Wilde Vögel

Best of 2010

2011-01-01T00:27:00.006+05:30

Looking back at this year, given it is that time of the year, I realize that I have a written a lot. I admit that my blog or the ‘The Alternative’ doesn’t look like it. But I have – hundreds of pages; and I use “hundreds of pages” not as a figure of speech, but quite literally to refer to, well, hundreds of pages. It is not the type you will ever get to read – Actually it is the type of writing that friends and loved ones enquire about, ask you to send to make you believe that it is worth something. And save it for their post-retirement reading.

So, given that I have written a lot, I haven’t had much time this year to do anything else. Like read books (except for the odd, blockbuster Indian fiction) or watch movies (apart from the ones in HBO and Star movies that come with subtitles so that you can watch them in mute while your son is sleeping) or pen random thoughts as blogs (and pretend the entire world is reading). So, my best of 2010 list is made of two hobbies that was a favorite with every freshman the year I joined college – Listening to music and watching TV (Yes that is true – these were the hobbies of a lot of people in my batch not coincidentally because these were least prone to be ragged on).

Since there’s nothing new to be written about the music that I listen to (except retro in last.fm is quite a find), it is a show on TV that takes the sole spot in my best of 2010 (while you could argue that best isn’t quite right for a list of 1 item).

Cooking on TV is not a very engaging activity (No, Masterchef India is not my favorite show this year; but you are close). As I was saying, cooking is not very engaging especially for someone like me who doesn’t like to or want to cook. You cannot fill moments of cooking with suspense and there’s no way for you to enjoy what someone’s cooked on television. Plus, to be a cook is not an aspiration that we, Indians, can relate to. So, if you are not in it for the recipe, there is precious little that you get out of it. There are no SMS polls, celebratory shows in Malaysia or a chance that someone is going to sing or dance for your favorite numbers. All you have are a set of people cutting, chopping, frying and serving food in the end.

And I have never been easily pleased with shows like these. I haven’t watched even one entire episode of any reality show before – Not the wannabes on stage, celebrities in jungles or weirdoes in a house. But I was riveted to this show, this cooking show, every day of the week. I will make time at 9PM and watch it from beginning to end and if I did miss it, catch the re-runs the next day. I spent time reading about the people – contestants and the judges – on Wikipedia and other gossip websites. I had my favorites and when they lost, picked new ones I was sure will win.

So, why did I like Masterchef Australia so much?

Firstly (and when I start a paragraph like this, you know what I have been writing), thought. The show’s not just about cooking – it’s about cooking in the jungle for the army, in the flight for a CEO, a ship for a party, for the old women association, for government royalty, in London and in Paris. Every show had a new concept or situation that the people had to adapt to, something for them to learn from. And, there’s real learning – the best chefs in the business teach the participants how to cook; the participants go to the best restaurants in town as rewards for their accomplishments. And the feedback is specific and consistent. As someone watching the show, you could see them evolve as cooks, show after show. Finally, there are real people in the show. Real people who are nice to each other, watch each other’s backs and show honest camaraderie. The judges are firm but considerate, generous in praise and candid in criticism. Participants feel good when they perform well and the good vibe carries over to the rest of the show as well.

So, in the end you end up cheering for people who are doing something that you don’t really enjoy, aspire for a goal that you cannot relate to, through a medium that doesn’t lend itself to the show. But you still feel for them and make them a part of your daily lives. And like any wonderful work of art, the show changes you without you realizing it. Recently wife and I were at a restaurant to celebrate a day off – when they served us the dish we ordered, for the first time we appreciated the presentation of the dish and the thought that went in plating it for us.

And for making my life richer by giving me an eye to appreciate these finer pleasures of life, I am truly grateful. And that's enough reason why the show is the only one on my list of best of 2010.

Goan Sojourn

2009-12-07T00:05:00.008+05:30

I am slowly trying to get back to writing regularly and am hoping, in the next few days to take time off and at least write small pieces. Over the last few months, I had some big, hairy audacious ideas for blogs but never could translate them into an actual post. Clearly because I was lazy to sit in one place for long enough to complete them. But I also believe it has to do with the medium - A blog, personally, gives you just one shot at getting it right. I have never re-written any of my blog posts or re-read old ones in an effort to make them better. Once they are written (after minor changes and re-writes, immediately afterwards), they are set in stone.

So, I am trying something different this time - ~P and I recently went on a trip to Goa for a week. Rather than making it a set of blog posts, I want to organize it as a website with different types of written content (Diary entries, reviews, snippets).

The site is here - http://sites.google.com/site/goansojourn/home. As you can see, only the first few pages are up. And I want to regularly add some content to the site over the next few weeks. I will also constantly revise the content that is already there. Ideas, feedback are more than welcome (either on the site or here).

The photos from the trip are here -

http://picasaweb.google.com/rathish.balakrishnan/goa

Imagination - Our passport to the real world

2009-08-02T22:38:00.009+05:30

I acted in my first play when I was 9 (4th standard) - I was playing a Malayali traveling in a train as part of a skit on National Integration. One of these days, I will scan the picture from the play and post it here for all of you to have a hearty laugh on how silly boys with lipstick look and how terrible primary school teachers are in putting makeup. And fortunately for me, I have been doing at least one play every year ever since - through school, college, and ignoring a brief hiatus while I was in France, throughout my professional life as well (Incidentally, 2008 was the first year I didn't do a play since I landed in Bangalore). .

Last week - I, as part of Version One Dot Oh (VODO), finished my first set of shows for the play, Six Degrees of Separation. On 24th and 25th, the play was staged thrice at Alliance Francaise. And between 28th and 30th at Ranga Shankara (RS). And as with all plays, every show was unique. There were good days (like the last shows in RS and Alliance) and bad days. There were those who liked it, and those who felt it could have been better (like this review of the play) and those who couldn't relate to it at all.

And it wasn't an easy play to stage or watch - The play was entrenched in the context of a specific time (1989-90) and place (New York), replete with obscure cultural references that are lost on even the well-read audience. The narrative is not straight forward. All of us in the cast have local accents, and efforts to neutralize them made the accents come across as inconsistent. The scenes are verbose, and demand top notch performances to sustain interest (That the lead actors delivered). And most importantly, the protagonist (and a few key characters) is homosexual.

And it is especially the impact of the last point that we (or specifically, I) underestimated. During my monologue in the play (I have a minor role, 7-10 minutes of stage time in a 90 minute play), I share how the protagonist asked me if he could fuck me. I am a heterosexual but I succumb and let him violate my self. It is a beautifully written scene and - when it works - forces the audience to reexamine the impact the protagonist has on people's lives.

In every show, there were always a dozen who couldn't stop laughing at the scene (and all other scenes with references to homosexuality). The play is not about homosexuality. None of the gay characters are overtly effeminate or are played as a stereotype. They are played as who they are - Perfectly normal people. And you could 'get' the play even if you completely ignore the aspect of homosexuality. But for some (10 out of an audience of 200) since the lead character was gay, the whole play was a queer show and every line had a homosexual undertone.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am not a great actor. So, it could have been something about the way I did the scene that prompted people to laugh (if you were there, saw me and have some feedback - I would love to hear from you). And though it was frustrating when I was on stage, I understand why those few laughed. How many of them have met a homosexual, known him as a friend or an acquaintance? A homosexual - like a Sardar, a Blonde - is a stereotype, a joke, a caricature. Case in point, the last gay movie that many could remember was Dostana.

After the first shows, we realized that it was a working assumption that we have to deal with. We made minor changes to expressions (especially mine) and dialogue delivery (we were clear that the script is how it was written by John Guarre, and we will not change it). Finally, during one of the shows at RS - the tittering took over the entire performance. I finished my role, defeated because all the laughter got under my skin and I gave a below par performance.

The next day, I asked the cast to be the audience and laugh through my entire monologue. Giggles, smirks and loud laughter. I failed the first time, I tried again and took my entire monologue, more honest than I had ever done it before. And when the scene ended, I slumped on stage and I wept, cried like a baby, loudly, my entire body shaking with every sob. (Confession - I have cried, loudly with tears streaming, thrice in the last 10 years. All three times after my scene in a play)

I have done the scene a dozen times before. I have thought about my character, Rick, in detail and concocted psychological motives for his actions. I created a father for him, a mother and built dreams of his childhood. If you asked me his back story, I could tell you the entire works to the last detail. But there was always, him the character and me the actor. And when the audience laughed earlier, I, Rathish, felt it was their problem, their insecurity in dealing with homosexuality.

But this time, acting in front of an empty gallery except from my fellow cast members, something clicked as I kept on with the monologue. I imagined that they weren't laughing at homosexuality, but at this small town boy with big dreams, who let himself be taken for a ride and lost all that he had. They laughed at Rick because he was a fool (Who wouldn't laugh at a man who let himself be fucked, because someone asked). And as I went on, I felt I was confessing to an ostracizing crowd. There is no way I could take that humiliation. And in that moment, I could have been him, violated and fatal.

That's probably why I love theater - I could never be an evangelist who is burnt to death, I could never be a homosexual rape victim, I don't think I would ever go as far as let myself be fucked by a man. But these are moments of true vulnerability - moments where you face death, loss and shame, emotions that our sanitized life keeps well under wraps. They say, one grows with experience. It would be presumptuous to compare being raped in real life, and acting as if you were. But there are moments, far and few and occasionally at the most unexpected of times, when a role takes you farther than you ever thought you could go, and opens a door to your own self.

Acting, they say, is cathartic. That is an understatement.

* The title of the post is from a line in the play, "I believe the imagination is the passport that we create to help take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is merely another phrase for what is most uniquely us. Jung says, 'The greatest sin is to be unconscious.'". The play was made into a movie, with most of the lines from the original play.

2008 : A Retrospective : Books

2008-12-06T13:44:00.013+05:30

For the whole of 2008, I have been over the clouds, on the rails, on bumpy roads far too often and far too long that I have managed to read far more than I have written.

Below are five of the best books that I have read this year. Not all of them are new (4 out of 5 were published this year). There is absolutely no science behind choosing these titles. At the end of the year, these are books that have stayed in my mind, that I have talked so often about and that I remember fondly.

5. Gang Leader for a day - Sudhir Venkatesh

An Indian American Sociology student goes to an all-black Chicago neighbourhood to interview young black gangsters. The first question in his questionnaire was "How does it feel to be young, black and poor?". The options in his questionnaire were "very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good". The answer he got was : Fuck You and a night in a dingy room with the gangsters.

A fantastically researched, first-hand account of how Sudhir Venkatesh spent days and months living with gangsters as one of them through gangfights, shoot-outs, deaths, celebrations and fallouts. I would have loved it even if it were a pure work of fiction. But to know that someone actually went through these experiences makes it much more engaging to read.

Some of you might have read about his work in Freakonomics, the book and the blog. But this one delves much deeper and creates characters out of a community that have long been glorified (by the arclights) or shunned (by the system).

4. Enchantress of Florence - Salman Rushdie

No one who has ever read Salman Rushdie has been indifferent to his work. My first work of Rushdie was "Moor's Last Sigh". I hated it. 3 years later, I read "Midnight's children", a book that fills every single sheet with as much imagination and magic as a paper can hold. But I could never truly come around to trust such a trickster - I gave all his other works a miss (including Shalimar the Clown). Until Enchantress of Florence.

I don't know if I have grown up to enjoy his works or whether he's aged and can finally hold the reins of his imagination firmly. But Enchantress is a true work of art - It is lucid (something I never thought I would say about Rushdie's work), poetic (as always) and vividly imaginative. True, it zigzags into little details, stays on a moment for longer than you would want and throws a lot more at you than what you can hold in your head. But there's a binding integrity and richness of prose that holds the book together.

The book is about how the line betwen imagination and reality is thread-bare, imperceptible and extremely subjective. And by picking characters that are real (Akbar) and those from the folds of his brain, Rushdie makes his point where one doesn't know where history ends and fiction begins. And how!

3. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre

You should be pure evil to enjoy this - have malice oil the valves of your heart, and enjoy humour where sharp knives are dipped in a bowl of chilling sarcasm and pierced into people's backs. Oh, Devil be damned. I would love an extra helping of this.

Vernon God Little is wickedly funny. Every single page, every single paragraph is written by a man who is an anti-social and is a misfit. DBC Pierre is an evil man. He lures you with some jokes and engages you in a conversation. A few pages later you don't really know where he is going but follow him out of sheer curiosity. Half-way through, you know something is seriously wrong but you can't leave because you are strapped to the chair. And by the end, the jokes are still there but a deep, disturbing core unravels and as much as you wish you didn't have to deal with it, he doesn't leave you with much of a choice.

Vernon God Little is the "Dark Knight" of Fiction. The creation of man who is completely in control of his craft and knows exactly where he is needling you with the knife that is stuck firmly to your back.

2. Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh

I like Amitav Ghosh - I read the Hungry tide through the night (and slept through most of the next day in office). I liked the The Glass Palace and got through the The Calcutta Chromosome as well (though I think it is one of his weaker works).

But nothing prepared me for the Sea of Poppies. Having read some of the other shortlisted novels for the Booker (including the eventual winner), this is my personal favorite of the list. I don't remember the last time I put down a book and for days after wished I had more of the book to read. And because it is a trilogy, the novel doesn't leave you with a sense of closure but is suspended at a point where the characters slip into darkness right in front of your eyes.

The research is so good and so well woven into the story that you sometimes wonder if someone could provide so much detail, without actuually having seen the farms of poppies, the ships for the trade, the people in the fields, in the harbours, on the docks. Every character has its own distinct voice, accents and vocabulary.

Sea of Poppies is brilliant. As much as I am wary of superlatives, it is one of the best works of fiction I have read in a long time (Right up there with Midnights Children, Never Let Me Go, Atonement and others).

1. The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

A Psychologist in Canada in the sixties wanted to create 'Ideal people'. People without vices, malice and weaknesses. So, he experimented on his unsuspecting patients by putting them to extreme electric shock, sensory deprivation, hunger, thirst and absolute lack of human contact. He believed that if he could achieve an extreme state of shock, his patients would be so malleable that their brains would be blank slates where he could write what he wanted.

His research was a disaster and ruined many lives. But since then, this research has been used by Intelligence agencies (CIA) during investigations, International organizations (IMF, World bank) on developing countries, by first-world nations (the US) during wars and now by Governments during times of crisis (Hurricane Katrina, Iraq War, 9-11, Tsunami) - To exploit a crisis and get people to do things, forsake rights before the shock wears off.

And this is a book for the times.

I sat in front of the TV for two whole days non-stop and watched the live telecast of men and women stuck in hotels and screaming for help. I listened to all media channels telling us how India has been redefined forever. I watched the man from Gujarat who came all the way from his state to the site to make a point against the government, and to establish 'stringent terrorist laws'. I see the subtle change in the reports on how Pakistan 'is coerced' (and not agreed) into helping us, how ISI chief is 'summoned' (and not invited or asked).

In times like this, it is important to remember who we really are and what we stand for as a nation. Lest someone should use this as an opportunity to change this nation into something we dont want to be.

There are books you enjoy and there are books that change the way you see this world. Shock Doctrine has forever altered the way I see many things around me. Go read it.

Some other books that I have read and enjoyed this year (by no means exhaustive)

Hard-boiled Wonderland (Haruki Murakami) - Classic Murakami!
A case of Exploding Mangoes (Mohammad Hanif) - Intelligent piece of writing!
The White Tiger (Arvind Adiga) - Good. But Booker? Uh. hum. And I am not nationalistic. But this is way too much India bashing for my taste.
Winnie and Wolf (AN Wilson) - On Adolf Hitler's possible love affair. My usual weakness for history and fiction interlaced together.
Shantharam (G D Roberts) - Well-written but this is a story on steroids!
Purple Cow (Seth Godin) - If you have read his blog, you know what to expect
Amerika (Franz Kafka) - Depressing! And they tell me it is one of his happy books.
Mothsmoke (Mohsin Hamid) - The second pakistani author in my list. Guilty pleasure reading about streets in Karachi, a place I would never be able to visit.
A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson) - Good. But like the walk, a little too long.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina Lewycka) - Amusing material! But I read it after too many recommendations. And so didn't enjoy it so much.

Books I wish I didn't waste my time on (again, by no means exhaustive)

Ignorance (Milan Kundera)
Merde Actually (Stephan Clarke)
How starbucks saved my life (Michael Gates Hill) - The worst book of my life!

Currently reading

Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama) - OK, if someone's going to be the most powerful man in the world, I'd like to know what he thinks. For one thing, this man can express himself very well. That we know is already a big bonus!
Empires of the Indus (Alice Albania),
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is on its way

Somnambulist's Sonnet

2008-05-14T02:13:00.005+05:30

I finally open my eyes.

I hate to see the watch to put a number on how many hours I have been sleeping. Not very long, I know. Sleeplessness is like a nagging thought. It gnaws the edges of your sleep with pointless detours and questions until the questions grow so loud inside that they wake you up. And once you are awake, the questions usually don’t matter. You are left with a feeling of incompleteness, with a half-formed answer to a fleeing question that was never meant to be. Like an orphaned fetus out of a wayward highwayman.

The drone of the fan falls on top of the grayscale setting of my room, which suddenly seems far bigger and spacious than its cramped self. The colors are stripped and every object exists purely out of its ability to reflect light - the fundamental laws of optics making everything into dark, shiny or just ambiguous gray matter.

I pick up a gray spherical bouncing piece of matter that is a ball in broad daylight and throw it at the wall – A quintessentially bachelor-ish artifact next to one’s bed.

I always believe that the only reason for sleeplessness is not enough water. Everything – guilt, bad sex, work and uncomfortable bed – is overridden by enough amounts of the ‘elixir of life’. Probably because mom always made me have a glass of water before I sleep – hot, pale green water with a sizeable chunk of boiled cumin settled right in the bottom of a bigger-than-usual tumbler. What joy it was to drink the water and put my little fingers to clumsily scoop the cumin and feel the strong taste of it in my mouth.

The cumin is gone, and it is never boiled. But water is what I reach out to in the middle of the night. Some never knew I was awake. And some mumble jumbled gibberish as I made my way to the kitchen. But few, very few, knew. And one – just one – remembered to leave a water bottle next to my bed every time she was home. I could have married her just for that.

I smile to myself at the thought. If only it was so simple.

I walk around the room with my lips wrapped around the open end of the bottle surveying what my house has become. When I had first moved in, I wanted the house to be barren – without character, without junk and without memories. It was to be Zen forest where I could retire at the end of the day with nothing, no one to haunt me. I never invited anyone home, never had a party and very occasionally let people sit in the drawing room for a few hours.

But soon they came. Not many of them. But they did. As room mates, friends, lovers, unnamed ambiguous relationships and strangers. And just as they do every time, they left a part of themselves when they left. And today, beyond the drone of the fan and the grayscale setting, I can hear muffled voices from the corners. Not loud enough to talk to, but loud enough to remind, to remember and to be written about.

I wondered if it was time to pack my bags and leave. Paraphernalia of daily life seem to be silently accumulating like flesh around the waistline – one day you wake up and you realize it’s there. And you cannot just shrug them off. While you can pack ‘stuff’ off in suitcases or just give them away to those who will value it more than you do, what do you do with memories? Which attic do you put them in? Which corners are you going to hide them – and for how long, until the next birthday of theirs arrive and you wish them and get a truckload of memories in return?

Or kill them. The memories I mean. But do you really want to? Do you believe that true happiness lies in basking under the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? I don’t.

You could probably take a detour. A vacation. Drop your identity at the next milestone in the highway, strip and run away into the wild; for weeks. You will be a man without a name. And a mobile connection. Without a laptop slung over your broken back. Without love.

Do you want it too? How many times have you done it? I know of a guy who was a friend of friend who once ran away to Ladakh because he was sick of his work. It is always a friend of a friend. Always.

Soon, in a matter of hours, it will dawn and the chatter will start. Slowly at first and then transform itself into a full blown metal rock band singing the song of life, bereft of pitch or tone or melody. I will pretend to wake up and start my day until I am too tired and it’s too dark to see. Or I am awake now – this moment and in a few hours, I will tap dance around life, like every single day, with my eyes wide open. But asleep.

For this is who I am. A trapeze artist of lala land. A perfect ten on ten Somnambulist.

Version One dot Oh presents ...

2008-04-24T23:14:00.004+05:30

My friends and Acquaintances from the group Version One dot Oh are doing a play. Having worked with the very same guys who are doing this play, a few things are given - it will not be amateurish, it will not be badly enacted, it will not stupid. And that's saying a lot about a play!

The play is happening at Alliance Francaise, Bangalore on Friday and Saturday. You can contact 99800 08278 for tickets.

My trip to Dresden

2008-04-20T13:04:00.001+05:30

21000 words on my trip to Dresden. There are a lot more verbal interludes - hopefully, I'll find sometime to pen them down. You can find the photos here - Watch it in slideshow and don't forget to read the captions :)

So, which grade is your country?

2008-01-22T09:12:00.001+05:30

When I was 12 or 13, one of my classmates suggested that we grade all our teachers (which seemed fair since they judge us all the time). If I remember right, it was on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) and we were doing it during one of those periods when the teacher doesn't turn up but sends someone else to make sure we don't turn the class upside down.

Incidentally, that 'someone' for the class in question caught us chattering and giggling our ways to glory and realized we were up to some mischief. To our credit, we were honest (we couldn't think of a appropriate lie that connects the teachers to the numbers).

For some strange reason, 'someone' didn't appreciate teachers being rated. She found the whole exercise presumptuous and threw us out of class.

Now that I am old, boring and wise, I think it is a bad idea to rate anything unless it is strictly based on quantifiable results. Because under all those numbers you are being plain judgmental.

Why am I reminded of this obscure incident now? Saw this link where the flags are rated as A, B, C and failed - link. The author has defined best practices for how flags should look like and listed some rules of aesthetics. What is missing is the historical context behind the design of the flag and what it conveys about the country.

India is B- (with a score of 65/100).

And to put things in perspective - Pakistan is A+ (88/100) ;-)

Photo courtesy - iStockPhoto

How do you change the world?

2008-01-19T20:39:00.000+05:30

We at Sattva are doing a quick survey this month. We are trying to find out little things that you do, however trivial it might seem, which you think makes a difference.

For example, I know a friend of mine who starts talking auto drivers whenever he gets in to an auto. And if by any chance if the auto driver has small kids, he buys a packet of gems for the driver's kids. He believes that this will brighten the auto driver's day and that will spread the joy to other people he meets.

My boss religiously switches off every appliance before he goes home from work including the tube lights, monitors, and chargers. Another friend of mine does not honk, unless absolutely necessary and yet another friend does not waste food and makes sure he does not fill his plate with anything he does not need.

Of course we can be cynical about this and say that all this small things would never have any measurable impact. But these people believe that the little difference these things make matters.

So we would like to know if there is this one small thing that you do, or you know a friend who does that you think counts. It might be the most trivial, or a habit that your friends and colleagues always get everyone's attention to. We are extremely interested in every story you have to tell, and every little thing you have to share.

We are planning to collate your response in the January issue of Sattva. And you can then read the list to pick up some of these as your new year Resolutions :)

*This was the mail that has been sent to all readers of Sattva for our January issue. I would love to hear from you all.

Star Gazing

2008-01-19T19:05:00.000+05:30

No - it is not review, for I am sure you have heard enough and more about the movie. Everyone seems to have cried at some point in the movie (though, I should admit that I managed not to. Just about managed not to). Though, I should cynically admit that the movie does try too hard to achieve this objective .

The film is nice. The music is good. The boy is fantastic.

I think a film works for you when you can relate to any character in the movie. I saw this whole film through the eyes of the boy's elder brother (Disclaimer - my younger brother is the exact opposite of Ishaan Awasthi. He is a whiz with maths and cannot paint for nuts :-) And my dad was never too stuck with the achiever's label. He wanted me to become a Journalist!). But the whole image of him struggling to find his place in the world, gaining acceptance among peers and becoming a star is something that I can totally relate to. And every time I had a lump in my throat was when I could see my brother in that boy.

On an aside, My favorite scene in the movie is when the boy dresses up before dawn, walks up to the lake to see the sun rise. I don't remember the last time I saw the sun rise - There was this one time, when I was in college. Sitting on top of a scaffolding on a September morning, I saw the first shades of crimson spreading across the sky. There was this one moment both the sun and the moon take either sides of the crimson colored sky. You could get down the scaffolding, walk on the dew topped lawns and watch the first flowers bloom and convince yourself that you are in heaven.

It is all nice and fair to recognize the stars on earth. But when was the last time you stopped and stared at the stars in the sky?

The story of two suicides

2008-01-19T18:45:00.001+05:30

Just finished reading this (link) story of about two suicides. All forms of narration (novels, movies) are replete with instances of using two parallel stories with distinct similarities. But to observe that in real life is very disturbing. As the writer observed,

They had so much in common: Two young researchers obsessed with simulating common sense. Both Canadian. Both Net-savvy.

Both of them, though with contrasting fortunes, driven by the same objective, working on two very similar projects and finally ending their lives in uncannily mirrored fashion.

The article links to their personal blogs, official pages, pages on the web where they have left a trail of their lives, which makes the whole experience of reading about them surreal. When you usually read about lives gone wrong or suicides, you can suspend reality and read the account as a work of fiction. But in this case, they talk to you through pictures capturing moments in their lives when they were happier, letters that aren't crumpled and discarded but are on the web as live evidence you can scan, blogs recording trivialities and visions of changing the world - all this making them more like you and me.

It reminded of a play that was a modern interpretation of Vikram and Betaal.

Today, you are there in Orkut smiling with friends, your scrapbooks replete with snide and 'similed' remarks, your pictures in front of Eiffel and the one with you in a leather jacket bearing the winters of Wisconsin. But when you die, what happens to your online identity? Does it remain forever as a memory haunting your loved ones of times gone by? Does that make it a ghost? An identity that will last forever?

Best of 2007

2008-01-10T08:53:00.000+05:30

This will be the last time I will use this number, I promise :-)

2007 in Pictures - NY Times (and since it's NY Times, 2007 is only about Afghanistan, middle east, war, US parliament and George bush crying. But the pictures are nice!)

Best books of 2007 - NY times

Best movies of 2007 - From Roger Ebert, no less, who's considered the greatest contemporary pundit in America ahead of technology and management thinkers. He writes movie reviews.

100 things we didn't know last year - From BBC

What have you changed your mind about in 2007 - From Edge, mostly scientific

Bill's last days

2008-01-08T00:33:00.001+05:30

A funny (in a quirky way) video of Bill gates' last days at office. If not anything, it's a nice celebrity spotting contest. I especially love the bit where Bono says, "We don't have any vacancy in the band". You can see the video here

Here's a similar one on Bill Clinton's last days at the white house - Video

What's interesting about both these videos is how two men with a lot of clout, can laugh at themselves.

A slice of the world for all

2008-01-07T20:07:00.000+05:30

Yesterday over lunch, one of my acquaintances said,

Two or three hundred years later, when we do achieve the ideal state of equality, people of that age will look at us and wonder how we could have lived like this, how we could have enjoyed delicious meals in restaurants when people outside did not have food to eat. Just as we look at Slavery and holocaust and wonder how people could have coexisted with such practices, the future generations will look at us and wonder how we could have lived with so much inequality.

It was a wonderful thought, full of optimism and a conviction that inequality does not a merit a place in the society just as holocaust and slavery. And I would love to be a part of her thought, believe that the world will see a day like that someday. But what is Equality really?

I, for one, do not believe in a system that aims to achieve absolute equality (like Communism, for instance). On the other hand, I believe in the fundamental principle of capitalism - Competitiveness. I believe that one should strive and work hard to achieve something substantial. There should always be the possibility for one to outgrow one's peers and the entire system. This dream is what drives men towards greatness, towards achievement.

In such a world, there is never going to be financial equality. There will be those that are rich and those that are poor. People will be spread across an entire gamut of occupations each of which will pay differently. There will be a small subsection of the world which owns substantially more wealth than the rest.

Equality for me is a world where everyone has the opportunity to do this. Where everyone's basic needs are taken care of, where everyone is provided with education and the skills that empower him to define one's future. Where even the most baseline facilities to the bottom of the pyramid are relevant and standardized. And what one does with it is entirely his own prerogative. Like the American declaration of independence says, everyone is given the right for "the pursuit of happiness" and not happiness itself. That I believe is a key difference.

Equality is not about sameness. It is about giving everyone choice.

To create true equality is not about abolishing poverty and redistributing wealth across everyone in the world. It is about creating opportunities for all. And that is what will drive true sustainable change in the society. The question now should be how we can achieve that. I agree that the answer is not straight forward. But at least, we know what the question is.

What do you think?

Elephant Poop : Stanford Educator's corner

2008-01-06T22:12:00.000+05:30

In these following words ("Eat like a bird, Poop like an Elephant") by Guy Kawasaki, I believe.

(1) Get out there, meet people, press the flesh, consume knowledge like crazy, attend seminars, etc. (birds eat a lot!). And (2) spread the knowledge, information, and contacts that you gained around, share of your time and talent (elephants are good at...well you know).

And so, as part of my efforts to "poop like an Elephant", here's first of the many sources of information that I found extremely interesting and informative.

Stanford's Educator's corner - http://edcorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html.

Stanford, understandably, attracts a lot of leaders and visionaries to share their experiences. And some of the podcasts in the site are quite lucid and instructive. My personal favorite is Shai Agassi, a fantastic speaker whom I have had the fortune of listening to in person.

I hope to be able to find at least one interesting site like this every week. And considering the wealth of information out there, I don't think it should be too difficult!

Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine

2008-01-05T13:43:00.000+05:30

In the first week of every month, the Sattva editorial team meets at seven thirty in the morning to discuss the month's issue. The idea of the meeting is to finalize the theme for the month and make a list of individuals and organizations to be covered as part of the issue. And the venue is always the same - Airlines Hotel, Lavelle Road.

It takes me exactly fifteen minutes to get from my house (at Airport road) to Airlines hotel (I wonder why they call it that) - fifteen blissful minutes of no signals, no traffic and no blaring horns. The hotel has all the idiosyncrasies of an edifice that has been there and seen that. Ancient tables with porcelain tops, waiters dressed in white doing you a favour by taking your orders, unused rickety artifacts (like dilapidated swings and motor cars) that remind the old timers what the place had once been, gardens and corners that are painted in disuse and delicious coffee and tea served in huge glasses (none of your cups and saucers).

And the smell of puke! You try in vain to find that one table which can take you away from that smell. You indulge in conversations with extra zeal just to take your mind off the stench lest you should add to that invisible but omnipresent human discharge. But like those giant birds once sang of another hotel, as much as you try, "you can never leave"

The place is huge. Apart from the actual restaurant, there is an open area outside (where we meet) with more than twenty tables. There is also a hotel which I have never seen anyone use, one that exactly looks like guest houses next to old bus stands that are worn and out. But you know, when you see them, that there was a time when they were sought after. In addition, there is a bookshop, a corner house, a nice spacious parking lot, a juice shop, a play area and lots of muddy free space.

Once a Sattva colleague told me that the place was much bigger than what it is today. The play area, she told me, was huge and a lot of parents used to meet in the evenings to spend time with friends while the children entertained themselves to no end in the play area. Soon, the hi-risers arrived and the part of the area was sold off to them. And I guess, since then the families have stopped coming.

But there is something about that place - like the fact that, that is the first restaurant in this part of Bangalore to open in the mornings, where you can sit and talk and enjoy your coffee - that makes it a haven for those like us to meet in the mornings. All around us, I have seen people talking about workshops to be organized, reunions that have to be planned, trips that that have to be scheduled and many times, memories that have to be caught up with.

In my first few months as the editor, I put a lot of effort for these meetings. I scoured the net and came up with a list of early leads and contacts. I just didn't want to go unprepared for the meeting and was being my own paranoid self. But there are times when I go there with an empty hand and watch the issue evolve in front of my eyes - purely by the magic of six degrees of separation.

It is amazing how many contacts you can come up with when five people meet together to discuss an issue. No amount of google search is going to give you, for example, a contact of a guy who sold oranges all his life just so that he could build a school in his village. What will you search for to get such a contact? And there are always mothers of friends, some workshop you attended, someone you read about - where a name comes with a story, an experience and a recommendation.

Like this bit about Airlines hotel - Google knows Airlines hotel as an unstarred government approved hotel. It doesn't tell me that the hotel's the first place you can get delicious coffee and that kids used to play there a decade ago. But my Sattva colleague can and that makes the story more intimate, a story you want to tell.

An argument finally laid to rest!

2008-01-03T18:55:00.000+05:30

If ever you hear the oft-quoted argument again, and I am sure you will considering the frequency with which it appears in every male vs female (in other words, "that caveman who is my boyfriend / husband") argument, here are the facts (link) of the case.

A very amusing article indeed.

He admits his unusual expertise has put his three kids (one of whom is economist and "Freakonomics" co-author Steven Levitt) through expensive universities.

Damn! We seriously need to revise our academic counseling and career options!

A blog a day - The beginning

2008-01-03T17:45:00.000+05:30

So, it is a happy new year and all, a time painted all over with broad strokes of fairytale optimism and super-hero faith in yourself; all of this forcing you to make resolutions that you will laugh at on any given day.

I have my resolutions for 2008. And part of it is to write a blog a day. Now, this is plain presumptuous of two counts.

I had a brilliant idea of making a best of 2007 list of my blog posts. It was then that I realized that I have in all written only 12 or so posts in the whole year and a best-of list didn't make much sense. So to scale from 12 to 365 (30 times!) is a tad unbelievable.
A blog a day presupposes that I have something interesting to share everyday. You might find it hard to believe if you have not actually met me in person. If you have, you will just laugh on my face.

However, I shall persist.

The reason I started blogging back in 2004 were for many reasons. I didn't know many people, didn't have much to do and had a lot to say. More importantly, I wasn't doing anything even remotely creative in my life and I badly wanted to write (a habit I picked up seriously when I was ten).

Today, fortunately, I have sufficient avenues (and commitments) to write regularly. In 2007, I officially worked for 4 magazines and was the editor of two (I know, what was I thinking!). Each of these responsibilities cover the entire gamut of work involved in creating content. So blogging (and the need to truly say what I feel as compared to what has to be said) unfortunately took a back seat. I have been furiously typing inside my head trying hard to capture moments as they pass me by. And I have realized at the end of the year that there is a 'b shaped hole' (Aww!) that any amount writing does not fill.

So, I am back to blogging. It might not be the same type of carefully crafted (yet mostly pointless) content I have posted before. But I am hoping it will be more like a journal that gives one (and in later years, me) an idea of what I was thinking when 2008 walked on my face. And for some strange reason, you might find interesting and engaging too!

Well, that is the hope. Wish me luck.

What's your story?

2007-12-05T10:35:00.000+05:30

I am not well. Nothing unusual – I feel like my body’s stuck under a road roller that is refusing to move. And strange men for some unknown reason are loading and unloading tons and tons of stuff off and on my back. I have been standing and sitting and walking with this pain for the whole day in office and finally at 5:30 in the evening, I decide to visit the doc.

But the post is not about me lamenting on my illness. The post is about interesting people you inevitably meet only when you are unwell.

My cab driver knows me. Quite unsurprising since it is one of these guys who drop me home most of the nights from work. We probably shared an interesting conversation or he’s probably still amused at my godawful kannada. Anyway, he smiles as I enter and waits for the usual sign of recognition. I am too tired to even fake it and let it pass.

It’s 5:45 pm and every vehicle ever manufactured in south India is on the Bangalore roads between my office and the hospital. I spend half an hour crossing the first two kilometers (what beautifully scenic, barren decade old decadent buildings everywhere you see!). Just as we were about to move, the vehicles stopped once again. But this time it’s not out of any divine trick conjured by the unknown, but purely out of well-intended human endeavor.

The driver saw it before I did – A decidedly well decked lady walked out of her Swift and started making frantic calls on her phone while screaming occasional outbursts at the truck driver whose vehicle just about (just about, just about) touched her car. What I also missed was that the registration of the car was done in Andhra Pradesh. But the driver didn’t and so didn’t “mana thambudus” from the Telugu desam party. A bunch materialized out of nowhere and started arguing with the truck driver pulling him out of the truck.

By then my driver was all excited and wanted to share his joy with fellow brethren. So, he gave me this whole spiel in kannada. Just because I was unwell (and definitely not because my kannada was bad), I couldn’t understand a word of what he was saying (disclaimer reiteration – because I was unwell!). He then switched to his English, which I should admit was definitely better than my Kannada. “Sir AP Board sir”, “This Karnataka Sir”, “All come sir. AP Board all come. Karnataka Board. No one come”. “Lady driver sir. That only.” And for each of these outbursts, I emphatically agreed by nodding my head and “Hmmm”-ing as well as I could.

Apparently that didn’t help much. “I see”, he said and made his way to the accident with emphatic zing. I don’t know what he said but I soon realized that everyone was talking a lot more loudly than before. Five minutes later, he came back with a new resolve and started the car. Was I proud of my driver! The Hugo Chavez of road disputes! Just then I saw the lady starting her car and driving away (A date that couldn’t wait!). But the dispute still continued. The truck was rooted to its spot and the thambudus kept the frontier alive – it didn’t matter that the original cause of the problem was now stuck in the next traffic jam.

“No problem sir”, “Only cap of mirror”, “No damage”, “They make too much awaaz, awaaz”. I nodded to say I concur. But thanks to the inherent ambiguity of the Indian head nod, he resorted to similies and metaphors that engineers like me would understand. “Like Geometry box sir”, “Like bottle cap”. Finally when I had had enough, I resorted to all sentences that I could frame with bi-syllabic words. “I know! I know!”, “Correct! Correct!. And when this didn’t work - “Ladies drive very bad!”, “Traffic, Traffic ella jage!”. After a while, I lost out on the verbal game and decided to snooze on the front seat.

But he went on, telling me the same thing over and over again. He tried keeping it alive until we reached the hospital. In bursts. Saying the same story again and again. I think (in my own warped-in-the-air-conditioner sensibility) because it mattered to him – this conversation. It helped differentiate today from yesterday when he drove through these same roads, with another uninterested stranger in the backseat. He probably wanted to associate a human experience to an unexpected event in his day so that he has something to talk about.

Just like those who I see everyday sitting outside gonghuras restaurant waiting for customers, and who I saw today fighting for the girl who didn’t bother to wait. They would go tell their friends how they put a truck driver to task, but I am guessing will ignore how she drove away without saying a word.

All of us lead our lives in a hope to find a story to tell. And this is mine. What is yours?

Waiting for Doctor Gladys

2007-11-11T22:00:00.001+05:30

For the September issue of Sattva, I had profiled an organization called Docteur Clown India - An offshoot of an international organization called Docteur Clown, which is doing some wonderful and creative work with Children. I personally had a lot of fun writing the article - The fact that the article itself was about 'clowning' was my excuse :)

However, since the article was ready only in the last minute we were never able to add it to the final issue. Now that we have a Sattva blog, the article finally has a chance to see the light of the day and get some readership! The link to the article is here

http://sattva- blog.blogspot. com/2007/ 11/waiting- for-doctor- gladys.html

I have also added the contact details for anyone interested in knowing more about the organization.

Sattva - October issue

2007-10-31T02:55:00.002+05:30

Posting a mail on my blog makes me feel like a CEO :) But this is something really special and I thought I would share it with all of you - This is the mail I sent to all the members of the Sattva team after our October issue

Hello all,

The October issue is now canned and will be reaching all our readers tonight. At the risk of raising expectations, Sattva has really treaded the unbeaten path this time.

Firstly, the topic itself. Sexual abuse is not an easy topic. The contacts were hard to come by and every story has an intense emotional core that, as our postscript article reflects, questions some of the prejudices we deep down have but don't want to admit.

Secondly, the design. Sattva is 'almost' black and white this time, which especially after our annual issue, is so not-Sattva!

Thirdly, the content. We have fiction as the guest column for the first time. We have started a blog and two posts are waiting to go online along with the issue.

When I look at the whole issue end to end now, I see that this issue is very personal. Every story is about a person, has a name and a face. Which for an issue like this, is the best possible way to put it.

I could go on and on.

So, let me take this moment to thank everyone of you for making this issue possible!

It was not just a wonderful issue but a very smooth execution as well (Despite the fact that I am sitting in another continent as I am writing this mail :). I know some of you didn't have the best time at office and some of you were given just a day's notice and all of you responded with wonderful articles.

Special thanks to our graphics designer who, every time, surprises us with such wonderful design!

To the team!

Please do take a look at the October issue and let me know what you think! The issue is available here. And the newly started Sattva Blog is here.

If I were Woody Allen

2007-07-28T00:54:00.001+05:30

"What I am trying to say is this", I started, trying hard not to sound like a jerk that I am but failing miserably. "A decision to marry is not quantifiable. There's no way of saying whether you are in love or not, or whether the marriage will work or not based on any numbers or statistics. And that's precisely why I hate to make that decision"

I could see that she was amused. She wasn't smiling or putting her head to one side and giving me a look like I was nuts. But I knew she was, by the way she was toying with the tea bag that was floating lifelessly inside her porcelain cup of blemished hot water. She continued staring at her cup, her brows knotted together in concentration, as if expecting me to go on. I did.

"I guess it's an occupational hazard", I punctuated it with my usual self-deprecating smile. "You look at life through a two by two matrix and everything in life can be represented as a graph. Whatever cannot be described using three bullet points", and I held out my fingers to emphasize, "is vague, unreasonable and ...".

"So you don't believe in god?", she asked still staring at her cup.

"Well I do. God exists. He's probably not the idol or the lamp that you see in a temple. But yeah, he is there. here. I mean, everywhere".

And this time, she looked at me and smiled. And tilted her head to one side and looked straight at me with just a strand of hair between us that she refused to adjust.

I smiled like an idiot. "Of course, it's different with God. I might not have three bullet points. But there's a clear gap in explaining how life goes on in this world and god fills that gap. A lot of things in the world wouldn't make sense otherwise".

"So, your idea of objectivity is whatever fills the gaps in your subjective understanding of life? God is because he fits in your little picture. And marriage isn't because it doesn't fill any gap?".

"Well, isn't that true for everyone?". And there went all tall claims of uniqueness, of intellectual distinction and of clarity of thought. An easy excuse to any such discussion - that you are a common man, a people's person, one of them. Pretty girl 1. Software Engineer 0. She didn't push it.

It is exactly points like this in a conversation that I love saying something like, "Feels like we are out on an arranged-marriage-interview-date!", or "Imagine if we were seeing each other" or worse still, "Can you imagine both of us being married, Phew!".

It's not that I am visualizing a life of matrimonial and conjugal bliss with the woman in front of me. It's a vague passing thought that's amusing enough to be mentioned to the other person. More often than not (who am I kidding! Everytime), the feeling is not reciprocated. That statement officially falls under the jurisdiction of hitting at her. It's there on the table as a live, squirming, ill-advised orphaned line that the other person wants to ignore but can't leaving no room for any further conversation. And what happens next is always the same - she will want to pay the bill, will always be late for the next engagement within the next five minutes and will not shake hands when she leaves. And all that's left is strange feeling of deja vu. And a distant voice of someone humming the song, "Something stupid". And that my friend is my first bullet point for the fact that God is. (and has an incredibly sadistic but appropriate timing)

"So, do you believe in Marriage?", I asked. Counter attack. I might not get a full point. But we might just settle for a draw.

And inside my head, I started playing out so many different lines that she could use for a reply. She could say, for example, "What do you think?" (confrontational), "Yes and No" (philosophical), "Let's talk about it" (Managerial, Consensus builder), "Well, if so many people do it, there must be some sense in it" (gullible, lacks depth), "I haven't really given it much of a thought" (flippant, too casual), "I am sure there is" (emotional, crabby).

She said, "Mmm Hmm". Yeah. that's what she said. Mmm. Hmm. Could be an yes, or a no, or "Interesting question" or "don't you have anything better to ask?" or may be she just cleared her throat.

She wasn't beautiful. Not the kind of face that would arrest you in the middle of the road to watch her walk past leaving you smelling the trail of her perfume. But there, in the coffee shop, amidst all that noise and chatter, with a cramped up table in between, she looked striking. Wild locks of black hair with brown lines in between, untied and left to play with in that characteristically carefully careless manner, a clear blemishless face, large expressive eyes and thin wide lips with a natural mild pout.

"And that's an Yes?"

"Yes", she said and smiled. And there was something about that smile, a little glint in the eye that said the affirmation was not just for the question that was asked. It was Yes and it could change everything. And that my friend is my second and third bullet point for the fact that God is. (and has an incredibly sadistic but appropriate timing)

"Is now the time", I asked myself, "to say something stupid?".

Sattva - Calling for Writers!

2007-06-28T21:14:00.000+05:30

Who are we?

Sattva is a monthly e-magazine with a vision to be an effective platform for the sharing of news, views and appreciation of the social change process, thus raising awareness and encouraging individuals and organizations to meaningfully contribute to society. The magazine has been in operation since September 2006 and has spanned 9 issues. Every issue is based on a theme ranging from Waste management to Traffic to Children.

Who are we looking for?
As the magazine nears its first year of completion, Sattva aims to truly realize the potential of a social platform that encourages active dialogue and facilitates social change. And we are looking for writers who can help realize this aim. We need people who

Believe that change is possible and want to facilitate the process by increasing awareness in the society
Can see beyond cynicism and notice the little wins in the social sector today.
Are passionate about the power of written word and its role in social change

What do you have to do?
If you are interested, please send us an article that you have written (on any topic) along with information about yourself - What do you do? do you have any prior relevant experience? And why do you want to be a part of Sattva?

We can then meet up and talk about how we could work something together.

Where can I get more information?
Call Rathish @ 9886789204 / Rai @ 9845501929
Click http://www.itihas.org.in/sattva.html
Read http://www.itihas.org.in/SattvaMay2007.pdf
Mail sattva dot ezine at gmail dot com

P.S: Though world is truly a small place today, we would still prefer reporters from Bangalore :-)

Sattva - April Issue

2007-05-13T22:33:00.001+05:30

According to a recent report, a rough estimate of the economic loss caused due to traffic jams is in the order of more than 450 crores due to delays and congestion. So, if there was any doubt, this statistic should convince even the die-hard cynic that traffic is one of the most serious problems Bangalore faces today. It ruins our mornings, puts our carefully crafted schedules in disarray and leaves us irritated, nauseated and tired. Traffic, in brief, is a curse.

Now that we are done complaining, let the issue begin. In this issue of Sattva, we have tried to look beyond traffic as a menace and have tried showcasing the opportunities it presents. We talk about the efforts that have been taken at different levels in the society to solve the problem. In the Forefront section, we look at how traffic has given the children of ECHO an opportunity to find their place in society. We tell you how CommuteEasy helps you find travel buddies to fill the empty seats in your car, while taking three cars out of the road – All a click away. We talk to those sections of the city whose voices we don’t hear at our dinner parties, and post-cocktail conversations. Shantharaju, the celebrated traffic cop, our Sattvic Celebrity and a favorite among Bishop Cottons’ students, tells us how he helps improve the traffic situation in his own little way. Aarti and Kishore talk to the auto rickshaw and bus drivers to present the other side of the coin in Postscript.

We are deeply indebted to Professor MN Sreehari, advisor to the Government of Karnataka in Traffic and Transport Engineering, for having taken the time to share his thoughts with us in the Editorial. And we are equally indebted to you, our readers, for sharing your views on how to improve Bangalore’s traffic situation in our Refractive Index.

The overly optimistic tone of this issue might contrast with the daily reality that all of us face. It has been a conscious decision to stay away from harping on the problem but talk about ways in which we could help solve it. The success of each of these initiatives and our own wellbeing however hinges on one singular premise – that you, the one on the road every single day, will strive to make a difference; whether you will ask yourself if you really need your car, follow lane discipline, stay away from your horn, respect the signal and always remember that you have time for that one second that you gain by cutting corners. I hope you find the information in this issue interesting and informative. Do remember to check out the little tidbits that we have put together for you in the end. And as always, we would love to hear from you.

Before I sign off, here’s a little piece of advice that all lorry-rears have taught me since childhood.

Sound Horn. No. OK. Thank you.

P.S - This is the foreword that I wrote for the April Issue of the Sattva. Please read the whole issue here.

Random post

2007-04-28T12:00:00.000+05:30

I have to do this NOW. Right now - for a minute later, either my phone or my internal calendar will start ringing real loud and I will walk away yet again. And you will never realize that I ever came here, wanted to post and was even half way through it, before I decided against and walked away.

This is a random post. Random thoughts in a random order at a random time.

My outlook (not the synonym to attitude but the Microsoft software) is a clear indicator of my work life balance. In my inbox are two subfolders - Personal and Interesting. While the former stores mails from my loved ones and acquaintances, the latter has mails that I find interesting (but don't have the time to read right away). At any point of time, the number of unread mails in those folders is a good indication of how much I care for my life. An average combined total is between 3 to 5. That's the zone that I am most comfortable with. If it's 7 or 8, then I should take a deep breath and go for a walk. If the number is more than 10, I know I am losing it. I need get out of my office right now, buy a dozen books, dozen more movies, go to place where the hutch puppy can find me and so can the internet. If it's 15, you better call the ambulance.

The number now is 21. The earliest mail in that folder was sent on 15 Feb 2007.

Not that I didn't realize. I took a vacation. A week long sojourn to travel to Chennai and Kerala, be with parents, brush up my malayalam and have some delicious fish curry. Was supposed to come back from Kerala to Chennai on Saturday and reach Bangalore on Monday. Spend the time in between doing nothing. I was at office on Friday. Booked an emergency bus on Thursday night landed for work on time the next day.

Mom tells me, I need to go to a doctor right now. And I believe, it will pass.

I believe it will. And I believe I am making the best use of my time. I got a chance to be the editor of two different magazines at the same time, was part of the editorial board of another; I auditioned for a play and won the part, enrolled for an advanced course on acting (and did some really interesting short plays); I am doing some interesting things at work, some new responsibilities (and a promotion that happened). All this plus meeting a lot of interesting people and talking about things that matter and will matter for a long time to come.

And if I am not sitting here now and listing it down, I would continue to believe that it is the best use of my time. But I have been here. I know where this road goes and where it ends.

It will pass, I tell myself. Next month, it'll all be back to normal. It's true. This is just bad timing. It's true.

It's also true that I faintly remember hearing this before.

Equus

2007-03-17T11:37:00.000+05:30

Been long since I treaded these roads, and there are lots of stories to tell, and a lot of experiences t to share. For now, I shall leave a mysterious bread crumb on my way to the jungle

BookRags: Equus (play) Summary

Sattva - Read it!

2006-12-01T17:43:00.000+05:30

Sattva, the word, stands purity and truth. Sattva, the magazine, stands for social consciousness, for an effort from people like you and me to make the world that we live in, a better place. I have a nondescript existence. I haven't done much to touch anyone's life. But of all things that I have done, this is probably something that I will forever be proud of.

Read our November issue. "With the 14th as Children’s Day, the month brought with it a certain sense of celebration and we wanted to bring out an issue that celebrated the newness, the innocence, the courage, and the entire spectrum of experiences associated with childhood."

Let me/us know what you think. Send a mail. Spread the word. This deserves to be read.

Pandora

2006-11-26T22:25:00.000+05:30

There are very few genuine moments of happiness in this world like the moments crafted by serendipity. Like the radio playing your favorite song when you start for work, just when you wish something goes right with the day. A moment of innocent happiness that no amount of MP3 re-runs in your sleek iPod can recreate.

Thanks to the final and absolute hard disk crash that hid 110 GB of my data behind a blue indecipherable screen, my audio closet is finally free of any MP3s. So, I am back scouting the internet for legal ways of listening to music. And a little secret haven that I found for myself, the closest I got to 42 - Pandora.

I don't know about you. But I am a hear say aficionado with a pubescent love affair with music. I don't have the style, nor know the moves. I don't know how to express it in names and notes. But I laugh and cry with it, travel far and wide on a riding wave, touch the sky, kiss the wind and fall through the vacuum into the emotional abyss. I begin and end a life with every song but can't, for the life of me, tell you what I like. I spend a lot of money buying CDs of artists and genres that are complete strangers to me, for that 'ahaa' moment when I finally find the music I love. I have always wished, someone could tell me that if I like that, then I would probably like this too. Understand my love without me having to define it in any grammar and open the door to my favorite shop of candies.

And then I met Pandora, who could translate James blunt into "subtle use of vocal harmony, acoustic rhythm guitars and many other musical qualities" and play me songs whole day long similar to the songs I like. Artists like Howie day, Alex Lloyd who would have been distant, hint of a star in my dim-lit crimson music skies are now daily muses. I still don't know when the day begins, what songs I would be listening to. But someone other than god is making sure I am taken care of!

So, what do you have to do? Slash your MP3s. Listen to Pandora :)

Red Earth

2006-11-25T16:28:00.000+05:30

All the characters and events described below are real. Any resemblance to a fictitious incident is purely coincidental or a failing on the part of the narrator.

Do you know Manohar Kelkar? Chances are that you haven't heard of him. And if you have indeed seen his name somewhere, I don't see any reason why you should remember it. As much as there's a possibility, I would assume it's miniscule that he's one of your kin, collegue, or friend. Anyway, a lot of them who knew Manohar Kelkar aren't alive anymore or are breathing their last. For Manohar kelkar, as I last heard, is a cotton farmer in the arid lands Dahegaon, a tiny village 135km from Nagpur in the Vidarbha region.

Cotton, as you probably know, is not an easy crop to grow. The good thing is that it needs very little water. But the timing is crucial. For good yield, the first few rains in July and August are absolutely essential. They are extremely prone to pests and hence require huge investments in fertilizers. Harvesting it is a nightmare - It can cut your fingers, infest your legs and breed a million insects that can leave you unidentifiable ailments. And in the end of it all, there's nothing much a farmer can do to make sure he gets a good price on his yield. Cotton prices depend on every variable in the world economy and a tremor in some dark, uninhabited corner of the lonely town in the Florida state can cost a thousand farmers their livelihood.

Trivial Statistic #23 - Maharashtra finally has a Rs 60,000-crore (over $13 billion) plan ready for transforming Mumbai into the next Shanghai, with the money earmarked for infrastructure upgrade alone. Plans include starting a metro rail system and giving a facelift to the Dharavi slums.

So, coming back to Manohar Kelkar, he was yet another deprived cotton farmer with bloody hands, infested feet and an extremely emaciated wallet with five mouths to feed [The number of mouths in the family is always inversely proportional to the ability to feed them]. He, like everyone else in the village, was once content growing crops to feed his kin and make a decent living, until cotton came with a promise of the big buck. The first few years were good when the government bought the bales from them for profitable prices. However, soon the profits disappeared, the government prices were way below what he was spending to get the cotton harvested. Of course, what he didn't know was that U.S. farmers buoyed by the government subsidies were exporting cotton for peanut prices and men like him were stripped naked sans any government assistance with their their tons of cotton facing the western wind.

2005 was a crucial year for Kelkar. His daughter, Donu, was turning sixteen and hence had to be married off soon. Every evening, his wife Indira dropped a hint as she served the last laddle of rice, after the children have slept, as to how the wives from the neighbourhood have already starting asking her about Donu's future. With time, her hints grew louder until one night, when they found the youngest one, Vinod, staring at them from behind the yellow flame of the kerosene lamp hanging by the roof. Money was his biggest concern. It wasn't as if he had a son, whose entire marriage could be finished in a couple of thousands (which itself was a big deal these days. He shuddered at the image of Kailash ghade floating in the communal well because he couldn't finance his own wedding. Twenty six years old. Way too young to die). Donu was his daughter. And so he had to worry about the clothes, the hall, the evening snack and the liquor in the night, the embroidered card and the fruits along with it and five lettered fatal monstrosity - Dowry.

Thirty thousand. That's the amount he wanted.

Trivial Statistic #39 - In a survey done with around 25 software engineers, when asked what they would buy for themselves for thirty thousand rupees, the first most common answer was that there was nothing they wanted that they could buy for themselvs worth as less as 30,000. Second, was a long luxury vacation. Third, was gold.

He couldn't go to the bank in the Wadki village. They had chased him out the last time he went there, after he defaulted on the thirty five thousand loan. He hadn't meant to. But there was nothing he could do but stare at the barren land and wait for the rain to come. He had asked for another chance, promised to pay them this time. But they wouldn't listen to him. There was just one choice left - the landlord. A few of the his friends had gone to him during times of need and received a dedhi. They could pay him after the harvest, he said. But the interest rates were steep, One hundred and fifty for every hundred rupees. He could request for a Sawai whereby he could pay one hundred and twenty five for every hundred. Either way, he had to pawn the land, paint his thumb as bunch of aimless lines on a piece of paper (What the landlord didn't tell him was that the land wasn't being pawned, for the risk of being null and void if he committed suicide, but was sold to him for a sum of thirty thousand rupees. What was 'accidentally' missed on paper was that the landlord would return the land once the money is back). Some of his fellow villagers had warned him against the landlord. Said he would stop at nothing to get his money back. But there was not much Kelkar could do. There were no alternatives. The landlord was his only ray of hope - tinted and tainted - but hope nevertheless.

Trivial Statistic #47 - According to statistics published in the beginning of 2006, India’s 40 wealthiest people are together worth a staggering $106bn (and in the pack after mittal and premji, are the Ambani brothers from Maharashtra with a combined net worth of 12.5 billion).

The marriage went well. Everyone in the village had come and wished his daughter well. They held his hand and congratulated him on what a fine marriage he had arranged and then glanced at his second daughter Vijaya who was soon turning fourteen. He couldn't get himself to think of it. Another thirty thousand was what it all translated to. He wondered how long it would take him to pay all these debts back. He didn't want his sons to bear the brunt of all this. School was the first expendable expenditure. But he will teach them real work, he told himself. He would teach them everything he knew in the field so that when they grow up, they would be fine able men who would have their way with life. There was always hope. Something told him that the yield this year will turn out well. They had mild showers in june that took all of them by surprise. Even the wild decidous forests were in full bloom and that was always a good omen. The last time the flowers bloomed, they had a bumper crop. That seemed like a long time go. But now was probably the moment for time to turn a full wheel.

Soon Donu left to live just an arm's lengh away - the closest irrepairable distance that only marriage can take one's daughter. And death.

And a few days later, as he sat in the tea shop listening to the radio, Kelkar knew that the gods have heard his prayers. The Maharashtra government announced the relief package to all the cotton farmers in the Vidarbha region. Word went around that they will increase the procurement price. The cynics said that they have to wait and watch. But no one wanted to listen to them. This is first hint of dawn in their dark barren skies. And they were determined to savour it.

Trivial Statistic #28 - According to the numbers rolled out in the end of 2002, the official revenue of Bollywood was 1.3 billion dollars (6500 crores) and the numbers have surged ahead since then.

The relief package was finally rolled out - There was free electric power for all farmers and reduction of interest rates for loans. A deadened silence fell on the village. It was no use to them. Only a handful of farmers had pumps (92 out of 1000). And in some cases, the MSEB had cut the electricity connection and made them unusable. And interest rates! Whoever got loans from the nationalized banks? These changes meant nothing to the landlord and by then they had even lost track of how much they actually owed him. Some said, there was still a promise of increasing the procurement price. But the words fell hollow on the farmers' ears.

And then they started falling. One by one, drinking pesticides that were bought on debt leaving families alone, deserted, in the middle of the road. Uma's husband was the first one. Her husband had died six years ago because he couldn't handle the doom. They had called him a coward. Promised to support Uma through thick and thin. She was now working in a farm, letting her son live with her in-laws - One disabled and the other blind. Soon, the numbers hit the national television. Reporters would come from everywhere and look at them with pity, conduct sessions to understand and allieviate their problems. Kelkar was clear - He would never do this to his family. He went around dissuading people from suicide. But not many were listening. He was determined to pull this situation around. That was when the landlord banged his door. Threatened to ravage his house, and make his life hell if he didn't get the money within the next few months. Kelkar tried talking to him, telling him about the measures that were planned. The landlord wouldn't listen. He said, if he knew how to make a marriage happen, he knew how to end it too.

Trivial statistic #76 - The latest statistical survey suggests that if outstanding debt increases by Rs 1,000 then the odds that the household is one with a suicide victim increases by 6 per cent.

Kelkar worked harder than ever. But hope was now flickering, facing an open window of doom. He would tell his wife that he had no idea how to get out of this mess. She, as always, reassured him that everything would be ok. Liquor said the same thing. Smoothed the edges of life and made it a continuum till he woke up the next day to face reality again to die every minute in piece meal.

Looking back, one cannot put the finger on exactly when he made up his mind. It was probably when, lying outside in the charpai, he played out Prime minister Manmohan singh's words over and over again in his head. A promise of Rs 3,750 crore as a relief package. Kelkar knew by now where that money would go. Not a word was said about restoring the advance bonus and hike in import duty of US cotton. And that's when he realized nothing's going to change. The tree next to him stood there as a witness, as an absolute like his fate that would watch his every step, loom over his house and stand there immovable and unchangeable as ever.

Do you know Manohar Kelkar? If you haven't met him, you could walk down to the district office of nagpur, open the dusty ledger and see his name as number 732. A statistic. That is what he is now. The 732nd victim who's committed suicide, hanging himself from the tree, because he didn't know how he could pay back thirty thousand rupees that he had borrowed. A life lost for thirty thousand rupees. Take a minute and think that over. Thirty thousand rupees.

Trivial statistic #87 - On 15 Sept 2006, The suicide by debt-ridden farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra touched 253 since July 1 2006. Since June last year, more than 800 cotton farmers have reportedly committed suicide, with nearly 200 doing so in the last eight weeks alone. Translated to frequency, a farmer commits suicide every five hours.

I am tagged and therefore I am

2006-10-10T22:12:00.000+05:30

... back! Tonight is definitely not the time to pass an interesting meme and be a part of it myself. But if it's not today, I wonder when it will ever be. So, here's my groggiest best

I am thinking about...
You :)

I said...
what I meant

I want to...
fill my lungs my fresh air and listen to the sea

I wish...
Never to wish and pine for anything beyond here and now. This moment.

I hear…
Bono whispering

I wonder...
How you and me are so close right now that you could read my thoughts and yet I would never know that you even came and stayed for a while. Took the time and smiled. Would never call after you as you dissolve in the crowd. I wonder what I am missing. I wonder if you wonder too.

I regret...
Letting them go; every single one of them.

I am...
An impressionist

I dance...
when nobody's watching :)

I sing...
when I am romantic (or she says and laughs)

I cry...
and wait in vain for the lump in my throat to dissolve into tears

I am not always...
your dream come true (with all due modesty :-)

I make with my hands...
ink bubbles of life that float aimlessly on paper skies

I write...
and therefore am

I confuse...
and hence am employed.

I need...
Sleep. A uncrowded corner in my head.

And I pass the buck to Kumari, Anirudh, Bhuwan and Anoop

How green was my valley

2006-08-08T13:50:00.000+05:30

Someone recently sent me a forward about a young man who was kidnapped on his way back from the Madivala bus stand in the early hours of the morning by guys in a sumo, was robbed, and beaten up before being thrown by the side of the road. The forward ended with a trailing sentence on how the guy didn't know what happened to the two girls who were bound and dumped in the corner of the van.

It could happen to me, it said. And if it does, I should give away all my belongings and save my life. Friends also advised me not to go out after ten in the night lest someone should mug me or worse still, kill me. I appreciate their concern. I really do. I know they mean me well and I know the risk is not as remote as it once was. I also realize that everytime I walk back home late in the night, under a flickering street light waits a criminal whose motive is snugly resting in my leather wallet. I do realize all of this. It's just that all this is not, in a matter of speaking, the bangalorean way of living. I wish, and I know I am expecting too much here, I could live my life like I want to as long as I am sure I am within the confines of the law and etiquette.

Of course, it's presumptuous of me to expect to enjoy pleasures like having a coffee late in the night just after it's rained, watching a movie after six in the evening, or visiting a friend who's just a stone throw away if I want to stay alive AND own a credit card. You can't of course have the cake and eat it too especially when, men who can wield knives and break the law don't enjoy the same luxuries as I do.

"What could we do?", ~A asked as strolled along the shrinking pavement in airport road, negotiating with an ever-increasing pedestrian crowd. A couple of more vendors had cropped up over the week. Flowers, cigarettes, magazines were now giving company to torn slippers and bananas. Oblivious software engineers were talking into their phones unaware of such amenities. It wasn't exactly hot, a word still reserved for afternoons in Madras, but we were sweating and each one was walking within his own smelly aura. It was six in the evening and hence wasn't too risky to walk around. I stood there looking at the sample space around me. There is nothing we could do. The city was nosediving into the abysmal economic divide. Every day, auto drivers watch as the ones in back seats spend hours on the phone talking of nothings, and when the ride ends they could keep the change on top of whatever the faulty meter exaggerated as the fare; he stands in the pavement with his plastic cup and watches a cup of coffee served for fifty rupees; he goes back home and faces an irrepairable reality; He believes it's unfair that he cannot afford a square meal while people enjoy unnecessary luxuries for the same money.

Well, there's poverty everywhere and there are rich men everywhere. That's no excuse. It's not. Nothing is ever a valid excuse for crime. But the magnitude of the divide in Bangalore is not the same as everywhere else. I have not seen too many cities in India. But I have lived in Madras and I have been to Cochin and I can tell you, it's not the same thing. There is a lot of quick, young money in the city. Too much money, too soon, too fast and too few ways to spend it. It's like having a jayalalitha's foster son's marriage every day, in different scales and forms.

From here on, there are too many things to talk about - too many reasons and too many excuses. One could talk about the raped women, the murdered ones, the credit racquets and the cheats in BPO offices. Too many accidents. Too many lives lost too soon.

The day I came to Bangalore, my father said I was a lucky to live in lovely city like this. And in the last two years that I have lived here, I can imagine why he said that. I love it for the same reasons as he does. But now, I love my life a little more. He lived here when he was barely 17 and it must have been in the 1960s, when the city was what it was supposed to be. It had its balance. And somewhere in the last few years, the balance is gone. And so has the character. It's been stretched in all directions, stuffed with people and smoked like a salmon by too many vehicles. The days are getting hotter, the rides longer and lives shorter. The government is trying no doubt to restore the sanity by building more flyovers. But may be it's just a little too late. I hope it's a phase. Every huge city has been through it - remember the broken window syndrome in New york. I see the fly over in airport road and tell myself, when this is complete everything else shall fall in place. Assured, I walk during the day, burn my money in lavishes, and sit inside safe classrooms in the night to listen to someone quote Brando, in 'On the water front' ....

You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley.

... and smile to myself at the irony.

Atonement

2006-07-10T09:25:00.000+05:30

Writers are omnipotent. They sit by the brook on sunny afternoons and create bubbles of lives that sway with the wind - every bubble an universe in itself, pregnant with lives twisted and tortured by a greater purpose and responsibility. The writer can then create lives, destroy them, lure the eve with a shining apple or destroy the bubble with a indistinguishable colored pixel. Period.

They could either sweep the rug of reason off your feet and take you to another space and time where their protagonist becomes the center of an ever expanding thriving universe (like how an unassuming ten year old from pivet drive realized his parents were the greatest wizards of all time). Such a premise easily lends itself to drama and larger than life characters (like the man who cannot be named). Or they could show you a seemingly insignificant card and make you a witness while a minor accident sways it and makes it fall. And just as it falls, it kisses another card and takes it along and soon they all fall, an entire castle of cards, kissed with death and a twist of fate. And when the whole castle is in shambles, you have no one to blame but a minor insignificant accident - a woodworm that ate the cross. And a satisfied writer who orchestrated it all.

On a midsummer morning, 13-year-old Briony Tallis watches, from a hidden window, her sister take off her clothes before her father's ward and jump into a fountain. An admittedly unusual incident (aggressive foreplay if it were in a hollywood movie) but not an event that by itself could entwine three lives, destroy them beyond belief and dismember a family. But by the time you are through with Part one of Atonement [Atonement : A Novel - by Ian McEwan], you realize that the lives of those caught in that decisive moment have been irrevocably altered and each of their picture perfect plans for future irrepairably destroyed.

The first part of the novel is a master piece. It paints an upper middle class setting in the early part of twentieth century, overlays it with an entire family of interesting characters. Briony Tallis is looking forward for her brother Leon to return and writes a play as a welcome act, that she plans to stage with the help of her cousins. Her sister Cecilia is spending time at home after her years in Oxford and living with them is Robbie turner, who's on his way to study medicine, after an exceptional year of academics. Each chapter is written from the point of view of one character and hence events are revisited and shown in the different perspective. And it's eventually this difference in perspective - subjectivity of realism - that causes the seemingly insignificant card to sway and fall and take with it the entire castle.

The story could have ended there. But the laws of cause and effect wouldn't have been complete. The unlucky wouldn't have been victimised and erring soul wouldn't have repented. The rest of the book binds the ends and records the atonement of the protagonist. Though the text is exquisite, the imagery detailed, these introspective parts fail to capture the magic of the first act. More so because they do little to advance the story - time goes by slowly as the characters trudge through the walk of life reconciling themselves with here and now and try in their own little ways to mend it. But like the author himself writes, "The crystalline present moment is of course a worthy subject in itself ... it allows a writer to show his gifts, delve into mysteries of perception .... However, such writing can become precious when there's no sense of forward movement ... underlying pull of simple narrative".

In the end, time flies. Lives end and plot twists are resolved. The thirteen year old girl reaches the autumn of her life and waits for the witnesses in her prosecution to fade so that she could finally atone for her sin. In a master stroke in the end, the line between the reality as in the book, and those recorded as a work of fiction by the Briorny is forever blurred. And when the final page is flipped, she stares out at the autumn sky and reconciles with herself and her written word.

Atonement is no doubt a work of class. And as with anything with class, it runs the risk of being compared with itself than with its contemporaries. I would have loved to like Atonement a little more. You know that when the last word is said, you don't feel the emptiness that only art could leave you with but in its place a sigh, a shadow of what it could have been. A master piece.

My week long spa

2006-07-03T00:43:00.000+05:30

I rarely talk in superlatives. But from where I am, right in the middle of the year, I think this (Jun 25 - Jul 2) is the best week I have had this year. I didn't realize how much I needed this until I was here and have been living through this week long spa. I have been sleeping after midnight, waking up near noon, reading a lot of poetry (Neruda, Shakespeare) and rambling on about nothings and little things that I am taking time now to notice, smile about and write.

I have watched every world cup match this week, followed the Wimbledon, the test series, the SL - ENG series and all local matches that happen next to my house. I am closely following the sensex, buying and selling stocks and laughing about it with my mom every day at three thirty. I am buying VCDs of my favorite movies - from Citizen Kane to Maniratnam favorites. And yeah, I have been talking to mom, sitting and cooking with her, visiting temples with her and cracking jokes only she'll enjoy. Apart from the few calls I got, and ONE sleepless night, work has been the last thing in my mind. Yeah, I could actually go meet a lot more friends who I haven't met in years. But if I weren't so lazy, I would feel a little more guilty :)

I should do this more often, I tell myself. Can one of you please remind me this once I get there? :)

Be the 'Busy' Bee

2006-07-03T00:40:00.000+05:30

The best thing about attending a teleconference from home over an STD call is that your mother's left with an impression that her son is a very important cog in the wheel 'back there'.

Long live my manager.

Sports update

2006-07-03T00:37:00.000+05:30

Was watching the Asianet news today and here's the sports update verbatim.

Brazil lost to France unexpectedly in the world cup quarter-finals. And Argentina to Germany (blah ... blah). And due to the exit of Brazil and Argentina from the world cup, the residents of the Mallapuram district are very unhappy.

That's it? Well, if the Mallapuram residents (Who?! What?!) are unhappy that Argentina's not in the game, that's it's quite a tragic situation indeed.

Blood brothers

2006-07-03T00:36:00.000+05:30

Madras summer + lazy bum + TV - set top box = constant viewing of NDTV profit

So, I actually sat through Mukesh ambani's announcement about his plans in the retail sector. Not that his plans made much sense to me. But it was amusing to watch him bring his mother along obviously to show the world who the real ambani is. If this had happened in the 70s and if the ambanis were as colorful as their money, can't you imagine ...

Anil Ambani : Mere paas gaadi, makaan hai! Reliance info comm hai. Ek naya boring logo hai aur Amitabh bachchan ka ad bhi! Tumhare paas kya hai?

(Dramatic Pause. Beat. Another beat)

Mukesh Ambani : Mere paas Maa hai!

(Plus Reliance petrochemicals, Reliance polymers and a LOT of money. But that's another story). Oh! what a sad joke.

A micro-mini Travelogue

2006-07-03T00:35:00.000+05:30

A public transport bus in Chennai any day carries a cross section of the local population. 7:30 on a Sunday evening is admittedly not the best time for people-watching. But the good thing is that you don't have to hang onto a window railing but actually get a place to stand inside the bus.

The action starts right the next moment after you get in. Someone whispers an 'excuse me' into my ears. And before I could turn and ask her how I could be of help, she shoves me into a corner and walks on. 'Excuse me', back home, is not so much a request but more a statutory warning so that you don't turn around and complain that you were never warned. I am a little rustic, out of touch. A bus journey is all it takes to get back in touch :)

I find a place next to the black vertical rod right in the middle of the bus, and stand adjacent to an aged brahmin couple, who like any other aged couple don't have much to say to each other. The richly clad Mrs. Iyer is dressed in a rich peacock green silk sari, has a turmeric-conditioned fair face but dark, wrinkle-free hands. Mr. Iyer is dressed in a light sandal shirt, has a slightly tanned face but fair, wrinkled hands sparsed with long gray hair strands. A symbiotic couple with complementing pairs of hands. I see his hands and tell myself, that he must have been a teacher, or an officer in the bank, a clerk may be. Not one of those who cut their hands in the factory floor. I have seen those hands a lot, like my father's and his friends' - dark nails shrunken inside folds of skin, palms as hard as wood (as my cheeks would know!) and a few scars sitting next to the wrinkles showcasing time that's passed by. Mr. Iyer had one of those palms, that will carry a flushed imprint if you hold the arm rest long enough. Tender as a flower. A lifetime with the pen and the ink.

Behind me, someone's agitated that the conductor is lying. Seems the conductor had a 50 paise coin in his bag but lied to this young man that he didn't have any and thus, 'fooled' him into giving him one. So, the young man wants his 50 paise coin back. The conductor is not sure whether the guy's serious and dismisses him for sometime. The young man however is persistent and is looking around for some support. In matters of social importance (like this 50 paise coin case), men of madras always have an opinion and they believe in it passionately. Surprisingly no one is interested today. One of them symbolically puts on his ear phones and stares out into the dark. After a minute or two, the guy takes out a note book and writes down the number of the vehicle (I really want to know what he's going to complain about). He warns the conductor ominously to wait and watch what will happen tomorrow. Mrs. Iyer looks at me and nods her head dismissively at the young man [Conductor 1. Young man 0]. And when another lady behind me realizes that the young man does not intend to stop his spiel, voices her support for the conductor and is greeted with a lot of ambiguous nods [Conductor 2. Young man 0]. The young man, disheartened by the state of affairs in the city, moves on to the other end of the bus.

I follow him as he walks away and find Ms. Excuse me staring back at me with not the most pleasant of expressions. She probably thinks I am eyeing her. Such vanity, I suffer from! I am probably the last thing on her mind. Korattur arrives and both of them get off the bus. I again want to see where the young man is going [as someone I love would tell me, probably my subconscious motives are something else]. Again, she spots me staring at her and dismisses me with a nod. She'll probably call me names. Or go home and complain about the men of today to her dad or write a blog on guys like me! You can probably click on the next button and check what she's got to say :)

Someone gets up and I get to sit. The familiar green, rugged texture. So many stories, so many people. My trips to school. Uncles and aunts, family friends. Weekend trips with dad. My board exams. An entire life hiding within the folds of a weathered cover. I stare out at the dark and make out all the buildings I can't see, that have been stuck with the stamp of permanence. Probably they'll disappear one day and so will these memories. But for now, they don't. To know they exist is a comfort. I smile to myself, close my eyes and sway with the summer night's wind.

The future does bright after marriage :)

2006-07-03T00:33:00.000+05:30

I guess one of the greatest advantages of being married for more than twenty five years is that you can learn the art of predicting the future accurately. Listen to this.

Mom calls up dad in the afternoon and wants him to verify about the warranty plan for a new exhaust fan that they have bought. Dad answers with a succinct yes and ends the call (my dad never believes in ending a call with any form of pleasantries) . My mom puts the phone down and tells me that dad's vehicle in his friend's place. The shop is in the opposite direction away from home. So, there's a very good chance that he would take the vehicle and come straight home and forget all about the warranty. He'll realize it only when she asks him about it. But he'll keep a straight face and tell her that the shop's closed (who's father is he anyway!). A bad liar and a gentleman that he is, he'll either confess that he lied and that he didn't remember till she asked him about it or say something else and get himself into trouble (who's father is he anyway!). All this will happen on Saturday. The shop will be closed on Sunday. He'll be on leave on Monday. Both of them will forget all about it till Wednesday. And if they are lucky remember it before Saturday and get it done.

Guess by now, you already know what really happened. This time when I came, I went and got it done.

PCO@home

2006-07-03T00:32:00.000+05:30

My brother and my mom have this unique knack of convincing anyone of the true values of the most unnecessary luxuries they want to enjoy. So about four years ago, my dad (live) and I (over an ISD call) had to go through a whole marketing campaign when we bought a fancy phone with caller ID facility, speaker phone and the works. If you want to dial a number, you press a button that says 'Press' (to state the obvious is one of my family's core virtues) and a little door slowly opens to reveal the numbers. You could of course look at the number you are dialing, find the duration of the call (which is not always a good thing) and let the numbers you have dialed be stored in the history for your mom to keep tabs on who you are talking to.

And like wine, the phone's getting better with age. To foster the spirit of loving and sharing, giving and receiving that's integral to the concept of a family, the phone is now equipped with a feature of broadcasting all your calls right till the end of the kitchen. In other words, the concept of a private conversation has just been thrown out of the brown, cob-webbed window and every call is answered over a speaker!

Such a feature, as you can imagine, can lead to very interesting situations. So one day, one of my really nice uncles who does not often visit us too often landed home without his really nice wife, who for some strange reason, some really nice aunties my mother knows don't really like. So as my mom and dad are reliving past memories in his company, one of these really nice aunties call my mom. And taking the privacy the phone offers for granted, she talks about my really nice uncle's really nice wife in not the kindest of terms. My flummoxed mom, in a stroke of absolute genius and desperation, silently cuts the calls and says a couple of hellos and declares that she's lost her. But the auntie is not only really nice but also very persistent. So, she calls up again and my mom heartlessly cuts her off again. This happens twice or thrice and the auntie finally gets the message that my mom's not really interested in talking to her now. My uncle has his own share of questions. But he's intelligent enough to understand that his questions will be blunted by a obviously uncomfortable lie that will share their company for the rest of the evening. So, they pretend as if nothing happened, save my dad who finds the whole situation extremely amusing and cannot stop smiling.

It's a lot of fun too - when someone like ~C calls up and who as soon as I tell her she's on speaker, confesses that I am the father of her son and that I should come to bangalore right away to attend the parent teachers meeting in the most 70-ish-mere-paas-maa-hai tone much to the amusement of my mom, my neighbor, and the guy who's come down to repair my PC (and guess even the grocery owner a mile away), .

The good thing - according to my mom and dad - is that this way, none of them can have an extra marital affair as there's no privacy, which with both of them in/nearing their fifties is a very pressing concern indeed.

Me write pretty one day

2006-07-03T00:28:00.000+05:30

After finding my day painted pink and yellow in my outlook calendar from morn to night for over a year now, I decided to have just a subtle hint of change to my schedule by joining a creative writing workshop happening every weekend. If you are one of those I have personally met in the last month, it's quite possible that I have already bored you with the stories from my sessions. For the others, the workshop plans to teach the craft behind different forms of writing such as prose, poetry, drama and script writing. It's debatable whether it's worth the hefty fee. But there are three things that I am really glad about.

Firstly, I realize what I don't know. The amount of layering that goes into writing something - right from the level of the plot to the level of sound and syllable - is amazing. It's one thing to take the pen and start writing like I am doing now (which is fine for a brain dump like this). But if you want to achieve a desired effort on a focused piece of writing, it helps to know these tools that help you a little more than superhuman intervention or the auspiciousness of the moment.

This also helps you appreciate anything you read a lot more than what you do now. Suddenly, there's a story behind the choice of every word and every alphabet. Which is better than either an inexpressible feeling in your throat in the end, or the famous 13x256 expression (for the uninitiated, it's the expression on your face when you try multiplying 13 and 256 in your head - an expression that, out of personal experience I can tell you, is very useful) when everyone around you finds the whole piece amazing and you don't have a clue why they find it so. [there's an alternate school of thought against dissecting the word to such chemical basics and destroy the hidden, inexpressible charm (like in love) to which too I concur. But again it's good to know and not get addicted to].

Secondly, is the sheer pleasure of being taught literature. What little joys I've missed in my life! To sit in a classroom while someone's teaching you poetry, and is doing it well, is such an amazing feeling. For that moment you are inside a warp, a colorful bubble, with its walls painted with stories, legends, images and emotions. The feeling of being amidst so much life, so much beauty is something you should experience.

Thirdly, is to listen to writers talk. I was reading Hamlet today and the when introducing the play, the writer says, "Whatever the idea was, we now have only the play, and it's so clear that it becomes mysterious. We do not know why he was created or what he means. We simply and amply perceive that he exists", which is usually the case. We would never be able to know the flash of thought, the depth, the story behind a certain word or line. And so many times it will tauntingly stand out, like a hint that you could never solve or completely comprehend. But sitting with half a dozen writers and listening to them explaining their work, you realize the amount of thought that's gone into every piece. And there it's good to be indulgent and to explain the little easter eggs, those hidden metaphors that you have left in your page long masterpiece for someone to find.

Five more weekends, and I still have prose and script writing to go. The only regret I have is that the classes are too few and far in between. I wait for five working days to go back and be a student again. And when it's one on Sunday afternoon, I know I have to wait again. And suddenly, there's this urge to study every form of art I have enjoyed in the past - acting, direction, music. Because I know there's a void, an entire world within a moment where now I see a blur.

Brain Dump

2006-05-25T08:20:00.000+05:30

It's twelve fifteen in the night and I am in a state of altered consciousness concocted out of an eclectic dose of tranquilizers, pain killers and 297 page technical specification document that I actually managed to read despite a bout of enfant fever.

(Waits for applause to die)

So, where was I? Yeah. Altered consciousness. Coming to the current state of affairs, Yes. I have been extremely irregular and unfaithful to my blog. And Yes. I feel terrible about it. And Yes. Irrespective of the number of excuses that I can actually come up (the typical software engineer spiel - too much of work, project deadlines, and wait for my favorite one, strategic realignments) , I have just been plain lazy. Despite my best efforts (ahem! ahem!), I have left my life to symbiotically swim with the same monotony that I have been trying to avoid.

So much for the disclaimers.

What have I been doing? Nothing. Many things. Not one thing that's of significance to be blogged about. Have been consistently clocking over half a day at work; As of now, it's officially been three weeks since I checked my email; Have been attending theater workshop sessions on Saturday evenings to leave just a speck of creative endeavors in my calendar. Have been watching lovely movies every weekend to make up for whatever drama is missing in my life.

My life is like a wild ride right now. Every moment in itself is so complete and hectic that you never stop to think where you are heading. You are content with the fact that you are moving, are led by a momentary purpose - a flicker of light. And time has this way of disappearing into nothingness under the blanket of monotony. Blink. Six months. Blink. An year. Blink. A life time. And before you realize, you have been going around and around in one vast vicious circle that will never take you anywhere. All you have been doing is to try finding your way through eternal darkness following a bunch of fireflies.

Too many things. Too many people. Too many fireflies.

I can only smile to myself for I know I have been here so many times. And I know what I have always done. I truly believe that every man is born with the power of choice. Destiny is always a straitjacket and you have the choice of either running away from it (All your life from one to the other) or stay put, face it and change it. And it's an amazing feeling to be able to say the magic word - NO - and change one's destiny. Tragic, that it's so difficult.

Every night, when I go to sleep, I play the CD titled classics after dark - an assorted set of wonderful instrumental pieces. I have never heard the last piece in the CD for I always fall asleep before I reach the end. And just a few minutes before, the CD ended. Guess it's a sign for me to go to bed.

May the force be with you all. Amen.

Pristine

2006-04-20T08:31:00.000+05:30

Pristine.

It's funny how one likes to believe that his entire life has been etched, planned, mathematically calculated to the seventh decimal and that every decision of his is a standing example of human reason and analytical prowess. And it's also funny how the most important decisions are made with the least amount of thought. Blink. And your life just changed.

Pristine. That's her name.

Where do I begin? What do I say? As much as I would like to tell you that I met her in an accident and fell in love with her at first sight, I am afraid that's far from the truth. I was introduced to her. She came home with a pair of funny photographers draped in a black suit. She settled in the corner, while the photographers raved about toothless urchins in bangalore roads and dew drops on fresh flowers. The bells didn't ring and the song didn't play even when one of them introduced me to her, as she stood there flashing her vital statistics.

But she's one of those who grow on you in the course of time. I got the contact numbers before she left; met her again in an hour and a half, pondered hard over a sumptuous lunch and made her mine at the stroke of two.

Pristine. That's her name. And she's mine.

Do I give you numbers? 1.5 with a zillion zeroes. 512 with a few zeroes more. 14. 42. Do you want me to translate poetry into bits and bytes? pixels perhaps - pick and put them together so that you can see her as she is in flesh and blood. No. she is beyond any form of expression. She has to be imagined, touched and felt, explored, heard and viewed in technicolor.

Pristine Fyodorvosky. That's her name and she's my laptop.

I am utopian. I am naive. I believe in free will and in the power of good. I believe in Santa Klaus and Superman. And I believe that I can lead my entire life using registered software or open source applications. Didn't I tell you I was naive? You can of course install Linux. But the installations might take a while. You will not get the required drivers. A lot of 'useful' applications are not available in Linux. So, I shy away. Spend three grand and a half on the operating system. Then you need the office software, the anti-virus and the works. And of course, what better lunch time jibe than morals and values. People love to twist the words, tweak the line and make up use cases to pull you down. It's not a comfortable feeling when someone talks against an evil that's accepted as a moral inconvenience. So, I am the moral open source guy. What songs do I listen to? Do I watch pirated movies? [I don't]

Well, Pristine's surviving and we are not alone - I just had to look. I am typing this post on AbiWord, an open source word processor. I have installed open office and am managing my accounts using Open office.org calc. I am looking for an open source anti virus software before I get my wireless internet connection done. Once that's done, the hope is that I get to blog more often now that I can do it sitting at home.

It's a tough world, I tell you. Good news is I am not complaining.

Welcome to Audience on the mat

2006-03-17T20:10:00.000+05:30

Dear all,

Let me take the pleasure of inviting you to Audience on the mat - A collection of three original short plays staged in Bangalore on the 24th and 25th of March (Next weekend). We, Misfit theater group, have written, directed and acted in all the three plays.

The shows are on

Friday, 24th of March - 7:30 pm
Saturday, 25th of March - 3:00 pm
Saturday, 25th of March - 7:30 pm
(All the plays will be staged everyday)

Venue: Alliance Francaise, Vasanth Nagar, Bangalore
Cost: Tickets priced at Rs. 99 (for all the plays together)

If you are interested please get in touch with Anita (Mobile: 9845072710) or Me (Mobile: 9886789204) and we can arrange ways to deliver the tickets to you.

I would so love to give you a curtain raiser on what the plays are about. But I have been advised not to. So, I shall leave you with a thousand words to speak for themselves for now. In the next few days, I shall pretend to let a few details slip and please pretend you didn't notice :)

Would really really love to see you there! So start booking your flight/train tickets and I shall arrange autos from the airport/cantonement railway station for you :)

A little more life

2006-03-08T08:50:00.000+05:30

It was after two whole months of traveling with him that I finally saw his face when I thanked him for the night and wished him good bye. For in the past, all I could see of his face in those last moments of the ride was his long sparkling teeth that shone through the darkness all around. I would see a perfunctory nod before I slam the door and turn away. Today, for the first time, I could see him, his eyes, and I knew how much this little gesture meant to him.

I got down and started wading through the two wheelers and the autos zig zagging all over the wide junction before touching the pavement on Dickenson road. Over the last one year, I have taken this road ever so often that I can close my eyes and find my way; I could even tell you the exact number of steps you need to take to reach the lone, old tree right in the middle of the school play ground; I could recognize voices on the road for I hear them everyday in the same place, at the sametime continuing with their little fights and amusing anectodes - their lives like daily episodes of my favorite soap opera (like my life is for them) - nameless, faceless strangers I know so much about.

Not that I had the time to stand and stare. The shuttle leaves me in the middle of Dickenson road at seven twenty. I have to cross commercial street, make my way through the street vendors near Safina plaza and open the rusted blue doors of Tunbridge high school in ten minutes. So, space and time is a blur and people are three dimensional shadows gliding on rolling wheels. In the middle of running and panting - I catch snatches of conversations, laughs, a after thought of a probable glance and a trail of sleek zooming cars. A blurred snapshot.

But today was different - It was six in the evening. It wasn't night yet and the day was just begining to wind. The pall of darkness had been lifted off the entire scene and all that was black and white was painted in a dull, pleasing dusky hue. It's amazing to watch nature set the pace of life so subtly that it's barely noticeable. Dim the lights, blow the breeze, scatter the autumn leaves on those concrete roads, hint a shower, glide the clouds and paint them with a touch of gray. And soon the flowers will shower, the birds shall sing and men shall stop and stare.

Dickenson road is no boulevard. It is yet another narrow road in bangalore that no one ever believed would be used so often. It has an assortment of buildings right from a military store to a deteriorating green edifice used for something it was not meant for and a few deserted huts with a courtyard that serves the garbage bin for the entire road. Nothing about the road would hint a presence of something that's been there and watched history. No impressive buildings, no Victorian statues nor a mention in any book. That is until you see the trees.

The branches jut out of walls, extend from one end to the other providing a thick green roof over the entire road. The bark is filled with lines of old age and the leaves are an interesting collection of green shades sparsed occasionally with orchid-like flowers. But the most beautiful of them all is the tree inside the century old school campus named after a rai bahadur gentleman. It's a lone survivor in a deserted playground, a dull brown bark arching to its right standing before a off-white colonial sandstone building. There are no leaves left on the aging branches. But the whole tree is full of violet flowers, densely packed all over the tree. And on the ground beneath her feet, is a violet flower bed like an image of the tree on a pond. And if you stand there long enough, you can watch a flower gliding from one of the branches down to the flower bed, playing with the wind till it finally settles in the bed, unrecognizable from the rest of them, making you forget in the beauty of it all that it's actually death that you are admiring.

And soon the sun disappears, the shadows continue to lengthen till they fill the entire sky and I slowly make my way to the theater session. Just as I am about press my foot on the pavement, I see a violet flower praying for life. I step back, pick it up and place it carefully inside my bag and continue walking. For many, changing the shuttle timings to five in the evening is a decision of convenience. For me, it's a little more life, I never realized I missed.

Almost in love

2006-03-02T08:25:00.000+05:30

Have I told you about how I once almost fell in love? No. Not in a way you would fall in love with someone, who is unraveled in the course of time, between moments and with whom you can see your life stretched till eternity, till death does you apart. No. I can never imagine enjoying marital bliss with her. She was too infinite for that, too subtle, too free. To marry her would be to bind her, cage a soul into the mire of everyday life.

She was not an accident. Far from it. I was destined to meet her - if not then and there, it must have been here and now, but I had to. Every once in a while, life satiates you in a way that you believe you have discovered it, been there and done it and finally see the unifying pattern that binds souls and events and makes them look like results of a linear equation. And then almost like a non-event, someone arrives and shows you shades and hues on a whitewashed canvas. It could be a word, an unshared thought or even silence and suddenly you feel as if the rug and the roof have been pulled out and you are in the middle of a vast continuum - of life. And it strikes you like an epiphany that, that moment was meant to be.

Now when I think about it, I think it's probably the way she laughed, the way her eyes would widen with a childlike glee and she will break into a fit of laughter throwing her head back as she did that - it was unrehearsed, unconscious, untampered - as pristine as joy itself. It was as if, nothing existed right then but the moment itself, and the joy it was pregnant with. There was no tomorrow, no peril painting itself in the next turn, nothing. You see her and you want to be part of that bubble, to believe in it and see your life begin and end inside it. Probably, that's when I fell in love with her. Almost.

I wouldn't remember the exact time but it was sometime much after midnight. I was standing on the verandah in the fifth floor watching a dozen deteriorating huts just outside her plush flat. I am not exactly sure what I was thinking - It was after whole night of partying and singing and I was drained out physically and emotionally. Standing there surrounded by the emptiness of night felt like being in the vortex of unrest, an emotional void. There was just of hint of sunrise at some distant point in the sky. I could hear her ask for me to those in the room, and in a couple of seconds she was next to me with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in another. There's always something arresting about a sunrise, even a hint of it, that leaves you transfixed and silent. It has a way of filling in silence with something much more profound than what you can ever express.

After what felt like hours, she said, "Isn't it much easier if you are just plain stupid? Never knew you could ask why and never realize there's actually no answer" I said nothing. She continued, "I wish I could always go back, unlearn this realization. That I am just a useless speck and that I can do nothing to change anything". She turned to face me expecting me to say something. I kept staring at the crimson shades in the sky running those words in my head over and over again like a song that's stuck on one's lips. I wasn't sure how long I was standing there but by the time I came into the room, the sun was out and she had left.

A couple of days later, they told me that she had left the city. I got her e-mail address from common acquaintances. But I never knew what to mail her. There was a question to be answered that I refuse to - Because the question is too infinite for an answer, too subtle, too free. To answer it would be to bind it, cage it into a metaphor caught in the mire of everyday life.

And that unanswered question binds us - me to her memory and keeps us caught in a bubble. To answer it would make it a certainty - a result of a linear equation. And to me this state of being almost in love is the most blissful state of all.

The Russian old man

2006-02-08T09:14:00.000+05:30

There's something surreal about coincidences, like an intriguing splash of crimson on a painting that makes you believe that's not an accident but is an orchestrated event, a sign, an omen. It starts when you wake up every morning a second before the alarm goes off, leave your house to find the same auto driver on the road with his trademark vermillion, watch the same sights on your way to the hospital, only to reach there and find the watchman collect his first glass of tea EVERY single morning as you walk past those doors. Feels like you are stuck in the same day and are living it over and over again ... until you settle in your cabin, with electrodes stuck on your back listening to the stories of Nurse Rosakutty.

Of course, as you must have guessed, Rosakutty is probably not her real name. I just like to call her that. I wouldn't be able to tell you if the name would suit her either as you see, I have never seen her. But I know enough to meet her entire family and have an affable tea time conversation - for every morning, she would sit in the cabin next to mine and narrate in her imitable shrill voice, every single event of even the most trivial consequence to her fellow nurses, interspersed with an equally shrill laughter. Sitting there, I could share her anxiety over her daughter's oratorical competition the day before, and her relief the day after, her husband's temper and her neighbours nagging. And I forever wonder if I could do something to make her life better - probably meet her daughter sometime and tell her how proud her mom is about her.

It's something about being hospitalized that suddenly shrinks your entire world into a cabin and a lone, dull view from a window that you forever try to reach out, break through and believe anything is possible 'out there in the real world'

And one day, she stopped coming.

He had a way of talking that you would immediately attribute to someone who studied arts in one of those christian colleges back in the forties and fifties, and has seen life from behind his impeccably pressed shirts and trousers for over half a century. Someone who never forgets his daily walks in the morning, writes letters to the editor in 'The Hindu' and speaks in a tone that demands attention. He was not a man of many words - he quietly listened to the instructions the nurse gave him, settled down in his bed and soon sunk under the same blanket of silence that I spend my mornings under.

Looking back, I am not sure whether I missed Rosakutty's stories that day. It must have been like sitting next to a fountain for hours and suddenly realising the void around when it stops - a feeling that's neither relief, nor panic but an emptiness that accompanies silence.

The next day, I could hear the old man coming in and settling down in his cabin. But in a couple of minutes, I could hear the words clearly delivered in perfect diction.

"GROHOLSKY embraced Liza, kept kissing one after another all her little fingers with their bitten pink nails, and laid her on the couch covered with cheap velvet."

I am by no means an authority but there're very few things that are written to be read, as is Russian prose. And of all russian authors, if one had to choose a writer's work for his leisurely hours at tea, it must be Anton Chekov. Such is my admiration for the author that you will not be surprised that I realized right in the first few lines that it was one of Chekov's earliest stories - 'A living Chattel'. I smiled to my pillow, kissed my luck and sat there in pindrop silence listening to him read. By the end of the morning, he was done with the story and I could hear him pack his bags and leave. Unfortunately, I was still under a mesh of wires to be able to go thank him personally for making my day.

And since then, every day I was treated with a new story. So many times, I wished to interrupt him to applaud, appreciate, share an anectode or request for a favorite story. But I found it extremely disrespectful to interrupt him while he's reading. Soon, it was a pact between us that I would continue to enjoy his stories provided I don't disturb him during his reading sessions.

I have for long tried remembering the details of the day it all ended. But try as much as I might, the details remain sketchy. I have a feeling that he was reading the "Grasshopper" but I can be wrong. But somewhere in the middle of the story, he paused longer than a breath. As I waited for him continue, I heard him call out in a distinctly shaky voice.

"Hello, can you hear me?"

I was not sure whether he was talking to me. So, I remained quiet and waited for him to end the conversation. But he continued to call out, each time his voice getting louder and shakier than before. I realized that he might indeed be talking to me. Strangely, I felt offended and even mildly irritated - he had broken the pact and I didn't see why he wanted to induldge in a conversation and that too, right in the middle of story. I buried my face in the pillow and waited for him continue. After a few more persistent attempts, he fell silent. A couple of minutes later, I could hear him leave.

As much as I wanted to stop him, I was still angry at him for having broken the pact. I then deemed it fit that I should emphasize upon him the clauses of the arrangement so that it would never happen again. I decided that I will indeed have a conversation with him tomorrow, thank him for his efforts so far but make it clear that we abide the pact. Tomorrow dawned, and I settled in my cabin rehearsing my lines.

It was only an hour later that I realized that he wasn't going to come. I wanted to call out for him, in case he was waiting quietly in the cabin for me to initiate the conversation. I didn't know what to call him and decided to call him the 'Russian old man'. Soon the nurses arrived - I asked them about the Russian old man who reads out chekov's stories. They said they didn't know any one like that and worse still, they said there was never an old man in the adjacent cabin. I found it ridiculous and told them so. I could see that they were trying hard to suppress a giggle. Suddenly, it stuck that they were lying to prove me a fool, an idiot. I didn't want to cry and let them know that they have had their victory. I turned away and started drawing figures on the wall that my mother taught me. I hoped they could go to the other side of the wall and tell the old man I am sorry. I realized, he was indeed reading The Grasshopper the other day. I could even remember the line he stopped reading ....

"Dymov!" she called aloud, "Dymov!" She wanted to explain to him that it had been a mistake, that all was not lost, that life might still be beautiful and happy, that he was an extraordinary, rare, great man, and that she would all her life worship him and bow down in homage and holy awe before him. . . .

But now it was all too late.

Chronicles of Nariyal*

2006-02-06T09:32:00.000+05:30

What happened was the stuff the befits serious art cinema - An overworked, disillusioned software engineer, caught in the rot of material bliss, fights with his conscience on an especially sleepless night (caused by gastric than moral issues) and resolves to return to his roots; decides to go back to his family home in a sleepy little town in kerala after (about) half a dozen years.

The names are revised, the contact list refreshed, numbers punched and stored (and mapped to mental images, stories and current affairs - fodder for "how is the little wart in your toe" talks over coffee). Tickets checked on land, rail and air and (against all hopes and prayers) found available. Itenerary checked and rechecked with parents and the local astrologer. And armed with a week's schedule, rapidex's best selling "learn malayalam over an overnight bus journey" and a digital camera, I set out to criss cross the district of cannanore and around.

--*--

No one's exactly sure who named me. It's more an anonymous voice that forged the destinies of my self and my name together till death does us apart. But one reason that could have gone in favor of the name is my half namesake in the fairer sex. She's called Rathi (which in the waft of coconut oil transforms into Rethi with an especially nascent flavor) . And in these all years, she's among those very few people who I have a relationship that goes beyond the ties of blood; someone I can have a real conversations with, about issues that matter to me; someone I truly, genuinely love listening to. She has the unique distinction to be among the chosen few who find their place in both my brother's and my list of favorite relatives (talk about chalk and cheese).

Why am I telling you all this? Because, she deserves special mention in the present context of my trip. Uthara is a three month wonder, my most recent niece and a toothless fairy who has a darling for a mom. And I was curious to see her in flesh and blood, hoping that the apple never falls far from the tree. It hasn't.

--*--

Family etiquette (which includes gift buying, small talk and table manners) is a very tough deal. "A 5 year old gets a tom and jerry game. The current middle school fad in the north part of kerala are the cricket stats cards. Girls prefer dresses. Babies look good in pink. In case of doubt, buy sweets. Maha lacto is not cool anymore (Was it ever!). Never volunteer to take the (plantain) leaf off the table (in case of close relatives). Always volunteer to take the leaf off the table (in case of distant relatives)" And this whole argument about how much do we know a person (in the orbit of relatives we have no idea how we are related to)? Do we know them enough to go meet them? to sit and have coffee? Lunch perhaps? Stay overnight? Phew!

--*--

I am going to write a book now, for I know the perfect secret to break the ice with relatives. Forget the diapers for toddlers, the tom and jerry and the packet cake (a speciality of cannanore). Bring on the Digital camera baby! Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, loves being on the camera. And to see how they look in the snap, as soon as it is taken is like the icing on the cake. And that's where sony's digital camera comes in. From the most reticent to the most vivacious, from the most elderly to less than an year olds, it's amusing watching them getting ready, and bringing out that flashing this-is-how-I-look-best smile on their faces.

And kids, there's nothing lovlier than watching them opening up, and pampering you with their little acts of love [grandma's affection is a close second]. You know you have made the cut when they start showing you their karate costumes, their notebooks (and the miraculously get your attention to the occasional v.goods) and slip into your rooms in the early hours of the morning (when the mothers scream to wake them up) and snuggle by your side under the special blanket you get.

--*--

And you always thought, such places are in a time-warp where nothing changes or ages. Where edifices and the people who inhabit them remain the same across the axes of time for that's how you remember them. And then you grow up, get busy, travel all around and forget how it feels like to climb those trees again, and walk on those cluttered pathways through paddy fields. And one fine day you are swept back and you realize that nothing's spared by the winds of change. The houses have either been painted afresh or left to creak and crack. The people have aged, lost hair, gained wrinkles. Kids have grown up, have a vocabulary, can express themselves. Some have flown away, defiant and independent. What are left are faint traces of places you remember and faces you can recollect.

You also realize how much you have grown up. In the last six years, I have traveled right till the other end of the country and then made my way to the countries I never dreamt of seeing, speaking dialects I still don't understand. And I have survived. But those back home are not sure whether I can make it to my uncle's house an hour away in a land that speaks my mother tongue. Coz for them, I am still the gawkish, absent-minded, bookish teenager who will anyday prefer to retire into a room with a book (which I admit I did, but VERY rarely - TWICE!). The kids look at me like a cartoon character whose stories have been fed to them since infancy ("Eat this or I will leave you with Rathish Chettan" or "If you don't do this, you will also start looking like Rathish maman")

And there sitting through those uncomfortable silences, you realize it's not just the language (damn those rapidex courses!). It's also that you have drifted away to other lands, other endeavours that don't hold the interest of people you "belong" to. Talking to them is surfing channels in a foreign country. You flip along first looking for that common channel (BBC) and settle onto harmless stuff like weather, politics and daily news. You soon get bored, flip to other topics you either don't understand or are not interested in and finally, a white noise fills the room. A monotonous drone. Pause. Silence.

But amidst all these are those few conversations, those few faces you wanted to see so badly, those little glances kids give you when they think you are not noticing just as you walk away for another half dozen years and this feeling of belonging somewhere (that's truly precious to a wanderer like me) that make it all worthwhile!

* Written between the 29th and 31st of december 2005.

The Unconsoled* - A tribute

2006-02-02T09:20:00.000+05:30

It is difficult to pick a moment and carve it in gold as the split second when it all changed - but if I have to pick the moment when I understood how much I loved her, it has to be now - when I see her laugh for the last lame joke, how her lips curved even before she understood the joke, and a second later I notice the joke dawn on her, first in her eyes that widen a trifle and then glide to her nostrills and then to her lips which by now frame a well aligned set of beautiful teeth. She rocks back and forth, holding her stomach, the hair carefully tucked behind her ears drawing a dark line now across her face. She stops suddenly and in the bluish gleam of the TV that fills the room, I catch her expression - there's a half smile on her face as if she read my mind. She snuggles between my face and shoulder and gives a half moan that is a question, a statement, an exclaimation and a sigh at the sametime (an impossibility accomplished only by a woman)

She continues to laugh, and intersperses them with words - which in a sane world will amount to gibberish - and I sit there holding her, watching our entire life playing itself before my eyes. Suddenly, it was probably something she said, I feel I have been here before and we have had this same conversation before. I faintly remember that it ended in an argument in the end. The whole memory seems a blur but real enough not to be a dream or a deja vu. However hard I try, the details slip me by a whisker, and lying there I was getting increasingly frustrated at my inability in not being able to remember the exact moment.

I am not sure how long I spent trying to remember the moment - but when I came out of my reverie it was already beginning to dawn outside. The red curtains were silhouetted with a crimson streak as if on fire. Suddenly I realized that I had a whole day waiting in front me and that I haven't had a wink of slip. As soon as that realization dawned, I felt weighed under a heavy pall of fatigue and stress. I try to make a mental itinerary of the things that I have to do but was too tired to even think and before the curtains caught fire, I was fast asleep.

By the time I was awake, it was dusk. The house was empty and the last rays of sun were on their way out. The TV was switched off, and the house was dusted. For a moment, I was scared if I had slept through the whole day. I looked around for her, straining to hear any sound signalling her presence in the house. Suddenly, it didn't matter. I opened the door and braced the chill evening wind, working out a foggy idea of where I have to go. I had to be at the rehearsal, I remembered but didn't have a clue how I could reached there on time. And after what seemed like eternity, the brown doors of the lift opened and an empty chamber invited me. As soon as I got in, I noticed something I had never noticed before. The mirror on the rear wall was a door leading where, I knew not. The lift stopped suddenly and a very preoccupied elderly gentleman got in. He had had a bitter fight with his daughter, Jenny and had sworn never to get back to the house again. And just before he got into the lift, he looked back at the door to see whether his grandson was there at the door asking him to come back. This was not the first time such a thing has happened. As a matter of fact, much to the discomfort of everyone this has become a regular occurence these days. But the old man knew this would never happen again - his grandson was not there at the door this time. Even he's lost faith in the old man and now, he had no reason to fight. I could see that he wanted to talk to me about all this but I was afraid - knowledge of someone's life is not much information as much as it's a responsibility. Suddenly, in a desperate attempt to shake off the reverie, he smiled at me and asked me where I had to go. I told him that I had to be at the school for my rehearsal but had no clue how to reach there. He beamed and said that I could take the glass door in the lift and that would take me faster to the school.

I took his words (for I had no other choice) and opened the door - For a moment, it was pitch dark and then slowly I could see that there was a road that was getting better with every step. And soon vehicles streamed in from all directions and the road was jam packed. I hopped into a bus and found myself an empty seat. I peered out of the window and realized I was very close to the school, and that I was very close to the cinema hall where I was supposed to meet Kalyani later this week. The roads were surprisingly busy for such a time of the day and the traffic was inching slowly till my eyes could reach. Suddenly, I felt someone tap on my shoulder and realized it was Arun who was sitting next to me. I also remembered that his house warming ceremony was to happen sometime this week in the little town where I grew up. He looked sullen and without greetings or warnings, started talking. The ceremony was canceled he said, because everyone refused to come. I wanted to explain to him how I was too held up to make it. But he wouldn't want to hear. He turned his face to the sprawling buildings and pretended I wasn't there which, right then, suited me fine.

After about an hour of silence, he started talking again - about the old days in school, about the fun we had and about how all of us are now in various corners of the world like strangers bound only by a flimsy thread of memory. He gave the same cold stare again, marking me as a chief culprit for the situation. I didn't reply because I knew I was to blame. I did try once to bring all of us together. But with time my efforts fizzled out and I knew I didn't try hard enough. I wanted to explain him all this but before I could, I realized he had left the bus and disappeared between the busy streets.

In a couple of minutes, the whole bus was empty and I was the lone one sitting there. The driver was patiently waiting for me to get out, smiling all the while an hoping the ride was not very inconvenient. After an entire day of misses, that little gesture felt like a kiss of first rain. I thanked him profusely, opened the rickety blue gates and went in. There under the century old tree, I could see everyone sitting and working on their parts. I was late but no one seemed to be angry about it. Kalyani's ammachi came and told me it was ok and that it happens to everyone once in a while. Probably it was the events of the day, or the kindness of her voice I held her hand and wept like a child. And from the corner of the eye, I could see kalyani and ramu sitting on a red stool and playing their parts with gaiety. It must be a silly joke, but they were laughing about like there was no pain in this world. And that moment, it all felt ok, like the world was cleansed forever of malaise and sorrow. Right then, kalyani looked up at me and smiled and Ramu waved at me with his script. I wiped my tears, waved back and started walking towards them, for the first time being completely sure that all is going to be fine from now.

*The Unconsoled - 1995 (Fiction) - Kazuo Ishiguro

Drift

2005-11-24T09:57:00.000+05:30

Under the blue top, under a thick envelope of clouds (dark or sparse, based on nature's moods), under a sodden roof of a three storey building, under the ceiling (and a house on top), under a fake kashmiri shawl, under the spell of sleep is a world wrapped inside a tiny bubble that dawns at night and ends at dawn. An inspired painting, a plain paper under a wet watercolor, a plain white shirt washed with a bright red kurta - a heavily inspired canvas that you try to make sense of. A collection of impressions, voices and wishes zig zagging into a motion picture suspending disbelief on a dicey peg. Here now, gone the next instant. Good morning. Welcome to the real world.

The alarm is the death knoll, rings and wrings the life out of the bubble everyday. Well almost everyday. The past few days, the voice has been miffed. It's probably the winter I tell myself as I wake up in disbelief and watch the note pasted on my face (Yes m'lord. I am the narcissist who has his own image on his mobile screen). Last night is a blur. I remember walking on hundred feet road at one, through a huge pall of fog barely seeing the auto in the corner, and the yawning driver inside. The road and the fog take me miles away in space and time to a remote corner in Rajasthan, to an yellow clock tower and a arc of a road under it, that as you march on midnights in early march has a distinctive smell of some flower (that you can't place) merging with the smell of wet grass and a lone burning beedi tip under a old rajasthani shawl.

Or was it last night? Doesn't make a difference now. The days and nights seem to have blurred in the last few months, merged into a flat black screen and a language with an altered alphabet. So goes the moment old rhyme,

Q W E R T
and so it goes
Poetry meets reason
in the world of rational rose

When actors appear in UML diagrams, play is a button in the media player and metaphors are not cool anymore.

Forget it. Let's talk about something else. You wouldn't believe how much I have written in the last few weeks. The walls of my brain are like graffiti walls. As with most graffiti, most of it is now gibberish. I have written and thrown a lot of scripts and mental notes, washed myself over and over, and left a long series of foot sized verbal trails on cement floors, hoping to pick and frame them later here. But the bubble burst and the sun shone, the feet walked away from the floor.

I don't even remember the last time I wrote a personal note here. Feels like a long time. And not that nothing's been happening. As a matter of fact, too many things have been happening that life seems like a flux not inching and moving and changing anymore but flowing and fixing itself into wherever it finds itself, even inside a small pickle jar, without strain, stain or pain. And you wonder whether you are growing. Because you are thinking most of the time (and that is usually a good sign) and you realize you don't understand a lot of things (and in ridiculously costly soft skill programs, they call this as moving from unconscious ignorance to conscious ignorance. Sqare (0,0) to Square (1,0). Summarized in six letters, growth)

I realize that I am increasingly becoming obscure and meaningless and bordering on unreadable (This way, I'll probably even understand James Joyce's Ulysses). Trust me, this is no sign of arrogance or contempt. I am just to lazy to linger onto any one moment and thus am letting you no time to see the drift from one drop to another each sprinkled on different planes my existence is right now divided into. My friend's been telling me that I have attained a certain mastery in stating nothingness now that I have to write a book. I think it's a good idea. Since it's good as an idea, I don't think I am going to do anything much to change its status in the future (from an idea to anything else, that is).

As always, man's greatest reasons to be creative are lass and laziness :)

PS: I have updated some info about the blogger awards at the bits blog. Do take a look.

Honnemarudu

2005-10-21T10:34:00.000+05:30

Before, now what looks like a eternity, a week, a couple of my friends, and their friends and colleagues left for Honnemarudu - A forlorn place next to the river 15 kms from Jog falls. A 9:30 ultra-deluxe Rajahamsa left us at Tadeguppa early morning in the company of a LOT of stray dogs and some early morning fisherman.

Soon a sumo materialized. We and the first rays of sun landed together, after traveling together on rain sodden mud roads, before a shackle and bleary eyed Nayan, who was going to be our guide for the next two days. The conditions were read out - No plastic covers, bottles or any form of non-biodegradable trash; Blue colored drinking water from a well garnished with dead leaves and algae; Two toilets to be shared located on the far end of a little road with a huge sintex tank with water outside;
Our accomodation (rather the cloak room) on top of a little hill making sure we climb a hill if we forget a towel or a soap. What wasn't told but was later found out was that we have company. Space wouldn't be a problem until you let them rest on you for sometime because they grow on you - LITERALLY! Leeches. Lots of them. My only images of Leeches is from the movie Anaconda-II where co-travellers gasp at a guy's back teeming with crawling vermins. Was quite surprised to see how small they actually are, and how fast they could grow (on someone else's hand!). Was granted closer examination of look and feel inside the loo in the worst possible position and time (when mobility is quite limited as you might agree)
All this and more were compensated amply by one pristine elixir - Water! Long long ago, a lean, chirpy 22 year old swimming ignoramus decided to try scuba diving in the Mediterranean resting his faith on the blond trainer and buoyant waves. Exactly 13 minutes and 42 seconds later, the oxygen valve slipped out his mouth and he had a whole sea for an evening drink (a little tangy, I should admit). Since then, he's stayed away from water because the moment he dips his head under water, he was practically reliving the whole experience. He didn't believe Nayan, those around him or even his own eyes. But by jolly! You actually float when you wear a life jacket. And soon you realize you are the thorpe-(do) and swish swash your arms around pretending to do back stroke (.. and the whole package!).

And now that you are comfortable with water, bring on the coracle and the canoe baby! The nearest island? Miles away? No problem! Hop in and we shall travel even to the stars (rowing our way through the milky way, wow! how romantic! :) And so rowed and rowed until we tired and bored. Nayan would then give us permission to jump into water and watch the heaven beyond the blinding rays.

The shower, which feels wonderful when you are in water doesn't really paint a pleasant sight when you are getting ready for a campfire in a deserted island. But we did go. Rowed our way to an island which is a forest with cleared spaces like bald spots right on top. We set up our tents, found whatever firewood was dry in the forest and burnt effigies of rafi, kishore kumar in a game called Anthakshari. 8 o clock - hot dinner (hunted and barbecued wished I, but packaged and carried unfortunately) served in open spaces that were surprisingly warm.

Another day of rowing and swimming after that. By noon, when we left we had enough fun for a weekend! Brief stops in Jog and Sagar. Some more photos ("cheese please" moments reminding me of those days in school where they make you stand on green benches and take a classroom photograph, the flash going just when you are eyeing the girl in the row below!).

The best thing, as always was company. Most of the faces there were unknown and now after the trip we are not chuddi buddies. But excellent sense of humor, wonderful company for adventure and very affable! What more would one need in a trip!

In keeping with the tradition of long posts, here's 7000 words more. If the link doesn't work http://photos.yahoo.com /on3rdjuly > Honnemarudu.

Ensoy!

Untitled

2005-10-15T15:32:00.000+05:30

He inhaled whatever little life was left in his cigarrette in one drag, held his breath as he watched the crimson end die into ashes right till the stub, and slowly puffed out rings of smoke to the horizon. Beyond the tents raised to form a local market, beyond the endless sand dunes and the sparse pastures, blood red sun was finding its way home painting the skies with a whole pastel of bright emotions.

He dropped the stub into the ground beneath his feet, stamped it while looking around for that one familiar stubbled face among a sea of beards, purdahs and turbans. A seasoned journalist - A camera with a conspicuously long lens, a crafted beard covering his chin, khaki shorts and a sleeveless vest with enough pockets for camera rolls, cigarettes and antiques that were sold for throwaway rates in these markets ... and for secrets the air here was infiltrated with; Nation building, senate rocking secrets that spies and double spies had to offer; A whole battle of information that was fought by men challenging each other in contests of scruples, rather the lack of it.

An unnamed stubbled face; A crumpled bit of parched paper; A scoop for all the newspapers around the world; And he was the chosen vent - The messenger boy to the civilized world. They were supposed to meet at five, a whole hour earlier. Such delays were rare in this kind of business, inevitable signs of a disaster ahead. But he knew that the news was worth the delay. He rubbed the film of sand from the dial of his watch and saw the second hand tick for the nth time that minute. Right then, he heard foot steps behind him. He turned around expecting to find his information source and ....

------***------

Date unknown. Place unknown. Past - a distant blurred speck, a loosely connected string of sensations; faces. No. Face.

A thin line of light on her cheek that entwines within her hair locks and extends onto her bare shoulder. Her eye, a storm lantern in the dark and when she closes it, her lashes and brows form a perfect ellipse that demands to be kissed. As you place your moist lips on her eyes, you feel the cheeks curve into a smile and you trace your way through the crests on the cheek, onto the line of light, right till the place the smile started. Her face is a blur but the sensations, the touch of lips, alive - here. Inside the head.

A deep stench of sweat, blood and shit. He wakes up again to find himself in a room he can make no sense of. The whole room is painted white; white-washed in the recent past, the windowless walls still reeking with the smell. Around him, in concentric circles are all forms of human stain - Sweat, blood and shit. Anger, hopelessness and numbness. And on this is a plate with food, the stench emanating out of every morsel, every drop. He closes his eyes and tries to remember the face again. But now he is awake and all his senses are fighting a losing battle with the human ruins. He looks for the door. Finds it and a table next to it. Dark brown thin legs contrasting the walls. A blurred face and a garb of colours sitting next to the table. A long sepoy rifle to his right. Stains of blood on the wooden handle.

He tries to remember the time when things weren't so bad. When there was a better lit room, better food. Conversations. Dialogues. Negotiations. Even occasional smiles. Hope of escape. He remembers the wasted chance of freedom. That flight of stairs that slipped from under his feet. The narrow door with the rusted knob in the end of the passageway that demanded to be opened shrinking with every passing second, till the dripping blood from the forehead shrunk it to a dot and erased it completely. Forever.

He remembers the papers on the table. Meaningless legal signatures in a world where law didn't exist even as a myth. Law was a witness. A proof of lawlessness. The deal was simple. A contract to be a spy - right under the nose of the torchbearers of truth; In the sanctum of newsrooms; Innocuous words added in news broadcasts that will make sense to a select few who sleep with rifles under their beds. terrorist messages piggybacking on national television. "Those CIA motherfuckers will be looking everywhere for clues while we use the national television to send messages, the whole world as a witness to our words", they guffawed. One sweeping signature that will wipe a whole body of work, values and ethics that defined a life worth spent.

Values. Ethics. Words that faintly made sense now. Edifices that have been stripped by more existential, banal conflicts. Of smell, touch. Survival. Moral values translated down to basic laws of reason - Signing the papers he knew will only prolong the end. Envelope his life with a shroud of paranoia, stress and finally shame and death. An inevitability much stronger than the one caged within this room.

Sounds! Human voice! Invisible speakers in the room had come alive. A crackling noise. A phone rings. A tentative voice. Hers! Hits him like a jolt, breathes life into him collecting every ounce of wasted energy to listen, come to life. Muffled tears. Conditions are read. Meeting is arranged. She was to meet them. Place unknown. Soon. "Is he ok?", a faint hopeful voice asks. The line goes dead. White noise fills the room. Arabic Gibberish. Guffaws. Wild laughter. "Kaboom". One word. Absolute. Kaboom - the end. A bomb. Her face suddenly becomes clear and so do her tears. The red lines within her eyes that closed as their lips locked for the last time. He pressed her face to his chest and felt her tears. Her desparation. He can imagine her now holding on the dead phone line, crying. He can imagine her with her brown leather purse, pressing it onto her skirt, her long hair tucked under a scarf, standing in the same market where he was kidnapped. Kaboom. Flesh. Blood. Her innocence.

Nothing mattered anymore. The moral edifices. The existential questions. What mattered was a face. Hers. He raised his head and called out for the now clear face that sat by the table.

------***------

The man was much younger than he thought. He was a boy, probably not even out of his teens with a face that was yet to weather experiences. He tried to read his eyes. The boy probably despised him, hated him for forsaking the only ideal that defined his life; Found his existence so trivial, purposeless compared to his which was spent guarding an ideal, fighting for a greater truth. But it didn't matter to him what anyone thought of him. Least of all the boy. The letters were indecipherable shapes of ink that didn't make sense to him. He looked at the boy again and mimed a pen.

Bang! Before they realized, the doors were open and a dozen soldiers emptied magazines into the room. He ducked under the table and sat there holding his knees, shaking. The volleys continued forever and finally the boy slumped on the floor. His eyes were still open and held in them a sense of victory, and a witness to his guilt. Carved in flesh and blood.

------***------

"Through all those dark times, didn't it ever occur to you Mr.Clark that you could just sign those papers and save your life?", asked the talk show host on prime television.
Pause. "Isn't a life spent guarding a greater truth worth much more than a life extended on a support system of deceit and hypocrisy?"

Not an answer. But a question, that two eyes had answered before closing forever. He is a national hero now, stands for values that define the nation's character. Nobody will ever know he tells himself. But buried now under the sands of time is a witness to his guilt. Carved in flesh and blood.

[Brave new world] A post script

2005-09-20T10:32:00.000+05:30

If you needed more evidence of the birth of the brave new world, there's a little blue sticker on the door where you can go set up the room the way you like.

Of course, it's not new! Some guys did this first in a dorm and even rejoiced on a celebratory note. But this is like celebrity blogging - dump novelty to the rubbish bin. It's who-is-doing-it that is news!

Go do it. And let them know what you like.
But don't forget that they are good hosts and they tend and intend to remember.

Enter the door.

PS: What do you think? How long will it take before you start using your gmail IDs to login and use Blogger? A week? Even less! No kidding.

Brave new world

2005-09-20T08:59:00.000+05:30

Fortunate are those who live in exciting times! Who watch history being made, a legend being born, rather than hear them as fables narrated by a quivering voice of grandma or from under the the dim lit table corner in father's study. Like reading about Big bang in page 53, rather than being in the exploding center, to see one's life change into something one could have never imagined it will be, taken to a place that one never knew even existed.

And strange as it may seem, even while the world explodes, human population waits in traffic jams, or stands in the corner for the signal to change, grazing on bottled news unaware of the bigger picture; Oblivious men accidentally caught in a frame of a moment when history is rewritten; When stray bricks here and there are dumped in the backyard of an attractive edifice - What was once a fashionable apartment, an interesting and useful scientific experiment becomes a land mark, a slang, a quality standard and on cold winter nights when the harmless world is tucked under a blanket, adds lawns, wings and soon an entire block. There are early signs of integration at the entry gates in the right corner. But the world is too busy to notice. The bricks soon are put in the right places and on one fine morning, stands a giant, a gargantuan sky scraper whose shade shadows the entire world. And before you realize they are everywhere, they have an answer to everything, and every question, every need, in any language

Pause for a moment. And try seeing the bigger picture.

Do you realize what's happening? Do you? You are seeing the world through their eyes. They serve your daily news, answers to your queries and questions (even the most scholarly ones). They tell you what to buy. They let you express yourself, showcase what you have to show. They define how you stay in touch with the ones you love - each & every means to do so! They even know where you live, right till the apartment number.

Do you see it now? Those stray bricks that were dumped in the backyard which then seemed like a reckless hobbyist's eccentricism were baby steps before the giant leap. You should have, I am sure. Because even giants are woken up from their slumber by deserting soldiers (who are leaving for the winning side) and bald, veteran generals are now busy declaring fatwas and bad mouthing their mothers, while the scientists back home, The davids of the electronic battlefield, shrug and enjoy their own practical jokes by deciding how the world will see the Goliath (Steve ballmer is his name, and this is what you see if you are really feeling lucky)!

Well, if you have taken stock of the present - Are you ready to see the future now? It's scary but from what we have seen so far, hardly implausible.

Open the door.

Welcome to the brave new world.

PS: Here's another fwd I got recently.

Ek choti si love story

2005-09-17T11:28:00.000+05:30

And so I have been tagged, and here's the 55 word story!

He picked his lifeless mobile, swirled it, pleading it to come to life.

Sweety_4_u! 20 minutes in that crowded chat room and he realized she was his destiny! Sweety_4_u!

One minute. One-Point-5.

Ring!

He grabbed the phone, cleared his throat and squeaked a hi. Bated Breath. Silence.

“Sir, do you have a Citibank credit card?"

Navadarshanam - The Concept

2005-09-15T11:35:00.000+05:30

When Ananthu and Jyothi stood there having made their way through the muddy, foot wide roads and lush green paddy fields, what lay before them was a vast expanse of land that once housed a teeming forest but was now barren but for a handful of trees, lying as a standing proof of gluttony (on the part of the cattle) and human apathy. That was close to decade ago.

Standing on the portico of one of his cottages situated amidst lush green wilderness, he pauses to watch the afternoon sun disappear under an inkling of a dark cloud and tells me that all he did was to build a fence around the land to stop the goats from grazing the lands again. And trees of all shapes, types and sizes sway once more along with the early evening breeze, emphasizing the wisdom of the decision – trees spanning acres and acres of land leaving rocks and trodden paths as the only evidence of the earth below.

Ananthu uncle likes to call Navadarshanam as a “public charitable trust devoted to investigation to the modern way of living and thinking, keeping in mind ecological and spiritual perspectives”. And the doors of the place are open for “those wishing to experience an eco-friendly environment, simple living facilities and wholesome food”. What all this translates to is a small self-sufficient village that sustains itself satisfying any need that may arise. A tall claim you might say – Not when you know that they grow their own vegetables, maintain their own cows for milk, generate their own (solar and gobar) electricity, have their own charcoal plant and avoid anything canned, tinned, plastic, that will even remotely affect the environment, except perhaps for a Tata indica that stands outside their doors (which probably runs on organic petrol, you never know!).

Walking with him as he explains his different endeavors is like going through your high school science text book – controlled combustion, renewable energy, nutritional cycle, adulteration – just that these 2 mark questions have been translated to real life working models that sustain the population there. The whole place is a standing proof of how man, nature and science can actually co-exist comfortably rather than work at each other’s cost.

Thanks to CDMA, he has a functional phone connection; regularly checks his emails and has a house in Whitefield that he bought “when one had to walk a mile to get a cup of tea or see a fellow human being”. Apart from that, his life is completely oblivious to the vagaries of the city that’s crumbling in its own weight. His world comprises of Jyothi aunty, and those working inside Navadarshanam taking up responsibilities in the kitchen, animal shed and future construction. Every once in a while, people come to stay for a day or two – most of them old acquaintances, or people like me who accidentally heard about it through word of mouth and he spends his days making sure our stay is comfortable regaling everyone during dinner with stories from his days in IIT, and reading books out of CV Raman’s book case that proudly adorns his reading room.

The cottages themselves are a work of art. They are open, spacious and are well-lit by sunlight throughout the day. Standing on the portico, one gets a view of the whole forest, the lake beyond and a skyline untouched by the human hand. In the nights, when you drift to sleep after being assured that the electric fence will indeed keep the wild elephants away, listening to the buzzing bees, hissing snakes, the mildly irritating mosquitoes that nag right into your ears about their day’s work, and the swaying wind chimes that don’t sleep for a moment, you realize that it’s been ages since you listened to these sounds, that barking stray dogs is the only natural sound that one gets to hear in a whole day, that our senses have become numb to so many sights, smells and sounds. Back in the 60s, on a summer morning in the US consulate in New York, the lady behind the glass pane asked Ananthu uncle whether he knew what he was doing for she couldn’t understand why a Stanford graduate with a wonderful job and a handsome salary, just months away from getting a green card would want to leave the United States. She should probably come down to Navadarshanam and she’ll realize all that ‘sacrifice’ was worth so much more.

Rejuvenated!

2005-09-12T18:33:00.000+05:30

After a long time, I took an authentic vacation - not one of those trips where you are away from your desk but spend time in social obligations and distant cousin's marriages; But days when an empty page is your itinerary for the day, and you indulge in philosopher's hobbies and still sleep a peaceful man.

5 whole days of bliss and this is what I did!

I traveled - to an eco-friendly get away called Navadarshanam 40 kms off bangalore. Lots more on this!
I read - The story of Philosophy (Will durrant), The glass palace (Amitav Ghosh, Finished)
I wrote - a new script for a play that we are planning to put up somewhere in november.
I photographed - about a hundred snaps. Will upload them soon
I trekked - to the top of a small hill nearby to watch sunset at mid noon :)
I shopped - Not the regular dus ka paanch shopping. But classy shopping - which basically involves buying things that you have heard about, but are not sure you would enjoy but you still end up buying hoping "to extend your creative horizons" and thus leaving a sizeable hole in your pocket - Mozart, Jazz, Waltz, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro ...
I went home - And did all the blissful things that comes along with it. After about four months, all four of us had dinner together, watched movies together and reminisced together about a lot of silly stuff
I watched movies - Sarkar, Cindrella man, Swades (again!)
I yapped - A LOT!
... and spent the rest of the time playing with little kids, chess, scrabble and sleeping till however long I wanted to!

Five whole days without access to e-mails, blogging or even a desire to access them. Heaven I am telling you - hopefully, over the next few days I will pick and choose little stories about all the little things I witnessed and in the process make some sense out of so many different ideas that these experiences have left in me.

Back to Bang!

2005-09-01T15:41:00.000+05:30

Back in those days when a lot of people we know had a lot of time, when mails were more than deadlines, reminders and FYIs, when spammers were not a force to reckon with, opening the mail box to check the number of unread mails was an instant means of gratification. You felt needed, important [even if you were on a bcc list on a mail sent to 25 odd people]. And on a warm sunny day that arrives after two whole weeks without access to email, the anticipation to know the number of cute, fuzzy, like-freshly-baked-my-grannys-cookies mails was quite an exciting feeling. So, you let the dial up lines yawn, moan and then roar and wait for the explorer to open on your 128 MB machine, stare at the blue status bar on the IE and when the magical number finally appears ....

Which is quite how I felt when I landed in Bangalore :) I don't know what I expected - but not much has changed (the flyover next to DD is not built for one!). However, there are a couple of observations that need a trained eye, or a prolonged absence to notice. The miniscule extension of Airport road on the opposite side of kempfort for example. This however hasn't made a difference to the traffic jams in the mornings because you see, the drivers haven't really noticed the extension [And you thought I was understating it when I said miniscule!]

And what is with the dogs? The number of sexually frustrated dogs in the road has risen exponentially! The watchman noticed my horror today morning as I was leaving for work, smiled with a touch of wisdom that comes with age and remarked, "Season time sir!". He might as well be talking about mangoes. I am not sure what they are doing at three in the morning - but I can tell you it is causing a lot of noise. The dogs of these days, I tell you!

Have lots of stories about my journey back [I was worried that I would be forced to break a three year record this time. But no! Rathish's co-passenger is yet again a septuagenarian! The world rejoices at the unbelievable consistency of our local super hero]. Beyond all cynicism, It feels so good to be back :) A four letter feeling that's spelt h.o.m.e.

Paris pranaya (Part I)

2005-08-28T17:12:00.000+05:30

We forever split our lives into many places. Each of them is a complete entity - with its own box of scents, smells, incidents, friends, foes, fights, and trips. Each of them have a set of songs we used to listen to, books that we used to read, words that we used to use often, pasttimes we used to enjoy, even the way we used to laugh, and a select collection of occasional million dollar moments when life felt complete.

And often, we tell ourselves that we should go back to visit those places again and pick up some left out memories and pack them into our bags. I rarely get to do it - It's been ages since I went back to the house I grew up in. I tell all my friends that I want to go back to BITS one more time to see the place again - But I know I would rarely get to do it. Probably because we just don't want to smudge a perfect picture inside our heads and want to let those places rest in peace. Or probably it's about the people - Those people who breathed life to the edifices, made moments out of ticking seconds and were the actors who make up memories while the place itself a mere stage. Without the people the charm isn't really there which is probably why this visit to Fontainebleau might be my last visit to the place though there's a faint hope ~C will still be there the next time I come back to Europe.

Fontainebleau is a sleepy little town 65 kms from paris. The town is famous for three things - the teeming forests which served as the favorite hunting grounds for many a french emperors, a beautiful chateau which is on par with the ones in Versailes and Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the INSEAD school of business. Not many know about this town. Some know that it's close to this town called Melun - which is another town everyone knows but no one knows why it's famous. It doesn't even have a chateau, leave alone a business school!

There are very few places in this world where I completely feel at home. Places where I am not a visitor or a tourist; where I don't need people to help me out with directions or the platforms. Feels good when you can be so comfortable with the place. Feels at home. Chennai of course is like that - Anywhere I get down in chennai, I know how to make my way home [Definitely not the case with Bangalore! I am completely at the mercy of the Auto drivers]. And so is Paris. You drop me wherever inside the Paris city, there's a good chance I know where I am and how to make my way to my old-houses in Fonty.

It's funny how little details that you can't recollect normally come back to you that very moment. Like simple pleasantries in a foreign language that you used to speak for sometime, names of the streets, the way to your favorite cafe, the names of the bus stop where you have to get down, the name in the calling bell that you have to ring and silly farting sounds that irritate you!

There's an apartment in the first floor, in Rue de fleury where BITSians have been living for the last 6 years. At the door, you have 5 calling bells with none of the names being Indian. You should remember to press the bell named "Churchill" if you have to save yourself from a lecture in french for waking up a french guy at 8:30 on a saturday morning. The house has an antique gas heating facility and EVERYTIME I enter the house, it makes this farting noise that irritates me. 3 years and 8 months later, it still happens.

~D, I have to tell you, is a perfect host. He just knows what someone would want when he enters the house. Thirty minutes after I enter the house, I have some delicious french breakfast, some bachelor tea (lots of spices, very milky and always an extra spoon of sugar but still Xtremely delicious) and lots of hot gossip. For a whole hour, we gossip about everyone - those who stayed, those who strayed, ones who left, wired geeks, weird geeks ... just about everybody. I don't know ~D too well - we probably have spent about 10 hours in all with each other before this. But I just didn't feel it right from the moment I stepped in.

The leather couch - Rarely have I seen the result of hardwork that my dad always talks about. But that day, I saw what he meant on the leather couch. For three whole years four men with all perseverence, did nothing over the weekends and sat on it as couch potatos watching TV, browsing the internet or just chatting about nothingness of the universe all to make sure their bum impressions are left there forever on the couch. And two years later, I am proud to tell you it's still there. You probably think I am imagining it - but I know the result of the 'hardly-worked' when I see it!

And then the Barbecue happened ....

BLOB Awards : Update

2005-08-24T23:15:00.000+05:30

Flash news!

We have come up with the preliminary list of categories for the BLOB awards. Do take a look and let me know your esteemed comments!

Thanks a trillion!

[A silent prayer] One more....

2005-08-24T21:20:00.000+05:30

Tuesday, 2 August 2005 - Toronto, Canada
309 on board. Everyone survived [Airbus A-340]

Saturday, 6 Auguest 2005 - Sicily, Italy
39 on board, thirteen died [twin-turboprop ATR 72]

Sunday, 14 August 2005 - Greece
121 on board. All of them dead [Boeing 737 ]

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - Venezuela
160 passengers & crew, All of them dead [MD-80 aircraft]

Wednesday, August 24, 2005 - Peru
100 on board, 41 died [Boeing 737]

A handful of land (revisited)

2005-08-24T01:08:00.000+05:30

It all started with an image.

An image I saw of a young man being pulled out of his house; The soldiers who were dragging him were NOT decimating his being (quite unlike the images one is served everyday) even when he was wriggling out their hands and quoting them verses from what looked like a holy book. It was an arresting sight which had so many dimensions to it - One of those images that you want to verbalise and share, an image that you don't dissect and judge but express as a viewer.

A event always has many dimensions and can be viewed through a lot of ways much like a three dimensional object being photographed. The absence of a perspective or a view is not because it was assumed, trivialized, or negated but purely because another perspective was chosen to be showcased. On the same lines, the post on gaza withdrawal did not talk about whether the jews deserved it, or what the palestinians had to go through over the years, or whether palestinians were villains who forced people to leave, or whether what Iraqis suffer is much lesser than what the jews are going through. Each of these topics span posts (or rather books) and are matters that involve a lot of detail and understanding. The post tried to understand what a jewish commoner felt about leaving his home to another land. period. This need to understand is independent of the judgement whether he deserved to do it or not.

To not judge the event was a conscious decision because to make a judgement (or to mention who's to blame) is a responsibility that requires a good understanding of the history that has led to the event. Though I haven't been blind to whatever has happened so far over the years, I am not sure I have the acumen to do so for an international event that has been debated for decades.

However, the important point that I carry from this exchange is - sensitivity factor. Not for a moment did I trivialize the magnitude of the decision or of the dispute that has been raging over the decades. I have utmost respect for the sentiments of both side. However, I realize it's runs much deeper than that. I am not sure how many of us (who commented) are directly related to the events happening there. But such disputes cut deep right through human lives all over the world. Each one takes a personal responsibility towards such problems in his own circle of influence (even if that meant having a strong opinion and keeping himself abreast with updates). So, when someone writes about such issues, it's his responsibility to provide a complete view and weigh events from both sides in the balance of ethics.

I personally still don't judge the youngster who was reading out the holy book to the soldier. I still empathize with his pain. And I will not judge whether what happened was right or wrong. That's me. But glorifying the dream of a promised land and sympathizing with those who leave the land when done in third person implicitly carries a subtext of "Jews being wronged" even when one does not make a ethical judgement about the decision itself. In other words, when I say I sympathize for him, the implicit assumption is I find his stand on the issue justified. And such implicit subtexts in issues as sensitive as this one are louder than the text itself. And that I have realized (do let me know whether my understanding is right).

To reiterate - I usually get my history checked, I feel strongly about the Iraq war, I am DEFINITELY not religiously prejudiced nor do I make emotional judgements when it comes to lives of so many people. This post has been a great learning experience. I hope I have been successful in clarifying what I wanted to convey. I sincerely appreciate all of you who have taken time to let me know what you think.

A handful of land

2005-08-18T23:45:00.000+05:30

As long as deep within the heart
The Jewish soul is warm
And toward the edges of the east
An eye to Zion looks
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years
To be a free people in our own land
In the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
To be a free people in our own land
In the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

(From the song Ha-Tikvah (The Hope), the anthem of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel)

On that day, God made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites; the Chitties, Perizites, Refaim; the Emorites, Canaanites, Gigashites and Yevusites." (Genesis 15:18-21)
"And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your temporary residence, all the land of Canaan as an eternal possession and I will be a God to them." (Genesis 17:8)

Year after year, generation after generation, mothers in the land of Israel must be telling their children one of the oldest stories humanity knows - about a man named Abraham; An old man who was promised a piece of land by god himself that he was to rule and showcase to the world as a model nation.

And for thousands of years, every jewish child carried this story close to his heart. Even when the nation itself didn't exist, even when there was not even a glimmer of hope that all jews would one day be under one roof, he kept it alive as a hope, as a prayer, and as a dream for a better tomorrow for himself and his children. He lived and died in the hope that he would one day be able to set foot in the land of Israel and escape from the road to perdition.

And through every line of history, they have been damned and bruised. They have been chased out of their homes by the romans, then by the arabs and finally the ottoman empire. One man was crucified on a fateful friday and an entire diaspora bore the cross for centuries forever without redemption. They were killed at the drop of a hat - A jewish captain was caught for passing secrets to Germany during World war I and thousands of jewish names filled mortuary registers. The nation he (is supposed to have) helped lost the war and history carries its aftermath as an irrepairable stain, as an albatross around its neck. And when men were gassed and killed, children experimented upon, not ONE country opened their doors for them citing appeasing immigration laws.

And finally at the end of the war, the destitutes declared the land of Israel as theirs and since then the borders of the nation have been bleeding. But every man there holds to his land as his own, for he knows it's not about the edifice that he's built on top, but about a millenium old dream that's woven as a canvas on which the nation stands.

And so when men and women are asked to evacuate their homes so that people they have been fighting against for centuries to hold on to their handful of land, can come and house themselves there, I have an inkling of an idea of how that might feel. Forget losing your entire eco-system, your home and every dream and memory that you built it with, your neighbours and friends and dispersing as nomads into lands seeking a new destiny. They have been doing it all their lives - from the romans, from the nazis, from the gullitone of fate. This runs deeper than that - this refutes his entire existence for he has a tryst with the land that he belongs to that he will breathe his last there.

I know a thing or a two about losing one's land - for I belong a country that's lost thousands of men on guarding a state and calling it ours. Our scriptures don't call it our promised land, we haven't fought the entire world to make it ours, our destinies aren't woven into its landscapes, but I would HATE to part with even a single speck of it for it has long ceased to be just a piece of land for us. It defines our pride, our collective existence. I know no country man who gives a damn about losing it to anyone else who may call it theirs.

You find them everywhere - CNN, BBC, Reuters, Rediff - Read them! Each one of them! Read about men who have left everything they have had and dropping into the gaza strip from timbukthu for a cause they believe in, See the soldier who's doused in acid but doesn't hit back at the protesters because he can understand what the other one is going through, Look at the kid who's holding the holy book for the soldiers to read. These men who have to quit their homes, and these soldiers are forcing them to do it, and an entire nation that follows it on TV, I am sure it's not easy on any of them. Yet less than a dozen are killed (Touch wood!) - Men who do lose it and kill fellow men are collectively blamed and I truly respect them for that because in a time when lives are lost for no reason at all, to value it amidst so much loss is TRULY remarkable.

The one question that demands to be answered is WHY? To part with something that you value as much or probably more than your own existence is extremely painful. But what is worse is doing it for something you don't believe in. Not even one bit. I am not questioning the validity of this move for right to this land is an international issue that has been discussed, compromised upon and finally endorsed by both sides. But why would Ariel Sharon do this? Because he believes this is the right thing to do? Because he finally wants to mark his page in history with one good deed? Or probably because he has finally been forced to compromise on his share of the land. Why?

Centuries of hopelessness has removed any benevolence from our opinion of politics. Politics at best is about representation, leave alone reform. It's about representing the views of a million diverging views that agree on a tiny miniscule point of inactivity where 545 people house themselves and call it a parliament. No one believes a man who wages a war for welfare or for means of warfare.

You can always justify a victory, for it's finally victors who write history? But a loss, a sacrifice - from an erstwhile soldier. Why? I am probably being cynical and fail to appreciate the goodness in him, in humanity. Do you see any?

A quick question

2005-08-18T01:07:00.000+05:30

I need just TWO minutes of your time. Please take a look at this link and let me know what you think.

Thanks SO much!

A silent prayer for ...

2005-08-16T20:40:00.000+05:30

Tuesday, 2 August 2005 - Toronto, Canada
309 on board. Everyone survived

Sunday, 14 August 2005 - Greece
121 on board. All of them dead.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - Venezuela
152 passengers, All of them dead.

On the road again ...

2005-08-16T19:24:00.000+05:30

Has it ever happened to you that you go to the same place the second time (within a span of an year) and it looks completely different from how it is inside your head and so unlike what you remember it to be. It's not that you have forgotten your previous experience but on the other hand, you remember it vividly - right from the rotten wooden fence that you held and slipped, to the edge that you tiptoed to and took a photo; Vividly enough to spot the difference this time. And just when you become a stranger again in the place, from some corner a memory tumbles down, a moment caught in between the blades of grass and a whole scene unfolds transforming an unknown alley into childhood playground.

After what feels like ages, I hit the roads again in Europe. Went to Salzburg in Austria along with my colleague ~S and his parents, and a Long time friend and co-prankster (appropriately with a capital L. To place things in perspective, we know eachother since the age of four). Back to the world of sprawling landscapes, highway signs, mappy.com print outs, reruns of the same CDs, stretching exercises in filling stations by the highway side, pain-au-chocalat-breakfasts and the same old travel stories that you dish out everytime you travel about a friend-who-lost-his-way and the accident-that-almost-happened.

Austria is an interesting country. It's extremely beautiful, is surrounded by the Alps, and is not very crowded, except for the filling stations that is. On our way back to Germany, we found this one filling station which had queues right till the exit in the highway. It was only then my colleague explained me that the price of oil is substantially lesser in Austria when compared to Germany. So, Shell on a highway near Munich would sell fuel for 1.36 euros while 85-150 kms away, right at the borders you get it for 1.09 euros. So, every sunday a lot of cars actually travel all the way from Germany to Austria and fill their tanks causing serious traffic jams in the area. And thanks to EU regulations, this is perfectly legal.

Also, fulfilled a long pending dream of sleeping under a tent. It was an immense learning experience I admit. According to Zen, "When sleeping inside a tent, it doesn't help to pile on 3 blankets on yourself to avoid the cold when the mattress you are lying on is as cold as ice". Profound, I must admit and a little numbing too.

Also had a taste of the severe sexual discrimination that is prevalent in the world. Did you know Swarovski is originally from Austria? It is and in a place called Wattens, they have a huge exhibition and a crystal shop. In the women's section, you have jewels, little cute boxes and other interesting things you can see but cannot buy. I was surprised to note that they have a men's section, which among many things showcases crystal Rats and Teddy bears in the size of a spit chewing gum. It is one thing not having a section at all. But to have a section with crystal rats ...

I shall take leave with a Joke on similar lines that I read in Questionable Taktix,

"In Rwanda (I think), the goverment is funding girls who get through college as virgins. Guys who finish college as virgins, of course, get as usual, an Engineering Degree."

Till death does us apart

2005-08-09T21:50:00.000+05:30

The mobile in her hand twisted and twirled and finally slipped out of her long slender fingers onto the floor leaving a permanent scar on the display. She cursed, picked it up from the floor and started fidgeting with the keys. Locking, unlocking and locking them again until it suddenly started to ring. She stared at the number for a long second, cut the call, dropped the phone in her hand bag and stared at her fellow passengers in the train - tired men oblivious to her presence making their way home and drowning daily woes in center spreads. She looked away through the window and caught a faint image of herself on the glass pane. Her cheeks were puffed, her eyes red and a lone strand of hair demanded to be ducked behind the ear.

How could she have let it happen? When did things go so far - He had filled her life in every way - touched every corner of her heart, lived through every fantasy in her head. She felt his presence everywhere - in the glistening drops of the shower, in the caressing wind on the way to work, in every accidental touch; She brought him to life in those last few moments before sleep and let him live in the dreams that ensue. Every trivial fact, every amusing gossip, every dog, every cloud, every baby she wished were hers were part of those long evening conversations when she walked holding hands with him. He was her shoulder to cry, wings to fly, excuse for an adventure, standup comedian, knight in the shining armor, her secret fantasy. With him, she could be anything - a kid, an angel, a bird, a dream ...

... And a faithful wife to her husband. A moral obligation that she wakes up next to everyday, watches in the dining table every evening as she waltzes her way home. Felt like ages since she even saw his face clearly or had a proper conversation with him. She was the perfect wife - She cooked his lunch, washed his clothes, walked and waltzed him in weekend parties, held his hands in family photos, sat on saturday evenings and watched movies on TV until both of them got bored and slumped on either side of the bed with the world in between.

A faithful wife who never let another man touch her ... until today. The train entered a tunnel and the clatter of the tracks seemed louder through the enveloping darkness. She closed her eyes and watched herself writhing in his bed, tried hard to erase the image from her mind but realizing more and more that she wanted to hold on it. She wished she could just pluck him out of her dreams, take him out of her life, fall on his arms again, and feel those lips again. She cupped her mouth in horror but found her fingers tracing her lips and touching memories.

She wanted her old life back - her life like it was last night before sun dawned and changed it forever where late at nights, she could love him in her dreams and run her fingers through her husband's hair and convince herself that she is a faithful wife.

Untitled

2005-08-07T15:43:00.000+05:30

The cold wind on a late november evening can be cruel indeed, forcing families to huddle up near a fire place and recount oft-quoted stories again to recreate themselves. Streets were deserted, even the pubs were empty, and so was the "Sailor's Tower" standing alone, perched on the coastline of Idago with only my presence for company. On a clear, summer day you can stand here and watch the coastline zig zag towards infinity like a ragged line, punctured along the way by docks, and a few steamers. Yet the million dollar sight is to watch the two mountains from the twin islands - Idago and Valago - reach out towards eachother over the seas, parted by a gap that god left man to fill.

-~|~-

Haven't you been there? Facing a problem with an obvious answer everyone else refuses to see. The two islands were as diverse as any two neighbours could be. Idago was an industrial haven - we had the best schools, built the best houses and had a quality of life that was rivalled by everyone around. Valago had the most beautiful waterfalls, lush green forests but children there had to travel miles to find a proper school to study in; Men were jobless and families couldn't afford the basic utilities required to lead a respectable life. It was at the mountains that the two islands came closest towards eachother and from there on, they parted until they were out of eachother's sight. To travel from one island to another, one had to brave the turbulent waters and the rude sailors who set up schedules to suit themselves. And those who agreed to go were more often so drunk that the whole boat sunk into the deep unknown - into a darkness no one could fathom.

Every single day since I was 10, I have spent hours at the sailor's tower listening to the two mountains. I would squint my eyes and watch men walk over my thumb, on my knuckles and finally reach the promised land at the end of my little finger. To build a bridge for me was the obvious thing to do. It was my secret pact with these mountains, my singular reason to live and the waves were my witnesses, the proof of my faith. It defined everything I did - my education, vocation, my choice of books, company and even my dreams.

-~|~-

A deafening silence lasted a second. And it trickled, in ones and twos, and then in dozens until the whole valley was echoing with an applause that refused to stop. The kids, youngsters and the old men, men from the council, the businessmen and the politicians from both the islands under the same roof in a quaint town that was chosen as the middle ground were looking straight into my eyes to see if I meant what I said. And for two hours, I was a voice for a greater truth, for passion that has fuelled my existence since the first day I remember. And when I finished, in that deafening moment of silence I would have collapsed dead for something that was holding me there left my soul and bared me naked before countless peering eyes. And then the claps started ringing - Not everyone believed it will work. Some wanted to give me a chance. Some wanted to see me fail. But the rest wanted to believe me, wanted to be part of something that touches a thousand lives and gives them purpose; hungry souls who would have created me out of ether if I didn't exist. The posters of the proposed bridge adorned the walls; There were captions and slogans; We planned ads in magazines, on TVs. The press was waiting and for a split second, just a split second, it all seemed possible.

-~|~-

"I didn't even know such formalities exist. I have read every single rule book there is and there's not even a mention of such a paper". It felt like I was talking to the walls, like I didn't even exist in that dingy, nauseating room talking to a stout, balding man who had an opened file cover for a face. He didn't bother to answer, but opened the drawers of his table and threw a book at me. The book was printed a week ago. "But the new rules must have come into effect a week ago. How could I have filed this document when our project was sanctioned 6 months before". He looked up from his file and smirked at me. Betel leaves juice from his mouth dripped onto the file he was reading as he slurped it back into his mouth. Callousness was plastered all over his face, on the stain on the file, painted on the walls, written on all the files that were falling out of every shelf in the room, it was slapping me so hard that I was bleeding all over. The buck stopped here, he knew it and he didn't give a damn. "I don't care for these papers, these damned formalities. I am going to build the bridge and let us see what you can do". It was a stupid thing to say. But futility gives you complete freedom to react because nothing you do is ever going to make a difference.

-~|~-

It had started drizzling. I wore the hood of my jacket and covered my numb ears. But his answer was still ringing loud and clear. "You talk like a crusader. But I know you don't give a damn about those islands. Listen to me son, I am not going to move my butt so that a no-namer bastard can get his initials in the annals of history". It hurt - to be able to do nothing to prove him wrong. People like him can always dissect anything - even sacrifice - into personal equations of profit and loss and dismiss them. It is as much an excuse for them to dismiss it as it is a reason for the crusaders to accomplish something.

I was walking through lanes that housed memories of my childhood but have long been forgotten because my daily work didn't lead me there. I didn't want to go to sleep because I had no reason to wake up the next day. I wanted to leave the city, didn't want to carry this loss like an albatross, didn't want my girl to be ridiculed at school as a loser's daughter. Felt like disappearing into the nothingness that was extending till infinity before me. I stopped under a lamp post to check the time. There next to it was an open window framing a part of a well-lit wall. On the wall was the poster of the bridge, my bridge, with a crayon-drawn family of four matchstick men - Parents holding hands of their son and daughter. On top of the family, the caption read, "Happy Family Forever".

-~|~-

I snuggled under the covers, buried my face into her hair and slowly traced my way to the center of the bulge and drew a heart on it, as a whisper to my sleeping daughter. Despite my whole world falling apart, that moment it all felt complete. My life merging with her life and the life within. She instinctively turned around, pecked me in the first spot she could find on my face and asked me sleepily, "Will you build the bridge darling?". I took her lips in mine, traced my way to her ear and whispered, "No baby. But I have left a dream behind" and sealed the truth with a kiss.

Is it a plane ... Is it a bird

2005-08-02T21:29:00.000+05:30

.... No it's super ted!

Just when you thought everything in this blog is going on smoothly, Super ted is back with a bang! (If you don't know Super ted, you should go back to the books). Super ted made a superstar entry in this blog but was soon relegated to the sidelines thanks to some philosophical quandaries no one is worried about. And now, Superted's back with a vengeance.

Superted has taken control of an entire blog.
Superted is cool, Superted is a super star (You know the song, sing along!)

You wouldn't see SuperTed here anymore but (in a grim note), if there's ever a problem and you need help, you know who to call - Ted, SuperTed.

Now, hop in while I whisper my secret password.
Hip, hop and hurray! (That sounds awfully familiar to a lot of things that Superted has heard :)

PS: To Summarise, I have updated my travel blog. Please do visit the same :)

My marital woes

2005-07-31T18:15:00.000+05:30

My guest house owner is an extremely sweet lady. She's plump, wears tinted glasses, has lovely gray fluffy hair with appropriately lashed black streaks and she speaks a language that I don't understand a word of :) Every morning when I go down for breakfast, she makes my day with that wonderfully salty omelette and a cup of tea I have no idea how to drink. I am being mean and cynical here but really, she's just one awesome host. Like all awesome hosts, she has a way of providing personalized service to each one of us, even if she doesn't understand what we are asking for.

Every lazy saturday morning at about ten, I am the only one who knocks her doors for breakfast and we have one of those rare, intimate, personal conversations

She: Sie sollten besseres um Ihrem Raum, es kümmern sind schrecklich schmutzig (You should take better care of your room, it's awfully dirty)
Me: (Smiling) I have no idea what you are saying.
She: Ich denke, daß alle Sie indische Männer wie das sind. Ich bin für Ihre Frauen traurig (I think all you indian men are like that. I am sorry for your wives)
Me: Yeah, india - good country. you should come sometime

and like this we talk for hours until both of us are tired of each other. The other day as she was giving me one of those salty omelettes, she pointed to the omelettes and said, "Taine mama" (or something like that. I have no idea!). I stared back at her giving her one of my trademark confused looks (while I try to multiply 123x247 in my head to make it look authentic). She repeats it four or five times and I still have no idea (Stop looking at me like I am a bozo. Even google doesn't have an idea of what she's saying). It finally strikes me that mama might mean mother and I say, "yes, mother. also makes wonderful omelettes like this". Relieved, she finally starts for the kitchen, gets a brain wave and turns back and says, "Wife?". I roll my eyes and say, "No, too early!". She asks again, "No wife?", looks at my omelette and me, looks up at the ceiling and then again at me.

And Zzziing .... everything came back to me.

Last time I was here, I was with ~P, my classmate, colleague and a great friend. I have to say that both of us complemented each other very well. I wanted good food and she wanted some "good" company while cooking. And it's not like she did all the work - we shared our responsibilities equally. She did most of the cooking and I did most of the eating. And this strategic alliance went on for three months. We typically used to cook together everyday and initially, she was staying in another hotel that was quite far. So, I requested our dear guest house lady to accomodate her in the same guest house as I was in. We then used to go for breakfast together, and in those "few" occasions she locked herself out, the knight in the shining armor (me!) would brave the cold and call upon the land lady to give me the spare keys. She put all these 2s together and made an 8 quite soon. And one fine day when ~P was sleeping, our land lady knocked on my door regarding some papers. As I was finding them for her, she looked around and asked me where is my wife? My what???? I then told her that she was my friend and that she's sleeping in her room. She pointed to the ring and gave me a questioning look. God knows what all questions ran in her mind - extra marital affair probably :))

Anyway, tortoise mosquito repellant rolled back again and we are in the future. I realize she's not looking at the omellete but at my ring. She remembers the girl, the ring but not the whole explanation I gave her on a cold, winter night. I want to tell her that it's my mother's gift to me. But I realize using mother in this context will only complicate things more and she might even throw me out of the house. So, I give one of my stupidest grins and stare into my omelette as if it's an X-ray report.

And I am asking god why in his own name, didn't he give my mom a daughter. The "sad" family truth is I don't have a sister and my mom always wanted a daughter. So, for every alternate birthday, I get a jewel as a gift. I already have two rings (one in each hand), a chain. My brother got the bracelet and both of us have categorically told her that neither of us has an intention of wearing trinklets EVER. And in sometime, I will parade in SAP's campus looking like Michael jackson or Elton john.

Before I leave, just another incident that happened in france (when I was 21). I was having lunch with this east european girl and every once in a while, she will have a question on her lips but refused to ask me. Realizing there's something that's seriously botherring her, I assured her that I wouldn't take any offence.

"So, how does it feel?", she asked, "being married so soon?"

"I don't know. I am not even 21 yet and I am definitely not married". It was then I realized the ring connection and gave her a grimace.

"How would I know! I know there's child marriage and all that in India. And I thought you were one of those victims!".

A victim - Indeed! MOM!!!!

Through the haze ....

2005-07-30T14:59:00.000+05:30

This post is like a walk. I am not going anywhere, I am just smelling the roses and savoring thoughts that live and die in an instant. Taking a walk through a haze of thoughts, imagining myself walking to buy a carton of milk in those early mornings in the month of Margazhi (tamil month) .

All of us have this little world inside our heads - with our own definitions of good and evil, with self defined limits of love/hate/betrayal or human decadence. We hold these limits very dear, let people in only when they fit into this realm of reason, watch the world through our tinted glasses through which anything beyond our limits of reason is ugly, naked and revolting.

It's not just about limits - it's the people too. Sooner or later, every acquaintance is painted as a caricature inside our head - skewed, interesting and definitely different from reality. We then have a relationship not with the real person but with this caricature inside our head. The longer you know the person, the stronger your relationship is with this caricature, and the farther it is from the real him/her. Not just acquaintances - but every category, every role defined in the human race. Men, women, mother, father, humans themselves - we don't see them for who they are but try fitting them into our definitions, straitjacket them into our caricatures - aberrations are exceptions and can be ignored, if they are loud enough and demand attention, we scream, shout, express indignation and go back to the straitjacket-ing.

Event name : "Social workers help save lives in mumbai flood".
Assign specimen ID. Specimen no. 2314.
Check for behavioural exceptions. None.
"lo! we have a perfect fit. Long live the caricatures"
Caricature validity++.
Straitjacketed, bottled and erased.
........
....
Speciment no. 2315. Straitjacketed, bottled and erased.
....
Speciment no. 2316. Exception occured! mended, punctured, Straitjacketed, bottled and erased.

all our lives ... every single moment.
This is an amazing view of life - every moment being an event that shall be bottled and erased. But that's not true isn't it - some of them stay with us, sometimes for a lifetime. It's not always something that makes us happy. Probably some of these events just cut deeper, hold on like rust onto the exodus pipe and stay there as the only remains of all those happy, sad, nondescript snapshots in the walk of life. These probably are the ones that go all the way and shape/change the caricatures. The members of the hall of fame.

But imagine living life treating it like such a bottling process. No! Humans are made of greater stuff. We need a facade over this skelton - a healthy value addition, a greater purpose, a stairway to heaven. it's amazing to live life without this realization - a state of suspension of disbelief, where we indulge ourselves in every emotion that we feel rather than treating them as a journey of neurons or as shooting synapses in our neural network. Zoom in and Zoom out of a view of the world - worrying about children I have never met or will never be meeting again in some hamlet in france for one second, and get consumed in trivial nothingness of an gargantuan, monolithic I the very next second, feel like a speck in a huge scheme of things as I walk on a concrete bridge washed by a recent downpour watching nature unfold itself until the very end of my sight. Zoom in, Zoom out - over and over again, indulge in them, word them, verbalise them and speak of them as the most important thing in the world at that very instant.

Straitjacketed, bottled and erased. Suspension of disbelief.

I realize, I must have lost you a long while back :)
I have to leave now.

The End of the Abyss

2005-07-28T16:33:00.000+05:30

About 165 miles away from Paris, is a sleepy french town. The town has a castle and that's not very famous and that not so famous castle was the town's only claim to fame. I wouldn't blame you if you had missed the buzz about this town in the last couple of years (if you were comfortably caught in the middle of a desert like I was back in 1999). A buzz about an episode involving a lot of people, whose deathknoll was sounded yesterday in the court rooms of paris.

A trial ended as you might have guessed. The numbers involved are huge - there are 65 defendants and 45 victims, spread widely across the scales of age. And what do you know, some defendants and victims are from the same family, the last names of whom are being withheld for security reasons. What was the charge? Frequents visits "to go for a coffee", as people put it in that sleepy town with a not-so-famous castle.

You can find all the details you need here or here and lots more here

My problem is ignorance - It was beyond my imagination that an event of this scale can ever occur among humans, and so I used all superlatives to events that pale in comparison to this one. I have overused the feelings of trauma, shame, anger and disbelief in this blog for what now seem to be innocent, innocous human blunders. So, what if a boy was let to die in the middle of the road, or some girl in a bus stop screamed because she was touched by a beggar - ladies and gentlemen, we have successfully found a parallel to shoving innocent families in gas chambers and transporting half-burnt corpses in goods trains.

No this one is worse.

This event demands a redefinition - of entire humanity. Let's go back to the basic tenets we hold sanctimonious. I am not talking of ethics or benevolence or consideration to a fellow human - principles that are inculcated by a proper breeding, education, religion and civilization. I am talking of the basic tenets hardcoded in our genes the moment we are born that works against even one's own good in an effort to save one's progeny.

Open the markets - there's a sale!

You can have sex with a six month old baby for a cigarette and some beer and sometimes even a car tyre!

And since you are our preferred customer, You buy this girl, you will get this boy free.

This sir, is the best one we have. I can you tell you for sure because this is my own daughter!

Here's the rapist of the month - 25 down and still going strong!

Those around are still trying to rationalize and understand why this happened - they are illiterates, they are unemployed, they are away from the society, and reasons like -

"these were people who were unable to manage their sexual impulses. And nobody told them these things shouldn't be done"

Someone even compared them to animals (excuse me, you must be joking to call them animals!).

I really don't have anything to say. I will come back to this once again. I ought to believe that all this actually happened in the same land as I inhabit, reassess my moral scales and find words to express a deep sense of emptiness that seems to eat my entire being.

Mother do you think they'll drop the bomb?

2005-07-26T23:20:00.000+05:30

Ever since I have come to Germany, I have been doing only two things in the evening

Cooking (yeah baby! I am still alive ;))
Watching CNN

While, point 1 is the most exciting thing that's happened to me in the last two weeks (if you don't count my conversation with the iyengar mami) the latter one is well, quite depressing to say the least. Here's a summary of what I have been listening to

53 dead in the london 7/7 bombing (7,9,11 - what's with these odd numbers!)
4 more (thankfully failed) attempts but one guy killed during investigation
More bloodshed in Egypt - 4 bomb blasts
Violence in Turkey
Yet another suicide bomb blast in Iraq

Do you listen to other sources of news - are all of them as scary and as doomsday-ish as CNN is? Because, if they are, thank god I don't have a TV in Bangalore. Trust me it is a very depressing feeling when you go to bed when the last thing is you see is a headless corpse bleeding outside a hotel villa with no one to tend (I guess that's one stage before getting so scared that you vote a nincompoop for president and two stages before getting completely desensitized to all the blood and gore).

Has the world always been this way? We have had worse situations I am sure. We have had the world wars for one, the atrocities in the gulf, vietnam, srilanka ... we have always had it in india - the blue star fiasco, the bleeding north-east, not to mention kashmir, and recently the shameful godhra riots - every corner of the country bleeding at some point or the other. But in the last 60 years, we probably have never had a global threat as this one, where a substantial number of the population finds a justifiable (though never acceptable) reason to all this violence. Evil probably never had such a strong motive where youngsters attend schools, visit websites and learn to incite violence in normal laymen.

All of us carry multiple identities - I am an Indian, a hindu, a malayali (and a tamilian too), a software engineer, a son and a brother - and all these identities coexist. The motives of one doesn't contradict the other and in cases that they have, I have been able to priortize and decide (probably because, there's one supreme unquestionable identity I carry of being a rational human being). And the greatest atrocities in the world have occurred when power mongers have appealed to the social identity of people - To one's nationality (Hitler) or religion (Godhra) or caste - a passionate appeal to brotherhood that hits a man's reason first, and his neighbour next. And when this brotherhood spans nations and social strata, and uses one of the holiest books in the world as the proof of reason, you have vengeance disseminating in the speed of light.

I have always believed, I knew the difference between the good and the bad. When I was ten, the difference was crystal clear. Dictators are evil. Democray is good (I didn't understand Communism then. I am not sure whether I still do). After seeing the cold war aftermaths, the iraq war, I am not sure. Who's evil? A man who for his personal gains kills thousands of people and rules his country? Or a man who for his business gains kills thousands of people and rules another country? North korea has nuclear weapons - does that make it evil? Is India Evil then? Pakistan is infiltrating terrorism in india and hence is evil? My Pakistani friend probably believes India is initiating rumours about Pakistan all around the world. Afghanistan has a terrorist streak - it is evil. Or should I have to blame the country that initiated the terrorist streak? The United nations has been trying to define Terrorism and the member countries have not yet been able to reach a consensus on what Terrorism is (No! I am not kidding). They are hoping to do it in the next couple of years. No wonder.

When I was ten, I wasn't sure if I know the complete truth. Now I am - that I don't and never will. When I was ten, I believed that people who read the news in my language are saying the truth (coz that is the only one I could understand). Now, I am not sure of even that. All that I know is every evening, strangers take turns to enter my bedroom through a cathode ray window and scare me out of my wits; they take pains in proving to me that I am next in the list of those blown-to-bits (there were good ol' days when I could appreciate the pun), convincing me that cooking my own dinner is far safer than going out on the roads and eating in a restaurant.

My Mom is eternally thankful to them for that.

Title Credits: Who else? :) Click to read the rest

East of Eden

2005-07-24T22:02:00.000+05:30

When he was 10, my brother wrote a story called "Big family". The story is about four generations of a family starting with a poor guy becoming a rich man and the next three generations becoming lawyers, doctors and actors (I think). Then after four generations, the story comes to end. When I asked him what the story has to say, he said the story is about what happened to these people. Nothing bad happened; all of them are happy but it's still a story. And from a 10 year old, that was a profound statement.

For me to like a story, there has to be a conflict, a tug of war between characters who we relate to and whose emotions we believe are real - someone to cheer for, someone to despise, someone to live my dreams within my head as I read it. But when a book spans 700 odd pages and many generations, I have often lost interest mid way because unknowingly, there's a pattern in the events that occur, in the characters and their ways (and sometimes even in their names) and in the conflicts they face. East of Eden suffers from the same problems - not by accident but by design.

The story is based on one of the oldest stories told by the christian faith - the story of Cain and Abel and how generations of fathers and brothers go through the same act of jealousy, anger, revenge and love.

The story is set in the Salinas valley and is primarily about two families - Trasks and the Hamiltons and how these families weave themselves into each other's lives. The story is not about one man - it's about many men; many memorable men and a few strong willed women. Even the author is a character albeit an insignificant speck from where the action is, but still a voice (a lot like Samay in Mahabharatha serials on DD). If the whole book were a war, every conflict is a battle between good and evil - a good that is so innocent that you wish you could pick him from the book and save him from the pain. And an evil that is born out of yearning for love, a need that you have felt deep down that you relate to it and shudder at the thought. And like in the Mahabharatha, there is a servant (like a charioteer), who epitomizes trust, faith and makes sense of everything that happens around and philosophises profoundly.

The whole book is a proof of a life worth spent - complete with words of wisdom, religious retrospection and knowlege of human behaviour - bordering to self indulgence. It beautifully displays the complexities in the fundamental relationships between a father and a son and between brothers; shows how love, hate, jealousy and care can coexist in a single relationship, and shows it through a multitude of relationships. Characters abound, form and die within the span of the book; some stray away and some disappear but when Adam Trask speaks his last words, "Timshell" and closes his eyes the closure is absolute.

East of Eden is one of those books that let you live many lives in one. Put simply, it's the story of mankind and its varied frailities. When you see through the sub plots and the imagery, there are real people - You and me - and that self-discovery is worth the read.

After a long time ...

2005-07-24T21:24:00.000+05:30

... I have updated my travel diary. It's a morally and intellectually challenging question when you are traveling as a part of work - does it go to your travel blog or your normal blog. One of these days I will integrate all these blogs together ("finally", I can hear ~AM say, "common sense prevails!"). Till then ... please read on ....

Stray musings - II

2005-07-22T21:32:00.000+05:30

Saw this list in this blog (through Jax's blog) - This is a meme again, where you mark in bold whatever you have done and italicize what you want to do and pass it around to those you know. I am neither going to bolden it nor name people and pass it around. But shall keep the list in my blog because this is a list for a lifetime - so many things that I have always wanted to do and so many other things that I have never dreamt of doing but sound good when read in this list :)

PS: I have done 50 of them so far and planning to add 25 more by the end of this year :)

Stray Musings - I

2005-07-22T19:47:00.000+05:30

Stray thoughts that have been pending for sometime ...

Growing up with a girl is never a smooth journey (like it is with a guy). While aging is one smooth when-did-that-happen for a guy, it's anything but that for a girl. Every milestone is marked and the celebrations that ensue seal beyond doubt that things will never be the same again. I learnt it first when I was thirteen (and so was she) and was too young to even comprehend what happened. I saw it again when I was 18, when she got married and moved away, and with every step widened an irremediable distance that's been growing since. At 23, I felt it again when I saw her lie in the bed with her baby next to her - the feeling of being with a stranger I can't relate to, someone who's much elder than I am, who's at the threshold of responsibilities far beyond my ability and who's been through an experience that's beyond my imagination.

She smiled as I entered the room and asked me to sit - Next to her was a life that was just a week old, a pink ball punctured with slits and dots for what should be eyes, mouth and a nose blissfully asleep next to her mother. She was too young to be held, touched, coochi-cooed and scared, to even stand next to for the fear that germs and evil vices from one's existence will mar what's closest to pristine purity in this world. We spoke in whispers about the job, the weather, the family dog and what it has for dinner trying to come into terms with something that both of us could feel but pretend didn't exist.

Every once in a while, I caught a glimpse of the pink ball to see if she would miraculously open her eyes and give me a toothless grin or a hug. But she was fast asleep and her mother was more than glad she was. And just as I was about to leave, the pink ball smiled - She was still fast asleep, probably she had a sweet dream. God only would know what she was thinking, an image that is not inspired by anything she's seen around, memories of the womb, her first home, that she still carries in her head - things we have outgrown, baggage we never can unlearn. But that smile - A split second and that's all it lasted. A smile that wasn't checked and corrected in the mirror, that doesn't carry the fear of pain, that's not tarnished by self consciousness and is not sweetened to please. The most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed.

Pure.

Hamara puttar Harry!

2005-07-21T12:19:00.000+05:30

What is pristine joy, asketh thee
Watching summer rain from under the tree
making spit bubbles with childish glee
tickling grampa till he wakes and flee
taking wife's wallet for a shopping spree
& reading latest potter totally for free!

Muhahaha!

With the last mighty door (sic) tumbled down
& Parseltongue speaking one behind professor's nape
When Ron and Her Merge In one
and harry high on felix and Gin (NY)

Will Ho! Great warts open again
after the sign on the wall, the war and the pain
Tell me Tom, riddle will be solved?
At the end of it all, lord es mort?

Seven lives. Seven books.
The stage is set; the phoenix has sung
The last leg is a lonely walk
the long bottom, luna-tic laugh
Ron, bill and the measly lot
will stand as potraits, testaments of truth
As hamara putter will rise above all
and punctuate this tale with the final dot.

brick by brick she has started to lay
Yet another million dollar play
two years is all it takes
for James and Lily's soul to rest in peace

Waiting .....

So which color are you?

2005-07-20T20:46:00.000+05:30

When this stint of mine in Germany gets over, I would have spent close to three years in Europe. Three years is a long time - to get used to a place, to come to terms with the idiosyncrasies and the inherent biasses people have and to learn to live with it. I have lived a life of a stranger here in Europe with no knowledge of the language and customs. I have never complained about the suspicious stares and the cold shoulders because I realized quite early that if I want to be accepted, it is my duty to learn the language and understand their customs, take that extra step so that I could ask for favors and get my work done rather than expect them to travel the extra mile.

But there's this thin line of difference between suspicion or self defence and outright prejudice. I would understand why a old woman pretends to be deaf when I ask her for the way to a hotel, while she's talking a stride with her puny puppy. But when a driver in a bus does it to me, when I give him the money for a ticket and makes me stand next to him for five whole minutes, while at the sametime men who speak his tongue who board the bus two, three stops hence get their tickets and seat themselves completely, I am sorry but I don't get it! Through my entire journey from my guest house to my company HQ, I was standing right next to him politely requesting him for my ticket over and over again and he acted as if I was invisible, as if I didn't exist. And when he finally did, he gave me a smirk (and No! I did not imagine it!) as if he's proved a point.

~@~

Two gentlemen, one German and the other Indian, who have landed in Frankfurt by the same flight have been asked to share a taxi on their way back home. They assent and wait under the summer morning sun while a taxi makes its way next to the platform. A plump taxi driver gets out wishes them good morning, picks the heavy suitcase of the German colleague and places it carefully in the boot of the car. He then looks at the Indian colleague who has an equally huge suitcase, walks back to his seat to start the taxi. Is he being paid any lesser by the Indian colleague? It's the same flight and the same destination - and why would someone do this?

I will not generalize and call this a cultural trait. As much as I would want to, I am not going to make historic references and blame a whole country or a continent because two fools have so far have reacted this way. Because I know when I do that I am making the same racist, foolish mistake that has been irritating me since morning, that I believe belongs to a race far less human than the one I belong to. But one day, when I get to speak this language, I would want to stop and ask these taxi drivers and bus drivers about that mysterious pill they take before lunch or after dinner that blesses them with such an unbelievably irritating and nasty attitude.

Ze Zermany

2005-07-18T17:27:00.000+05:30

Ich habe schließlich Deutschland erreicht. Hatte einen bequemen Flug und jetzt ein morgens an meinem Sitz. Gibt alle interessanten Geschichten bekannt, sobald ich Zeit finde!

PS: For all technical issues, contact google's language tools team

Brave new world

2005-07-15T18:36:00.000+05:30

Firstly, thanks so much everyone for taking the time to answer the question :)

Over the last week, I have been thinking about the same question during those long lonely walks back home. More in the lines of, if I am given a world where everything is perfect and where I will be completely shielded from pain and given all means to stay happy, would I want to live there? A land where I would be clinically programmed right from genesis to like what I ought to, and given what I will learn to like (and given lots of it), be provided a vocation where my aptitute exactly matches my expectation, where another choice is not even a stray thought. Where I am what I eventually disintegrate into - an amalgam of chemicals and man, my apothecary, the author of my destiny and not god. Where variety is a proof of human error and humanity, a vast identical herd on the scientific highway.

A land where pain is not glorified - neither as heroism (for there won't be a war or crisis), nor as sacrifice (for there would be no love) nor as piety (for there's no god). Where art is dissected into a set of physical sensations that one craves to feel and fed directly to the senses without subtlety or ambiguity of interpretation. A land where youth is eternal, death a decision and pain a frivolous indulgence. Where a human who loves his mother (the-one-who-cannot-be-named) is a savage and is beyond reason and home is where four sweaty souls weep and waste their lives together in pain.

After watching America take the path of mass production to manufacture cars and watching culture disintegrate itself in all forms of art and life, Aldous Huxley went back to paint this world as his image of future - where the american lifestyle would conquer the world and its ways and where people will finally vote for happiness as their final goal. That was 1939.

I would neither talk about the plot nor about the beautifully layered interpretations that the book offers. But that one question - What do you really want in life? Behind all that you wish to do, see, accomplish, understand and achieve - isn't that the bottom line? Happiness? Do I really want to live in the brave new world?

It must have about three in the morning. It was during an engaging conversation that ~D said (though not in the same words), "For a long time I was looking for happiness in my life and sorrow or failure irritated me and made me feel hopeless. Now, I look for contentment - I don't deny the existence of pain nor do I cloth it in a happy garb. I see it, feel it for what it is but realize it's just as an integral part of life as is happiness. I realized my life is complete when I see every outcome with this equanimity. Where things can go wrong, where I can afford to lose but understand that this is just another step, another moment lived (rather than extrapolated, analysed and wasted). I don't deny myself the pain. I feel it for its worth and wait till the next moment comes along"

And when you see him you realize he means it - he's seen life, loved and lost, gained and lost it again. He probably is not able to do it all the time. But this is what he believes in, he strives for.

I still don't have the answer to this question - deep down I know for a fact that pain and fear have helped me grow much more than happiness ever has; That I can't accept life and humanity as an eclectic and rather imperfect mixture of chemicals. I sincerely believe in god, good will and a higher purpose. To admit all I need in life is just happiness feels like shriveling my existence into an insignificant dot. But I am waiting to hear a voice ringing strong sans doubt.

PS: If you are interested, you don't have to buy it. You can find it here.

One quick question

2005-07-13T12:38:00.000+05:30

What do you really want in life?

The eternal wait!

2005-07-12T13:54:00.000+05:30

9:50 in the night is not a bad time to travel in bangalore. And when you get out of Forum, you expect to be in Airport road in about 20 minutes. A line of waiting cars on Hosur road is too common a sight if you have been around for sometime. But when not a fly moves for more then a dozen minutes, you obviously venture to check what is happening.

Apparently, the news in the 10th file of vehicles from the epicenter of all the chaos was that a policeman had slapped an auto driver. 10 files hence, someone was telling everyone that a police officer had stabbed an auto driver. I decided to find it out myself, got out of the bike and stretched myself to spot a whole array of autos and auto drivers lined across the road; Some of them were screaming and the rest of them were punching their fisits into nothing.

Realizing it's going to take a lot of time to sort out, my friends and I pulled the bike onto the pavement and thought we will walk till we cross the point of crisis. Just as we were trying to make our way through two autos on the pavement, a pizza delivery scooter whisked past us and tried making its way through the autos. A balding, old man in khakis rushed towards the scooter, caught hold of it and asked the guy to retreat. "But sir, I have to go. delivery sir". "Don't you see the trouble here! Go back and wait there". Of course!! An auto driver has been hit and how can anyone go home or deliver pizzas or eat them in their cozy dining rooms. The pizza guy finally manage to wriggle out when the auto driver wasn't watching. We also made our way out throw a hundred detours.

But as we crossed the road through the forum premises, I looked back at all the guys who were giving us company till not so long ago. Not one moved; no one was irritated or was trying to find their way out. They stretched their arms and waited for the chaos to clear by itself. 10:50 in the night, ~J gave me a call and told me that the problem was sorted just then. I thought of all those who were waiting, and wondered how long their patience lasted; how numb the lifestyle here has made them; And how resigned they are to the behaviour of traffic that recoils and fails to move at the slightest provocation or spurt of activity.

Dark clouds roamed above and the thunders roared - Fate asketh thee to wait till eternity and thy shalt do so.

Yes my lord. No objection my lord.

And there you go!

2005-07-11T16:32:00.000+05:30

Thank god I have a lot of work most of the time - one day of a little less work and look what all I am upto :) Was quite apprehensive about taking it wondering if it would actually send a report saying "Do ones like you really exist!" :)

Anyways, click here to find out what I am talkin' about or to just find a way to while away time :)

Weekend at Surabhi's

2005-07-11T10:47:00.000+05:30

Two years ago, just around the same time, five really crazy nuts decided to take off to some forlorn island in the south of france to which for years, the postman was the only human link from the mainland. And for five days, they booked a cottage on top of the hill facing the ocean, travelled far and wide in their gaudy red hyundai around the circumference of the island; doing among other things - scuba diving, beach volleyball, lots of ogling and swimming training. Rumours still do the rounds in some houses in fontainebleau that one of them took off his oxygen mask while in the bottom of the Atlantic and had a close brush with death. Two years later, even now, that trip is one of the best ever trips for (at least) four out of five of those crazy nuts.

It was during that trip that for the first time I felt the utmost contentment of having lived life completely when slumping down in the bed at the end of the day. A sense of suspending reality, letting the world wait till this moment's over; A sense of recklessness beyond fear where any situation can be managed; And an insatiable urge to feel it over and over again ... that's been burning for a long time - seven months to be precise (after we were left freezing at -27 degrees on top of Switzerland). This trip to bandipur that happened over the weekend was hence long due.

Bandipur is a forest area situated in the borders of Tamil nadu, karnataka and kerala which housed among wild animals and trees, a petty thief with a lot of wilderness on his face. It's about five and a half hours drive from bangalore. We, six able young men and a lady, set out with our bags, knives and air guns to set up a tent in the middle of the forest and do some quality trekking and tiger-spotting. Well, things didn't exactly happen the way we wanted. But we still truck loads of fun. Here are a few highlights

Walked up a five kilometer uphill stretch to a temple in Gopalaswamipeta very close to bandipur. The temple right on top of the hill, literally amidst the clouds and the stretching to eternity silence is divine.
Finally went into one of those open jeep rides through the ragged paths in the forest with a digital handi-cam searching (in vain, unfortunately) for animals behind bushes and trees.
Shot a whole documentary which includes a news report at the end of the day (like in those news channels. just that ours is more interesting ;)), a live commentary of the trip and of all the antics we did, and lots of deers, peacocks and monkeys.
This probably sounds very childlike - but I have always wanted to sneak out of the open window of a moving car (tavera in our case), climb onto the top of the car and look around from there rather than sitting like a bored duck inside the car. Managed to do that finally in this one :) (though the driver was not too happy about it!)

And so many more that cannot be numbered and put into a list (the songs, jokes and the gaffes and guffaws) but still were what made the trip most memorable. There aren't too many snaps because all we spieldbergs were busy with the digicam. (We are planning to release a VCD of our documentary though :)). However, I shall upload all the snaps we have very soon.

Chalo. Let me get back to work now.

PS: The title is a dedication to the mallu restaurant that gave us some really good fish fries and chicken curries at really throw-away rates.

My pleasant ville

2005-07-08T09:47:00.000+05:30

"So what did you do?", she asked between mouthfuls. I thought for a while and realized just as I told her that I didn't do anything - zilch. Nothing at all. "And then, what's this whole thing about celebrating your birthday with your parents?" Yeah - when you miss meetings, parties and travel six hours to go some place (and feel kicked about it), you are supposed to do something. Probably, even my mother understood it the same way when I told her I am coming home for my birthday. Saturday morning, when I landed home after the 22:55-to-chennai-B70-from-koyambedu-to-thirumulaivoil, and was half-dazedly staring at some half-naked actress on TV, my mom detailed the plans she had made for sunday. We will hire a car, go for a movie, then go to a restaurant and have dinner outside ... her voice trailed off when she realized I had dozed off midway.

I don't know what is it about going home - probably it's got to do with the fact that I have been spending 300+ days every year away from my parents for the last 7 years (like so many of us do) that I want to be with them at least on occasions like birthdays or new year's eve. Probably, going home is the most economical activity to do on one's birthday (an argument which pales considering I flew from france to chennai to be able to spend my birthday at home last year. My mom almost had a heart attack at such public display of affection!).

May be it's the charm associated with the idea of getting into a secluded spot beyond the reach of humanity. Oh trust me - my house is officially the last step in the threshold of humanity. I officially live in a world where streets have no name. No roads in the map lead to my house. Coming to my house is a roller coaster ride, the adventure quotient of which has been tripled ten times thanks to the latest "repair work" and the recent summer showers. So, entertaining visitors (that includes even the postman) is literally out of question. I haven't activated roaming in my mobile and phone lines in my house (of which very few have the number) are quite a mess. So, someone should really take an effort to reach any of us at home for whatever reasons.

Like my brother always says, I am probably old school. For me, it's an amazing feeling having my mom wake me up in the morning, her face being the first thing I see every year, finding the new dress ("Surprise!") I have to wear placed on the table when I come back after my bath, going to the same temple, meeting the same friends and/or their families. Makes me feel grounded, feel secure - for me, the neighbourhood where I spent the first seventeen years of my life is the place where nothing can go wrong, where every brick plays an old aunt that exclaims "Boy! Look how old you have become". People there are my excuses to relive my innocence, to remember where all this started. And given that it's a corner called Vijayalakshmipuram in Ambattur, things take eons to change. Every road (cricket pitches with galleries that extend to neighbour's terraces where history's etched in every broken window pane), every shop (where you shopped for rubber balls to rubbers!), every clinic (housing heartless doctors who draw your life into an empty syringe) to every soul who takes the 47D bus at 7:30 in the morning to reach office are still there like they have been painted as fixtures within a canvas.

And as the kid rides back on the bike to the bus stop watching the neighbourhood, deserted at nights but for a few blinking lights, he carries back a child like innocence into the cynical world - a dream about a happy place where all was once well, and will forever be. My pleasantville.

tit-bit

2005-07-07T12:47:00.000+05:30

Tit

I have finally got the photos from the plays we staged. The whole show was a collection of three short plays.

The snaps of the play I directed (Layaa) are here
http://www.dharam.us/Theatre/Layaa/index.html

You can find the photos of all the plays and all the fun we had before and after here
http://www.dharam.us/Theatre/index.html

The photos of "Layaa" and "Words" are from our dress rehearsal and not from the final day shows. That might explain the different background (and the unkempt, unshaven and non-made-up faces) that you see in the photos :)

Bit

One of the most interesting discoveries that I have made in the recent past is the podcast. Now, I am not sure how many of you use iTunes to listen to music (it's free. it's good and hey, it's apple all the way! (though a trifle heavy on your system resources) and you find it here). With the latest version of iTunes you have the vast directory of podcasts - podcasts, are well.. it's difficult to explain. Let me do it with an example. I subscribed to this podcast called Cinecast which is a movie review "channel". This "channel" is updated every week with a new episode. Once I subscribe to it, I can download any of the earlier episodes and listen to them and iTunes automatically downloads the latest episodes as soon as I start it (the first thing I looked for was for a "Friends" podcast. Nay! you don't get it there!). What's amazing is the variety - I am currently listening to the adventures of sherlock holmes. The whole collection of sherlock holmes stories is read online and despite the occasional yawns and the squeaks, the narrator does manage to hold your attention. Apart from this, there're podcasts on science, movies, business, news. Ok .. before you shut the door on the salesman, I'll part with these profound last words - Do try it :)

Long lost twins?

2005-07-05T09:34:00.000+05:30

Is it just me or don't you think they look quite similar? Wonder if the bestest player and the bestest director are indeed brothers lost in kumbh mela or something? :)

PS: Just realized blogger finally allows uploading of images!

Human Stain

2005-07-02T23:41:00.000+05:30

I don’t know him. Never met him and whatever I have heard of him are occasions where he was a syllable in a collective noun, another head that’s a part of a reference to an ambiguous group whose span you have no idea of – Classmates, friends, acquaintances. His death shouldn’t really worry me or give me sleepless nights. But ever since I heard about it, there’s this nagging feeling of unrest inside, a feeling you can’t come to terms with but can do nothing about – like an irritating speck of dust ducked under your eyelid that refuses to leave.

An auto hits a college youth on his way to college and leaves him bleeding meters ahead. The auto itself topples to one corner and as the driver scrambles to get his vehicle back on the wheels, trespassers rush to help him leave the place as soon as possible. Onlookers from behind the rusted window bars of public transport stare at the college kid whose head is slowly gaining a red halo as his hair gets matted with blood. Busy professionals on their way to work blame the kid for taking up so much space in a road as busy as airport road. Someone calls for the traffic police to clear the mess. A circle of heads surrounds a rotting body. Rumors doing the rounds whisper the words “police case”, “trouble”, “ambulance” in each other’s ears. The circles gets wider – the pool of blood and the crowd of spineless spectators. The watches tick in horror for 45 minutes as the heads come and go. 45 minutes – the blood dries up in the burning concrete. Someone picks up the kid’s mobile and starts calling the numbers. One hour later, the kid is admitted in a hospital. Post mortem suggests that the kid could have been saved if he had been brought to the hospital in the first thirty minutes.

That night one murderer would have gone back home, washed his auto, confessed to his wife and would have lost sleep for the next fortnight hoping dreading the possibility of someone having noted down his vehicle number. Hundred more murderers would have gone back to coffee tables and office canteens and described the gruesome details of the accident and blame their inability in helping the situation (“Do you think our manager would have understood if I had been late?” “Damn that teleconference! I would have saved him otherwise!”). A million more heads would nod in unison and blamed the boy for speeding. A thousand more witnesses would have crossed the signal, yawned and resumed their usual gossip. One soul would never see the light of the day. One family would cry forever because, unfortunately, they live in the company of spineless men.

The city sleeps peacefully hoping the municipal corporation will clean the dried blood left on the road. It is distressing to watch roads littered with human stains on your way to work. Indeed.

After a long long time ...

2005-07-01T21:49:00.000+05:30

And what do you know, the kempe gowda bus stop also has a broadband internet cafe :) Feels like a lifetime since I have been here last (been ages since I even read someone's blog) and I have so many things to talk about - movies I saw, books I have read, pimps I met, incidents, accidents and vague trains of thoughts that I have been chasing - so much to a point where it feels like a pressure cooker inside, where every thought is making its way out all at the sametime.

It was a good idea to make a list of books that I wanted to read - I have been clinically knocking them off from the list in the last few weeks. Started off with Jim morrison's biography (No one here gets out alive), and then went on to read Future of India (Bimal Jalan), Siddhartha (Herman Hesse), Swami and Friends (R K Narayan) leaving 1984, Brave new world and Orchid Thief on the list - Orchid thief will go down as one book that I have searched the most in my lifetime. There are probably a handful who have read the book. But the fact that Charlie kaufmann decided to take it up and adapt it into a screenplay (in his own unique way) is a good enough reason for me to read it. And what a movie - makes more sense everytime I read it (Yeah, I actually have read the whole script twice or thrice). Anyway, no reason to complain coz ~L has promised to give me Ponniyin Selvan and that's like a looong time resident in my to-be-read list. Right now it's "Anne Frank - the diary of a little girl" (I am thinking how she would have felt finding her diary being read by so many millions of people. Probably she has the answer to that question too. It's amazing reading something so unpretentious and so close to the heart, when you are not performing to an audience or writing to please someone)

On my way home now and I am so looking forward to it - Feels like a long time since I really slept like a log. Am telling myself that I will blog a lot during the weekend. But considering how sleepy I am feeling right now, I don't think I am going to come back here again. Let's see :)

Just a quick request - if any of you know of any interesting books on the life and times under the Nazis or any good introductory books on Economics, do let me know. So long ladies and gentlemen ....

B & B & B

2005-06-22T09:15:00.000+05:30

Yeh world hai na world, there are two types of people in it. One who love watching mad caper movies and spend money doing so and the other, who love making such movies and also end up making a lot of money out of it. As you can imagine, the smart ones are those who move from the first category to the second category.

After a long time, I gotta watch a real no-brainer with an entertainment value totally worth the money. Right outside Rex cinema (where I watched the movie), I can imagine a box saying, "Please leave your brains here before you go ahead and watch the movie". As the credits start rolling and you see the Biggest B rapping by waving his hands Eminemsque, you know what to expect out of the movie. Whatever initial doubts you might have about this movie being an emotional drama seeing the first confrontation between Baby B and Babbar (another B) is quickly put to rest once Rani mukerjee makes a tongue in cheek remark at Kareena on screen.

And from then on, for a long time to come, the movie moves like a music video. Every con job they accomplish is shown in glimpses between songs that are belted out in quick succession (though no one is complaining because they are really hummable numbers). And then enters Big B, who's now perfecting the art of playing a whacko (The scene where B swears that he will catch both Bs and shoots the glass pane is so 70ish, you almost hear kitne aadmi te kalia in the background!)

On the scales of creativity, the film is a lowly 3 on 10 - None of the con jobs are creative; even the romantic scenes lack imagination; the characters are quite two dimensional and the situations et emotions cliched. But what makes the canvas come alive is the amazing chemistry between the small ~B and the only non-B (the bubbly babli). They light up the screen like a khan and a ~K did a decade ago. They have an amazing repertoire of expressions which will leave you in splits even before a word is uttered (watch out Junior B's expression in the climax). Abhishek is good, no denying that. The woodenness of his face and movements is still there but has reduced substantially. He exudes confidence on screen and personifies mischief. There's not much acting that he's forced to do and that suits him fine. But, it's Rani who steals the show right from under his nose. She's so adorable (even with those extra pounds that she's put on) and lingers on the screen even after the lights are off.

Everyone involved in the movie has been stressing the point that the movie is a tribute to the 70s bollywood. Thankfully they did. Of course, one can spot the sholay link when b & b wear identical costumes and ride the bike doing the same antics as "Yeh dosti hum nahin ...". But if the tacky sets for the scenes in the train were in any way a tribute to the movies of the yesteryears - the only way they could have made it obvious was by placing subtitles explaining their intention. The one guy sitting next to me was wondering aloud why YashRaj films was trying to save money by putting up sets like these for the simplest of scenes (I am still not sure if it's any cheaper but I could understand why he thought so. Tacky is the word!).

The music is awesome; really peppy - Just the kind of songs that make even the dullest of assignments at work worth working on. And yeah, Aishwarya rai - I loved her (though ~M didn't). It was then I realized that 5 minutes is exactly the amount of time she can be on screen without letting it dawn on you how fake she actually is.

In summary, Bunty aur Babli could have been a helluva good movie with a little more thought. But the way it is, is still a good paisa vasool (God! I sound so much like those guys whose reviews I hate to read!).

Epiphany at midnight

2005-06-20T09:10:00.000+05:30

Somewhere around midnight, on the bus to chennai did this epiphany strike me - a vague analogy that I have taken a fancy to. About how life is so much like poetry. I have been trying it to put it down to words. But somehow, what I want to say is getting lost in translation :(

Let me try ... again.

Poetry is probably one of the most all-encompassing work of art - be it in form or substance. And if one were to map poetry in the axes of structure and substance, we end up with a two by two matrix with the following squares.

Structure Major and Substance minor

A poem that is written by the book - with rhyming last words, the right beat and oxford's chosen words for public etiquette. The words bounce on and off like a nursery rhyme and proud mothers would read them out to tea time friends. These poems don't search for a greater truth, nor define an epoch. They are daily observations, travel diaries and corner jokes.

Like so many middle class lives which are lived by the book. There's a fixed template for every life - as to how someone should be named, nicknamed, the school he should go to, the engineering or medical degrees he has to get, the age has to get married in, the house he has to build, the children he has to tend. Hundreds of millions of people can live their life adhering to this template, this rhyme and rhythm and not even once bother about the purpose of all of it. about a greater truth, about how far this rabbit hole can go. I envy the bliss of ignorance these people bask in - and trust me, everyone around them is completely content and happy with this life. Like my mom was with my poems in sixth standard - innocous, rhyming and look-my-son-can-write statement of pride.

Structure minor and Substance Major

Go back to all the songs that linger, all the words that sting and all the metaphors that haunt you and make you think - lines beyond rules, driven by this burning desire to express something that's so stifling, so strong, so overpowering that existence stops and starts again with every punctuation. A form of art where structure is considered a constraint, a useless wall in the way of a gushing stream of thought.

And so many lives that come to my mind that fight tooth nail with these questions and answers all their lives; Lives that search for a purpose; Lives that find the norms of the society, the trends of the pseudos suicidal; Lives that hurt themselves and scream in pain not out of a masochistic drive, but because the void that fills them is much more painful than the scars and wounds

Lives that went wasted and destroyed because there was no place to go, nowhere to begin, nowhere to end. Lines that rambled and shrunk into a huge, decisive dot before they could end, before they could say what they wanted to. Lives that flew beyond infinity for they lacked the one thing they couldn't live with - Structure.

Structure minor and substance minor

Poems that were too lazy to conform, and too shallow to have any truths to confirm. Poems that are devoid of structure because it's hip, because it's a transcendental trip, because it's a whole lot of gibberish that no one can relate to and hence question. Poems that can fake the style, quote the lines, choose the words from the 16th century dictionary but can never infuse the soul, the pain painted in the abyss of the eyes. Poems, people, that never go anywhere, say anything, and never even wanted to.

Structure major and Substance major

And those that know how far this rabbit hole goes, how futile every breathing moment is, how all these words by themselves form a paper palace waiting to be destroyed by the next whiff of thought. How without purpose, this huge edifice (structure) is such a collossal waste of time and lives (not just yours but many more). But still hold onto it, work within it and make every moment count because that's all they have got.

Lives that are grounded by reality - at least a part of it that they choose as indispensable, inevitable. Lives that have realized (knowingly or unknowingly) but still don't use it as an excuse to fly away, to escape. Lives that don't abhor life for its emptiness but spend a lifetime trying to make it count. Trying to touch lives. A lifetime of tightrope walking where you take turns to question either ends - the structure or the purpose - wondering if all this is worth it, but go on in the hope that in the end, when everything's over, you have at least said a few words that count, done a few deeds that matter or left a thought in the wind for some soul to sense.

I don't know if I am making any sense to you :) But, that's all I gotta say about Life and poetry.

A quick update and I am gone!

2005-06-17T09:32:00.000+05:30

I have been quite haphazard with my blogging habits in the last two months - blame it on the increasing sense of responsibility at work or other endeavours that have been taking my time :) Anyways, my server's starting right now, which gives me enough time for a quick post before I get back to work.

I have ranted enough and more about the play now. One last time and then, Closure :)

The play went well. We had a sellout crowd three out of four days (rain spoilt the plans on thursday) and the general feedback seems to say that people enjoyed the show. We had some glowing reviews in Indian express (and one in another newspaper I am not sure I can mention, that never saw the light of the day). What we are very happy about it is, out of the three plays everyone had their own personal favorites and all three seem to be equally popular.

A personal thank you (so much!) to all of you who could make it to the play. You were a fantastic audience to peform to. Thanks so much once again!

Personally, my parents gave me a very pleasant surprise by coming down to bangalore without prior notice to watch their son on stage (after 8-9 years). Kickass it was :) And you know the entire experience is complete when, the lights are off and stage is dismantled,you feel a sense of belonging not just towards the set and the masks but towards every soul that you held hands with during the last three months.

Back to work now - Super ted has been working like crazy since the beginning of this week. Super ted logged thirteen hours yesterday in a desperate attempt to save humanity from close encounters of the third kind. And guess what, Super ted's lovin' it. Off to chennai tonight after exactly three months - A very very special person is leaving for the US after a wonderful wedding in tirunelveli and these are occasions one shouldn't miss.

And my blog's celebrating its birthday 2 weeks from now and I am pretty kicked about it too :) Chalo. will get back to work now.

I have been tagged

2005-06-15T10:17:00.000+05:30

I have been tagged! I am not sure how this works exactly. But from what I could gather, here's a list of books that I am

Currently reading

Searching for certainty - John L Casti
Bono on Bono

Just Finished (in the last one month)

Fermat's last theorem
Alchemy of Desire
One hundred years of Solitude

On the list to read

Jim Morrison's biography
Sidhartha - Herman Hess
Brave new world - Aldous huxley
1984 - George Orwell
Orchid thief (the book, the movie "Adaptation" is based on)
Swami and Friends - RK Narayan

Favorite books (not in any order)

Fountainhead - Ayn rand
Animal Farm - George Orwell
To kill a mockingbird - Harper Lee
Green Mile - Stephan King
Alchemy of desire - Tarun Tejpal
Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Captain Corelli's mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
India Unbound - Gurcharan Das
Games people play - Eric Berne
The Goal - Elijah Goldhardt
Godfather - Mario Puzo
Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Dark Nature - Lyall Watson

... and probably lots more that I can't remember now.
The ones I tag are people who aren't blogging actively during the recent past. Yet, are three people with a lovely taste in terms of books.

Strayed moment - 4

2005-06-15T09:42:00.000+05:30

11 June 2005
11:00 am

An open window in the extreme left corner of the hall letting in a lone ray of light. An unused piano hiding under a velvet veil. A forlon stage. Empty seats. Lots of souls. When the chatter stops and lights are dimmed, when the makeup is off and the actors are asleep, the voices start talking. I truly believe, anyone who enters a hall leaves a part of his soul there for the rest of eternity. Be it an actor who crucifies his soul every evening for the rest of them to watch; is born and dead like a firefly which shines and dies within a blink of an eye. Or the audience who laugh, smile and cry with him; leave a baggage that they brought along and take back fresh ones. And forever these baggages live there unclaimed within those four walls.

And on lazy saturday mornings, when you slip in while no one's watching, take your seat next to the lone window and the unused piano, you watch them perform and you realize that you are a part of something that so much bigger than what you are; that when you are there on stage performing, it's not just you that the audience hears, it's all the voices that perform with you, revel with you in the bliss of glitz. That you are just a puppet with just a part of your soul to offer - a tiny indiscernible pixel in the canvas of perfection that the audience appreciates. Another subatomic soul that shall forever live between those walls.

Just another pixel.

Strayed moment - 6

2005-06-13T10:19:00.000+05:30

12th June 2005
5:30 pm

I am not sure if it was my mom or my cousin Manu who woke me up - For a second, I had no idea where I was or what time of the day it was. I sleepwalked into the drawing room and sat there half sleep, the voices of my parents like an endless, indecipherable drone playing into my ears. I was trying to recollect a dream I was having, about something I had to do as a part of the play making process but didn't. I remember having the dream over and over again all through the two hours I had slept. But I couldn't place my finger on the exact details and was dissecting every moment in my mind to spot the link.

And that was when it stuck me that it was all over. Not like a jolt or an emotional upheaval. But like prick of a needle on numb limbs - a state where one can watch one's own blood trickle without any pain or horror. The last four months of my life ran like a black and white mute movie before my eyes. flash. snap. flash. darkness. smell. touch. smile. sweat. lights. sounds. applause... Silence. I closed my eyes and suddenly could feel the small drawing room closing into me, the indecipherable sounds becoming a pounding beat - I shrunk into a little dot inhaling stale air, gasping for breath feeling utterly claustrophobic. I rushed out of the house, into busy roads and bustling shops, into chaos, into anonymity and lost myself there.

Memoirs of rain - Part I

2005-06-07T12:08:00.000+05:30

I am not sure how old I exactly was - must have been in my early teens or on the verge of it. I remember the khaki half trousers, the white shirt and the orange badge, the red color backpacker that didn't stay with me for long. I remember it to be a november evening, close to 5:30. I remember our school clearly and the bus stop opposite to it. I remember the deserted road that evening that was being belted by rain incessantly. I remember the two (or was it three?) boys, one of them very clearly, who were with me. We were waiting for quite sometime for the rain to stop. But it looked like that was not going to happen - You should have seen it rain in Madras to know what I am talking about. The tempestous rains have a touch of armageddon to it. Anyway, in this fine evening in question, when it was raining like there was no tomorrow - we decided to leave together and I, as usual, was supposed to tag along in someone's cycle. As I was coming out through the huge blue gate with only a polyethene sheet for cover, the rest of them got onto their bikes and told me that they will wait on the opposite side of the road. I said yes, looked back to see if the door was closed and turned around to find all of them gone. Vanished in thin air! Through the veil of rain water I could see some white and khaki specks cycling for life. I was too numb to even react - I had no money for the bus (some change wouldn't have changed anything coz there were no buses running); there were no phones at home; my house was a 25 minute walk from school on a sunny, peppy day and all I had was a flimsy polyethene cover.

Left with no other choice, I started to walk. I couldn't see straight because knives were materializing from thin air and slitting my skin. My jaws were doing rock and roll and my knees were giving away. Every inch of my academic paraphernalia was wet and the polyethene sheet was plastered to my head. I reached half way after about half an hour after which someone in the road shouted me for walking in the rain and dragged me under a tree. By divine provedence, my dad came searching for me and found me under an obsure tree amidst all the haze. He later told me the only thing that saved me from his anger was that I was white as a sheet when he spotted me. He said I looked scared - far from it, that was most the exhilirating walk of my life. There's something so liberating about walking in the rain, about the touch of rain water on your skin - makes you feel free, adventurous, more alive than ever - an inexplicable excitement that can only be felt. And that too - not those sulky, two cent showers, but real rain - the rain that will one day mark the end of this world.

Since then - I have been doing it everytime. During those rare chances in pilani while the whole insti waits in the corridors of FD-II, I walk out feeling like the king of the world. That one time during PS-1 while I got out of a running bus in mount road to get drenched in the rain for sometime and realized my blunder only when I walked like a duck, leaving a trail of rain water on the floors of the bank. And during those few uninteresting rains, fascinating snow falls and fatal hail storms.

And day before yesterday.

(Will be Continued ....)

Play Updates

2005-06-03T11:09:00.000+05:30

Just a few updates from the play side

We are selling tickets tomorrow at Tunbridge High school from 10 o clock in the morning to about 8 in the night. The school is on infantry road (the first building on the road) and is right opposite to Safina plaza. So, please drop in anytime to buy the tickets.
A quick favor - if it's not too much of a trouble, can you please post a copy of the Curtain raiser of the three plays (present in the same page) in your office bulletin boards or forward it to your friends in bangalore. Even if you are not able to make it personally, you will get the goodwill of a lot of souls by passing the word of mouth :) Thanks so much in advance!