“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.

Fuss

I can feel my stomach being devoured by the cramps. My face shows no signs of it- it smiles normally but the eyes can’t hide the agony inside. They are cold. I am sweating all over. I can feel the sweat traverse down my legs, through the wisps of hair. All I want now is a place to sit, to kill the nauseous feel. The brunch that I just had is threatening to throw up. My head reels and I shut my eyes tight to stop seeing things go round and round.

The train compartment is crowded. The vacation crowd is in – travelling with noisy bunches of kids and irritating new mobile phones (read, with extra super-sonic speakers for the whole train). Two little girls, in their early teens remember Allah as the train stops for want of proper signals. They want to know were each one of their neighbours want to get down, so they could maneuver their way to the window seat.

This is probably their first visit to the city. I stand, holding my patience together, tight between my molars. It is beyond Thane, about time that those sitting, relieve the ones who stand. A tiny finger pokes my waist. I open my eyes and look back, I can feel them burning.

“Aapko kahaan utarna hai?”

“Kyun?” I ask.

No answer.

I can see pairs of eyes dart towards me, scornful of my curt reply. Like I care.

I continue with my trance.

I stand close to the window, holding on to the luggage rack. I need it to keep myself standing upright. I tell myself I cannot let myself go on like this. I must eat like I used to. This is killing me. My stomach never groaned as badly.

The finger pokes again. I don’t look back. It pokes again. I look back in slow motion, I fear my head will fall down if I jerk it back.

“Thoda bajoo hato, hawa nahi aa raha hai”

Pat. “Darwaze ke yahaan jaake khade raho, acchha hawa aayega.”

I am amused. Bourgeois demands indeed. Frills of comfort.
One more poke and the bomb will explode. No idea what I’ll do but the kids will surely be scared.

Just then, the couple at the window seat in front of me, get up. They have to get down at the next station. My insides heave a sigh of relief. I feel older, weaker than the two decades that I am. I let my head rest sideways on the headboard. The sun pierces into my thigh through my jeans. A bottle of water stuck into the grille occasionally drips water onto the thigh, bringing a welcome peace. I am bored, bugged. I hate to be this ill. Enough.

Introducing…my baby

I am glad I told her what I feel about her. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. As I write this, I’m missing her. But I’m sure I’ll hear her voice again, in less than twelve hours.

Where I work, I am supposed to fill pages of a newspaper with news stories that have to interest readers to make them buy the paper. If there are not enough news stories to fill the page, and there is space enough, we use a photo-caption ( a photograph with high news value, clicked by the staff photographers, fortified with an apt caption).

Here’s a photo-caption very dear to me.

Caption: Hari’s girlfriend caught in a retro mood as she tries on a friend’s glares at a recent visit to a nearby water resort.
Pic: IRAH RAYKAHC

Ande ka funda?

I had a very strange colleague. Too bad that she stopped coming a few days after I joined!

She looked every bit a foreigner, but had an Indian name. At first glance, I decided that she was some tourist who had dropped in to say hello to our boss. However, it didn’t take me much time to realize that she was more Indian than me! but that’s another story.

In the six years that she had been in the country, she had mastered the Hindi language to the extent that she could grab even the crudest of ‘Bambaiya’ slang. She admitted that even Marathi was comprehensible to her now.

Shantaram’s feat no longer amazes me.

Something that she told me before the day she stopped coming has left a bookmark in my head and I find myself going back to it, every now and then.

I have been brought up in a vegetarian family, which considers consumption of meat, eggs and alcohol a taboo. However, having studied in a school run by Goan Catholic priests, my palate has grown used to having slice cakes and doughnuts (obviously not egg-less), distributed on special days. Now, I do not miss chances to gorge on cakes, egg or no egg.

Recently, at a do in office, there was a huge cake with oodles of chocolate cream on it. I waited for my chance (acting patient) but didn’t think twice before helping myself to a second helping.

Soon after, my colleague, herself a vegetarian, asked me:

That cake had eggs in it right?

Yes, I said, knowing what she was driving at.

But you are a vegetarian.

Yes.

But you had it anyways?

Yes.

But that’s cheating!

I caught her stare. They were hazel-green/gray in colour and crystal clear, making the stare look ominous and stark naked. A split second later, I feigned being busy with something and let her exclamation fade out in the air-conditioner’s humming drone.

Now I ponder, if I am a vegetarian, I shouldn’t be eating cakes fortified with eggs. I am cheating indeed! If I’m an ‘eggetarian’, I should be eating other egg products too, which I don’t. and I’m definitely not ‘non-vegetarian’ since I do not eat meat or fishes.

Isn’t it only human to indulge in a craving? (Do we really need a foodie to understand that?)

good AFTERNOON

So, I think, I am finally a Sub Editor. (‘Think’ because, I am yet to be told how much I’ll take home every month) My first full-fledged job, this not only sounds good, but also feels good

My office is bang opposite the lanes of Flora Fountain, where newly released paperbacks can be acquired for measly sums. I have to reach office at three in the Afternoon and leave in the night and reach home amidst an entourage of barking dogs. I try not to show them that I am scared, but I think they are smart enough to gauge my stiffness.

It used to come naturally. May be it comes from the habit of looking out for mistakes in signboards and hoardings. My father would always point out such mistakes and we would together scoff at them. I see that he has started this with my sister now- he keeps pointing fingers at typo errors in newspapers and challenges her to spot the mistake. A spoilsport that she is makes wry excuses to wriggle out of these impromptu ‘home-works’.

I sit in front of a Windows 2000 computer with the games option in it manually deactivated. And it has no Internet connection. To my left, at a distance of 2-3 metres hangs a laminated picture of a smiling Behram Contractor, better known as busybee. From where I sit, it seems as if busybee is looking at me!

The people in the office are cool. The reporters are young and enterprising. The photographers are talented and talk less. The page makers are experts and fun to be with. The boss is trendy and intelligent. Oh and the receptionist says “Good Afternoon” after me every day and tops it up with a smile.

Here, I let the bitch in me come and crib about what I do not like in the place. The place rocks all right. But it urgently needs a canteen- a place to provide us with coffee or tea or snacks to keep hunger pangs at bay. Oh and I wish the boss would pay a little more attention to the content. I wonder if it hurts the late Mr. Contractor to see juvenile mistakes in the paper that he painstakingly founded and edited long ago.

When I told my father that I had an interview call from Afternoon, he said, “Oh, Afternoon Despatch and Courier?”

The place needs a little more scope for recreation. I don’t ask for a pool table or a swimming pool. But we can have tiny games on our computers? Or a few more tables in the ‘canteen’?

Well, today I discovered that the page-makers’ room has awesome speakers to catch some music. The AC there is turned on high. So you can also catch some cold there! (sniffle).

Long drives…

I thought highly of myself as someone who loved Ambarnath immensely. I still love the place for its smell, for its people, for the sounds, for all the greenery that makes a complete home. People argue that it is far off from where the ‘sights’ are and from the place that the money is. I agree, but I choose to be stubborn in this case. I will not mind travelling for two hours to get to those ‘rich’ places till Ambarnath ceases to be such a beautiful place. Such a time, I fervently hope, shall never come.

I thought I was Ambarnath’s greatest fan – a self-congratulation in mirth. But a friend who came to meet me recently pulled me down to ground level. Travelling for fun with a break from racking his brains at BITS Pilani, he had come to Ambarnath after 6 long years, a place where he had spent half of his school days. He then had to shift school, after his father’s demise.

After a brief lunch at my place, we set out to smell the air that he had smelt before he left. We walked to the place where his building used to be. He sensed something and stood stiff on the road a few hundred metres away. I sensed his uneasiness as he panned his eyes across a swank, new complex that has now replaced his home. We walk towards it silently. Rickshaws croak by, mercilessly. At the entrance of the building, we see a uniformed guard coming towards us. He waved his lathi in an irritated gesture. My friend caught his eye and I stood by, bemused. The watchman had stopped glaring and was smiling. They shook hands. My friend asked him if he recognized him. The watchman said he remembered the face but had forgotten his name. The mild wetness stood testimony to the gentle reunion. The watchman says “Jao ghum ke ao.” We walk the place with him explaining things to me, pointing out places were they would play cricket and pointing to a high wall, which he had to painfully climb to retrieve lost rubber balls. I don’t say anything; just looking on, not want to break his trance.

We then walk along a tarred road, talking about our memories in school. We brought out the tiffin stories.

We come to a set of old wooden cottages, in ruins now. Barbed wire fences and iron gates with rusty locks guard the houses that look like the official residence of a forest ranger! They were guesthouses of the DMC (Dharamsi Morarji Chemicals), my friend informs me. A few dogs bark fiercely as we step into the private area. I am scared, armed with the premonition that all dogs are my enemies and want to bite me. My friend tells me, there is nothing to worry. Seriously, his confidence amazes me. That old place looks so genuinely eerie that it will put any RGV set to shame. He scoffs as I tell him that.

We walk out to the main road. He keeps asking me if I am getting bored of this tour. I tell him that I am enjoying every moment of it. He probably thinks I am just being polite.

He tells me he wants to tour Ambarnath in a rickshaw. I think he’s kidding. Not fazed by my response or the lack of it, he walks over to a rickshaw wallah and states his wish. He makes a face and declines straight. Then as we approach another driver, this man, probably overpowered by the idea of quick hefty cash hails us back. He says it will cost a hundred and fifty rupees. My friend agrees. I let my jaw drop to whatever level it wants to. I just cannot imagine anyone paying for a tour of Ambarnath! The reality sunk in and became a grin on my face as the journey began.

We let the rickshaw halt near our school. My friend wanted to go into the school. But he just stood outside and looked at the classrooms where we had sat together, years ago. We walked towards the playground. We laughed at the fun we had during the PT periods. We would be let off onto the ground to play football. Halfway through the game, we would be exhausted and rest on the wall of the cemetery nearby, looking at the graves and poking fun at the ones who were too spooked to join us on the wall. I asked him if he remembered where we used to urinate and pointed out to the foliage behind the goalpost. On an impulse, we jumped out together and did just what we used to do during those days.

Life in a hostel had caught up with him and he was on his fourth cigarette by now. He asks me if I abused smoke or drinks. I declined, said I had tried but had quit.

The tour that lasted for two long hours spanned my friend’s life as a school kid to a teenager who lost his father early. He took me to places in Ambarnath I had never seen before. He pointed out to old rooftops he had climbed as a child, helping his father lay cable TV connections. He visits his aunt’s place and comes back misty eyed. He seems much more quieter now. He lets me into it. His aunt cried as soon as he appeared before her. She had recognized him through all these years. He was touched.

He drops me at the station and heads off to meet a few other relatives. He will soon catch the train to Mumbai, to meet friends he made in his college. But then he’ll carry with him memories- some sweet, some tender and bitter. A vision of a house that is no longer there, of a childhood that is gone in the narrow gullies of Kohojgaon in Ambarnath west.

My friend, my classmate from kindergarten to class seven did me lot of good by visiting me. He gave me an insight into the place that I now love much more. And then, he gave me my best auto rickshaw ride ever!

Atissue atissue

On the top of the list of things that I detest the most, is the cold. The common cold. Now, there are two types of the ailment. A cold and accompanying fever is a great excuse not to go to school/ work/ college project work and calls for sympathetic “tch “tch”s. Everyone loves a good cold like this- a much deserved break.

The other kind of cold is the one that afflicts me twice a year and decides to stick to me like a mushy Valentine! Bah! This is the kind of bug that wreaks havoc in my system, just when I am gearing up my vocal chords for some ‘important work’. Here I am, all set to audition for a radio jockey position and “atissue atissue” goes the signal of hartal. Damn, my system is on strike, man! Oh, these bugs just served me a notice. It sounds something like those railway announcements “Aapke nasdeeki lungs mein kucch zaroori abhyantriki karya jaari hone ke kaaran, aapki sound box facility kucch der ke liye raddh kar di gayi hai”. The railways at least express their deep/high regret for the inconvenience caused. These pests are shameless, no notice only, dhinkra!

Whatever I speak, comes out with a nasal twang. (Oh Gawd, please leave that Himesh guy out of this.) My nostrils laced with Zandu balm, clogged with something like Joker gum feels like a Virar-bound train reaching Andheri at seven in the evening. My throat is no better. It sounds like Raza Murad with a dozen cacti shoved down his mouth.

Dad says a little kanakasavam (a vile-looking Ayurvedic concoction) will help release the cough. Mom suggests the sweet Homoeopathic sugar balls. “Oh, and don’t forget to inhale some steam,” adds dad. So now, I have Zandu balm on my chest, forehead, inside my nostrils as I sit with a blanket over my head over a steaming pot of water. Though I like the sweet medicine, I told mom that I better take the black potion that dad suggested. (Psst. the fact that I saw ‘11% alcohol’ on its label has got noting to do with this.)

As for now, “Ids dime for by dext sdeam sezzun, cya.”

I wander through the linked lanes on a photo-sharing website, reading the images put up, pondering over the captions. Some are quotes from books, some, random thoughts. Others describe the situation the photograph was made in.

How I long to capture things that I see and find wonderful. I know I can write about them and paint my very own picture in words, but it still would not match the effect produced by a photograph. (Yeah yea, hot medium. Mc Luhan, I won’t forget you ever, I guess.)

One I picture that I have been carrying in my head for over 3 years now, is a circle of addicts squatting around a tiny fire, sniffing and inhaling narcotics. My mind reads out the caption loudly in my head every time I see them, just opposite Lower Parel railway station, just beneath the ticket booking window. The caption reads- ‘Two makes a duo, three make a joint’.

HE alone knows when I’ll get an eye for myself- an eye that would help me click and keep the clicks forever- to show people what I saw, a picture and not a necklace sentence strung together by beautiful words as beads.

For heaven’s sake, stop forwarding mails like these. “really god made this a miracle” it seems! UGH!! The guy/gal/eunuch who made this must’ve been really bored then. And the person who started this mail must be castrated with immediate effect and sent to travel alone, without shoes in Virar fast on a Monday evening.

Why the wedding ring should put on the fourth finger?

Thumb represents parents – oh!
Second finger represents brothers & sisters – hum ho, ok.
Center finger represents own self – ha ha.
Fourth finger represents your partner – oh!
Last finger represents your children – teeny weeny mynah moe?
Really interesting – bah!

Pls follow the below step, really god ma d e this a miracle (this is from a Chinese excerpt)

Firstly, show your palm, center finger bend and put together back to back
Secondly, the rest 4 fingers tips to tips
Games begin, follow the below arrangement, 5 finger but only 1 pair can split.

Try to open your thumb, the thumb represents parents, it can be open because all human does go thru sick and dead. Which are our parents will leave us one day
Please close up your thumb, then open your second finger, the finger represent brothers and sisters, they do have their own family which is too they will leave us too
Now close up your second finger, open up your little finger, this represent your children. Sooner or later they too will leave us for they got they own living to live
Nevertheless, close up your little finger, try to open your fourth finger which we put our wedding ring; you will be surprise to find that it cannot be open at all. Because it represent husband and wife, this whole life you will be attach to each other

Real love will stick together ever and forever.

I WONDER WHAT THIS MEANS NOW!!!