotten to factor in while making these grandiose internal plans, was life. Life doesn’t give a toss about your plans. It flows gentle as a stream or gushes by like a river in flood, and you get swept along, sometimes benignly, other times mercilessly.

Life has been a bit of a storm lately. From all Hell breaking loose at work, to various familial and social undertakings, I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning with nary a straw to clutch at. In all of this, I have not once forgotten to beat myself up over missing my blog deadlines. Ah guilt! What a perverse pleasure to indulge in.

Yesterday, for the first time, I had a minor epiphany regarding my writing. My blogging is a hobby. It’s meant to be a pleasurable past time. Since when did it become a millstone around my neck? Well, since I made it one!

So, henceforth, if I need a break, I’ll take one. I want to come back to it with a renewed sense of purpose and vigour. In the meantime, adios amigos. It’s time for me to recharge, to recuperate and to recover from what has been a frightfully frenetic time. To calmer shores I head. Hasta la vista!

The flip side of genius

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‘Savage Beauty’, an exhibition of Alexander McQueen’s work and journey is a fascinating insight into the mind of a tortured genius. From his start as an apprentice tailor on Savile Row to his rise as the enfant terrible of British fashion, it showcases the convoluted workings of a mind that constantly strained against the leash of conformity.

Born in the East End to a cabbie father and a teacher mother, he knew very early on that he wanted to be a designer. He was also aware of his sexual orientation, and not the least bit embarrassed by it. From Savile Row to Milan to Central Saint Martins college of Art and Design, his education and experience was varied, and contributed largely to giving him the reputation of creating the impeccably tailored look. Yet, it was this very background, this knowledge of construction that allowed him to deconstruct with such confidence and assurance.

With his football hooligan looks, his bizarre vision, his sexual proclivities that he played out in graphic detail in his collections, he set out to shock the establishment. And shock he did. Slasher dresses that paid homage to Jack the Ripper, the bird motif that recurred constantly – nightmarish regurgitation of Hitchcock’s classic ‘The Birds’, bumster trousers that displayed bum cleavage more appropriate to a building site than a runway, fetishist manacles and masks, models sprayed with faux blood or urine, there was no boundary left unexplored, no terrain not rampaged through.

All along though, there was the perfect tailoring. And wild, fantastical art. Juxtaposing elements that had never previously been seen together before- leather, feathers, crocodile heads, lace and tartan, horns and chains… the world fed his imagination, and that in turn fed his creativity.

Yet the demons that haunted him, also purportedly led him to abusive relationships, unprotected sex with unsuspecting young men, and a drug habit that aside of being de rigeur in the fashion circles, had him spiralling down a vortex of despair and self loathing. The more successful he became, the more he outlandish he tried to be. The more the establishment accepted him, the more he spurned their advances.

At age 40, he took his own life, barely weeks after his beloved mother’s death. A cocktail of drugs,pills and tranquillisers were found in his system. He had hung himself after slashing his wrists with a ceremonial dagger and meat cleaver. Just as flamboyant in death as he was in life.

The world lost a designer of significance. For whom, designing wasn’t limited to clothes. It was theatre. Sometimes bizarre, sometimes absurd. Always hugely entertaining.

‘Savage Beauty’ runs at the V&A till the 2nd of August 2015. Well worth a visit. Even if you do come away with a feeling of complete insignificance in the face of a humongous talent.

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Of Parables and Eyes

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What is a parable? It is a simple story containing a moral or a spiritual lesson.

Well, the last few days have culminated in a parable for me. With an unending spate of visitors, the stress of work, the background of friendships going awry, I have been stretched beyond limits. Trying to find a bit of calm in this storm has proven elusive at times, and downright impossible at others.

Parables are associated with the Bible, and rightly so. Yet the Hindu holy book, the Bhagvad Gita has its own set of lessons to impart. One that has stayed with me through the years is the one involving Dronacharya, the royal guru to the warring cousins the Kauravas and the Pandavas. In one particular archery lesson, he hung a wooden bird on a tree branch and asked his students to take aim. Before firing their arrows he asked each one to describe what he saw. One by one they described the forest, the trees, the landscape, the wooden bird. Then the mighty guru asked Arjuna, his favourite student, what he saw. Arjuna merely said, “Guruji, all I see is the eye of the bird”. He went on to become one of History’s greatest archers.

My daughter’s eye operation was scheduled to be at 7:30 am on Thursday. I was meant to arrive from work the night before. Worry had coiled itself into a knot in my stomach. I was apprehensive about the general anaesthesia, and concerned about the operation itself, which involved removing a bit of skin off the conjunctiva and a few stitches. Nothing major, the surgeon had reassured us. Yet, it was her eye! The misgivings would not be quelled.

As bad luck would have it, my flight cancelled, and I was stranded nearly 4000 miles away, with no recourse, except to get home 24 hours later than anticipated.

Helplessness and frustration joined worry and I was a ball of nervous tension by the time I landed. I had missed the operation. I had missed the chance to hold my daughter’s hand as she was put under. I had missed the chance of being there when she came around. I felt like a failure even though none of it was of my doing.

I sped home, desperate to see my little girl. Through it all, the fatigue, the annoyances, the snubs of some and the ingratitude of others danced around demonically in my half crazed mind.

I parked the car, said a quick hello to the neighbours and rushed inside.

She was curled up on her side, her mouth slack in sleep. An eye patch covered her left eye. Suddenly, all that background noise quietened to a hum. I was there. She was well. The operation had been a success. I cradled her in my arms, and kissed her gently. My parable unfolded itself. All that was of true value was right here, in my little home. My husband, my children, their welfare. This was my ‘eye’. My focus.

Nothing else mattered.

The importance of unplugging

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A recent holiday I took felt like a real holiday. We’d left all gadgets behind- smart phones, computers, and all other pain in the rear devices that keep you connected with the world at large, at all times. Aside of a tablet for our girls to watch their films on, we were completely disconnected from the daily happenings of our extended circle of family and friends. Guess what? Didn’t miss it one bit. This was one of the best holidays we’d had in a long,long time. We explored, we walked, we talked, we ‘connected’ with one another in a way that had become impossible with the invasion of these devices. We absorbed all that was around us, without the need to narrate a blow by blow account of it online. We actually took in the beauty and magnificence of Nature without being compelled to Instagram it alongside.

Why has our online living overtaken the real world living? Why do we feel it necessary to record all events for posterity without being ‘in’ the moment at all? Is it because we want to show the world how exciting our lives are, how much more we have travelled, how many more experiences we have had? To induce a bit of the green eyed monster? Yet, ironically, bypassing those very experiences while chronicling them?

As a family, our rule is that one meal of the day is together, at the table, gadget less. I hope that the conversations we have, the laughs we share are the memories that the girls take with them as they grow up, go to University, get jobs, move away, get married etc.

In the meantime, I am trying to enforce a gadget watershed hour too. Come 9pm, switch off, unplug, and enjoy a nice glass of wine, a bath, a book maybe? Our hours on this planet are limited. Let’s not spend them tied to a virtual master.

The Generation Gap

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Recently, a neighbour’s house got broken into at night. The burglars were not able to gain access to the main house through the conservatory, and so, she remained safe and oblivious in her bed. Upon finding signs of the break in the following morning, she immediately contacted the police. Through the grapevine, the news filtered down to us. As she is an eighty two year old woman, in indifferent health, living on her own, naturally we were concerned. I rang her. There was no response. My husband went around to see her. No response. He reckoned she was sleeping off the shock.

The next afternoon, there she was- on my doorstep, in her cashmere cardigan and pearls, hair beautifully coiffed, looking like she had not a care in the world.

“Susan”, I gasped, “Are you ok? I heard what happened! Have the police found out anymore? How are you feeling…?”

“My dear”, she answered with perfect equanimity, “I am fine. If I’d had a shotgun, the burglars wouldn’t have been though!!”

She had not been ‘sleeping off the shock’. She had been out till midnight, having a jolly old time with her friends.

I sat back, bemused at the turn of events. Was it that particular generation, I wondered, that were tougher, more resilient, and less likely to collapse at the first sign of trouble? After all, Susan had lived through World War 2, the death of three husbands and the Big C : Cancer.

My thoughts wandered to my grandmother. Orphaned at five, she was brought up by her uncle’s family who didn’t treat her particularly well. She was married young, and while my dad was still a babe in arms, she’d had to leave her hometown of Karachi, and make a treacherous crossing into India, during the horror that was the Partition. From a relatively wealthy background, she was reduced to living like a refugee in one of the many refugee colonies that had sprung up in Delhi at the time. She was then widowed at thirty, and with three boys to bring up and barely any education to speak of, she sewed clothes to make money, scrimped and saved to give her sons a decent living, and was a one woman Mother India of sorts.

She is eighty seven now. She can barely see, she can barely hear, but her hold on life is just as tenacious as ever.

Consider the Queen. Coming up to ninety, she still performs most of her state duties herself. Abdication in favour of her son is a thought she refuses to entertain, and her mantra remains one of duty and servitude to her people and her kingdom. No fluffy slippers and a cosy armchair to retire to for this great grandmother. She forges on, setting an example to her descendants.

Then there is our generation and the generations that have followed. Broadly speaking (for there are always exceptions), we are a soft bellied lot. We have seen neither war, nor deprivation. We haven’t lived through rationing or suffered the ignominy of poverty. Yet we moan and complain and whinge at the slightest provocation. Traffic snafus, a restaurant reservation going missing, the check out girl being rude, an acquaintance ignoring us on the street- our list of trifling woes drives us to that glass of wine every evening. Or to the psychiatrist’s couch to “unburden” ourselves and fatten his/her wallet. Or to the happy pills.

How, I wonder, would we react to a life changing event like war? To something as traumatic as the Holocaust? To something as wrenching and soul crushing as a Partition? Would we have the same reserves of strength, the same tenacity, the same endurance, the same fortitude? I hope we never have to find out.

Yet, it’s important to take a leaf out these ladies’ books. To learn to face life squarely, and with gumption. Let us not make the mistake of becoming too soft, too complacent, too chicken. History has a strange way of repeating itself, and we need to be prepared, for only the fittest will survive and only the strongest will endure.

Disclaimer: This post applies to those of us brought up or living in First World countries. It’s important to recognise that there are huge swathes of poverty stricken/ war ravaged lands where generations of men, women and children gird their loins daily, and set about the business of life with immense courage and fortitude.

Should I stay or should I go

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She trips over her son’s shoe as she enters the house. With a muttered oath she places it next to its twin. She unloads and loads the dishwasher quickly. Vacuums and dusts. Makes the beds. Tidies her daughter’s cuddly toys, placing them exactly in the order she’s been instructed in. Then she takes her packed valise, checks for her passport and ticket. Puts on her lipstick. Places her goodbye note next to their wedding picture. Her heart skips a beat as she thinks of what lies ahead. The phone rings just as she opens the front door. She pauses mid-step.