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.

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?)