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Banter with the past
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Saleem Peeradina's account of his growing-up years in the Bombay of Fifties is tender, poetic, and naughty
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FLASHBACK Saleem Peeradina: `It's a reflective, self-conscious looking back of an adult' PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
Saleem Peeradina grew up in a Muslim household in suburban Bombay in the Fifties. And I in a Hindu family in a small town in Karnataka in the Seventies. Two contrary worlds, you might say. But the most fascinating part of Peeradina's memoirs were those vignettes of growing up in a middle-class family that left me with a "Yes, that's exactly how it was!" feeling — the old clock that's always kept 10 minutes fast to make sure children get to school on time, that sought-after cosy hollow in the sofa right next to the radio, those agonising negotiations with parents for one's own space during the awkward teen years or the first pangs of inarticulated love.
Not that poet-artist Peeradina is trying to paint a monochromatic, pan-Indian picture. A lot in The Ocean In My Yard (Penguin, Rs. 250) is quite the "other world". The pervasive fragrance of attar or the elaborate rituals of praying, feasting and socialising during Id, etched in delicate detail, seem exotic precisely because of the unfamiliarity. In fact, this play between the personal-familiar and the mysterious-unfamiliar begins with the very title of the book.
But even when it treads unfamiliar territory, The Ocean... does not lose its poetic intimacy. It was in keeping with this spirit of the book that Peeradina wanted his audience to make a semi-circle close to him for the reading of the book at Crossword. "These are like bedtime stories. I actually wish there was a fireplace!"
Footloose
Starting with the family lore that surrounded the birth of a boy with two awkwardly shaped, restless feet, Peeradina went on to read excerpts on the many undulated terrains the feet roamed. Colourful gullies inhabited by idiosyncratic uncles, adoring grandparents, bicycle mates, teachers with amusing escapes to their credit, exotic film stars, women who kindle burning passion and yet remain out of bounds... In a neat rounding off of the metaphor, the book ends with the feet waiting to take off from the native shore to the expansive unknown.
Rooted firmly in the past, The Ocean... does not let the Mumbai of today — the "Maximum City" overrun by Bollywood biggies, underworld dons, share bazaar rivalries, packed suburban trains and overcrowded chawls — peep anywhere into the narrative. Peeradina says he didn't want to "indulge in gimmicks" such as using the present as a counterpoint to the past he so lovingly and carefully reconstructs. The Mumbai of today is, in fact, "a nightmare" he would rather not visit. "I was shocked when communal riots flared up in Bombay in 1992. It wasn't the truly cosmopolitan city I knew at all."
But that doesn't mean The Ocean... is a sentimental nostalgia trip of a man growing old, now living away from his hometown (Peeradina teaches in the U.S.). This book, he says, is "a reflective, self-conscious looking back of an adult." And he insists on looking at his brutally, straight in the eye. "It's sometimes so painful that it's difficult to go on." This is particularly evident as he talks of his troubled relationship with his father.
This unmissable honesty, coupled by the lure of tender nostalgia, takes the reader on a pleasant cruise to the past. There are no tempestuous adventures along the route, but one is unlikely to miss them. A great fan of old Hindi melodies, Peeradina sang his favourite from Awara at the book launch: "Dum bhar tho udhar muh phere, oh chanda... Main unse pyar kar loongi, batein hazar kar loongi." As you read The Ocean... you want the tumultuous present to look the other way, for a while, and allow us the pleasure of a brief banter with a lyrical past.
BAGESHREE S.
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