The Venus Flytrap: Die Laughing

The funniest story I have heard in weeks is a tragedy. It’s presented as a true story (but repeated so often and to such effect that it has surely taken on some less than fact-faithful colouring). The storyteller, a magical man named Rane who summons strange things out of drums, knew someone who had an infection on his leg, which somehow landed him in a coma. The leg turned gangrenous, and in his unconscious state the family was told that they could either amputate or wait for him to die. The festering limb was promptly chopped off. The amputee, out of that danger but still unconscious, spent a few more weeks languishing in his scary siesta. And one day, he woke up, all damn cool, cool as the cucumber he had lain like for those weeks, threw his bedsheets off, looked down at his missing leg, and died of shock.

I wish I could tell you this story as deliciously as it was told to me. Suffice to say that of the many, many funny stories the magical drummer shares, this one was by far the most uproarious. It’s not surprising – macabre humour might quite possibly be the best kind. Deep down, we love laughing at our own wretchedness and mortality. And we love pretending to be shocked by our capacity to.

Nothing illustrates this better than the dead baby joke. When I first discovered them on the net, I was horrified. What kind of gruesome mind could make light of such calamity? The images were repugnant – “How do you make a dead baby float? Take your foot off of its head”; “Why is there always hot water at childbirth? In case of a stillbirth, soup.”; “What’s the difference between a baby and a dart-board?
Dart-boards don’t bleed”.

I didn’t realise until I’d read a long list of them that I had kind of been chuckling away, transfixed by the sheer horror of it all and unable to stop reading.

Schadenfreude may be one reason why we’re able to delight in off-colour jokes. Just as watching a violent movie can be a cathartic release, we’re able to explore the sinister aspects of our psyches through macabre humour. That part of us that is capable of evil – and we are all capable of evil – gets a vicarious spin. Once the initial shock wears off, a certain sordid pleasure sets in. It’s the same one you get upon finding that everyone at the table is bitching about the same person you’ve been silently seething about, and you can just stay coy, no longer having to play the gossipmonger. I would never squeeze babies into a bottle just to see how many it would take to make “baby oil”, but in reading the joke, my mind saw it, felt it, and released the need to ever consider the question out of its own volition.

There’s a bit more gallows humour to the story of the man who rose from a coma and died of a heart attack, because of who the story came from. Rane himself had once sustained a head injury, gotten arrested, and was sent for a medical check-up upon his release. Grave results were expected, and his father spent the whole week fearing the very worst. They were, as it happened, truly shocking – Rane was given the all-clear, and his father was so relieved that he died of a heart attack.

We looked around the table at that point and tried to show some sympathy.

The truth is, we all nearly died laughing.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express. “The Venus Flytrap” is my column in the Zeitgeist supplement. Previous columns can be found here.

Sangam House Reading in Chennai

The second of our two public readings for the inaugural season of the Sangam House writers’ residency will take place today in Chennai at Pasha, The Park Hotel at 7.30pm. Special guest Tom Alter joins Salma, Joshua Furst, N. S. Koenings, Mridula Koshy and Sharanya Manivannan. Writer bios are here.

Shuttered

I was thrilled to find out that a photograph I took has made it to Shutter Sisters, as today’s featured Daily Click!

Witchcraft Is A Pick Of The Year!

The Straits Times, Singapore, asked several people what their favourite book from 2008 was. Ng Yi-Sheng, whom I hugely admire as a poet and performer, picked Witchcraft. Here’s what he said…

(The italics are mine — that’s a line that will sit under my tongue all day as I savour it slowly, grateful  for once that I had not thought of it myself, for then it could not be said about my book)

Ng Yi-Sheng, 28, writer and winner of this year’s Singapore Literature Prize for his debut poetry collection, Last Boy

“I hardly ever read books as soon as they come out, but my favourite among the few I did read was Sharanya Manivannan’s poetry collection, Witchcraft.
Manivannan is a poet and performer, born and living in India but raised in Malaysia, where she was involved in a lot of activism against the government’s destruction of Hindu temples.
Witchcraft is her first poetry collection. She and I bonded at the last Singapore Writers Festival, so she left me a copy at indie bookstore BooksActually where it’s also currently available ($25 without GST).
The book is sensuous and spiritual, delicate and dangerous and as full as the moon reflected in a knife. Manivannan manages to be deeply grounded in her Tamil heritage while also subtly digesting global iconography from the Chinese, Balinese and Mexicans.
Her voice sounds modern and ancient at the same time, supremely confident as it speaks of desire, the body and language.”

Pondicherry Reading + Books In KL

One reading I’m doing tomorrow and one reading where my book will be sold.

Sangam House reading in Pondicherry

6pm at Hotel De L’Orient (17, Rue Romain Rolland). Sangam House presents five Indian and international writers — Kishore Singh, Joshua Furst, D. W. Gibson, Sharanya Manivannan and special guest Auroville-based writer Anuradha Majumdar. Entrance is free.

Buy Witchcraft in Kuala Lumpur

Amir Muhammad will be seling limited copies of Witchcraft at RM50 at the Ceritaku reading, 9.30pm onwards at No Black Tie (17, Jalan Mesui). The books are not signed. Cover charge: RM20.

Chip On The Shoulder Much, Lonely Planet: South India?

“Chennai has neither the cosmopolitan, prosperous air of Mumbai (Bombay), the optimistic buzz of Bengaluru (Bangalore) or the historical drama of Delhi. It’s muggy, polluted, hot as hell and difficult to get around. Traditional tourist attractions are few. Even the movie stars are, as one Chennaiker put it, “not that hot”.

The opening paragraph of the section on Chennai — or Chennai (Madras), I should say. I mean, Chennaiker? Hello? I’m no Chennai apologist, but do your damn research at the very least before you dive into the dissing, Amy Karafin.

The Venus Flytrap: Dentally Retarded

I want to be a dental dunce. I really, really do. The first of my wisdom teeth has declared a very conspicuous appearance, and it’s making me believe that the person who christened these mofo molars as such was probably the same one who came up with that adage, “ignorance is bliss”. I’d rather be a dental dunce than be equipped with intelligent enamel.

Given that like all offspring of doctors, I am predisposed to mild hypochondria (again, strictly genetic – my father looked at a recurring heat boil I had on my knee at 10 and pronounced that I had cancer), a disbelieving friend raised an emoticon eyebrow. “Just wondering if it’s real wisdom or a bad ulcer,” he typed.

Which is ridiculous. Everybody knows that real wisdom can only come from deep reflection, autodidactic curiosity, and a generous infusion of ayahuasca (substitutable by chocolate where required by law).

Wisdom teeth, however, are less discerning. They come inconveniently – like when someone suddenly calls and wants to put your mumbled statements down on record for the press. And when your friends want to treat you to a fancy celebratory lunch (of course, one can always drink the pain away, ahem). They also swell up your cheek – on your good side, too! – so that you’re forced to do that fabulous photo shoot like some demented supermodel gone kawaii-style, all sucked in cheeks and carefully-positioned sign language.

I’ve been flexing my jaws more often than, well, a venus flytrap. It hurts to keep my mouth closed. But it also hurts to eat, to swallow, and to talk, in roughly equal measure as it hurts to do none of those things. I have one hand perpetually on my cheek, open-mouthed, like some perpetually gasping, pouting heroine. Or a goldfish with a hand. Growing wisdom teeth just bites – and not in any good ways.

I suppose by this point you would have realized that my ironically idiotic ivories are coming out only on one side of my face. This is probably a saving grace of some sort. For instance, you only need half your face to be on a postage stamp, throw an attractive silhouette, and be drawn in hieroglyph. All useful distractions when one does not have the mercy of anesthesia or anything but evolutionary glitches to blame.

Wisdom teeth are supposed, both in folklore and etymologically across the world, to signify the development of sound judgment. I would have to say they’ve certainly helped me make some sensible decisions. I’m too sore to think of clever arch remarks, so now I just say, “My wisdom teeth are coming, so goodbye”. And no more wasting time trying to settle on where or what to eat. I just go home and sniffle into some lukewarm soup while the mutton curry sits in the fridge, as tempting as Eve’s apple. If it’s bigger than a piece of fusilli, I can’t put it in my mouth. Something tells me that the tooth fairy is really an anorexia enabler.

And it’s not like I even actually need them. After all, I’ve been masticating, speaking and avoiding dentists to great success for nearly 23 years. If I must grow new teeth anywhere, I’d rather have vagina dentata anyway (for reasons not to be held against me if you look like Gael Garcia Bernal or Salma Hayek).

So really, I would rather be foolishly fanged and dentally retarded than have the sullen, starved sagacity of wisdom teeth. Life should be devoured in healthy slices, not in timid little slurps. And I am very, very hungry for it.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express. “The Venus Flytrap” is my column in the Zeitgeist supplement. Previous columns can be found here.

Cute Puppy, How To Draw A Puppy, Cute Puppy Pictures!

Hi! It’s difficult not to notice when three dozen searches for those terms wind up on my blog in one week.

So here you go, people.

Cute puppy/Cute puppy pictures — In abundance (I recommend the second link).

How to draw a puppy —Tada!

Hope that helps! :)

And a little sweetie in case you insist that my blog’s the place to get your puppy fix.

On Cancellations And The Importance of the RSVP

At 10pm last night I was beginning to worry about whether or not I would be able to make it to the reading scheduled for this morning. I was feeling unwell, on top of which it looked like there would be only a couple of readers, and with a handful more attending. I opened up a search engine to look for pieces that fit the theme, to be distributed to random members of the audience to read in the event that there wasn’t enough original work. Immediately, I felt frustrated — spoken word organizer? Try schoolteacher. We’ve had a dozen readings so far and if I’m still going to have to beg/bully people into reading, I would rather do it in a workshop setting than at an open mic. I messaged my co-organiser to ask if they could carry on with the reading if I couldn’t make it.

By 2am, I knew for sure I could not make it. When I messaged Chandrachoodan again, he replied that he was still stuck with office work at that time. The reading had to be off.

So we got in touch with people who had rsvp-ed and let them know.

It seems that a few people messaged Chandrachoodan in the morning to ask about the reading, messages he didn’t see till late afternoon.

All this brings up something very important. These are very small events. There is no reader/audience divide because nearly everyone who comes winds up reading. They are not events to go to if one is simply interested in being entertained — we have not come to a large enough rate of attendance for that to happen. These events happen only if there is interest and support in them. Interest and support means a variety of things: it begins with rsvp-ing. This is to let the organisers know that there are sufficient numbers to hold the event. It is also so that in case of cancellation (this is the first time this has happened) or change of plans, there’s a list of people who should be notified.

This is a fledgling scene and it will fail without support. Every open mic is a struggle (at least, for me. You can ask around about the forehead vein I sported all through Madras Week). Yet, they are fun and rewarding — they are worth having.

Let’s say that all the people who wanted to come had rsvped. It would mean there would have been that many people to disappoint. Grief arrests you in moments you don’t expect it to; if I had known so many people cared about the open mic, I would have pulled myself together and not given in to it. But you can’t disappoint people if you aren’t aware that they have expectations.

I apologise for the fact that the reading did not go on as scheduled. I would like to promise that there will be many more. That, however, will depend on you.

Open Mic! On Wheels!

When: Sunday December 7th, 8.30am

Where: Meeting point at Mylapore train station.

Who: You and your poems/short prose on the theme below.

What: It’s difficult to organise open mics in a city that doesn’t have venues very kind toward poetry, a point I have beaten to death often in this blog. Which is why we’ve done the outdoors thing most of the time in the past. This is a late announcement, because Chandrachoodan and I were looking at certain other venues, but with the current security issues, those were not viable choices.

You may have heard that the Chennai airport is on high alert, along with Bangalore’s and Delhi’s, for a terrorist attack. We are, of course, deeply concerned about this turn of events. We are not inspired by it, but in solidarity with all efforts taken by individuals, organizations and the government to keep ordinary citizens safe, we think it would be to good to have a reading on the theme of… .Public Transportation.  Interpret as you will. :)

Seeing as Chandroo doesn’t have a private jet  yet (not that I would want to fly in it anyway) we’ll be open mic-ing on a moving train.

Those who went to the first Photowalk will recall that on Sundays at this time, the train in this part of town is completely deserted. Or at least, very quiet. So don’t be shy.

We’ll meet at the station, start the reading there, and then board. Will it work? Hopefully. Who can make it work? You.

Please RSVP to sharanya dot manivannan at gmail dot com or to chandrachoodan at gmail dot com.