The EspritNoir Mind Space!

So Long Farewell...

2006-08-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Everything that has a beginning, must come to an end. A line as cliched as the day is long. (Damn, another one. I'm on a roll here:) But still so true.

So, without further delay, I would like to announce that after quite a bit of thought, mine as well as those of you who expressed your opinion on the matter, i have decided to shift my digital domain. You can now find me at

espritnoir.wordpress.com

Before i leave this spot, that has been my "cyber space" for almost 2 years now, a confession. Earlier, whenever i read about people moving their blogs, or changing server space, or such things, i'd always wonder, "Why are they making such a big fuss about it?" I mean, its not like they're changing their real homes, and moving on elsewhere. Its just a bunch of keystrokes seperated by a couple of dots, and forward slashes. What's so different? Now, that i'm moving, i understand what it feels like. espritnoir.blogspot.com was like a starter home to me. I didn'y know anything about blogging before that, and it was a safe and simple house, in a nice friendly neighbourhood. The initial isolation soon gave way to the voices of friends, some known and others unknown, who grew comfortable enough to drop in regularly. Become a part of my life. Like in real life, slowly i realized that it was no longer a house, but a home. And leaving your home, real or cyber, is always a sombre experience. I dont know what i am going to do with this site as yet. I will keep it for now, and may decide to restart it again some other time. Time, as another cliche goes, will tell.

Poemer, Silverine, Ajeya, Smruthy, Nams, CG, RamblingMuse, Noojes...Thank you for dropping in so often. It feels great to have a voice, and be heard. (Thank you Poemer, for making me realise that). All you guys, "Me casa es su casa":) Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with me thru your posts and your comments on my blog, and for respecting my thoughts. Hadn't it not been for you guys, i may not have even bothered to continue writing. Hope you find my new place, as intersting as you found this one.

And to all those of you who drop in occasionally, thanks to you too. Do keep visiting.

And without further ado, i ask you to update your address books.

For now, EspritNoir has left the building...!

espritnoir.wordpress.com

Bandstand in the Rains...Again!

2006-07-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

This happened about a few weeks ago. In fact, this was about two days after I was walking home in Bandra, that night a few weeks ago. For some reason, I never got around to posting it up before this. I may have gotten over the melancholy state of mind, I was in back then, but, this was nonetheless, a state of mind that I was in at one point of time. And, I thought I out to put it up…

I had my annual “Most Memorable Moment at Bandstand in the Rains For the Year” moment early yesterday morning. Nothing as fancy as I made it up to be, this is just one or two memories that I eventually end up with each year, at what’s probably my one refuge when this world gets too hard to handle. Sometimes, it’s a crazy moment, some times romantic, at times painful, or even just being at peace with myself, having a quiet walk in the rains. One time its almost been scary to the point of almost being suicidal. (Totally unintentional, I assure you, but very thoughtless and stupid in hindsight. I’ll tell you about that sometime else) But either knowingly or unknowingly, there’s always a moment, a memory that I closely associate with being at Bandstand in the rains, at least one each year, if not more.

To start off where it actually started, I was out for a friends sangeet party the night before, and late after the function was over, I was driving on home, and as you must have guessed it by now, its night, I’m driving, and its been too long since I’ve been there, so I just end up at Bandstand, around 11:00 in the night. The 3 days of incessant rains that have been lashing out against Bombay, had probably scared most people into staying home, coz even though it wasn’t raining right then, the promenade along the sea face at ’Stand, (as a good friend of mine refers to it), was practically empty. Just one or two stray couple here and there, probably residents from the buildings nearby, and me.

As I walked along the sea-face, something was gnawing at the back of my mind. Here, I was at Bandstand on a starless night, with the rains gently drizzling on my face and hands, and for once in my life, at what has become a home away from home, a private refuge at times, I wasn’t at ease. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I remembered something that someone close to me had told me while back, what now seems like ages ago. Without going into the specifics, I’ll just tell you what she said. She had told me that she was glad that the next time I would go to Bandstand, I’d have a happy thought in my mind and a smile on my face. And although this wasn’t the next time, the thoughts racing through my brain right then, and the grim look I caught on my face a little earlier, when I accidentally glanced in the side view mirror of my car, made me stand up and take notice. I was at Bandstand and forget being happy, I wasn’t even the usual me.

Well, since it wasn’t quite the same, I decided to get out of there, far sooner than I would have wished. A troubled sleep later, the next morning, I woke up listening to the rains lash out against the french windows of my room that led to the balcony. It was raining in torrents. And before I had completely opened my eyes, and kissed goodbye to the woman in my dreams;), I had made up my mind to be at Bandstand that morning. Twenty minutes later, I was at Bandstand, a lone figure, nobody around for miles, looking out into the raging sea.

I have no idea, what prompted me to do it. Maybe the need to get rid of all my frustration, maybe the desire to feel alive, or maybe just plain insanity. But in that torrential rains, I stepped off the paved promenade, and hesitantly started walking on to the jagged rocks towards the waves that were crashing in just a few feet away. Not a very smart move to do in normal circumstances, especially when you are wearing floaters, that are about as helpful as flip flops in getting a grip on the wet and slippery rocks, but absolutely insane when its raining like the end of the world, and the wind is threatening to take you places, very much like a plastic straw in a tornado. A slip here and there would have meant a brief stint of compulsory bed rest at home, with quite a few bruises in the most tenderest of places. Maybe even a fracture or two. But to those of you who’ve been there and done that, I’m sure you’ll understand that at times and places, reason ceases to exist. So there I was, standing on the rocks in the pouring rains, the waves crashing into the rocks at my feet, getting drenched by the minute. And the whole moment was so huge, one of those brief moments which seem larger than life itself, that believe it or not, I started to sing! My body was having a tough time holding still and keeping my feet on the ground, and my heart wanted to sing! Truth be told, its an amazing feeling, singing at the top of your lungs, completely off key, with nobody to judge you. Unless you consider the waves, and the rocks as an audience, that is. There I was drenched to the bone, singing out rain songs at the top of my voice.

“Rain … Feel it on my finger tips feel it on my window pane… your love is coming down like… RAIN!!!” Madonna…

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, it’s not warm when she’s away…this house just ain’t no home anytime she goes away…” Al Green…

“She’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus and America too…” Tom Petty…

“A love struck Romeo sings a street style serenade…”Dire Straits

“Raindrops keep falling on my head…” B J Thomas

“Hope you’ve had the time of your life…” Green Day

“Born to be wild…” Steppenwolf

I could have stood there singing all day. (Bad singing is addictive, I must say. Try it sometime. But only when you’re alone:) Just stand there, nobody around, feel slightly like a complete lunatic. And not care as to who was thinking what. (It helped a lot that there was nobody around to care a damn about). And as my brain scanned an imaginary playlist in my mind, as to what song to sing next, I realized how lonely I felt all over again, but yet somehow, how completely alive.

I must have felt like that after ages. And then, I realized something that day. Something I had learnt the hard way over several years ago, and now again. In joy, you run the risk of merely existing, living in a state of constant euphoria. But, in grief, you are truly alive. In pain, in sorrow, you feel the systematic throbbing of every painful heartbeat. You listen to every dejected sigh you release. You feel the passing of each moment of your life. You actually feel the pain swelling up inside your heart, transform itself into an uncontrollable urge to cry out in anguish and make its way to your throat, only to die a silent death, when you are forced to suppress it, lest the world mocks you in your hour of anguish.

That realization in place, I realized that the crazed off-key singing was merely a way to release the pain I was feeling within. A cry turned to a song. And as with crying, the more I sang, the better I felt. It was a completely unexpected release of emotions. And I stood there, my voice completely drowned in the roaring of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

I must have stayed there like that for over an hour. Finally, the realization that I had a wedding to attend in a couple of hours, made me turn my back to the most appreciative audience I had ever had. I turned away, carefully walked towards the promenade, desperately hoping that I didn’t trip and break my head or something. As I stepped back on solid ground, something made me turn around. It must be a crazy thing to comprehend, but I bowed down to the waves and the rocks. A gesture of thank you to nature for accepting me, and for giving me a memory that I will live with forever. And a smile once again.

Just one more reason what makes Bandstand so special to me.

Blogger v/s WordPress

2006-07-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

Well, some of you must have noticed that the formatting of all my posts has suddenly gone haywire...blame wordpress for that. was trying to transfer my posts to wordpress when blogger was down in india, and something glitched and the formatting went kaput!

so, ppl, here's a quick decision you need to make...check out my other site, at espritnoir.wordpress.com ; it has exactly all the posts that are on this site, but in a different template...which one do you like better? send in your votes, and that will decide whether i switch over to wordpress, or stick with blogspot...personally, i like the gui of blogger, but the overall look and feel of wordpress...i think i'd vote for wordpress...but i wont count my vote (unless its a tiebreaker:) so, you have a week's time...come sunday next, i will take a count, and take a call...

ab faisla janta ke haath main hai (translated : the decision is now in your hands)

Last Things Last...

2006-07-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

Recently I did something for the last time. Well, maybe for the last time, I don’t know as yet. Apparently, only time will tell. That’s something that’s been on the back of my mind for a while now. And may remain for a while, I can’t say. But, getting to what I wanted to talk about, the worst part is that when I did it, I didn’t know it was the last time I would be doing it. Or I would have wanted to stay in that moment for eternity, never letting it go. This morning, on the bus ride to work, in between typing SMSs to a friend, it got me thinking. How many times would we do things differently had we but known that the next time we do something, may be the last time we ever get to do it.

Our lives revolve around firsts. We spend so much time thinking about the first time we do things – the first steps of a baby, the first time you ride a bicycle, your first crush, your first kiss, your first true romance, your first job. It’s first everything. But nobody every bother to think about the last time we do things. The last time you said “I love you” to somebody special. The last time you held somebody close in your arms, just wanting to be stuck in that moment forever. The last time you took in the whiff of somebody’s just washed hair, and thought that was the most memorable scent in the world. The last time you told your parents you loved them. The last time you touched the feet of your grandparents, because you wanted to and not because you thought that would make them happy, and that would let you get away without calling them for ages again. The last time you thanked your friends for being there, every time you needed them, and even the times you thought you didn’t, and asked them not so nicely to get lost, but they still came around when you broke down. The last time you laughed like there was no tomorrow, and the last time you cried your broken heart out?

The problem with lasts, is that its almost always in retrospect. You’d be extremely lucky in life if you knew that something was going to happen the last time ever. But if you did know, how would you react if you knew what you are about to do, you may never get to do again. Would that knowledge affect your actions? Would you let go of that person in your arms as easily, or would you hold them back forever, never wanting to let go? Would you still maintain a dignified formal distance from your parents or would you tell them you love them for everything they’ve ever done for you. Would you tell your grandparents how much they mean to you? Will you still hold a grudge against your friends, for that misunderstanding so many years ago, or will you be man enough to call that somebody up and say hey, its over now, lets put all that hit behind us?

Go on, try changing your perspective from “Firsts” to “Lasts”. I did it for a moment this morning, and my perspectives changed on a lot of things. About things that mattered and how much they mattered. It may change the way you lead your life, help you shape a better tomorrow. In the words of the immortal Tyler Durden from Fight Club, “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessle's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever had.” (You have to see the movie to understand this)

I don’t know whether what I did I will ever get to do again. Like I said, it may have been for the last time, but I don’t know. All I can do is hope for the best, and expect the worst. Only time will tell which of these comes true. I know one thing for certain. For all it was worth, it was worth all the while…

Written : July 8, 2006. 8:13am
Posted : You can check the timestamp!

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

2006-07-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

Midnight. 5 large Bacardis down. A lone figure, in the rain, walking down home on the streets of Bandra. Sober as a rock. If ever there was a movie setting in real life, this was it. I can almost hear the background score in the movie scene. Bill Withers. Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone. Or maybe U2. With or Without You. Tanhayee. From Dil Chahta Hai. In such a setting, how is a man not to think about his future? Of all the choices that lie ahead. Of the choices he must make. Not only necessary. But inevitable. Choices that he cannot share with others, for fear of being outed, or being compromised in any way. Choices that must stay deep within, coz uncovered they could unleash hell.

One can measure the depth of the ocean. Measure the distances between the satellites. Over 90 years later, they can tell us how fast the Titanic sink that cold, ill-fated night. But, how does one evaluate the veracity of the real things that matter? How many moments of joy were forever extinguished that night in 1912. The truth in a sentence spoken either in haste, or maybe even with much thought, without realizing as to what may be the possible consequences? How can we ever test the veracity of true emotion? What one feels? What one desires and to what extent? What causes happiness and what causes pain? How does one alienate oneself from all these? Can one alienate oneself from all of this? Is it possible to be human and continue to live within the confines of the same old prison walls called life. Or does one give up all hope and exist as a rock? How does one compare the euphoria of having lived ten days, with the banality of having existed the rest of your life?

Unfortunately, life is not a buffet table. One cannot pick and choose what one wants, and what one likes. It’s a fixed price menu, you get a few things. Predetermined. Its either this or that. Mashed potatoes or fries, on the side? Shake or a cola, with that? Not both. Never both. But the heart is unreasonable. Deep down, it wants it all. But, how can one tell what the heart truly wants?

If one can't tell what the heart truly wants, one just lives with one’s shallow choices and moves on...

Have You Found Your Calling Yet ?

2006-06-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

Lunch hour today found me standing all alone in lunch queue at the canteen. My regular lunch buddies were occupied elsewhere, and it was after a really a long time, that I faced the prospect of having lunch alone. Not that I had a problem eating lunch by myself, in fact, I was hoping that I wouldn’t bump into some colleagues who’d ask me to join them. As those of who know me, or have read my blog long enough will know, I rather prefer to be myself, than be social at times I’d rather not. Anyways, I had some things running in the back of my head for the past few weeks, and I needed some time to sort them out. Lunch was as good a time as any other. So, I stood in the short line to pick up my daily dose of “Diet Lunch”.

As I was just loading up my tray with veggies and soup, I noticed the CMD’s Personal Assistant, an extremely efficient and eternally busy lady (and mostly justifiably so), right in line after me. Talking with her is always a pleasure, and we exchanged a few pleasantries and I moved along looking for a quiet corner in the canteen. Picked up my table, and I sat on my chair, thinking back to the days when I had just joined the company. At one point of time, as a newbie, still wet behind the ears, I was mortally petrified of the woman. And looking back, as strange and funny as it sounds, I realized that what had scared me the most was nothing more than the pace of her voice, a super fast rapid express that seemed to rattle off things that needed to be done, and had to be followed up. Back then, I was so scared that on one of the few occasions that we did interact, I wouldn’t be able to keep pace with what she was saying, and would have to ask her to repeat her point, and that would most definitely get me kicked out off the company, for glaring inefficiency. I dare say, back then, I wasn’t so ever in awe of the company’s CMD, an excellent and amazingly humble human being, as much as I was in awe of her.

However, as I got to know the CMD better, and my respect for him grew, I realized that being PA to one of the most sharpest and finest human beings I have ever met, or will ever meet, is not an easy job at all. It took me months, to realize that the pace of her voice was probably just a reflection of how many things were in her mind, at any given point of time. And to get them all done, they had to be done fast, and hence they had to be spoken fast. And the few times that I did ask her to repeat something I had missed out on, she would just smile, and say it over again. So my job was safe:) And the few times that I’v interacted with her over the years, whenever she needed some document printed in a particular way or was stuck with some website, and asked me for help, I found her ready with a smile, and a helpful comment or tip, and a prompt thank you. And so, over a period of time, she has became one of the few people in office I genuinely like interacting with.

So, even though I had a bit of thinking to do, I was quite glad when she came over and sat down at my table for lunch. The last time I had bumped into her was incidentally, when we had met at lunch in the canteen over a month or so ago. Back then we had been discussing, among other things, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, the movie, and some interesting blogs that she had been reading. Taking a cue from our last conversation, I was telling her about some movies I had seen recently, and she told me about some new interesting blog she had been hooked on to. Casual conversation, when one thing led to another, and suddenly the conversation took a turn, and she asked me “Do you know what you really want to do with your life? What you want in life?”

Truth be told, at this moment in life, I’m not really sure of what I want in life : professionally, personally and even emotionally. But, whenever somebody asks me that question, I have several escapist answers all ready as a comeback. “Money! The rest all follows!” or “Sushmita Sen as a permanent girlfriend”. The quips are endless, to avoid telling the embarassing truth. But for once, I found myself telling her the truth. “I really don’t know, as yet. I know its probably a shameful thing to say that at the age of 27, but I'm still uncertain of what I want, and that’s just the way it is”.

She looked at me, gave me a conspiratorial look, ducked her head slightly toward me, and said, “I must be quite a few years elder to you, but to tell you the truth, I still havn’t able to decide what I want out of life.” And she smiled.

“Well, that just makes the two of us, then. But you know what, I think the fact that we both don’t know what we want, makes us better than the sorry folks who even know they could be looking for something. At least, the knowledge that we don’t know what we want keeps us searching. Better off knowing that you need to find something important to keep you going in life and not being able to find it, rather than going through life not even knowing you could have had something important.”

“That’s a really good way to look at it. I think I’ll keep that in mind”.

And I knew then that I was in good company. If one of the most formidable women I know - to use a clichéd, but apt, term to describe her, “A Woman of Substance” – could admit that, I wasn’t at all off the mark. Reminded me of a line from the Baz Luhrman song "Everybody is Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" -

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.

Well, here’s hoping that everybody who’s unsure of what they want, but is at least looking for it, find their true calling in life. And, to those unfortunate souls, who have gone ahead and achieved all the success and glory they desire, but are still not sure why they’re not satisfied, all I can say is “Stop being an ostrich! Get your face out of the ground!”

Adios, amigos…

All You Who Sleep Tonight

2006-06-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

- Vikram Seth

I came across these words recently, as the result of a wonderful chain of reactions set in motion a long time ago. The realization that somebody could be so thoughtful, and in an age so frightfully self-consumed, so concerned, to share “mental” and “emotional” space and time with somebody they care about, leaves me awed.

Ah, to love and be loved unconditionally. In all its forms : as lovers, family, as close friends. Undoubtedly, the greatest high one can achieve…

Tagged…

2006-05-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’ve been tagged. Well, not exactly, but I picked this one up from Silverine’s blog. The idea is to list down 10 simple things, that give you great pleasure. So, here goes my list, or as Julie Andrews put it so well… “These are a few of my favourite things…”

1)Time spent beside the ocean. Maybe by myself, or with someone who understands the volumes spoken though comfortable silences…(Preferably the latter)

2)Calvin and Hobbes. I could just spend hours and hours reading the strips. And all over again. I think that’s possibly one of the cleanest, funniest, and yet most thought provoking comic strip / part of literature (I don’t think it’s any less than Literature) ever.

3)Listening to some great music while I’m out for a long drive at night, just trying to sort things out in my mind, or just for the fun of it. As an extension, just going out for a long drive, on a good clear road. I love it when the weather’s just right, so that I can roll down the windows, and hear the whooshing sound of the wind as it rushes past my ear.

4)Rains and everything associated with it. Getting wet in the first rains after a long and hot summer in Bombay. Petrichor – the fragrant scent of the wet earth, after the rains. Coffee and bhajiyas in the rains. The crazy romantic ideas that enter my mind in the monsoons. Watching the turbulent waves smash against the Worli seaface promenade in the rains, and rise high up in the air, and come splashing down on the adjoining pavement. I love almost everything.

5)The warm touch of paper after it has just come out of an laser printer. I just love holding a sheaf of printed papers just out of a laser printer, especially on a cold day.

6)Reading something really well written and heartfelt. Whether it’s a short fairy tale for adults (“The Little Prince”) or a Byron poem (“When We Two Parted”) or a mournful song for the dead beloved (Song IX by W H Auden. “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone…” The one used in the film “Four Weddings and A Funeral”) And even more so, when you can really feel the emotion the author was going through when it was written, as you transpose your own similar experiences on to the words on paper.

7)Lying back on my back on the highest point of my building terrace, the water tank, at night, from where all I can see is the sky above me. Nothing else comes in the periphery of my vision. The calming effect of seeing nothing but the stars in the vast inky blue and black expanse above, is almost therapeutic.

8)The smell of freshly baked pav (an Indian bread, something similar to the western bun), just out of the oven. Buttered pav and fresh eggs, sunny side up, is the perfect combination for Sunday breakfast.

9)Checking my email, and finding an unexpected mail in there, from somebody who has been out of touch for so long. Or finding 3 (or even 1) new comments on my latest blogpost. Either ways, it feels good to know that somewhere, somebody tried to reach out to you.

10)Being able to sleep in on a working day, when I don’t have to go to work till lunch.

That’s it for me. I’m sure I’ve missed out on a lot of things, but I only had 10 to write about. This tag is open to everybody who wants to have a go at it. Do try it. It’s not as simple as it sounds, but you do get a chance to think about all the things that you really like a lot.

Hope you enjoy thinking about your favourite things…

Road Trip Part 2

2006-05-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

(Apologies for posting this so late...Hope you enjoy this...!)

Afternoon siesta over, all of us men who had stayed behind for the night, decided to get some shopping done ahead of our impending trip to Patan, the town where the engagement was the next day. No ladies or kids in tow, six men – three of us cousins, our two uncles, and one extended family member - decided to explore Baroda in whatever little time we had. So we drove around the market place, looking for sweets to carry for the engagement, and kolhapuri chappals and mojaris (traditional types of Indian footwear) to go with our Indian ethnic wear for the ceremony the next day. One of our uncles, a local, took us to this small dim lit lane, where 3 or 4 footwear vendors had their displays lined up on the pavement. After haggling for what seemed like hours, between the six of us we got nine pairs of mojaris and kolhapuris. I think the guy shut his shop early that night. Shopping in Gujarat without haggling is like killing the joy out of shopping. Gujaratis, like the Chinese, just love a good bargain. I think they love bargaining, more than the sale or purchase itself. I have come to a conclusion that if they don’t haggle, both the buyer and the seller feels cheated out of some great exotic pleasure that they would have otherwise derived from the sale. But I’ll get into that some other time. Time to move on.

One thing I must confess here. There’s a certain thing about small towns that I really like. They always have a unique flavour of their own, a local charm, if you will, that makes it stand out from the rest. Especially to an outsider from a city like Bombay. A metropolis can undoubtedly serve you everything you wanted on a platter, but almost always at an intangible cost for your dreams, a hidden cost that is dearer than the tangible price you pay for it. Bombay can make you emotionally jaded at times. I’m not saying the city hasn’t got a spirit; a true Bombaite / Mumbaikar will never accept that. Scrape off the grime and dirt, and underneath it all, the city is all heart. It’s just that amidst the daily race for survival, the small things get hidden beneath the millions of masks the people have to change everyday. That’s something you don’t have to worry about in small towns. Sometimes, small town do change their original personality and start losing touch with their own identity, and that’s a sad thing to happen. In my opinion, it happened with Pune, though I’m sure more Puneris will not agree. But I don’t see that happening with Baroda. Well, not yet anyways. The quaint little town, like so many others in small town India, seems to have sprung up overnight, instead of being built with thoughtful planning. And as a consequence, it still retains an old town feel and look to it. It may have been possible that only the area I saw in the twilight was that way, the rest of the city may be different altogether. Maybe I will go there again sometime, and write some more about it. Definitely in the winters. No more Gujarati summers for me.

Well, come Sunday, and we were to leave at 5:30 am, but a funny incident (funny, only in hindsight) involving my cousin, the bathroom and an overflowing tap that refused to be shut, and soon threatened to flood the house behind us delayed us by almost an hour. Put six men in a bathroom with faulty plumbing – mind you, none of us have every fixed anything beyond a loose TV remote battery cover in our lives - and suddenly everyone’s an expert plumber. Thirty minutes trying to fix the leak, but no success. Somebody suggested shutting off the main water supply. No such luck, that doesn’t work. Back to trying to fix the tap. Its now an ego struggle between the lifeless tap and the men who won’t give up. Tried stuffing the mouth of the tap with a cloth but the mouth’s too narrow. Back to the wet drawing board we went. In the midst of the chaos, my uncle and cousin managed to knock off the tap with a wrench and spray the water all over the bathroom and beyond, effectively giving the rest of us a second shower. Finally we plugged the pipe with a thick piece of wood, in a move that involved cutting off a branch of a tree in the courtyard, with a Swiss Army Knife! This reduced the flow of water to a harmless trickle. Ten minutes spent congratulating each other on a job well done and passing out the cigars, and twenty minutes cursing the guy who messed around with the tap in the first place, when we finally realized we were behind schedule by over three quarters of an hour.

Finally, 6:40 am on Sunday morning, we left for Patan, where the engagement was to going to start at about 10:30. Four hours to go, and having been told that the distance between Baroda and Patan could be done in 2.5 hours tops, we were relaxed. So, we start off in shorts, t-shirts, and floaters, generally looking like a bunch of yuppies in search of a watering hole on a Saturday night in Goa. We’ll get there and change, no big deal. Well, that was the plan anyways.

So, we were finally off. The journey to Ahemdabad was pleasant, and fast, as it was an expressway all the way through. The fun began after A’bad, where we realized that none of us knew the road ahead to Patan. Well not exactly anyways, we had been asked to ask directions and find our way. So, after the first turnoff out of the expressway, we look around for people to ask for directions. 6 guys, mind you, asking for directions. This is bound to get interesting.

As we pass through ‘The City of Flowers’, Gandhinagar, the capital city of Gujarat, we look around for somebody to ask the directions. First guy we meet, we roll down the windows and ask him for directions. Well, at least my uncle from Bombay did. Let me tell you one thing about my uncle. He is one of the coolest dudes around. Real fun to be with on most occasions. And quite sporting. And claims to speak Gujarati. When I say that, I mean he speaks Gujarati the way people say Arnold Schwarzenegger can act. Ask Arnie goes beyond “I’ll be back”, he’s quite entertaining to watch. Totally unintentionally, of course. Same’s the case with my uncle. He speaks the Bombay version of Gujarati, which is a bastardized mix of Hindi, Marathi with a smattering of Gujarati thrown in as a garnish. It’s miles and miles away from the actual dialect spoken by Gujarati people in remote interiors of their home state.

So, a conversation between my uncle and the locals we meet along the way goes something like this :

Uncle (with a cocky grin on his face, stating “I’ll have us on the right way in a moment”)
Avo, Patan jane mathe kauno rasto che? Rough translation : “Sir, What road goes to Patan?”

Villager : weofpw ejpjwfwfmfmwe j fpwefpw ejewfk wfwjefwekm dk. Saamjhi gyo?
Translation : There is none. My uncle is completely taken aback by the volley of Gujarati that the guys just threw at him. But to save face, he pretends he’s understood everything, and smiles back to him, and says, “Okay, now I know where we are. Move on ahead, and I think it’s the next left turn.”

So, we roll up the windows and move on ahead, hoping that what my uncle “translated” was right. After one and a half hour of asking directions in Gujarati, and driving numerous locals up the wall with our absolute understanding of their language, we were hopelessly sidetracked. At that point, two HUGE truths came and struck us bang smack in the face.

One, this uncle couldn’t understand one word of the super fast-paced Gujarati dialect that these guys spoke!

And two, sleeping in the back seat of the Scorpio, was our uncle from Gujarat, who spoke and by that logic, presumably also understood, the local dialect! In the midst of all our idiocy, nobody had thought of getting him to ask the directions!!!

After individually hitting our foreheads with our hands, the rest of us finally woke him up, and told him what he needed to do. The hero that he is, he put his head up, mumbled something in Gujarati, (and when the other uncle didn’t understand a word that he said, we knew that we had found the right man for the task!), and promptly fell back to sleep again.

A few minutes later, the hysterical ranting of the rest of us brought him around, and he finally got up, and asked some people around for some help. And got us on track. And promptly fell back to sleep.

With all the diversions, and tea breaks and other nuisances, by the time we saw the first milestone, that said “Patan : 20 kms”, it was almost 10:10. The women, who were already at the venue, had been calling us every six and a half minutes, since 9:00 am, trying to figure out where we were. The engagement was about to start in about 20 minutes, and we were still on an isolated piece of road, about 15 kms away! God, were we in trouble!

As we were getting closer to the final destination, horror of horrors, we realized that we were still dressed in almost our chaddi – baniyans, and dared we enter the engagement like that we would most definitely be quartered and killed, first by the girl whose engagement it was, and then what remained would be fed to the dogs by our respective family members.

So, there’s only one thing to do. Desperate situations call for desperate measures. We found the next isolated spot on that road, and possibly for the first time in the history of Patan, six grown men, discarded their yuppie fittings, for ethnic formal wear, about 10 inches off the road! Our modesty was only protected by the limited cover offered by the SUV, and the assorted trees and shrubbery around. I’m sure the couple of locals who passed us along the way, probably thought we were either a bunch of lunatics, who got our kicks out of undressing in public, or a bunch of thugs changing into our costumes before pulling a heist on the local petrol pump. The fact that we stood there in our shorts and ganjis, hooting and waving out to them as they passed us, didn’t help higher us in their esteem either.

So, a result of quick thinking, and making the great wide Patan landscape our changing room, combined with some deft driving on the last stretch of our journey, to avoid some cattle, goats and other assorted four-legged beasts, who came out of nowhere to try and delay us further, we reached the venue with five minutes to spare. From then on, things flowed along smoothly, the engagement went off great. Lots of photos, lots of sweets, and tons and tons and tons of ice cream. I have never seen so much ice cream being fed to somebody as the couple was fed by all the family and friends. In all I think they must have been forced (very lovingly, and all in jest, off course) to gore down about 2-3 litres of icecream. God, if I ever get married in Gujarat, I’ll make sure there is no ice cream on the menu. Or aamras for that matter. At all!

Well, from there on, things were quite sedate. In the evening, we said our goodbyes to the other family, and took proper directions from them to find our way back. Luckily, they gave direction in Hindi, so everybody understood, and we managed to make the journey back to Baroda quite smoothly.

A night halt at Baroda, and the next morning, we left for Bombay. Nothing much to report there. After 2 days of driving in the sun, running around to find chappals, packing gifts, fixing overflowing taps, dressing up on the roadside, too much of icecream and aamras, and of course the engagement, we were all pooped out. All in all it was great fun. When all of us family meets up, there’s never a dull moment, and this road trip was no exception.

The only thing that kind of put a damper on spirits was a news that we got on our way back to Bombay. Soon after we had just crossed over to Maharashtra, I received a phone call from my mom, who had flown back to Bombay the earlier evening, to check up on us. Apparently, a couple of hours after we had left Baroda, some communal tension had sprung up there, and a curfew had been declared in parts of the city. Over the next few days, lives were needlessly lost in the city, as the dark side of humanity raised its ugly head. Sad, how some places and people that seem so simple, and welcoming one day, can suddenly turn into cold and heartless, in such a short time. All my sympathies to the innocents that got in the crossfire.

Well, that’s about that. The wedding’s probably going to take place in December in Bombay, so there may be no road trip. But all of us will be getting together once again, and I’m looking forward to all the craziness then…

The Odd One Out…

2006-05-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

(Apologies for not putting up the conclusion to the Road Trip first. For starters, it's just not shaping up the way I wanted it to. In the meanwhile, what follows next happened over yesterday and this morning, and like so many other pieces before, just wrote itself;)

“Excuse me, sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do the digits in your birthdate add up to the number 2?”

I turned to the side, and saw this 18-19 something young kid, in a bright red t-shirt, with a 3 day stubble on his face, looking at me, as if his whole life depended on my correct answer to that question.

“Actually, no, it doesn’t.” Well, if this guy was a numerologist or something, he’d have to do a lot better than that.

He looked at his watch, seemed to do some calculations in air, and then asked me again. “Is it 8 then? Or 6 maybe?”

When he realized he had them all wrong, he finally asked me what the correct answer was. I told him.

“That’s the first time ever that I’ve got the wrong answer.I don’t understand it.”

“Well, don’t cut yourself up too much over it. I have known to be a walking contradiction to those who know me. I can’t claim to know things about myself, so I really don’t blame you anyway. Nice try, though.”

What else could I say? I mean, here I was, on a Saturday morning sitting on a stone platform at Bandstand promenade, watching the waves lapping at the rocks 5 meters away from me, and this kid who’s been sleeping on the stone bench suddenly gets up and asks me what he did.

Now, those of you who know a little bit about me, would know that normally the conversation would have ended right there. Better off as a observer, if I think somebody is getting too close for comfort, or if I'm unsure of what to say or do, my first reaction is to walk away. But somebody I made friends with very recently, told me that every once in a while, I need to decide when to be an observer, and when to get involved. This time, something told me to get involved.

Without any idea why, or where this was going, I asked him why he wanted to know the answer to that question he had posed me.

“Well, I’m trying to prove a theory I’m working on. Everything in time has a definite beginning, and a definite end. And since time determines everything, almost all details about a person can be determined by a particular time any event occurs. For example, the time that you met me, this moment, can tell me, or in theory should have told me, your birth date at least. I can’t believe I got it wrong”.

Somewhere inside, I was quite thrilled at being an anomaly – different from the rest - rather than just another correct statistic in his research theory. Small kicks I get from life.

He then went on to tell me more about his theory. I would have loved to pen it down, or commit it to memory so that I could have reproduced it here better. He stated quotes attributing them to Einstein, and a couple of other scientists, and philosophers, and used words like “astrophysics”, “quantum”, “particle physics”, etc. One quote that I think he used was “The start and end of any event, is repeated at regular time intervals…” or something to that effect. Frankly I wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was saying at this time. Anyways, after a little prodding, he began dropping hints at how this theory that he was working on back home in Pune, had been sent to a London university, and how they were bowled over by what they had read, and how he had been inspired to prove his theory right. A theory that, in his words, “would rock the nation.”

What was he doing in Bombay, and what was he doing at Bandstand? He had come to visit a friend, and something had gone wrong, and he had been forced to spend the night at Bandstand, out in the open. “You know how things get wrong sometimes…”

What was he doing in Pune otherwise? “I’m a student. Dad’s in the army, based in Kolkatta. Loves me a lot. Miss him a lot. I had been even selected to the 3rd round of Indian Idol (a very popular musical talent show in India, based on the American Idol theme) But Dad made me get out of it, as it would have affected my studies. They even called me for the Indian Idol Part 2, but he wouldn’t let me go. Say, you’re from Bombay right? You wouldn’t happen to know anybody from the entertainment industry would you?”

Aah, so that’s what it is, is it? Unfortunately I don’t. And I said that to him, and he instantly picks up the hint of disdain / scepticism in my voice. “You don’t have anything against the industry, do you?”

I thought about it a moment. I remembered some of the stories a close friend of mine told me when she was trying to break into the industry. She’s as tough as nails, but she refused to make the compromises that she would have had to, to get somewhere in the industry. She preferred to give up her dreams, instead. “No, I don’t. But I do know that it ain’t as easy to break into as it looks like. You need to make a lot of compromises, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up being chewed up and spit out like a piece of stale and tasteless gum. But, to each his own. If you are ready to make those choices, to get to where you want to be, it’s your call. I don’t have anything against the industry or the people. At the end of the day, it’s just another means of a livelihood.”

He seemed pleased with that answer. Somehow, a clearer picture was beginning to form now in my head now. Starry eyed boy, with dreams of making it big in the entertainment business, coming in to Bombay, hunting down production managers, casting directors, assistant directors, talent agents, getting caught in the clutches of touts pretending to be all of the above. But, typically (and maybe I’m wrong here, I am speculating on this) the starry eyed people are from the far interiors of the country, with basic or no education, who come into Bombay with big dreams, and nothing else. Not well educated youngsters, from an Indian Army background (although I was less than 10 years elder to him, and I asked him to call me by name, he insisted on calling me a crisp ‘Sir’ – “It’s the army background, Sir, I can’t help it”) who go around quoting Einstein, and talking about theories in quantum and astrophysics. What about all that, I asked him. How does that fit into all this entertainment?

“That’s how I want to prove my theory, Sir. It’s a movie about how this theory works.” And he left it at that. So did I.

How long was he planning to be in Bombay. Did his parents know he was here? “Yes. Mom knows I’m here with some friends.” Although I bet she didn’t know her son spent the last night out on the streets, sleeping by the rocks of Bandstand. I didn’t mention that to him though. “I’m leaving for Pune this afternoon.”

By now, we had been chatting over an hour, and it was time for me to leave. I wished him all the best, and hoped that his dreams – about the Indian Idol thing, as well as the theory that would rock the nation – came true one day. He seemed rather disappointed to see me go, like the time you feel when you want somebody to talk to, but nobody’s around. He moved on though, and I drove away.

Before I reached the end of the road that takes me away from the sea face, I had a nagging feeling at the back of my mind. In fact, it had been there since he had first started speaking with me, and told me he had spent the night out on the streets. Something made me turn back, and drive all the way along the promenade to find him again.

There he was, sitting alone along the promenade. From a distance, that almost appeared to be me. A lost soul, staring into the ocean, into trying to get to terms with himself. At least he knew what he wanted. Seemed to know, anyways.

I pulled up behind him, and called out to him. I wanted to make this as matter of fact, and as less embarrassing - for both him and me - as possible. “You planning to go back to Pune today. Don’t mind me asking, but do you have the means for it? You got a ticket?”

For the first time since I had been speaking with him, he faltered. “I do. I mean I will arrange something. Don’t worry”. Bingo. No money, and no ticket back home. Stranded in a strange city. He planned to make the Bombay – Pune train journey, ticketless. Possible, but pointless.

I offered him a 100 Rs. note - all that I had at that time – but enough to get him some grub and a ticket to Pune. To his credit, he was reluctant to take it. He had not asked me for money at any time. But, I didn’t want a young kid to get crushed in the city. Bombay’s got a bad rep, as it is. And in some cases, deservingly so. There was no point in making him go through it.

He stood there for a good 3 or 4 minutes, not being able to look at me in the eye, thinking about what to do. He seemed like he was about to break down. He could have been an excellent actor, but something told me, beneath the tough exterior, he still was just an 18 year old kid. I could just imagine what my mother would have gone through if something like that ever happened to me, and I'm sure if his mother knew, what her son had been upto the past 24 hours, she'd be just as upset. As a human being, it was the least people could do for one another. And just to call it even, I told him whenever he got his theory published, he could put a thank you note for me in the opening credits;)

Finally he took it, and that’s where we parted ways again. For then.

The whole day I was restless though. Something told me he wouldn’t leave. He had a conviction in his eyes, that said, he needed to do something. Prove a point. Maybe he had run away from home, and had lied to me that his mother knew where he was. After five or six uneasy hours at home, I decided to check Bandstand once again, to make sure he had actually left. He could have been anywhere, but something told me, if he was in Bombay, he would still be at Bandstand. It’s that kind of a place.

After a minute or so driving along the promenade, I saw him again. He was still sitting, almost exactly where I had left him. The afternoon train to Pune was long gone, so either he had tricked me or there seemed another possible explanation why he had stayed behind. I observed him for a while, without being seen myself. He made a phone call from a cell phone borrowed from somebody else. At least the guy was resourceful. Wasn’t such a lost kid after all. Had a way with people. Walked around, sipping a cola. He finally saw me, staring at him. I had half expected him to run. But he walked on over to me instead.

Wasn’t he supposed to be on a train to Pune by now? He asked me, why was I there? Something had triggered off a chain of thoughts in my mind, and that’s why I wanted to check up on him, I said. I asked him whether he had in fact run away from home, point blank. He said no, his mother truly knew he was in Bombay, but she didn’t know anything about the movie people he was meeting up with. In fact, he was meeting a production guy at 5:30, and that’s why he had stayed back. He would be returning in the night. I asked him his mothers phone number in Pune. Better to check with the story rather than have him lie, and get in trouble later. Messaged his mother, asking her to call her son up on my cell number. In a few minutes, she called up, asking for him. She didn’t sound hysterical - like someone whose son has run away from home - so that was a good start. So, she did know he was in Bombay, and I made him tell her that he would be home for dinner.

I still wasn’t convinced about the smartness of his decisions, so once again, I tried my best to put the pros and the cons of what he was getting into. He told me he had a plan. Gave me the names of the people he had met, and those he planned to meet. How everybody had been a real good to him and had tried to help him, except me. Huh? So, I had been bad to him? Now, I was slightly miffed.

“No, no, not that. You’re the one who’s been exceptionally helpful, nobody’s gone out of the way as much as you have.” Now, I was blushing. Its bad enough to try and help somebody without making a big deal out of it.

Finally, after spending a half hour with him again, listening to his gameplan, for his theory & research, I warned him that if he wasn’t in Pune by the next morning when planned on calling his mom to check up, I would set the Mumbai police loose on him. By now, I had enough information to track down his possible movement in Bombay, people he planned to meet, offices he intended to go. He promised he would be home, by the next day. And making sure that he still had enough money to get back home, I left him there at Bandstand once again.

As I drove away, he waved out to me, and I stopped the car for a second.

“You are truly the odd one out, Sir. Remember that. Thanks for everything.”

It took me a second to figure out what he meant by that. Then I remembered my words to him in the morning. Strangely, that was one of the best things somebody has ever said to me.

At that time, I knew he was going to be okay. At least for this time. The vultures weren’t going to take him, just yet. For now, he was smarter than them.

This morning, I went to the same spot I met him yesterday. Feeling more like a patronising uncle, or even a concerned parent, than an absolute stranger that i really was, I called up his mother’s cell number. The first time, the machine told me “Please check the number you have dialled”. My heart skipped a beat. Was he okay? Had I made a mistake of leaving him alone? I tried again, and this time, his mother picked up the phone. I asked her if I could speak with him. And as she handed the phone to him, and after I spoke with him for a minute, wishing him all the best for the future, I was finally relieved.

The starry eyed one who managed to make it home, safe and sound. He, too, was the odd one out.

God, for the briefest of moments, it felt good to be human again, in the truest sense of the word.

Hell, I'm Neo! Opinions invited! This should be an interesting debate!

2006-05-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

What Character From The Matrix Are You?

You are Neo, the chosen one, the slayer of agents everywhere. A former nerd, you have evolved into quite a stubborn hero.Although Trinity is not that hot, at least you're one of the few that can get some in the real world. You can stop bullets and you're immmortal; so what the hell are you going to do in Matrix: Reloaded?!"Yeah. Wow, that sounds like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call."
Take this quiz!

"Hell. This is so cheesy...lol. I can't believe i akly put this up..." (EspritNoir)

Road Trip - Part 1

2006-05-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

Warning : This one is long, and winding, and may not have any point...but read on.

A big hello to all of my regular readers, yes all three of you!;) Had a hectic last week, and the previous weekend was even more so. A cousin of mine was getting engaged to her boyfriend in a remote little hamlet in Gujarat last Sunday. And that gave me and my extended family a reason to go out on a road trip that well, though not quite what they make movies out of, was fairly memorable.

Totally NOT according to the original plan and seating arrangements, made 4 weeks ago, or the altered plan made a fortnight ago, or even the “finally final” plan made the night before we left, Saturday morning saw 2 SUVs loaded with enough bags to last out a month long seige of Mars, filled with clothing, gifts, snacks, water bottles, cell phone chargers, cameras, and other assorted paraphernalia, not to mention 14 people, head out into Baroda, our first halt en route to our final destination.

We started off quite early, and were soon cruising across the national highway connecting the two states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. This was the first time I was driving on NH8 (Bombay – Ahmedabad highway), and I must say I was impressed. Not only is the road in near excellent condition for most of the journey, but also the surrounding countryside, although not picturesque, is quite scenic, in a desolate, isolated kind of manner. If you are a good driver, you would do well to notice the vast landscape that whizzes past you as you cut the miles ahead of you. Small thatched-roof huts, stray cattle, small hotels advertising cheap and tasty food, rush by you only to disappear from sight, and be replaced in seconds by other huts, cattle and hotels. Probably the best part of driving down a highway at 120 kms an hour, is the fact that if you want to see something, observe something, you have to do it instantaneously. You can’t think twice, take your time about it, or go back to it. A milestone once gone, is gone forever. Kinda like life, only a lot slower and lot less uncertain. At least behind the wheel of a car, you usually know where you’re headed. Where most of us are headed with our lives, well, that’s as good as anybody’ guess.

Moving on, if you enjoy driving as much as I do, I would strongly recommend a road trip down this route. Do a quick weekend getaway to Daman, where, I have heard, you can sink into a cozy hammock put up between 2 palm trees on the beach, and sip on a cool beer or two, all afternoon. The road to Daman, and beyond is even, and has just the right amount of curves to stop it from getting too monotonous, and on a good day is peppered with just enough traffic to keep you alert without taking away the simple pleasures of driving.

There are a few such routes from Bombay that are worth driving down, especially if you have a good SUV (I drive in the family Mahindra Scorpio, and I love it), a good music system and good company of friends who know how to enjoy the simple joys. For a really memorable short journey, the Bombay – Pune Expressway is an excellent drive. Get some friends along - not too many though, maybe just one or two - and head out towards Pune at 5:30 am in the morning. Once you cross the McDonalds at Kalamboli, you get on to the Expressway, and from there on it’s one of the best short-to-mid distance drives around Bombay. But to really enjoy a good Sunday morning drive, don’t drive all the way to Pune. Drive at a fair pace, and enjoy the great landscape the surrounds you. If you are not too rushed, you should drive into Lonavala (about 90-100 kms from Bombay) by 7:30 in the morning, just in time for breakfast. Head for one of the hotels, for breakfast (I like the Vallerina, just below the main bridge that runs through the small town, “the hotel with the Valley attached”, as their brochure states) Once you’ve had a relaxed breakfast of fluffy omlettes and hot buttered toast, head out onto the road towards Amby Valley. That’s a fairly winding road up the mountain side, and you pass Bhushi Dam on the way, where you can spend some time. Drive on beyond Bhushi, and after about 20 minutes of winding uphill, you’ll reach a Lions Point (I think that’s what they call it). Its an absolutely flat table land extension that juts out of the mountainside, where you can park your car, and just look at the small town that you left behind. Its especially pretty in the winters, when the early morning fog hangs so low and so thick that you can actually feel the early morning mist if you put your hand out of the window, and try to grab on to a small piece of the clouds. In winters especially its quite chilly up there, and to lie back in the car, listen to some good music, and forget your worries for an hour or two as you stare into the vast gray morning sky ahead of you, is something I guess the closest you can get to heaven. If you havn’t done it before, you should.

Similarly, there are some other really good drives, for longer distances. Bombay – Ahmedabad is one of them. So is Bombay – Hyderabad, down south. Its about a 16 hour journey, and the road again is quite good. And so is Bombay – Bangalore, or so I’ve heard. I haven’t driven down that road before, and plan to do that trip soon. Also, Bombay – Goa. But that’s an altogether different story. I’ve romanticized about driving on the Bombay – Goa stretch for so long, that I would require a couple of posts just for that:)

Anyways, on the subject of road trips, one word of advice for those planning to take drive out into the country, especially one involving a lot of children and tons of luggage. Decide the seating prior to departure, and rotate the people on a regular basis. The last thing you want to hear when you are driving down the road at 120 kms/hr, is somebody whining about how he isn’t getting enough air in the back. And to be perfectly fair to the kid, its no fun sitting in the back of a car for hours with all the luggage dumped round him. So, take some trouble before hand to make a proper seating arrangement, with the rotations evenly spread out. Its worth the trouble in the end. It saves you the pain of having to stop at every half an hour, and listen to somebody complain how bad it is in the back.

So, the drive was good, and we managed to make it across the harsh and hot Gujarat landscape to reach Baroda by 3pm in the afternoon. Since we had been traveling with the AC on for almost the whole journey, we weren’t quite ready for the heat that greeted us the moment we got out of the car to enter my aunt’s – our hostess in Baroda – house. The heat hit us in the face – and everywhere else – like a brick wall, made with burning hot bricks. Less than ten minutes out of the car, all of us were dragging our asses on the ground, as even moving from one room to the other was too much effort for the body and mind. The rooms were a furnace, and even though we were sitting under the ceiling fans, it felt as if something was slowly sucking the life out of us. People in Bombay who complain about the humid weather here, should be made to spend one afternoon in Baroda, during the summers. The next day they’ll be singing praises about the weather in Bombay. Well, since we really didn’t have too much of an option there, we tried to bear it as best we could, and fell out flat on the beds. Luckily only a part of the whole group – all the ladies, including the engagement belle, and her father - was going on ahead to the town where the engagement was going to be held, it gave us guys the chance to catch some shut eye, while the others made their way ahead in one of the SUVs.

(And that's part one. Will continue this ramble in my next post...)

A Wisp of a Dream...

2006-04-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

She came to me again last night. She only ever come to me in dreams anymore. Strangely, it wasn’t the face I recognized. Or the voice that I had heard before. Or even the touch that I once knew so well. All my bodily senses told me, that this woman in my dream wasn’t her, she was somebody else. But instinct told me otherwise. Her face was different, but the smile was still loving. Her voice sounded slightly far off, as you often hear in dreams, but it still carried that soft lilt that I recognized. Her touch was hesitant at first, as if she was scared that I would push her away, afraid I wouldn’t recognize her. But it was her. In a different form, but still the same.

It’s strange, the things we keep hidden away from ourselves, in the recesses of our memory, only to discover them when you least expect to. I had forgotten how much I had missed her touch, until last night. How I loved to touch her. Our fingers intertwined with each other, each of us seeking an assurance that the other wasn’t just a figment of the other’s imagination. Caressing her cheek, feeling her soft smooth skin on the back of my hand. My thumb brushing her lips. Kissing her lips, her forehead, her face. The back of her neck. I think I love the back of her neck more than anything else. Brushing away her long curls to one side, I shower her with small tiny kisses, zillions of them. Then slowly move elsewhere, but return to that same spot again. The back of her neck. I don’t think I could ever get tired of showering her with tiny kisses. Considering she has never complained, I don’t think she minds them either. It reminded me of a character in a movie I had once seen, and a novel I had once read. Almasy, who had been obsessed with the hollow spot at the base of a woman’s neck. The woman he was in love with. Like him, I claim the back of her neck as my own kingdom.

In the dream, we lay beside each other, close. No words were spoken, no need to. The highest form of intimacy, to lay beside somebody beautiful, somebody you love, and not have to make love. When just being there is pleasure enough.

It's dawn soon, and I wake up by myself. I take a minute to realize she wasn’t really there. I try to convince myself that the fragrance that I think lingers in the room, isn’t really her. I resist the urge to wake up completely, hope that by keeping my eyes closed, I can be with her again. But, like a wisp of a cotton cloud, that disappears the moment you try to grab it, she’s gone for now. I don’t know when she’s coming back.

And I get up, and start getting ready to face another day.

Shame

2006-04-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

I had a perfectly good day going for me today. Right until the moment somebody ruined it for me. Me!

On my way home, just a couple of hours back, I’m standing at a bus stand, wondering whether to catch the bus home, or hail a rickshaw. Not too many people around, its about 8:30 pm in the night, and its fairly dark around, except the lights of the cars, and cabs and busses, roaring about beside me. There is this dog, kinda like Santa’s Little Helper from the Simpsons, only slightly less pathetic looking. Scrawny, downcast, but minding his own business. He’s walking past the bus stand, looking at people, maybe hoping to catch something to eat, when straight out of nowhere, this jerk who’s standing at the stop, just lunges forward, and aims his foot straight at the dog! Not like this dogs threatening to bite his head off, or is hounding him for something, or anything. Luckily the guy completely mistimed his kick, and the dog managed to jump out of the way with a yelp of fear. But the guy, for no apparent reason, felt it okay to kick a dog like it didn’t matter. And the worst part was, I stood there maybe 5 meters away from him, and saw the whole thing, and although it PISSED me off, I just didn’t do anything. Immediately after that the guy jumped into a bus, and whizzed off as if nothing had happened. But in that moment, the least I could have done, was yelled out some obscenity after him, letting him know that kind of behaviour would not be tolerated. But the only reaction I could remember was, “Man, he’s twice my size, what if he turns on me?” And, ashamedly I must admit, I passed an opportunity to do something I thought would have been the right thing. On a blog that I read regularly, I had once read a story how the writer had stood up to somebody who had done exactly the same, and I thought, I’m sure I would do the same. I always thought given the opportunity, I would stand up for what I believed in, do the right thing. But, today my own fear betrayed me. It’s easy to say “Stand Up, and Fight!” when you’re the Goliath. But when you’re David, it’s difficult to sling the first shot.

Today, I became a David, who lost to a Goliath, ‘cause I was too damn concerned about my own safety to stand up against something not quite right.

Looking back, I remember a famous quote I had once read :

In a dog fight, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters; what matters is the size of the fight in the dog.

As he licks his wounds, and broken ego, this dog promises to fight back the next time. For himself, and for others.

Alone Again, Naturally...

2006-04-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

Another Saturday evening spent by myself, staring out into the ocean, and watching couples cozy up to each other on the Bandra promenade. Another evening spent listening to music in the car, driving up and down the streets of Bandra, hoping that something happens, and I don’t have to spend the rest of the evening alone. Another hope dashed and another evening ruined.

Bombay is not a place suitable for single people. In fact, I wonder if any city is. Everywhere you go, you see couples, holding hands, hugging, trying to peg you as a loser for not being with somebody. And if you look beyond the couples, you see the college crowd hanging out together. Being single has become one step away from a crime, as it were. And hey, don’t get me wrong. Its not that I aint got no friends or anything. I do, I have great friends. But, life’s at that stage at the moment, where everybody I know is busy coping with their own shit. People I know are getting married, getting new jobs, having a baby, and just so busy with their own lives. And again, I’m not grudging them that. I’m happy for them. But that kinda leaves people like me, out in the lurch. The ones who don’t seem to be going anywhere. Socially, I mean. I’ve often been accused of being an anti-social. Hell, I invented that label for myself. I’m the guy you see at social gatherings, leaning on the pillar behind shrubbery besides the drinks table. I’m the guy who can’t think of anything funny to say at the right time. When I’m with myself, or people who know me the closest, I’m a hoot. (Well, at least, that’s what I think. Here again, I may be wrong. All those who disagree, please look away.) But, replace that set of people with a completely alien audience, and out comes the anti-social. I will very comfortably slip into one corner of the room, and be happy watching other people chat away. Who pretends to look into his cell phone, too busy sending off fake SMSs, just so that I don’t have to make eye contact with others. Or worse still, be forced to make conversation that makes sense, should somebody actually come up to me, and say a hello.

And that’s what stopped me from walking into a pub last evening, all by myself, into any one of those places where the whole world gets together on a Saturday evening. And that’s why I spent another Saturday evening, listening to music in the car, driving up and down the streets of Bandra, hoping that something would happen. And staring out into the ocean, all by myself.

I have no idea what I intend to achieve with this post. Its one of those posts, that just seemed to write itself. Maybe it’ll make more sense tomorrow.

Nostalgia and the rains

2006-04-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

As I began dressing for work early in the morning a couple of weeks back, I heard a distant rumble. Thunder? Couldn’t be, must be something else, it’s just mid-March. Anyway, the skies looked clear enough. Hmmm, it would be good to have rains though, I said to myself, as I stepped into the elevator. And as I step out of the elevator, the first rains of the year hit me. A slight drizzle, actually. But, the air was already laced with the aroma of the wet earth. To me it’s probably the most wonderful fragrance in the world. Petrichor. The scent of life.

By the time I reached work, the early morning drizzle had given way to a full fledged off seasonal shower, that was to last almost the whole day. And although, I knew its just a one off shower, and the monsoons were still months away, I couldn’t help but smile. The rains just make me feel different. Make me alive. And all it takes is an off-seasonal shower to get the best monsoon memories flood my mind. (No pun intended). And give me a theme for another rambling post…

SINGING IN THE RAIN
Two years spent in Pune, doing my post-grad in some godforsaken college, mostly getting an education in life, outside college, rather than in it. Two years of the most bittersweet memories of my life. One sweet memory is of a night a couple of days before I was to leave for Bombay. As I was returning to my rented apartment after my exam, the weather suddenly changed. Now May is normally peak of summer in India. Rains clouds gathered overhead, and by 6:00 in the evening, darkness had enveloped the city. Just after I reached home, within ten minutes or so, the dark clouds opened up. Rains! Followed by thunder and lightening. In the middle of summer! One of the simplest joys in life is getting wet in the first rains of the year, something which I can never resist. I raced up to the terrace, and was greeted with the most amazing display of lights I had ever seen. Lightening flashes blazed across the gray sky, and lit up the night like millions and millions of streaks of bluish-white electricity, that light up for a second, and then go dark again. And light up again, and go dark again. And again. And again. And again. It felt like Nature was putting up a stunning display of sound and light just for me. If you love the rains as much as I do, there is no feeling like the rain falling on your body, cleansing your mind, your soul. Opening up in sweet surrender to the infinite power and beauty of the elements. And something happened to me that night. I know it sounds crazy, but all alone on the terrace, completely drenched, I began dancing. It must have been one crazy sight, had anybody seen me that night. A wet, out of shape figure singing and dancing – slipping and sliding, mostly - all by himself in the darkness. But I didn’t care. I didn’t need any music, and I didn’t need a partner. That night, I was Gene Kelly, the night was Debi Reynolds, and the thunder in the sky was the only orchestra we needed. We were Singin’ in the Rain, without any care in the world. I really don’t remember how long I danced that night. Could have been 5 minutes, felt more like 5 hours. But that’s one rainy night that I’ll never forget.

JOIE DE VIVRE
Then there was this one time about two monsoons back. It had been raining the whole night, and it didn’t look as if it was about to slow down in the morning. As usual, I left my house at 6:30, all dressed up for work. Somewhere between my house and the end of my lane, on an impulse, I decided that it would be a shame to waste such a gorgeous morning in the office. Nothing feels better than playing hooky from work, and I rushed back home, put on some old jeans and some sweats, ditched the umbrella, and got out again. I walked all the way to Bandstand, in the cold rain, and got into a coffee shop that overlooks the sea at Bandstand. So, here I am sitting at this coffee shop, drinking an Americano, looking out at an amazing ocean view, in the rains, and I think it can’t get any better than this. And boy was I wrong! There’s absolutely nobody in that small coffee shop except me, the barista behind the counter and Her…the most amazing, lively, gorgeous woman I had ever seen. She was dressed up in a very simple, yet tasteful light orange tee-shirt, and a pair of cream capris. She had been sitting there from even before I got there, and for the 2 hours that I sat there till she left, I could hardly take my eyes off her. Okay I know, a lot of you are gonna shout “VOYEUR!”. But hold on. I mean she was pretty and everything, but that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Not the only reason anywaysJ She was so full of joie de vivre, that she almost even in that weather, she carried a little bit of sunshine over her shoulders. I thought I loved the rains, but she just seemed to be so much in love with life itself. The music system kept playing a popular Hindi song over and over again. And she started swaying to the music, as she sat in her chair. If ever I could present an award on any music channel, I’d give her the Award for Best Dancing While Still Seated on a Chair. And just like that, on that rainy day at Bandstand, I kinda lost my heart out to one of the most lovely ladies I’d ever seen. Although I really wanted to, in the two hours that she sat in front of me, I never got the courage to get up and tell her how beautiful she had made my day by just being there that rainy morning. Well, wherever she is, I sure hope she is still spreading that sunshine everywhere she goes.

Candle light dinners are so passé…

Another rainy evening, I won’t be forgetting is one back in college, when me and a friend of mine decided to catch a movie and dinner. Movie done, we were walking down to a terrace restaurant that she had recommended, to get some dinner. As we made our way there, the temperature dropped and the wind suddenly picked up. Orders given, we spent time looking over the city lights from the terrace. From a bird’s eye-view, about 7 floors high above the ground, the city looked quite amazing. Traffic lights, headlights of cars, and other chaos of the street, so close, somehow seemed miles away.
I still remember the music that was playing in the background. “Bahon main chale aao”, by Asha Bhonsale. The weather was lovely, and the breeze had almost turned into a heavy gale by then. By the time, the waiter got us our starters, a light drizzle had started up. We paced about the terrace, kababs in our hands, bemused at the way the waiters were having a tough time coping with the wind tossing serviettes and tissues all over. By the time the food was ready, we had to move in to a covered section of the terrace, which we did, reluctantly. And as soon as we sat on down at our table, right beside the low terrace wall, the rains began in earnest. And once again, lightening flashes began lighting up the sky and man, the atmosphere was just about perfect. And just when we thought, things couldn’t get any better, the lights in the restaurant went out! Trust me, candle light dinner pales in comparison to dinner under brilliant lightening flashes. Truly, the experience is something else. What had began as a quiet dinner, turned out to be an extraordinary evening out. Just like that.

Dinner, coffee and a quiet stroll in the rain later, it was time to go our separate ways. But the memory of that simple dinner, made unforgettable by the rains, lightening, and thunder, and of course, excellent company, is one I would love to capture in a bottle, like an exotic fragrance, which I could relive over and over again.

And then there are so many others…memories of the monsoons. Each unique, and each beloved. Close to me for several different reasons, some of happy times, some of sad ones. But each one close nonetheless. But then, that’s a blog post for another rainy day.

Je Ne Regrette Rien...?

2006-03-14T22:57:00.000-08:00

There are some very few times in life when i actually regret being single. Well, not exactly regret, but you know, there are those moments when I would have preferred to have a “significant other” in my life and be one in somebody else’s. Like last weekend, I was driving back home after dinner, and suddenly I decided to head to Bandstand instead. So, I’m at Bandstand (thankfully at least post midnight its relatively less crowded), at 1.00 am in the morning, and I am on the promenade walking all by myself. It was all there. People hanging out, trying to extend the weekend by as much as possible, before we all returned to our humdrum work the next day. The stray couples walking up and down the promenade, holding hands, just enjoying the time spent together. The dark sea spread for miles ahead of me; the near full moon lighting up the waters underneath. It was such a pretty postcard picture, and I so wanted to share it with somebody. I actually looked around, just wishing that there was somebody there that I knew. Somebody who I cared about. And who would enjoy spending time with me. And as I watched the waves roll in, I must confess I felt the green eyed monster kick in. Envy at the other couples around me. At the realization that I had nobody to share the beautiful moonlit night by the sea with. Even a phone call from somebody would have been a sign from heaven. But, like so many other times, the moment passed, nobody called, I didn’t bump into anybody accidentally, and nothing happened that night that would have made a great movie one day.

But, that night it did get me thinking. Of all the small things that me and other single guys like me, have to do without, which a ‘committed’ guy would probably just take for granted (that’s a serious generalization, I know, but come on, but humor meJ)

So, for all you committed guys out there, be thankful for all of this and a lot more :

When you catch the faintest whiff of your favorite perfume (maybe “Provocative”;) on your woman. And your knees turn to jello in an instant.

Every time she accidentally turns the channel to MTV, just as Kimi is about to shoot ahead of Shumacher on the crucial last lap at Monza.

Whenever she turns to you to help her with her hung Windows XP. Hey, you both know, she could have restarted the damn thing herself, but she knows how you love to be her Knight-In-Shining-Armour.

The times she went for a horror movie with you, and screamed, clung on to your arm and hid her face in your sleeve whenever the creepy music came on. That’s why you chose that movie in the first place!

Whenever she asks you give her a neck rub. Admit it, you enjoy it more than she does. Or better still, she gives you one herself.

How peaceful she looks when she’s asleep. If I ever fall in love, I’ll make it a point to get up 45 minutes before she does everyday, just to sit by the bed and watch my pretty one while she sleeps.

You lean in for a quick hug, and the fragrance of her just washed hair hits you like a 10 ton bomb. And you never want to let go. Ever.

And a zillion other small things that makes her so special.

So, there you have it. All you committed guys (and gals), call up your loved one and tell her (or him) that you love her. Go ahead, make her day.

And all you single people out there… hang in there. Hope you find your someone special soon.

As for me, I’m listening to Edith Piaf, and she speaks for both of us when she says, “Je ne regrette rien…” Neither do I… at least until the next time I’m at Bandstand all alone in the middle of the night.

Selective Amnesia

2006-02-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

Selective Amnesia.

If ever there were a wish, that I could grant myself, if not the whole world, Selective Amnesia would be it. The ability to erase from permanent memory, any event, trauma, moments of immense pleasure or extreme pain, at will, without affecting other memories. I know, this may sound like a plot line for a really cheesy Hollywood flick, (addendum : long after I had thought this idea up, and much later after I had drafted the original article that I reworked into this particular blog post, which I finally got around to posting up today, I saw a movie called : “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. I felt cheated that what I believed was my original idea, well, just wasn’t. Anyway, it was a great movie and I’d like to appease myself by thinking that at least one of my ideas made it big. For those who havn’t seen it, go do yourself a favour, and rent the CD/DVD. Btw, the title refers to a line from an alexander pope poem), but hear me out here. How often have we tried and failed to forget things that have hurt us. A dejected lover who, still in love with the woman who walked out on him, can’t get the her voice out of his head. A rape victim, who forever carries in her mind the shame, maybe even misdirected guilt of the trauma endured. The memories of an abused childhood. Adolescent ridicule for being an outsider. Peer pressure. Marital abuse. The unexplainable grief of parents who have lost their only child, which causes a part of them to die on the inside as well. The wreck is total.

Each one of us has at least one such memory. One that we try hard to bury deep within the labyrinth we call our subconscious. A pain – no, something more than that - a cross that we bear, silently; one that we would go to any extent in order to keep from becoming public. The possible applications of this “wish” could be immense.

Please understand, I am not in any way trying to deny myself pain. I agree pain is undeniable, and in fact forms the very basis of our growth pattern. Hurt me, I will cry, but the next time I will be careful when I approach you. It helps us from committing our mistakes again. Response to pain is the most basic reflex action. But, to endure the same pain everyday, once you’ve learnt the lesson, will allow it to fester wounds deep within your soul, until it grows to such proportions that it slowly begins to kill you on the inside.

For years, we have been hearing – the human mind is no less than the world’s best computers. It’s a miracle. Examples, however isolated, have shown us, that the human mind can, if trained enough, process more data faster and more efficiently. I can delete the data on a computer disk. Even the body eliminates what it doesn’t require. Then why can’t we develop for the brain a process that forms one of the most basic functions of a computer and the body. Deleting unwanted data. GIGO. Where is the GO outlet for human brain? And I don’t mean Hypnosis here. Hypnosis is like sleep walking. You don’t erase the incident, you just mask it. If you bring the person out of hypnosis, wham, the pain’s back again.

Did God, or the Force, or whatever you to call the powers that Be, forget this one bit of override mechanism for the brain? Or have we forgotten Or are we to assume that the powers that be WANTED us to live with this pain, and bear our cross either till the end of sanity or life, whatever comes first?

In any which case, till the time Science finds a way to make “Eternal Sunshine” a reality, I guess each one of us will have to continue to bear our cross to our end, and live in the eternal fear of somebody else discovering the skeletons that we so deeply bury in the graves of our conscience.

The Revenge of The Bulk!

2006-02-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

As I pushed away the empty plate that carried the greasy remains of what used to be ghost dum biryani, I let out a sigh of sheer contentment. If Heaven was a food item, an excellent biryani with succulent morsels of mutton would probably be it. And as I lingered on at the table, wondering whether I could prolong my lunch hour by just another 20 minutes to indulge in something sweet, the regular maitre’ de seemed to read my mind and came up to me and suggested “The chef highly recommends the sweet dish today - hot gulab jamuns with a side order of vanilla ice cream, Sir. Nobody quite makes them like the chef, Sir.” And, as I loosened the belt on my trousers by one notch, I knew I was going to be late to work by more than just 20 minutes. Aaah, Heaven, sinful Heaven.

2 servings of gulab jamuns, (nobody could have had just 2 jamuns, they just melted in your mouth. In fact, the first bite that I took, I actually thought I had bit into just the syrup, until I could feel the taste of the jamun trickling down the back of my throat. Amazing!) and a couple of notches later, I started walking back to the car in deep content. The rest of the Friday looked too tempting to spend behind a desk, so I called in and told them I was going home, as I was feeling slightly out of breath and felt an attack of asthma coming though. I was due a lot of leave anyway, and had been stressed out working almost 16 hours a day for the past 3 weeks for a major event for one of our key accounts, so it wasn’t too much of a moral dilemma to lie. And come to think of it, I did realize that I was feeling slightly out breath, and was feeling slightly giddy. Must be all that rich food over the last few weeks. Business lunches, social dinners and with my taste for the good life, second servings of everything was a must. But I wasn’t worried too much. I had always been fat, since I was a kid, so my body was used to this. My heart just pumped faster than most guys my age, so it knew exactly what was expected of it. But, that out of breath thing had been bothering me a bit for a while now. Come to think of it, my calves ached while walking too. Must remember to check it out with my doc. Mental note, call up doc. Hope he hasn’t shifted his office in the last 2 years. It was conveniently located near a small bistro types, which served the best Chicken A la Kiev in Bombay. Just right. Just one cut into the chicken breast, and the melted butter just oozed out and mingled with the mashed potatoes and steamed veggies, with an aroma that seemed to fill the room up. Bliss. And I put my thumb and index fingers together and raised my hand to my lips, to make the universal sign of the kiss, the way the Italians do it.

And that’s when I noticed it for the first time. Strange, I thought, I never knew my hands were so large. Funny how you don’t realize these things earlier. I mean, they seemed slightly bigger than usual. Maybe its just my imagination. Anyway, I had reached my car, and I did the beepbeep thing that let the car know that I wanted to get in, and opened the door of the Ikon. I liked this car a lot, Comfortable and fast. But I was thinking of upgrading it to a bigger car. Lately it felt slightly cramped. I patted my belly and hind parts, and smiled to myself. I’m not all that bad, I mean, I wasn’t a Sumo wrestler. Well, not yet, anyway.

Hmmm…funny, had somebody fiddled around with the seat position in the car? I couldn’t seem to squeeze into the space behind the steering wheel. Nobody could have messes around though. I had just unlocked the car myself, and nothing seemed to be missing. Nobody around, the car park seemed empty. I slipped out off my jacket, got down on one knee and tried to push the seat back to the farthest it would go to, but it was strange. It wouldn’t go any further. Now I was irritated. You just cant grow that fatter, just by having one lunch. And I had driven that car myself in the morning. And was it just my imagination again or were my hands even larger than before? God, even the trousers seemed to be a lot tighter around my waist now. I tried to loosen up the belt further by a notch, but as my now definitely huge fingers fumbled with the belt, I was struck with the awful truth that there were no more notches to go. Damn, what’s happening today. Why is everything going wrong?

And then it happened, just like in the funny scary movies. I felt a sudden heaving feeling in my waist, and my stomach just bloated up by a couple of inches. And then a button popped off my new shirt and flew off into the distance. In other circumstances, it would have been quite funny actually. But, this was crazy! I MEAN BUTTONS DON’T JUST POP OFF AND FLY ACROSS THE STREET!!! Then another, and the top one threatened menacingly to do the same.

WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME!??!

Jacket in hand, I tried walking away from the car. I couldn’t get in it anyway. Not the way I was looking by now. Bloated fingers, a waist that probably measured halfway around the Equator, shirt partly open, trousers threatening to rip at the seams. By now, a cold sweat was running down my brow, and I had broken in to a run. Well, it was more of a fast waddle really. The way I had once seen a penguin do, in a funny video clip I had sent across to friends over email. But that was hilarious, this was plain FREAKY! I just couldn’t be seen like this. I had to find a place to hide. WHERE???

As I came out of the underground parking lot, I saw a coffee shop around the corner. I remembered the numerous days I had spent there nursing a coffee and chocolate doughnuts. DOUGHNUTS! ARE YOU CRAZY? I said to myself, HOW CAN YOU EVEN THINK OF DOUGHNUTS AT THIS TIME! I was doing the Buddy Love – Professor Klump transformation (you remember the scene, from The Nutty Professor, where his lips, hands and other body parts all start arbitrarily swelling up. The only difference was that I was already a Klump going for a new world record in the upsize Sumo wrestler category) and all I could think of was DOUGHNUTS!

Nobody in the coffee shop, and the bartender had his back turned to me, so I managed to slip in without causing any shocking reactions.

I could just picture the reports on the late evening news as they towed me away in a cage :

“The Missing Link found in Bombay City. NDTV reports.”

“KingKong masquerading as mild mannered event manager for past 10 years. Exclusive on Star News”

“Parents baffled. ‘He was found in the foothills of the Himalayas. We just adopted him’ sobs mother! Aaj Tak brings you the parents side of the story”

“Is it Elvis? Is it the Michelin Man?? No, it’s THE BULGING HULK! IT’S THE BULK!!!”

I waddled to the bathroom and barely squeezed in, and was relieved for a few moments that I could fit in comfortably. But the way things were going, for how long? Later. First I needed to catch my breath. I wheezed in and out, trying to get some air into my lungs. Barely. Something seemed to be in the way. Then I saw my reflection in the mirror, and realized that my double chin had now given birth to a couple of more baby chins of their own. No wonder I couldn’t breathe. Must be all that layer of flab. I quickly undid the collar button of whatever was left of my shirt, and tried to take in as much of air as I could. Slightly better. But my waist was still troubling me. Maybe I needed to let them off too. God, I hope I can get out of here without having to break the walls down. In the few minutes that I was in the bathroom, the distance between the walls seemed to have shrunk. But that doesn’t happen, and NEITHER DOES THIS. People just don’t BLOAT UP!!!

And just as I thought I was going to be stuck here for good, something started happening. I began breathing slightly better. The walls started going further away. Was I…? Could it be possible…? Yes, I was returning to my normal size. GOD, IN HEAVEN, I WAS BECOMING HUMAN AGAIN!!!

Around ten minutes later, I was back to my usual size. I still had slightly bloated fingers though, but not too obvious. My shirt was a mess. My trousers luckily were slightly better off. I tidied myself up, and prayed that the jacket sufficiently hid the plight of my shirt. Almost 30 minutes after I had walked into the loo, I looked myself in the mirror. And after what seemed like ages, I saw a person I recognized. But just barely. For, the strange truth was still trapped inside me. I would never be the same again. Who knew what would release the creature that lay within. What would trigger off the transformation from me, as I saw myself right now, into the Human Bulk? Would this be my secret forever, would this be my curse? Was I a comic book character now? Would I get super powers too? Maybe they could make small action figurines of me, with those stylish capes. Hmmm, I wonder?

With these and a million other questions in mind, I made my way out into the world again. A few people had come in by now, and as I made my way out, I was sure that everybody was looking at me. They could see the Bulk, I was sure of it. But actually nobody bothered to look at me for too long. Not more than the usual stares that came naturally for somebody my size. With a sigh, I walked up to the bartender, who knew me well. “You okay, sir? I noticed the door was locked for a while.”

Feebly, I nodded to him I was okay. “Feeling slightly off. Nothing much. Give me black, to go.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“Throw in a couple of those chocolate doughnuts as well. Its been a rough day.” Well, it had, okay. And if you cant have comfort food in times of stress, when can you have it?

As I stepped out into the real world again, I was almost back to normal. I must have imagined it, that could be the only explanation. Christ, I was sure it was stress, nothing more. I laughed. The Bulk. What a secret identity to have, I thought, as I bit into the last of the chocolate crusted sugar. Hmmm. Tastes good.

And then, to my horror of horrors, the last button on my shirt popped off…

The Bulk is back!

Band Aids for Friends

2006-01-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

Vacation is over. 2006 was born, and has now started taking its first baby steps into the future. All seems set for the challenges ahead. Hope you, and 2006 ahead, have a great time ahead. Take care.

Was working on an altogether different post as my first one of the year. But this one just kinda wrote itself, late one night sometime back. Bear with me on this one.

Being friends with someone, like being in love, means more than just spending time in each other’s company, cracking jokes, enjoying sundaes with whipped cream, or going out for long drives. Or even inspiring each other to do your best, or looking out for each other, or goading the other to be better, faster & stronger. It’s more than being there in times of trouble, or pulling each other through your lows, and sharing your dreams and your highs. Getting things right with your friends, that’s the easy bit. It’s also about getting things wrong. All the fights, all the mean things you say to each other, all the hurt, all the pain you cause one another. Creasing out the conflicts, that’s the real challenge. After you’ve lost your temper; and you’ve been hurt by things he or she may have done and said; and however right you think you may be; and however wrong the other person may be, it’s also about learning to accept it, and bear it. Not coz it’s easier that way, or because you can’t or shouldn’t walk away from friends, but because any person who is entitled to give you the pleasure of his company as a friend, is also entitled to give you the pain. If you learn to live with the comfort of the pleasure, you also need to learn to look beyond the pain. (I am not talking of forgiveness here. That implies being on a much higher moral plane, and frankly I find that very condescending. Forgiveness should be reserved for rare cases only, in cases of extreme hurt or severe injustice.) Cause, anybody you call a true friend, can’t be all that wrong about judging you, can they? Are you that bad a judge of character, that you don’t even know your own friends? So, if you get in an argument with someone you care about, and totally disagree on a particular point, they may be still be right, in their own way, can’t they? After all, if you’ve spent so much time with them, they can’t be totally crazy, can they? And you may be partly wrong, can’t you? After all, you ain’t God, are you? So, yeah, friendships, like life and any other relationship can hurt like a bitch. Even the good ones. But grin it, and bear it. Once you find friends who bother to care for you, through all the hurt and the pain, it’s worth all the effort.

All my friends out there, who I may have hurt inadvertently in life, all I can say is : I wasn’t thinking. I can’t guarantee I won’t do it again. I can only say it won’t happen intentionally. Try and look beyond that hurt, and give me another chance. Maybe we just got it mixed up. Let’s patch it up.

And, if you’ve hurt me, once in a while, and are feeling lousy, forget about it. I may have lost my cool when I was hurt. In times when the pain is too bad, I may be forced to show that I don’t care. That’s my weakness showing through. But believe me, I do. Call me when you need me, and I’ll be there.

At the end of the day, life’s as much about black and white as it is about rose tinted glasses. And all the hues of gray, and all the other colours in between.

Lessons From A Failed Romance - 2

2005-12-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

(Conlusion to my one of my earlier posts)

As he continued talking, I realized that deep down somewhere he still hadn’t let go. Maybe on the surface the wounds had healed, but deep down, those scars were still fresh as the day she had left him. But he was holding up. Hanging by, maybe, a thread, but his head was still up. And then he shared something with me that I decided was also worth a mention up here.

He is currently doing the wedding rounds, and his family is looking out for some suitable bride, although he is still not completely sure whether he wants to go ahead with it. They know of his grief, and although he admitted, they weren’t quite pleased with his actions, had supported him in his ordeal. He felt going along with their plan, at least exploring other possibilities, was the least he could do to express his gratitude. And, before I could ask him whether he was being fair to the girl he would eventually get married to, he replied, ‘I know what you are thinking. But I wouldn’t want to mess around with somebody else’s life. If I ever get married, the woman will know all about my past. If she feels that the rest of me is good enough to spend the rest of her life with, and she is willing to risk it by helping me clear out my emotional baggage, I know I won’t let her down. No dead bodies in my closet will make anybody else go through the emotional hell I’ve been through. I won’t transfer my pain on to anybody else.’

And what about your ex? Would you invite her to the wedding?

‘You know something, for a while after we broke up, I was browsing through my comp, I came across some 350 odd emails we had traded with each other over the years. Cheesy poems, corny love notes, things that meant the whole world to me, when I was in love. As I read them after she left me somehow they didn’t make much sense. If she had meant all those things she had written, how come we were not together anymore? Maybe they meant something, maybe they were just black letters on a white screen. As I stared at them longer, I figured out something. Those mails, those words, were like a dead body. Cold. Unemotional. The warmth of those words was gone. Like the dead body of a loved one, they existed physically. Just like I could touch a dead body, I could read the words over and over again. But, the feelings in them had died out, leaving behind only a corpse of meaningless words. However much you love somebody, their dead body lacks something – the soul. Its warmth is gone forever. A cadaver is as real as a living person, but you don’t keep a dead body with you forever. You cremate it and try to hold on to the soul and the spirit that it once possessed. I thought deleting those mails would be the most difficult thing I had ever done. They were my only link to a past I so desperately wanted to keep alive. But once I realized that they were nothing more than cadavers, it was relatively simpler. And after crying for her for so long, I realized that’s what she is to me. A cadaver. The love’s all gone. From her side at least. I still love her, but just like the way you continue loving a dead person. In the past. And you don’t invite dead people to your wedding. You just get on with your life after a while, and think of them a few times in the year, shed a tear, and put on a smile and move on. So, no, I won’t invite her to my wedding. If I ever get hitched, you will be invited though. So drink up. And let the dead past bury its dead. Tonight we celebrate the present.’

Soon after that toast, we parted ways for the night. I walked away with slightly more respect for him than I did before. Everybody needs to find love. Especially the ones who have experienced for one brief fleeting moment in life. It’s easier to live life in blissful ignorance, never knowing love. But if you’ve ever loved or have been loved, your life becomes that much more drab and joyless when love’s gone.

May he find his true love. Amen.

A Quiet Christmas Weekend

2005-12-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all my readers, and friends and family. Hope you have a peaceful holiday season, amidst laughter and merriment of your loved ones.

Am spending Christmas weekend at my favourite aunt’s house near Alibag. Lots of cousins, lots of noise, lots of fun. I am not sure how she does it, but this aunt, manages to keep a smile on in spite of everything. As a child, more than my mother, me and my sis used to be under her control. The closest character I can think of comparing her with is Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia. A caustic tongue, but a heart of pure gold. A perfect manager, who manages to share the last few bites of her amti-bhat or pav bhaji between six hungry, kids in their mid-20s with such diplomacy that everyone thinks he or she have the biggest bit. Patton, or any other general couldn’t hold a candle to her. God probably made a one in a million piece when he made her.

Anyways, as usual Alibag is good fun. Nothing about quite beats the simple joy of walking down a sandy beach at daybreak, with the ice-cold water gently lapping at your ankles. If you pay attention, you can almost feel time slow down to a nice comfortable crawl (only if you are an outsider, mind you. For those who live here, life begins before dawn, and ends long after the rest of the world has nodded off to sleep). As I walked down the beach early Sunday morning, I see sights that I miss in the city. The sun slowly coming up, breaking the still of the night, with the first rays of light. Dogs playfully running around, nipping at each other’s necks and legs. My sunken footsteps on the wet sand, leaving a disappearing trail behind me. On an impulse, with my toe, I write the name of the first girl I had a crush on. I stand there watching her name, etched in sand. As the waves roll in, her name is distorted a bit, and then as the waves roll back again, its gone. I smile and I move on.

After the walk, me and my cousins walked all the way to a small ramshackle canteen, where they serve the best vada-pav in the area. Well, we’ve been going there for so long that it tastes the best, anyways. The fact that the quiet lazy hamlet that we were in does not have any other vada-pav joint doesn’t even come to our mind. Like so many other things in life, you just accept and love things as they are. So, a quiet leisurely walk, and hot vada-pav later, we walk on home.

The rest of the day was equally well spent. All of us chipped in for preparing lunch. Somebody chopped onions and tomatoes and then left to play with the kittens. Another made parathas and then was dragged off by our kid cousin to see something spectacular he had discovered. Somebody else made the baingan ka bharta, and quietly left off for a stroll. Me, I made the chatnis. And then I walked off and fell asleep, only to be woken up for lunch.

And soon, it was evening, and a 3 hour drive brought us back to reality. Bombay. Home.

As I put my head on my pillow and fell asleep, the last thought that hit me was ‘Lazy Sundays are the best Sundays.’

Once again, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you. Hope you enjoy it with the ones who love you.

(I will return with the conclusion to my earlier post in a couple of days. Do come back.)

Lessons From A Failed Romance - 1

2005-12-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

‘Tis the wedding season in India, right now, and I’ve been scooting from one wedding to another the past few weeks. Tiring job, really, but hey, its better being on this side of the field, than the other. Anyway, weddings also have some unexpected benefits somewhere. A couple of weddings back, I chanced to bump into this old acquaintance of mine from college. We had been fairly decent friends back then, but had gradually lost contact over the years. As I had mentioned elsewhere on these pages, it’s always a pleasant surprise to catch up with people from the past, and we ended up with plans for a drink or two the next evening.

Most of the next day, I tried hard to recall the last few times we had met up. I think it was around the time I was in Pune doing my postgrad, during one of my frequent Bombay trips. I remember that at that time, he had been going strong with some girl from our college, they had been together for almost 3 years when I last met him. Possible marriage plans on the cards. I knew coz at one time, I was asked to resolve a debate on what they should name their first born. As I made my way over to Eightys that night, I wondered whether that debate had finally been resolved as yet. The timing would have seemed to be about right. I made a mental note to ask him that night.

A couple of beers down, and we had filled in the period gaps in each other lives over the past few years. “I am working…I did this…Did you know…?” He seemed a little out of touch with most people we knew in common, and it was mostly me, who was filling in the blanks. And, surprisingly, even after the second beer, he still hadn’t mentioned his girlfriend, which was quite strange, I thought. I really wanted to know, the name of the first born, coz I had a small private wager at stake. So, I quietly slipped it in conversation. And reality came as a fair shock to me.

She had left him. Walked out of his life, said she had fallen in love with somebody else. The night she told him, she had cried herself; said she couldn’t help it; and said she was sorry, but that’s the way it was. ‘We could still be friends’, he quoted her with such sarcasm, that for a second, I couldn’t recognize him. Cynicism was not his character.

There are times when you know how to deliver the perfect punch-line to the joke, and then there are the times when your tongue turns to sand inside your mouth. This was one of those times. When somebody tells you they’ve broken up with somebody they love, there’s very little you can say to them. Since I really didn’t know what to say, apart from the clumsy and so inadequate, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. It must have been so hard on you…” and the usual bullshit platitudes, I just remained quiet, and let him do the talking. He must have been silent for too long, all these years, coz suddenly it just came out like a tidal wave. Apparently, five years later she had realized that she was in love with someone else. And I was amazed just as I heard it from him, how anybody could do this to someone. Just up and leave one fine day. And then he told me, something that really cheesed me off, - the bitch I thought (and I really didn’t even know her that well) - A year after she broke up with him, she called him up, and asked him to meet up with her. He did, and she actually had the nerve to invite him to her wedding. Said that she should have never let him go as a friend. Christ, I mean get a life, lady! The guy really worshipped her, and this is how she hands it back to him! What has the fricking world come to?

“I was a mess, man. Really didn’t know how life was going to end. I mean, crying is only cool when Tom Hanks does it at the Oscars. For six months, I was just plain ugly. One fine day, I decided to write something, just wanted to write “KILLKILLKILL’’…you know rage therapy or something. After six pages of KILL, I ended up with a list of things Do’s & Don’ts if I ever get into another relationship.”

He showed me the list, and although I wasn’t really sure I understood everything he meant in it, I was intrigued. And he gracefully agreed to me putting it up on the blog.

Here it is, more or less as he had penned it down :

1) Always give your 100%. Even if the other person doesn’t. The satisfaction that you tried your best to make it work, will be the only salve, however inadequate, to the excruciating pain you will suffer when you break up.

2) Be gentle, not tough; Be strong, not weak

3) Never be hopelessly biased towards the one you love. You are as important in a relationship as your partner is.

4) Know when to put your foot down. Learn to say No.

5) Always find some time for yourself. Never lose touch with reality.

6) Write her silly poems, and buy her balloons and flowers.

7) Make a commitment before somebody else whisks her away. Love, and your lover, may not wait forever. Make your move fast.

8) Accept it when you have failed, and exit with grace. Even if you get the other person after losing your dignity, it’ll never be the same again. If you won’t respect yourself, nobody else will.

9) Don’t expect to loved back forever. Sometimes, love works only one way.

10) Never be too emotionally dependant on the person you love. If you love her truly, you wont allow her to be dependant on you too.

11) Don’t get addicted to talking on the phone for hours every night. The night it stops ringing, it’ll feel worse than hell.

12) Act Strong. Think Fast. Die Hard. (I had no idea what he meant by this, and he refused to explain. He just gave me a sly smile and told me to think over it. I will put it down to Cinemania, and the fact that he was sozzled when he had written this.)

This was more or less it, as best I could rely on memory and hastily scribbled on paper napkins. I agree with some, am not sure of a few, and am completely lost with the rest. But, these revelations seemed to have given him the courage to hold on.

(This is the first part of this post. He told me something else which i will be putting up on the next blogpost, within a few days time.)

The Voice in His Head

2005-11-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

He closes the door behind him, as he silently walks into the empty 1-BHK rented apartment. Eight months back, it used to be home; now it is just a place where he catches a few hours of troubled sleep some nights of the week. Now, he prefers the constant din that surrounds him in the rows of busy cubicles at the call center her works in.

He hangs up his keys, throws his jacket on the back of the chair, and grabs a bottle from the side table. Bacardi. Takes a swig. Its warm and flat, and doesn’t do him any good. He opens the fridge for some Sprite that’s been lying there somewhere. The small bulb in the fridge refuses to come on, and that reminds him that the fridge is still not working. The Sprite is gone anyway. He’ll have to make do without. Damn the fridge. She would have called the company, she would have known whom to call. She would have also known how much to pay the technician. She was smart, and knew how to handle ordinary situations. She would have known. She was extraordinary, in some ordinary way.

The bedroom still smells of her cheap perfumes, and her ittars, and scents. He hardly ever comes into this room. This was “her” room, more than “theirs”; it still is. Her taste is reflected in everything that sees. The vanity table is untouched. The hair brush, kept exactly where she had left it eight months ago, waits to be lifted by soft feminine hands and to caress gentle curls. Her small bindis – rounds, crescents, squiggles, stars, all colourful - still dot the top corners of the mirror. Her scents – in moments of weakness, he opens up those bottles, and takes in her fragrance once again – mix with the faint odor of her medication that still lie around, and fill the room up with the aromas of crushed rose petals, and slight decay. The damp smell of death, has still not lifted and is trapped in the room with perpetually closed windows, and lies as thick as the layer of dust that has settled all over her books.

He searches around for a moment, his hands reaching for something he knows is there somewhere. The semi-darkness doesn’t make it any easier to find things, and he fumbles around till he finds the bottle of Valium, carelessly thrown on the ground, and leaves the room. He doesn’t want to stay there any more than necessary.

Two pills and a drink. Some evenings, just the pills. But always music. Turned up loud. To drown her out. Her voice in his head. Sometimes, laughing, singing, saying “I love you, honey”, past conversations replayed, over and over again. Her sigh after their lovemaking. Her unique blushing laugher when he paid her an outrageous compliment. Her wild tantrums. Fights, debates, questions unanswered, he heard them all. Till he could take it no more. A beloved guest, who refuses to leave, and overstays her welcome. Waiting till he let his guard down at night, and then she would come calling again. Tormented by the lilt in her voice. That’s when the music helps. The pills to induce sleep. But the music to silence her.

Another night goes by, only slightly different from the rest. She’s upset today. She wants a small puppy, and he won’t let her keep one. He says she can’t handle the responsibility. She cries. She says he doesn’t love her. She threatens to walk off.

As the pills take effect, he turns up the volume on the headphones louder. She is still crying, but her sound is muffled now, as if she is miles away. Its no longer as loud as before. As hard as he tries, he can’t get the voice to stop. Far away, she continues crying. He cries too…

Death By Water

2005-10-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of the gulls and the deep sea swell
And the profit and the loss
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Lines from a poem, I studied in English Lit class back in college. The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.

People have called me morbid. I’v been termed as downright psycho. Crazy. Dark. Pessimistic. Somebody even suggested that as a child, my mother must have dropped me on my head a few times, to make such thoughts come in my brain.

All in reaction to the fact that, unlike most people who have a very difficult time reconciling with the thought of their own mortality, I take my fascination of death a little further beyond the ordinary. You see, I actually have fantasized about how I would like to leave this planet. And to spice things up a bit, not only have I occasionally fantasized about it, I know exactly how it would be.

The ocean. Vast. Limitless. Wise. Ancient. Powerful. Silent. Deafening. Serene. Much like its wisdom, even the adjectives to describe the ocean are infinite. And if I ever have a say in how I make the transition from this world into the, well, who knows where, I can see myself on a on a sandy strip of island, totally deserted, walking off into a stormy ocean. No living beings for miles. I continue walking until I’m standing almost waist high in the water, struggling to stay up, as strong waves try their best to fall me over. The sky is covered with rain clouds, the kind that paints the whole canvas of the horizon into shades of gray. Light. Dark. A splash of light there, and then deep gray once again. Rain is pouring down on me, and the sharp, stinging needles of cold rain drops have me drenched to the bone. As I pause to take in the expanse of the ocean before me, I see a wave swell up far ahead of me. Slowly, it rises above the rest of the ocean and as it moves towards the shore, towards me, it continues rising, till the crest of the wave is almost 10 feet above the ocean. Maybe more, but never less. And as it comes closer, it grows in size, till it seems to touch the clouds. I know this is it. The moment I have been waiting about, the moment I have seen in my dreams for so long. I start walking towards it; it looms right ahead of me, a vertical wall of water, the most gentle, yet the most ruthless element know to man. Water that purifies. Water that cleanses. The only element with the supreme power to give life, and the power to end it as well. And the last feeling that enters my being, as the powerful tidal wave engulfs me, is a sense of calm. A oneness with myself. Never possible in life. Only during that brief moment of transition, from this world to the next, can one experience that wonderful sense of oneness. Being one with Nature. With the Universe. And in that briefest of moments, with God. Being God.

Knowing that it’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you truly free to do anything.

But, that’s all a long way off. If ever. I can’t say that if I was given an opportunity to die my own death tomorrow, I would grab with open arms. Work have to be done, things have to be said, a life has to be led. It’ll be awhile before I’m ready. Or maybe never. As most will be well aware, youth’s romantic fantasies involving love, life and death are always susceptible to fall victim to the materialistic harshness of a more mature reality.

For now, the heart is young. Fear is secondary. And the ocean is as always, alluring. But death must wait, for later. Life still has a lot of reasons to live.

Blog Wars

2005-10-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Bloggers of the world unite!

For a while now, Blogging has been one of the final frontiers for the champions of “Free Speech with Responsibility”. However, I truly realized the full power and potential of the blog just today.

In a nutshell,

Some time back, Rashmi Bansal, editor of JAM magazine, put up a link on her blog (youthcurry.blogspot.com) to an article that had been published by her magazine. This article questioned the credibility of IIPM as one of the “premier business schools in Asia” , by systematically questioning certain claims made in their full page ads in national dailies. The article itself, was quite bland, without resorting to any sensationalism, and also gave credit where due. But, it wasn’t in any way defamatory, spiteful or in any ways malicious. However, some (or as most bloggers think, just one individual, using several identities) IIPM students took offence at this, and started what can now only be described as the “BlogWars”. They decided to spam Bansal’s blog with spite mail, and malicious comments, questioning not only her academic qualifications and journalistic skills (justified) but attacking her moral character, sexual orientation and more (abso-FUCKIN-lutely unjustified and undignified). Meanwhile, on the other side of the cyberforest, another blogger, Gaurav Sabnis (gauravsabnis.blogspot.com) took up Bansal’s case, and made some points he felt were justified in support of her story. Now, these deranged IIPM sycophants (or sycophant) turned their attention to Sabnis. IIPM sent him a doubtful legal notice, contacted his employer – IBM, and claimed that their students threatened to burn their IBM Thinkpads in front of the IBM office, if the company didn’t force Sabnis to retract his words. Sabnis, when he was informed about this by IBM, chose a higher moral ground, and instead of retracting the words he stood by, chose to quit his job at IBM, to avoid any undue hassles for them!

Here, let me state that I really cannot comment on the validity of JAMs and Sabnis’ claims regarding the credibility of IIPM. I really don’t know how good or bad it is, cause till now, I haven’t ever had reason to care. However, I do state my personal OPINION, (which, when I last checked the Indian Constitution, is still one of my basic rights) when I say I really cannot think much of an institute where the head honcho moonlights as a wannabe movie maker, and actually made a lousy movie during the academic year. But, that aside, how much credibility do you think one should have for an institute that holds a company ransom, blackmailing them to get one of their employees to retract a statement made on a personal blog. Even their legal notice to Sabnis, seems to be crafted by one of the budding movie writers who probably spawn in the green lawns of sidey B-schools, while erstwhile pursuing an MBA degree. (Now that’s what I call Dual Specialization – a pure filmi MBA. “Ma, main MBA college main First Class First aya hoon ma. Abhi to tum khush ho na, Ma! Tumhara sapna poora hua na, Ma? Ab to mujhe bata do mera baap kaun hai!”) And leave alone Sabnis, the comments made against Bansal on her blog were not just malicious, but some of them were downright threatening. Makes me wonder (again a personal opinion, so don’t try to sue me and stuff. I have the right to a thought, don’t I?) Are Assault and Battery 101, and Terror Tactics 505 compulsory courses at “Filmi B-School”?

The point I’m trying to make here, Sabnis and Bansal have the right to make their claims, and state their opinion. If you have a valid grievance against what they have to say, please air them out. Put your point across by all means, but legal and ethical. Not by attacking somebody’s personal preferences, putting up fake stories to discredit people or by using “strongarm” tactics to get your point across. Is the Institute scared of taking this case up to court, because they fear they have no case in the first place. Or are they just looking to some instant recognition, ‘coz everybody knows that today, even negative publicity is good publicity. Or are they just trying to block people from having independent views, because they are too scared that people might just see though a possible sham?

Whatever be the case, I think it’s a shame, that in what is the world’s largest democracy, the Right to Freedom of Speech and Independent Thought can be so easily condemned. And I think Gaurav Sabnis needs a round of applause for having the balls to stand by what he believes in. Not everybody would be able to quit IBM. Hats off to you buddy, may your tribe increase! If you ever stand for elections, count my vote in;)

The Long Walk

2005-09-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

I was rummaging through some old stuff in my closet, and along with some files and papers, I inadvertently pulled out some memories of college.

I still remember my first day at DGR quite clearly. Trying to lose myself in the myriad mass of humanity, the first few words I heard in college, happened to be ‘Abbe, chal be, dimaag ka dahi mat bana!’ I jerked my head just in time to see this Surd talking to his friend and I thought ‘God, am I ever gonna be so cool to say something like that and get away with it.’ A kid just out of school, I was completely out of tune with what was around me. Not wanting to run into any another ‘dimaag ka dahi’ types, I spent the rest of the day walking around campus with my eyes fixedly on the tips of my shoes, frantically trying to convince myself that everybody was NOT looking at me. You know, they never were watching me, but back then, it was hard to shake off that feeling, and it took me almost a year to walk around campus alone, without that knot in the pit of my stomach. And it took me even longer to finally say ‘Abbe chal be, dimaag ka dahi mat bana, kya?’ Although its been almost five years since I’ve graduated, every time I hear that phrase, I go back to that first day of college, and smile. I see a pathetic lone soul walking around campus with his eyes staring fixedly at the tips of his shoes. If I could, I want to tell him, “Here buddy, lemme walk with you awhile. Show you around the place a bit. And don’t worry, one day, you will say that very line. And more. And nobody will be staring at you then. Life’s gonna be okay”

But that kid’s long gone now, and all that’s left behind is me.

On my last day in college, contrary to my normal disposition, I took a walk around the campus. It took me more than an hour to cover the concrete walkway around the DGR campus. A distance of maybe 500 meters. A journey of 5 years. There were a lot of questions back then. What next? Where do I go? Who do I meet? Will I ever make new friends? And more importantly, will I ever see these people, with whom I had spent the last five years, suffering through boring lectures and hanging out on the college ‘katta’? Would life ever be the same again?

Today, five years out of college, I know the answers to some of the questions. Some answers I like; others I’ve had to make compromises with, and accept painfully.

Some questions still remain. Where do I go from here?

Some old questions have made way for new ones. Will I ever meet someone?

I’m a working twenty-six year old, and even now, I just wish there was someone out there, from an unknown future, waiting to tell me the same words I wanted to tell the kid.

“Relax, son. Life’s gonna be okay”.

Guys Like Me...

2005-08-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

I found this gem of a poem one night while I was searching for some poetry. Not everyone may get it, but to those who can identify with the poet, it's a masterpiece...I did!

Guys Like Me
by Jorge Campos

We’re the guys who love you truly and deeply.
We’re the guys who can give you whatever your heart desires.
We’re the guys who can pleasure you immensely, if only you look beyond our appearance.
We’re the guys who tell you how beautiful you are every other second.
We’re the guys who know exactly what to say in every situation.
We’re the guys who write those poems you love, and who you wish you knew.

We’re the guys you don’t notice or who you shun whenever you pass us by.
We’re the guys who you roll your eyes whenever we have the courage to say, "hi."
We’re the guys whose hearts break when you don’t want to dance.
We’re the guys whose personality you love and wish would be in Brad Pitt’s body.
We’re the guys who know exactly where every spot is and know how to touch it.
We’re the guys who ACTUALLY think about you all the time and ACTUALLY miss you.

We’re the guys who make the money even though you say you don’t care.
We’re the guys who spend half our money on you only because you’re you.
We’re the guys who want you to be happy and never be sad.
We’re the guys who want to massage you so YOU feel good, not so WE feel good.
We’re the guys who can’t wait for your phone call or can’t wait to call you.

We’re the guys you’re looking for when your boyfriend hits you or yells at you.
We’re the guys you’re looking for when you need someone to talk to.
We’re the guys you’re looking for when you need someone to cry on.
We’re the guys who are waiting by our lonesome for you to come to your senses.
We’re the guys who make you laugh at all the perfect moments.
We’re the guys who don’t care what you wear... either way you’re beautiful.
We’re the guys you think are pointless because of the way we look.

But no matter how bad you treat us and hurt us...
We still KNOW...
You’re still the most precious thing to us.
___________________________________

All you single people out there... If you think you are all alone in your loneliness, you are not. Take heart!

Fear

2005-08-09T23:16:00.000-07:00

Fear.

Fear scares. Fear grips. Fear paralyses. Fear terrorizes.

Fear of darkness. Fear of light. Of failure. Of success. Bondage. Liberation. Death. Life.

Of all of human emotions and feelings that make us distinctly human, fear is the most potent. It makes us more mortal than we already are. It steals upon us, and covers us in a cloak of insanity, when we least expect it. Some fears we know, some take us unawares. Some we learn to live with. Some we learn to ignore. Some fears motivate us. Some fears inhibit us. Keep us from being the real person, who we are. Fear of failing. Of becoming a loser. Ridiculed. Laughed at. Singled out.

But, in reality, fear liberates us. From ourselves, our surroundings. Our consciousness. Our demons.

Facing our fears, help us become the person we all want to be. It makes you know what you want to be.

Take a piece of paper and write down what you fear the most. You will know more about yourself than you did before.

You will know your mission in life.

I did. And now, I do. Know more.

I fear dying alone. Not having made any difference in the life of anyone.

I now know my mission.

Get to know your fear. Get to know your mission.

Time Travel...

2005-06-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

Well, me am back. As I begin to write this, “Tere dar par sanam chale aye…” plays in the background. Its been ages since I’v heard that number. Remember the movie it featured in…“Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Ayi”? God, how long ago was that? School? College? Definitely my school days, somewhere about 1992 or 93 maybe. God alone knows. Looking back, a lot of that time just seem to be faded memories of another me. Even, an alternate life maybe.

1993. Nineteen ninety-three. Spell it out, and it feels even further back. Life seemed so different back then. So real. Music was still an art, not a studio setup in the basement of a rich, untalented kid. Knowing how to sing and how to play at least one musical instrument were the bare qualifications, rather than “an added advantage”. Thankfully, the likes of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and were yet to be discovered.

MacDonalds had yet to hit the Indian shores. American style pizza was just about catching on. When you walked into a restaurant, and asked for a coffee, nobody asked you, “Cappucino, Americano, or Decaf?” Nescafe or filter. Take it or leave it. And yes, those were the good old days before inflation set in, when a 100 rupees in your pocket could buy you a really fancy dinner. And breakfast the next day!

If you had “Cable Television”, you walked with pride. People were still switching over from “Chayageet” to MTV. The Indian audience had newly discovered style icons, Nonie and Danny McGill, who had become coolest people on television. And does anyone remember the Wu-Man. Caught him doing some celebrity lifestyle chat show on CNBC a few years back. That’s the last I saw of him. Wonder whatever happened to him after that. Women and young girls were still gushing over that “Greek God” of the small screen, Ridge from The Bold and the Beautiful. And nobody in their wildest dreams had ever imagined that ten years down the line, Hindi soaps would become the opiate of the masses. And no, Hum Log and Buniyaad were NOT soaps, but social dramas! So, they didn’t start the trend!!!

Bombay was still Bombay and not yet Mumbai. Chennai was still Madras. Kolkata was still Calcutta. The cities, in spite of their old names, seemed cleaner, quieter and better places back then. Dance bars, I’m sure existed, but only in shadows. No self-respecting gentleman would be caught in once of those places, although I’m pretty sure nothing stopped them from visiting them. They still weren’t visibly upmarket, you see. And you almost definitely never heard of cops raping young girls. Well, maybe they did, but you just never got to hear about it. You could still hear lines like “…the Bombay Police Force - Second only to Scotland Yard…”

Life didn’t seem as hectic as today. People still found time for unscheduled breaks, quick trips to Lonavala and Matheran. Life wasn’t ruled by personality development classes, weight-loss programmes, tuition classes for seventh graders, to better prepare them for their tenth grade exams. Life was slightly drab, but filled with some simple joys. On any given Sunday, all one had to do was pick up a cricket bat in his hand, step out into the galli with his friends, and, at least for a short while, even a boring accountant was transformed into a Sunny Gavaskar. Come to think of it, young boys all over the country saw Sunny and Kapil-paaji, and thought, “One day, I’ll be like them and make my country proud”. Nobody thought, “If Pepsi doesn’t pay up enough, maybe I’ll endorse Coke instead. Should I go with Adidas, or Reebok? Airtel or Reliance? Who should I make my bookie???”

On a personal level, back then, life ahead was like a gift sitting under a brightly-lit Christmas tree…just waiting to be unwrapped! On many levels it still is, although the Christmas lights have now been put out and the shiny wrapping paper and ribbons have long since given way to the coarse cardboard packing inside. Back then, I was just another fat kid, who thought “Hey, ten years down the line, I’ll be successful, and rich and I’ll have a woman who loves me by my side”. Ten years down, and I am still obese, still single, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. At least some things in life haven’t changed over the years. Well, there’s always the hope of what the next ten years will bring. Ups and downs, exciting chicanes at times and sometimes narrow straights whizzing past, it’s been one helluva ride so far.

All these thoughts, because of a song that started playing on my Winamp playlist hours ago. Maybe I’ll play it again. Time travel felt so good for a while.

Nostalgia can be a dangerous disease. Can strike at any age and is almost impossible to cure. So, close your eyes for a bit, and think fifteen years back. Get in touch with the You that you left behind so many years ago. Get something back from that time? Memories of your first crush maybe? That favourite tune you had almost forgotten? Your old hangout that’s now given way for a shopping mall? Feels great doesn’t it? Feel like sharing???

Everyday Heroes

2005-04-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

More often than not, we seek our heroes in the realms of fiction and fantasy. Or if not, we turn to Nobel laureates, artists, men of great vision, power and wealth - with their achievements, they all vie with each other for the esteemed position of Role Models or as Channel V calls it, “Youth Icons”. Though there’s nothing wrong in turning to the world of fame or fiction to identify our models, we do run the risk of failing to recognise the everyday heroes that surround us all the time. Some of whom are people we know and interact with everyday, but never acknowledge their superhuman powers, simply because they do not hide behind masks or wear capes or well, they just can’t fly! Now what super hero worth his name can’t fly? Even Batman, with his trusty Utility Belt can wing it, when the occasion requires. So we assume, no super powers, no hero.

But, a few days back I realized that just because these ordinary mortal heroes that surround us everyday don’t have fancy powers, doesn’t make them any less extraordinary. Their inability to fly is replaced by a supernatural will to fight supreme battles with life, silently and patiently, one day at a time. Not for them the glory and power of fame, but the small comfort of their own achievements. Scars, if any, to be hidden from others, lest the world think them to be weak or indulgent. You see, a few weeks ago, I had breakfast with one of these mortal heroes of daily life.

I have known her for over 10 years now, back from the good old school days. Doctor Dee, that’s what I call her. She’s come a long way from just being the smartest kid in class, to being an intern doctor, working her way at a government hospital to becoming a DCH (Diploma in Child Health). And yet, she remains so much the same. She was and still is the one of the most amicable persons in I have ever known. Soft-spoken, funny, intelligent, she’s one of those rare breed of people that barely exist, even in fiction, today – a genuinely nice person, almost straight out of a children’s fairy tale book.

Whenever we meet up, which is say four or five times a year, she fills me in with stories of her “bacchus”, the kids she encounters daily in her hospital wards. Amusing anecdotes. How one of her patients, all of 9, announced to his family and all the doctors present in the ward, that one day when he was bigger, he was going to marry Doctor Dee. Or the “aye, kya bhailog?” and “jadu ki jhappi” type jokes that did the rounds of her hospital after Munnabhai M.B.B.S. came out. Happy stories of bacchus who had recovered from their illnesses, and excited about returning home. Others not so happy. Parents with no resources, looking up to doctors to somehow save their undernourished, underfed, and overexposed children. Mothers with TB and AIDS, dead after delivery, leaving behind crying babies. Children whom she had attended to, who didn’t make it through the night. Those who did, only to die two nights later. How quickly the joy of saving someone’s life can turn into angst as one helplessly watches another life slip away.

As she told me these things, I couldn’t even imagine the emotions that she, and other doctors, like her had to deal with, every single day of her life. I always wonder how would I react in a similar situation. And, always my reply has been, I honestly don’t know. I mean, what must it be like to play God, even in the most briefest of ways? Knowing that every single act that you do, can be the difference between life and death to somebody else. Having to remain on your toes 36 hours at a stretch, often without any thanks or any gratitude. Knowing that most people don’t remember doctors for their small, everyday victories that help their patients live to see another day, but only for their major failures. And yet, being in her ward, everyday, taking care of her bacchus, not because it’s her job, or because she gets good money from it, but just because. That’s it. And despite the pain and helplessness, making a difference in the lives of so many. And in spite of it all, remaining so humble. So human. But, I guess that’s what separates us mortals from the heroes. Any idiot can wear a cape and pretend to fly, but it takes the likes of Dr. Dee to become just another nameless, faceless ordinary Hero. One who will probably never ever win a “Youth Icon Of The Year” award, but yet makes more of a difference, than all possible Icons put together.

Hats off to you, kid! Keep it rolling. And remember, God’s on your side. All you’ve gotta do is ask…;)

Lady Hunterwali

2005-04-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, two weeks are up, and now my 15 day vacation from work comes to an end. Tomorrow, its off to work again for me. The same old daily grind, till the next vacation comes along.

Spent 5 awesome days in Goa this vacation. Saw and met a few interesting people there. But none more so than this one lady I met on my train journey back from Goa to Bombay. A journalist, she works for a leading English national daily. I happen to know somebody else who works there, whom she knew as well, and this became a kind of lead in to a very interesting conversation over the next few hours with … “Lady Hunterwali”. No, that’s not her name, but since I would prefer not to name her, I’ll use the nickname I had mentally coined for her soon after we got along chatting a bit more. Why Hunterwali? Well, in a world where most people, me included, would put up with “bad behavior” merely to avoid unpleasant confrontation with others, she goes on actively to make people realize that bad behavior in public is simply not acceptable to everybody. She is on a crusade to make people realize that public places are not littering grounds for coffee cups, chocolate wrappers, leftover food and other trash. All through the journey, every single time she saw somebody attempting to litter the pretty scenery whizzing past us outside the train, she would lash out her imaginary whip in the air and go “NO,NO,NO…NO…! There’s a perfectly good dustbin for that right behind the other door. Use that, please!” And she did so with such passion, that though nobody ever saw that whip, I was almost convinced that the victim of the verbal lashing actually felt the sting of the whip on his skin. I actually saw one grown man shrink in shame in front of this tiny person, and start walking towards the trashcan with his tail between his legs. Another co-traveller who had seen her in action earlier told me that, she didn’t necessarily have to use her voice as a whip – her fiery glare, aimed at a family guilty of littering in her home state Goa, was good enough for the job too. And from what he told me, that family wouldn’t forgetting their lesson - and that glare - anytime soon. Notch up another moral victory for the Hunterwali.

Well, Lady Hunterwali, as the old school poem goes, may your tribe increase. Keep on the good work, and here’s hoping that someday those forest fires stop.

Catching Up With Old Friends...

2005-03-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

It’s always a great feeling to catch up with friends…especially if you havn’t been in touch for awhile.

Just before I began writing this, I finished chatting with a close friend of mine, who’s now happily married and settled in the US of A. Hi there, DDP, if u read this sometime, I’m still gaining back my natural colour:) (private joke, guys, look away:)

I have always been reluctant about making friends all my life. The way I look at it is, I don’t choose them to become my friends, neither do they choose me. A friendship cannot be made, it just happens… In fact, if I look back and try and recall my first encounters with people who are today my closest friends, I think it’s a miracle that I’m still in touch with them, let alone be grateful that they are so close to me. I remember how my best friend, now all the way in Australia, almost ruined my nice pair of carefully guarded, clean trousers one rainy day in college, when he came up running behind me, yelling out my name, splashing puddle water all over me. All could think of at the time was, “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU MUCKING UP MY TROUSERS, YOU IDIOT!”. To this day, he denies having done that, and to this day, we still have a great laugh about it. Another friend and I began our friendship by telling each other what we hated the most about each others guts, and almost 10 years later, we’re still doing it…And probably will for the next 10 years to come. A third friend, at one time back in school, was almost a sworn enemy. People couldn’t have trusted us in the same room with a loaded gun. But again, over the past 5 years, he’s become a integral member of my support group. Who knew, back then, that one day, some strangers would become so important in my life. And their presence in my life would make me feel important.

I always think it’s an amazing feeling to catch up with old friends. Nothing beats the feeling when the phone rings, and I can’t recognize the number, and somebody on the other end goes “Guess WHO?!?” Some of the most memorable moments in my life have been what many would call some of the most ordinary. Getting a call from a friend in Bombay, when I was in feeling low and miserable in Pune. Making her listen to me play the guitar (I am generally considered as the world’s worst gat artist) probably made her feel bad, but it sure as hell, made me feel better:) Or the time, I hesitantly called up a person whom I’d been out of touch with for over five years, and we agreed to meet for dinner. Today, almost four years down the line, she is now a close friend, and sometimes I wonder, what would have happened if I hadn’t made that call. I just got lucky, I guess. Another time, I remember when I bumped into this friend, with whom I had lost touch with after college, on a crowded Bombay street. We both had errands to run, and things to do, but we ended up reminiscing about the good ol’ college days over dinner and coffee that evening. Neither of us had planned out that evening, but it just became a great one on its own.

And that’s how it should be. You shouldn’t plan your friendships. You can’t tell somebody, “I will be you forever friend” or “lets promise to be best friends for life” or something equally cheesy. You just let the relation take its own twists and turns, and somewhere along the way if you get separated, it’s okay. Like I’ve said before, all relations must change, if they are to remain alive. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes for the worse. That’s a given. Sometimes your friends are by your side, sometimes they’re not. But, one thing is certain, if you need a friend, life will find a way to get you back together. And someday you’ll get a call from a number you won’t recognize and the moment you hear the person on the other side say “Guess WHO?!?”, you’ll know it’s your friend. And even, if you haven’t spoken to that person in ages, you know it’s just gonna be all right.

Hello, people! Hope your phone rings soon. And while you’re waiting, just pick up the phone, and call up some friends you haven’t spoken to in a while. They may be expecting your call…

Life's Unanswered Questions...

2005-02-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

“…Tonight, our bed is cold, lost in the darkness of our love,
God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of…”
Bruce Springsteen. A Brilliant Disguise.

In the night time, when there is nothing to do, I still think of her.

Its been four years now, but I don’t think I can remember one single day when I haven’t thought of her, at least for one fleeting second. On the bus back home from work, when I pass the restaurant where we used to grab a soup and dinner. In the library, when I pass the section on English poetry. Anytime I watch a Rahul Bose movie. Whenever I drink black coffee, which is all the time. Anytime I hear Annie’s Song. Each time “Casablanca”, her favorite movie, comes on television. In fact, I still think about her almost every second I am alone. Out of sight, out of mind, they say. Ya, right, tell me another!

The strangest thing is : I spent four years with her. And today, four years after she’s left me, I think about her everyday, but I just can’t remember her face. Did she have straight hair, or gentle curls? Was it jet black or did she ever have them streaked? Did she have that lilt in her voice, or is it just something that my imagination made up in these last four years? Sometimes, I wonder, whether I actually do miss her. Or is it just the thought of her. Am I still in love with her, or am I in love with the idea that I was ever in love with somebody, and more importantly the notion, however false, that somebody was in love with me? Where and how does one draw the line and say, enough is enough, I will now get on with my life. Time, they say (they say a lot don’t they?), is the Great Healer. Just who decides how much time is enough time? Is four years long enough to mourn for a lost love and lifetime of shattered dreams? Am I a “loser” just because still hold on to precious memories of the past. All my friends who knew about us, now scoff at me for still holding on to them. But they were precious to me, those times that we spent together, saying I love you over and over again. The only difference was, one of us meant it, and the other…well, if she had meant those words, she would have still been with me now, wouldn’t she?

A breakup with a loved one, be it a lover, a friend or family, can be highly damaging to one’s state of mind, to say the least. It also leaves one with a lot of questions. Especially if it is least expected. We need to remember that even the most strongest relationships change, for better or for worse. That’s what keeps them alive. To the one left brokenhearted, there are only two options before them. Ask yourself the same question over and over again – WHY??? It’s a question that mostly remains unanswered. Its just a way to try and to put our minds to rest, “this happened because, that went wrong…Had I just said I love you more often…Had I just got her that diamond ring she wanted…Had I just been more prettier, he would never have strayed…” You can spend an eternity, but you’ll never find an answer to that “Why?”, none that satisfies you anyways. Letting go on the other hand, will hurt, but it’ll preserve your sanity. As someone once said, “If it doesn’t break you, it’ll make you stronger…” Letting go may be the one thing that keeps us from crossing that line from sane to insane. Call it whatever you like, give it any cliché, it’s just one more lesson in the game called Life.

Then, the only question that comes to mind is : how do you learn to let go…?

(The above is part imagination, part fact, part something i understand, part something that i don't. in true "mindspace..." style, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that...)

Blog Virgin No More...

2004-06-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

Thats it! Blog Virgin no more...Can you believe it, i didnt post anything anything for 4 days after creating the bog, coz i just didnt know what to put up...And i was so scared of getting off to an unimpressive start that i almost didnt start...and how many times have i, we all in fact, done this before? Get so scared of making a fool of ourselves, that we just wait on the sidelines, doing nothing, understanding nothing? watching everything go by? well, maybe this aint as impressive a start as i'd have hoped it would be, but its a start nonetheless...and thats better off than before...welcome to the EspiritNoir mind space, welcome to my world...