Twinkle twinkle little star

Ishan Awasthi is a dude. He knows how to have fun. He doesn’t mind dipping into the gutter and fishing out ugly Guppy babies. He loves to play Superman with his head sticking out of the front window of the upper deck of a double-decker BEST.

He is the kid in every one of us. The atom that wants to get out and explore, that wants to feel free, wants to fly but fears what the world will think. The kid is trapped within the grown-up, in the pincushion of the adult’s apprehensions, his prejudices, and the pictures in his head.

Left to his own, he’s a happy soul, painting pictures of his dreams and with nothing to worry about.

He is not scared. He pumps his fist in a “Yes” when thrown out of class, moonwalks in the corridor, feeds his exam papers to the dogs and also cleans their ears for free!

Wouldn’t all of us want to be a little destructive when really pissed at something? Little Inu does exactly what Jim Carrey says about impulses in the Living Colour, “Why can’t I just stick my fingers into that table fan?” or “Hey, there’s Jerry. What if I just kick him in his balls and say hi instead of shaking his hand?”

Ishan couldn’t stand the sight of cute, dainty, neat, potted plants at the door of his enemy. He makes them look un-cute, un-dainty, un-neat and non-potty.

It is important to have fun in whatever one does. I don’t know who said it but I go it from a professor in college. He says there’s nothing more important in life than having fun.

The idea of ‘fun’ is also so very subjective. It can’t be copied like trigonometric calculations or complex chemical processes from a book to a journal. It is not the same for everyone. One needs to ask the baccha inside what it is actually seeking- his/her idea of fun.

Aamir Khan surely had lots of fun making the film. And it shows. (His kids must’ve loved it.) The otherwise reclusive personality is so much in touch with the child that it is tough not to crack up at his antics.

Whether truth or fiction, the potshot at Abhishek Bachchan was hilarious!

I don’t know intricate details of the feud between Amole and Aamir but I’m glad Aamir potted the clay into a shining taara.

P.S: The post-film visit to the loo revealed quite a few damp eyes and sniffles.

On the path of self-actualisation

I had lost a very valuable part of my attitude. One of the few things I shared with my former classmates is a generous amount of something that would generally be termed as a ‘lackadaisical attitude’; so much so that, all of these classmates were labelled into a group called ‘Chaltaye’ in my yahoo chat list.

SSR has been quite effective in moulding this ‘Chaltaye’ attitude, his train of thought being that one must let nothing affect one’s mood, creative process et al, that there’s nothing more important to grow while having fun, not to let anything bother you. It is but a totally tangent story that he himself would get irked by too much of ‘chaltaye’.

I was a big believer of this theory. I would seldom get angry. It wasn’t like salt in my curries like it is now. Not that I wouldn’t sulk then. Now, sulking is like breakfast, a routine that I must do for the poor sun to set in the west. My mood swings could easily conquer any lady’s monthly 3,4-day depressions. Generally, a verbal tiff with someone who means the world to me would mean that my day has gone for a toss, nothing would go right then onwards and I would be data-transferred from whatever mood I’m in at that moment to Sulkland. I turn into that 35-year old grump Facebook said I am. ‘Have fun’ adieus sound like curses. When in a crowd, I suddenly duck to avoid meeting recognizable faces, who, I’m sure would stop to ask me the customary queries of what I’m doing nowadays and how come I’m still in my last year of graduation etc. And the number of taxis that want to run me down on such days! My my!

Today was different. We had had an exchange of simmering words in the morning. Even as I hung up abruptly, I was thinking what would become of my day. Would all the effort from the day and the previous one go into the crushed aluminium foil of sulk sulk?

But it didn’t! Today was one of my most memorable days in college. It was Bazaar Day and the theme was ‘South India.’ Despite the confusion between medu wada and batata wada, everything was just perfect. Elephants and kathakali dancers in place, cutouts of course. Others had got leaf decorations and plantain leaves. A pookalam was designed with flowers. We were selling idlis, wadas and rasam. And…we won it! We bagged the first prize for the stall, first for the decorations and stood second in the food section. And how we squealed and rejoiced and hugged and danced when we won! And I had just had the time of my life, dancing away, getting people to buy our items- ‘kaanvaasing’ I called it…all of this while dressed in perfect ethnic costume.

So I guess, ‘chaltaye’ is back or am I sulking right now? I just want it to stay, now that it is here and help me mend things that have gone wrong and go on and be that happy ‘chaltaye’ Hari I used to be, for I care and I love. Her.

'Redding karte hain'

A hairy Hari Chakyar gains a very valuable gender reality experience at the barbershop

I got a haircut today, a close-to-the-scalp-cut that most people would associate with Akshay Khanna. Not that it is much of a deal, but the whole experience came with another free experience. Towards the end of the trimming process, realization struck. All the effort women take to look good and the pain they undergo suddenly dawned upon me.

The haircut was done, but I wasn’t satisfied. I could see jagged ends and unfinished poky cuticles sticking out here and there. I told the razor-wielder to shave ‘em off, so the new haircut would look less like a shaved moth. He dutifully whipped out his razor, but after a few miniscule strokes here and there, he said, “Redding karte hain.”

It was incomprehensible…I did not get what he said and impulsively responded, “ain?” “Dhaaga chalate hain,” he said. *A moonbeam suddenly made its way to earth* “Ah, he means threading,” I thought.

“Hey, wait a second, ain’t that what girls get done to their eyebrows just in time for a function or boyfriend-meeting ceremony?” *Head whirls*

By the time my pea-sized brain had reached this point of thought, the barber had a spool of string in his hand, like glass-dipped maanja. He held one bit of the thread between his teeth and held two other parts in his two hands and went at the remaining hairs.

The thread made a trayon trayon trayon trayon sound as it went as I held my eyes shut tight and cringed and cursed myself as to why I had to put on my spectacles and catch those errant strands, when I could have just avoided this painful humiliation! I seem to have this kinky fixation for pain, but this was ridiculous!

I bet there weren’t as many hairs there on my cheekbone and on my temple as that guy made them out to be! When wielding the all-powerful thread he just went berserk, ‘redding’ imaginary hair while I said “yeow yeow” and thought to myself, “F***, this hurts!”

But the end result is kinda good, so I think the effort was worth it. Precisely why I think women go for it. What the heck, it looks good! Don’t get me wrong; for I say this only in jest…I think now I’m a little more aware and sensitive about women’s issues!

Piggy on the railway, gone to commit suicide

Resilient and compliant that I am, like all my fellow pigs, it has been quite a few years that we’ve adapted ourselves to the perennial no-power situation. We have been convinced that there’s acute shortage of power in the state and that we would have to part with power for a considerable number of hours every day, so that our richer brethren in the city can relish their afternoon siesta peacefully in their air-conditioned bedrooms.

As for us- pigs, we don’t really mind not having electricity in our homes for anything between six and nine hours. Our television sets have become showpieces and we’ve been busy trying to find things to do when blessed with the lovely power cuts.

Recently heard, there are going to be power cuts in the New Bombay region too, which had somehow managed to hide behind the CIDCO building, when they were making the erratic timetable to fatefully deprive the Central suburbs of power.

Wasn’t that region supposed to be the next region to be ultra-developed after areas like Andheri? Weren’t major business and service industry offices planning to move base from the present congested Mumbai town to Vashi and Nerul? How then will those regions undergo power cuts?

I think I know how. Don’t label me as cynical. All of us have risen to a level higher than that and have attained something called nirvana of patience.

Look at this, the way I look at this. They continue with their plan of moving their offices to New Bombay, Indian Express and Loksatta being one of them. But then, they’ll meet the power cuts. But they are not flustered by it. The state will have a solution. “Central suburbs are only subjected to six hours of power cuts,” the state would say, “They still have eighteen hours of power, we can borrow some more.” Thus, the little what we have now will go on to ‘save the world’. Oh and then they’ll have explanations. ‘You know there used to be this power-source that recently shutdown and the others are all being renovated and will be ready within 2 months.’ And all that.

But then the suburbs will be given incentives to take up small scale industries like candle making and production of storable biogas made out of human excreta. The candles will keep us people busy all day and give us light at night. The rest of the time, we’ll be asleep, so we will not need any light. Hey, cardboard covers of notebooks are great to swish swash for breezes. And the candles, if smoothly made, can be used to make excellent dildoes. But then, they’ll have to be really strong or else, they’ll break inside the orifices and cause trouble later. Imagine the ecstasy of making love in candlelight after a candle light dinner! Perfect, ain’t it?

And the biogas fuel is the best incentive ever. It seems it is the second best energy-efficient fuel after LPG. Sure drives the point home that we are actually gaonwaalas. Shit and make gas out of it. Did I mention we are pigs?

A man boards the train from Ulhasnagar, has a very obvious Sindhi accent even while he talks Hindi. He is one of the lucky ones among members of ‘train groups’ to have a culturally diverse group of people travelling together to their different places of work. He spouts quite a few Malayalam words, which to the surprise of the Malayalis in the group, sound very much like how a purebred Malayali would talk! It is revealed, now, that this gentleman has been undertaking the annual sabari mala trip without a break for quite some years. The few words that he knows stand testimony to all those devotional trips. What more, he relishes south-indian food and says there’s nothing in the world like the yummy food in Udipis!

Mollywood now has a new actress. The 22year-old is named Roma. She is settled in Chennai and speaks Tamil as fluently as her mother tongue- Sindhi! Roma Asrani. Though I don’t know more about this new budding starlet, I happen to know that she’s as healthy as the other leading ladies of Malayalam cinema.

<----- Roma Asrani

A lady lives in the nearby colony tries so hard to talk in chaste Malayalam, that she actually succeeds, but not before making you feel that she’s not really a Malayali. Truth is, she’s actually a Sindhi lady married to a Keralite, speaks convincing Malayalam, wears deceptively Malayali sarees and dresses, cooks food that taste almost like it came from a Udipi hotel!

All three of the above stories have two things in common. One is obviously the Sindh-Kerala connect. The other thing is that all three of them were told to me by my mother. The uncle in the train is in my dad’s train group. The Sindhi married to a Keralite lives in the same building as my sister’s dance teacher.

We had been watching the box yesterday. A reality talent hunt show was on when my mother pointed out to the celebrity guest and asked me if I know who that was. I replied in the negative. ‘I don’t get to watch much of TV, how do you expect me to know,’ I rued. She replied that the guest was Roma, a Sindhi girl who is now acting in Malayalam films.

I don’t know what she is driving at, but it is definitely sure that she is contemplating yet another such union. It gives me great pleasure that she is giving serious thought to it. Reason to rejoice? Only time will tell.

“Tu repeater hai kya?” he asked me.

“Ehh…repeater nahi…” I replied and told him that this was the first time I was doing the sixth semester. So technically, I’m not a repeater, but non-technically, I am?

No ‘friends’ in class. There are two girls who talk a little more Hindi than the others, precisely why I solve the MidDay Bollywood Crossword with them. That is one part of this class that I certainly enjoy. Some lectures are fun, the others morose. No group to ‘hang out’ with. Hari is a loner. The fun lectures are where Hari opens up sometimes, thinks openly about things he heard at work, learnt in the process…shares with the class. Other times, a general quiet descends. Nothing much to talk. Anyways, there’s no one to talk to. Almost all of whom I knew flew away last April.

Lone canteen visits…the four-seaters are over-flowing with bums, while I manage to find a place to grab my grubs in peace. Dark clouds poke me with the silver wiring in them. The silver wiring of all that I did in the one year that I lost, of things I learnt and the money I earned. Sooner than later, the mildly pleasnt hallucination caused by the wiring sublimes into vapour as the dark cloud fogs the planet again.

Why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t I have passed out with the others? Damned.

I think I know why I feel so down in the Deonar dumps.

K. Complete the following sentence with any fucking ten words of your choice:

Hari is going through this because………………………

One hand up. It’s Hari! Ok, Hari, tell us the answer. You are so smart, only you know the answer.

Ahem…yaya…all that is fine. I am going through all this because I always looked down upon repeaters. Did the ‘always good to everybody’ Hari really look down at people who had lost an academic year and scoff and haughtily think to himself that he’s way smarter than any of them?

*sheepish grin* uh…I guess…yes. There’s my neighbour who is really smart but would always fail when he was in school and I would always think to myself what a dimwit he was. It’s only in the near past that I got over that mean pre-conceived notion. Then there were many of these new faces that could be seen on the first day of every year at school.

“Hey, is that one of the repeaters? May be. Because, if it were a new student…the uniform would look newer than what he’s wearing now,” my mind would talk to itself.

It would take days to get talking to this new addition. Not because I thought academic failure was contagious or anything, but because such students were usually known for their nefarious activities and I really didn’t want to be known as one of them.

I never thought of myself as conceited as I now seem to be. My memories are shattering me.

I was getting my new college I-card made…when the guy in-charge asked me, “Tu repeater hai kya?”

The question hit me on my face like stray stones hit footboard travelers on local trains. It reminded me of how demeaning…almost derogatory that word was to me, till a few years ago.

All these while, I thought I did no one any harm. It brings tears to me. I thought I was all goody-goody in school. My hands shook if I tried to copy during exams. I never pushed anyone while climbing the stairways to the classroom, never clicked my shoes on the hard stone, never talked in class other than when of utmost necessity.

Isn’t there something on the same lines as sow a mango seed and you get a mango, not an apple?

My current class is good, accommodative and intellectually sparring and they wouldn’t look down at anyone, let alone me. But it is not my class. Yet.

Enough of things that thus weigh me down, compelling me to squander precious time and energy over such senile thoughts. Hope things do change for the better. May the dark cloud be vacuumed out of my head. Hope the industrial visit help me make friends, to help me get out of this semester in peace. Hope the projects and studies and work goes fine. And then there would be nothing to be as sorry about.

No pushing

No shoving

No elbowing

No words spoken

No words intended for me

No hard feelings

No gritting teeth

More time to read

More time to sleep

More time to contemplate

Better audibility of the mobile phone

Stone/ impassive faces replace concerned emotive ones

‘Who you?’ is the highest authoritative policy

Cushioned seats pamper my bum for now…but does it get used to it or gets offended by it is yet to be seen

Such has been my experience following the much-awaited switch to the I Class coach. More observations to follow, am sure! Wink wink.

There is this small gap between our building and the one in front of ours, where we used to hide, while playing ...shit I forgot the name of the game...lol, we called it lapa chhupi (Marathi for luka chhupi) which I had totally forgotten about until my little cousin showed it to me today...and to my surprise, I can still pass through the small passage, albeit tilted...my waist has grown and so has my paunch, so I really have to try not to get stuck between the mossy walls! For a while, I felt I was twelve again!

(Pic: Shyamal Unni. Camera: Nikon Coolpix L5)

Well well…

Two more days and I head back to college to pick up from where I left off, from where I was told to take a break for a year and join back later. Questions arose like infuriated soldiers from hidden bunkers. I hadn’t failed in one subject in 11 years of schooling. The trend began in the tenth and continued throughout, into the HSC and then plagued the two and a half years of mass media that I ventured to study.

My future looked so bleak. It looked like stone walls with graffiti on it, which read, “You’ll never get anything you wish for.” Days spent brooding, sulking. More time was spent at home, surfing the internet. Nearly a thousand job/internship applications sent- some by email, the rest by snail-mail. Meanwhile, I made a new friend. We met through Orkut and then met through a common friend.

(I still don’t get how my time can be bad when all the things happening to me right now are for the best of my interest!)

Luck bent a finger a beckoned me lustfully. A teacher at college, my mentor, got me an internship with The Indian Express. All of a sudden, a nobody, a college dropout was an intern sub editor! It was my first peek of how a real newspaper works and what it needs to be good at what I was learning to do.

2 months later, yet another job followed, but this time, I was supposed to be a full-time sub editor. Afternoon Despatch & Courier. Memories of college wafted in often, rendering me weak, forcing me to wonder if I was treading on a wrong path. My newly-found friend turned love was always there to peel that feeling out of me like you skim out the tender filmy layer off a glass of milk.

Seven months down that lane, ADC, as the paper was sometimes called, decided to down its shutters. Even as this is being typed, the matter as to who actually owns the paper now is awaiting the decision of a court of justice.

A few days later, I was offered a job to write funny-sounding scripts for a comedy show on a newly-born national channel! Wow, isn’t this like a stepping stone to whatever I have always wanted to do?

I took it up. It is fun. But now, college beckons. Hope my stock of luck ain’t over just yet.
A few more years of such booming luck and I would be where I just want to be...

At the top!

Yay!

Initial part of game plan accomplished without much ado. Can I? Oh ok. Well…bags packed and the next train to Andheri. Being much of an ascetic, there ain't much to carry other than the bundle of clothes. New place to live in, albeit a little untidy, which is not a problem at all. Great pals to live with, people who I know, are good human beings like me, creative and thoughtful.

Work is so much more fun now. A lot less struggle to get to work means a lot more creative funnies. No baggage, no water bottle for the journey, no book to read in the train. It is just me…musafir? walking down Andheri roads…something I never thought I could do, with my hands deep inside my jean pocket- sometimes for the stylish look of it, sometimes because my hands get bored of just hanging lackadaisically by my side and sometimes to search for change.

It feels good. My voice sounds better. I can sing better, make voices better. I can think. I can write.

One of my roommates, who was also my colleague at my previous workplace is something that people could call a voracious reader. He has a horde of books, strewn around his room, collecting dust like Nazis collected Jews to put into gas chambers. Yesterday I invaded the dusty closet like the red coats almost invaded Harvard long long ago and along with him, set the books in order. Newspapers were separated and accumulated in quantity decent enough to earn some ruddy money. And then there are old pizza boxes to be sold off, but my roommate believes they won’t help earn much.
The resultant effect is good. The books are in order and the study table ready for some thought and writing.

A few more days. Then pay time. Hope at least this one gets here. Till then…let the game plan roll on…

Enough

New place. New people. Eavesdropping on people talking over the phone. Trying to catch names. New names to remember. Discovering the loo. Discovering how to use the faucets in there. Recollecting them on time. You addressing someone and someone else turning around (for eq. you call out someone you think is Anjali, but is not and the real Anjali sitting next to her looks up instead and says, “Yes?”)

Answering, “Who are you and what are you doing here” questions of bosses. Discovering how to open the door (enshrined with the la hoo haa fancy swipe card system.)

It is an enchanting feeling to see on screen and hear the very words that flowed out from your head. It happened recently. One of the gags I penned had been translated beautifully by the two anchors of the show…my words now had emotions in them teamed with wondrous expressions.

Some people there will answer queries anytime you ask them. Some others walk past you as if you don’t exist, but this shouldn’t be considered rude or anything because all of them there work under pressure and are thinking of something or the other all the time. That must be how creative brains work. :P

The office is swank. Wooden flooring, good chairs. Bean bags to ponder in. good word processors on which one can also plug into youtube, thanks to a good internet connection.

Oh, and coffee and tea at your beckham and column, no, beck and call.

As goes my former status message on G talk, new place, new people…now good place, good people.

Good office alright. But getting there and getting back home from there is the struggle of a struggling ‘wannabe something BIG in life.’

Wake up with the previous night’s shoves and pushes still wreaking havoc inside the muscles. Rush to catch the designated train, pray for it not to stop en route. Change tracks. Board train. Reach bus stop. Say hi to the queue. Barter shoves for pushes. Maneuver the way to the seat. Get down, walk two minutes towards office. See the swank, feel the AC…phew, finally there!

(66 words. Easy to say, damn tough to go through.)

Eyes shut tight. Teeth grinding together. Trying to find foot-space. Taking the juts on the stomach without a sound. Feeling the ache building up in the back, feeling the pressure on the pelvic muscles…stretching to the best of their capacity. Only then do the sounds come out, pleading at first, then polite but curt and then outright rude. If things still don’t work, lighter shoves from your side and a cold stare does magic. It is way better than anything insulting to say.

Getting angry all the way and trying to cool down asap, to think of things that should translate funnily on the screen. Tough job indeed. I wonder where all that anger should go.

Voodoo dolls of BEST buses and local trains? Random rantings on the blog? Or random writings on a piece of paper and then tearing it into bits and setting it into fire? Pillow fight? Shouting out loud? How the heaven, do I vent? Hope it is not turning into a huge bubble, waiting for that fatal pinprick.

I wonder where I can get hold of tranquilisers, those shots that hunters and vets use to put the wild creatures to sleep, for a while, of course. I would love to try a few of those on a daily basis on some co- travellers, who think they can have their way about things at the cost of others. And then the ‘helpful’ police will be out looking for the serial tranquiliser.

I find silence as the best way not to hurt the caring ones. Shutting up would mean shrouding the need to crib, to vent, saving the fear of taking the ire off on the first person that cares to listen.

Enough. Time to save the angry energy for better purposes.

Time for the game plan wheel to begin rolling.

Failure of journalism

Follow the path of righteousness. Never commit something wrong, completely knowing that it is wrong. Apologise when you feel you are wrong. Keep the senses open; never take decisions without equally weighing both sides, objectiveness they call it. Bribing is bad. Taking a bribe is still bad.

Apply for a passport. Take crisp prints. Fill up the remaining blanks. Amass the necessary documents. Remind oneself of one’s date and place of birth. Talk witnesses to readiness. Photocopy each document thrice or more times. Carry yourself and the bundle to the nearest passport office. Plastic, weary smiles for the watchman there. Await your turn. Answer putrid questions. “You are not married, no?” pay the dough. Accept nods for farewells and acknowledgements. Await for ‘clearance’.

One fine morning. A gruff but polite telephone call. Summons to the local police station. Passport application verification. Witness one. Questions. Answers. Weary demeanour. Dingy room. Rude awakening. ‘Fees’. 100 bucks. “Will I get a receipt?” Guffaws.

Later, witness two. Questions. Answers. Weary looks. Curtness exhibition. Empty boasts of “You want receipt, I’ll give you receipt.” Police verification done.

Passport almost here.

New phone call. Summons for police verification of dad’s passport renewal application. Today. Dad says he’ll pay if the cop asks for fees. “Why?” “Oh, it won’t be too much.”

“But why? They get their salaries!” “One person not giving in to the cops won’t stop the corruption.” “Doesn’t mean you have to give in too!” “Look, we have had to pay illegally for the house tax papers. Each time we had to get the guy here, we had to bellow his pockets with greenies. Some things are like that. You cannot change them.” “It is because you choose to make things that way.”

I don’t know what to say. What is the fckng use of studying all this bullshit journalism and stuff when you can’t persuade your own father from giving in to bribery? What use is a passport begotten by such means? The visas and the flight tickets that follow the passport would rather fly straight to hell. The passports to hell.

A dressing table for my sister

Enough

Trains are the lifelines of Mumbai, where people from every walk of life adjust, make space for everyone. What makes this city unique is that no one complains. May be they’ll grumble and mutter obscenities under their breath but just will not talk about what is bothering them, because it is bad manners to complain. Aaighaalya and bhenchod will rattle the headboards more than the bumpity bumps of empty local trains. Patience is a virtue. Adjusting is yet another one, which does not come to all. Resilience and patience, even in the most neck-breaking crowd inside a train, is the mantra.

Smelling armpits, dirty feet sliding down your trousers as they meander towards the door to get down at ‘aapla stop aala.’ Well, the spirit of Mumbai. Ho hum! Enough. Mixing the ubiquitous tumbackoo and chunna with the thumb of one hand pressed into the palm of the other, letting the lighter elements fall into your sandal, through the gap of your toes and shoving the ‘tonic’ between the lower row of teeth and the lip, haven’t we seen it a million gazillion times?

I have had enough of this bath towel-between-the-collar-and neck middle class. It is no point telling anyone what to do. No one wants to hear you. Who you? Enough of rubbing shoulders with the common man (read, peon at Mantralaya, office assistant of PWD Chief Engineer, driver of shipping corporation manager.) Stock of patience, over. Being stoic, thing of the past.

No more strutting around penniless. No more waiting for 'we'll let u know'. No more adjusting (read, getting a sore leg and a shoulder wet with the adjacent person’s sweat) to make room for the fourth person. No more. No more. Had enough. Time for a change. Time for a game plan.

The power puff girls

Will the world ever turn around and be different from what it is now?
Now, people say, “…the male chauvinist pigs in Delhi, you know how they are….” I do know how they are, not as strongly as I am not one of them- happily so, but because I have had the misfortune of meeting a few of them and hearing quite a lot about them through friends, through media. The corners of my mouth curl as I imagine what it would be like to live in a female-oriented world in the real sense of the world and not only as it appears on dark websites…in the crude form of femdom.
An excerpt from an interview: “So what do your parents do?” “Uhh…my mother is a pilot and my father is a househusband.”
Unflinching, unhesitant and bold- proud to have a caring, understanding father at home to tend to her, to listen to her after-school stories and to ridicule her History teacher for teaching his daughter unmindful muck instead of real facts.
Somewhere, a househusband cackles. Someone is coming to see his son today. For marriage. He is pensive and excited and wants his neighbour to be there for moral support (actually to share the preparatory work!) His wife and daughter had chipped in considerable amounts from their savings and he was proud of them.
Seven girls had rejected him so far and he does not want this to happen again.
One of the girls had said that the boy was a tad too dark and they had started badgering him to use Fair and Handsome. Someone else had wrinkled her nose at the boy’s long nose and they had had him undergo plastic surgery. But the result did not please the suitors and they called it off. An engineer girl who came to see the boy had asked if he was a virgin and had stormed out of the house when she knew he wasn’t. His father still doesn’t know why that team did not like his boy.
There wasn’t a single time when he had rejected an offer. The girls would always find fault with him each time. Someone even said the boy had stared into her eyes instead of looking down at his hands, as was the custom. The father was tired. The boy himself had agreed to tie the knot with anyone who married him. He had decided that he would take care of his wife’s house and their kids.
Spineless? Meek? Pashtuns may consider this demeaning, outrageous, against their nang and namoos, their honour and pride.
Lder, well-settled women would marry men who are just out of college- fresh graduates or HSC passouts. If the women die first, the men would have to follow their wives’ corpse on the funeral pyre- the Sata tradition- a symbol of their undying love for their better ‘a little more than’ half.
Ages on, some men would have had enough. It was too bad they couldn’t divorce their wives. They were all too powerful. So, it would be decided that some men meet at a secret [place, may be at the handsomeness parlour, to chalk out a plan to swim out of this oppression. A Men’s Rights Association would be born.
Hari wakes up. In a filmi setting, his brow would be bathed in sweat and he would be panting.
In the normal setting, he looks at the clock and wonders when that time will come. It has been his all-time fantasy that his life partner makes good use of him.
Oppression is only euphemism. May this oppression also have an erotic tinge to it. At this very moment, the corners of his lips are curling upwards.

Death of a friend

It hurts when you have to say good-bye to someone very dear to you. A very senior colleague of mine today had been for the 10^th day prayers of her friend. She came back from the function and couldn’t stop the steady stream of water flowing from her eyes as I held on to her soft, wizening hand. She talked to fondly about her friend, about how humble he was and how good he was to people, so much so that I developed this strange urge, wishing I had met him at least once before he had departed.

Sometimes the world is like that.

My colleague said something, which is a matter of fact but struck me as strange. “All my friends are old are dying one by one,” she said. This reminded me of a story that I read in some children’s magazine and had adapted and re-adapted it to suit my story-telling. Three best buddies- a tomato, an onion and an ice-candy are inseparable. They live together, sleep together, go to school together and play together. One monsoon day, they decided to go for a movie. They were bumping down the street even as it poured, more excited than the three best buddies.

But from nowhere, came the sun, beaming bright, scorching light. The ice-candy started sweating. It started feeling nauseous and soon collapsed and melted away into the BRIMSTOWAD, much to the dismay of his friends.

His friends wept and they wept in the rain. It was good it was raining, so people couldn’t see them crying.

Since they had already set out for the movie, they planned to continue with their plan and proceeded to the theatre. In the pitch-black darkness, a man sat on the very seat that tomato had occupied, squashing him into Kissan Tomato Ketchup.

The onion cried and he cried. He went outside the theatre and he cried and he cried.

Then it suddenly struck him. He thought, “The tomato and I cried when the lolly died. I cried when the tomato died. Who would cry when I were to die too?”

The thought suddenly made him feel very lonely. He wept even more.

A sage who was passing by saw his pitiable state.

Crying “Alakh niranjan” he ruffled the hair on the onion’s head and asked him the reason for his sadness.

The sage smiled at him and said, “Is that all? Henceforth, whoever brings the knife to you, will shed tears!”

I remember Richard’s death in 2004, a few months after we had all grabbed admission in an Ambarnath college. It was during the exams. I remember, the next exam was Hindi and all the poems in the textbook read as if mourners had penned them. I still cannot help feeling a pang of guilt as I pass his house everyday. The pain has ceased to be a dull ache now. A guilty, dull ache. I still remember how inconsolable his father had been after he had been buried in the Fatima Church cemetery. Some gave him toy guitars, others wreaths. I had said I would be back to say hi to him. I never went back. Somehow I cannot bring myself to go to the graveyard again, without feeling nauseous and spooky about it.

Recently realisation struck me. People who had been friends, thick buddies till a little while ago are mere chat friends now, who say hi and howz u and wassup. Lots of friends, no money. Now- money, money and no friends.

Friends? Hmph. Who? What? Where?

War of the pimbles

I used to have a beautiful goatee (beard). Now, I don't. Thanks to the dirty pimbles. I am being tormented by rascally pimbles. Tiny, err...kinda biggish, roundish, red-pinkish globules of my skin, mushrooming out of my face, threatening to be extra noses. There's one on my left cheek. Looks like, it's been going to the gym, turning tough! Rough and thick and crusty.
There's a family of pimbles living on my chin. They live like long-lost relatives on either side of the cleft on my chin, like India and Pakistan, separated by the cleft of the Rann of Kutcch.
Nuisance mongers. When in the train, random objects would come n nudge at it, as if people knew how much it disturbed me and were purposely doing it to quench their thirst for sadistic pleasure. The last time I expressed my anger was when the lady with the basket of chickoos brushed her basket against the pimble on my left cheek. Cheekoos! Bah!
It is tougher at night. Groggy with sleep, when the existence of the pimble has surpassed my memory, I set my head onto the pillow, the very side that the pimble sits and clasp my hand over my mouth, not to wake up my folks.
The pimbles had started mating and creating new offsprings near and around the place that they now live, the result of which is my new, clean-shaven look. And how difficult it was to shave without upsetting the pimbles! It was like tiptoeing into a room full of sleeping chicken warming their eggs, when you have to jump over stacks of hay and still not make the tiniest of thumps. Plying the razor blade over the stubble without touching the irritations felt like riding a bicycle on a railway track.
The Government of India and the NASA called upon me last night. The said they feared that the pimbles are the handiwork of certain Martians who landed on Earth a few eons ago. They said they wanted to quarantine me, like they did to all those eggs supposedly infected with bird flu (lol, imagine the chicken going atissue, atissue!) they asked me to take my dearest thing with me. I told my baby sparrow to pack her bags.

A couple of parrots paid us a visit yesterday. They seemed to say, “Kawaak, Kwhappy Kwonam.”

Irk, ire, idiot



I met the Police Commissioner (cyber crime department) in the train yesterday. He seemed to be much harried with all the crimes and other murders happening with the assistance of networking websites and other sites.
He might’ve seen me reading Memoirs of a geisha and must have assumed that I would be interested in rantings, as he tapped at my knee and said, “Good book,” nodding his head like he had spent hours on his job poring over the book.
He must have felt miffed when I just nodded, gave him a polite smile and turned back to my book, because he said, “Do you know who I am?” with the air that he was actually the blackbuck that Salman Khan had shot.
Before I could reply, he introduced himself as the commissioner of police, in charge of the cyber crime department and went on with his saga of how the Internet is a very bad thing and how crimes have gone up on it.
I made my eyes a little big to show my surprise and gratefulness for being allowed to talk to His Highness The Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime Department) and then continued with my book.
“Do you know there are 10 lakh dirty, unethical profiles are there on Orkut?”
I nodded, not taking my eyes away from the book.
“Half of them are homos.”
It seemed as if someone had pushed him onto a chair with an electric seat, for he sat up in a start. “Did you hear that Naval officer who was married but was going around with another girl, whom he met on Orkut and then she later came to know that he was married and wanted to break off with him, but the guy killed him?”
I hummed. I didn’t care if it satisfied him, but he droned on anyways.
“Are you on Orkut?”
I nodded.
“I hope you do not put your own pictures and personal details like email address or PIN code or phone number of vehicle number or PAN card number or ATM code or bank account number on the dirty Internet.”
I said no.
“Thank god,” he said, brushing his hand against his brow as if he was wiping away sweat after recovering from a very chronic bout of diarrhea. “At least some youngsters are alert and knowledgeable.”
Memoirs of a geisha is so interesting!
I thought he understood my lack of interest in his jabber when he started looking out of the window. I soon got to know that he had only been racking his brain for more topics to entertain me with.
“You know Adnan Patrawala, right?”
I said I had only read about him in the newspapers and did not really ‘know’ him.
“Ya ya, that only I’m saying,” he said. “See how dangerous thing it is. It, I mean Orkut should in fact, be called danjurious.”
He thought I did not understand his pun. So he said, “Danjurious means dangerous plus injurious.” Cheeky grin.
I nodded, wondering whether he could see the smoke billowing out of my ears.
“I think I will ban this site.”
I was already livid. Now this was getting on my nerves.
“What do you think?”

I looked into his eyes. I stood up without taking my eyes off his. I could see him looking at me. I stretched up, took my bag off the luggage rack, opened the zipper, put my book inside, closed the zipper and started towards the door.
“Okay, you are going, but tell me what you think about banning the site and blocking it and disallowing people from using it?”
Shut up.
The train arrived at my station. From the corner of my eye, I saw the cop shifting seats and sitting by the window now, his elbow propped up on the sill, unmindful of the red spittle on it and glaring at me.
I stepped onto the station and walked with a satisfactory air about me as the train glided past me.

Life's monsoon musings

It had rained all day. The clouds yelled, pointed pointy shards of thunder at me, accusing me of things, pointing fingers. Elsewhere molten lava bled from huge caverns. Smoke engulfed the place even as water poured onto the boiling blister-like volcano hissing it down into a cold smoulder.

The ground shook as thunder struck, sending tumultuous tremors around. The rains were turmoil a while ago. Though it ceased to drizzles, it continued to send spasms of sparks, threatening to crack open yet another rain-cloud tsunami.

The system of raining is very hidey. It starts pouring in the north and then it heads southwards. It goes on and on. It continues to move on unless it is met with something like a dam. It also depends upon how strong the dam is. Some dams can hold tell mighty rivers to behave themselves. Some others act like Don- feigning power first, and then turning pesky, meek, uncouth and unfaithful. Such dams can only control big rivers for sometime. As the thunderstorm rages, the strength of the river increases. Rainwater adds to it. The lunch break is over. There are cracks in the damned dam wall. They stand cracked like pursed lips, held together not to let go.

It’s over. The dam is broken. Water gushes out, forcing things out of its way. It is mad with rage, angry at nothing particular. It is suicidal. It is a tidal wave hiding a suicide bomber’s coat inside its womb. It cannot stop at will. It is being forced to flow. It cannot help it. But it is actually good. It must flow. It must break barriers and bunds and emerge victorious and stand on the podium, not the third or the second place. There’ll be two first places and the rain god and goddess will stand there, watching all the rain that they made and all the dams they had broken together. And then the priest referee will come and so will all the audience. They’ll bow down together and the audience and the referee will garland with a golden medal- a medal for their bravery and for winning and for blah blah..

I had been watching all of this from my window. Then I had to go into the other room to look for a handkerchief.

Happy Indipindi Day

August 15: Hoisting the nation’s flag. Saluting it. Singing the national anthem. Hugging each other. Pinning paper flags on to each other. Wishing each other happy this day.

August 16 onwards: The flag’s taken off the pole, which is fine, why should it be up there all year? The paper flags are on the road, torn, worn and weathered. Flush out noses on the road, wipe that very hand on the streetlight pole or anything in sight. Spit out the snot that travels down to the mouth. Spit it on the road, spit it out of the train, sitting at the window seat, denying a seat to other weary co-travellers. Just spit spittle or mix it with red-coloured spunk available in tiny packets. Spray the mixture at the corners of all floors of the Dombivali Nagri Sahakari Bank and the State Bank of India, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, General Post Office and also colour the stones along railway tracks. Munch the contents of those packets, buy extra packets for later use, buy them for friends, and share with friends. Spill the contents into the mouths and tip the packet out of the window. One man- may be four packets a day. Four men- sixteen packets a day. Hundreds inside one train. Thousands of tiny packets on the tracks. Hundreds of trains. Lakhs of packets on the tracks. Ruffles Lays. Roasted groundnut packets. Polythene bags. Offerings of leftover and used flowers for the water-god in the Thane creek and the Mithi river. More packets. Less rainwater drains. Rainwater drains clogged with packets. Buy oranges in the train. Peel them, relish them, and put the peels under the seat. Then say, “Peels, what peels? How would I know who put it there?” Make unnecessary noise. Honk too much near Anmol Ratan Apartments. When in the train, play songs on the mobile phone with the earphones alternatively used as anal plugs. Hang out of the door and hit people walking on the platform, steal their caps, kick their bottoms. Drink and drive and rechristen yourself Alistair Pereira. Bribe the judge, ride in his car, make him resign his post! Forget everything like nothing happened. Spit about, colour things, places and finally people red. Pin flags on each other, be goody goody, hug each other, salute the flag, sing the national anthem and say, “Happy Indipindi Day.”

Liar liar!

One’s lie getting caught can feel sheepish. Silly. Queasy. Squirmy. More so, when it is people who trust you.

My lies got caught just a while ago. I had been shaking with guilt till a while ago even as words as soft as pincushions with pins still stuck in them, were being hurled at me. I’m just an amateur at lying. Have learnt, won’t lie again.

When you’ve lied and get caught, say so and it will be light. When you’ve lied and get caught and deny lying, you are in for greater danger.

more on this later...

“Culture, traditions, alignment of stars, who knows what will happen if these don’t match?”

Who knows what follows next- bouquets or brickbats?

If the purpose of this weblog is to chronicle my lifetime, this day (August 5, 2007) must be enshrined in it as a red-letter day. This is the day that I, the undersigned, Hari Chakyar told his mother that he likes a girl.

The pair of scissors in my hand was doing my sister’s craft project- making a flower bouquet. My brain, agog with activity was playing and replaying least resistant ways to tell mother what I had been intending to tell since a light year but which only became clear recently. Now that I have spilled the beans, everything seems so bright and out in the sun. Opened door.

I was almost done with the craft. We were clearing the clutter. Mom had got an empty plastic bag to stow away the paper cuttings and cardboard shavings, when I said to her that I wanted to tell her something…after my sister had slept. Mom said, “Is it something scary?” I know that was a very funny thing to say, but I did not feel like smiling then. I said, “Why would you be scared?” “It’s about me,” I continued. I waited for a moment. Do I just tell her now or do I wait for my sister to sleep? No, she’ll insist mom accompany her to bed.

“I like a girl,” I sing-songed purposely downplaying the seriousness of the issue. “You know who it is,” I added.

The half an hour before this conversation had been wonderful. Mom, sis and me were sharing beautiful jokes, I, from my collection, sis from her school and mom from her memories. That would explain that light-hearted confession.

I looked up to face mom. Her eyes had grown big and all the mirth that had been there till a while ago had drained out.

“Father and I were happy that everything was turning right about you…”

“What’s wrong now?”

“What’s wrong, you ask? Nothing is wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. (cold) You did not ask who it is…”

“I don’t want to know. All I want to say is that if the person belongs to a different community, then I’m sorry to say, we wouldn’t be able to support you whole-heartedly. And there’s still so much time left to make such decisions. Culture, traditions, alignment of stars, who knows what will happen if these don’t match? The one who had made the horoscope said that such decisions regarding this horoscope should not be taken before consulting planetary positions.”

Sister entered. “What happened? “ asked the innocent angel.

Mom looked at her and sighed. Big. “Nothing.”

“I want to know, what is it?”

“I said I’m going to sleep, are you coming?”

About spirituality among other issues…

I’ve always thought helping a blind man reach the foot over bridge is a better way of reaching god than a week long fast (read self-torture), where you deny yourselves food and water. Torturing the body that the divinity up there so benevolently gave us.

I think even the idea of fasting doesn’t stop there. Isn’t fasting supposed to be saving the food that you have and giving the rest to the needy? Like the haves giving part of what they have to the have-nots? Like bourgeoisie to proletariat?

I’m not atheist. I don’t think there is life in stone idols either, nor am I a great supporter of the Brahmos. I go to the temple when I feel like, for a change. Usually it is when I’m expecting something and mom says, “Pray to god and everything will be fine.” Dad has a better way of putting it. “Walk to that uphill temple and back, it’s a good exercise, you know. While you are at it, also say hi to Ayappa,” he would say.

I go to the temple because of vested interests, because I have something to ask of Him. Ayappa Temple in Ambarnath west is good for its quiet. I hate it when they put on those devotional tapes. The same is with the temple at Mumbra, though when it is not the tapes, it’s either music from people's mobile phones or the smoke from someone’s cigarette that make me grind my teeth together.

My idea of spirituality seems to be different. It is what sociologists like to call humanity. It is behaving the way good samaritans would, helping out. Not going out of the way to do anything, but doing what one must while at one’s own work. Helping blind men find their way. Spreading smiles. Petting animals you find on the road. Giving a seat to a wrinkled old man or a really fat woman (who’s otherwise obstructing movement inside the train compartment).

I find peace in being quiet. Being blank. Nothing to think. No idol. No prayer beads. No mat. No incense. Just me. Time with me. Quality time.

My Den

I want to build an underground house, our home. My partner has let me call it “apna den” and she benevolently responds with a tiny hum whenever I refer to it.

Heavy with worry and understanding the fact well that my plan is a little crazy and out of the world, I put it in front a colleague, who I think, holds vast knowledge about land and land dealings and where the land price is rising and which company owns land where. I asked him if my idea is feasible. Of course, he said, much too coherently, for it suddenly hiked up my hopes. Don’t Eskimos live in igloos? He asks me. See, what is an igloo? It is an underground house!

I don’t believe him now. My geography textbooks taught me that igloos were just built of ice and were at the ground level, not up, not down. But then, the textbooks could be wrong, and no doubt, my teachers had never been to the Tundra, let alone see an igloo’s insides! May be, an igloo did have secret rooms inside, a ‘den’ as I call it.

Our conversation couldn’t proceed that day.

I hadn’t wanted to burrow always. For a long time, all I wanted to do was spend an ascetic life, away from people, but closer to myself, up on a tree, in a tree house. But to my partner, that was a bit inhospitable. Or so I think. And won’t there always be the danger of falling down one great dawn, while trying to yawn in the big lawn?

I wonder how I started thinking about a home under the ground. I tell my mom what I want to do and she says all of us will die for want of air.

Constantly pondering if the plan would work out, I brought it up again with my very knowledgeable colleague. This time over, I asked him about the chances of such houses springing up in Mumbai, considering the space crunch in the city. What he said poured a whole ice-factory over my head.

He said Hafeez Contractor has been asked to build an underground parking lot for Mumbai, which will stretch from somewhere near the erstwhile Victoria Terminus to Flora Fountain. Even this plan is yet to be realised. When the parking lot is built and is successfully being used, may be the government will think of something like underground housing. Is this called left in a lurch?

I am not going to wait for some Contractor guy to build his parking lot or whatever. I am going to burrow my partner and myself a den. I want it and I will. Soon.

EYES

I tell nearly everyone I know about the people that I meet, see and talk to while in the train. I can remember them, their gestures, and the colour of their skin, the way their hands and head moved as they talked even while I’m talking about them, mimicking them in front of my friends. They all have pictures of themselves in my head. May be this is why hordes of people seem familiar, I might’ve seen them on one of such trips and then I coax my head to try and place the place to the instance.

But now, many of these characters that I meet inside trains will have a face.

I met a character today. He did not see. He feels around his way all day with a folding stick to guide him.

As the train edged close to the final destination station, our visually-impaired champion started digging deep into his trouser pockets and fished out wads of tenners. He then felt the corners of each note, straightened the dog-eared ends and counted them, placing one on the top of another.

The other pocket now. Out came currency notes of varied denominations. I assume the longest one that he felt for; he would consider the hundred-rupee note. The medium sized one would read FIFTY RUPEES in ten Indian languages and English. The smaller one would obviously be tenners. After the manual note-counting machine was done with processing, each denomination rested cozily in each one’s family bundle, inside the cozier confines of our champion’s trouser pockets.

A fellow traveller and myself couldn’t help grinning widely at each other for quite some time while we witnessed this.

Shopping qualms

Just a wheel in the machine

I am standing inside a shop where they sell cameras. I am here to get my first camera- a digital one (which means I do not have to spend dough on films and processing, but I can directly hook it up with my computer and ogle at the pictures that I clicked). The costs will eat up a whole month’s salary and a little more, but what the heck? I’m buying a camera!

The salesman inside the store just asked the owner, “without, na?” the owner nods. I feel the camera he’s going to give me is handicapped, without something means it lacks something. I ask him what it is. He says, “Bill.”

“Bill? Clinton?”

I gather he meant to say he wouldn’t give me a bill or a receipt when I would pay him. I don’t like the sound of that. My dad won’t like it. He’ll ask to see the bill, receipt and the guarantee card before he looks at the camera.

The salesman is showing me what button does what. He just put a scratch-resistant sticker on the LCD screen and does it so neatly that it reminds me of a condom!

They don’t want to pay sales tax. A bill would mean they sold something, on which they would have to pay tax.

Icky.

The camera I longed for so much is now in my hands. But I am cold towards it. I didn’t look into dad’s eyes when I said he did not give me a bill/ receipt for this purchase. His eyebrows went up a bit and then he sighed. He knows the world works like this.

I know it too. But the sacrifice of a month’s salary and a little more seems worthless now.

The shopkeeper gave me a “box piece” alright (box piece- the complete box with the camera and all its paraphernalia, so it is considered tamper-proof) but he’s tampered with my satisfaction of acquiring something that I’ve been longing to get for so, so long.

There have been a trillion, gazillion times when I see something and want to capture it, save it for future scrutiny and show others what I got. I have seen numerous things that could’ve been beautiful pictures if I was armed with a camera just then! Damn.

Then a tiny sparrow said she’s happy that I finally got a camera. It has rubbed off on me. I spent last night trying to remember what I had glazed over when the assistant was explaining what happens when you press what button. I am learning!

Why?!

Why is it that sometimes something is right in front of me and I cannot reach out to it? Why is it that sometimes things are clear and I can’t make sense of it? Why is it that sometimes I want to say things to people and am not able to do it?

I have a long path to tread on to reach my destination. A person I know whizzes past on a vehicle. I want to hail and show my thumb the way I want to go, but why is it that I don’t do it? And when I do, the person is easily out of earshot.

The milk had spilt long ago. I wonder why it is still a wound. The story was right in front of me, a page one lead story. It just doesn’t cease to prick me. Why is it that I just cannot let it go by, into the voluminous editions of time?

Why is it that I stare into empty space, thinking about nothing? Why is it that I can’t hear things properly? Why is it that I read backwards and up and down and round and round when I am reading? Why is it that I go blank when I talk to people? Why can’t I talk like others do?

Why indeed?

Blank

Bajaoing Bean...

I just saw Mr. Bean’s Holiday. I like the film. The reasons are three. One – I like it because I like Rowan Atkinson. Two – it takes you along with it, it does not leave you alone to be with yourself and sulk like you do at other times. Three – it gives a satirical eye view of the hollowness and unscrupulous acts that are committed in the name of cinema appreciation. I thought I would write about it just when I feel like writing about it, lest boredom take me off track and then make me forget what I indeed want to write.

I adore Atkinson because he can makes faces like no one else. Looking into the eyes of the people as you do weird things and know that they are watching you because you are doing things different from what others do is something that I do in the train everyday! And Bean does it so well.

He loves kids and he just cannot bear to see anyone hurt. Parts of him are inspired by the good-natured Stanley from Laurel & Hardy fame, both want to do good to others, but end up messing themselves up. Can we count the number of times he has saved a baby’s hydrogen balloon from flying off or has prevented some hoodlum from stealing a toddler’s candy bar, no matter which train has to go under or which dung he has to step through?

What keeps a Bean movie a league away from other comedies is the fact that there’s only one star in this – Atkinson himself. Other films have dialogues and they sound funny and make people laugh. Bean doesn’t not have to say anything to keep you entertained. His antics are enough to make you giggle and stick onto the screen. He’s just himself on screen, the original self. He’s genuine and does not feign things. He cannot hide emotions. He dances and frolicks when happy and jumps about, kicking things and stamping his foot down and hard when he’s really really angry. He “hmphs” and grunts and he makes sour faces. His face breaks down like that of a four-year old denied his first remote-controlled car by Santa because he had been a bad child all through the year. He throws tantrums and he acts stubborn till he gets what he wants. I have never seen him cry though, I guess there are lot of other films that people must watch to cry – here a Bean film marks another brownie point! This man is also full of surprises. You know he has messed up and are preparing yourself to see him get pulled by his collar and thrown into a prison, but hey, he’s escaped out of there before you could even bat an eyelid!

In this film, he gets to go on a holiday for free – a prize that he wins through a raffle. He gets to go to Cannes to visit a blue water, white sand beach and to reach the place, he has to fly, then get into a train and then go by bus. The film goes on beautifully like a holiday video, seemingly shot through Bean’s own camcorder, a prize that accompanied his holiday package, dutifully ‘donated’ by some gracious soul. Superb editing too. A masterpiece – a kid is playing with a toy train at the raffle draw, the train goes into a tunnel and out emerges a real train, with an excited Bean inside it!

Bean wants himself video-cammed all the way to his holiday destination. He props up the camera as he eats at a fine-dine place as he crunches lobster shells and is taught to slimy savour oyster flesh by the waiters. He has other people shoot him as he walks to the train door and asks for re-takes and re-takes and then he makes them lose their train. And like I said, he’ll do just about anything to save a kid or reunite him with his parents. On the way, he’ll meet a beautiful girl, who reminds me of my girlfriend for her delicateness and the creamy smoothness that her cheeks exude. Probably the girl starts to like him, but Bean has only one dream – his all expenses paid vacation! Still, on the way, he’ll fulfill that girl’s dream to become a superstar and makes her much sough after for autographs.

May be the girl starts to like him, but in the end, Bean is loyal to his partner, he’ll only go to bed with his teddy bear – a constant companion, though it has been denied a part of the limelight in this film.

Atkinson once wakes up to find himself in a real village, with a rustic band playing soft music, a lady in a flowery bonnet serving tea to gentleladies and gentlemen who sit talking under an orangish sun. he knows later that he is caught inside the set of an ad film!

The film takes you on a vacation to Cannes. Enough of Aishwarya and Abhishek strutting their married booties at the shutterbugs. Make way, for Rowan Atkinson is here! The golden sands, the cool, blue wetness and the warm sun. Warm and wet and cosy! I want to go to the beach with my girlfriend. She does not like sand and water, but I assume she wouldn’t mind us walking hand in hand a little away from the water.

And then there are potshots at the award film circuits. You see the director wringing his hands in exasperation and wiping his brow, pensive of how his film will be received, while the one sitting right beside him yawns. The film itself, shows the director in the lead role, running about like Kunal Khemu in a Daredevil costume while the subtitles go – from the makers of the director’s film, directed by the director, produced by the director, starring the director and so on and so forth.

While the audience yawns, Bean drops by, gets into the broadcast room and plays his camcorder tape instead of the directed director’s film and it ends with bean’s newly found girl kissing Bean on his cheek. Bean somehow gets to the stage and shines under the spotlight. Security agents and the director are up on the stage trying to get the intruder out, when suddenly the audience is on its feet voicing their appreciation with a standing ovation.

Hideously so...

I saw a moment of truth today. Early morning. Still groggy from an uneasy but eventful night, I made my way to the railway canteen at the erstwhile Victoria Terminus.
Everyone has his/her own brushes with these moments of truth. A rich spoilt brat took them a little seriously and became the Buddha.
Wishing to appease my early morning hunger pangs, I order a plate of medu wadas and ask them to be shrouded in a shower of sambar.
Soon enough, I was standing by the kadappa stand, devouring the crispy, islandic wadas floating like icebergs in the yummy looking sambar, when I suddenly felt hit by a need for coffee.
I break the wadas into smaller fragments to let them sponge more of the sambar. I eat a piece. I sip the coffee.
Yum.
But the coffee is a little too steamy for my tongue.
I let it settle for a while as I finish my breakfast.
I begin sipping the coffee. My stomach feels good.
Suddenly someone pulled my plate to the left. “Ah, some waiter. They are probably short of plates,” I assume.

This picture has been used for representational purposes only

I turn left to see who it is.
He is a haggard-looking, unkempt man of around thirty years with stubble starting to grow even on his cheek bones and he is lapping up the leftover chutney and sambar from my plate, hungrily sucking the spoon.
Silence.
I stay put for the time. I have the coffee in my hand. It feels weird. My settled stomach is suddenly churning.
I move away, partly with my guts threatening to give way to the urge to throw up and also happy that now I have something to write about.
Hideously so.

Respecting the woman

Mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, teachers, goddesses and many more of such incarnations. The woman is celebrated by her dimensions and should be revered and respected for what she is.

Certain things that I hear and see around me make me wonder if the urban man respects his woman anymore. Off late, I have heard stories of how someone in a great position, made good use of his hunky looks and swishing personality to ‘devour’ “many” of the female species. It seems he had not spared any woman colleague of his- he had either made illicit advances towards them, or had them kicked out because they expressed dislike to his ways. To cite a particular incident, he was caught lying down under the chair of a woman wearing short skirts. I wonder how these souls can sleep in peace?

A colleague of mine, Peter (name changed to protect the chastity of my blog) urgently needs to be shifted to an asylum. Or a zoo. His head touches St. Peter’s beard and his nose chokes with the clouds that our staff photographer recently caught hovering over Flora Fountain. He is a bellow full of air and needs to be pierced with a pin, ASAP.

Women are playthings for him. I have had people I know, come to me and say this guy recently proposed marriage to them and claimed to be very serious about the idea. This, when he hasn’t even met them in person! Desperate asshole! That’s just what someone called him today.

There’s an extent to which you use expletives. Which sane woman would ever tolerate a “You fucking bitch!” from anyone on this planet? He shouted that to a girl today, someone whom, he calls his girlfriend. Not in private, not one to one, but in full public view. He then asserts on how someone who has given one a job must be ‘respected’.

I wish ‘respect’ could be bought. I would buy a truckload of it, roll it into a dildo and gift it to him on his next birthday.

I don’t see him going anywhere up the ladder. He just cannot. He’s too caught up in reframing public opinion to suit his current needs. He’s the most severe case of attention seeking syndrome I have ever met in my life. Anything, for a little limelight! And the one who can’t talk sense to people deserves no respect. None.

Big mess

Beings residing in the Central suburbs – Dombivli and beyond, are not people. They are pigs. Lower animals. They don’t need water. They don’t need electricity. They manage with whatever they have. The shameless species. Give them shit any shit and they’ll take it. They don’t complain, they don’t fret. Don’t give them electricity for days and they won’t make a sound. Cut their water supply and they’ll walk miles to get a potful of the nectar, but won’t fuss. Compromise.

Make their trains stop at one place for two hours- they sit in one place, waiting patiently for it to chug on, the way Gandhiji said?

Cancel the train and they’ll only mutter unparliamentary words under their breath. That’s all. There are no questions to be asked. “Why cancelled?” Oh, like there’s going to be a satisfactory answer to it! Duh!

I happen to know what the answer is going to be. ‘technical difficulty’. Snag it seems, snag where, no one knows. It ends there. Snag they say and the pigs go “ho, hum, what to do?”

Big mess. When is it going to be about time to put a full stop to this complacency? When will people in the suburbs get a voice? When will they become people and be treated like people? And when they will, will there be more late-night candle-light vigils like in Rang De Basanti? Will people march on the road saying ‘Revolution’ like in that sanitary napkin advertisement?

This reminds me, a father pig, his wife, a son and a daughter were at their dining table. Needless to say, being pigs, crap was their staple diet. The excited son happened to say, “You know, what? Last night, I saw a dead rat on the road!”

The father immediately chided him. He said, “Sonny, how many times have I told you not to talk dirty things while having food?”

This is it. May be talking about what is going on is blasphemy. Let it be. I just can’t take it anymore. The under breath is about to grow louder. Its getting angrier each day. A revolution will come. Soon.

Linguistic inclinations

The process of learning a new language is tough. It means registering the new word and how it sounds together in separate folders, for easy access later. There are different pronunciations to take care of. There are words that sound similar but are like milk and citric acid. Some words can be replaced by alternatives, while others just have to be used in specific places. Quite some words sound crude but actually mean something cute.

The secret to learning a new language is easy. Just when you are learning a new word, link it up with something that sounds similar or sounds similar (even remotely similar will do). Connecting the words with images in the head (my goodness! Marshall Mc Luhan’s theory of media understanding!) will help a great deal, the only qualm there being that ruminating the word anytime in future would mean taking a two-step jump, from the word to the picture and from there to the pre-registered word.

Where to start? From the alphabets or with words? I decided to do it with daily usages. I decided to learn it from saying aloud, common usages such as “How are you?” and “Where have you been?” which in non-chaste English would go something like, “Long time, no see.”

The look on someone’s face when they hear you talk their language – priceless! The effort is just worth taking. To surprise them with their own language, when they do not expect you to even comprehend what they are talking, feels squirmy in my tummy.

But for the regularity! I told my tutor to teach my five fresh words everyday. And she’s teaching me for free! No fees! Hmph, and no regularity.

I’m learning two languages together. One is Sindhi- a native language of Sindh (now a province in Pakistan). The other language is cornily, filmily and too commonly called love. I’m proud to say that I’m a student of love, learning from mistakes, listening, registering, thinking, caring, a little US-Iraq and making space for each other to – literally and not quite so too, to make each other feel comfortable and cosy to fall together into the depth of the language.