wanderer

A monsoon of quiet loss

2011-04-19T11:40:00.001-07:00

A ramshackle heart.

A balcony.

And monsoon.

Rain that brings with it memories of joy and love, now long gone. A breeze that carries the notes of freewheeling days, splashy puddles, raindrop-fresh giggles and crystal clear convictions. A day that reminds me of Before. Before the anticlimax, before the petering out, before the endless vacuum.

Most things in life don't come to an end with a flash and bang, with drama and effective stage exits. They just...fade. Not with a bang, but a whimper - isn't that how the world ends?

Fleeting, fleeting love. Oh-so-deceptive as it first makes its way into your heart and your life. Whispering of ever-afters and rock-solid permanence. Singing of beloved tales and classic films that seem to bear testimony to the sheer dependability of love. Lulling you into believing in the magic. Love - it makes the world go round, it's all you need, you can't buy it, it'll see you through the time of cholera, it is a story in itself, it's hard on the knees, it bites and bleeds and lives and dies and begs and pleads.

So when it finally happens, when it's-there-one-minute-and-gone-the-next, you feel like you've been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of you. It's not like it went kicking and screaming, on the heels of terrible betrayal or irreconcilable differences or one of those equally loaded phrases. It left quietly, one morning, while you were making toast for breakfast. And you try desperately to retrieve it, rescue it, bring it back - at any cost. But it's gone - it took a one-way ticket out and you're left wondering why. And the devastation is heart-stopping, because it's the aftermath of a storm so silent that you never even realized it was there. It's left rubble in its wake, a debris of pointlessness and dreams no longer dreamed, of songs that just sound like empty words, of broken promises, of dangling conversations that are punctuated with sentences that mean nothing. It is a wreckage that reeks of absence, of failure - not of high-strung emotions like anger and grief and guilt. A quiet collapse. Love: a house of cards that the slightest random bit of breeze can topple with a soft swoosh.

Thus, the balcony.

And the ramshackle heart.

And a monsoon of loss.

Every time.

2010-12-21T03:28:00.000-08:00

And I go for it every time
Just like a heavy drinker
I go for it every time
Hook, line and sinker

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when something changes. Can you look back and remember?

The moment you grew up?

The moment you understood the finality of death?

The moment you first realized that an alcohol-induced

The moment you fell in love for the first time?

The moment you fell in love for the last time?

The moment you stopped believing? Or the moment you started?

One would think we'd learn, we'd know better, we'd be once-bitten-twice-shy by the time we've been around long enough to have gone through all of the above.

But we don't learn, do we?

And she'll go for it every time
Putting herself in peril
She'll go for it every time
Lock, stock and barrel

Becoming your own sequel

2010-07-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

If it can be broke, then it can be fixed
If it can be fused, then it can be split
It's all under control
It's all under control

Do we lose fragments of ourselves along the way?
Does the compromising, the conversation, the cynicism take its inevitable toll?
Are the losses worth the end result? From the days and ways we choose not to remember, to the people we don't like to be reminded of?

All you need is time.

Castles in the air.
"Happily ever after."
Magical myth making enmeshed in our dreams and aspirations, thanks to Disney, romantic comedies, Bollywood blockbusters, and trashy novels devoured on airplanes.

The dust has only just begun to form.

New and shiny and pretty.
I can almost taste the glimmering joy.
This is how it's supposed to be.
Is it too late? For me, for you, for us?
Have we seen too much, done too much, said too much?
Have we made it impossible to create a fairytale conclusion for ourselves?

Mmm, what you say?
That you only meant well?
Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
That it's all for the best?
Because it is.
Mmm, what you say?
That it's just what we need?
You decided this.

Can I recapture myself?
Can you recapture yourself?
Are we irreversibly altered?
Is innocence forever lost?

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

What about the promised wisdom? The promised lessons learned from experience? The honing of spirit that pain is supposed to bring with itself?
It is hard to feel anything except like a patient etherised upon a table.
Was the story supposed to turn out like this?
Really?

i carry your heart with me
i carry it in my heart

There is no escaping it.
There is no going back to the start.
There is only change - now and for ever after.

There's still time for you,
Time to buy and time to lose
There's never a wish better than this
When you've only got a hundred years to live.

This is it then, I suppose.

I have become my own sequel.

Subtle, insiduous, and maddeningly insistent (I)

2009-08-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Don't look for structure in this one. Or plot. Or beginnings and conclusions. Or articulation of already-formed thoughts and storylines and concepts.

I have none of those things to offer at this point in time. I'm too busy trying to make my way through a maze of thoughts that have gotten too numerous and inarticulate to make for a decent blog, forget a decent night-time conversation with the self. So this one is for that old cliche: resolution through words.

There's enough that comes to mind.

There is suffering and illness. There is misery and hospital beds. There is the ICU - a word that struck terror in all of our hearts at first, till we became resigned to it in the weeks that followed, and then said "ICU" in the same tired voice we had first heard the receptionist say it.

There is hope and then the loss of hope, and then hope again and then the loss of hope again, and then- then, there is death. My first conscious encounter with death, a loss that matters in a way that none before it have. The pain of it is sudden and overwhelming. But it can be dealt with. Because of the reassurances we have, said constantly by everyone to everyone till they become the mantra in the weeks afterward: "a long and fruitful life", "released from his suffering", "better to go like this than have stayed on without independence"... It is made easier by the fulfilment of his last request. A family mends itself slowly and surely, as it comes together to honour its greatest and most enterprising member; but it is too late for the architect of this process to enjoy what he has brought about.

There is an already half-disappearing image of an old man sitting in front of his dead brother's photograph and crying for forty lost years. His regret is so powerful that you recoil from him, and you shudder and hope you will never taste regret like that, so intense that it is almost acidic. And there is a renewed commitment to apologising- sometimes even when it's not your fault. Because the price of being righteous (or even right) is just too terribly high sometimes.

Then, Agra. We are here because this death needs to be accorded its proper place, its proper meaning by the framework that sheltered this giant of a man when he was alive. It is a misty, cold morning. Winding deserted streets at the crack of dawn. A hall full of men and women meditating in unison. The head of this religious sect believes in the power of collective energies. Afterwards, there is a field of crops that are ready to be harvested. And there are plenty of scythes. It is almost surreal. I am in a field in Agra at 7:00 AM on my 24th birthday. (That has to be one of the unlikeliest autobiographical sentences I've ever written.) The harvesting is a community project run by the sect- we all sit down and proceed to cut the crops with scythes- it turns into a bit of a competition, a game, and we laugh and talk while quickly mastering the art of harvesting, as more seasoned members generously pass on bits of wisdom to us ("Make the cut right at the bottom of the stalk- no point wasting the last few inches!"). We are shushed at regular intervals by senior overseers, and our group (which ranges from a 19-year-old to a 62-year-old) subsides into chastened silence at periodic intervals- just until someone cracks the next joke in a muttered overtone.

The head of the sect arrives. A number of people in the field have come because there are problems they want his advice about. Some have come to share good news. A stern senior member makes us all gather round as he explains the process to us. There are rules and guidelines - "Don't talk", "Don't shuffle", "Don't interrupt" and so on. I feel like we're in school; no-one has spoken like this to me in many years. But it seems to fit- in this place, in this context, perhaps it could only be this way. We line up, waiting for the head to reach us. Progress is slow, even though none of the devotees speak. Why does no-one speak? Because they have already given short summaries of their problems to the religious committee earlier- and anyway, the head of the sect is omniscient so there is no need for conversation.

Finally, he reaches us. Fragments that will stay with me (and certainly with everyone else who was there) all my life.
"He was a good, good man."
"He went too early."
"All of you stay together."
"He did such good work. All these years that he managed Delhi...we've never had a problem from there."
"All of you stay together."

And that...was that.

More later.

Lost and Found

2009-01-06T00:39:00.000-08:00

“Everyone belongs somewhere.”
“Maybe not everyone…. Maybe some people just get lost.”

There is a certain amount of charm in being that lost person. It’s undeniable. The whirlwind of cynical freewheeling, the moments of crisis on windy terraces, the bitterness of vodka as a Friday night savior, the complete disdain for long-term consequences, the vaguely haunting gestures of trying to get your bearings, the gloss of dismissive statements, the satisfaction of cutting sarcasm, and the haggard, yet real, smiles exchanged across a room, across a lifetime, across a dimension that is typically impassable…

There is also a sense of vacuous loss when you transition from being lost to being found, being fine, being happy…. Not nostalgia exactly. That would be to romanticize a time that cannot – should not – be romanticized. But even once the rose-tinted glasses have been relegated to the heap of dusty memories … there remains a slippery sense of having lost something in the present joy.

Lost…what? Is it the general madness? Or is it the rollercoaster extremes that lost people seem to thrive on…? And even there, to clarify, it’s hard to miss the highs, because those exist even when one is happy – almost exactly the same ones. So, impossible as it may sound, maybe it is the rock-bottom despair that is missed…? Of course, it makes no sense. Except in the most roundabout of ways…where it becomes clear that what binds us all together as a race is a complex whole of pain and happiness. And all of a sudden, it feels like only half the connection is being made. Isolated from the pain, and privy only to the content pleasures…

Humanity kicks in at this point, and it becomes easier to identify with the young boy at the signal, the tired-looking receptionist, the gas-tragedy agitators, the aging patriarch, the anguished colleague, and the numb friend. It is almost as if the capacity for pain needs to be reinvented...through improvised methods…in case one becomes totally alone in that solitary bubble of joy.

So the tears well up, almost inexplicably… at advertisements that you know are manipulating all the right strings… at songs that you would have classified as sentimental nonsense in another lifetime… at distant situations – the kind where it was easier to be a harsh realist when you had your own situations to deal with… at the third drink when you know perfectly well that you’ll stay stark sober for another two at least – but the mind plays tricks on you, bewilders you, leads you down that maze of sorrow you have inhabited once upon a time… Fighting your enemy is easier when he or she exists outside of you, isn’t it?

Have I got it right? Or is it just easier to complicate something and turn it into a shimmering smoky fable than to accept that, maybe, we’re just a dissatisfied race without the capacity to be truly happy…? Maybe the grass always is greener on the other side…? But, no… I cannot believe that… Reveling in joy, but having melancholy tug at you once in a while confirms the best of anyone’s humanity, does it not? In an essentially solitary existence, imagination is our only source of compassion… And how can we (and why should we) deny the best part of ourselves?

Phoenixes and Futility

2008-08-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

Surely you remember the betrayal.
From….was it yesterday?
Last week?
A few months ago?
Or has it been years now?

Have you cried? Paced up and down? Woken up with a sudden fearful start?
And was it because of the bitter hurt of being betrayed, or was it because of the cold metallic guilt of betraying someone else?

Got a secret, can you keep it?
Swear this one you’ll save…

An inevitable temptation to re-examine and rethink earlier, black-and-white statements about “I’d rather be honest” and “I’d rather know than be deceived”…

I see her standing on high moral ground… Lonely… Alone… With wreckage and debris all around her, and no possibility of magical phoenixes.

Truth yields fleeting satisfaction.
And then…
All that’s left is regret.

Surely you remember the regret.
The incessant “why-didn’t-I-just”…
The ruthless reconstructions….the defining moment just before the-point-of-no-return.
Wondering why you did it.
And wondering why you told.

Surely….life would have been simpler, happier if some things had been concealed….secreted….locked up in a neat, shiny treasure chest and taken to the grave…

But…

…no-one keeps a secret
Why when we do our darkest deeds, do we tell?
’Cos everybody tells…

Remember the look on your friend’s face?
Or was it your lover?
Or did you look into the face of your brother?
Or perhaps, your sister?

Were you speaking?
Or were you being spoken to?

Snapshots veer into the haze.
Years of midnight snacks, and gossip sessions.
Endless phone-calls.
Being held.
Falling over with laughter on the staircase.
Car-rides with comfortable silences.
Being supported.
Cold beer and togetherness.
Road trips to the mountains.
Being cherished.
Barbecues on the terrace in winter.
Finding a special song.
Being loved.

All that is remembered in those moments is already tinged with nostalgia.

And did you wish, later, that you hadn’t been able to work up the courage to do it?
Because….it wouldn’t really have changed anything….would it?

I’ll keep you my dirty little secret
Dirty little secret…
Don’t tell anyone or you’ll be just another regret
Who has to know…?

He told me his universe altered when it happened. When the betrayal happened that is, not the telling of it. She was an old childhood friend….it was a weak moment….it meant nothing….and it was certainly a one-time-thing. There really wasn’t any point in telling the love of his life what had happened. Things were going well, and they were going to get married in a year or so.

Who has to know, when we live such fragile lives
It’s the best way we survive

Regardless of all that, his world tilted.
Sleepwalking through the next few weeks. Zoning out of conversations.
Not thinking.
Not breathing.
So very still…
River turned stone...

Are you hypnotized by secrets that you’re keeping?

“Things came back into focus only when I told her.”

She left him. He’s currently working himself to death and, when he’s not doing that, he’s drinking enough to send himself to an even earlier grave.

“The price of living an honest life,” he cracks a sardonic grin.

Ah.

“At least I have that.”

At least you have that….

And so, after all the beating around the bush, and all the insensitive allusions, and all the questions that must have made you cry….at last now, let me answer your question to the best of my abilities.

I don’t know whether you should tell, or not.

Either way, there will be repercussions that we cannot even imagine at this point in time. Either way, life will change. Whether explicitly, or in subtler, hidden ways.
Consider him. Consider your life together.
And then… Turn inward, and investigate your own heart.
What would you want? From him?
Absolute, razor-sharp honesty? Or a tenacious weighing of factors, determined by circumstance, implication, and so on?
Therein, I suspect, lies your answer, or at least a shadow of it.
What you want is a marker of what your want your equation to adhere to.
Let that help you decide.

That’s the best I can do.
And when we look back, many years later, hopefully we will discover humour even in this situation. For now, let the pain hone you.

We all do the best we can.
And, if it’s any comfort….
Everybody hurts.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

2008-05-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze

I love that line by Salman Rushdie: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers

Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?

W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby

But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.

Serpentine Fiction

2008-05-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

And all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be
Are full of trees and changing leaves...

Addictions are old friends. And sometimes you just don't want to let go.
Say, one is addicted to being a million different people...

In one day, say the 1st of May 2008, you can...
wander through london in the great frost
fall in love
traipse around on a jamaican beach
lose yourself
eat the best fried chicken in the world
be granted eternal life
commit heinous sins of darkness
go to turkey as an ambassador
find yourself
get jilted
win literary awards
fall in love again (the repetition here is inevitable- people seem to do this a lot)
sail into magical oceans
commit suicide
be resurrected
win a war
lose your mind

Pure.
Phantsmagoria.

And then you can go out and get a drink, and live yet another life.
Icing on cake.
Fantastic.

But (and there is a but).
If you're used to living many lives, you start to explore the possibilities in your own, right till their logical conclusions.

Say there is an ongoing something in your life.
Well. I have already lived this something out to its various possible ends in my mind.

I have seen the worst that may happen
I have said what I might say.
I have foreseen heartbreak.
I have already cried.

This is substantially different from being "prepared for the worst".
It means you have already lived through the worst.

The ideal blissful conclusion is also lived out of course.
This again, is different from "hoping for the best".
It means you have already lived the best that can be.

But the cynic in an addict persists in dwelling on the former... Illusions can only sustain you so far, right?

If you have already walked down the paths that lie before you... do you convert it from the possible to the probable? Even if it is just in your head?
Does thinking about things make them happen?
Can a private performance lead to a real change?

A superstitious cynic...?!!

No wonder the madness of literature beckons.
Some temptations are impossible to resist.

And the addiction spins out of control.
Mortality, time, and space collapse.
Lives must be lived.

Valentine Confessions

2008-02-15T03:49:00.000-08:00

To write about love is... simplistic... reductive... implausible... incorrigible... Irresistible!

Did I really think that something this perfect existed?

Sure. In the same way that someone who has never been outside of the city of their birth believes in foreign lands. But to know it... To taste it every single day... That is a different country altogether... an imaginary homeland, located and conquered.

Am I frightened as I write this?
Hell, yeah.
Scared to death as I consider the possibility of how it will feel to return and read these words in the hypothetical, impossible scenario of 'it's-not-working-out'.

But if there's one thing I have identified about this sunburst it is this: I have never been more vulnerable, or more fearless than I am in this moment in time.
Courage to face what lies ahead... Love across oceans and trudging across the deserts of millions of inevitable dusty hassles... And fragility to the extent that I cannot look beyond this...

For the love... the faith... the dreams...
For making it real, and keeping it real...
Happy valentines darling

And before you ask, of course it had to be a day late.
Delay is our bond.

All you need is time

2008-02-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

If it can be broke then it can be fixed
If it can be fused then it can be split
It's all under control
It’s all under control

Are you telling me you don’t revel in your moments of darkness?
Does your depression hold no saving grace?
Is that midnight drink not being stored for future nostalgia?
Can it be that you’re not capering through the hollow years?

I have no fond recollections of the first time I met her… Of the moment that sealed our friendship...

I do however, remember the psychological rollercoaster that we all got into together.

Has someone ever walked up to you, demanding your strength?
Your best friend perhaps?
A lover?
Your sister?
A stranger?

There is a certain charm in being wanted by people when they’re coasting through jaded valleys of grief. And I have seen ridiculous numbers of people lean on her.

My favourite moment is still the same.
A Delhi nightclub… Allegiances are declared, battle-lines are drawn…
And she is victorious simply because you cannot beat sheer nonchalance combined with a complete lack of tact and duplicity.
How much we laughed that night..! Collapsing onto the sofa in the comforting glow of Peach Schnapps and sisterhood.

But…it took its toll, didn’t it?
Every time it happened, they sapped a little more of her strength.
Her eyes were brighter than ever but she was tiring…

Have you ever been tired?
Tired enough to want to never get out of bed?
Tired enough not to care where you wake up the next morning?
Tired enough not to care whether you wake up at all?

Do you enjoy the exhaustion as well?
Chances are it will lead to a renaissance after all…?
Maybe… Maybe not…
Sometimes it’s just too hard to find your way out of a maze of diamonds, dust and demons.

I’ve got to take it on the other side

You will, you know. Find your way that is. Some people get lost. But you won’t.

You’re stronger than you know.
Oh I know you’re already tiring.
Your voice is your disguise.
Your deception is your armour.
Distance…your weapon?
Against…us?

It’s time to come home.
Come home to the hugs.
Come home to the love.
Come home to the music.
Come home to the dancing.
Come home to darkness, and to light…

Being a little tired is better than being nothing at all.

Come home, and we will do it differently this time round.

If it can be lost then it can be won
If it can be touched then it can be turned
All you need is time
All you need is time

Resolve to...what?

2008-01-02T02:53:00.000-08:00

There’s always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it’s hard at the end of the day...

Resolutions…

Resolve to…what?

To quit?

To resurrect a lost friendship on the debris of nostalgia?

To save? Yourself, or someone else?

To laugh more?

To buy less expensive shoes?
To buy more expensive shoes?

To heal?
To break?

To travel to the places less-traveled?
To travel to the places well-traveled?

To take more photographs in blackandwhite?

To leave?
To stay?

To crash? Into whom?

To make decisions?
To be willing to have some decisions made for you?

To try?
To stop trying?

To remember, and to forget?

To learn how to bake sinful-chocolate-cake?

To persist?
To desist?
To resist?

To be less Penny Lane?
To be more of someone else?
To be yourself? Alwaysalwaysalways?

To see more of your grandparents?

To dance more?

To destroy that which is comfortably numb?
To preserve that which is comfortably numb?

To start?
To conclude?

To be pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie?

To leave the dark cold hotel rooms?

To stay focused?
To stay distracted?

To face the music?
To escape?
To walk the line?

To not fear the endlessness anymore?
To love the wheel of love, life, and laughter?

To chase?
To flee?

To get a tattoo? Finally?

To locate the appropriate song for death?

To whirl and freewheel?
To savour?

To speed up?
To slow down?

To search? And find?

To be the storm? And the anchor?

Let me be empty
And weightless... and maybe
I’ll find some peace tonight...

Do you remember?

2007-12-17T00:22:00.000-08:00

Remember? Do you remember? Do you? Remember?

Insistent.
Constant.
Annoying.

Do you love me or do you not?
You told me once but I forgot.

Vases that give the impression of being made up by once-shattered-and-then-put-together-again-glass… With millions and zillions of veins running through them…

For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.

Do you remember?
Do you?
Do…?

Too many choices…

Saturday or Sunday?
Black or white?
Turquoise Cottage or TGIF?
Train or plane?
Levi’s or Pepe?
Your place or mine?

Some choices are easier to make, than others.

Do you choose to remember, or not?
Poor Orlando! When he was betrayed by the Russian princess, he went to sleep for a week. And when he awoke, the Russian princess was a hazy recollection. And he was free once again.

Must you die for a little while in order to live again?
Must you sleep for a little while in order to forget?

Do you want to forget?
Do you need to forget?

Some dance to remember
Some dance to forget

Why do you dance?
Oh. Wait.
Let me alter that.
Do you dance?
With the LIIT and the martini and the Marlboro and the madness and the melody and anyone-who-happens-to-walk-into-your-arms??

When you wake up the next morning, do you remember the night before?
Really?
And if you remember, do you want to forget?

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Adam and Eve fall with knowledge… Yet, somehow, “knowledge is power”… Who said that? I forget… It doesn’t really matter…

…hee spent his whole life trying to forget…
…drank away her memory…little at a time…
…never could get drunk enough…to get her off his mind…
…until the time…

Oh, that epiphanic moment!
Is it a moment, really? Or a process…
Has it ceased to matter?
Are you just a cynic tonight?
Or are you reborn, renaissance-d?
Have you found the poetry in the pain?
And are you willing to immortalize it in the landscape of your mind?

Markers of memory…
Parades and festivals and national holidays and commemorations are meant to remind us.

Do not forget.
Do not forget: your history, your people, and your family. You are made up of them.
Do not forget.
Do not.
Don’t.

Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Gooseflesh in a tiny monument at 6:00 AM.

The strains of a song that take you back to a gushing river in the mountains.

A drink that tastes of argument.

Phrases that hold coffee-and-cigarettes-on-a-cold-winter-day.

A face on the street that tugs at your memory.

Lilac sheets that dream of bedtime stories.

Anthems that make you feel like you are part of a movement.

The fragrance of freshly mowed grass and a vision of garden treasure-hunts.

A date equated with a howling mob.

The shirt that that will unbutton the touch of betrayal.

Dimples that make you see dead Prime Ministers.

Staircases that lead to ancestral homes in faraway-small-towns.

A loud noise that rips your consciousness into the smithereens of a series of bomb blasts.

The past is past, and the past is present.
I am you, and you are me.
We have remembered, and we have forgotten.
Chronology collapses.

How long till the world will be completed?
How many times will history repeat it?

And what shall we do with this deceptive glimmer of memory?
Drink to it, he said.
Anyone for an LIIT? Or perhaps, a Margarita?

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance.

You're just a cynic tonight...

2007-10-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

B.A.S.E

Don't you see the charade is over?

Do you really know her, sweetheart?
Do you really know anyone?
All the messages and the letters and the conversations in the world are not enough for you to believe you have the key to her mind. Well...maybe you do believe you know what's going on inside her head as she looks at you.
Think again.
Oh, innocence!
Haven't you figured it out yet?
This is her playground...my playground...your playground...their playground...
Don't expect life to turn into love-fest simply because the time is ripe for you to fall in love.
Integrity?
What's that??
There are the fairy tales, and the blockbusters.
But this is the real world.

This can't be happening

Too many secrets.
So perhaps you'd rather not know. At all.
All right, then. I suppose ignorance is a valid choice.
But you don't need to go looking for disaster to find you...
4:00 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, a lone piece of lingerie in an incongruous setting, a photograph someone inadvertently posted on Picasa, a glance exchanged across a table... there are a million ways in which your world can fall apart.
And it will happen, you know.
A lightning shock of tears as you realize, once and for all, that you don't really know anyone at all.

Love is not a victory march
It's a cold... and broken hallelujah

Beaded curtains.
I see something beyond them.
Smoke and glinting glasses; I can hear laughter.
Knowledge is power.
At least I will go on and have a good time tonight.
So life swirls on... and it's easy to get lost in the maze of mojitos, madness and melancholy music.
Looking for a warning sign?
Waiting for a cue?
Look at all the lonely people. Eleanor Rigbys of the world. Testament to the fact that sometimes, there are no signs and no cues.
You wait and wait and wait... Life passes by... BAM- you're sixty-five, solitary, still waiting...

When you get what you want
But not what you need

Every now and then, there is a... moment?
The unexpected message, the headline, the winning catch, the blog-post, the kiss, the friend, the statement...
Secrets dissolve.
Flashpoints of honesty.
Things left unsaid turn into equations. Years are wandered through. Tongues that are tied and twisted finally speak. Dragons are reborn. Promises are made, and kept.
The world sparkles, and it looks like your Broadway musical has finally taken off.

Lights will guide you home

The Caprioshkas glimmer and the sunlight shimmers.
Carpe diem.
It's the kind of moment that will keep you going...
And when crossroads are arrived at, you will remember the hysterical laughter at that table... that stunning music video they aired in 1998... that unforgettable dance... the biting mountain air on a certain morning... your feet sinking into the dewy grass... grapes soaked in honey... sputtering bonfires... the last chapter of that book... the girl staring out at you from the cover of a National Geographic... the way that certain fragrance will always remind you of a certain album...

And maybe...there won't be another Tuesday afternoon.
You're still a cynic, darling.
Just not tonight, it seems.

525,600 minutes- how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
...
How about love?
Measure in love.

p-u-r-g-e

Confusion: From the Emotional to the Chronological, and Beyond...

2007-08-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Take the time to make some sense
Of what you want to say
And cast your words away upon the waves

Oh… to try and start at the very beginning…

Chronology collapses.

So…which one came first? Laidback Waters? Kakoris? Which week was Shalom? And the second time? Serpico? Has it been fourteen days? Nineteen? How long ago was Hookah? Three-four-five months?

How long has this been coming? A couple of days? Months? A year? Or maybe many years…?

Who can begin to comprehend the connections that bind us and the tiniest acts that change the course of our lives…?
Because (let’s face it), it all began with Calvin and Hobbes (at least it was A beginning if not THE beginning). Lucky that I’m a fan…!

And the Butterfly Effect kicks in for all its worth.

Calvin and Hobbes… an inquiry… a tentative plan… Mocha and a millionmillion questions…

Quick addictions… endless conversations… ridiculous sleep cycles… Aladdin and rain…

A phone call. Is that a local code? Yes.

Run.

When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

Silence.

Except for snatches of Coldplay, Incubus, Floyd…

My own, truly bizarre situation… I was surprised he didn’t walk away. For good.

“Coming back to Delhi? That’s great!”

Hookah.
And yes, Atlas shrugged. In some ways, more that night than any other.
Tumbling through easy conversation and too-many-drinks… Parents and movies and Islam and alcohol and stories… Collapsing onto the Laidback Waters sofa… “You’re a psycho”… Laughing so hard that we had to hold each other to not fall off…

Two statements. Intrinsically bound to each other, and intrinsically false.

I don’t do infidelity.
And marriages aren’t two week vacations.

Can’t help but wonder… who was the “weakness”? Or was it just me?

Hmmm… Anyway, shirt duly pulled down, moment effectively killed. Thank god we’ll always have that!

Bygones, as someone likes to say…

But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

My pace…?
Fear.
I haven’t felt that in a long time…
Complex webs of nomenclature and explanations to curious friends. And each other!

“Will you go out with me?”
Oh well, what chance does ‘my pace’ stand against the inevitable?
Finally done with controversial terms used to describe our equation…

A love of the transience of everything. Reveling in it.
Really? Always??
Or is that transient too?

The answer's in the looking glass
There's four and twenty million doors
Down life's endless corridor

To echo the “possibility of eventuality”, yes, trying to second guess certain things is futile.

Full Circle.
The irony of it is almost Justin Timberlake-ish.
A heady acceleration and-waitaminute, where are the brakes??
Ohhh…. There aren’t any.
That explains all the freewheeling and spinning out of control…
Cheers to that, then.

As I chase the sun

5 Random Revelations

2007-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

After TS tagged me last week (the week before?), here goes…

5 Random revelations:

I am a shoe-addict. At last count-ok, actually, I don’t think I’m going to write this down because if K. reads the figure he will never let me live it down!!

I despise champagne. It makes me want to throw up. Ugh.

I honestly think Sidney Sheldon’s books make for great reading.

I believe emotional stability is a habit. I’m sadly out of practice…

I live for Pink-ness.

Hmmmm..... Now that I've got that off my soul, I think I'm going to go get some tiramisu.

Everybody belongs somewhere.

2007-08-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

“Everybody belongs somewhere.”
“Maybe everybody doesn’t. Maybe some people just get lost…”

“Last order guys! What will you have?”

The table is unbelievably crowded. Shot-glasses, beer bottles, mojitos, other assorted drinks, ashtrays, cigarette packs and the occasional purse.

Where were we?
I don’t even remember.
One long, alcoholic swirl.
With someone, getting with someone, getting over someone, being without someone.

Trying to be someone…??? God-knows-I’ve-read-too-many-identity-crisis-type-novels…

Bring on the tequila, then.

Do you get wasted? Unbelievably, ridiculously, unfathomably drunk??

What are you running from?
Or…maybe that’s the wrong question…
What are you running towards?

There is not much left to say.

You’ve held me together so many times. Without even knowing it.

You: my partner in crime, and in walking the dark side of the moon.
You: my strong, pure pillar of strength.
You: more my sister than my friend.
You: the Dragon.
You: with the jokes that only I will ever laugh at.
You: with love that made me truly feel ‘effortless’.
You: with the laughter and the beauty and the literature.

If there's anything to say
If there's anything to do
If there's any other way
I'll do anything for you

I don’t know what exactly it is I set out to write today. This post is going to be a terrible read… Heh.

Playing at charades…

“Hey! It’s been a while!”

“Yeah… Where did I see you last…? Agni, right?” (Actually, I saw you at Climax two weeks ago. But I want you to remember, and I want you to say it.)

“Yes, that must have been it.” (Tsk. I’ve been playing this game longer than you, sweetheart. I know you know that we met at Climax two weeks ago, and I’m not going to correct you. I’m a nonchalance-expert! You lose.)

“Ah. Right. Well. I’ll see you around then? Maybe we’ll catch up later at Elevate..?” (Bitch. Lose that guy on your arm though, and then bumping into you might actually be fruitful)

“Hopefully! Ta!” (In your dreams. You lose. Again.)

Hmmm… It gets a just a leeeetle bit tiring after a while.

Thankfully, I’ve partied a lot with many different categories of crowds these past few years. And many of them are: more fun, fewer games… Less Delhi, if you know what I mean.

I’m still exhausted though…
Even in bits and pieces…it is going to take its toll…

The plan was supposed to be sheesha and restraint, wasn’t it darling? But then…things have a way of happening with us, don’t they?

Oh, well. We shall see…

Is there some idea
To replace my life?

Hide and Seek- the Last

2007-07-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best? Ah of course it is.

“Who was driving?”

The universe skipped a heartbeat. The skies spun in agony. The mountains lay heavy with grief.
For a moment, the players felt their souls contract…an involuntary twitch of the eye…a sudden desire to scream…an inexplicable clench of the fist…a wish to collapse. When one of the naturals leaves us, we all feel it. Even if we do not know.

And then... she was on her way.

She checked into a nearby inn first. Anything to postpone the moment when she would go and see him. Alone. And now she looked down at the pine needles and wondered whether she could even build those walls again… well, of course she could! A few days cannot change that much… can they? She did not owe them anything. She could leave enough money at the clinic to make sure they did all they could, and go back to Delhi, to her work, to her safe life. Even as she thought it, she knew she would never be able to leave without seeing him. And she knew she had lost…

A clinic.
A door.
A room.
A bed.
A broken man.

He lay there, unconscious, and she was defeated by her own love. She stayed there for hours, just sitting. She did not look at him. She did not cry. She simply stayed.

The caretaker had accompanied her. He was the one who made arrangements for the funeral. She told him that there was no one they needed to contact immediately. The older man had told her that his wife had walked out on them years ago and they had had no word from her ever since. The two of them had spoken proudly about how self-sufficient they were as a unit, with no family to speak of, in the country. She and the caretaker attended the funeral and she carried the ashes back to her room in an earthen pot that the cremation ground authorities had given her.

He woke up two days later. They did not have to tell him. He already knew. He held her hand and had the bland soup concocted by the clinic’s cook without a fuss. She asked him no questions, and he gave her no answers. The next morning brought her tears. She cried over her breakfast, and went for a walk. She did not want him to see her red-rimmed eyes. By the time she reached him it was early afternoon. That evening, he sent her back early, saying he was tired. He did not want her to see him cry. She went without a murmur. She had sensed tears all day, and thought they were her own. When he requested an early night, she realized they were his.

Neither of them seemed to be able to bring up the death that lay like a heavy fog over them in their waking hours. They would clasp their hands together and spend their time quietly. She rationalized the lack of conversation, reassuring herself that they were healing through silence, and through touch.

A few days and many walks later, the doctor had a few words with her, “You need to cheer him up a bit. He’s physically quite all right now but he’s still very depressed. Some music, some books maybe…”

The doctor had noticed something about his patient that she had not. He was not healing at all. He was wasting away in the silence.

He awoke to Fool’s Garden the next morning.

"I wonder how, I wonder why
Yesterday you told me about the blue, blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon tree"

He groaned, “That’s the most meaningless song in the world. You’ve given me a headache early in the morning, thanks a ton.”

“What? I love this song! It’s such a classic.”

“Crap. What is it even supposed to mean? ‘All that I can see is just another lemon tree.’ How pointless.”

“That’s the point, silly. The absurdity of life and all of that.”

He laughed, “I’m sure that’s the last thing they were thinking about when they wrote the song. Germans should stick to beer. They were probably sloshed when they came up with these lyrics anyway.”

It was the first time he had laughed in the week that he had been conscious. She had not expected success so easily. Just goes to show, she thought wryly, how we complicate matters far more than we need to. She laughed at his grimaces, and let the song play till the end. Then she opened the newspaper. “We’ve been cocooned in here way too long, right?” And she read out articles that she thought would interest him. Politics, the latest movies, George Bush’s latest antics, a new study that ‘revealed’ that loud noises are distracting (“like you need a billion dollar grant to figure that out...these Americans are crazy!”), the Balkan situation, Indo-Chinese bilateral trade agreements… After lunch, they both rested a while. Come evening and she popped in an album of Punjabi remixes and imitated one of the singers right down to the last detail. He laughed till he was exhausted, and she went back to the guesthouse still humming the catchy tune.

She took the urn to him a few days later. He held it in his hands as he lay on the bed. He stared out of the window for a few minutes and then put the urn down next to the bed. They held each other and he wept as she stroked his hair, saying nothing. He cried for a long time and she felt him trembling with the loss.

Then they talked. They celebrated his life, and they grieved his passing. They were angry at the unfairness of it all, and they were reconciled to the unpredictability of events. They missed his presence, and they felt his presence. They cried at losing him, and they laughed with his memories. They asked destiny a thousand questions, and they made their peace with kismat.

She took him back to the guesthouse a few days later. They sat on the porch till late that night, drinking their wine and looking at the clear sky.

The taxi to Delhi arrived the next morning. The caretaker blessed them both and she was grateful. Gusts of wind whipped her short hair around as they loaded their suitcases into the boot. She looked around one last time, before getting into the car. As she saw the guesthouse and the old caretaker, and the densely vegetated landscape that surrounded them, she felt an ache so strong that it was almost physically palpable. She felt vulnerable once again, frail in the face of the mighty mountains and the fierce wind.

And she laughed. Because she knew she had won.

Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best? Ah of course it is.

Hide and Seek- the Third

2007-07-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity...
Hide and seek

Now, she pushed herself up, trying to find traces of that day in the air, breathing in purposefully. In vain. The harsh afternoon sunrays hurt her eyes when she tried to look up at the clear skies. She bent her head forward to shelter behind the curtain of her long, straight hair. But no reassuring curtain fell in front of her eyes. Of course. They had robbed her of that as well…

“You should cut your hair.” the younger man was lounging on the bed in her room. He twinkled at her mischievously, almost looking like a boy.

“No.” she said firmly, well aware of the fact that he was well aware of the fact that she had hair- tampering phobia.

“Seriously!” he said, “It will give you a whole new look. Come on! You know it’s a silly, baseless fear. Why not?”

“Ha!” she said, for lack of a better retort.

“Couldn’t think of anything else to say, na?” he said knowingly.

She threw a cushion at him, “Certainly not. I don’t need to justify my reservations to you anyway. So give it up!”

He threw the cushion back at her, “Hey dad, help me convince her!”

“Sort it out kids.” his father said distractedly, absorbed in the book he was reading.

“Kids!?” the two of them shrieked and two cushions flew towards the offender.

“Ouch! What?” and he looked up, annoyed.

“Hey dad give her a haircut” and “Your worthless offspring is irritating me” were said simultaneously.

She turned to the younger man, “Did you just ask your father to cut my hair?”
He spoke at the same time, “Did you just call me worthless?”

“All right, break it up,” the older man put his book away, “yes, she did call you worthless, my progeny, as you undoubtedly are. And yes, I am going to cut your hair.”

Outrage from both sectors at this controversial statement. She started to giggle soon enough till she realized he was serious about his intentions regarding her hair.

“You don’t even know how to! What are you, a CEO who works weekends at the local parlour?”

“Don’t be daft. I was in the army.”

“The army?” incredulously.

“Yes, in addition to my military duties, I gave about a hundred haircuts a month. My own unit."

“Where did you serve? And how come you’re out now? You’re not old enough to have 'retired with distinction…' ”

“Israeli Army. Gulf War.”

“What?! But you’re Indian!”

“Yes… I was working there actually. When the Gulf War began, the government resorted to emergency recruitment. Almost all foreigners working in the country had to sign up. I signed up before they forced me to. I managed to get back to India a while after the war began. Managed to see a considerable amount of fighting before I left though.”

“But-but-“ she spluttered. Then she stopped short; a sneaking suspicion that he was joking occurred to her. She studied his face- he was dead serious. No, he was not fooling her. “But that’s ridiculous.” she finished weakly.

“Tell me about it.”

“It was not even your war. Not even your country!”

“Yes. Though I wonder if that would have made it considerably better.”

She paused, thinking about that and the ex-soldier’s son took the opportunity to stick his head out of the window and shout for a pair of scissors, which were promptly delivered by the gnarly caretaker. Her attention came back to the matter at hand.

“No haircut!” she squealed.

“Yes haircut. You need a new look young lady. Do not argue with your elders.” his mock anger was totally ineffective.

“I’m not some Israeli soldier! I’m a woman! In Delhi! In peacetime!!”

“I gave haircuts to a couple of women too. There are women in the Israeli army too you know. And trust me, you don’t trifle with the tresses of women who have loaded guns on them. Since I am alive and well, you can safely assume that my handiwork was not too bad. Not bad at all, if I may say so myself.” and he gave them a little bow.

A last ditch attempt to run out of her room…the doorway was blocked by the younger man…

That was how she wound up sitting in a chair an hour later, feeling naked. There were huge clumps of lifeless hair lying all around her on the floor.

Long, apprehensive space of time between the moment the last strand fell, and her personal moment of reckoning. Persuasion and flattery finally worked their charm and she stood before the mirror. Almost elfish. An intruder from Middle Earth. She turned her face, first one way, then another. Examining the angles of her face, her cheekbones. Her small ears! The long hair had been part of her for so long that she could not recollect the last time she had looked at her ears. They were quite pretty really. Perhaps a pair of diamond studs…

“Not bad.” she told the triumphant hairdresser, smiling happily.

“A toast to your new look, what say?”, this from the one who had started it all.

She said yes.

They drove down to the marketplace and picked up beer and ships. Father and son had had the foresight to bring red wine along with them, from Delhi. Goan red wine. She had had that wine in Goa, long ago, in another lifetime. And as she tasted it again that night, she tasted the other, long-ago nights infused with the crashing of waves and the swaying palm trees and she wanted to cry. But she did not. Instead, she laughed and opened a packet of Classic-Salted chips.
A couple of drinks later the ambience was pleasantly companionable. When the caretaker entered with the dinner they had ordered, the older man requested him to sing them something. “I heard you singing the other morning as you were making the beds. I have wanted to hear you again ever since. Please do oblige us.”

His son added that they would love to hear him, and she threw in an entreating “Please!”

The worn caretaker sat down on the floor, obligingly. He thought for a few minutes, probably going over the repertoire of songs in his head, selecting a suitable one. She thought abstractedly about how gracefully the older man had put across his wish. She had often winced when tactless friends had asked locals to perform (yes, it was like performing.) for them during trips many years ago. Like they were specimens or something. Really, she had thought back then, that urban Indians were as bad as the ignorant Americans who loudmouthed their way into the country and expected to find elephants on Delhi’s main roads, and snake charmers in Mumbai’s high-rises. But this, this was different- the CEO wanted to listen, not click a photograph and stash it in an album to be shown to all and sundry. And it showed.

So when the old man sang, he sang for someone who was truly listening.
That showed too.

She had often wondered what people meant when they said music took them to ‘a different world’. “I’m transported.” Her sister used to say whenever she listened to Beethoven’s ninth symphony. The caretaker’s rendition of the hilly folk song helped her to understand. She was not ‘transported’. But she was swept up with the notes that flowed from one line to the next, that tripped from stanza to stanza. It was a local song, probably. She could not slot it. It was not racy, but it was not slow either. Cheerful yes, but tragic too. Simple yes, but with a peculiar inflection in the voice. And intense. Wholly and completely absorbed in its own existence. The man sang and it was like the whole universe was just a singing man and an audience of three.
Was he singing of life? Death? What lies after? Love? Pain? Jealousy? Crops? Mountains? Family? Goats? Electricity? Shops?

It did not matter. She listened, and for that short period, she was totally and wonderfully aware- of the brilliant masterplan that governed all existence in its merry chaos.

She simply was.

“Thank you.” this softly, from the young man when the last word (word? Was it in a real language then? It had seemed transcendental) faded away. And the wrinkled person bowed his head in acknowledgement, and left the room. A trance like state (maybe she was just drunk…she did not think so though…). A few moments of silence as drinks were reclaimed and the experience was stored. But not to be relegated to the depths of oblivion. The shelves had glass doors, and you could look inside whenever you wanted.

Followed by ghazals. AR Rahman. The Beatles. Britney Spears’ ‘Oops’ (and she rediscovered her talent as a mimic…the last time she had used that had probably been back in College…Mr. Sharma’s desperate attempts to flirt with his prettiest student). Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’. Ghalib. The older man’s laughable try at the moonwalk. They all cracked up at that and their laughter must have echoed deep and far in the valley that night. The wonderment spread its wings and leapt off the peak.

A comfortable exhaustion after a while. The older man excused himself, “I’m getting old. I need my sleep.” he yawned. Left.

Then it was just the two of them. Glimmering intimacy. They moved out into the porch. Pitch black night and a zillion stars in the sky. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Strains of music in her head. His hand strayed towards hers. The clasp brought fireworks in her soul and the last pillar lay in the dust, reduced to nothing.
Epiphany.
She found herself in the contours of his body. The chilly air pierced their beings, and their love warmed the mountainside. And they were one. With each other. With the wind. With the mountainside. No whispering, no murmuring…a complete and absolute silence that shook the world and she trembled with it. Treasuring the moment and letting it seep into every fibre. The universe exploded, and she was as free as the wind itself.

Later, a deep sleep in her room while they held each other hostage in their mutual embrace.

Still later, he got up and kissed her goodbye. He and his father were going to a nearby hill station for the day. To take photographs of the famous scenic forests there. She had declined to go; it would be nice for them to have some time together. And she wanted to finish her book too. He said they would be back in the evening. She smiled mistily at him, and went back to sleep once he had left. She got up only at lunchtime.

They were not back in the evening. Or at night. She was worried sick by midnight and the caretaker had to give her a talking-to before she realized that it was impossible to get to the forests until tomorrow morning. She tossed and turned for hours before drowning into troubled dreams. When she awoke the next morning, the old man was waiting outside her door. The morning greeted her with the news of death.

A wreck on the winding pot-holed road on the way to the forest. Their jeep mangled with a Maruti Van. Both drivers died instantly. The Maruti had no other passengers. The second occupant of the Jeep was critically injured and lay in a nearby clinic.

“Who was driving?”

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity...
Hide and seek

Hide and Seek- the Second

2007-07-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Spin me round again and rub my eyes
This can't be happening

She had told herself that she would stop by their room and converse long enough to confirm their academic professions and then return to her book. When the younger man opened the door, he looked comfortably rumpled. She stared for a few seconds and then tugged her gaze away, embarrassed. It was such an odd unfamiliar sight! A man wearing his nightclothes; she could not recall the last time she had seen a man with his hair like that-sleep tossed!

As it turned out, they were not in the academic field. Neither were they artists or photographers. The father was the CEO of a company that had recently launched a new 24-hour news channel that claimed to be comprehensive and international in the true sense. Bilingual anchors. News from around the world, with an emphasis on Indian events. More than one version of the news.

“Garbled!” an acquaintance had labeled it, “How can they tell us that the Tokyo bomb blast were the work of Islamic fundamentalists, and then the very next minute spout some conspiracy theory bullshit about a local hairstylist being behind it?” She had agreed at the time. Sure, there were two sides to every story. But news coverage could simply not function like that. Why, there would be chaos! No one would know what to believe anymore.

Now however…well, she did not know what to believe anymore! The older man had told her about his work as the two of them sat having tea on the porch outside. The younger man was inside, getting dressed. Five minutes flowed into ten..into fifteen..twenty. And she still did not feel like getting up. The younger man joined them. He was a graphics designer. He freelanced; edited movies sometimes. Mainly parallel cinema projects. Though he had worked on a Shahrukh-Kajol starrer once. “Much better money than Nagesh Kukkunoor could ever pay me!” he chuckled.

“But…isn’t that like compromising your-” she searched for a word and came up with nothing better than “-craft?”

He looked at her searchingly. “Is it?” he asked softly.

She was at a loss for words. He must be offended. Of course he was. Such a personal question. What was she thinking? She had gotten carried away by the camaraderie and blurted out what she was thinking. “I’m sorry. I had no business to ask you that.” She mumbled.

“Why not? Don’t look so apologetic for Christ’s sake. I was just asking you why you thought that. Okay, I don’t see it as a compromise because I enjoy working on both kinds of projects. Certainly, I believe much more in a movie that’s not one big fantasy fiesta. But there’s nothing wrong with an out and out entertainer either. And like I said, it pays. Literally. I need to do a college romance type of movie every now and then, so that I can work on projects that are not lucrative but are definitely interesting.”

She understood what he was saying. He would not work for a movie that endorsed Nazism for sure-because he would be against that. But harmless entertainment was just that-harmless fun. No compromise involved. No clash of principles and all that jazz. Suddenly, she was confused. She had categorized them as pseudo-intellectuals. That did not seem to apply anymore. They were too eclectic to classify. And in that moment she gave up trying to classify them. Forever.
The older man enjoyed photography. Hence the destination with the breathtaking view. “I don’t care much for the view. Everything looks the same after five minutes. I did think a couple of days with Dad away from the city would be nice though. And here we are!” his son told her.

Breakfast. Then a visit to a nearby chapel. A short but steep walk. Beautiful, old stained glass windows. Rows and rows of dark wooden pews. And a priest! In a back of beyond Himalayan settlement! Lunch at the priest’s house. Roast chicken and potatoes. Surreal. A return to the guesthouse.

The three of them were too exhausted to go out anywhere for dinner so the older man requested the caretaker to organize dinner. “Whatever is available. Keep it simple.”

They were on the porch once again. Eating aloo paranthas sizzling with butter. In silence, with their shawls wrapped around them because the night air was chilly. The night melted into dawn, which brightened to noon and faded into twilight. A weekend turned into a few days and she spent most of her time with them…

Now, the whiff of pinecones crept up on her again as she tried to remember what the paranthas had tasted like. She could barely remember what it felt like to be hungry, what food tasted like. She had not eaten since lunch the previous day. Food! As if she would ever be able to think about it again. It seemed so trivial, compared with the fact that she had lost everything she had ever wanted to find…

Her mind took her back to the afternoon under the pine trees, in the woods just behind the guesthouse. The heady smell of pine needles filled the air. It was almost potent.
Amusing stories were being exchanged. She related an incident she had to dig out from the recesses of her hoarder memory. Her brain was like her nana’s trunks of clothes. Everything went in, but nothing was ever taken out to air or share. So it was hard. Her sentences were stilted at first. When she reached the part about getting her head stuck in the window grill, the two men burst out laughing. The rest of the story tumbled out easily- hysterical father, fire engines, electric saws, and an everlasting fear of putting her head through small openings.

Father and son regaled her with stories from the entertainment industry. Like the photographer who had an assignment for a photo-shoot with Amitabh Bacchan and told the superstar, “Now, don’t be nervous. It’ll be over before you know it! And you’ll look just fine, not to worry.” She cracked up at that one.

And about the colony where the son had an apartment, where Art of Living was the latest craze. He mimicked the advertiser who lived upstairs, and had enrolled for a course. He had talked about nothing but ‘the Universal Eye’ and ‘cleansing the soul’ for months afterwards. He had also taken to explaining the ‘Twenty Step Program to Inner Peace’ to anyone who was willing to listen. “An advertising guy through and through!” the older man guffawed. Then there was the couple on the ground floor that felt their children would benefit from the spiritual enrichment the programme offered. The children’s ages were yet to hit double digits…

She grinned, amused, but felt obliged to say something in favour of Sri Sri Ravishankar’s brainchild. “Well yes. It’s funny when people take the whole concept to such extremes. But come on, it has helped a lot of people, hasn’t it? It can’t all be a load of hogwash.”

“Of course it is. ‘Hold your partner’s hand and cry and all your problems will be solved.’ Ha! As if years and years of pent-up pain and sorrow can be released during one sobbing session. It’s temporary relief. Art of Living is no better than a quick fix at the local massage parlour. A transient high.” The younger man said with biting conviction.

Suddenly, she was angry. She had felt like they had been telling her not to make judgements these past few days-by setting an example of sympathetic objectivity. Then what was this? A balanced perspective? They were as hypocritical as anyone else was. Pots calling a kettle black. She retreated into herself and said icily, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just because you’re irreligious or an atheist or whatever doesn’t mean all spirituality is fake and pretentious. I happen to know people who have discovered life all over again through Art of Living and other courses like that. Sure, once it becomes a fad it’s harder to see it as a holy, moving experience. But it is really stupid of you to run it down completely. It’s a hell of a lot more than a couple of hours with a sex-worker.” and she stopped, breathless.

“Is it?” skeptically.

“Yes.”

“Then why haven’t you gone and discovered life again through it? Not exactly passionate about your existence, are you?”

She was stunned into silence. Oh, the impertinence! She stood up and walked off into the forest behind her. More like stomped off actually. How, how, how could he ask her a question like that? Like it was any of his bloody business. Presumptuous man! He though himself so much superior to her. But he was just another cynic. Funny, she had always thought of herself as cynical. He made her seem almost naïve by comparison! She knew she was not being naïve though. Her sister had gotten over her child’s death, largely because she did a ten-day Vipasana programme. Ten days of living in silence in an ashram. The heartbroken woman had found solace in it, and had come to terms with her loss. She did not come back home ready to laugh at sitcoms again- no, it certainly did not work like that. But she was at peace. Ready to pick up the threads again, with some idea of a pattern in mind. And this man had just thrown that beautiful, healing experience into filth.

She had stopped to think just a few minutes away from the clearing where they had been sitting. She stood there now, and thought about his question. Not that he had any right to ask her that. Still…she could answer it to herself. She did not enjoy her life, or leap enthusiastically out of bed to greet a new day each morning. Why then, had she not enrolled herself? It was certainly not due to a lack of encouragement. Her sister had recommended it at least as many times as her relatives had told her to get married- hundreds! She knew the answer of course. It was just not her style. Chanting mantras, practicing asanas, laughing and crying in a group, spilling deep, dark secrets to a room full of people, kundalini lessons-most people found it soothing and uplifting. She found it boring. And pointless.

“Hey.” it was the older man. He was standing behind her and she turned to face him.

“I haven’t done it because I think it’s silly.” she said simply.

He nodded, “He thinks the same way.”

“Okay. That’s acceptable. Great. A kindred spirit. But that does not mean-”

“I know, I know. Save it for the offender. Come on. You need to get back there and give him a piece of your mind. He can be pretty patronizing at times. Take him down a peg or two sweetheart.”

He led her back to the clearing. The young man was standing now. She stood a little distance away from him. He looked at her and held her gaze. He did not withdraw it as he said, “I had no right to tell you that you don’t love your life. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. And I’m not exactly passionate about living. You were right about that.”

He took a deep breath, “About the spirituality scene-”

She interrupted, “I know. It’s not your cup of tea. It isn’t mine either. I just told your father. I think it’s silly. It doesn’t work. For me. But that’s not to say it’s silly for everyone. Trust me. I know.”

“I’m in agreement. I was- insensitive.”

“Yes, you were. Things are not black or white. Isn’t that what your ‘comprehensive, international channel’ tells us? Two or more sides to every story? And no single, absolute truth?” she was addressing the older man now.

He nodded, but stayed silent. His eyes strayed towards his son, as if waiting for him to say something. His son remained silent. He kept looking at her.

“Aren’t you envious of them?” she exclaimed, “Their quick fix solutions? Meet a guru and restart your life? Rediscover yourself through wearing saffron and swaying to the Gayatri mantra? Place a frog in your drawing room and change your fortune? I wish it was my cup of tea. I wish it did work for me.”

“No,” he said slowly, “I am not envious. I can understand why you are though. The thing is…I don’t think that’s the only way. I love my life. And I don’t need Deepak Chopra or Oprah Winfrey to tell me how great life is. I already know.”

“Then you are one lucky man. Because I don’t. I need someone to tell me. And I guess I’m not listening hard enough because no one has been able to get the message across.” Bitterness had seeped into her voice. She did not care. So she was whining. Big deal. The facades were already down. Might as well let them see her as she really was. Who cared? Who cared about anything really? She stood, careless of the presence of anyone else, and looked down at the pine needles and examined them. Long, sharp and smooth. She wondered what it would feel like to lie down naked on them and let them pierce her smooth skin.

The younger man's voice brought her back from the pleasurable pain that was suffusing her. “You can listen all you want. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think you can really love anything by hearing about it. You need to experience it. Shit, I know it sounds corny and new age, but I really do believe that. You have to live, really live. Laugh, cry, love, hate, be jealous, scream, dance, eat, sleep, fight, pray- whatever. It’s like a symphony. You can’t read it. You need to be involved and hum along and listen to every note and every instrument and gasp with awe at the end,” he stopped and threw his hands up helplessly, “I think I’m babbling now…must be incomprehensible. But let me just say this. I’m not being patronizing. Loving life did not come naturally to me. It doesn’t to most people. One has to work at it. Even the happiest marriages need to be worked at, right? The effortlessly blissful ones are rare. Very, very rare. So, I’m not trying to help you or anything like that. Only, well…I’ve been there. I still visit sometimes. So, I know. I know there is my way too.”

She felt a warm, firm hand clasping hers, and looked up into the older man’s face. And she knew she was looking at one of the rare, effortlessly blissful persons who are natural lovers of existence. They fit into the world and the world loves them. He held her hand and looked beyond her. “Too many walls…” he murmured.

She smiled. “ ‘I am a rock. I am an island.’ Simon and Garfunkel were right you know. ‘And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.’”

He broke into a grin at that, “Same chaps who wrote that song lamenting about people not communicating with one another? How does it go- ‘and the silence like a cancer grows…people talking without speaking…people hearing without listening’? And let’s not forget ‘like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down’. Bridges are hardly conducive to an islandic existence, don’t you think?”

She had to laugh. Outwitted by an obvious Simon and Garfunkel fan. She gripped his hand and looked at the sky. Then she looked the younger man. He was not smiling, just looking at her. “I know,” she said softly, “I know what you’re saying.”

It was enough. The wind swept their faces with its cool fingertips. It swirled at the ends of her long hair and breezed inside her sweater. The first drops of rain fell. The earthy smell of wet mud tangoed with the fragrance of pine trees, and the woods danced with the thunder…

Almost like...the elements playing hide and seek.

Spin me round again and rub my eyes
This can't be happening

Hide and Seek - the First

2007-06-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.

Start building the walls again. It is the only way. Whispers of advice.

She asked herself why she was not listening. Hadn’t her stringent rules kept her happy all her life?

Well…maybe ‘happy’ was an overstatement. She shook herself back to reality. Ha! Overstatement? More like a complete and total fabrication. Farther from the truth than a hippie from the Lok Sabha. She smiled wryly at the comparison. They had reminded her of hippies the first time she saw them, with their loose kurtas and well-worn jeans. Open sandals. Their hair was short and clean though. Unlike the flower children.

She smiled again at the memory. More than anything else it was the air of utter acceptance that they wore. Que sera sera. Worn with the same ease with which her mother wore a sari morning, afternoon and evening, day after day, year after year.

They fit into the jigsaw puzzle. Like correct pieces. Blended in effortlessly with their surroundings. Like they belonged. It was a belonging she had craved for what seemed like forever.

She had been sitting on a chair in the balcony-porch, looking at the floor when they had arrived. Kurtas, careless aura and all. The caretaker opened the room next to hers and showed them in. they were carrying their own luggage. Rucksacks and duffel bags. They looked at her while the old caretaker ceremoniously fitted the key in the lock. She looked back at them- disapprovingly. The older man looked old enough to be her father! And the younger one was certainly at least her own age. Why pretend to be like a couple of teenagers hitchhiking around the country?? It was just not proper. Therefore it was only logical that she barely nodded her head when they smiled at her.

She remembered cursing her mother at that moment. It had been she who had insisted that her daughter go to the mountains. The phrase ‘well-deserved break’ had been repeated like a mantra for many months on end till finally her daughter decided that she might as well take a weekend off and be done with it. She booked herself into a little known guesthouse upon the recommendation of a colleague. “It’s a marvelous place! A wonderful view and all the privacy that we from the corporate world could desire.” he had told her enthusiastically. She did not care much for the view but the solitude sounded appealing. Her mother was disappointed. She had been thinking more along the lines of a luxury resort where her all-too-busy daughter would find time to take a swim in the heated pool and perhaps get one of those therapeutic face packs that everyone was talking about nowadays. If only she had known what an aversion her daughter had to other people handling her body! She just about managed a hair trim every now and then. Just about!! Anyhow, reservations had been made at the place her colleague had suggested. Luxury resorts were just not her thing. There were too many people looking to please you all the time. It was embarrassing and irritating. She preferred to just be left alone.

And now it looked as if he perfectly realistic expectations of that desire were going to be seriously obstructed by these seemingly outgoing new arrivals. She slotted them immediately in her brain. Either unemployed, or struggling artists or photographers. Or academics (professors at JNU perhaps). Probably frequented art galleries. Watched street theatre plays on weekends. Shunned branded clothes (unless the label was FabIndia of course). Considered themselves leftist liberals (probably could not spell Lenin’s first name, but what the hell), intellectuals and bohemians. She tried to determine their relationship. Friends perhaps. Or colleagues. Or gay companions. They did not seem like homosexuals though, she thought. Then she chided herself. Like anyone can tell. Some of the most apparently straight men turned out to be leaning the other way. Who would have guessed about Rock Hudson?

When they came over in the evening and sat themselves down at her table on the porch, she sought to satisfy her curiousity. They turned out to be father and son. She blinked for a second, thrown off balance. Of course. They even looked similar. The same intense eyes. She felt sheepish. How come she hadn’t thought of the most obvious answer?

Her quest completed, and her curiousity satisfied, she quickly finished her tea and retreated into her room under the pretext of wanting to have a bath. When she emerged after what she considered the safe interval of half an hour, they were still sitting there.

“Oh good, you’re fresh and ready. We thought you might want to join us. We’re going to walk down to the market to have dinner.” said the older man genially. She looked at him incredulously. She had seen the town’s excuse for a marketplace on the way to the guesthouse in the morning. It barely qualified as a place of commercial activity. A bunch a mouldy old shops- the regular dhaba, a paan shop and the like. Not that she was being a snob, she reassured herself. There was nothing wrong with the market but…dinner over there!

“Oh come on. It’ll be fun. I know what you’re thinking. Not exactly the kind of place HT City covers in their Eating Out column in Delhi. Well, you can do all the regular eating out back in the cities. You know, when in Rome…” the younger man said.

Hobnobbing with the locals? Definitely leftist, she thought. Nevertheless, she contemplated. Contrary to what he implied about her dining out in the city, she could not remember the last time she had gone to a restaurant. McDonald’s yes-if that could really qualify as ‘eating out’. It was more like eating just enough to sustain herself and then running home. And alone. Always alone. It was a policy of hers to never interact with co-workers outside of the office building (not that she interacted much with them inside the office building either). Boring, boring, boring- as her saucy secretary put it to her once during what she fancied to be a female bonding session.
So she contemplated the invitation. And decided to accept. “All right,” she said, “just let me get changed.”

The two men looked at her and started laughing. “It’s not exactly the Taj honey. What you’re wearing is just perfect.” the older man chuckled. Warning bells went off in her head. Was she really going to go for dinner with someone who called her ‘honey’ after talking to her for barely five minutes? With two unknown men whose last name she did not even know? They could be thieves, rapists, serial killers…

But the marketplace was barely a five-minute walk away. And it was not like she had anything else to do. Once the darkness fell she would not even be able to see the view (it was rather splendid as she had silently acknowledged upon arriving). She looked down at her jeans, threw caution to the brisk evening wind and said, “All right then. Let’s go.”

Dinner turned out to be pakoras and Maggi at the dhaba. The food took ages to arrive. The older man informed the other two that because of the high altitude and rare atmosphere, food took far longer to cook than in the plains. And stoves were slow to begin with anyway.

Conversation carried on pleasantly for a while. The three of them discussed the deplorable state of the road between the last major hill-station and this little village-town. She wondered aloud what they did in cases of medical emergencies. The nearest big hospital was more than a two-hour drive away-assuming it was a lucky day and there were no hold-ups on the way due to landslides or flooding from the river. “I suppose they leave it to Fate, huh? If you’re lucky you reach in time. If not…well, there’s not much you can do about it.” she said, answering her own query. And she silently cursed the red tape and the insensitive Central government and the corrupt government machinery that reduce the locals to this helplessness. Then she caught herself, surprised. When was the last time she had whined about the government? It was not really her style. She had always believed that people are responsible for themselves. A caretaker government was a crutch. The locals here were probable a lazy lot in any case. Even if funds had been granted to build roads they would have been wasted because of inadequate planning, and inefficiency. Inferior material would have been used and they would have been ruined as soon as the monsoon arrived. As for medical emergencies…superstitions probably forbade the people from consulting educated doctors anyway. There was bound to be a local Ayurvedic quack or some crazy Tantric medical man.

Then she looked at the smooth skinned face and the weather beaten hands of the young adolescent girl who was serving them their first helping of pakoras, and she was shocked at her own callousness.

Now she lay prostrate, trying to recall what it was they had talked about. Oh yes, they had debated about the identity of the leafy vegetable used to make some of the pakoras. She was pretty sure it was a variant of spinach, while the older man said it was a different plant altogether- ‘jimisa’ was the local term for it. The younger man grinned and said, “Shove it you two. Just eat the damn thing. It’s delicious. A leaf is just as delicious by any other name!” she remembered being momentarily shocked (‘Shove it’! To his father!) and then laughing and slurping the soupy Maggi.

They walked back after that. She excused herself as soon as they reached. Yet it was with a twinge of regret that she closed and locked her door. God! What was the matter with her? Shunning company was hardly a new habit; she was an expert! It was just the change of scene, she reassured herself (reassured? Was it really that unpleasant a change?). She would be herself again tomorrow- aloof and detached. She would stay in her room and read a book. Yes, that’s what she would do.

It was only once she was in bed that she realized that they had not discussed work even once. “I bet they’re professors…JNU for sure…” and she fell asleep.

Why had the come into her life? Ignited her curiousity? Made her want to meet them again? Why?

Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.

The Night of February --nth

2007-06-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

Location: outside -- Mall, Gurgaon
Time: 5:00 PM

Why don't you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square...
... the reason why they were there??

We hear the screech of the tyres and feel the crash before we actually hear it. Our heads spin towards the other side of the road.
A rickshaw.
A woman.
A young boy.
The Qualis screeches away before anyone can move.
People start crowding around and we watch from the other side of the road.
One very high iron fence separates us from the scene and we know- or we tell ourselves we know- that they are being helped out by one of the fifty-odd people standing there, that we can do no good by standing around, that we should stop staring at this tragedy because it is rapidly turning into a travesty.
And yet we stand. And we try to see whether the boy is okay, whether the woman is okay but it's nearly impossible to tell and finally, after an undetermined length of time, we turn to each other.
We know what we need to do.
Snap out of it.

After a few minutes of reassuring each other that they're all right, we return to The Plan.

Dramatis Personae:
Women- N, V, P
Men- K, Stoned, Elvis

N: So... are we heading to Staying Alive?
P: What is it like anyway?
V: Oh, very shady...
K: Good enough for a shady exploit like this!
P: Yeah... it's still light outside... this really is kind of shady. And it's a weekday!
N: Hmmm... we are being rather debauched aren't we?
V: Aren't you always? (cracks a disapproving yet sparkling grin)

P and N look at one another rather sheepishly. K has gone off to buy cigarettes.
The four traipse into Staying Alive at 5:15 PM. The only people there.

Waiter-with-the-Elvis-Presley-Hairstyle: Oh bhenchod, it's a Tuesday! I thought we wouldn't need to work for another few hours. Moronic kids...
Waiter-who-looks-stoned: Erm... yeah........

P: Ooh is that a frickin BIKE in here?
K: Yeah! Isn't that great? It's a K-344567 with 48 GHZ and lots of horsepower and gear-thingies and a kenchunking capacity that even the likes of Ralph Jiggeryhurtz and Jemengen Dyooz would envy!
(ok, that's what it sounded like. I've forgotten the precise details and things)
V and P: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..................
N: Hey, this corner table is free! Let's grab it!
V: Ummmm... sweetie, every table is free. Relax.

The four debauchees seat themselves.

K: What are you guys having?
P: Beer.
N: Beer.
V: (peering intently at the menu) Something vegetariannnnn.....
P: Hey! You have to drink!
V: No baba, I really just want to eat something.
N and K and P: Noooo!!! You HAVE to drink!
V: Okayyy....calm down. I'll have a breezer.
(and that ladies and gentlemen, is called Peer Pressure)
K: No, you have to have REAL alcohol.
V: Don't push your luck.
K: Okay, okay. Excuse me!

Waiter-who-looks-stoned comes over to the table (and I'm going to just called him Stoned henceforth).

Stoned: Yes?
K: Okay, we'll have two beers, one breezer and two large vodka shots.
P and N: VODKA SHOTS??
K: (with a withering, silencing look) Yes.
V: Uffff....
Stoned: Sorry, sir? (looks confused)
K: (slowly and articulately) Two beers. One breezer. Two large vodka shots.
Stoned: Which beer sir?
N: Foster's?
P: Okie.
N: (to Stoned) We'll have Foster's.
Stoned: (refusing to look at N or P) So, Foster's, sir?
K: Yes.
Stoned: And... ummm.... ummm..... errrr.... (looks confused)
K: (biting his words out) And. One. Breezer. Which flavour do you want, V?
V: (to Stoned) I want Cranberry.
Stoned: (refusing to look at V) So, Cranberry, sir?
K: Yes.
Stoned: And... (racks his brains) and.... 2 large vodka shots!! (looks at K proudly) Imported or domestic, sir?
K: Smirnoff.
Stoned: Yessir, yessir. Anything else?
N: Yes can we have jacket potatoes with the minced chicken?
Stoned: (addressing K) Sorry sir, we have nothing with potatoes today.
V: What? Oh no! I wanted the vegetarian version of that! Ok, I'll have a vegetarian platter.
P: And we'll have the non-vegetarian platter...?
N: Cool.
Stoned: Of course, sir. (withdraws)

Stoned: Nice chap, that boy.
Elvis: Hmph. With three girls. Looks like a kanhaiya. These girls nowadays... And look at that! Smoking also now... Tsk tsk...

Back at the table...
N: He didn't look at the women once!! What a guy...
P: I know! He was persistently acting as if we didn't exist.

The drinks arrive and so do the platters.
A rapid demolition of both.
More vodka shots. More beer.
The tables spin and the music is louder now.

P: Take it easy babe... I think that's quite enough.
N: Hey... I NEVER get drunk.

Famouslastwords.

Some dance to remember
Some dance to forget

It's a cliche by now, but it's ridiculously true.

By now...complete chaos.

V and P decide to dance, and N and K decide to have a serious conversation.
Then N and V decide to hug each other for about 15 minutes while K and P exchange confidences and then begin to laugh hysterically about something.
Then V decides to message someone furiously and K smokes furiously and N and P talk to each other.
Then N decides to lie down on the sofa in K's lap and V and P start cracking up about something.

Stoned: What the hell is going on?
Elvis: I'm just trying to work out their relationships. Who is the sister, who is the girlfriend... Who are the best friends...
Stoned: Very hard to say. They keep changing partners too quickly.
Elvis: Oh see... that one's started to cry now... They've drunk too much as usual. Stupid youngsters.
Stoned: Arre! The other one's also started off...
Elvis: Now he's holding her...
Stoned: But she's holding someone else...
Elvis: And that one's dancing alone...
Stoned: But now she's gone and she 's holding his hand!
Elvis: I give up.
Stoned: So do I.

Everywhere people stare each and every day
I can see them laugh at me and I hear them say...
Hey, you've got to hide your love away

Holding on.
Conversations. Promises.
Tears. Laughter.
Cigarette burns. The searing taste of vodka.
Holding on.
Give me your hand. Give me your heart.
Let us help.
Please help me.
Love and support.
Holding on.

The bill has been paid but P has not cried yet.

N, V and P go to the bathroom and while V goes inside, P decides to dispense a bit of advice to a very, very drunk N.

P: ........all right then?
N: (very slowly and deliberately) Fuck off.
P: (after a long, long pause) Ummm.... what?
N: Fuck off.
P: Do you mean that?
N: (nods) Fuck. Off.

P bursts into tears and when V comes out, P is nearly inconsolable.

V: Arre baba, you know she didn't mean it.
P: She did.
V: She's sozzled.
P: When people are drunk, they speak the truth.
V: Not always. You know that.
P: (sniffs) I guess so...

P, V and N link arms and walk to the entrance where K is waiting.

K: All good?
V: Of course.
P: Shall we go then?
N: Glug.

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me

But we get by, and we get high, with a little help from our friends.
And that's just the way it is.

An Interruption

2007-06-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

I am trying to think of the correct song.
I cannot.

You are a name from my childhood.
You are a conversation I can barely remember.
"So, you like reading?"
"Yes Uncle."
"Good, good. Keep reading."
And I did.

You are hidden in the black and white photographs from times before I was born.
You are a fragment of my father's management days and crazy Corbett trips.
You were twenty-two, and you were his best friend.
Brothers-in-arms.
As old as I am now. And I have a best friend too...

You are a voice I have heard all my life.
Your story is our story.
My story is your story.
"So, you like writing?"
"Yes Uncle."
"Good, good. Keep writing."
And I did.
There is only one story in the end, isn't there?

Pen pals with your daughter.
Hearing about the big, old house in Calcutta.
Books, books and more books.
Dinner and good times in Delhi.

I am still desperately trying to think of a song that will fit.
I can't seem to find it at the moment.

This is an interruption.
There will be fables yet.
We will write them together.
Someday.
I know it.

How long...?

2007-05-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

How long 'til the world will be completed?
How many times will history be repeated?
How long 'til the words fall to the pages?
How many times 'til all we can say is save us?

How many times will you look back at that one night? And wish that you had thought more and had just one drink less than you did?

How many times will you remember that car-wreck with shame and shock at your own callousness? And wish that you had stopped and checked whether the occupants were okay?

How many times will you tremble when you recall that betrayal? And wish that you had not done the things that led to an endless estrangement?

How many times will you recall the glass as you decidedly threw its contents at his face? And wish that you had controlled your temper?

How many times will you curse your fate and regret your decisions and apologize to the numerous people whose lives you've helped to screw up just a little bit more? And wish that you were a better person?

Climb on top of all you despise
It's a better view from the lies
Two steps behind before I've begun
Time stops to tell me all I could have done

If I want things to be different now, and forever afterward, will you hold on to me, like you have all these years?
I know where I'm supposed to be.
Finally.

I want to go
Will you show me the way?

On crashing an intellectual gathering...

2007-05-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

It was not a party we were invited to. Well, not directly invited at any rate. But a friend of ours was asked to it, and we tagged along. Free food and free alcohol? Come on, that’s an irresistible combination. Stop judging me. I’m sure you would have done the same when you weren’t making money!

Anyway, so the five of us walk in and look around a little sheepishly. It’s not a very big party and people are scattered all over the house. We feel conspicuous, and huddle together. The host (or some pseudo-host) dawdles over and offers us drinks.
“Sure!” beams out truly-and-directly-invited-friend.
“Sure!” we echo, rather weakly.

Once we’ve settled down with our vodka-and-Cokes and a bowl of chips, we begin to look around. And realize we’ve been provided with free entertainment as well.

There are a whole lot of people from a certain architecture school, famous for- well... actually, I’m not sure it’s famous for anything in particular but its students sure seem to think it’s a great place. I’m just going to take their word for it; sometimes you’ve got to have a little faith in people and what they say, you know?

So anyway, there are a number of women in cotton, ethnic-printed, Fabindia/ Anokhi saris and an equal number in Levi’s jeans and cotton, ethnic-printed, Fabindia/ Anokhi kurtis. Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Fabindia and Anokhi. And I adore cotton, ethnic-prints. But it gets a little tiresome if that’s all you see. A bit like those identically dressed, plasticky, mini-skirted girl-gangs that we all love to hate in Hollywood high-school flicks. A little bit of variety is nice, you know, be it in the midst of high-school-drama or drawing-room-conversation…

The men are equally clone-ish. Raggedy kurtas, dirty-ragged-jeans (why is intellect necessarily synonymous with dirt and lack of maintenance and upkeep?) and (hold your breath-) French beards. Voila! If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

And worse still, if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all.

The-Woman-With-The-Dramatic-Snaky-Bindi-Creeping-Around-On-Her-Forehead: “You see, the premise of Chandralekha is that it’s vertically conceptualized, rather than horizontally. Then, obviously, when you see it, you must view it vertically because to do so horizontally is to lose the otherness inherent in the form!”

G. ventures a question: “Chandralekha? Which part of the country is that from?”

Snaky-Bindi shoots him a look of utter contempt: “It’s a post-colonial-style, three-minute documentary about the hallucinatory madness of an Ethiopian monkey. Made by a friend of ours in Andhra Pradesh. It will tell the world about the sufferings of the Ethiopians.”

G. looks confused, and ventures to ask a second question: “The sufferings of Ethiopian monkeys?”

Snaky-Bindi’s eyes now shoot Rajasthani-heritage-daggers at G: “Are you trying to be funny? Because it’s not funny you know. The Ethiopian situation is encapsulated in the monkey’s descent into madness. Even as we speak, the documentary is being shown at various film festivals in Mongolia. And R. has already got an offer to shoot the Mongolian royal family’s palace. He's going to be tied up with that now, for the next few months.”

G. decides to work up enough courage for one last question: “But then, what about the Ethiopian people? I thought the movie was going to give rise to a movement, maybe some charity events…?”

Snaky-Bindi has had enough: “You are just revealing your narrowness of vision. It’s about a movement in the mind, don’t you see? You must transcend this necessity to see everything translate into concrete terms. The otherness of insanity must be transformed into a holistic unity and that’s the only way to deal with the madness of modern civilization!”

G. has also had enough. We walk off, collapsing into laughter as G. downs his drink… “What the fuck…? Otherness? Vertical? Horizontal? Why can’t people speak in plain fricking English?”

Ah well... At the best of times, critical terminology is a wonderful thing. It allows us to conjure up entire systems of thought with one word or one phrase. But critical terminology should not obscure what you’re trying to say! It should make your point clearer, shouldn’t it? Unless, of course, you’re hiding the fact that you don’t really have a point to make at all…

“Shall we go have the kakoris? They’re yummy.”
“Yes, let’s. And let’s stuff a couple into Snaky-Bindi’s mouth as well. Then maybe the room will stop resounding with her "otherness"!”

We stuff ourselves with kakori kebabs, swig a couple of drinks, and flee the party. There’s only so much erudition us mere mortals can take in one night.

I know, I know. We’re horrible people. We crash people’s parties and drink their alcohol and eat their food, and then laugh at them! We’re simply awful. But I wouldn’t trade places for the world. Being on this side of the fence is way too much fun...!

snip

2007-05-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

According to Greek Mythology, the three Fates are Goddesses who supervise destiny by controlling each person’s “thread of life”. Clotho selects the thread, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts this thread to signify the end of a person's existence.

What does that sound like, I wonder? The end of a person’s life? If I were making a movie about these whimsical Fates, I know what sound-effect I would use at the moment that Atropos cuts that slender thread. It would be a clear, simple, razor sharp-

*snip*

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Ranjana Bose looks out of her office window. What a beautiful day! The sky is overcast and it looks like it’s going to rain. A welcome respite from the recent heat wave in Delhi. Ranjana looks down at the paperwork on her desk. Is there time for a quick cigarette? Probably not, she tells herself hurriedly, recalling guiltily that she is supposed to be in the process of quitting. And the documents need to be turned in by the end of the day anyway. Ranjana looks out again. Is it drizzling? People seem to be scurrying under that bus-stand.
The landscape lurches.
Her hands are clammy.
A shooting pain.

*snip*

Young Corporate Whiz Kid Succumbs to Untimely Heart Attack

Bill Malkovich trips down the steps from the lobby onto the sidewalk. Oh my god, it’s already 2:00 pm? He curses himself for losing all track of time in the young girl’s room. While one can easily call Bill Malkovich a cradle-snatcher, one can just as easily see that he is a fantastic father. The divorce hasn’t stopped him from attending Parents’ Day Meetings or taking Jenny out regularly for pizza and movies and story-telling sessions. Today is an exception. He should have been at the school right now. His gaze rakes the parking-lot on the other side of the road. Where is that damn car? Oh, there it is! He steps off the kerb as the pedestrian-signal turns green.
The horns blare.
He is momentarily blinded.
Screeching to a halt.

*snip*

Successful Publicist Fatally Run Over As Speeding Bus Turns Corner

Jenell Morrison leans over his Physics textbook. The jingle-jangle of the lecturing professor’s silver bangles is un-fucking-bearable. He wants to crawl back into bed but he knows the test tomorrow will include material from the lecture today. He sighs and glances at Abid, who is glancing at Maria. Jenell tries to suppress a grin. Abid is truly hopeless when it comes to Maria. All his charm and arrogance melt into awkwardness when that girl looks at him. Jenell appraises Abid carefully. Is he really dedicated enough to become a permanent member of Jenell’s beloved band? Well, he did write that great song last week… Jenell looks up at the whiteboard.
The door crashes open.
Something whizzes toward his collarbone.
The room tumbles into chaos.

*snip*

School Student Goes On Arbitrary Killing Spree

Melanie Costa walks in and sits down in the train, comfortably sated after the delicious Italian meal with Gabriella. She rummages in her backpack. Where is that I-Pod gone? She often thinks that perhaps buying the Nano was not such a good idea. So easy to lose! Especially with her messy bag and careless ways. Ah, there it is! Melanie settles back onto the seat. Hmmm… She feels indecisive and there is an inter-generational, musical conflict. Cat Stevens or James Blunt? She thinks about Idan all of a sudden. Good-looking, witty Idan with his sharp cheekbones and crooked smile. Okay, James Blunt it is. “You are beautiful...” the singer’s voice croons into her ears.
A loud, grinding explosion.
She smashes into iron and steel.
Flames towering high.

*snip*

London Underground Rocked By Terror Attacks

Chonburi Sopon tosses the fish up expertly, one last time. It falls into the plate and he takes it to the lone customer sitting outside in the sun. Chonburi smiles at the Australian woman as he hands her the fish, and then decides to take a walk down the beach. He is calmly content today. Thankfully, the loan has been approved and he can finally open the club on the beachside. He is still hesitant about the colour scheme of the interiors though. He is rather partial towards a deep green but Annie has her heart set on a dusky shade of pink. “It’s more vibrant! More club-like!” Chonburi can almost her slightly high-pitched voice over the crashing waves. Are the waves a little more powerful than usual today? He turns to look at the Australian woman who is enjoying her meal.
The waves gather force.
His eyes widen.
The furious water crashes.

*snip*

Asian Tsunami Disaster’s Final Death Toll Over 300000

***
I have been told that bank-balances and moderation and career plans and health insurance and stable relationships are excellent things to possess because they give us:
security and stability.
Except that I’m pretty sure that security and stability are fairly fragile castles.
At that *snip* moment, I do not want to regret the things I did not do- however trite that might sound.
Which just makes me think that Horace got it right, back in 23 BC, when he declared:
Carpe Diem.
Seize the day.
Take hold of the day.
After all, one never knows when Atropos might decide to slit the thread.

Snapshots- the Third

2007-03-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

The concluding chapter:

Third year, St. Stephen's College.
Brick-red, stone-grey, leaf-green.

Falling out of love.(Or so we thought)

What's love got to do with it, anyway?

Weeks of... tasting dead roses every time you walk into the starred gates of College.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
And some are born to endless night

A very wise Middle-earth resident once told me, "Love is not enough. Sometimes, a relationship just loses its energy, its drive... And it comes to a natural end. It's still love; but not the kind that will make you make an effort."

Don't we all wish we had listened to well-meant advice??? :)

Falling in love is so hard on the knees...

McLeodGanj.
Tiny theatres with makeshift seating and owners who bring you tea during the movie if you have just come in from the rain.
McLlo's terrace restaurant. Red wine and Godfather and a dreadlocked-hymn-chanting-foreign-hippy-woman who would generously give you herbs that would knock you out for hours and make you lose all memory of conversations with French-Canadian men and of tripping, dancing and swaying through the main McLeod Street market, all the way to the hotel.
"Yesterday was just a few hours long"
Tibetan freedom bands that play awful music but give the 200 odd people standing in the square an odd sense of brotherhood.
Running through the town to make it in time for the "Wednesday only-Korean Sushi" we tasted in the afternoon. Trekking up to Shiva Cafe and meeting the King and the Queen on the way (two chappal and pyjama clad foreigners surrounded by paintings on slabs of stone).
Israeli salads and fried eggs and sandwiches that were impossible for us to finish!
Delaying a friend's early scheduled departure by convincing him to tear up his ticket and scatter it all over the McLlo's lantern-lit terrace.
Dharamsala shawls- warm and fuzzy and bright purple-orange-green.
Tibetan shopkeepers that give you "Thank you India" bookmarks.

Redemption.

The Foreign Exchange Apartment.
Amazement the first time we peeked into their refrigerator. Everyone has separate milk cartons, separate butter boxes- marked with name tags!!
Heated political discussions- George Bush and Iraq and cultural clashes.
Insane terrace top parties where we whirled and twirled to trance and learnt what it feels like to betray other people.
Breaking down in a bathroom and leaning on a white person. Globalization does not lie in movie-making and ambassadors. It lies in beer, cigarettes and moments of weakness.

Darling, darling
Stand by me

Losing friends.
To drugs. To depression. To betrayal. To indifference.
Dealing with it.
Coming to terms with it.
Realising that we shall never really completely come to terms with losing friends.
It hurts for a long, long time.

Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard.
Let's take it back to the start

Making new friends days before College was to end.
Lamenting lost time, making plans to visit Erithrea (look it up lazy!), bonding over a bong, discovering the understated magnificence of The Power and The Glory, trying very hard to make Ngugi interesting by reading the play aloud-only to have L. fall asleep in the middle of a line, smoking Camel cigarettes, dragging N. out to all sorts of parties till 6 AM, watching O. slowly lose her heart (and her mind!), devotedly taking the Metro to Chandni Chowk to eat kebabs and roomali rotis, dancing between the old and the new at the Graduation Party and laughing so hard that we thought we would collapse under the stars.

Complete and utter emotional chaos: enjoy the rollercoaster ride.

Oscar Epidemic.
A moment of pride when they screened Brokeback Mountain in College and no-one hooted or laughed when Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal sweated provocatively on the screen together.
Movie Marathon at G.'s place.
Capote and cigarettes.
Transamerica and tetra-packs of juice.
Munich and Maggi.
Allnightlong till the Oscar-red-carpet-freakish-costume-extravaganza began at 6:30 AM.

Fighting fate. Fighting change. Fighting inevitability. Fighting the process of letting go.

fightingfightingfighting

The Night of January 16th: the Shakespeare Society's Annual Production-2006.
A very drunk final performance with impromptu lines that only "the insiders" understood.
Countless games of Mafia.
Hours before the show, the sound system in the auditorium blasts the Sutta song.
Ah...university!!

We know I'm going away
How I wish....wish it weren't so
Take this wine & drink with me
Let's delay our misery

Save tonight
And fight the break of dawn
Come tomorrow
Tomorrow I'll be gone

Save tonight

Snapshots- the Second

2007-02-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

Second year, St. Stephen's College.
Brick-red, stone-grey, leaf-green.

--falling in love--

Lay down your arms.
And surrender to me

Parking lots and elevators and lobbies and bedrooms and bathrooms and dance floors and apartments and car-rides and... you get the point...

That kind of lovin'
Makes me wanna pull
Down the shade, yeah
That kind of lovin'
Yeah now I'm never, never, never, never gonna be the same

^friendship^

Brilliant, sparkling, sunlit.
Sneaking alcohol into the college premises in a bottle of Coke and drinking it blatantly on the SCR lawns.
Traipsing through College- drunk out of our minds.

Cribbing. Whining. Complaining.
ALL. THE. TIME.
and then...
Laughing. Giggling. Grinning.
ALL. THE. TIME.

Give me a problem and I shall show you how to humour yourself.

Thank you College.

Boring Sundays turned into hours of card-games and King's Beer. Shakespearan declamations in the middle of the street at 3 o'clock in the morning (thank you O.). R and N bring out the guitars and we spend all night singing everything we can possibly think of. Countless nights spent at H. Lines. One explosive couple and many slammed doors. Navy Cuts turn up under clothes, in books, in pillow covers, and on one memorable occasion, in the fridge! Emergency stash... Always prepared...

N-A-G-I-N-I

A small village a few hours short of Manali, with 2 shops (primarily stocking Pine cigarettes and Coke) and 2 trout-fishing resorts. Well... 'resort' is really an overstatement. Scattered tents on an incline. Cubicles on the upper slopes which were used as showers. Telling the helpers that we needed hot water at least half an hour before we wanted to bathe.

Days of doing nothing at all. Nothing productive anyway! Fishing, walking, playing cards, walking, smoking, walking, debating, walking... Bonfires and Pearl Jam and guitars and Euphoria and alcohol and the craziest, most ridiculous Hindi songs ever invented.

Kaise bhoolegi mera naam?

CM (the owner), generously doling out charas (he smokes from the moment he wakes up till he falls asleep). SM (his wife) doling out the pasta and fried chicken.

The river.

Gushing and frothy and infinitely entertaining. L. hopping like a goat across the rocks and stumbling in her overconfidence: splashes of laughter. Nearly losing a family shawl to the river. CM's precise instructions about the bait and the angle and pressure with which to throw the line out. Accidentally tangling the hook into D.'s hair while tossing the line. Inexplicable skeletons on the riverbank.

Going to explore the village on the other side of the river- no bridges! Only a dicey trolley that could take 2 people at a time... The guide pulling us to the other side with ropes that looked uncertain and frayed. Dangling above the sharp rocks and wondering whether we'd die immediately or in a painful, long drawn out manner, if we fell.

The temple on the other side. A small room with an idol in one corner and posters of Karisma Kapoor and Sonali Bendre on the other walls. Incredible.

An argument about reservation. Passion and zest and cynisism and idealism and resignation and anger and apathy and pragmatism and love.

A Canadian Punjabi who defied compartmentalization with a vengeance. Stories about her dedicatedly Buddhist group back in Canada which gathered for a spiritual weekend at a bungalow which was stocked with "every possible drug available in the world". Her religious faith and belief in God and incidents about her crazy dog that insisted on "humping" every guest who entered her house. Her loud, raucous laughter and her quiet, shy lady 'companion'.

Being ridiculously scared to go up to the bathrooms after a ghost story session one night. Working our way up the mountain slope with torches in a tight knot. Brushing our teeth in fear over the washbasins in the open air, fearing an attack by a psychotic killer any second (for as K. put it in a well-timed remark- "Psychos are easier to believe in than ghosts. Our guide could be one!").

The days flew by.
A holiday so perfect that no other will ever match up to it.
It raised the bar.
Forever.

alcohol

DV8 and Blues and Hash and RPM and F-Bar and Mantra and Elevate.
Again.
And again.
And then again...
And coffee at The Imperial when we were feeling extravagant.

the epics

The Iliad.

Sing, goddess, the deadly wrath of Achilles son of Peleus,
That brought countless woes for the Achaeans,
and sent forth many strong souls of heroes to Hades,
making they themselves spoils for dogs and
feasts for birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished.

Sheer magnificence.

A sense of loss.
We shall never live in times where glory is everything, where it is the sole motivation, where it is enough.

G. reading Homer with Metallica blaring in the background.

Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you can't see a thing
Just call my name, 'cause I'll hear you scream

Zeus.
Master of Puppets.

The Mahabharata.

Unravelling its secrets.
Like a treasure hunt!
Like scrabbling about in a dying bonfire and finding a few, scattered golden embers.

The joy of discovery; like Cortez in Mesoamerica.
Triumphing over a text.
Realising that we can never really triumph.
Faustian arrogance; hubris?
Being humbled by the awesome complexity and immortality of the work.
Regretting our 21st century existence.

Damn.

*love*

It defies description.
Shall I try anyway?
John Donne's 'The Sun Rising':
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Suddenly... poetry makes a whole lot of sense....

.a.r.b.i.t.r.a.r.i.n.e.s.s.

R.'s guttural mumblings about Shakespeare.

Clashes with the Dean about sheltering puppies in a Rez room in the wintry cruelty of North Campus.

Arriving one morning to find all the benches round the dhaba tree uprooted. Speculation about the mysterious forces who had carried out this despicable act in the mystery and anonymity of the night.

Monkeys dancing devilishly and scattering the rezzies' laundry all over the College grounds.

AM's fantastic excuses to wriggle out of lecturing us: ear surgery ("I can barely hear"), hand surgery ("I can barely move"), eye surgery ("I can barely see"), abdominal surgery ("I can barely digest anything") and general surgery ("I'm on my deathbed").

Paharganj.

Flowy skirts, the cheapest drinks in town at Chandni Bar (respectably known as Vikram Hotel), and the nicest lasagna and slowest service in town at the terrace-top old-Manali-esque Sam's Cafe. Dappled sunlight filters through hanging scarves and rickety balconies and oxidized silver earrings and Tibetan style ponchos...

Your cool suburban sun
You're foolin' every one
You win some you lose some

To be continued...

Snapshots- the First

2007-02-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Snapshots:

First year, St.Stephen's College.
Brick-red, stone-grey, leaf-green.

Innocence blended with guitars blended with Robert Browning blended with cigarette smoke blended with Kamala Nagar blended with assembly speeches.

Free falling

The Gang of Five. Pasta and iced-tea and Big Chill. The larger circle of College acquaintances. Kebab rolls at the Hindu canteen; looks like a railways station: multi-coloured railings, a juice-stall, 102.6 MHz and bathrooms right next to the counter. But the kebab rolls were worth it.

The Shakespeare Society.
Theatre games and theatre politics. Green room conversations- random and generally accompanied by a Navy Cut. Tinted with nostalgia even as we sat talking; we were so aware that this would be one of our defining memories of College Life. The first post-production party. Crazy. The alcohol was loud and the music was flowing.
Yes.
Exactly that.
Culture shock?? We thought we knew it all... :)

Heated political issues. To vote or not to vote? Presumptuous statements, cafe walkouts, SMS arguments...

Nainital.
English departmental trip. Comfortable silences, video game parlours, one hotel room with 15 people, guitars and whisky, midnight walks, mountain climbing, an unexpected dragon, boating on Naukuchiyatal, sizzling aloo paranthas and mountain-tea. The induction was complete.

Hash, Buzz, RPM, TGIF, Ruby Tuesday's. Dancing on the tables. Shot after shot after shot after shot. Tequila... Bailey's... Vodka... What's that? Who cares? Bring it on... Blowing up a week's allowance in one night. Broke. Tanking up in the car for a hundred bucks and then heading to Hash, ordering one drink and dancing the night away. LC tap dances on the bar, OB is constantly worried about her eye-brows and R is convinced he has left his car open.

Aaisha, Aaisha
Passing me by

Parallel cinema, the world of Latin American stardust, small-budget movies, foreign films, Bengali cinema. Afternoons in the auditorium. Laughing and crying with Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso. Drooling over Gabriel Garcia Bernal. Watching City of God and wondering whether life would ever be the same again. Intense discussions in the Sarai coffe shop about the German Nazi propoganda film. Terminology being tossed all over the room. The same way you'd say 'Espresso!' or 'Cappucchino!". Except here it was 'Leftist' and 'Marxist' and 'Nazi' and 'Capitalist'. No-one said pseudo-intellectual. I wonder why. There were enough of them around.

Understanding a text.
Really?? Can one line mean all that?? Bullshit. That line cannot be analyzed in 20 different ways. It means what it says. Really?? Can one line mean that little??
Give me a word and I shall show you the universe.

Sitting in the cafe from the moment we arrived till Mohan and Bhaiyyan would literally push us out at 2:00 pm. Endless cups of tea and coffee, cheese toasts, Maggis, cigarettes (that would be suitably stubbed out when Wilson/ any other Threats were approaching), cards, tutes, conversations with each other and Mohan (Bhaiyyan's a bit of a grouch!), nimbupaani... Like the post-office of a small village, The Cafe: our very own community centre. Coming and going, coming and going... the Hub of all the drama, and the news.

Learning. Learning how to be your own person. In the midst of people and groups that told you something other than what you believed all your life.
Realising that they are not always right.
Realising that you are not always right either.

One phone call. Goa to Delhi. 4:00 AM, 1st January.
The beginning of an era.
Vascillating for weeks.
Resorting to good old cellphones in order to flirt.
15th February. Clinched the deal.
BD- the Queen of Slaps: "let them echo forevermore"
Sunny afternoons outside the chapel.
Endless days and endless nights.
Maqbool and momos and mellow madness.
A summer full of vodka and hip-hop.
Football matches and sweaty bear-hugs.
Laughter.
Laage tumse mann ki lagan
Nescafe.
Pink sweaters and Christmas.
General Insanity at the Grad Di party.
Partying so hard that we learnt the art (there is one...).

Winter's cold spring erases
And the calm away by the storm is chasen
Everything good needs replacing
Look up, look down, all around
Satellite

To be continued...

Teresa...

2006-11-17T22:52:00.000-08:00

Oh Teresa, it was not too late...

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
In a hole in the universe there lived a Teresa.

A lonely, neverending tunnel of Espressos, littered with scraps of verse, and lit up at intervals with half-smoked Marlboros.

Did you not know the way out?
Were you too scared to make your way to the surface?
Or were you simply lazy?
Were you angry?
Or just tired?

Oh Teresa...

I remember the time you flitted in and out of our lives. An ethereal butterfly! Shimmering flowing skirts and magical bronze shadows that tantalized every man in sight.

We were enchanted.

Laughter. Deep throated and free spirited. You belonged to Almost Famous, without the cynisism. Penny Lane. Pure joy.

Our very own gypsy.

Why Teresa?

I do not understand. I have tried. But I cannot.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you solve a problem like Teresa?

Wizardry!

I loved you.
We loved you.

Teresa in the mirror, laughing at the appalling decor of the Mirage restrooms. Teresa at the bar, charming the bartender into giving us Baileys shooters on the house. Teresa dancing to old-school hip hop with the New Yorkers on the dance floor. Teresa collapsing with laughter in the parking-lot while attempting to sing 'Cecilia'.

You're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily.

It is the incomprehension that has scarred us.
I am defeated.

Gandalf would appear when least expected. Fireworks! Great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire.
Teresa would appear when least expected. Fireworks! Great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire.

A regular prosaic Saturday night transformed intp a collage of mystery, truth and camaraderie.

"To be ordinary is a fate worse than death."

Was that your own line or did you borrow it from someone else?

There was so much we did not know about you but the incomprehension did not bother me back then. You were...like an optical illusion. Meant to be enjoyed, not understood.

Teresa on the terrace, reciting Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess'. I think two people out of twenty were familiar with the poem. It didn't matter. Only Teresa mattered.

Teresa in the garden, barefoot in the dew.
Pied Piper?
Well, we all followed you that night.
Twenty pairs of shoes on the porch.

Where on earth did you go?

Insubstantial whispers through the Delhi grapevine. We heard...
Reams of poetry that we did not read.
Countless nights when you did not meet us.
Endless tears that you refused to let us see.
Packets of cigarettes that we did not share.

Our Teresa... no more?

We looked.

I am a rock, I am an island
And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.

Butterfly turned to stone. Lost in the gravel. Impossible to locate.

Sometimes I think you might come back. And if you do, we have the mountains and the sunlight to escape to. I am guessing you would like the sunshine. I don't know. We never met you in the daytime, remember?

Oh Teresa, it was not too late...

Why did you not let us save you?
You saved us.
You changed our lives.

Delhi sparkles with stardust because of you Tinker Bell... Our very own Neverland.
Eighteen more people on this planet know and love Robert Browning.
'Cecilia' means laughter at 2:00 AM in a parking-lot.
Bronze is magic.
And the magic has touched us.

"Good-bye!" said Gandalf, "And good-bye to all of you, good-bye! And I am not going to allow you to back out now. I am ashamed of you for thinking of it."
"Good-bye!" said Teresa, "And good-bye to all of you, good-bye! And I am not going to allow you to back out now. I am ashamed of you for thinking of it."

You have denied us all access to your reality. We do not know. We cannot follow.
Pied Piper's betrayal- reversed.

Oh Teresa it was not too late...

Now I understand what you tried to say to me. How you suffered for your sanity.

No, I don't.

They would not listen, they're not listening still. Perhaps they never will.

You made sure we won't, Teresa.

Did you know what you were doing? Did you realize?

We had vertigo. And then we glimpsed your world. The fantastic heights, the proximity to the stars, the rush of joy, the sheer abandonment of fear- moments of intoxication.

It is hard to think clearly on the 51st floor of a building.
Less oxygen.
Too much freedom.
Solitude.

I have tried to imagine the Baileys bottle in your hands. And the song that you might have been singing. And the thoughts that you might have been thinking.

Perhaps you were right.

Vertigo is scary.
The complete absence of vertigo is even scarier.

They gazed and wondered; but they were no nearer understanding it, when the first cold stars came out.

Perhaps it was too late.

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.
Teresa is in my ears and in my eyes.

Let's drink to that.
Make it Baileys.
Cheers

Epilogue:

The world is divided into those who have read Tolkien and those who are going to read him.
The world is divided into those who have met Teresa and those who are going to meet her.

Rules of Revelry

2006-10-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

A party that lasts 3 years teaches you a lot of things.

February Fantasy:

Everybody on the dance floor

It is hard to remember how many bottles of alcohol were consumed. It is also hard for most people to remember the events of that night. The terrace, the bedroom, the dance floor and yes, the bathroom, had all been taken over by the music. No-one remembers how it began but at some point, the dirty dancing crackled and spiralled.

Come on baby, light my fire...

The body-count per individual ranged from none at all to 6. Most people were somewhere in between. Could have had something to do with the fact that the party was one day after Valentine's Day, which seems to be designed by Hallmark and Archies to make everyone feel inadequate.

Or maybe everyone was just drunk beyond belief. Drunk on the vodka and the whisky and the gin and the beer. High on the beautiful weather that night- Delhi winter's last lap. On College. On each other. On Madonna and The Beatles and Punjabi remixes. Sloshed because of the sense of the ridiculously safe anonymity on a dark dance floor where it is nearly impossible to tell who you've wrapped your arms around and are dancing with. High on the fact that maybe you don't even want to know who you're dancing with. High on love, or the possibility of it. And wasted on an occasional shot of infidelity; most potent of all in my opinion (also leads to the worst hangover but that's besides the point). And, most of all, drunk on the fact that there is no impending judgement.

----Remember, 'the morning after' is just like any other morning and ought to be treated as such.

Smoky September:

Last day of the fest. No Escape.

I get knocked down, but I get up again

"Can I bum a cigarette off you please?"
"Sure. It's a Navy Cut though."
*smiles*
"That's my brand too. Thanks."
*smiles back*

The cigarette is lit and the two of them stand together smoking.
Pull-hold-puff-pause-pull-hold-puff-pause

"Crazy scene tonight huh?"
"Yeah... Look at them going at it on the dance floor!"
"Why aren't you with them?"
"Need a breather."
"I see... Beer?"
"Sure."

Sharing a drink.
sip-pause-sip-pause-sip-pause

I drink a whisky drink, I drink a vodka drink
I drink a lager drink, I drink a cider drink

They never make it back to the dance floor. The conversation at the bar carries on. Inconsequential, regular stuff. Right uptil 2:00 AM when the place finally closes down.

Nah, don't worry. It doesn't turn predictable and they don't end up best friends for life/ get married to each other. But every time they meet after that, they share a smoke and a drink, and the No-Escape-night sparkles in the fizz and glows in the embers of the Classic Mild/ Benson and Hedges/ whatever (brands change with economic prosperity!).

Nostalgia in tobacco and alcohol.

I sing the songs that remind me of the good times
I sing the songs that remind me of the better times

----Sharing a cigarette or a drink is a quasi-religous experience.
Yes.
It is.

March madness:

Party in Ghaziabad. We're in North Campus. A one-hour drive away.

"Are we going?"
"Too far ya... Too much of an effort. Let's just chill at home."
"Cool. What are we eating? Chinese?"
"Hmmm... Momos and fried rice."

The College boys arrive alongwith the delivery boy.

"Come ON women. Let's go! All the third years are going... It's a full on third year scene. And the Maths guys have bought an insane number of beers."

We hesitate. What finally decides the matter is that it's easier to go than to spend half an hour making excuses.

Leave at midnight. Get there at 1:00. The party's just getting started.

A massive garden with beer bongs placed in strategic spots. General camaraderie. The music is loud and EVERYONE is dancing. People being thrust up on the table one by one. Cheers and beers and no-more-tears...

The electricity lets us down A general protest. One smart cookie drives his car onto the lawn and puts on the music- full blast. Never say die.

We wind up at 5:30 AM. The cops have arrived. Flee the scene!! The cars screech out of the driveway past the police vans.

Three cars driving side by side on the highway. The last few cigarettes and bottles of vodka being passed from car to car, while driving. Laughing at the madness.

Driving up the ridge. It's a winding road and contrary to the popular perception of crazy, drunk college kids, all three cars slow down and drive carefully. Blind turn coming up. We're in the first car and we take the turn.

screech-skid-crash-silence

A Maruti van, speeding in the opposite direction on a one-way road has crashed into the car behind us. We park on a side and suddenly there are 20 people on the road. The Maruti driver has already fled into the forest before anyone could react. He must have known he had crashed into a car full of Sports players (who also happened to be Jats). The two passengers weren't quite as smart. The College crowd loses its temper. When you're high and still driving carefully, an accident really hurts. The Maruti-men are hauled out and bashed up. We (that is- the girls) protest feebly but there isn't much point.

K. walks around in a trance and comes up to us.
"Have you seen my shoes guys?"
He's been walking around barefoot.
"Nope. Just go sit down in the car please."

The cops are a 100 metres down the road and have arrived. They stand around, enjoying the show. For those of you who are unfamiliar with North India's social dynamics... Jats and cops are brothers, kindred spirits...

The frustration has finally been vented. The passengers pay up to cover the cost of the damage.

The cops see us off with strict, paternal-style instructions to drive carefully and get some sleep.

"Thank you ji! Bye!"

Home sweet home. N. had left the party earlier. He took the keys and is now sleeping inside.

ringing-the-bell
ring-ring-ring-ring

Crap.

"Call him."

dial-no answer-dial-no answer-dial-no answer

Oh, you have got to be kidding.

Banging on the door, screaming his name together on the count of three. Six voices shout in unison. Our knocking is bringing the damn house down.

N. has evidently passed out good and proper.

The neighbours are now screaming at us. Bedlam in the building.

We give up. Drive to another friend's place and collapse into bed at 8:00 AM.

----Every night is a potential adventure and holds the possibility of a memory you will recall with fondness.
Also, don't mess with Jat footballers and hockey players.

December Disaster:

A birthday party. Beautifully done up. Waiters and expensive food and lush green lawns and a DJ. Vintage airplanes in the backyard.

'Cos i try and try to forget you girl
But it's just so hard to do
Everytime you do that thing you do

A hand up a skirt is all it takes to ruin a night.

She was wearing a very pretty skirt. Short and shimmery and green. He was talking to her when suddenly, without preamble or permission, he thrust his hand under the flimsy fabric.

What an idiot.

I don't ask a lot girl, but I know one thing for sure
It's the love I haven't got girl, and I just can't take it anymore

Her boyfriend was livid with rage (yes, there was a boyfriend in the picture) and I think he would have killed the offender if he hadn't been held back by friends. She was sobbing in the corner. Some of the guys slapped him around. A couple of his friends attempted to defend him.

"He's very drunk yaar. He's had too many."

The host realized that the party could easily turn into a war-zone and it nearly did. A couple of people got beaten up. They weren't involved in the episode but that hardly matters when tempers are running high and there's a girl involved. Blood on the dance floor.

"Take him away guys. We'll deal with it later."

They do. He doesn't come to College the next day. Only after 30 days and repeated apologies does he step into the hallowed halls once again.

----Don't be an asshole.
Alcohol is not a reason or a valid excuse. You only do the things you really want to do.

January Joint-

Sitting around in the sun.

rolling rolling rolling rolling rolling

Boom Shankar

Memories of Malana and Manali. Someone's got a friend along whose sitting with us.
Take three hits and pass it on. The group is large and there are only 2 'J's. The new chap's turn.

1...2...3...4...5...6...!!!

The old-timers look at one another. Obviously a rookie. Hostility is growing in the circle.

7...8...9...

Someone takes pity on the poor chap.

"Dude...pass it on. There are a lot of people left."
"Oh sure, sure.. Sorry!"

5 minutes later, it reaches him again.

1...2...3...4...5...!!
6...7...8...9...!!

----Every social activity involving more than 3 people is a ritual and has its own rules.
And some people never learn...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2006-10-09T00:24:00.000-07:00

She remembers the weight. The sheer weight of insecurity. Walking down the corridor alone and a group of people bursting into peals of laughter right as she passes by them. Of course they were laughing at her. Weren't they? Insistently telling herself, "You are as tall as you think you, as beautiful as you think you are, as smart as you think you are, as cool…"
Bullshit.
You are only as much as they want you too be. YOU need to be validated by someone else. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, remember??
She tries anyway, and strides swiftly past the snickering, giggling gaggle.

ARROGANT

A way with words. That didn't help her much. Writing as a means of cathartic release is overrated. Pages and pages of lucid, lyrical diary-entries are rendered irrelevant when you wake up in the middle of the night during a slumber party and overhear your 'best friends' trashing the way you dress. "Her bra-straps show when she wears those spaghettis!" When you pretend to still be asleep. When it takes a colossal effort to reign in the sobs that threaten to wrack your body. When you wake up and have breakfast together the next day- sausages and eggs and toast. When you never talk about it. Never. When u hesitate the next time you have to decide what to wear to a party. When, for reasons you do not know and cannot fathom, you choose to wear defiance and black straps.

S--L--U--T

An afternoon in the school canteen. Dosas and idlis. A Frooti squirted in your face by the harbinger of your doom- the boy who used to be a pillar of support. Whatever happened to that?? Rushing to the bathroom to wash your face, and collapsing on the floor. Your 'best friends' follow and calm you down. A ludicrous sense of gratitude. At least they still care a little bit- or pretend to. Who cares? The pretence of friendship is better than complete solitude. The truth is not all that it's made out to be. Illusions sustain her. Illusions sustain you. ‘The Matrix’ be damned.

hysterical

A party. Terrace-top. The advent of slow, romantic songs. Pairing up. "May I have a dance?" An awkward teenage attempt to align herself to the rhythm, though she can feel people staring-staring-staring. The moonlight reveals far too much. The morning after- rumours.
"She accused him of trying to kiss her!"
"No she did not!"
"Yes, she did."
Bewilderment. Kiss? What kiss?? Just a dance. Realization. No such thing as 'just a dance'. Hearsay.
"I'm sure she led him on."
"He would never have done that!"
"Well, she’s quite a bitch anyway. Maybe she just made it up to get attention."
"Where there's smoke, there's fire!"
Is there always? Really? The memory of that night... A ruin in the landscape of your life.
You are only what they say about you. The grapevine is your identity.
Gossip is The Gospel Truth.

*TEASE*

Academic excellence. Voices. Insinuations of competetiveness, the need to be better than anyone else. She stopped attending Chemistry. Would invariably walk in late with a 'friend' so that they would get thrown out of class.
Going home and picking up ‘The Fountainhead’. Howard Roark’s voice in your head. "Second-rater" Ringing, ringing, ringing till you hurl the book in rage. Angry at them and angry with yourself. Because you’re just-not-strong-enough.

pridepridepride

Thank god she has her family. Loving, caring, laughing, supportive, regular. Oblivious. How could they know? You are Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a hundred others besides. Because you are secure where you are free. A different person at home, she builds walls and towers and fences. Your home is your fortress. Her own world-the one that matters. But her fortress collapses in the fraction of a second when her eyelids flutter opening the morning. Another day has begun. She cannot escape the sunlight that streams in through her window. The same shards of light that will invade the school bus, the field, the classroom.
Family is simply. not. enough.
And you sidle into the classroom. Feeling small but not small enough. The battle has started. You want to go home because every evening is a temporary reprieve, a period of relief. Keyword- temporary.

l.o.s.e.r

‘Life-changing moment’. The phrase is the oxymoron of her life. People say their lives changed when they saw/read/heard/thought something. A defining moment. She is unable to pinpoint that instant. She is almost jealous of the fact that she is unable to recall the moment of transition.
It would have made a good story.

ATLAS SHRUGGED

The sunlight is rich and mellow.
A million friends- including the spaghetti-trashers. Real friendship. Undiluted by the past.
Gossip is inevitable and irrelevant.
Love.
She is part of the laughter.
Breaking other people’s hearts.
Joy.
The boy-who-tried-to-kiss-her is a close buddy; they go out for dinner and drinks.
Home is more of an open-house. People dropping by all the time.
Walls? Security from the awful crime rate. That’s all.
Knowledge.
Academic brilliance- again.
The world is her fantasyland.
High.
Lay down your arms. And surrender to me.
The truth does set you free. She is free.
She still loves illusions though.
Does not try to carve up the universe into black and white anymore.
Binaries are pointless.
Enjoy the chaos.

Forgiven.
Not forgotten.

A C(K?)ontroversial Q(K?)uestion

2006-10-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

One of the Indian intelligentsia’s (?) favourite whipping dogs in recent years has surely been Balaji Telefilms. For the uninitiated, that is the company that is responsible for flooding channels with the K-serials.

“These serials should be pulled off the air.” (This from the usual advocates of freedom of expression by the way…)
“Shameful stuff! So incredibly regressive…”
“I mean come on! Life is not all about who has the bloody keys to the family safe.”
“Such a waste of time. Why don’t they show us something more intelligent? As if we have nothing better to do.”

Seems we don’t. Have anything better to do, that is. The TRP ratings of ‘Kyunkii Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ and ‘Kahaanii Ghar Ghar Ki’ have consistently remained the highest on cable television ever since they first began to be aired. That means that an overwhelming majority of people with access to cable television sit down every weeknight to watch Parvati and Tulsi fight for their respective khandaans with the ubiquitous and convenient plastic surgeries, attacks of amnesia and unexpected pregnancies thrown in. Are the critics of these serials implying that these people are witless, unintelligent viewers? That they have no choice but to settle for Balaji fare? Nonsense! The Indian viewer is spoilt for choice and has consistently chosen to watch these serials over others.

At this point it becomes important to decide whether we feel that television reflects society or vice versa, for a number of criticisms are related to this original bone of contention. Surely, the mirroring and impact are mutual and simultaneous. At the same time, it is obvious that the television reflects society far more than the other way round. Was it the popularity of soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful that led to a dramatic increase in divorces amongst Americans or did these soaps in fact simply depict the growing frailty of American marriages?

What in fact, is the problem with depicting patriarchal joint families, a materialistic society, warring business factions and regressive outlooks? These did not suddenly spring forth from our television sets with the advent of four or five television serials. Isn’t Balaji Telefilms being true to the spirit of a certain, already existent segment of the Indian social landscape, albeit with the inevitable embellishment and melodramatic representation?

That is another issue by the way. We are all agreed by now that these serials reflect life to a degree, right? However, a common grouse against these serials is that they are ‘unrealistic’. I agree. They do not represent life as it is. So what? The essence of contemporary Indian cinema and television is exaggeration. Very few ‘realistic’ reels invade our homes and theatres (there is an increase now though, what with parallel cinema and ‘reality shows’ making waves. Still a tiny part of the big picture though…). Unattractive secretary? Let’s make her downright ugly with an unflattering hairstyle that anyone with an iota of sense would change if she wanted to. An Indian college in 2004? Let’s transform it into fantasyland with clothes and make-up the like of which aren’t seen in the streets of Manhattan, much less Mumbai. A hero taking on Pakistani soldiers? Let’s make him single-handedly defeat a whole regiment- and throw in a couple of Pakistani tanks for good measure and extra applause in the theatres! But I digress… What I am trying to say is that controlled and precise representations are not the norm. They are few and far in between. So why chastise just the makers of the K-serials for something that pervades our entire entertainment industry? Do women in real households wear saris at home that look like they belong in designer showrooms? Of course not. Do diyas assume a life of their own and extinguish themselves when a calamity strikes the khandaan? Of course not! (My apologies to those who believe in the divinity of diyas. Let’s just agree to disagree, shall we?) Is the normal Indian businessman stupid enough to repeatedly sign on documents without reading them first? Of course not- at least I hope so. We all know things do not superficially function the same way in the real world as they do on screen. And why should they, some would say. What is the point of mediums that allow us to get away from every day life, if every day life is all we get to see anyway?

Then there is the issue of ‘negative’, stereotypical representations. There are fingers being pointed at Ekta Kapoor (Balaji Telefilms is her baby) for contributing to the suppression of Indian women, the spreading of superstition and what not. Let us first assume that the K-serials are in fact, regressive (Though many would disagree. I have personally heard people praise Parvati and Tulsi for being empowered and powerful women. One could argue that they are limited by a society that has cast them into the mould of the ‘ideal’ Indian woman, but their agency in the events of the soaps is unquestionable. Anyhow, let’s not even get into that argument- it is an endless one and not what we’re dealing with here). Do these daily servings of popular hogwash strengthen the hold of patriarchy and blind superstition and so on and so forth over the average Indian mind? To put it simply, will men start expecting their wives to prioritize their families over everything else because they see good old Tulsi do so? Will women start fighting over the house-keys because someone in the K-khandaan does so? I seriously doubt that. Surely we overestimate the impressionable potential of the average Indian viewer. I suppose one could say that these serials are harmful in the sense that they do not promote change or a Cultural Revolution. In other words, they help perpetuate the current state of things. Well, don’t most forms of entertainment do that? Surely the lack of radical thought is not enough reason for the kind of vehement criticism that ‘Kyunkii…’ and ‘Kahaanii…’ have provoked.

My own personal problem with the popularity of the K-serials is restricted to the fact that they have caused me a great deal of inconvenience as far as writing mails is concerned. Ekta Kapoor’s love affair with ‘K’ has led to an insane amount of interest in numerology, and I am simply unable to address anyone in writing anymore because names seem to be spelt differently every second week!!

If you ask me, despite the chaos (or is it kaos?) they’ve caused, these serials are a boon to society. Housewives have something new to chat about. Families have been granted a regular post-dinner pastime. Lonely old people have excellent entertainment. For God’s sake, the K-factor roused people to action after the Gujarat earthquake; the critical juncture at which ‘Kyunkii…’ was, motivated the survivors to mend the television cables and tune in to Star Plus faster than one could say ‘bharatiya naari’! I believe there was even talk of an award. Something to do with the solace these familiar serials provided the quake-stricken community… Ekta, the philanthropist…

I, for one, am rooting for her all the way. She has put her finger on the pulse of the people. And with resounding success. She is giving the people what they want- in fact she has mastered the art! No amount of ‘intelligent’ criticism can change the fact that the K-brigade is ruling the airwaves. As for how mindless it is…it has never been necessary for entertainment to be intellectually stimulating. It’s just entertainment after all! Let the ‘intelligentsia’ stick to recitals of medieval Central Asian poetry and lectures on geological surveys in Latin America (cerebrally challenging and suitably offbeat enough to be in vogue and be discussed at the Saturday night Habitat Centre book launch…). In the meantime, Ekta Kapoor remains the Czarina of soap operas, and soap operas remain the order of the day. There is a popular saying that goes something like this- People get the government they deserve. Well…People also get the television serials they deserve. The mandate is out. It’s Kulture over Culture!!!

A regular ride home...

2006-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

On the way home at 8.30 AM in the company cab.

A traffic light on MG road. The cab is required to turn right, into Chhattarpur.

A green signal for vehicles determined to go straight down the road. We must however, wait. At least...legally, we are obliged to.

There is a red Maruti 800 in front of us. Playing it safe, on the right side of the law.

Our cab-driver starts honking. He's in no mood to wait.

Stubborn, stubborn Maruti 800. It refuses to budge!!

Blaring horn, now accompanied by muttered swearing on part of the driver.

When *Madangir-3rd drop* in the back of the cab exasperatedly says, "Just skip it goddamit!", we know he is voicing the collective thought in the cab.

Headaches coming on. Staying up all night, followed by relentless, jarring noise in an unusually stuffy car (it's crowded today and it's definitely hotter than it has been recently)... the perfect way to ruin your peace of mind.

Is the light never going to change? An eternity of honking.

Finally!! The green arrow pointing towards the right, glows! A light at the end of the tunnel; a light to end all our suffering...

Crap. Maruti 800 still isn't moving...

Cabbie loses all patience. A few dicey moments and about 6.5 near-casualties later, cabbie has managed to swerve to the left and is in the process of overtaking Maruti 800 from the left. We halt next to the still-static car.

In spite of ourselves, we peer curiously into the neighbouring vehicle.

Cabbie rolls down window, sticks out his head and glares at the obstinate middle-aged man. The man who refused to budge.

All his hurry now forgotten, the cabbie now addresses Maruti-man.

English meets Haryanvi meets Hindi.

"Uncleji!! Turn kyon nahi karte ho??" (Why don't you turn??)

It is a busy, small intersection. A bus full of people on our left lean out interestedly. A million cyclists crowd around, ready to enjoy the fun. A green Alto which is coming from the left, espies the potential for entertainment and halts right in the middle of the intersection.

Cabbie now decides not to disappoint the audience.

He looks around at the other people and with a grin and biting sarcasm, shouts to all and sundry, "Learner hai, learner hai!! Abhi- Abhi gaadi chalaani seekhi hai!! Inki galti nahi hai." (He's a learner, he's a learner!! He's just learnt how to drive the car!! It's not his fault.)

The spectators snicker. Humour is a nice change from fisticuffs.

Maruti-man stares straight ahead. He's about 50 or so. Silent. We can't help but giggle too.

Cabbie is in no mood to relent. "Arrey, thulley bhi nahin khade hain, Uncleji!" (There aren't even any cops around!)

*a pause as the speaker ackowledges the listeners' sympathetic nods*

Then addresses the audience once again, "Chaloji, koi baat nahin... Seekh jaayenge." (Anyway, it doesn't matter... He'll learn.)

Maruti-man is transfixed. He refuses to acknowledge Cabbie. He refuses to retort. But most infuriatingly, he refuses to move!!

Cabbie has vented his frustration and had his fun. He rolls up his window, shifts into first and the horn blares again.

The minor traffic-jam caused by the spectacle disintegrates as Cabbie attempts to drive through a couple of motor-cyclists and the Green Alto, ignoring all laws of space and matter, and life and death.

It doesn't matter. Green Alto, and almost-dead motor-cyclists are still too amused to lose their tempers. They smile appreciatively at Cabbie and our cab screeches as it turns left.

One last look at Maruti-man. Stony-faced. Hands clenching the steering wheel. Greying hair.

In all the drama, the signal has changed back to red. We realize just as we're taking the turn.

The cabbie races past the Chhattarpur temple. *Khanpur-6th drop* ventures a comment, "Good work, bhaiyya ji... Aise slow drivers ke saath to aisa hi karna chaahiye." (Good work... This is exactly what one should do with such slow drivers.)

Cabbie has mellowed. Feels generous. Pops out the tape of bad-quality Haryanvi music and puts on 95.0 FM. His way of showing us he's in a good mood, because we're always asking for FM.

"Arrey, theek hai... Chalta hai." (Oh, it's ok... It doesn't matter that much.)

We settle into our seats comfortably. Shakira and Himmesh early in the morning.

The driver glances back at us one last time, "Learner tha na..." (He was a learner...)

We smile obligingly and some of us close our eyes. We still have enough time to squeeze in a short nap.

The cab screeches to a halt. We need to turn right to drop *Chhattarpur-1st drop*. The traffic light is red. There's a truck in front of us.

Cabbie swears. The horn blares. We are resigned to our fate. We concentrate on FM. We close our eyes and settle back into our seats.

A regular ride home...

I can smell Diwali in the air

2006-10-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

I can smell Diwali in the air.

That probably sounds unnecessarily profound, but if you really think about it, it's true. There are certain nights when you step out and and you can feel the approach of winter. A moment of ecstacy. Then of course, thoughts are quickly diverted to the fact that a whole new winter wardrobe needs to be arranged or the fact that tickets need to be booked for the Goa trip (funny how we crib about Delhi summers right from April to October and flee the Delhi winter when it finally arrives) or that you'll have to carry a light shawl to work tonight-the air-conditioner is just too damn effective!

But the awareness of that fleeting moment remains.

The awareness of Diwali round the corner.

Of card sessions, and dinners, and pujas, and shopping, and gifts, and pathakas, and music.

Card sessions where the stakes vary from matchsticks, to "5 rupaiye ki blind, 10 ki chaal", to glass bowls that contain enough money to fund a round trip to Mauritius, to nights where car-keys and girlfriends' lingerie items are tossed into the betting ring- fair game.

Dinners where everyone excitedly dresses up, adhering to most hosts' strict instructions ("Keep in traditional guys!"). Where Laxmi reveals herself in stiff gaddis of crisp bank-notes. Where good food and good alcohol and good-looking people blend into one another, creating a symphony of warmth and companionship and joy. Where P. Uncle insists on getting drunk within the first half an hour and then religiously makes a trip to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Where chairs are often abandoned, and everyone settles down comfortably on gaddas and cushions, closer to the marble, and by implication closer to the earth. Where backless cholis and enticing navels and expensive aftershave create threads of desire that link nearly everyone in the room by the time two drinks have been had. Where P. Aunty is greeted with cheers when she brings out her famous kebab platters (accompanied by moans and groans from the vegetarians in the room!). Where, occassionally, the game is forgotten and money takes precedence; suddenly it's not just a grand or two at stake...it's a friendship. Where conversation sparkles and laughter rings deep into the night. Where N. and G. decide to take a midnight walk together, fully aware of the fact that the morning will be overcast with regret. Where wealth, friendship, festivity, laughter, alcohol and the onset of winter collide into each other; with a little bit of luck and enough talent on the part of the players, everything is still intact (albeit with subtle, sometimes nearly invisible changes) after the last 3 open rounds for 'health', 'wealth' and 'prosperity' are played, after the gracious hosts are thanked, after the last car has purred away, after an unsettling silence finally settles over the stage...

Are things still the same??? But let's go back to the dinners for a bit...

There are roughly three categories of people one meets during the regular Diwali celebrations.

There are friends of the moment, the kind you're interacting with day in and day out at that point in time.

Then there is the comfort zone; my personal favourite! Old is gold and all that jazz. Friends whom you've been meeting nearly all your life at the parties your parents go to. Friends who come together barely once a year now (we're all grown up and don't accompany our parents to social gatherings anymore! Diwali is a rare exception). Yet, when we're all in the same room, distance and time become irrelevant, and nostalgia takes priority. Memories of sneaking into the kitchen and stealing the snacks before the 'adults' finish them. Winter picnics complete with sandwiches, badminton, cricket and the one-odd Aunty who'd insist on packing aloo-puri in massive steel containers.The high levels of excitement when we'd go to a house with a computer in the early 1990s and spend hours playing 'The Prince of Persia'. A slight sense of awe as the older children reached the Board Classes, and started asking us to amuse ourselves while they studied in their rooms. Envy when we'd learn that other kids were allowed to talk on the phone for as long as they liked. A renewed bonding when the youngest person in the large circle became acquainted with the concept of 'sex'- the lowest common denominator had been achieved and now we could all sit together and talk again. The only time we meet now, these witnesses of our lives, who could testify to all the awkwardness of our adoloscent years, is Diwali. And it is sheer, mellow joy!

And then of course, there are acquaintances. the kind you've met at a couple of other people's places and shared an interesting conversation or a memorable dance with. People you want to get to know better!

Diwali doesn't discriminate. All three types come together, and hostility and elitism take a backseat as glasses sparkle with shimmering bubbles and dupattas glitter with sequins (clothes from Lajpat Nagar and Ritu Kumar's showroom are eerily alike!) and old Hindi film songs warble in the background. Till the inevitable happens and someone makes a smart-ass comment about someone's college/clothes/car/companion/whatever. Before you know it...resentment simmers, sarcasm glimmers and then- fireworks!! Or maybe not. There are times when the lava doesn't erupt; it simply slinks back into the depths of the earth where it came from. But something alters, the universe shifts JUST a little bit, and we know we're one step closer to ruining something beautiful.

Diwali brings us one step closer to a perfect world. Diwali is a disaster waiting to happen. Diwali is a consumerist mela that speaks of love and family and friendship and joy with the same ease with which it peddles televisions and paints while appealing to our desire to keeping up with the ostentatious neighbours. It is only too easy for the cosmos to spiral out of control in the unstable season that is Diwali. But to not like it, to ignore it, to hate it, or to fake your way through it is like not falling in love because you're afraid of getting hurt.

Every Diwali changes us.

And that is because it is a symphony of extremes- the best and the worst and plenty of grey thrown in. The flames only remind us of the surrounding darkness. But where would we be without the diyas??

J. Aunty's home-made biryani is diametrically opposed to K. Uncle's insistence that the food be catered from the most expensive outlet in town in order to make sure that everyone knows the bank account is overflowing. L.'s jaded flirtation with T. is poles apart from W. and M. who fall in love over red wine and Nusrat's songs. The hue and cry over child labour creates a situation where the same children now starve due to unemployment. The noise of the firecrackers and the silence of small betrayals come together. Mithai, dry fruit, chocolates, Danish cookies, Tropicana exist in close proximity and the clash of civilizations is suddenly an oxymoron (or is it?). Drunken nights and early morning pujas are regular events in the same house. A truly well-meaning gift to your neighbour will not necessarily eliminate the stab you feel when you receive a present that is three times more expensive. The honest laughter you share with your new found friend will not help you completely overlook his tendency to control the card-game.

To deny this is to deny ourselves.

To deny this is to deny the reality of contradictions.

It is an odd season. There's a nip in the air but you still need to turn on the AC in the car. A time of transition. Winter fruits trip into summer vegetables. A time when opposites co-exist in the same dimension.

Celebrate the contradictions. Celebrate life. Celebrate Diwali.

2006-10-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

Starting something new.

On a day when the newspaper carries the regular reports of school shootings, sex scandals, corruption in the legal system, civil strife, epidemics and so on and so forth, I shall begin blogging.

It seems ridiculously jarring, but what the hell... I've been wanting to do this for a while.

Boom Shankar!