My memories of Secret Santa

Studying in a girls’ convent run by the Apostolic Carmel nuns in the eighties in Goa made Christmas an as important festival as a Diwali or Ganesh Chaturthi. And a large part of Christmas celebrations in the school consisted of playing the Secret Santa. Of course, in those days we did not call it that..we called it Christ mother (  it was a girls school, remember?) and the Christ child- the giver and the receiver respectively. The excitement began about 3-4 weeks before the Christmas. Each class conducted its own event moderated by their class teacher. The names were written on chits and each one had to pick up one. It was of course a secret, so you could tell no one..or you could tell your best friend and tell them to tell no one 😉 Then there were chances you would get your own name, so you quietly put back the chit folded and picked up another one. Sometimes you would get your best friend’s name and that was so thrilling, now you couldn’t share your secret with your best friend too. Sometimes you got that girl whom no one liked and you try to tell the teacher that you wanted to change it- but no, the spirit of Christmas doesn’t allow for that. You have to be nice whosoever name you get- that’s the life lesson for you- your teacher lectures you. Now came the important part – what do you give your Christ child? Well, the Sisters remind you that in the true spirit of Christmas – its not the gifts that matter. The one month that you have that person’s name- you be nice to her. You keep her in your prayers every day. Wish the best for her and her family in your heart secretly. You pray for her without telling her. Such a beautiful thought, na? Also we were reminded that since we were students, we had to make sure our gifts weren’t extravagant. Even if some of  our parents could afford, our teachers reminded us that all parents can’t afford so we don’t want to make anyone feel small- that’s not the point of this exercise. We were reminded to have the backs of our Christ child throughout the month – be a little extra nice to them, watch out for them. Share your lunch with them, forgive them if they hurt you. And the fun is – because we didn’t want the Christ child to guess who we were, we ended up being nice to everyone. Now if that’s not the true spirit of Christmas, I don’t know what else is. Finally on the last day, when school would break for Christmas, it was time to reveal the Christ mother. We made a small gift like an embroidered kerchief or a neat bookmark or picked up some gift that was important to us and along with a homemade sweet, gave it to our Christ child, revealing our true identity as their guardian angel for the last four weeks. In turn, we also found out who our Christ mother was and received our gifts. Just once in a way, it turned out that the person who was my Christ child was also my Christ mother causing much joy at the mutuality. And then we collectively had a pot luck lunch in class with all  the delicacies that our mothers had packed in our boxes for the special event. Even more than three decades later, every Christmas, I still vividly remember how we were taught to celebrate Christmas in its true spirit. And every time, I become a Secret Santa I remember to pray for my chosen Santee.

Best wishes for the festive season !

 

The Elephant Whisperer 

A true story of a herd of wild animals by naturalist Lawrence Anthony.

Conservationist Lawrence Anthony and his partner, the beautiful and sensitive Francois live on the South African game ranch Thula Thula along with the ranch manager David. Anthony is offered a herd of rogue elephants to rehabilitate. If he refuses, the herd would be put to sleep as they have turned out to be unpredictable and dangerous, already having caused enough destruction.

Anthony’s sensitivity to nature and animals is amazing. Here is a man born for the wild. His ability to communicate instinctively with animals makes him the right person to rehabilitate this rogue herd. The book is beautiful from the word go. The journey of the elephants as well as that of Anthony and Francoise along with them is filled with love, poignancy, humour and inadvertent sense of wonder towards nature.

It did remind me a bit of Durrell’s writings – this man is way ahead of Durrell in many aspects though. He has found a kindred soul in the animals – he seems to communicate with animals at a deeper level. Anthony displays an unusual ability to understand the silent communication of the creatures of the wild.  

 #repost of old post

Devdas

 This doomed love story by Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay written in 1917 as been adapted to the celluloid more than once but the one I watched last night was the old classic by Bimal Roy (1955)  – music by Sachin Dev Burman and lyrics by Sahir Ludhianwi- cast – Dilip Kumar in the title role, Suchitra Sen as Parvati (Paro) and the ever graceful Waheeda Rehman as Chandramukhi. It generally doesn’t get better than that. Each of them is a master of the craft and despite the story being a melodramatic tragedy – subtlety is the key word of each and every scene. The entire 210 minutes of screen time- the cameraman has used minimalism to create maximum effect, making sure the pain and sadness dominate the screen and nothing else distracts it. The crisp editing makes sure that at no point does  the movie drag. The melancholy music adds to the torment faced by the silent protagonist as he copes with the fact that he has lost the love of his life partly due to his parents’ and society’s disapproval of  their relationship and partly due to his own folly. A couple of songs are based on the Baul tradition of Bengal. The depiction of the village life in Bengal in the early part of the 20^th century is shown aptly so is the costumes of the actors. Do make time for this classic if you haven’t seen it yet.

-May 2020

 

The Moon and the Sixpence 

– by Somerset Maugham

An old copy of this book which I picked up at a second hand book store – I don’t even remember when- was sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. I picked it up the other day as I wanted a break from the heavy and dry contents of Mein Kampf. And such a good thing I did. This is the story written in first person voice by the author about an artist who pursues his art with an almost  violent passion; an artist who honours his calling only at the age of forty after  living a normal middle class stock brokers life. Charles Strickland lives with his wife and two kids a regular life of an English stockbroker when all of a sudden he decides to give up everything and moves to Paris to become an artist. The author, who has met Mrs.Strickland during the parties she hosts for writers and poets; finds himself in the midst of the Stricklands family scenario by virtue of his friendship with Mrs.Strickland. The rest of the novel traces the life of Charles Strickland and his dogged pursuit of his art.

Maugham explores the madness of Strickland through the narrator’s voice and observation. The story begins with the present time frame and personal interactions between the artist and the author  in the first part but goes on to a retelling in the past in the second part where the author pieces it together from narratives of various people who have met the artist along the way. The story draws inspiration from the life of the artist, Paul Gaugin. While it does have some threads of similarity to Gaugin’s life such as Gaugin too was a stockbroker or he too moved away from his family in order to pursue art, the story in no way is that of the life of Gaugin. I did have to look up the relevance of the title “Moon and the sixpence” and according to Wikipedia “ the title, the meaning of which is not explicitly revealed in the book, was taken from a review in The Times Literary Supplement of Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage, in which the novel's protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as being "so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet."[3] According to a 1956 letter from Maugham, "If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon." The book pushes the reader to look deeper into what makes the madness of a creative genius justified  and to what end does an artist go to redeem himself and his art. The satirical end leaves one amazed at the nature of the societal memory and ability to twist things to context. A compulsive read!