Childhood Calls

Just accept. How easy it is

from the womb of the nature to

the tomb that is nature

Stop pretending; its bliss

.

If what I say is what I mean

No hidden agendas, maybe impure but clean

no retentions no pretensions

no worry of what you think

for what I say is what I mean

there is no guilt, there is no guilt

For there are no hidden intentions

No retentions No pretensions

.

There is nothing to hide, I am nude

not civilized, I am crude

you see me, you know me

that is all that I am, No enigma

not larger than life. Spontaneity

for there is no precept

All you need to do is, just accept,

Just accept. Just accept.

With the open eyes

What was it that I was looking at?
It has all changed and gone
Though it stands in flesh and blood
But not as I had always known

Looking you like I always liked
Looking you like you never were
With my open eyes I look at my lies
Not you but my surmise

Here, there and all around
It’s all the echoes of my sound
Did I ever give my ear?
I spoke and spoke and never did hear

You are just one and there is world around
Not as it is, but as I have mis-found
Now that the eyes are open and the mind is clear
I see new things, as I steer

Don’t Stop

Songs have lost their inspiration

Or maybe now they are inspired

The light is fading in the mind and heart

With the cooling fire of the pyre

I wonder why I don’t remember you any more

With my eyes closed you aren’t there before

Just there is a thought

Where have you gone?

I open my eyes and close again

But you are gone, yes, you are gone.

LOCUSTS

Through the wide window of my room, in the 7^th floor apartment, I could clearly see the sky, still lying on my bed. Also I could see the city that sprawled all around, taller buildings at distance, numerous dwarf houses, occasional green patches, and a bustling road with shrill sounding high fuel efficiency bikes. The view of the blue sky was soothing, at least as long as I was in that air conditioned room.

And the sky started changing; now blue started dissolving in the background and in the foreground started appearing strange flying birds like a swarm of locusts, as if they would plague the city and in no time would cut off the sun light. On a keener observation I found out that these birds were metallic, they in fact were fighter planes.

They cut off the sunlight, their number was overwhelming, and they had plagued our city finally. Bombs started dropping from them like beat of birds, becoming bigger as they came nearer. Taller buildings were coming down, green patched were more of yellow fired patches.

I felt helpless as I had never felt before. With so many planes dropping bombs even the messiah could be sure of death. I found no use escaping, where would I escape to? Any other place would be only more dangerous. I was seeing death before my eyes. Any moment I would be dead. It was so different from what I had always thought the death would feel like. There were no memories, the life didn’t come flashing by before my eyes, and all notions of death were defied.

There was acceptance, fear, and helplessness. I had accepted the death, I was afraid just because of conditioning, and I could really do nothing with all the clout that used to linger all around me.

This day was to come and so it came.

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We would fight for everything. We would fight for food, water, air, land; you just name it. Our sole aim was superiority; there was nothing in absolute that we could be satisfied with. There was hatred in our hearts.

Only if we were one nation, we would we so prosperous. We would be all happy and would have so much in bountiful quantity. But we hated each other. We would get our heads slit rather than bow. Mutual agreement was well beyond our pride.

So we always fought. That had in fact become our reason to live; to kill the other.

We were as good as dead.

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I always wanted to have a house in the hills, in the quite of some valley, where I would have only minimal and could meditate day and night and relish the nature and live the natural way and die one day in the bosom of nature. If you accept nature’s way, nature cares for you. You can never starve at nature’s hands, if you learn to live in nature’s way. I wanted to drift back to the stage of primordial nature.

But I could not leave this civilisation, hardly civilised civilisation.

I had made numerous relations, bound myself with numerous obligations, getting out of this web seemed completely impossible.

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But that one day I left, left that 7^th floor apartment in which I lived. Long before the sun was awake I got up and just left. Walking the empty streets and reached the railway station, bought the cheapest ticket to the last station where-after the slope of the mountains stopped the wheel, where-after started the kingdom of nature in much of its primitive form.

Never before had I travelled in such a crowded, non air-conditioned coach in train. I sat at the door hanging both of my legs outside. There was no space to even stand inside.

The sun had finally awakened, the sky had gotten blue. The day had progressed and the train had moved some distance from the city. Then farther away I saw that in the background of blue sky, the city was stormed by strange birds like a swarm of locusts, as if it was plagued. Seeing better I found that the city was being bombed by fighter planes and I was aboard the last train that ever left that city.

Last order that I issued with my sovereign pen last night, before finally retiring to my suite on the 7^th floor, was to storm the enemy state with all our fighter planes, inundate the city state with all our bombs, and let the enemy state rest in death, the next dawn. And overwhelmed with my desire to live, meditate and die in nature’s bosom, I had taken the elevator to my room.

Like cloud the planes shadowed the city states and bombed them to death, ending the enmity forever and with no base left for the planes to return to.

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Reinventing God

It becomes very easy if you can place your trust in something or someone, if you can believe in that one thing or being. Your trust may be rational, it may not be. What matters is faith. Believer’s life is easier than non believer’s. Non believers have taken a lot of burden onto themselves. They are really loaded with bag-pack full of stones.

For a believer, there is a source for almost everything, his divine object of faith. Beyond that he has not to think. But for non-believer the onus to find rationality of everything is unto himself.

Human being is not rational, but he always tries to be. There is a limit up to which he can move with this baggage of rationality. Many keep moving, many break down and many, better still, care not for rationality and take the leap of faith.

In life, a time may come when I find myself clinging to some object of faith, know that I have broken down.

Killing God is very easy and can be done very rationally so. But reinventing him is more fun, because that is liberation from the ego. The baggage of rationality brings a complacence, a very high opinion of oneself, consciously or ignorantly. Mostly that happens un-consciously. A rational man is able to identify the rationality of God for the believers, but what is implicit in this is that he holds rationality on top of faith (else why would he rationalise faith).

So once the burden overburdens you and you are near break-down and if you reinvent the God, it is bliss. Because you know importance of rationality and you know importance of faith and at the same time you can’t foster any longer your ego of rationality.

Realization

Something happened, something very natural, in the wilderness, a battle of survival. Unfortunately none survived. There was nothing like the bigger fish eating the smaller. The bigger had the strength here and the smaller had the strategy. So both perished.

And I was an observer, not a neural one though. Quite unknown to both of them I had a liking for one. See I could not prevent in, it was all going in my dream. All through the battle I wanted my loved one to win. So as the things went, both perished. I was in grief. I lamented the loss of my loved one, I was in mourning.

But then as it happened, I woke up. Dream still lingered in my mind and so did that feeling of loss and sadness. But then something happened, a realization. I realized that in that battle of survival, both had perished, my loved one and his opponent and the battle was in no way an unjust one. The life of his opponent was as important as his, and so were their deaths. So why was I feeling bad just for my loved one?

Attachment. I felt attached with one and the loss made me sad.

Had I been truly an impartial observer, it means I would not have felt anything. But would that not be cruel and insensitive on my part?

I guess not. Because that battle was a fair one and I could not help in any way ( come on I was dreaming!), my feeling indifferent won’t account to any insensitivity in any way.

There is one more thing in it. Things are impermanent, and so are beings. They will come and go, as will you and me. Their coming may make us happy and their going may make us sad. Isn’t that just being human? That in fact is. But at the cost of understanding of reality.

Why would I like to understand reality? Anyways it is not the reality that works, it is the agreed on reality that works. And as is agreed on widely, we should lament separation from our loved ones.

I would like to move beyond the agreed on reality for I am not satisfied. Moreover that defies sense of justice.

If I am to move beyond this agreed-on reality, the norm, then would it not lend everything in chaos. The norms are to facilitate things and your unilaterally moving away from them would lead to chaos. Is that right?

I do not propose that, instead I propose to move to an agreement closer to reasonability, a contract based on justice, impersonal justice.

Would that be feasible? Is that practical? I see one benefit with this new norm at least, lesser contradictions and lesser pains. Utility will provide for feasibility in time. But that is a significant move, a radical move. So lets not take it en-masse, rather take it one by one, according to our capabilities. As and when we feel the need of that reasonability, we shall go for it. In no way will we impose it. Why? Because that would be against the justice that we are aspiring for. Our justice in humanistic and we will have to realize that if one is happy with lesser reasonable norms, as long as that doesn’t defy justice, we will have to respect that.

That would account to moving towards lessening emotions, is that right? This new impersonal-justice is entirely need based. If questions have started sprouting in your mind about the present agreed-on reality, only then should you go for this. You are lessening emotions here because that makes you satisfied as a human being. Satisfaction as a human being brings in enough subjectivity that qualifies you as human. Emotions are just a way in which subjectivity as a human being finds expression, and now if it is something else than emotions that satisfy you, it in no way makes you lesser human.

The gray area here is this notion of justice. That is largely how you would respond under the present norms when you are truly impartial in relation to a situation. Like had I been impartial in my dream, the way I would have responded. I place my trust in our present norms for that. As to what we call humanism right now would to much extent be this notion of justice. We are almost there. Though I would like to deal with Justice in forthcoming posts, I think this is quite sufficient here.

And I would cry

I would look at the sky and cry, and cry. The sky was too big. stars were too many, it was difficult to comprehend and was little familiar. So I would cry. Mom would caress me, would rock me, would tell me songs, but so long I was under the sky, i would cry. Ans as soon as she would take me in, I would stop crying.

Later in life I would wake up in night and start crying. parents would try to silence me, would try to know the reason, would try to make me know that they were there.

There was a fear of loss. Lying on the bed i would think what would I do if my parents are lost. It scared me, I felt less secure, I would cry.

Still later in life I would cry in the nights. Was I growing into a sissy boy? The reason for crying now was different. The reason this time was death. I have been raised up with the idea of re-birth and Karma. What if I am born next time as a dog? I won’t even be able to speak! If born as human, I will have to learn everything all again. As if it is very easy learning this one time, how would I do it again? Temporary nature of things intrigued and worried me.

I would only cry at nights, perhaps because I had nothing to do at nights. There were just two TV channels that too Doordarshans! There was nothing to keep me busy in the night. Somehow crying would really relieve me.

My fears allayed with time. I stopped crying as I grew older. But that does not mean that my nights became any easier. There still were many doubts, many questions and many fears. And now they were only more. I had started feeling convenient with my present identity. Idea of death brought new doubts now. Would I feel this same ‘me’ in the next life? This feeling is better felt than written. To be more lucid, the one who is feeling himself as ‘Chinmay’ here-now, is he going to remain the same in the next life, even if he is born as a dog? Or to say it even better, is there going to be some common thread between my this existence and the next existence, the thread that I can associate with myself, which I can call myself. Or to say it still better, if this identity of myself is not permanent, is there something that I can call myself. Death would take this body and so would it take this consciousness, then what would remain that would be me, and how would I feel that if at all that could be felt. The answer is perhaps what we call the soul, ‘atma’, but I could never really feel that and that could mean to me nothing more than a concept. What I really wanted was some sort of realization that would put these questions to an end and not some rhetoric.

And this question would worry me though I would not cry.

You may laugh at all this, but all this was pretty real and raised horrible doubts in me. I still have found no answer, though have come to a truce with these questions.

Such questions when put before, may sound like even foolish doubts, but when they emanate from within, they really trouble a lot and nothing remains more important than the answer to these questions.

Row comrade row

I am on a boat, rowing it. Shore is nowhere near, can not be seen. God damn it! I am so tired.
Trying to look ahead, I have never been able to see the coast where I can finally stop rowing and sit to rest. I was born on the boat and seems so that will die on it.
God damn it! I am so tired.
I stop rowing. In no time I see other boats passing mine and their boats men tell me, “Row comrade row, the end is near, no need to fear.”
I pick back my rows and start rowing again. I tell myself, “The coast is near, row.”
I am exhausted and so are other boats men, but we all row, for the coast is near.
I slow down, give up to my tiredness. I slow down further. And I stop. I stop rowing. I see that a few boats are nearing and will take me over in no time. And once again I will be told, as I always have been before whenever I have tried to stop, “Row comrade row, the end is near, no need to fear.” And I just throw away my oars in the water.
Boats come to me, concerned well wishers say to me, “Row comrade row, the end is near, no need to fear.”
“But I have lost my rows”, I reply. They look at each other and then at me and move.
I lie down on my boat, look at the clean sky, I relax. It’s so beautiful, blue water all around, the coming moon, the going sun. I sit; I see fishes playing near my boat. It feels great. It’s all so beautiful, it always has been, but rowing the boat I never could see, for all that I wanted to see was the coast, and that was not there.
But wait, more boats are coming. Oh! They are the same ones that took me over, whose boats men had asked me to row. Why are they coming back? One of them says, “Oh! You had lost your oars, how are you ahead of us?” I tell them, “I have stopped rowing; I am still there where we met earlier. You are coming back, why?” They look at each other and then at me and the elder one says to the rest, “Row children row, the end is near, no need to fear.”
I say, “Oh my friends, why do you seek the coast? To rest? So I am doing now.” They look at me, they are sceptic, and they slow down as they are already moving away. But they again speed up and move away. I lie down on my boat, look at the stars. Have they been this beautiful since ever?
I wake up. I see one more boat beside my boat. One of them has broken away and has joined me. He is staring at the sky, mesmerised.

Fighting me

I don’t get over

Or I don’t want to get over

I don’t know

I love you and then I hate you

At one moment its all there

Another, its all over.

.

I think and then laugh

Laugh and then I think

Think think and laugh laugh

And you are gone!

Mind killed you, reason killed you

And now I feel all alone

For you are gone.

.

Brave, strong and reasonable

All I am that I should be

I am the man, I am the sword

But alas! Its not me

.

I am the one, helpless

Fighting no one else, but me

For I can not get over

Get over thee.

Book on hook

Somebody’s status message on Facebook read sometime, ” You Give me a book, I’ll walk a mile for you.”

I myself am much into books and feel that there can be no better way to kill time otherwise. Kill time? Off-course, because I value first-hand experience more than any other way of learning. As of books, I have stopped reading fiction, almost. In my book shelf non-fictions have already out numbered fiction reads. Autobiographical, Biographical, Philosophical, Historical, Spiritual, Strategical…or simply non-fiction fill my shelf now.

Fiction is many times, or better say most of the times, one living his dreams in ink than in reality, and I hate that. Not the best novels you hear about are so, but many that have managed to make their way into this categorization of fiction are such. Simple fantasy doesn’t make much sense to me and neither does informed and well researched fantasy.

Books can make people and can mar them also. I have seen both extremes. But one problem that I have seen with most of the avid readers is that they start giving less importance to what is before them, the physical reality before them, they develop some mental forms/patterns in which they try to fit in all that is around. I have also seen people setting ideals reading books that are just fantasy or if not that, they try to imitate the character that all through tries to tell you to be yourself!

So here comes a point to be a bit cautious. Books are good, for me they are like must, but remaining in touch with reality and constantly refreshing yourself with the reason that you are reading something is very important. More important here is that you know the reason precisely why you are reading something. The reason may be as simple as that you like to spend some time reading a good fantasy, if you are up with such a book. If here you are good with your reason you won’t get unreasonable with the book, you won’t try to take out something more from the book. Say you are reading some philosopher’s theory and say he is telling you something on what form should a government be, and if you are just reading it and before this never has the question that “what kind of governance is superior?”  has come to your mind, you may get swayed away by his opinion. And if say you have been pondering over this question of governance, maybe due to some contemporary situation/crisis in some nation, your reading various philosophers views would be really enhancing.

“You won’t know the real value of water, not till you are thirsty, and not till you are in a desert”

That is what I say that you should be good with your reason. The reason may not be a heavy-weight, but there should be and you need be clear about it, that you may not be left astray.

Who is dead?

In the blue ocean, I see this red shade. But I don’t say what I see, thats a sacrilege. The ocean is pure and blue, red shade is one’s own hate. A puritan, I am, I wonder how many more wear this facade. I see, but don’t say, in pure blue, the guilt of red shade.

The red keeps growing, as does guilt, and the blue keeps fading away. I still pretend, tough personally apprehend, that it’s all blue and no red.

One day someone whispers to me, I too see what you do. Amazed, I raise my brow, and ask, what is that? He says: The ocean is not blue it’s all red.

How does he know? I dread.

I say: It’s all blue, it’s not red. Its your guilt, its sacrilege. I see it blue.

He says: So do only a very few, for its red and not blue. It’s all red, theres no guilt, no sacrilege. Its time of truth, the god is dead.

High on Hukkah

I am from the city of Nawabs, mind it not Nizam. There is a difference. The city of Nawabs has Nawabs as the populace while in the city of Nizam, there is just one Nizam. Hukkah and Betel chewing are leasure at my place. Roam in the narrow lanes of Chowk area, you’ll know that lavish lifestyle needs no money, all it needs is a cot, a box of betels, and a Hookah. And when this deadly combination starts casting its magic, it is what we call Mehfils.

So it is because of my proclivity for the thing that I find myself with friends round a hookah, away from my home, trying to reincarnate the Nawab in me. But here it is a green leaf affair, not for Nawabs but for the Nizam, its costly.

Everything seems awesome. Place is a fusion of cultures. The ambience is maddening. Place is a cocktail of all directions and colors, east and west, north and south, black and white, red and blue. Its trance.

I lie on a bean bag and for the very first time I feel that this is something made for me. It is not me who has to adjust. I can be my way. With such bodily comfort I feel my brain running leaps and bounds. And all off a sudden Maslow’s hierarchy of needs makes much more sense to me.

Mint and strawberry, I don’t know who of us called for the flavour, but all the time smoke smells chocolate to me. But again as does the bean bag salves me, so does my Martini. I am on the verge of transcendence.

Like birds in the sky, Things fly by,

Light from the dawn, Smoke from under down,

Sound is the space, Flavour is the pace,

Never before life’s been so, roads were never so easy to go…

Pa Pa Pa Poker Face………..And wierdo Gaga takes over. Trance is lost. I am back. Where was I? What was I thinking about? Was it an astral voyage? A projector is casting all eccentricity of Gaga on a wall and JBLs reverberate the particles in the air. It’s just the physical comfort now, high has plummeted. I seek refuge in the Martini.

The pipe comes to me. I pull in the smoke, the Hukkah gargles. I cough and the smoke escapes from the mouth. Few eyes turn to me. All I do is smile. I again pull it in. It works this time. Pipe goes round robin way, and keeps going. The fire goes, more fire comes, and the fire goes on.

Its red, its blue, its yellow and its dark. We are all together and we are all alone. Oxymoron is the word for the evening. There is not much talk and if some, that can not be recalled and inked, for that’s just the crust and not the core. Here I feel us at crossroads with Voltaire wo said, “Not to be occupied, and not to exist, amount to the same thing.” Or perhaps we are occupied!

I wonder if this is how people back at my place celebrate their evenings! And what you see when you go through those lanes, saving yourself from streaming red betel juice, indeed vindicates my stand that the city of Nawabs has Nawabs as the populace.

I raise the glass for this one last time. The last sip that I savour is in the name of the culture that I leave behind to behind to be here, in the name of the philosophy that says “Vices make you alive”, in the name of my friends who were indispensable for the evening to be this good. And I swallow this sip and savour it the most.

Drunk #3

You definitely can manage your first drink for free. Or “you are a fool if you pay for your first drink” as one of my more experienced friends told me. I believe you can even manage more than that.

“Have your say”

“Fresh lime soda, and yes, sweet.”

“Come on, you can have anything. Theres a good variety they offer here. Pick a Vodka”

“No thanks. I…ACTUALLYYYY…don’tttt Drink(Voice modulation: helpless). Soda would be fine( Voice modulation: sad).”

“Come on. Its not always that someone offers you like this. Come on, speak out like a man. Drinks on me.”

“Okayyyy. Now that you are so insistent….”

I am witness to that, though none of the two was I, a passive observer in fact. This doesn’t go with other things, to be more precise it only goes with addicting things. Like you can always find someone offering you cigarette, weed….etc, but seldom coffee (unless there are some serious hidden intentions or some business going between you guys or you are a super hot girl). None of these? Give me a call, we can sometime sit together and share our sorrows over a coffee.

Now I have a friend who met a guy in a bar in a metro. The guy was his daddy’s age and was a married army man with a daughter of my friend’s age. Army man was waiting for a girl he had met in the flight and who had promised him to meet at this very bar at time an hour before my friend met him. The fact that the girl had not come and had replied to his call by forwarding him some romantic SMS had not made him leave, hoping against hope, he was still waiting and found a good company in my friend, to bear the moving clock. What my friend has to say of the whole experience : All expenses paid. A dip in free-flowing wisdom. Got a new friend. Witnessed a new level of human perversion…

In all the time I spent with my seasoned friends I got to learn a lot. I consider this a privilege. “Know what you are drinking”, one of my friends who is very passionate about drinking once told me.

“You can make that a hobby. Helps in many ways. See the percentage of alcohol, see the make and the manufacturer. Try to identify each name with a taste that you can know if you are not getting what you asked for.” I nodded my head thinking myself wiser as he was drunk and how can a drunk person be wiser than me, all in my senses? He was in grip of his vice and I not. Obviously I was wiser untill it was proved otherwise and I realised that I was more in the grip of my ego than he was in the grip of Soma. And this enlightenment came to me the next time I was struck in a group with a drinker who knew what he was drinking, he was boasting off his this knowledge, rather flaunting it. He was not wrong, he was not uninteresting, he sounded smart even drunk…Grrrr…I envied him.

Man has his vices, you don’t find ideal man, for if you find any, he’s not man, anything but man. And more interestingly man starts taking pleasure in the fact that he has some vices. Vices, as the name says, are not rational going by the old definition of rationality. The new schools may consider the vices rational as they have a place for the irrational man, they try to talk of man as he is and not just the man as he should be. This has been a real breakthrough and the things have become more intuitive and the random nature has found a place for itself in deterministic science. This is the Gyana, the enlightenment, that descended me facing that man. And I realized that your vices don’t make you an ass-hole, they just make you man. So there was no reason for me to assume myself smarter than my dear drunk friend.

Tired, as always I get, intend to continue…bbye for now…

Me with Myself on Platform # 2

It is nineteenth of September and I am sitting on a chair on platform number 2 of Lucknow railway station. On my way back to college after three wonderful days at home with parents. I left the home half an hour back, bade goodbye to my parents but still am with them, still feel at home with mamma coercing me to eat something, me getting irritated. I smile at this thought and there is some longing for that. Home is after all a place where you like and love to be, when away irrespective of whatever you feel at home.  The taste of the last tea at home, strong, not very sweat, and milky still lingers in my mouth. Mamma didn’t make me lemon tea for she feared that lemon would catch my throat.

I come out of these thoughts as I hear the programmed female voice announcing something about my train. I miss that and wait for her to repeat that in Hindi. After all I live in a multi lingual nation where English is used to comfort alienation of an Indian that he is likely to face in India. As we use directions in maps for ease of navigation, so can we use languages to navigate map of India.

The message is, my train would start late. Nothing new! And that I have come out of my thoughts, I pay heed to following announcements. Train of an old couple who is shunting in front of me has been scheduled to arrive on a different platform, some technical reasons. Now they have to climb back all the stairs and go to different platform. I look at their luggage and feel sorry for them. They frown. Quarter of population on the platform is on move after this announcement.

I have two bags. They lie in front of me on the platform. Next to me sits a man in his forties who is now eating food perhaps packed by some relative or his wife, he sometimes back was suggesting his son to do well in his exams to whom he was talking on mobile phone. Mobile phones make in themselves yet another interesting Indian story. Ubiquitous now, once were a privilege, a need now, grew in numbers like nothing before had grown, not even India’s population and not the Sensex. Mobile phone is a paradigm of technology changing life, like automobiles did. You still can find older people remembering days when life was so more peaceful without phones than now with phones in every hand. Despite this they find it necessary to have these devices.

There is a sea of unique individuals around me. To my back there are people sleeping on polythene sheets spread on the platform (How much land does a man require?), sleeping on ‘Jhillis’. Who says one billion people are a problem? Not for our entrepreneurs. Organized factories have come up to cater this demand of polythene sheets on railway platforms. Nature freaks see possibility of recycling here. No one is poor enough in this country not being able to buy this ‘Jhilli’ when he is going to travel without or with ticket in general compartment and sleeps wherever he finds place to, spreading his ‘Jhilli’, a bed on move(Fortune at the bottom of Pyramid!!!).

There is unprecedented number of policemen on the station. Reason being twenty fourth of September is approaching. Verdict of Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on the case that dates back to 1885 is due on this date. The dispute is much older, some four to five hundred years when a temple was demolished by an invader to build a mosque, whose dynasty was to rule India for ages after that. In 1992 some (MANY) Hindu activists brought down the mosque. The place was and is believed to be the birth place of Hindu God Rama, as so it is the birth place of Rama. The government is apprehensive of communal riots following the verdict. So this unprecedented security here and elsewhere in the city.

With a lot of things happening around, hawkers selling stale and unhygienic food, an amputated beggar asking for alms, person next to me eating food, a train starting from platform number one, a couple haggling with a coolie, a young man listening to music aloud on his cell phone (Madam Baith Bolaro me special tri khatir laya), I drift back to my thoughts as all this appears mundane. I am thinking about my life, how I plan things to be, how I have to proceed, what the life really means…blah, blah, and blah.

Then I see a cow approaching me with its horns directed straight towards my stomach. I am panicked and jump from my place. Ephemeral nature of life becomes all of a sudden so very real to me. The cow was attracted to the food that the person next to me was eating. He is more composed than me, perhaps more experienced even. He simply hushes away the cow. I laugh at the questions that were bothering me and the idea of my being nothing in this world, the world I and for that matter most of us aspire to conquer, though my heartbeat is still on fire. The cow could have left me lifeless or at the least bleeding had those horns managed to have a touch of any of my body parts. I laugh more, a laugh born out of helplessness. Once again out of my thought world.

Now a group of eight young boys, all in 8-14 years age group, and a commanding lady comes and stands in front of me blocking my view of platform number one. I pull my both bags nearer to me. I have been skeptic of almost everyone lately since my mobile phone was stolen by two boys breaching my trust. As it is auspicious nineteenth with twenty fourth so near, news of all kinds of rogues heading the city are there, over and above that this skeptic mind, and compounding all this documentary film on the hijack of IA plane back in 1999 that I watched today on NGC, I get a bit suspicious.

Are these the so called saffron terrorists? Are they going to hold swords if the case is decided against the Hindus? I myself am amazed at this idea of mine. Then I tell myself, stupid, they are on the station. This means that they are going out, so they can not be them. Ah! Relief. So are they Fedayeens? The documentary on NGC worked here. Then the commanding lady with the boys asks, “Where are the girls?”. I, without any specific reason that I could get, feel a bit relieved at the idea of girls accompanying them. Out of the blue came a voice, “Madam they are coming”, and in no time arrive six girls and some more boys, look at the sex ratio. The weird idea of Fedayeens also goes as the group becomes more homogeneous and takes a look of a class on a picnic.

I am wondering at how weird I can think. My mind goes to what Buddhist monks taught Johnny in Karan Bajaj’s book: Don’t judge people. And comes next in my mind what Osho says: “Just become a witness (Sakshi ban jao)”. I smile to myself. My weird thoughts have already embarrassed me. I decide to do so, not to judge and just become a witness. And also I think not to think. I try to do so. I witness thoughts going away from my mind. I witness things around. But now nothing is making sense to me, to my amazement. And I come out of the state. Because if I remain in this state now, I feel I can even miss my train. And more truly, I feel that this mind has become so habitual of thoughts that absence of thoughts doesn’t feel natural and the thoughtlessness comes to an end. It’s like homeostasis, only this time it is thoughts and not hunger and thirst. Or perhaps it’s not the absence of thoughts just an illusion of thoughts being not there for still in this state I remain conscious that there are no thoughts, which means at least this thought is there.

An elderly lady approaches me and asks if I can give her fellow passenger my seat, she more of directs me, for she has recently been operated. More out of concern for her age than medical operation, I get up and give her the seat. I move my luggage to some distance away where I stand along. And through all this the person sitting next to me gave me a look which I still find difficult to comprehend. What this crazy mind on mine gets the best is “Are you a fool?” I wonder why that man would say this. I am once again ashamed of my thoughts.

“Don’t judge people”

I stop this chain of thoughts that I see building in my mind. And soon arrives my train, half an hour late, almost on time by Indian Rail standards, and the last though that comes to me is “I should write about all this”

Drunk #2

“A friend in weed is a friend in deed”

I wasn’t invited to this beer bash. Perhaps a few have taken umbrage of its preceding post. In my attempt to divide my peers into three, which I now consider to be audacious/outrageous on my part, I really displeased those who fell in any of these. The party was organized in most secret of the ways.

“Smoke some Ganja..come on…smoke some Ganja Oye…”

Thats what is now rocking my room, and these  guys are back from the party, the covert party as for me, and all, drunk, lie here there and anywhere, in fact any place they can find to settle there asses or even less, in my room. The trio that has just hit my room, trio of drunkards, all of them belonging to the “OTHERS”; a great opportunity to write about this third front after all. I keep the book am reading aside and get ready to gather moments that I can perhaps write about, as I am doing now.

They are laughing a lot, more than ever they do, almost completely purposeless laughs. Another friend, attracted by all the music and swears enters the room, unaware of the fact that but for me everyone else is drunk, asks, “Why in this world will you people lie on each other like crocodiles? ” And one of them wittingly replies, ” ‘coz we are crocs” and all again burst out laughing, I too join them not to let them feel alien with me. Friend catches up,” Okay!! which bar?”And what follows is complete non sense talk,  anybody speaking anything.

Two of them for the first time reveal names of their princesses and get pretty emotional about them. I am amazed. They are different from me, for my case is

“With time grew the pain…

And I started enjoying the pain”

They don’t intend to learn adjusting with this pain, unlike me, and have pretty meticulous plans chalked out how to proceed. There is an interesting observation here.

“Attraction starts with repulsion”

Now there are many cases supporting the statement. The first one was that of the big-muscle-man (remember MARIO WING NEWSLETTER #1 ?), now there is more or less the same case here with one of these two Devdas, one whom I know better personally. Ah! I so badly want to blab away the names, but I can not…darn it.

“For the sake of drinking”, “Drinking to get drunk” and the “OTHERS”, the very respectable ‘others’, the ‘others’ whom I kept at diametrically opposite end in the previous post.

Let me put it straight, as I myself am. If what I write next offends someone, please feel free to get offended, I offer no apologies. ‘The OTHERS’ are those who really don’t know the reason why they are drinking. I was wrong assuming that they are not interesting, in fact they are more interesting than the revered former two. The reason they didn’t appear interesting was that they don’t make much fool of themselves and neither of others. Most important of all, ‘the soma’ doesn’t make them puke out their wisdom. Now for precisely these reasons ‘the others’ appear to be the most interesting. Devoid of much overt effect that they are; what is covert is really worth this mid night oil and precious parker ink.

They don’t know their reason, as I already have said. They don’t tell you anything meaningful when asked for reason, ofcourse in their sane times and for that matter insane times as well.

“I am flying high… O I am flying high….I am flying high…Oye…”

Thats maximum that I could make out of all the various answers that were thrown. puked, slapped,…, abused at me. They are probably in for the ‘hip-thing’ and are learning to be the ‘for-the-sake-of-drinking’ drinkers . They are owing their allegiance, conforming to what is ‘hip’ or better say ‘non-conforming’, to the class they covet to be in, to the environment they long for, to what they think they are or again better say they ought to be.

“I want to go up high round the winding world” thats what they dream and also reach, probably, and least of all: sing.

And again as last time, I am up with writing for now, but the post remains in-concluded. So will continue. For that while…BBye..See Ya..

Drunk #1

“Etiquettes demand that you say cheers before kissing your darling.”

“Joy is in drinking and not getting drunk.”

I am not a drinker though find nothing wrong with it, have always been a silent observer in all the parties, sorry, wet parties. I hate missing them though I don’t find myself saying cheers with my friends very often, but yes, I enjoy the ‘peanut-chat’ and the ‘alu-chat’ when the rest enjoy the Soma. And these Chats are not the reason why I hate missing these parties, I hate missing the wisdom that flows in the conversations that follow. Its good to see the most silent type friends compensating for their otherwise almost mute lives, joy to see the BBC World friends silent as mute, its good to listen to older friends, their experiences of life that come without any censor, its fun to see a few friends trying to act absurd just over 2 pegs of vodka, its laughing the ass out at some friends who prefer sleeping on the road outside the pub and you have to take care of their dignity, if any whatsoever,  and there are always lessons to learn and last though the most important, some really need you to get back.

“Bottoms up friends”  and that to me means “Finish your peanuts you Kiddo”. Thats not what is actually said to me but thats what the looks of the proposer convey to me. Now some friends are conscious drinking before me. As one of them once said to me, drunk upto his throat, “You are not drunk, I won’t speak a word to you, I don’t trust you, you’ll use what I speak now.” And thats what I am doing right now! Not that he did not speak to me after that, he spoke a lot and lot and lot but thats what I say ‘wisdom’, “You’ll use what I speak now.” True, very true, drunk he was but not out.

I am not a drinker, now that would not be technically very sound at this point, as I am not an alcohol-virgin. But whenever that has been, has been very very limited, just for the sake of adding my mug in the ‘cheers’ ritual, that a few friends of mine are very emotional about, those who drink for the sake of enjoying drinking and not getting drunk.

Drinking for enjoying drinking and drinking to get drunk, there is a very clear distinction between the two, and that is really very important to understand. Though these two are not exhaustive, I have the third variety too in my friends itself, but they don’t deserve as respectful mention as the other two.

The first ones are classy type, who enjoy the aura, who long for the whole experience of holding glass in the hand and sipping slowly, though they do not drink any less than the latter.

“Don’t go for ten, go for two, but relish the two. Don’t just swallow it.” This advice came in from a pro as I was contemplating the apple-green flavor that I had ordered so as to add my glass too in the cheers ritual. I didn’t pay any heed to the advice, as after the happy sounds of the glasses striking each other I found myself done with that bitter apple green flavored thing in a shot. ‘Bitter’ as I say it, that is not intended to impress upon you that I don’t have a taste for the fermented but I actually don’t have a taste for it and thats why I write it the way I do, ‘bitter’.

“What’s that. You finished it. Thats not how it is done. Look, it doesn’t get absorbed in the stomach instantaneously, and unless that you don’t feel it up here”, he points to his head, ” So what you do is try to match the rate of consumption with that of absorption so that you feel getting it up here and theres where the fun is.” I nodded my head waiting for the thing to get up, it never reached where it was meant to, you don’t actually expect that before four or five pegs. But as I already said, I am not a drinker, though not technically, I expected something to happen that never happened.

So its after all the former versus the latter. There are friends giving time to each drink and there are friends shouting at the waiter for more and more and more. And amid all is me, listening carefully to everything that is being uttered, not willing to compromise with a single phoneme and piercing my fork in the piece of potato in the potato-chat and taking it to my mouth, almost mindlessly, as my mind is somewhere else, you know where.

One of the ‘To-get-drunk-sake’ guys went all mad, insistent with his unscrupulous demands, and one of the ‘for-the-sake-of-drinking’ guys suggested me to slap the former tight. I requested the mad guy to join others for the dinner, to get something in his stomach to absorb some of the liquid, if not all, he had had to reach the high that he had reached and was creating a nuisance for us. He didn’t eat and his fate I don’t feel appropriate writing here, but that was not very good, he didn’t really like what happened once back to this world.

I’ll continue later, I think that the moment of my writing has passed and won’t be of much use continuing just to conclude it.

See you.

Drops of respite

Its moist. It rained yesterday evening, the weather got pleasant. The sky is overcast, but it doesn’t rain. The leaves are very still, there is no trace of wind anywhere. Ajaey says its harbinger of a storm. I wish rain accompanies the storm, as it did yesterday. Its romantic when it rains.

Its the time that monsoon shall bless the thirsty earth and the earth shall be good earth, mother earth. And her bosom shall feed the hungry populace. The heat has crippled the economy, shops are shut down in the noon and opened back only in the evening, monsoon shall heal. Mr. Mukherjee says that he is not the FM, monsoon is the real Finance Minister, and true indeed he is.

Last year around the same time I started writing an article and had titled it “Mind and Moisture”, I never completed that. Readers should bear in mind that I was pretty obsessed by the initial showers so there is scope for partiality. I got pretty absorbed in the rains back then that I had no time to complete that. At the centre of that article was the idea that Monsoon is largely responsible for what Amartya Sen calls “Argumentative Indian”. The leisure and the pleasure of the rhetoric and dialectic, all arise from the pretty easy agriculture that the monsoon facilitates, that the mind feeds on the moisture. Moisture is to mind what coolant is to engine.

To quote George Bernard Shaw, “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.” Chess was invented in India. The fields of Doab, that have been a theatre to great politics, again a mind game, have on one hand monsoon and on the other the fertility of the mighty rivers changing their course.

In this way I intended to proceed, quoting more examples and more lucid ones, to establish the relation between mind and moisture in case of India. But never completed that!

Flocks of birds I see in the sky. Maybe storm is on its way. Leaves have started quivering. I shall go out and relish the rain, the rain that makes mirror out of sandstone, if it accompanies the storm.

A short Note

In his innocuous little ways

Did he proceed always

Not bold enough to say the whole

Not shy enough to simply hold

In his innocuous little ways

Did he proceed always

…and never he told.

Rationale:If at all it does

Painful in fact it gets when the inexpressible desires to get expressed. inexpressible by its very nature or because you have repressed. Whatever, it is inexpressible, and for that, as a matter of fact, as you can not express, it suffocates you. And you, like me, just seek a pen and a paper and start writing anything. Sometimes comes out, a not very rational poetry which when asked to explain, you wonder what it means! And you wrote it, in all ways you wrote it, no one but you wrote it. And as I so emphasise, I doubt, really? Did I write it? No I didn’t write it, I just held the pen, maybe pen composed it. I was just a medium. Maybe ink had her story, it might have wanted to say something. It feels cynic as you know that it was not the ink but, yes, you, yes you wrote it.

Hushhh…Slow….Calm….don’t utter it….the ink wrote it, not you…don’t tell…silent…otherwise they will ask the meaning and what will you tell? No no no no no……the ink wrote it. Ah! Thats it. I am comfortable now.

inexpressible not yet expressed. inexpressible, by its very nature or repressed. So what was that poetry? That was inexpressible unexpressed. Ah! sounds good, sounds better.Sounds convincing…And you laugh. The desire to express the inexpressible is assuaged. Though you could not express and never would you be able to express, but yes, you can guise it with dress, with mask on your face, look at the mirror and say, I have expressed.

Ah World! Ah You! I have expressed!!

If at all it does

Face so full of lust

Eyes so sunk in thirst

Can my surrender only assuage the devil

Can only let pass the gust

.

Can only let pass the gust

If at all it does

I worry, may not it bury

him under the mount of lust;

A never ending thirst

.

I refrain. Back do i step

As I push his head..away from my lap

I enquire, I conspire; as I see him

heading towards the mire

The mire of desire..that puts his heart on fire

.

I refrain, I restrain..though I know his pain

In the fire of desire he is burning his sane

Though I wish to give my lap – and gently pat his head

In my long hair I wish to hide his face – as him I gently do embrace

.

But I push his head..away from my lap

See now I myself fall in devil’s trap

I refrain, I restrain..but can’t help enjoying his pain

His face so full of lust

His eyes so sunk in thirst

Spew air on his burning fire

As I leave him in a gust.

Mario Wing Newsletter #1

TOP SECRET.

(Do not tell anybody that I told you)

Fraternity is seeing a new crisis build before itself. Though the gravity of the crisis is not clearly understood by the members, the stalwarts of bachelorhood, it doesn’t make the crisis any less severe.

of late the big muscle-man, who apparently lacked the fist sized muscle beating in the chest, has shown traces of its presence. Soldier’s other muscles are tightening over the ‘grown-celluloids’ that until now seemed to be one of the legs of the tripod of conspiracy. To his defense he has to say, ” Attraction starts with repulsion”.

its not just one case, rather the most innocuous of all. As another stalwart, the harbinger of the crisis who opted for Sanyas later, says about it, “Theres no point. No chemistry fits in here. They are different species.” Thats indeed a thumbs down for the muscle-man and a bite of reality. Elders are of the opinion that it wont be difficult to direct the ‘Big-Guy’ back to his ‘Black-Grapes’ that in the end of the day are going to turn out sour.

As of another case, this ‘Jovial-Kid’s Case’ is a bit more serious. Comprehensions of eloquent expressions on various occasions has moved elders’ hearts, to be true. Fraternity won’t mind loosing one soldier taking into cognizance the depth from which these expressions are emanating. To the relief of the fraternity it is quite un-probable that the ‘Jovial Kid’ would make any move and he is not a threat in the near future.

Third being the case of ‘Drunken-Wisdom’ who in the guise of his psychological research is ignoring the perils of sailing in troubled waters. Though he is a strong pillar and his research can really add to fraternity’s understanding, but the elders still fear that may not he loose sight of his goal in his odyssey to a doctorate. For the time being Drunken-Wisdom’s misadventure has passed muster and the elders suggest timely reality checks, being cautious.

As of fraternity as a whole, there is no imminent threat , as no overt move has been taken by any of the diseased. But relying on the intelligence inputs it is imperative to take a few steps in advance so as to cushion the impact of any shock, if any, that the fraternity may face in future despite its best efforts to stall it.

It is definitely time of crisis and introspection as termite has already got in and is hollowing the fraternity from inside. And alas! it is just one termite responsible for all the tumult, and at the same time Hurray! it is just one termite.

City in the light of Life

Waking up at six in the morning and going for a morning walk may sound cruel to to the nocturnal generation, but is a great experience.

Morning Lucknow is all so different from the Lucknow of the day. The Lucknow that I had known was that of cars rushing into cars, men rushing into men, every other man chewing beetle nut and spitting anywhere and everywhere, policemen staring at you at every corner, dust raising out of controversial monument parks, cavalcade of some or the other VIP passing every few minutes….

Morning Lucknow is very different. You can enjoy the melody of chirping birds, that get lost in the sound of the horns in the day. At six in the morning most of the city is still sleeping, but for the white mustached Colonel who is out with his mighty dog every morning be it summer or winter, but for the milk van that is busy distributing packets of Amul milk to shops.

In some time the city will start waking up. You will see people opening their front doors, coming out of their houses, stretching their bodies, picking up news paper that was delivered much before the Colonel was out with his mighty dog. Lucknow is waking up and soon it wake up to be the capital of Uttar Pradesh. Soon the empty streets will get jammed with vehicles, standing on the foot-path would mean an open invitation to streaming red beetle juice on your shoes, beware!

Seeing a city wake up is unique feeling in itself. If you are feeling alone you start feeling that you are not alone and sometimes exactly opposite happens.

Elaborating the former, waking people and city gives a sense of motion, of life. That there is work and there are people. That you are not alone in your pursuit, that you belong to such a big world. That Colonel too has found his reason with his dog.

Touching the latter, you wonder that, not one person or two but a whole city is waking up, waking up to work, life, as it did the day before and as it will do the next day. You wonder how many bother to stop and question, ‘Why?’ Though how would I know weather one has found peace with that query, I feel that most have not even faced the query. Also what possibly will change if I get the answer? But that does not end the question. The question persists. You wonder how the roads and buildings will remain, as the Imam-Bara stands in all its might and grace, and the people will go, as have the Nawabs gone, as I will go and as will the Colonel and as his dog. You wonder how innocently the people keep fitting themselves in the machine and the life keeps going. And you feel very alone in your pursuit, alone in a big capital city.

Add a verse to this poetry of life if not you know the reason of the poetry and least the desire of the poet.

Sounds fascinating, and I sincerely wish that it could content me. This mind seeks reason. And reason is not in the poetry, least in the verse.

The city that has waken up in the light of the rising sun will again go to sleep in the light of bulb, tube light, CFL and the like, product of somebody’s verse! Life in Lucknow will end once again over a game of cards, over a round of ‘Hukkah’, over a last round of beetle chewing. Again the city will sleep and give way to a new morning to come. But the question persists, to my discontent.

Bee of the sky

O my unrequited heart

Your criminal am I

Your tears, your pain

I relished as a high

.

Oh! Sweet pain Ah! Cute pain

You addicted me You brute pain

In the guise of high You broke me by

Sanity kept going, I write, as insane I lie

.

I saw a flower on the road to the sky

Fell for its fragrance as I passed by

Miles away, away years down the line

Still breathe in that fragrance, fragrance so divine

.

O my unrequited heart

No, Not your criminal am I

You fell for a flower

You bee of the sky!

Happy me!!!

All is left, is all it could

All it could be

If only I had the courage to say

Courage to say to thee

.

If only I were Romeo

My Juliet you would be

Had I the courage to say

Courage to say to thee

.

If only I loved you less

If only possessing you mattered to me

I would have said it all

Not caring for what you feel

.

Now all that is left, is all it could

All it could be

But no remorse, as you are happy

No remorse that I didn’t say to thee

.

Happy me!!!

The World So Sweet

“Thank You God for the world so sweet

Thank You God for the food we eat

Thank You God for the birds that sing

Thank You God for everything”

Each day at school ended with these four lines. We were small little kids getting to know the world more and more everyday. And that we are grown ups, almost, many of us would even like to challenge the basic tenets of the above four lines. One, ‘existence of God’, two, ‘the world is sweet’, three, ‘are the birds really singing?’ and four, okay no four.

This is not wrong, nothing above is sacrosanct enough not to be challenged. And we all are happy with our own views and respect other’s views as long as they respect ours. That is a single base for ‘unity in diversity’. We all go with our views and ideologies until we are poking others’ believes and ideologies.

Yesterday i met a person who wanted a ‘Hindu revolution’ in India on the lines of ‘Islamic revolution’ that took place in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomieni. Moreover he wanted it to be strictly based on Hindu ideology. He drew inspiration from the success of Iranian islamic revolution.

He was probably unaware of the recent Presidential elections in Iran and all the storm that it brought and how the Iranian people wish themselves to be seen in the world, Thanks Twitter!

And one more thing, he was a great fan of Bhagat Singh. Also he saw Gandhi in somewhat negative light. How do I deduce that? He said, “Gandhi somehow gathered support but Bhagatsingh and Netaji also played a great role.” True he is in his latter assertion but use of ‘somehow’ with Gandhi shows his lack of understanding or disapproval on his part of Gandhi’s ideology.
I would like to put in my one observation at this point. A few movies on Shaheed Bhagat Singh were released in a line. the movies were a hit back then. Unlike other movies, that come and go, these movies created a whole lot Indian youngsters who started seeing Gandhi in negative light. This is a fact and I have more than 50 friends of mine who belong to this lot. And consequently, and maybe not consequently, started believing that Gandhi’s ways were not all right. and some even argue that struggle for freedom should only be a violent one. They often draw analogies from American struggle for independence and French revolution.

Above paragraph was simply my observations. I tried my best not to give it flavor of my own views on the issue. Here I want to put in my views as well. Gandhi Ji was a saint, not a politician. We call him ‘Mahatama Gandhi’ and ‘Mahatama’ means saint. He stood not for independence of nations but for the liberation of mankind. now there are also people who hate him for giving away some wealth to Pakistan at the time of division. I request them to check their basic premise. How did the people who stood shoulder to shoulder in the freedom struggle against the Britishers become enemies all of a sudden? Neighbors killed neighbors.

And as for revolution, be it Islamic of Hindu, I think it is good to first yourself be the one you intend others to be. Others shall follow you if you are right.

As you proceed, as you go on, things come out from things and things start getting complex and at times take undesirable shape. Issues that never actually were issues at times paint the history red.

And as I write, I feel, how simple and how innocently the things started. how beauty became beast and how we forgot those innocent and cute and simple four lines that we started our journey with…

“Thank You God for the world so sweet

Thank You God for the food we eat

Thank You God for the birds that sing

Thank You God for everything”

Nesciii



Now it has been somewhat more than two and a half years that I have been giving business to Nescafe (Nescii we all call it). It began in those initial days in the college when we didn’t roam much so that we may not be ragged. You know it was hard to overcome the temptation to explore the 300 acres of place that was all of a sudden thrown open to us, the inquisitive us. So our initial trips to such ‘social places’ came as challenges. Social places means the places where the seniors would socialize and challenges were the ones posed by friends to test each other’s guts. We always enjoyed betting with others and seeing them go to the place and come out successfully and sometimes not. Some got caught in the ‘chakraviehw’ and all because of their lack of confidence. (Would love to quote Rajput, “All that matters is style and confidence”) Anyone could tell from their faces that they were Facchas, a local term for the first yearites. It was all going fun until one day it was my turn.

Was I caught or not is not material, but yes, that was a shock. I ordered for a burger and I got one, in a paper plate. ‘In a paper plate’ is what deserves more attention.

The Paper Plate…

As I have already said ‘the inquisitive us’, I wish to carry it forward to the present context. So the inquisitive I started observing the paper plate

“to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”

Isn’t it one of the fundamental duties mentioned in our constitution? It is. So conforming to our sacrosanct constitution I started observing that paper plate. And it was cover of a primary class maths book that had been made into that paper plate. Yes, this was the shock. There were ethical issues before me that time, and i gave my mind to those issues finishing that burger! So the question that the burger was edible or not was no more important as I was already eating it! Slowly, with time, I grew habitual to it. Sometime it was Dalda Ghee carton and at others some textbook cover, but the burger was always the same. Then I understood what was all recycling thing about.

Time went by and came across many more cartons and covers and the second shock. And with the shock reappeared all the ethical issued that had been buried in the taste of the burger and were never expected to surface again. This made me believe that things make a comeback, whatever they may be, unless it is American economy!!!

Two days back, in the dark of the night, it was evening in-fact but you know the sun goes under the blanket sooner in winters, he too feels cold! Yes, where was I? Two days back, in the dark of the evening, hungry I, ordered for a burger at Nescii. The air was blowing south, as against always, that is, north. The ever flowing tap was not flowing. The shadow of the tree, casted by the sodium, as against always, was falling on the sleeping dog, who as against always, was not searching in the dustbin and sleeping. And the dustbin, as against always, was not filled. Even all these conspicuous things went unnoticed by me and I ordered for the burger.

And then came my burger. I picked it up and was about to put it in my wide open mouth, when, I suddenly took it to my nose, smelt it, and threw it in the dustbin.

Why? It was because of that paper plate. Till now I had never bothered of the source of that plate. But I could not ignore it this time. It was cover of pesticide and a big symbol of danger and ‘do not consume’ appeared on it. How aesthetically pleasing! This was the second shock.

You might be thinking that wasn’t the build-up a bit too much to reveal this second shock of mine. I too think that, but I wanted to try my hand at what many news channels do today.

New Year Reso

Waking up till midnight (and even late) has become a part of life now. It was not quite the same just a few years back. Today as this year ends and we enter yet another calendar year of our life with its celebrations all around. Hotels are packed, DJs can be heard on almost every corner, its a special business day for the bars. Thinking of my parents, they are probably sleeping sound at home. This New Year thing doesn’t fascinate them. Maybe they have seen too many New Years. Though New Year has lost its sheen to much extent for me as well but the thing has not yet fully gone.

Few years back Star Movies used to telecast Titanic every new year, me and my sister used to stick to the television and watch the movie and our parents would sleep and we would see dad coming to ask us to lower the volume. Waking upto midnight used to be a big thing for us back then and for sure the next day’s schedule was disturbed. And yes, there were many New Year programs also on other channels, some having bollywood celebrities entertaining the masses, some having celebrated comedians trying to make us laugh, sadly their jokes have lost their quality with time and also dignity. That is one change you can see with passing years! We used to jump on to these channels during commercial breaks in Titanic. But now, most of them have synchronised their commercial breaks as well!

We grew, and now from TV sets we moved on to parties. We started celebrating new years in Hotels, where there were special programs on New Year. So what was it all in the hotels? It was food, dance, music, performances…And we enjoyed. Really.

Then we realized that it was boring. It was better to sit and watch on the television only. As far as food is concerned, we now know the value of mum’s food that we do not get to eat for months altogether now. We stopped partying at hotels on new years.

Then came college. New year lost its meaning. For many friends it became yet another reason to get drunk. But they already have many reasons for that. If somebody asked of New Year resolution we just smiled. And many believe that beginning of every semester is a new year. They are right, why should it not be? There are just two differences between the two semesters. One, Holi falls in spring semester and Diwali in autumn. Actually it is always the one week holidays that we look for and not the festival in itself. So this factor is more or less marginalized by this fact. Second, long summer break follows the spring semester and short winter break follows the autumn semester. But believe me, after fifteen days at home you spend one more month at home or one day more, it doesn’t make much difference. So if you accept this the second difference is also marginalized. There you go with two new years in a year!

Today evening we friends were thinking of what to do today. One of us said that we should spend the day that we may never forget it in our life, any ideas? Answer was damn simple, lose your virginity. There were many great plans, but how it ended? Like any other day of year that has gone by. Don’t we everyday aspire to do something that we never forget in life and is it not true that we never do such things, though they happen and mostly accidently. No wonder that no day seemed different to Arcadio Buendia. Was he really insane or much too wise for the time to accept?

And as of now, the condition is that we want to welcome the new year, if at all we want to welcome it, in silence, mourning for the year that has gone by, the doom that it brought to us. And the resolutions, it is just some feeling inside that we don’t want to repeat the same mistakes again. And I will end it with a SMS message I got a while back,

“Keep correcting your little mistakes….Because nobody slips down the hills….But just slips by ‘Little stones’ ”

And that appears to me to be the wisest new year resolution, if any at all.

And having written this, I feel, that this New Year thing has gone finally, though I did not expect this to happen now.

No Remorse

“Little-little surreptitious steps. Not just hiding from others, hiding from the self. Little-little games played, secretly, bearing no meaning, and making the sense of life.”

Chestnut not as always speaks, it wonders, it thinks, and then it weeps. No one has hurt him, he has hurt himself. Chestnut was not as lucky as Kali who ultimately did not cut off the branch he was sitting on. Nobody stopped chestnut, not their fault. Today I come back to find Chestnut where he was when I left, now in pain.

Let the chestnut speak for itself. Let me speak for myself. You don’t know my story. I am hurt, yes I am hurt. But that does not make the chestnut miserable.

With time grew the pain

This world called me insane

Wind of time aged this body

And i started enjoying the pain

Not just hiding from others, hiding from the self. As I said before! O poor chestnut you’ll get lost in these pretences. Why don’t you face the truth? You are not enjoying your pain, Chestnut, you are fleeing away from the reality. You can not enjoy the pain unless you hide some greater pain underneath this pain. Why not face that pain and get over it once and for all.

You talk too much. So listen…

As my body betrays my soul

As the hands go freezing and the body cold

No more hurts injury of any part

But it still pains…my unrequited heart

Why I play little-little games? There you go. What else do I do? I have faced the greater pain, now I just enjoy it. My strength betrays me with this pain, so I play games.

O poor Chestnut, you play games with your agony. Games, bearing no meaning. Tell me how did it happen, maybe I can help you.

You care. Its good to know. You can help, I doubt. No one can help this soul. But yes, I will tell you how it happened.

I always showed her the smile

And never the pain

She thought that I was happy; and left

I bade her goodbye, smiling again. No one to blame

I took Little-little surreptitious steps. Never could I take a bold overt one. And yes, you are right, I cut my own branch. You know it now. Heavens! I cut my own branch. Not as lucky as Kali, true. And I fell. It hurts. No one to blame!

O foolish Chestnut.

Why did you not speak?

Kept bearing all that pain

Maybe you both had the same to say

And you both did refrain

No wonder these games make sense of your life. Poor you, coward you, foolish you. Who was she?

You ask too many questions. Why? Why now? Why did you not ask back then when you left, left me alone?

Chestnut! Is that me?

You always showed me the smile

And never the pain

I thought that you were happy; and left

You bade me goodbye, smiling again. I am to be blamed.

No one is to be blamed. Yes, it is you.

Those little-little surreptitious steps, O you foolish. How was I to know? Was I a devil?

I loved you, i love you

And shall always love no one but you

I fell in love just once; to which

I am still true

Today with a ‘magic touch’ you reveal divine

You say, “I always felt you mine”

It pains, more than ever it did before

I ask, then why did you leave me: left me alone?

.

Why did you not speak?

Kept bearing all that pain

We both had the same to say

And we both did refrain

.

But no remorse; Yes, no remorse

We enjoyed all these years; indeed we did

We enjoyed the growing pain

Enjoyed the life, enjoyed the pain. Off course

No remorse

No remorse.

I am addicted

In the little world of mine i live, in this small room i extend my personality. Sometimes i want to see myself beyond this room, in every room, everywhere, in this whole world in everybody’s heart in everybody’s mind. But that is just what I want, the fact is that I hardy matter anywhere outside this room, to anyone. My living, not living is immaterial to most, and maybe all. But this living is such an alcohol, I am addicted to it. I realise that me or no me makes no difference, I am not the butterfly whose flutter is going to bring tornado anywhere. But I want to live because I am addicted to this alcohol, blue alcohol, life.

I put up my jeans and shirt, the same blue jeans and the same denim shirt, and I am out there in the world, away from this room, knowing that I have to return back to the room and never wanting to return. Being in the room is like facing the reality, facing the hole that my world is in, outside world relieves me of this thought, maybe for some time only, but it does. What I do in the room, I keep lying on the bed, reading random things, again finding escape from the room, and the room threatens me. But the room is the reality and the truth.

Ambitions I have, but I am too lazy to work hard. I have adjusted to this easy going life, though they too cost me. They cost me my ego. I admire the ones i wanted to be like, now their victories fulfil my ego. I have found out that I wont achieve all what my heroes have achieved, so their victory is my victory now. Ego searches ways to help itself. It is such a parasite! Body can go without food but ego can not without its own food. So it decomposes other things to its food. Uses others to help itself.

Life has no meaning; I know that, if it has I know I am missing it. But still i am living it. Life is such an alcohol!

Inside The Wardrobe

I would land to stop but would again take off. Rest, i didn’t need any. My new wings had given me a new freedom. I was excited and was enjoying flying. I would go higher than the eagle; dive to the ground and again in the mid way would open up my wings and spring back up. Space seemed timeless and the joy eternal as it seemed back when i had acquired gills and fins. I could swim in deep waters, dive to the depths of the ocean, exploring a whole new world telling some entirely different history of time. Space seemed timeless and the joy eternal.

Timelessness was overpowered by the oscillating quartz crystal and the eternity was nothing but reflection in that hard mirror that was intact before i collided into it. I have hardly used those gills and fins since then. But now, the wings excited me. The space once again seemed timeless and the joy eternal.

As i open my wardrobe, i find many and many toys, the toys that once meant life and purpose, the toys that once promised to accompany me to eternity. I put the wings in it. I close the wardrobe.

I have a pile of toys that once promised me purpose. And i move with these toys in my wardrobe, but no purpose.

And one day there is darkness. I find myself in the wardrobe, locked from outside. As my eyes adjust to the darkness i find the same world, as outside, becoming yet another toy.

I knock, knock very hard. I push the door but the door doesn’t open. It is locked from outside.

Its too late now.

“Oh toys! Ah toys! Why didn’t you whisper the secret into my ears back then?”

“We did, but you were enjoying the timelessness and the eternal joy, you were tossing the fractured glass ball again and again. It was poised to break. It did! Don’t lament.”

WHY ME?

She came and sat in front of me. I looked up for an instant and could not help myself and kept staring at her. I shook my head and back to the book. But was I really in the book now? As once Swami Rama was overwhelmed by the strong fragrance of flowers in the valley of flowers and lost his mind, so did I, at the beauty unparalleled and unmatched.

Words in the book no more bore any meaning. Again and again I would go through the same line and got not a word of it. Mind it, I did not look up once in the next ten minutes and was still on the same line with no idea of anything at all and wondering at what was happening to me.

Now I fully understand the miseries of the great sages who lost themselves to the ‘Menikas’. The sages, I feel now, are innocent, not to be accused. You can take my words for that.

Half an hour had passed and I was still tossing my pencil looking blank at the book and time and again would steal a look of her face. I could not understand if I was to be thankful to the overcrowded reading room or not, because it was the thing that sent her to sit in front of me.

And then she broke the silence, the silence that had got hold of my mind and was crippling my thoughts. She spoke softly-

“What is the time BHAIYA?”

Having spent half an hour in a fix, I stood up immediately, the mesmerism had finally broken, put my things in the bag and left the reading room.  Did I answer her? No, I did not. I went away growling.

NAKLI BABA

Looking at my palm, yellow dark-yellow, no trace of blood. Skin has hardened at places, like tortoise shell. Nails have grown and are dirty. But these lines have not betrayed the palm, they are still there. These lines, that were once looked at by great palmists and ‘Jyotishis’, the ones who would see the lines of the state premier. I see these lines and laugh at times. What not i was destined to become, what not i had to achieve, the ‘Jyotishis’ would always praise the lines, many of them had never seen better lines before! My parents were always very happy whenever we were visited by the so claimed future tellers, ‘Jyotishis’, huge ‘Dakshina’ (Donation) would follow.

So i was naturally expected to do much, there were peaks for me to conquer and battles to be fought and won. But i betrayed it all. A great sacrilege, after all i had turned down such great ‘Sacred’ conjurers.

But these lines have not betrayed me, they were there in that sophisticated and soft palm, they still are there, now even more pronounced, on this hard, rough and anaemic palm, which is more like a sedimentary rock cross section, preserving in layers my past, my history, but nothing to do with the future.

Things were not bad, they were good enough for anyone to follow that road and reach anywhere he wanted. But, somewhy (sorry oxford has no such word…but i needed it), i could not bear it. I could not bear myself fitting into the block puzzle designed by someone. A puzzle where my palm was the telescope to look what shape the block would take.

I left everything. Did i do anything that i was expected to? The question is immaterial. But as a matter of fact, i achieved nothing that was expected from me, i left much before.

Now there is no shame, this hand stretches before people, with palm always in receiving position. This holy place, where i beg, is kind enough to bring in devotees who would spin a coin or two in this palm and the body keeps going.

I am looked down by other orange clothed(s), because i am not a seeker. I am not seeking anything or anyone, least the God, i do not practice meditation, i don’t know Vedas, i do not bless anyone, i do not perform any rituals. They call me ‘Nakli Baba’. The fact is, i am not seeking anything, i have no interest in anything, even life. I am living just because death also doesn’t interest me.

I AM NOT A DREAM

Standing on the bridge on Solani that leads to old Roorkee, leaning against the railing and looking at the flowing water, I was lost in some other world, world of dreams, heroism and passion. Being a blooywood lover, Hollywood gladiator and……..and somebody pushed me from back and shouted, “Not your Father’s road that you’ll stand anywhere.” Back to the world, world of reality, world of miseries, 75% attendance, two mid sems, and a life in oblivion and not just that, icing on the cake, mess food. And this time it was a guava seller who had almost banged his cart into me. With resentment I said, “Is it your father’s road?” Not ready to quit, he showed me a ticket, “we pay municipality…10 rupees daily.” I shouted back, “You pay municipality to hit me. Why not pay that to me and then hit me. ”

I thought it best not to argue further with that insolent bastard, so I moved from there. Now i was sitting on the bank (!) of Solani. I tried to revert back to my dreams, I had not yet proved my heroism, the thirst of my ego remained unquenched when that bastard hit me. But I could not go back to those dreams. All that came to my mind was a red guava that the bastard had cut and put on display to lure the customers. The gladiator dreaming in the clouds was pulled down to earth by that fruit seller and now was sitting, throwing stones in Solani and watching them disappear in the stream.

And then one stone came hitting the stream, not mine! I turned to my right to see who else was there. A Sadhu in orange clothes was sitting next to me, smiling. I turned my face away at once. I felt like getting up and running away. It was a very natural response and I myself could not understand the reason for it. Actually I was conditioned to that response. I was instructed in my childhood to remain away from Sadhus, that they hypnotise children and take them away. And nothing else is more painful for a child then separation from parents. But I got rational and thought that I am not a child anymore. I can talk to him and put an end to that conception of mine for ever. I turned towards him and passed a smile to him. He was in the process of throwing another stone. He smiled back and threw the stone. He said to me, suo motto, “Dreams end and then other dreams start. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming….”I was looking at the stream and nodding my head, not that I asserted him, but I was trying to assimilate what he had said. I kept nodding for a minute or so looking at the stream until another stone hit the stream. I then asked, “what when there are no dreams?” The Sadhu smiled and said, “It is still a dream, the dream in which you and me satiate the ego of the dreamer.”

Thunder struck I was, what was that? It was beyond me. No more was I nodding my head and no more smiling. I constantly stared at him with a perplexed look. He smiled and one more stone in the stream. I then asked, “Who is the dreamer?” He said smiling, “To know the dreamer is my quest. But I know one thing, we all dream, so we all are dreamers. But I don’t know about the one who dreams us.” He sent me back in my dream that had been broken by that fruit seller. I pinched myself to confirm that I was not dreaming. I was not, I was there for real and so was Sadhu.

I asked the Sadhu, “What do you do Baba?” He said, “I told you, I search for the dreamer.” I said, “I mean what do you do to earn your bread?” He replied, “I beg.” I was astonished, “What, you beg! Such tall talks about the dreamer and you beg. Don’t you feel yourself a burdon?” having said that I felt that I had gone too far. I got a bit nervous recalling Sadhu my parents had told me about. I should not have said that, I felt. Sadhu was smiling. He should have felt humiliated, but he was smiling.

Yet another stone in the stream “Don’t I make you people feel worthy? You give alms to me and feel great. I satisfy your ego. And about burden, not heavier than you, you think you can change the world! You can not even help yourself from being hit by cart of a fruit seller and you think that you can turn the world upside down!” How did he know that? I was a bit afraid now. I asked, “How do you know?” He said, “I was standing there by your side, you did not notice me.”

I said angrily, “So you are following me?” I was a bit disturbed by it all. I added, “How long have been following me?” Another stone went into the stream. His smile was becoming mysterious for me. He said, “For three lifetimes.”

This was too much for me. I slowly stood pretending to be normal and then ran as fast as I could. He shouted from back, “How long will you keep me waiting?”

I didn’t stop, I ran and ran and……….then I heard Shaw banging my door and shouting, “Saaleee, Don’t you have to go to class? Just five minutes to 9. Come on, wake up…”

That very evening I and Shaw went on a stroll to old Roorkee. We were standing on the bridge leaning against the railing and looking at the two girls who were strolling on the road on the bank of Solani when a Sadhu in orange clothes came and stood beside me and leaned on the railing. I turned right and this time I ran as fast as I could with the Sadhu laughing and Shaw shouting “What Happened. Seen a ghost or what?”

And then I heard a heavy voice shouting “How long will you keep me waiting?” and Shaw was also running away from there. I should not have told him about my dream.

Deep Down The Memory Lane

Deep down the memory lane

I see you standing

I move away, away from you

I don’t see you; am pretending

No you don’t matter anymore

My mind says as I leave

If so, then why so much pain

And why my heart doesn’t believe?

Live from classroom

I thought that it was just me who wanted to escape from the class as soon as possible, but it was not so. least interested in the lecture i was looking at the board where a very senior professor was scribing something and imparting us the knowledge that will make us the great engineers. looking at the board and thinking beyond it, faking sincerity, constantly thinking how to save my one precious hour. and then Rajat turned back, who until now seemed to be very absorbed in the lecture, asked if i had a newspaper or novel or anything else. if i had anything myself i would not be staring at the professor so religiously, the prof was not a lady and i am not gay. and the prompted by rajat, i looked around to find what the heroes of JEE were doing. half of them were busy completing the practical record, half of the rest were miserably looking at their watches. and the rest quarter of the class was taking down notes of what the prof was teaching, and that too when each one of us knew that what was being written non the blackboard was poor imitation of the book we all have. and then rajput interrupted me by asking “what is he teaching?” how could i know, i was busy writing what you are reading right now. and yes, Bhaiya was giggling with Bafna. And Bafna, he was vigorously nodding his head in acceptance to what professor was teaching. and it seemed that prof too was teaching to bafna’s satisfaction. and Rastogi ji was busy religiously copying all what was being written on the board. once a friend said to me “Rastogi is Terminator”. and Arnold Schwarzeneger flashed in my mind, i could not understand. then he told me “He is programmed yaar”. more than a year has passed and now i feel that he was wrong, Rastogi is not programmed. OMG, what was that, Mr. Mohta was arguing with the prof. prof was trying to explain to Mr Mohta and Mr Mohta not ready to understand. but neither of them could do anything, because it was written that way in the book. it is sacrilege to question it! And the big guy of the class was sitting behind me and his presence was vindicated by sporadic swearing that would cross my ears now and then…

The Road Not taken

That i would lie in the bosom of mother-nature and relish what Robert Frost once did and write a or maybe two poems inspired by the limitless beauty of mother nature, i thought having taken ‘what poet you are like’ quiz on Facebook. Facebook said i was like Robert Frost. From then on i tried to gather each and every bit of beauty mother nature has endowed upon us and here i write about some of those bits. As the college campus has a lot of greenery, i had not to go anywhere to search for the Frost within me. I knew the road ‘less travelled by’ lay there only, along the concrete roads i take daily to the EC department. I knew that my ‘miracle apple’ would fall from one of those trees that line the concrete road to my dep.

First discouragement to my pursuit came talking to Dave. Dave and my other friends had gone to Nag Tibba a few days back. It is a seven kilometres track somewhere near Mussoorie. I really wanted to accompany them but couldn’t because of my sprain (Remember?). Dave was describing the track to me. Let me convey you the exact words that Dave said to me. “Jain Sahab, imagining the track is quite fascinating. You imagine green trees, flowers, that you would pluck a fruit and eat and drink water from some fresh water pond make out of some waterfall. It all seems so virgin. It is not so. The water in those ponds in not clean and cold like anything, and you never think in those dreams that where are you going to shit. You don’t even have resources to clean your ass. There is nothing so beautiful about nature, its hard in there, its dirty.” Shock! It was a shock. As if somebody had just shaken my in lying Robert Frost. As if it was an end to a dream. Then i thought, perseverance, yes, thats the word. I don’t have to quit, make my pursuit relentless. I thought that you are not supposed to go to some obscure hill to search for nature, there will always be difficulty. Why not try it out in the gardens of the Administrative block, moreover there is a lavatory in the library that is very close to it, as far as Dave’s genuine question lies. So i went to that garden and started looking at the things differently, trying to rhyme words lying on the grass under the tree until a guard came and asked me to move away from the grass. He pointed towards the board that read “Do not walk on the grass”. But i was not walking on the grass, just sitting. But the barrel of the gun suggested me not to argue with the guards. Already my dear friend illuminate had warned me of the neurotics roaming around to just undo me. Who knows what form ‘Yamraj’ may take? Then I said to Mr. Frost “Sir, your days are gone. There is no beauty left in these gardens or woods. Its just in there, in the TV, Fashion TV.” And Mr. Frost, to my amazement, spoke back to me. “Perseverance. Relentless pursuit. What happened?” I nodded my head, maybe somewhere else, not one of these protected gardens. And at last i was lying on the grass of Govind Bhawan garden, where we earlier used to play Football and now, after the arrival of new warden, there is good green grass tempting the herbivores of the Bhawan. Some people say that when the grass of this lawn is mowed, they make Palak Paneer in the mess. Again i tried to match my frequency with that of nature and tried to resonate rhyming words in my mind. I hadn’t even thought of one rhyming pair of words that the resident warden came and told me that there was a snake spotted at that place a few day back. Now that was enough to make me run from there.

So you see, in this pursuit of mine, how many difficulties i had to face. But you know, i have gathered some bits indeed. And now i feel that Dave was not that wrong.

Loose String

As the time moves, things change, relations mature and life becomes an arena to practice the surviving skills; we are bound to lose things. There comes coldness in many warm relations while other relations get warmer. You cannot keep tied to all the strings from past and the present; you have to loosen some. This is nothing but adaptation, adapting to change. But mere restructuring cannot rid you of the strings you opted to loosen. You can go loosening them till you feel them no more, but you do not get free from these strings. And there are times when you lose balance and are about to fall and then one of these loose strings pulls you back, you don’t fall. Because the string was always there though loose enough not to get noticed.

Need is the mother of invention. Man did realise it and the ingenious man devised methods to deal with it too. As a matter of fact eastern world is more of a collectivist society whereas western world is more of an individualist society. We, in India, respect our parents and separation from them is far from our imagination (not talking in physical terms). So, if somebody talks of mother’s day or father’s day, we laugh at it and say that every day of our life is dedicated to our parents, why just a day in a year? But for westerners, where such separations are very part of their life and normal, such ‘days’ do provide them with opportunity to look at the loose strings once a while. This is no point for debate that we are right or they are wrong. It is as it is. When i got a friendship band, it was a bit amusing. But now i realise it is not such a bad idea. Why can’t i use friendship band to make some of those loose strings heavier especially when you do not want to dissociate yourself from the ‘g-squared’ thing. The thing made me re-live all my years at St Clare’s. I had really lost that string until one of my school friends reminded me of ‘g-squared’.

I know you would have enjoyed the ‘g-square’ story in this article. But that is for me to relish and this is the abstract born out of that so that you may not miss some ‘g-square’ from your own life. (Well, why does my mind drift to g-string each time i write g-square. Bad boy!)

Drifting to the past

If there were no mile stones how would one know how much he has travelled on the road that seems to be practically endless? Though we know to ourselves all roads lead to somewhere, but at times journey gets too long and one needs to know where he is! What if the road is not some national highway but the universal expressway called life? There ought to be some things to keep track of things (Really? This is open to debate.).

New year , anniversaries, birthdays…all act as flags to remind us that time is going by, by quantizing the seemingly analogue and continuous time. Such is the continuity that you divide it into smaller unit, u-sec, n-sec, p-sec…, it laughs back at you; you can always put more zeros in the denominator!

In the course of this journey many doubts arise, and again the time answers all, sooner or later. Time has changed the most rigid, never bet with time! I have seen things change, places change and people change, marred and made by time.

A few days back i felt like taking a walk at night, it was 12:30 am that i left the hostel, knowing not where to go. It had rained for the whole day and the sky was all covered with clouds when i left. It could rain any time, and i would be all wet if that happened. I left it to fate (wondering what i am writing?). I did leave it to fate. It was all so silent and I moved in the wet darkness within and the moisturised sodium light outside. There were sounds of footsteps from the right and then the left, i looked around. It was the reflection of the sound of my chappals, tapping my feet. Laughed at it, thinking that so is life, full of reflections; our own reflections sometimes bothering us. Reached the convocation centre, written in big bold letters, Convocation hall, i thought that how would it be a decade hence if i happen to visit the place. Too early to think, but have already had a similar experience so i somehow feel that it would not feel all the same, rather quite different. I drifted back to my one year that i spent at Kota, and one day it did feel all the different. The day was just the next to that of JEE exam. In the morning i was sitting with my dad at the “Indori poha Corner” and sipping tea, where i had done the same for past one year, but that day it felt that I had never seen that place, it felt so different. I wondered if it was the same place, it indeed was. The place had not changed, i had. Wondering what had changed in me, much had, i was there for an aim, so busy i was in its accomplishment that i had missed the place, being there always. Had i been not there the next morning, i would always remember the place quite differently as to what i remember now. So, maybe, this place will also feel quite different sometimes hence. And then there fell a drop on my forehead, wondering whether rain had decided to wet me, i looked up. Wind had brought down a drop to my forehead which earlier rested on a leaf of the tree I was under. I rubbed off the drop with my hand and moved ahead, thinking that this too will pass.

A Day Out: ADD-ON

previous post continued

The Koton (not cotton) lady

Remember the lady on the reception counter of the hospital. Now this thing almost blew my head off. My reaction to it was “What…What…How can they do this…” Lokesh was staring at her as if thunder-struck. There was an emergency case of bone fracture and the patient was to be plastered. They sent one of the guys accompaning the patient somewhere, we didnt know where. Sometime later he came back with a big packed roll of cotton (God! they didnt have cotton at the hospital. A bone clinic!) Well this was also okay. The lady sent the cotton roll inside that multipurpose room (remember where i was x-rayed). All was tolerable till now. After some time the lady asked one of the ward boys for some Koton (mind it Koton and not cotton). Well, this was also within tolerable limits. THEN….then the ward boy went inside that multipurpose room  and came back with half of the roll that had been brought for the  patient. OMG! And she kept it inside her drawer, maybe used some of it also…Is that how the hospital manages its Koton (not cotton) supply…

“What…What…How can they do this…the cotton was for the patient…”

But I tell you one thing for sure…you get to see a lot while Doing Nothing….

A Day Out

When the things go wrong with you, quite often people ask “Whose face did you see first in the morning?” Maybe they are more concerned with how the day began. Maybe they think that the beginning of the day sets the mood and the mood sets the rest of the day. How did my day start? Okay here it is. I was lying on my bed reading ‘The Hindu’. There was electricity failure and the bloody fan was teasing me hanging from the ceiling. I decided to do away the heat and tease the fan back by ripping off my pants. I can do that, at least in my room. So practically i was lying on my bed, in underwear, reading the newspaper. And then the very first thing that i heard was, “You are a nudist, you pervert.” Hell! It was Shivasheesh peeping in from the window. The ridiculous look on my face was quite an indication for Shivasheesh to get going. Quite a start, right?

Let us go back a little. Last evening i had hurt myself playing tennis. It was like me trying a shot that defied both Newton’s and Einstein’s theory. So i tipped off my ankle and CRACK! Then, Icepack, painkiller and bed, morning, “You are a nudist, you pervert!”

Wow!

Then some mundane. In the afternoon i felt that my ankle had swollen. No, not a fracture, i prayed to god. Went to Rastogi’s room to ask for some good doctor outside the campus, hopping on one leg. Rastogi has some local relatives, so he is a good source of out campus (censored) information. Rastogi was sleeping. Hell! Now what? Ramnik suggested me to call Rastogi, it will wake him up and also i would not have to see his ‘after sleep’ irritated face. I did that. Rastogi picked the phone and he sounded like a zombie would. It was the last call that Rastogi received on his that phone, why, I’ll come to that.

Rusty lives just 4 rooms away from mine. Five minutes later he came with the address of the doctor and gave me a crape bandage (he saved my 100 rupees). Now this is not mundane, because it led to Rusty loosing his mobile phone. So, after i left rastogi instead of going back to sleep went to play badminton, leaving his room open, as he always does. Now, let me put it straight, somebody stole his mobile phone.

Lokesh accompanied me to the doctor. Thanks dude. It was an awesome Rickshaw ride. Later in the night i and rusty would argue over the etymology of the name ‘Rickshaw’. He would argue that it is a Japanese name and i would say that it is an Indian name that too Hindi. I would all the time during the dialogue know that Rusty is right, but i would not accept that.

Back to Rickshaw ride. Me and Lokesh and the rickshaw, the Japanese one. Now one reason why Roorkee is Roorkee. Lokesh was carrying  a bag on his back and one of the belts of it was hanging. They do. Two girls came on activa and gave a blow to the hanging belt and shouted, “Latak Raha hai” (its hanging). Now this is called real poverty, i don’t know why, but it is. We both were looking at our zips.

Then there was a very crowded shop, which my experience told to be ‘Theka Desi Sharab’, the wine shop. But it was Baba Ramdev’s pharmacy. India is changing. The good journey ended and we landed outside ‘Nanhe Munoon Ka Aspataal’. Lokesh insisted me to consult there only. But i thought that 20 year old should not be termed ‘Nannah Munna’. So we went to the right place. Dr. *******, yes, that is the name of the doctor and the nursing home is on Saharanpur road. I don’t know if its a coincidence or not. Well, some very good experiences in the hospital. There was a lady on the hospital reception counter. Now she deserves one full article by me, so i wont tell about her now. Doctor came ten minutes late. That really doesn’t matter, i am too much habitual of that. Everything is late here in India, trains are late, planes are late, we are 5 and a half hours late from Greenwich, I doubt most of us are also late in coming to this world! Well, the doctor sent me to the X-Ray room. Now this was a single room where everything but for consultation with the doctor was taking place. I mean, X-ray, plastering, gossips, chai-pakodis and maybe some forbidden things too. This X-Ray guy got me on the table and got himself hooked up with other nurse who was plastering a child’s leg. Telling his tales of hepatitis and suggesting him to get tested for the same, least interested in me and more in the hepatitis thing. I looked at Lokesh and Lokesh looked at me and we both looked at him, and the X-Ray boy looked at the other nurse. Maybe the hepatitis had reached his brain. At last my photo-shot was done by the very special x-Ray camera. So at last all was done and my pocket was empty by now. Visiting the doctor was like hanging me upside down from a neem tree and taking even the last penny out of my pocket and at the end i was obliged for all that. Happily we returned, happy to find that there was no fracture and just a sprain. But not its been two days and still there is swelling, now i am doubting the doctor and thinking to revisit my Dr. X.

Lost my money and Lokesh’s precious time that he would have invested in the library. Yes, don’t shock, he goes to library as well. Yes, i know what you are thinking. My answer is that he has no girlfriend, and he is not even looking for one. Still wondering why he goes to library? He studies there. But if you don’t believe me i don’t accuse you. Anyone who reads drunkwisdom.wordpress.com will think what you are, Doing Nothing.

There is much more to be told about that hospital, i think i will tell you that in another post. I am tired writing it. It has gone too long. So we returned to the campus all the way back, at half the transportation cost that we paid earlier, talking about the Himalaya Girl (Guess who?) we had met in the morning. And all the way i was holding Lokesh tight so that I may not fall down the Rickshaw on the very good roads of Roorkee, I have already fallen once.

Light a match and the forest will burn!

No government is good or bad. In a democratic setup, it is really the government of the people. The leaders we admire and the ones we criticize all have come from amongst us only, elected by us. They are the real face of us, the face which we might have missed while looking at the mirror.

Let me take the whole thing more pragmatically, considering a few examples. When West Bengal showed the way out to NANO plant and Gujarat provided Tata a new home for NANO, it does not show that a state is progressive or not, it shows how progressive the people are. So, why such differences?

Going back in history, Gujarat has since very long time been a port province, place from where international trade would take place, home of ‘Marwaris’ and ‘Banias’, land of businessmen famous for making cream from water, always searching for avenues to grow their money. On the other hand, Bengal has been a home to poor, irrigated by distributaries of Ganges land has been a home to cultivators and Jute mill workers. Population density has been high and still is. People here, even today, find most of the work in primary sector.

Bengal has witnessed the worst famine and not Gujarat. As noted by Amartya Sen, the famine was caused not by the scarcity of rice, but by the lack of purchasing power. The rumors of war and shortage of grains led to hoarding and price rise. And large population could not simply afford to buy the food. 1943 was year of disaster.

Does this not make it clear why there is a stark difference between Narendra Modi and Buddhadev Bhattacharya? Does it not make clear that if one Modi goes other will come up and one comrade goes other sister will come to do the same? This is because their vote bank demands that.

Change always comes from the ground. So, if something has to be grown, first the seeds are to be sown. So, be ready to soil your hands and clothes if you aspire for a change. Blame game simply won’t work.

P.S. My reasoning may be wrong. If you feel so, please correct me through your valuabe comment.

A walk to remember…

we all are born equal, we all have equal right to education. Really?

There were showers in the day. So the evening was pretty pleasant. After the dinner i felt like taking a walk in the bosom of nature. I took the road to the canal through civil lines market. Half of the shops had already shut down and the remaining were getting ready to close. I heard a shutter go down every few steps. That called for finish of yet another day.

Call it a ritual if you like, the night streets are occupied by the beggars and stray dogs and cows for the rest of the night. As the market was closing and not yet fully closed, the beggars had not yet come to claim the footpath but the animals had started straying in.

I, lost in my own thoughts, practically enjoying everything around, the things that may not be very pleasant for the parties involved, moved forward. I was saying to myself, “A typical Indian marketplace. This is the culture i belong to and not the mall one. Whatsoever it is, i like it.”

The sequence of thoughts was broken by the sight of a boy collecting garbage in his large plastic sac from the street. The boy was badly dressed and not more than 10 years in age. His face had gone black with dirt. God knows where else he goes collecting garbage that can be sold at recycling plants. Sight of such boys in train compartments is quite common. They risk their lives by climbing in and jumping out of moving trains for the sake of some empty plastic bottles. This is their living. Maybe this boy also ventured in trains.

“Scavengers of the night”, this came to my mind very first. These boys constitute the large ‘Army of the Dark’ that clears our posh market places for a new start every day. They never cross our ways in the day time, if they accidently do, they are hated, unwanted. But they are the darker truth of us, the 8% growing us, the shining us, the great engineers us, the claimant of permanent seat in UN Security Council us. They are the truth, the inconvenient truth.

I stood there for a moment. Saw him pick up another refused polythene bag and put in his sac. His back constantly bent hovering over the pile of the dirt. Suddenly he looked up and looked at me. There was an eye to eye contact. I turned away my face and pretended as if i was not seeing him. He moved to a dustbin nearby and started scanning it. I could not bear his looking into my eyes. So i moved, slowly. There should have been nothing there of my interest. But this child sent me back to my 10^th birthday. 18 august 1999. I had gone to school in colour dress, the best i had. I had distributed sweets to my classmates. They sang the birthday song for me. I was happy. Late in the evening there was a birthday party at my home. My parents had gifted me a YAMAHA Keyboard. I loved it, it cost in thousands back then. I hardly played it ever, but i always wanted to have one, so i had it. There was a lot of polythene and cardboard wrapping that i had thrown. I wonder now that it would have earned, maybe this boy’s father, bread for another day. That was all so good then, i don’t feel all the same now.

I turned back and approached the boy. Hesitatingly put my hand on his shoulder. He looked back at me. His eyes full of amazement and fear.

I remember when i was small my mother always asked me to stay away dirty street boys. I always did. I remember when we friends used to play football in the park, children of Raju, the sweeper of the colony, the dirty street boys, used to stand near the end and watch us play. Sometimes they would run and fetch the ball when it went away. We would not thank them; they were obliged to do so. They would all run and compete with each other to pick the ball and throw it back to us.

I again could not bear the look in those eyes. I pushed back my hand and said, “Nothing” and moved away speedily. Could not dare to turn back to look at him.

Thinking what mum would have said.

“Go and wash your hands. I told you not to touch dirty street boys.”

Sorry mom.

YES! YOU CAN DO IT.

life is learning

Today there was a little girl i met at Nescefe, she threw the plate in the dustbin and looked towards me. The look was demanding as if the child needed me to appreciate her. I smiled back and widened my eyes. She moved back to her parents. In a way i reinforced her action of throwing the plate in the dustbin. My reaction was a positive reinforcement for her.

Taking the child to a psychiatrist for some potential disorder can have some unforeseen effects. Like, in a way, it may be telling the child that he has some disorder or atleast that his parents feel so. Parents are the first and the strongest source of reinforcement for the child, and sending him a signal that they doubt his ability can be disastrous. The parents, obviously, want to help the child and this in no ways means that they love the child less, but can it be perceived so well by the child? The consequences may be that the child may loose confidence in him and develop many self doubts. From the very childhood child seeks reinforcement from his parents.

But what if there is not very clear image of the parent in child’s mind. What if that girl thought me some bad man, say told to her by her parents, she would have doubted the thing for which she was reinforced by me. This is a very satellite situation because I am not a part of her learning process as my contact with her was just for once. But what will be the consequences if the child’s image of parents is jeopardized?

The thing is that this raises a question on the ability of the child, which may be thought to be innate. Mental problems are quite different from physical problems. For physical problems one does not see himself as responsible or offensively responsible, but in mental problems one may look that way. If one is told that he is incapable of something, if he is adult, his effort would be to prove it wrong, but if a child, who is still in the process of developing the self, it can be traumatic. The situation becomes worse when the source through which he is forming schemas, he becomes unsure of. The child may grow into an insecure child, doubting the world around and into an introvert. Parenting plays a great role in what the child grows into.

So, the best way to help children suffering from any disorder is to place confidence in them. Get the treatment, it is must, but make sure it is like any other treatment for physical problems, that is what should appear to the child. Put plainly, the best one can do is what mother of Forrest Gump did!

views are personal…not for any reference.

The Diary

This story I wrote a while back, felt like sharing…

My best friend, Naseem Quereshy.

We were in the same class. We would always sit together, lunch together, and stayed after the school to play basketball together. We both were in the assembly coir. We had put in our best effort to learn ‘Vande Matram’ to get into the coir. It used to be a joy to sing in the morning assembly. We used to meet at the crossing where the routes from our houses met, about a mile away from the school. Once away from the sight of parents we used to race our cycles to the school. We maintained a tally in our school diary where a plus one was given to the winner. We really never bothered about the growing tally, it was just about winning. We never did imagine that the sum of the scores would ever reach two thousand. It reached. That was our last year in the school. Our score diary was passed on to me as my won races were more. I could not realise until today that nothing better he could have given me for that win. We were not lucky enough to get into the same college. That is something I wish to change today going back into the past. I was lucky to get into IIT Roorkee. He was luckier to get into NDA. In the initial days we used to chat long on phone and then came in Google Talk which cut short our time of chatting and eventually replaced by rare scraps on orkut. I missed him the most in my first year. The reason was that i was in rajendra bhawan and had to rush to department on cycle every morning. No day was such when i did not remember him climbing the mount everest to reach my dep. Then i reached govind bhawan in the second year and cycle literally got dumped and one fine day i found that my cycle was not there in the cycle stand. It was auctioned by the bhawan authorities. There were many notices put up but i did never respond to any regarding claiming the cycle. So with the cycle gone went away the daily memory of Naseem. The regular ‘Vande Matram’ got replaced by occasional ‘Jayati Jayati Vidya Sansar…’.

Time flies. Four years passed away as if it was just one day.

I got job with an investment bank though i am an electronic engineering graduate. I started earning in seven digits. Life changed its course entirely. Now the occasional ‘Jayati Jayati Vidya Sansar’ was also gone. There was practically nothing to remind me of Naseem.

Much was happening at national level as well. There were blasts in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Banglore. Many people got killed. This all followed with encounter of some terrorists in Delhi. This arose many questions at national level. Police action got under scanner. In Maharashtra north Indians were being harassed. American economy was getting in recession mood. There was shoot-out at Mumbai that shook the world.

I received Naseem’s call a few days back. He was posted in J&K. Now Lt. Col. Naseem Quereshy. He just called and started singing ‘Vande Matram’ on the phone. And i joined him. Then there were gossips for hours. He made me talk to his wife, Radhika, and hear his one year daughter crying. So happy i was for my friend Naseem! Two days later i lost my job as the bank in which i was working filed for bankruptcy and once again my CV was floating in the market. NASDAQ was all red. SENSEX also is red following global sentiments. When global sentiments are depressing there is no point talking about yours. I don’t understand which attack is going to hurt our country worse, the terrorist one or the one which struck me. For i am not alone, there are millions with me accomplishing their dreams outsourcing their services to America and especially when the great economy is taking a bear ride.

Today morning i received a call from Naseem’s wife, weeping like anything for her martyred husband who was killed in an encounter with the terrorists. Statements are being issued by bigwigs, be they political or religious leaders, and being telecasted on the television since the morning. They are calling him a great patriot and all. I really don’t understand them because many of them are the ones who once wanted my friend to stop singing what he loved to. I am writing in my flight to Srinagar where i am going to meet my friend for the last time. I don’t know what his wife will do now. What i know is just that i have lost my best friend, a true patriot, a true Muslim who sacrificed himself for the cause of his nation. I carry the school diary with me. I will be giving it to his daughter. After all Naseem is the one who has won the race that we long back started.

SIGH!

Days went, months went

And the years went by

Now that I look back

Its nothing more than a sigh

I had things; I knew people

And there were those I felt mine

Long behind I left them

As I look back, as I sigh

There were aspirations There were dreams

There were aims all set high

There were achievements There were victories

The charm was lost as the time passed by

A Deep Sigh

I wonder if I have done the things

Or the things have just done me by

I wonder why it was all

All all all that has gone by

Deep Deep Deep, A Deeper Sigh

FAKE It

Life. Wanna live it, just ‘Fake it’.

Hide and seek…I vs ME

Tall is short, short is tall. Haves are have-nots and have-nots are haves. There are people failing in their pursuits every second. Masks have become ubiquitous. In India its very difficult to distinguish a fake saint from a real one, real ones are hard to find. The mask he has worn is so deceptive that it has hidden his real self from himself. Masks were to deceive others, now they are used to deceive self. The reality has got too tough to bear or we have become much too pragmatic. People aspiring to be selfless (They aspire publically! They make it a social event!) have turned out to be the ones holding the biggest egos.

Why are so many people failing in their pursuits so frequently? Because they are masking them from themselves. Be the pursuit spiritual or material, wherever the mask comes in, pursuit has to fail. World has gone manipulative. We manipulate unfavourable to favourable. A good example is what the western banks did to themselves. The restructuring of debts (see CDOs and CDO squares, cubed…), gratification was certainly short lived. It turned out to be suicidal.

Who is at loss? What good is this mask doing? Apparently much and actually none. Mask is a slow suicidal pill. No, it won’t create resistance, it will kill.

Yeh hai Dilli Meri Jaan : Reminiscence (Final Part)

Reminiscence

“Three decades have passed.”

“Yah. Three decades. But you are as beautiful as you were then.”

“Stop it. You just flatter me. There are wrinkles on my face now, hair have also started turning white.”

“Okay, you have turned old, not me. I am still that young.”

“I am losing my physique; you are losing your brain, my old husband.”

“You remember that day; I made lemon tea for you for the first time.”

“I can never forget. For full month we hadn’t talked. You would always sit on the same bench.”

“You would come, jogging. Look at me, we both would exchange glances and would turn our faces away. You sometimes made funny faces.”

“I never realised that I had feelings for you until the day you were not on that bench. When i passed that bench and did not find you there, you know, I was feeling very bad. I was missing you.”

“I knew you would, but was not sure how would you react. I thought that you would hate me though i knew you did not.”

“I never doubted that you were a little crazy.”

“What?”

“Yes, you were. You still are. When i passed that bench and found you not there I feared that you were gone. But I should have known that you would not go leaving the ends open. I could not believe to myself that you would go without speaking to me. I always wanted somewhere within you to speak to me, apologize to me I would not speak to you then. But, yes, later I would forgive you. You didn’t give me chance for that. You were crazy.”

“The story was horrible. You know, i really realized later that i should not have told you that.”

“Yes, I know. I suffered that story of yours. And look at you, you cruel man, you told it to poor, old Mullah-ji also.”

“That was the first time I went upto to the end of that park. That day, God, I was tired.”

“You don’t know how good I felt seeing you there at the end of the park.”

“Yes, I could see that your eyes. Those tears were quite eloquent.”

“I really could not control myself. You were also blinking heavily trying to do away with your tears.”

“Yes, thats true. But I controlled them, at-least for some time. You looked so beautiful. You were standing before me with hands on your waist, tears in your eyes, one knee slightly bent.”

“Yes, and you kept looking at the ground. And then you told me in faint voice that you were leaving that night. Then you stood up, but still you did not look at me. You slowly raised your face, looked in my eyes and said those three magical words. And your tears had betrayed your efforts.”

“We both were in tears. You held my ear, screwed it a little. And then…”

“And then we kissed. Our first kiss.”

“It all sounds like a story now. We were young. We wept. When you’ll tell this to your grandchildren they will laugh.”

“They are too young. At-least a decade more they will take to understand.”

“But our children laughed, tried to tease us as well. You remember when I told it to them. You were blushing.”

“Yes, I was. I am normal. You are crazy. I am not. Its more a melodrama for this young generation. It is no more our time, its theirs.”

“And then we sat down. I was wiping your tears. Then I told you that I had to do packing. You said that you would help me with that.”

“Yes, and you told me that you would make me a lemon tea. You had talked about it so much in your story. It scared me.”

“And you laughed at that, didn’t you.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Its hard to believe sometimes that 30 years have passed. And sometimes it feels like 300 years have passed.”

“You are crazy. Thats why.”

“Maybe.”

Yeh hai Dilli Meri Jaan (PART 4)

How long can the fingers remain crossed, how long can anyone remain without being oneself, how long can one pray to avoid pregnancy having not taken i-pill or used condom? Now it was to be seen that how long I could go without seeing my story bear fruits, definitely, not much.

I would feel, not very long after, that the story should have been abandoned after its first trial(remember my roomy). And more lately I would realise that maybe not!

Dozing off for half an hour on that public bench, I call it public to remind myself that yes it was a public bench not just a private romantic bench and also because I was sharing it with an old gentle man, I moved on. You know all old-men are gentle by default; they may however have been the most notorious of their time. Hey, BUDIA-KE-BAAL, I love them. The same sweet pink stuff in the packets that I used to relish in my childhood better than any other crap, “Hey! Cost?” “5 Rupees BABU-G” he said. BABU-G like PARLE-G, it sounded awkward then. “Give me one” and I handed him a ten rupee note. “No change in the morning BABU-G, you are the first one” he said. Neither did I have. “Okay, give me two.”

The day passed by, with me almost-sleeping in the office. The evening, a beautiful one! Clouds had covered the sky, but it would not rain. It’s Delhi. The city repels clouds. I spent some time on the steps below my apartment, where we sat last night and tried to remember the last evening. My all time favourite lemon tea in my hands. What else does a man desire of? What? What did I just say? Does it mean that I would prefer sitting there with a lemon tea rather than shefali? Oh my God, No. But yes, clouds, me, Shefali and lemon tea. This sounds perfect. Soon came the night and I went to sleep.

Now this is the hardest part for me to describe. But the mere fact that it happened compels me to write it. I can’t pour my embarrassment into my writing else you would really see me blushing. Well, i was sitting on the bench, the very bench, unaware of the harm that had been caused, thinking of inviting her to my place for a cup of lemon tea. She came, no need to tell again and again jogging. I waved my hand and brought a little smile on my guilty face. I later realised that the face ought to be guilty. She would stop or at-least wave back. She didn’t. I saw her right hand raise, my smile grew more intense. Then I saw the middle finger of the right hand come out, my facial expressions reverting back to normal so that they could express amazement and sadness. Then the hand pointed towards me and her lips moving to say fuck-off. Motions of the lips, though silent, were eloquent enough for me to know what they said. Blushing, was I? Furious, was I? It felt so embarrassing, as if the whole world had seen her doing that to me. Every stray eye that caught with mine seemed to be knowing what had happened and laughing at me. Should I move away? Should i keep sitting there with all my embarrassment? And I over came the creepy thoughts. I kept sitting there thinking that it would be submitting to those ‘creepy’ thoughts to move away. I am a man, I have testosterones in my blood. She came back and was passing, maybe a bit surprised to see me still sitting. It was my turn now, my right hand rose and the middle finger came out flying and my lips moved to repeat what hers had said. Now it was fun to see her expressions change, if not fun it was consoling. That disdain in her face kept going as I flung my hand to pose her. And a look of astonishment and offence took it over. As if she was saying, “Hey how could you do that to me? I am a girl. I can do whatever I want. Not you.” I was proud of myself. I stood up and left. Lately I realised that her looks said something else, “You are the one who told me that story.” It was only after that I realised that it was story that had done the harm. I could not believe that it was that bad. Now as I was nearing my flat, O I hate to call it flat at times its the company that calls it flat, so do i, I became more and more obsessed about the idea that it was ‘The Story’ of mine which had done all the harm. I was condemning myself for the harm I had done to myself. Its difficult to prevent your feelings to get to your face at times, especially when you are using whole of your RAM in condemning yourself.

“Asalamalakum janab, why so sad? Something wrong with the ‘mohtarma’? O I saw you both gossiping there on your stairs. ‘wallah..’, what a choice” said mullah-ji. Now this was height. Every tom-dick and harry would now say anything to me. No, maybe I am wrong. It was mullah-ji who woke me up, the present was his gift. There was a sudden impulse to retaliate with some harsh words. But a quick deeper thought gave me a better option. Why not give a last try to your story? If the things go usual way, Mullah-ji would learn his lesson and maybe I can also give an introspection to my story. A win-win thing!

“Walaikumsalam Mullah-ji. O at least someone cares here. Mullah-ji grave wrong has happened. I would want to tell you what all happened in the night. But I see you are a busy man, you wont have much time for that non-sense stuff.”

“No-no son, why don’t tell me today evening. I have enough time in the evening. You should always share your grief. It lessens that way. I myself am a sufi, you know that. I honour all religions and beliefs. Violence and anger, all these are bad. Thats what I believe.”

Mullah-ji did not know that it was going to be the most memorable evening he would have in his life. Maybe!

Mullah-ji knocked at my door at precise 6-30 in the evening. And then started the well iced never lasting session. And I managed to agree him to listen to that story. It was 4-30 in the morning and I had bagged for 5 more minutes to mullah-ji. And then there was some noise, sort of a crowd. It was coming closer. They were a handful of people with bamboo sticks in their hands. I thought that some strike had broken out. I shook mullah-ji, who was practically dozing and to sound more urgent shouted “Mullah-ji run, they are coming to beat you.” Mullah-ji rubbed his eyes quickly and looked in the direction of the mob. Smiling he said, “They are not coming to beat me, they are coming to beat you, arse-hole.” Mullah-ji sounded resolute that he would not ask them to spare me. It was the adjective that he had used that forced me to run. So I ran. It could have been a costly test of the story. Panting i stopped at the corner of the street feeling that the crowd had stopped. The crowd had stopped. Some of them were helping mullah-ji towards the mosque and the others were staring in my direction. I resumed my brisk running. I was outside the ‘JOGGERS PARK’, well in time.

Friendly mullah-ji became an intimidating figure for me from then on, until I and Shefali would go to him and remind him of his being Sufi.

I would never tell that story again to anyone.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Yeh hai Dilli Meri Jaan (PART 3)

SRCC, well that had started sounding good to me. SRCC…how romantic, you don’t even know the name of the girl you are going to dine out with. But that doesn’t matter really, does it? SRCC…it created suspense, a curiosity, something to go on for. I passed the whole day searching SRCC on Google , rather to be more precise Google Images and that to keywords like SRCC girls, SRCC Jogger’s park, SRCC cute girl…and so on. But I couldn’t find any detail of her. I had done some similar thing earlier. Once a guy just struck with me on ORKUT, he claimed himself to be from Maldives. I could not really believe that, so I just scanned whole of his profile like 007 and at last googled the pin code he had entered. It happened to be of Bhopal. I caught the guy, he was from Bhopal. So in search of some similar thing, maybe I could astonish her with, I googled whole day but to no use. So in the evening I got dressed up as i would for any regular outing at Roorkee and reached the park by quarter past seven. I didn’t want her to come before me. i had already done so wrong, no more wrongs to be done.

She was there 10 minutes late. I said nothing, just looked at my watch. “You don’t want me to say sorry. Do you?” she questioned with her eyes overstretched. “No off-course not” actually I wanted her to. “So how do we go?” I asked. “Actually the chauffer will be here anytime, I have called for a Limo” she said looking ridiculous. Okay, Limo, I got it. “AUTO…AUTO…” I shouted. An auto stopped. We got into it. “Okay reset the meter, CP” she said to the auto-wallah. “Madam, give 30 rupees, won’t go by meter” said the auto-walah half pleading. “Come-on get off” she told me and started getting off herself. “Are madam! Okay sit” and he reset the meter. “So, is this bamboo thing in CP?” “No, not in CP. But you know I was thinking about the place and didn’t feel like going there. There are many good restaurants round that place. We can hang out in any one” she said. Hey she had decided it all by herself as if I was nothing, she didn’t even bother to tell me before. “So why not Bamboo garden?” “The place is so dragony, oh i didn’t feel it appropriate to go there” she said. “Dragony! Whats that?” “DRAGONY, dragony means dragony. Haven’t you seen a dragon?” she said. “Have you seen a dragon?” “Hey, now everybody has seen it on Discovery, come-on, moreover its more of China-China thing, than a real fire blowing Dragon.” Oh! Until now I thought that it was just me who was nuts, she too was, who knows a bigger one! Dragony! Huh! Bloody auto-wallah was asking for 30 rupees, it was just 18 rupees away from the park. I saw Pizza-Hut. I hadn’t had Pizza of anywhere else but for hotel Prakash since so long. No Pizza-Hut in Roorkee. “Hey! Lets have Pizza. Its been too long.” “Okay” she nodded and we moved to Pizza-Hut.

“So what’s your name SRCC?” “SRCC! Well that would do”. Could she not have just told her name? Am I mad or something? “Hey! Come-on, I need to know it.” And the waiter had to come at that precise moment. Sometimes you feel so soo alone in this world. Not one person seems to be your side. “Okay what will you take SRCC?” “Hoooonnnn..okay..mushroom pizza” she said. “Well please get us one Mushroom Pizza and two cheese Pizzas. Mind it, don’t use onion and garlic in the cheese ones. Okay” I placed the order as soberly as I could. Then she interrupted as if she had seen a snake, or perhaps a dragon. “What for 2 cheese pizzas. Look at yourself. Okay waiter please cancel the order and just bring in one Cheese pizza and yah please avoid onion and garlic, I am sitting with 1^st century monk.” I wanted to resist and had just started saying something that she dominated my voice by raising her voice and continuing “And thats it. Please” she said. “And what name shall i bill it madam?” asked the waiter. “Shefali” she said. “Hey what was that? I won’t do it with one pizza, and why would you not take anything? On hunger strike?” “Sweety we can probably go to some other place as well after this and won’t you offer half of your Pizza to me?” O yah, I had to. “Oh ya…off-course. Thats not something to be asked. Off-course we’ll share the pizza.” “But Sweety you are so dumb that I have to tell you that” she said again with her mocking smile. “Hey! Stop calling me that. Sweety, I had a girl with that name in my school. And you know this smile of yours, why are you laughing at me?” “Nothing, it’s nothing. You been to Delhi before?” she asked. I now knew her name, at last. Thanks waiter. Its not always right what you think about the world. You think that its going against you and actually its the other way. God doesn’t leave the ones he has made so soo alone. “Yah, once or maybe twice. But it was just going to some places and get going. Though i have been to CP, as you call it.” “I’ll show you around. You have some hobby?” she asked. “Hobby…yah! I love to make story and tell them to people. I love that.” “So you are a dreamer?” she asked. “A dreamer, no..NO..not a dreamer, actually  I make up stories from things around me. So not maybe a dreamer, a juggler perhaps. Juggling the facts and events and situations…” “Tell me one” she insisted. She insisted. Oh someone wants to listen to my story. That never happens. Once I had told it to my roommate; it all ended with his changing the room. He told me later that he wanted to kill me after that but had somehow controlled himself. I thanked him. Actually the story had gone too long, it happens with me when i tell story, it lasted for 12 hours 17 minutes; still unfinished. But i knew that the story was good, it was only that my ex-roomy didn’t have enough patience and that he slept in the practical the following day, whose consequences he had to bear. And he thought that it was all due to my story. Perhaps he was wrong, or at-least I thought so.  The story started. Pizza came and got finished, bill was paid, we roamed around, we had coffee somewhere, we had momos, much more kept happening and the story kept on going. She was a patient listener. It was 5 in the morning and we were sitting on the stairs of my apartment, apparently on the foot-path. The story was still going on. I had to nudge her several time as she would doze off, okay, maybe more than a hundred times. I had stopped in between to wish Mullah-Ji “Asalamalakum”. This time he had replied with a satanic smile on his face seeing her beside me. It was hearing the azan that she stood up. “Hey! Just 5 more minutes.” “Thats something you have been telling me for the last, i suppose, 7 hours. You see, I have to move on. Time doesn’t stop!” and she moved on. I accompanied her upto the park where she asked me to leave and said that she would go herself now. I granted her that. And I went to the park to sit on that bench, I sat there for half an hour or something. Her departure was somewhat like that of my ex-roommate. Fingers crossed.

TO BE CONTINUED…