Annie reached Montevideo, Uruguay from Lisbon.
Her flight had taken her through the feisty easterly winds
that blow across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Viento de Levante, from the other
side of the Atlantic and landed just underneath the North Atlantic, wind
sailing in a midsize airship, across the Mediterranean past the entire Atlantic
Ocean, all through the flight she just slept, while the weather outside went from
fiery wind and storm to rain and thunder, giving the Pilots some pretty good test
of their flying skills, the one thing She wasn’t ready when she stepped out of
her aircraft is the 9 degree chill, it was about 18 degrees in Lisbon, when she
left – the experience in Lisbon had left her lungs with very little air, all
she wanted was to close her eyes and inhale, devour in some energy.
With the help of sleep, more sleep and sleep.
The fact that it was a long 19hr flight did help. And the
American Airline crew did try their best to underplay and quieten things down
to the extent possible despite the usual Spanish penchant for revelry. So it
was like a well controlled silent movie trailer under yellow lights , people
talking in low tones, some clutter of cutlery here and there, with a low singular
Saxophone playing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s classic ‘as long as I can see
the light’.
She flew 1st class.
But despite all her want, for a mind blanked out, Annie’s
mind kept throwing up things, visuals, stories, sounds, trailers of conjured up
events, in one instance she had this grizzly dog like animal creeping up her
legs, softly, trying its best not to wake her up, but she did wake up with a
shudder before going back to sleep, then there were scenes of brutal screams
and howls, all muffled inside dreams but seeming real even as the jet plane
sped past clouds of grey and white.
Even as the Pilot looked at 2 Suns and 2 moons.
While sleeping Annie went through a mindlife akin to a vague
digital remix – a shout fight with Burke - Edmund – and his friends who were
outlining some theories on aesthetics, then she had a visit from Nietzsche and
Husserl and then Kant came knocking to debate on Free will and the science of
time , space and Impressionism. She thought She howled and moaned and screamed and
talked and walked and flung a fork in disgust but none really happened.
She just thought, and She knew.
But that’s how thought works. Worked .
All of it happened while she was high in the sky, about
35,000 feet high.
Now She was back to the ground earth and wanting to reach Buenos
Aires asap.
But now that her mind was awake, a new version of a poem of
an old poem by Kuvempu - a poet of Indian renaissance from Mysore, India, that
She was inspired by during her days in Ooty, when She used to visit Mysore
quiet often - kept going back and forth in her mind, this time with her own
innovations and intonations.
O Nanna Chetana Agu
nee aniketana.
“be Unhoused O My soul,
the infinite is your only goal”.
transcend
transcend
transcend
no boundaries
bind you
look beyond
jump
blind
you’ll stay alive
Walk outside the line
You’ll stay alive
As usual the verse came in stutters and monotones, singular
sounds, that had no meter, no rhythm, no symphony but that was how she liked it
– simple words dropped out , rhetoric synchrony was all that that mattered - each word dropped, like pearls and individual
stones by children at play.
Annie wasn’t into music as a technician or as an artist.
But , beware , She was a Connoisseur of sorts, alright? may
not be in the truest sense, but She could appreciate a complex and subtle ‘Passacaglia
and Fugue in C minor’ rendition for its poetic brilliance and sheer magic and
skill of the musicians and then walk out and enjoy Tiesta and Depeche Mode past
midnight , go into a headbangers ball loosening her hair and all that with a passion
and enthusiasm of her youth at 3AM and wind up again with a sobered song of the
dawn.
And then walk fresh, straight into a debate session, seminar
on Theodore Levitt, at Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge or Berlin or Istanbul, where
- invariably - She would have been the lead presenter and then walked out with
an encore as if it was like just sipping glass of water.
Performance, art, music, Philosophy, Literature.
Quatum Physics, Economics, Chemistry.
She could just keep jumping different squares.
With aplomb.
That was Annie.
But you try treating her like she’s an object or just a
chilled out young woman, you’ll be in for a shock – She was a thinker - and she
considered that part of hers as her core.
Clear and distinct.
Thinker,
not as some feminist or political science student or some such branch – for her
She was a master thinker, with a mastery on several subjects and with
authority.
So when Annie spoke Schopenhauer or She met someone who was
willing to talk on a topic on Phenomenology or then shift some small digression
on Organic Chemistry and then something on some new programming language meant
to simplify super computing – She would be in with clear knowledge, or else she
would take note and then update herself with a vengeance.
She was loose
She was firm
She was
A mind .
In Lisbon, it started as a wonderful British romance, they
were joking, laughing, arguing, debating – Schreidhorn and Annie – Schreidhorn had
mastered the art of Charisma and he had the physic, the aesthetic and even the
intellect , the knowledge - so much that he could dazzle even Annie.
But by the time they reached Lisbon, Annie found ‘Shrek’ - as
he liked to call himself – a highly self centered, forever, non stop, motor
mouth – who could talk about ideas upon ideas centered upon a theory that he
could singularly transform the world.
Provided the world heard him.
He did seem to have an audience made of his own cronies and
friends and a few wide eyed electrified people.
And he was typically a person who could easily talk for 8
hours non stop, in a closed room, all about something to do with himself or
some philosophy he loved. Needing nothing, no water, tea, coffee or air.
Disciplined, Sycophants acting as critical debaters was all
that was required.
The rest Shrek took care.
Annie soon found him hollow, power mongering, greedy, political
and as a person who spoke beyond the length of his nose but never really meant
to ever risk anything beyond even his little paper edge on a metro rail door.
He was obsessed, about himself, his Charisma and his huge ideas
to change the world.
But when it came to the real thing intellectual originality,
strength, depth etc.
He could test your levels of being bearable.
Annie and Shrek did manage to see the Tiesta + Depeche Mode
concert and then kiss and have sex but by the 4th Day it was clear,
Annie just couldn’t take the trash.
Annie Called Daniel. It was going into several rings and
calls and there was no answer .
Until finally Daniel came on line.
It was a spiritual scream.
Where the fuck are you ?
You bastard ?
You there ?
No comments:
Post a Comment