for public consumption

Kolaveri

2012-01-07T17:02:00.002+05:30

I am sure what I am about to refer to will resonate with a lot of girls who blundered their way through adolescence in the mid 90s - adulation for that devilishly-dimpled-derring-do who took over the country and whose fiery courtship in DDLJ established itself as benchmark for all teenage romance.

Till a few years ago, it would seem as if SRK had gone from strength to strength - one commercial success after another. His business sense was to be applauded - so what if he danced at weddings - show me the manual on '101 things a movie actor should not do' and I will show you one on 'Have pull, will make money'.

However, I am now beginning to get ticked off. How dare he contribute to something like Ra-one, the way he did? Minimal research and lack of attention to detail - for example on how a Tamilian Brahmin might behave or more importantly, not behave - and extreme caricaturization. The movie raked in some money because of the hype and curiosity created. Similar case with Don-2. It's almost like he thinks he is the Super-hero himself, he is Don - the guy who can get away with anything, because the audience swoons every time he throws a lazy smile its way. Or so he would like to believe.

Moving on from SRK to other rotten tomatoes found around aplenty - it angers me when film-makers dish out any shit in a predictable, formulaic manner - with the requisite number of high-speed car chases, semi-bad-dudes-with-an-underlying-intention-of-doing-good and glam dolls (given enough screen time to display their assets from every angle).

Yes, I am talking specifically about - Players. It made me mad. Millions being foolishly spent on an unoriginal idea, which if left to itself may have saved the day, but was made worse by doing that thing in hell which film-makers like to call Indianization. This sub-par movie has protagonists who decide to carry out a heist so that they can then use the Gold to build an orphanage. Abbas-Mustan - do you two really think that your multiplex audience, for whom this movie is obviously made, has the constitution of a particularly sappy fifteen-year-old girl? That you need to trot out the good old 'childhood-spent-in-poverty-sister-got-raped-so-I-turned-into-Robin-Hood' kinda crutch for your heroes?

Shame on you guys - your audience whom you insult so generously, will repeat the favor next time by ignoring your slickly-made advertrailors and preferring to spend their time and money on others with more brains and balls.

P.S - I haven't watched Players - this kolaveri has been generated after speaking to people who have and reading a couple of reviews. If that made me so angry, I shudder to think of what might have happened, had I actually decided to spent good-hard-earned money on it. Thanks your lucky stars, A-M.

A question to myself

2012-01-02T20:27:00.000+05:30

..and while the seasons pass me by
the tides, they go mellow and high
pictures of sunsets, seas and serenity
play havoc with my hardened equanimity
but resolutely I sit nailed to the chair
and think 'bout another place - anywhere
City rat - drink to that
that someday perhaps, perhaps you will
like the future to just be a thrill
of ways unknown, jobs small and galore
where success would be a by-product, no more
so will you have the heart, my friend
to drop the ball and buck the trend?

The anatomy of Anger

2012-01-01T21:50:00.004+05:30

The hot volcanic burst
A manic lusty blood-thirst
Eyes aglow and ablaze
A snarling baying cannibalistic gaze
A clogging intake of breath
Like the silence of a suffocating death
An increasingly-deafening throbbing vein
Blood like molten lava mixed with pain
Pities to the victim of such an attack insane
The misguided sod who houses this cancerous bane

Patchwork and Bollywood

2011-12-18T15:55:00.003+05:30

What is liberation all about? In today's zeitgeist, and for me, it means stuffing my work overalls into that trunk in the attic and devoting self to making the home and hearth a thing of beauty and a joy forever (or at least till the mood runs its course). Quite a radical thought.

I have been noticing on my travels, that the masses have taken up 'Being Human' with great gusto. Not even S.Khan would have envisioned a tribute as timeless and conclusive as this coming his way - fake imitations of his brand. Fake BH tees find themselves breathing the same rarefied air that an international fake is used to - clandestine consignments of them getting smuggled into the country all the way from hawk-town Bangkok, no less. Congratulations Salman, as the credit for this dubiously delightful distinction goes to your carefully-crafted mass appeal and punctiliously-performed public image.

So what have I been up to apart from drawing up wishlists and pontificating about the Khan-daan? Well, lots. For one, I saw The Dirty Picture.

Although I don't remember you asking, I would describe it as a great concept gone slightly awry. The three men in the life and times of 'Silk' (I can never get around to understanding how a person can be named that. It is like you see a construction worker walking by with a load of cement on his head and you decide to rename the heroine of your movie - Mud) and how they play dramatically different roles. Apart from N.Shah's lech act, the other two are poorly fleshed out and executed.Tusshar's character is lifeless and Hashmi's sudden transformation is too much to take for an audience who by the time that Sufi song rolls around, wants the movie to end. Vidya Balan is brave and wanton and uninhibited, a pleasure and the real reason, like her character in the movie, that people go to watch TDP for. Her acting, but mainly her skin-expo.

See, like 'Silk', I am playing to the gallery too - where would you be now had I announced my activities of the last few days largely consisted of charting out a development plan for categories in my area, looking at past trends, and market movements? Possibly, on another blog.

The year draws to a close and I still don't have a plan regarding where to wind it up - digress - last year, we went to Karwar, where we realized that tranquility does not become us, at least not unless we have paid hundreds of euros and are seeking it in the exotic locales of the Mediterranean islands or some such - so yes, we don't have a plan. But as the best laid plans of mice and men often come to naught, I want for fate to play the lead this time and fling us against whatever rocks she thinks are deserving of our lethargy.

So, to adventures planned and unplanned - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year folks!

Family ties and business

2011-10-06T14:52:00.004+05:30

Having grown up in an education-focused, private-service-destined environment, I didn't have a clue until recently about the special kind of fuel that drives the merchant class of the nation.

The Marwari-Gujarati-Sindhi commune - them scientists should do a gene investigation in order to identify that strand which infuses them with such sound business sense. Buying land worth crores of rupees, with the acute sense that it is going to be worth crores more in five years, is their daily nasta.

In my family, education is supreme and we worship the Chitragupt bhagwan, a being who was thought up by Brahma for the express purpose of keeping records of all creatures on earth - of their deeds and misdeeds - and then based on those deciding who should be allowed to go to heaven, who banished to hell. So no feats of bravery, spiritual purity or wealth creation for us. We are the diligent, academic, prudent and stern keepers of dharma.

Anyhow, speeding back to the present - my family is stuffed to the brim with people who have won accolades for their academic brilliance. From childhood on, I have been hearing that we don't have the 'business mindset', in various degrees of condescension of tone.

So the 'business mindset' was something which I associated with mercenary behavior, the tendency to sell the shirt off the back of your best friend, if circumstances so dictated.

As time passed, and Manmohan S and PC made it easier for folks with ideas to set up shop, young India started to count unlikely entrepreneurs, not necessarily from a business background, among their role-models. Yet, these were of a very different ethos than the traditional gujju business families, which young India still didn't know much about. To hell with generalizations, suffice it to say that I didn't.

And then came Levers and rural Maharashtra. Businessmen of every shape, size and ethnicity have been the pain in my back-side for the last two years. (By the way, I say this with affection in case any of you happen to be reading this). The interaction is complicated, with many nuances to our relationship - we are business partners, we are fencing foes, we are sparring bedfellows. And through all of this, I have been fortunate enough to learn so much of how a business family in India lives, feels and carries on traditions which seem unthinkable to us - service folks.

The camaraderie - I have never seen such fast friendships - you put your money where your words are. I don't remember the last time I spoke with friends I used to play hide-and-seek with. These men do. They may not reminisce about those days, because they have no reason to. They never moved away, so nostalgia does not come into the picture at all. Instead they talk about the ventures they are jointly part of - where one of them is the money-bags, the other the brain or arms.

The olde world families - Women cook. Men make money. Period. Let me tell you, those saas-bahu serials with the joint family set-up may seem alien to us - of the nuclear families and not-knowing-our-cousins-well-enough upbringing - but you walk into a Marwari household, and there are bhabhis and dewars and rich-ghee-laden mid-day meals jumping at you from every nook of the three-storied mansion (with a floor for every brother, but a common kitchen and washing place for the women). And what's more, I have encountered more than once the astonishing phenomenon of two sisters being married to two brothers, which puts a more intense spin on the concept of families getting married here in India, and not individuals. When providence is so fortunate as to have two sisters sharing the same kitchen, peace reigns in the household and that, I believe, is one of the most prominent reasons for this twin-marriage culture in the first place.

Not only do they live together, cook and eat together, they seriously look out for each other. I mean, seriously. Many a distributor have I appointed where the investor is putting his money behind our business in spite of having a growing set of ventures of his own, in order to provide a set-up for his brother's son to look after once he graduates from the local college with a B.Com degree. These men and women treat their familial obligations with such solidity, 'extended' family is not part of their vocabulary. They may curse and fault their nephews with vehemence the same as they would do their sons, but when it comes to putting food on their tables and bringing up their children, it is all one big gently-simmering cauldron without borders.

Entire towns are beneficiaries of such generosity, extending to blood and non-blood relations - like the brother of the husband of the daughter of your sister. I kid you not.

I look at my own narrow horizon of interest and the difference is stark.The generation which precedes me is still way better in terms of maintaining relationships and active involvement in the pursuits of family members, but on a tangential note, I can't help but acknowledge that the tight-knittedness which my ancestors had built with their relations is dwindling with each passing generation. Although like development and fashion, even this could follow a cyclic of its own - with Facebook and WhatsApp and Twitter, our children stationed across continents could know more about the daily struggles of each other than I did of my cousins a thousand kilometers away.

And on another tangential-reverential-must-be-said note, while most of us submit to a changing world, there are a few who change it forever. The world is mourning one such maverick and I do hope Mr Chitragupt opens the Pearly Gates for him.

The M word

2011-09-04T13:46:00.003+05:30

People keep asking me how life after marriage is and whether it is any different. That's ok. Not complaining. I am sure I have asked the occasional fellow the same question, perhaps for lack of anything better to ask.

I am not so sure about the answer to that question though.

If I list down all the things I do today which I used to not earlier in hair-splitting detail, that will be, no doubt, my answer staring me in the face.

1. Make breakfast in the morning - Yes, and not some amateur cornflaky horror, the real stuff
2. Feel guilty if point number 1 not done
3. Get driven to the bus stop/cab stand, as the day or mood may demand
4. Not talk/message/mail/interact in any other way with the significant other unless the demands of domesticity/good sense weigh heavy
5. Coordinate during office-leaving so as to reach home roughly around the same time. My time zone being Belapur and his hop-skip-jump, this needs some mathematical prowess
6. Feel pride at the spiciness and spanniness of the home on entering
7. Ensure it remains in that same order of spic-span as far as possible during time spent in it
8. Do important stuff like television watching - all sitcoms which have the audacity to present themselves for viewing while simultaneously working, eating and carrying on other important bodily functions

And of course, there are the occasional orbit-shifters - like visiting relatives, entertaining visiting relatives, buying supplies to feed two discerning mouths (but more importantly all the kitchen drawers and refrigerator shelves), paying bills and thinking up and implementing even more new ways of doing up the house.

So while a point-by-point analysis of time spent pre and post ball-and-chain reveal staggering differences, the surprising thing is that it does not feel that way on first thought. It feels like the most natural extension of life as it was. As if one was born to lead this life of domesticity. Of course, there are random longings to hit the pub or dance all-night-long. But it is not really marriage which has curtailed those activities but rather a sickening advancement of age and consequently a slight decrease in the ability to sustain interest in an all-night dance-drink fest. One would rather watch Californication - experience a vicarious hangover and be done with it.

So all you young people who just do not feel ready to be married, because of that huge elephant that's been sitting on your soul ever since you starting walking and understood/heard/ingested that marriage is about commitment and responsibility, just remember that this feeling will not last forever. And that you must wait till it goes away.

Marriage may be about C and R (long and dirty words, do not ask me to write them again) but for me, it has been about doing things together, making plans together, being-in together, going to bed early together, getting hoodwinked by furniture-selling-thieves together. And for those who believe in more tangible proof - marriage is easier on the pocket than singledom. The initial investment into presentable-furniture and flat screens bears good experiential dividends and you would have got those at some point anyway, they are less correlated to marriage than again, a sickening advancement of age and along with it a desire to have your abode not look tsunami-struck. So there are economies of scale and distribution of labor and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

So C and R notwithstanding, wedded life has its moments.

So far, so good.

War

2011-07-16T17:51:00.002+05:30

Perhaps more has been said on the subject than is required.

I don't want to say anything about mourning and grief, about shock and loss for few, and voyeurism for many, about an impotent government machinery, treacherous neighbors or moles in the midst.

For one, I don't think the government - its intelligence and police departments are entirely to blame on detecting this one. Rahul Gandhi's statement may have been insensitive but not entirely untrue. And in any case, the BJP is a complete ass to go and stage protests over this and even stoop down to the ridiculous level of suggesting primary and secondary education for him. If the BJP thinks that the people of India entrust it to lead the country into a more peaceful and developing era, it is delusional – it may have forgotten Babri Masjid, but we haven't. Furthermore, we don't tend to recall all those times when danger is averted through vigilance and swift action. Search online and you will find at least a couple of these every month, many of them in the chronically troubled regions of our country. That is another sad truth – a majority of us wake up to terror once in every two years (barring the people who lose their family and friends for whom every day must be a struggle), but there is a significant number of people in this country who live like that constantly. So much so, that civilians are trained and armed by the government to fight such terror (Salwa Judum in Chhatisgarh being a controversial example).

No. The government within the sphere of its present defense mechanism and policy could not have done more. Of course, the fact that the proposal to create a body called the National Counter-Terrorism Center has been gathering dust since the time it was proposed in April 2010 by P Chidambaram, reflects an utter failure of the government to create new policy and redefine how India should battle terrorism.

I don't claim to know a lot, to be very intelligent or a supreme visionary. But I have had enough and I don't believe that the answer lies in knee-jerk reactions, or a change of government.

India needs a complete overhaul of its defense and counter-terrorism strategy. A new policy that will trickle down to the very grass-roots, affect you and me in its execution. Gone are the days when only the government and its military, police and intelligence departments could be expected to blow the winds of change. The enemy is attacking me and my family and if things are to change, we have to be equally involved in that change. Maybe take a few pointers from nations like Israel, who are surrounded by enemies on all borders and are still one of the most developed nations in the world with the highest life expectancy and usage of solar power. Israel is also the highest spender on defense as a proportion of its annual budget.

Yes, we could adopt a thing or two.

We need better border defense, better equipment for tracking invasions, more advanced technology and weaponry. Case in point - the high-tech boats that were purchased after December 2008 to patrol the seas are lying unused because of the huge amounts of petrol they require.

We need to be ruthless and perhaps inventive in cleansing our own territory of terrorist elements. Like cloud computing, we should enlist the support of civilians for doing this - encourage citizens to report suspicious activities and characters, which are then investigated thoroughly by the authorities (a thorough investigation does not mean giving every suspect the third degree - remote surveillance and background check should be enough to eliminate many of these suspects). We should give civilians easy access to the police for reporting any irregularities they encounter - like unattended bags, abandoned vehicles, etc. We should make that a way of life - I see a bag lying on the railway platform and if nobody comes forward to claim it, I call the police. There will be false alarms, but even one successful detection is enough to justify the manpower expense. Further more, we need CCTVs at railway stations, bus stations, airports, cinema theaters, crowded public places. And personnel manning these CCTVs at the HQs.

We need better infrastructure and disaster management. I read someplace that the CM of Maharashtra could not get in touch with the police commissioner after the blasts due to network jamming. Fire trucks, police, ambulances should be the first to reach ground zero, instead of the media.

Finally, to effectively execute all of these, we need more militarization in our people. Compulsory conscription for both males and females over eighteen years of age.Military service for all doctors and engineers even. A reserve army of trained civilians at all times, who can rush to the scene of attack and provide relief and rescue, or even combatant services till the time the police, army or the Black Cats arrive.

All this may sound radical and unsavory. All of these suggestions require huge levels of commitment from We, the people. We are a nation that loves our food, songs and Bollywood. But this new reality is a game changer. And the first step towards killing the enemy is to acknowledge that there is one in our midst, even now as I walk towards the bus-stop to go do my non-controversial job of selling soap. India is no longer living in peacetime. There is war underfoot.

Doctor Who?

2011-07-03T00:10:00.001+05:30

We live in a strange country. Like no other.

The other day I spent close to three hours in a medical shop. Have I ever before disclosed here on this blog that I love shops? Apart from them being pretty much my office space most days of the week, you get to know so much about a city, a town, the people that live in it by standing around in a shop. It is full of things that people buy, take into their lives. More insightful is to see how they buy.

I urge you to spent ten minutes the next time you go visit a shop, just standing around inconspicuously, observing folks as they come in with their kith or kin, browse, ask for things - at times very specifically, sometimes leaving the decision-making to the shopkeeper, haggle, occasionally socialize, leave.

And let me know how it was. It fascinates me.

So anyway, I was in this medical store. Never mind why. Run by a patriarch and his two younglings. Handing out relief to patients and relations with the flourish of a doctor. Two instances which stuck -

A man walked in - I can only guess at his profession - blue-collar for sure, in his thirties, rough and stubbled, he said - Aurat ko cold aur fever hai.

The shopkeeper - Aurat ki umar kya hai?

Our man - Aurat hai.

The shopkeeper - Haan, aurat hai toh theek hai, lekin badi aurat hai ki chhoti?

The man - Abhi aurat hai meri. Humse thode naa badi hogi.

The shopkeeper - Haan haan, aapse kaise badi hogi. Yeh lo.

The man - Theek hai. Waise fever se zyada cold hai.

The second one is more telling. A woman hesitatingly sidled in, looking like a frightened deer caught in the headlights with a bear at the wheel. She spotted me and called me to her - half-beseechingly, half-shamefacedly. I went - this happens sometimes, people think I am part of the staff - she hissed into my ear - Ek mahina das din ho gaya.

I was at sea. I asked her - Kya matlab?

She whispered - Ek mahina das din, nahi hua.

It dawned on me. And simultaneously also on the shopkeeper. He came to our part of the shop and gently prodded her for a bit, before she told him the same thing, poised to jump into the nearest pothole all the while. He handed out the remedy, with the practiced ease of a gynecologist. Told her how and when to take it and what to do further if it did not bring about the desired results.

Such instances make me suddenly aware of the length, breadth and depth of this country and how little we know of it. About how much we take for granted, which some people can only have substitutes for. The chemists. Part-shopkeeper, part-doctor - handing out ointment minus lozenges to the great unwashed. And probably making a more honest living out of it.

Parody - Bechara DK

2011-06-27T01:30:00.001+05:30

Daddy mujhse bola
Jaakar roti kamaa
Education ki shakal mein
Paisa mat jalaa
Maa ki daant sunkar
Kabhi toh jaldi tu bhi beta jaaag, jaaag, jaaaaaaag..

Maine mann banaya
Banoonga Radio Jockey
Kyaa footballer, kyaa cricketer
Kheloonga sirf hockey
Naam apna alag ho
Aisi hai mujhe unique si yeh aag, aag, aaaaag..

Tina ne lagaaya
Jhapad ek mujhe
RJ ki pagaar pe
Ek pyaas bhi naa bujhe
Woh toh khaye mewa
Aur roti sang ghee mein luthputh saag, saag, saaaaag..

Men in Shorts - warning - nothing to do with Cricket

2011-04-03T09:52:00.002+05:30

Men in shorts do something for me.

And before you get any ideas, I am not talking about lithe limbs encased in skimpy gear challenging my modesty, you know the type. No, those don't do anything for me.

I am talking about something quite special, and weird. If you know me by now, these two adjectives are irrevocably linked.

Sometimes when I am coming back from office, all a-fluster about some or the other traffic nightmare, or cabbie or auto-wallah, or getting home at 10 pm instead of 9.30 as planned, I catch a glimpse of a man or two, maybe in-between forty and forty-five years of age, flecks of gray starting to show, wearing a colorful half-sleeved shirt, with Hawaiian prints or something. You know. And shoes without socks. And of course, those shorts.

He is usually up to something mundane - walking the dog, picking up groceries, kicking up the scooty.

It fills me with a strange longing. To have a life. Where I can come back home by 7.30, still early evening, with the hope of doing something productive and useful and fun with the rest of it. To have a home, to be able to get chores done on a weekday too. To keep work where it belongs. The way I have seen my father do it for as long as I can remember. In shorts.

Tell me your dreams

2011-03-09T17:53:00.001+05:30

Sigmund Freud said that 'The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises'.

It is a rare day in a month for most people when they come face to face with their subconscious, they are jolted by the encounter, even betrayed perhaps, by the subliminal existence of it.

But there are those few who suffer the lot of a host whose guests have overstayed their welcome, guests who are constantly lounging on the living room couch, flipping channels.

As one of those people and I am basing my conclusion on the disturbing fact that it has been many moons since I had a dreamless sleep, I am curious to understand the nuts and bolts of it. I want to know what these dreams mean - because most of them are sinister, and whether they happen to any other people I know with such alarming regularity.

Are any of you readers persistent dreamers too? Or perhaps the difference lies in the fact that I remember all my dreams?

I read somewhere - Man is a plaything of his own memories. While dreaming incessantly has not proven to be detrimental to my well-being till date, except for the fact that I am not really achieving the dreamless NREM state for long enough, I am sure that it is a result of something that is not quite right.

Meter down

2011-02-27T16:30:00.000+05:30

Fact - Cabbies in Mumbai have become so choosy about the fares they take on that there is a higher likelihood of dear ol' Salman giving you a lift in his gorgeous Audi A8.

Yes, that is a fact. One that has led to many many instances of the overactive BP to shoot above its lakshman-rekha for me. I absolutely can feel the difference. The Mumbai of fifteen years back where any business was good business and today - where even cabbies need their afternoon siesta, evening adda and night-time cuppa.

It flummoxes me. Or did. Until just recently. And dear readers, I believe I have cracked the code.

No, our cabbies have not become owners of super-fabulous hidden treasures, nor have they attained nirvana and no longer want the money. No, they are just managing their time and business better. How?

Mobile phones. The Mumbai of fifteen years ago maybe had a few techno-savvy adults and some tata-birla-godrej-brat-types sporting these gizmos. Obviously no longer the case. Much has been spoken about how mobile phones are and are going to even further transform the lives of the rural population of the country. What is closer to home is the way it has transformed the lives of the cabbies around. Their phone numbers are handy around in the offices and with select individuals and they design their days and nights around these callers. Even the yellow and black ones. So a cab with a couple of drivers stuffed inside snoring away means that they must have done late night or early morning duty and probably have a few such assignments lined up for today also. So no point waking them up.

Gone are the days when you could just hail a cab and expect it to take whatever you had to offer. If you want constant and uninterrupted taxi service, then get to know a cabbie, get his mobile number and be sure to call him a couple of hours before you want to go someplace. Yes, such is life. Supply and demand. If you don't like, become a cabbie yourself or if you are the Forbes 500 variety, start a taxi service.

Love-shove

2011-02-19T12:17:00.002+05:30

I am not a big fan of Valentine's day. Have always been conflicted about it, like I have about most things. So a part of me shuns the 'celebration' so to say but another part (or maybe the same sneaky part) also likes it when there is something special going on.

But this post is not about that. Let me get to the point.

V-day 2009 - A and I decided not to give each other anything for V-Day, or behave as if it meant anything to our hardened twenty-six year old selves. It was the first one for us and soon after we had started going out. Mush has pretty much been anathema for me upwards of the age of twenty. So we decided not to bite the bait of commercialization. Lo and behold, I was gifted a sweet little expensive Swarovski teddy bear (I still don't know what to do with it) No fair, Mr A, said I! But secretly, I loved the gesture.

V-day 2010 - Again we didn't make a big deal of it. It was like any other day with maybe more fine in the dine than otherwise. But I woke up to the smell of roses. My secret evil little self did dance a little jig of joy.

Now cut to V-day 2011 - I go to office, travel to my market even, come back early, feel terrible about not getting him anything , go rushing to the nearest boutique, grab something that would look good on him (admittedly not the best threads in town, but it is about tradition, isn't it?) and get back in time to get ready and looking good. He comes sauntering in, carrying his self and his declarations of love, sans any restaurant bookings even.

Sigh. I read someplace recently that 'Fairy tales do for women for porn does for men - set unrealistic expectations'. While no rustic hillbilly in the department of charm and chivalry, A has come of age I guess. His acts of love have transformed from getting me flowers to getting me a Demat account. Well, love has many forms, and then again, so does a Demat account.

Chronicles of a shameless bride-to-be

2011-02-06T14:39:00.002+05:30

Of course it has been too long. And don't tell me you didn't miss me.

Somehow, I don't feel like writing so much nowadays. While trying to make output a significant multiple of input in the machine that is my life, I let the music pass by.

Writing is like music. It is no surprise then that the times I feel like writing the most, when the desire grips me like a heart attack are when I am watching something sublime or when I am listening to some great music or when my brain cells are mildly soaking in alcohol.

Yes, the good life. The good life makes me want to take to the pen with a vengeance and churn out philosophy and literature.

While on the subject of music, it is a gift to be able to get this affected by it. Not everyone is. And I sort of feel sorry for them. Music to me is more than just something pleasant to listen to. It defines my moods, takes me routinely to my happy places, inspires me, provides an uplifting force when I am Down in the D's.

Back to more mundane things, shaadi preparation is languishing and I am not able to bring myself to do anything about it. It is a good thing then I don't have to do much. The honeymoon location has been settled upon and not much progress has been made beyond it. Ankit thinks that I am the biggest free-rider that ever lived and I quite agree with him on that. He tried very hard to make me take a constructive interest in planning it out and I did comply. I lugged around a copy of the Lonely Planet for a while, and I did zero in on the places we should go to. Now it's his job to make that happen, innit? Work-wise this is the year when I am going to set myself on fire. Like they say - Success is not a result of self-combustion, it is the consequence of setting yourself on fire; and I believe I need that kind of success to be able to give it up someday with the satisfaction of been there and having done that well. Wonder of wonders, I am losing weight as well. A result of drastic changes in eating habits I am sorry to say, and not a healthy well-exercised body. But I have tried so hard to put in the right process for so long, it just does not work out. What with shuttling between office and travel and JVLR, gymming is a distant dream. Well, I should have a bit more stability in my life once there aren't two homes to toggle between and then I shall valiantly take it up again. For now, this will have to do. Nobody wants to see a pudgy bride.

And then there is the usual reading, watching movies and totally living it up on the weekends happening. Have been getting back in touch with some long lost pals - school friends, only to happily realize that not much has changed. And here is a theory - kids who perform well in school tend to continue to perform well all throughout life. They find rewarding pursuits like banking, business management, high-flying consulting and marketing careers and do as well at those as they did at their geography and algebra. The seeds of confirming to conventional standards of success sown early bear fruit all through. Well, congratulations to us.

On another rather fruity note, I have also become quite the winophile off-late. Vodka mixed with red bull in paper cups is a distant memory. Tis Merlot and Sauvignon which do it for me now. I do manage to lead a good life when I am not prancing around in a sack or clothes which look like that in some rat-infested godown, you see.

Des ki Dharti

2011-01-05T22:19:00.003+05:30

People in villages have a lot of time on their hands. As well as a lot of curiosity in their stomachs.

I say this with experience - whenever I have gone to any village, I have had at least eighty percent of the population which is sitting or lounging around on the streets and in corners, come and surround me and my colleagues and stare at us like we were fish inside an aquarium.

Imagine talking to a dukaandaar about Lux and Knorr and having fifteen men standing around listening keenly, almost expectantly, like you were demonstrating to them how to turn monopoly money into the real stuff. They really do listen, and they don't shy of making their approval and concurrence audible, when the situation so demands.

Today I also encountered a rural balak - a smudgy-faced, rotund little fellow tugging at his father's kurta and pointing at something in the shop, all the while whining for him to buy it. He had to keep at it for a solid five minutes before his father, engrossed by the exciting products that my salesmen were brandishing, paid any heed.

Turns out he was raising hell for a toy gaadi - a square little plasticky thing, nothing like the sleek gizmos from hotwheels and more that his urban compatriots waste their time with. But a car it was nonetheless. This must be something programmed by the Gods - boys and cars. It would be an interesting experiment to see whether a boy kept isolated from the influence of advertisements which show great dare-devilry performed by other boys in fancy cars and also any movies which are pretty much advertisements for similar stuff on wheels, would still crave these toys like they were one inside the womb.

By the way, did you know that the government appoints some families in each village who are in-charge of distributing rationed and subsidized atta, chawal and shakkar to other BPL folks in the village? These dudes have a license and even make paltry margins. The government surprises me from time to time, by some rare display of efficiency.

So, as you may have guessed, I did some village hopping today. And our villages are something else.

Poultry and Cattle
For space they battle
A family of fifteen
Is considered pretty lean
The oldies have time
Their stories as easy as dimes
Their children did stay on
Tilling land on which they were born
But the grand-kids are not so stable
They dream big and think they are more able
They study and then they go away
Life in a big city - seems glamorous any day
As clerks in courts and teachers in schools
No doubt they do write their very own rules
But who will sow the crop now and who will till
Leaving us hungry or footing a huge import bill

Fourth

2010-12-07T01:28:00.001+05:30

Raju was running late. It was the 4th of the month.

Flying through the by-lanes of Kalbadevi, dodging tempos and thelas, the occasional car, and people - vendors, pedestrians, people generally passing time on the road - he would have looked at his watch every two seconds, had he had one.

Watching his light-as-a-feather, bony little self almost glide the air currents, one would think he was no more than five or six years old. He would actually turn eleven this year, or so Anees chacha said. He and his family of three begums and seven children then had been around when Raju's pregnant mother had been picked up by a local NGO coming once a month to round up severely ill slum-residents needing urgent medical care and taking them to the nearest municipality hospital. His mother had disappeared after his birth, and the NGO volunteer had delivered him to the neighbor - Anees chacha's doorstep. Chacha had accepted him as a gift from Allah and the newest member of his ever-expanding family.

That was eleven years ago and here he was now. A rag-picker/scavenger by day and waiter-boy at the Good-fun bar in the evenings. Sometimes, the lala at General kirana used him as a delivery boy and sent him to some of the affluent neighborhoods in the vicinity with parcels of atta and tel.

As Raju passed lala's dukaan, he waved out to the portly figure sitting behind the counter. Lala looked at his flying form and shouted - "Abbe kidhar bhaag raha hai be, bawla hai ka!". Further on, as he neared the police thana, his urgency to immediately be someplace else become much more acute, but he slowed his frenzied pace to a brisk trot, so as to not attract attention. As a young urchin around this area he already knew that getting in trouble with the police was as easy as one of them noticing his seemingly purposeless existence.

As he turned that last corner without incident and came within sight of his destination, his feet grew wings again and with the single-minded focus of an Olympian near the finish line, he sprinted the last twenty meters faster than Usain Bolt, just as the clock struck one and the gates to the Hanuman temple started to shut. He flew in and sat down, just in time to have a man put a plate in front of him and another ladle out a huge portion of freshly made, piping hot, deliciously aromatic - khichdi onto it.

Crazy Beautiful

2010-12-03T19:04:00.001+05:30

The Terminal. A movie about a man who spent nine months at an airport terminal in NYC, waiting to be allowed to pass into the city so that he could collect the signature of one of the greatest Jazz legends in the world, something that he had promised his dead father he would.

When was the last time you did something like this?

Pages from my Diary?

2010-12-01T15:11:00.003+05:30

An episode of my life which I view with a lot of amusement now and what had seemed to be the biggest sorrow of my life at the time - When I was a kid, I underwent some trauma. My mother was fond of having my hair cut really short - the style used to be called a 'Boy's Cut', no less. Saying she was fond of it, is actually camouflaging the true intentions.She was just not into taking care of long hair - the oiling, washing, combing, braiding, delousing that 7-year-old hair demands. It's another thing that I hated that look and would cry every time a reflection happened to fall upon my eyes or imagination. I thought it made me look like a boy, a rather pudgy, nonathletic one at that. And like all self-respecting 7-year-olds, I hated boys.

When my sister grew up a little bit and become the shining star that she is, I would always be compared to her - on her willingness to get up and start dancing, on her happiness and cheeriness in general, talkativeness. Nearly half my family prides itself on the words per minute they can chalk up, and are also very culturally inclined - singing, dancing - and actually very well - every time somebody sneezes. So a high premium was laid on such abilities and more importantly, inclinations. I, on the other hand, was into being left alone, watching from a safe distance. Not much of a talker, and thinking that I was too fat to stand up and display to people all my wobbly bits, I would fight tooth and nail to not be made to do that. This sort of stuck, this image of me being a quiet little thing. More so in my mind that anybody else's I think. And it also kind of led me to develop an alter-ego. I was uproariously gregarious with friends around - the bubble in the champagne and the rocker in the house. It is only over the past few years that a sort of merging of the two has happened.

At 15, I did not know any boys. Of course, I thought about them. I was interested. But just didn't know any. So it was really interesting going to these coaching classes where I encountered boys for the first time. There was so much talk those days about who likes whom, who said what to whom and about whom, who looked at whom - you get it. I found it deliriously fascinating - building mammoth situations around these exciting happenings in my head. Of course I also found the time to study, hard. That was the other thing I did.

Somewhere along in the next couple of years, K happened. My first love, or so I believed. He was the romantic, edgy, SRK-lookalike who would make my silly heart race at the time. And so passed three years. I did have fun. But I do not remember any of that. What remained is what took over five years to heal after it crashed. For the latter two of those three years, I kept it from my parents, assuring them that it was over. And when I finally came to them distraught that it had actually ended, all my father said to my mother was - I am glad that it is finally over now. I don't think I learned anything from that experience immediately. In fact, I went over to the other extreme of being terribly cautious and introspective about what I actually wanted and felt. Today though, I am a strong advocate of co-education schooling, of snapping children out of excessive day dreaming and of welcoming them back when they stray.

Due to all of this drama, I have this one regret - I did not spend as much time or thought on my graduation schooling. I could have done more. I feel I did not utilize the resources at my disposal well enough - both internal and external.

Life is made up of a million mistakes - misplaced notions and wrong actions, things which seemed life-threatening then and only bring up that warm glow of nostalgia now. I thought I was absolutely right and knew everything at 15, at 17, at 21. Thoroughly confused at 25, I knew I was wrong. Here I am now, at 28. Having been through the veil to the other side - where there is no love and no friendship, getting back just in time. Hanging on to the few solid friendships I have for dear life now - nothing can come in the way - no missed birthdays, no non-appearances on important occasions - nothing. In love - understanding the true implications of that word - to let some battles pass, to let some habits die hard, to embrace some wrongs, to work up some excitement at the end of a long hard day, and most importantly, to let kindness win over righteousness.

Long due and completely true

2010-10-16T15:10:00.001+05:30

It has been long
Since I wrote a song
A streak of love sublime
On the vast canvas of time

When it entered my life
I was fraught with strife
Watching myself with a wary eye
Wrestling with demons of years gone by

But it was insistent and patient
It came at a good time too - perfectly stationed
I forgot to look back
Under its persevering attack

A year, two - under the sun
Enough for me to know it was the one
So I bound it to me more tight than anything
And now I wear it on my hand in the shape of a ring

Women, ah!

2010-09-30T21:02:00.000+05:30

Last weekend I went and watched The Vagina Monologues and I must say it felt weird. I will also say at some point in this post that it was brave and new age (it has been around since the past eight years too) but the first thing that struck me about it was that it felt - weird.

Note that I do not say it was weird, but that it felt weird. Hearing the word being said out loud, so many times, like it was a perfectly legitimate word, insinuating that the utterer of such a word was neither deranged nor an incorrigible pervert. What a notion!

On a serious note, it was a series of monologues, dialogues - all stories depicting a certain theme. An exasperated housewife, an elderly lady, a young girl, a sex-worker, a victim of rape. And needless to say all these themes had something to do with sex and the V-word.

The acting was immense. It was unconscious and funny, the imitations were awesome - the dialects, tones, accents - Parsi, Marathi, Punjabi, Brooklyn - all perfect.

I do recommend it to you ladies and yes, to you too, boys.

On a different note, Marilyn Monroe once famously said - I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.

As a working woman, I find myself trying to be a man sometimes. Not a lot, but it's there - the consciousness of the corporate world being a man's playground and of me - being a spade among clubs. Some people would put a different spin on it - in this age of everybody wanting to play the diversity card, a woman has a better and brighter chance of climbing the ladder etc. I am thinking it all boils down to celebrating the differences - I may not be able to joke with my boys, my team, with the same rambunctiousness and raunchiness as the average guy, but there are ways in which my unique womanly touch does manifest itself. I guess it is about recognizing that and being comfortable with it.

Some good news though. The CEO of a consulting company just recently commented on a study that his firm has done on the strength of the female economy and its influencing power on major purchasing decisions, saying that companies that are ignoring the woman consumer are digging their own graves.

That's right, Mister. You don't put an online payment option for the electricity bill, being Neanderthal enough to think that women nowadays have the time to ferret out post boxes and drop boxes and such like to deposit payments, then I will not purchase electricity from you ever.

A new beginning

2010-09-19T13:29:00.000+05:30

She ran into the building, only just managing to register how impossibly tall it was. Last she had been in this part of the world, structures that stretched a 1000 feet into the stratosphere, were a rarity.

She came abreast a bank of ten tall high-powered elevators - opening-shutting-beeping, making the world aware of their super-tech presence.

Immediately stepping into the one that opened up, she looked around for the floor buttons and could not find any. And then out of nowhere, a flap clicked open in the wall to her left and a head sprang out. Yes, a head. After her heart had crawled all the way back from the back of her throat to the chest area, she noticed that it was not a human head.

"I am the lift genie. Which floor please". Trilled the head in what can only be described as a robot's version of a sing and a song.

Shaily was stunned. Admittedly, she had spent the last five years in Motihari, trying to teach advanced and efficient techniques of breeding cows to farmers, but she had no idea that the world had transformed so much. And this was Bombay, Mumbai. The city she had mostly grown up in. The city which she claimed to know like the back of her hand. The city which she had thought would never be 'India's Shanghai' in her lifetime at least. And here it seemed to be making Shanghai's high-rises look like caves..

"Don't worry, I am here to help. Which floor please".

At this statement, Shaily looked around trying to locate a camera perhaps, through which some person someplace might be monitoring her reactions and accordingly feeding in speech to the robot. Anyway, she was getting late, so she looked at the head and said - thirty-five.

"Thank-you. We will have you there in no time at all".

The lift gave a lurch and started ascending speedily and suddenly like somebody had set its rear-end on fire. She looked at the mirror and saw a weather-beaten, but still attractive thirty-five year old face. Maybe slightly disoriented at the moment. But the determination shone through nevertheless, to clinch this one.

A talk

2010-09-19T12:46:00.001+05:30

It's a tough time my love
I fear I will melt away
Under the strong gaze of the sun
During these round the clock days

The mind is fiddling
With doubts anew
Peace is a bird
That long since flew

I need some fearlessness
Or at least some devil-may-care
To get back to strength
And go where eagles dare

Play - One on One

2010-09-13T01:13:00.003+05:30

Today I went to watch a play called - One on One at the Tata Experimental Theater, Nariman Point.

This experimental theater is a smallish one with maximum seating of around a hundred people. Which is probably enough. The ticket prices are reasonable, the crowd is well-behaved and the plays vary from being serious bringers-on of Why-did-I-subject-myself-to-this to This-is-exquisite-and-I-want-to-marry-it.

The play today was one of the later variety. The concept itself was delicious - a collage of ten minute acts written by Mumbai's best playwrights on topics which intrigue/annoy/delight them about the India we live in today. To top that, the acting and no doubt - direction was superb, in some cases rising above the material.

Some of the notable performances were by Anand Tiwari, who is the guy from the Tata Tea Jaago Re commercial and some motley roles in various movies, Rajit Kapur aka Byomkesh Bakshi, who has come a long way since his cycle-riding-dhoti-wearing days and Amit Mistry, who plays a timorous terrorist-batchmate of Kasab's going through a crisis of identity.

The transitions between the pieces were made swiftly and silently and the actors seemed to know the audience well, successfully manipulating it into laughing and clapping at all the right places.

I highly recommend it, not only for its obvious artistic brilliance but also the high entertainment value. Who says artsy stuff, that too the very niche experimental kind, cannot be paisa-vasool? Who, really, needs a Dabangg?

A tribute to Piano Man

2010-08-28T09:55:00.000+05:30

Her eyes are on me
I know it, o I do
My fingers tremble slightly
Remembering playing for her too

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

She sits with a vodka in her hand
In a tiny red dress
I am belting out the notes
I couldn't care less

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

I know she knows
I know everyone knows
I laugh with the old man at the bar
He is me, in another time, in younger clothes

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

The room is dark
And her presence the only glow
She finishes her drink and gets up to leave
I wink at good ol' Jerry, getting on with the show

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

I sing there every night
And they all sing along
There are new old men
Living their lives in my song

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

There are waitresses, pretty ones
And many other princesses
But there never is her again
My girl in the tiny red dress

For I am the piano man
Getting paid by the sheet
She is the daughter of Mr Coone
With the world at her feet

Independence Day

2010-08-15T13:07:00.000+05:30

Do waqt ki roti nahi, toh ek baar hi sahi
Marne ka freedom zaroor hai, azaadi hai yahi
Kuch log kar aate hain duniya bhar ke chakkar
Kuchhon ne zindagi guzaar di seh kar thanedaar ki akad
Gulami nahi hai British ki aaj, toh kya
Neta hai hamare maalik, daur hai yeh naya
Pet jab churmurata hai, toh bech aate hain maa beti
Aatma toh chhodo, ek healthy kidney aadhe saal ka anaaj khareed deti
Padhe-likhe hain hum aur aap, humko kyaa padta farak
Kharab sadkon par jab accident hoga, tab chamaata padega kadak
Hogi hospital ki urgent zaroorat humko tab
Chalega pata sarkar ne sanction to ki, lekin Neta or bureaucrats khaa gaye paisa sab
Nahin kahengen hum aaj ki Hindustan azaad hai
Jab takk ispar gundagardi, garibi aur indifference kaa raaj hai

Third

2010-08-08T16:29:00.001+05:30

Armaity Dilliwala looked incredulously at her report card again. No, there was no mistaking it. There it was.

Third.

She felt a little sick. In all the ten years of her life that she could remember, she had always come first. That is what she was known for. Her parents, their friends, relatives - they all joked about it. One joke in particular, her Uncle Jamshed liked to tell and retell - his wife Sherzeen and Armaity's mother Aloo had both had their due dates around the same time but a week before the due date, Aloo went into labor and after a relatively easy five hours, there she was - Armaity, always ahead of her peers.

And now this. She could feel the eyes of her classmates on her. She thought she heard some whispering and giggling. She was still standing in the same spot where she had opened the card and seen that ugly thing stamped across the bottom right corner.

She had no friends, at least none that would sympathize with her at this hour of need. She had always consoled herself thinking it was because all her classmates were jealous of her. Now surely, they would all be laughing at her.

Dazed, she made her way back to her car and still unbelieving she handed over the report to her mother after reaching home. She was expecting her parents to break into hysterics and drama, as was their wont. But her mother just said - Good child, well done. Chalo ni, Rustom Uncle nu iyahan jaavnu chhe.

Armaity was stunned. What was the biggest disaster in her life was being treated like ant-shit by her mother. She was relieved at one level but also slightly disappointed at another. Wasn't that the only thing which made her what she was - loved and special?

By the end of the week, she realized otherwise. Nothing around her changed. Her parents continued to behave the same way as before. They fussed about her, took her to her tuitions and scolded her annoying younger brother for raising hell with his toy guns while she did her daily home-work. Her classmates continued to come to her with sums they could not solve, and the teachers continued to leave her in-charge of the class during free-periods.

By the end of this life-changing week, she was grappling with a peculiar thought. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to her than her rank.

Playgirl

2010-08-08T11:05:00.000+05:30

The way to my heart
Is not an easy path
The journey offers little consolation
It is all about destination

Coz I am the kinda gal
Who once hooked will never pall
For better or for worse
It is your blessing, it is your curse

The body is easily reparable
Not the heart so able
It is under lock and key
There, I've said it, since you cant see

Coz I am the kinda gal
Who once hooked will never pall
For better or for worse
It is your blessing, it is your curse

Maybe you want something easy
Less intense, more breezy
That is your choice to make
But get out now, get out for my sake

Coz I am the kinda gal
Who once hooked will never pall
For better or for worse
It is your blessing, it is your curse

Second

2010-08-01T23:19:00.000+05:30

He already had a best friend. How could he have another?

Seven-year old Akash was facing a dilemma. His school teacher had given his class an essay to write on their best friend. His best friend was in Lucknow, the city he had moved from, just four months ago. Amit and he had gone to the same school, in the same bus, to the same class, for three years. Such things cannot be overwritten.

Still, there was Venkat. Venkat had looked at him pointedly when he had told him about the essay. How he wished now that he hadn't told Venkat about it.

It had all started with a game of cricket, as most things do. Venkat and Ramnish were chosen to be the captains and they in-turn had to pick their teams. Akash stood there, a newbie in the group, seven years of having no playmates around in the locality he had just moved from having turned him into somewhat of a wall-flower as far as sports were concerned. His heart sank as one by one, Venkat and Ramnish plucked off the other boys and he was certain he would not be picked, meaning he would go to the team whose captain had lost the right to start choosing first. He stood with his head hanging in shame. Only later in life would be realize that shame is an obstacle of class A variety and is best discarded as soon as possible.

And then the incredible happened. He got picked. Actually picked, not thrown into the team which had no choice but to take him, but picked - fair and square.

He looked up, his eyes shining, and skipped across to Venkat's side, feeling mighty proud at what seemed to him, the biggest achievement of his young life.

So uptil now, he had fuzzily thought of Venkat as being his second-best friend in the world, and the best friend he had in this city. But he knew, he just knew, that Venkat would not like being relegated to second-best position.

The problem gnawed at him like nothing else had ever before. And he knew he had to reach a decision soon. The essay was due Monday.

As he sat, pencil poised over notebook, he thought back to all the good things that either of them had ever done for him. Amit had saved him from a street-dog once and had even let him use the fancy new pencil that his father had got him from Bombay. He had always given him good advice. Like the time, when he had wanted to invite his favorite teacher for his birthday party and Amit had suggested that he wear perfume while doing it, since it would make him look more grown-up and of course, nobody ever refused anything to a grown-up. On the other hand, Venkat had taken him into his team, and more importantly, under his wing - teaching him how to get a bit of a spin into his bowling so that the bigger boys take notice. He also invited him to his home from time to time, where his mother served him the most delicious rasmalai that he had ever had. He sometimes even let him ride his bicycle, which was new and had bouncy new tires, unlike his old one.

With aching brow and a tempestuous mind, did Akash finally come to a decision between the two mighty contenders in what was the most ferociously fought battle in his life, even though the participants were unaware of it.

And so it happened, that the essay that was turned in by Akash Saxena on Monday morning started saying - A best friend is one who takes care of you when you are in any problem and I am very happy that I have two..

First

2010-08-01T01:55:00.000+05:30

It was the first day and her stomach definitely knew it. She had put up a brave face while being dropped off at the gate, but now as the great blue building loomed up frighteningly stark, she stood rooted to the spot.

The other thing which made her throat dry were the hordes of raucous girls milling around - there were groups of them in every corner, all looking similar in their pleated blue skirts and starched white collared shirts yet different enough for her to know that there could be a multitude of rejections, multitude of sniggers.

She stood there for sometime, both relieved and worried that nobody had noticed her as yet. And then suddenly, one of the brightly chattering girls looked her way and stopped her incessant flow for a second. The others in her group also looked at where she was looking and for a moment there was silence. And then there was a giggle. Or half a giggle. But it was enough. It broke into a deluge of whispers, nudges and sly glances. It was not long before some of the other cliques standing around caught on.

She sighed. A little in relief. Well, now she knew where she stood. She had that decision taken out of her hands.

The new weird kid. In a pink frock with puffed-up sleeves and a broad flowing crinkled tunic, knee-length socks and canvas shoes from Bata, matching ribbons in her hair and spectacles.

Years later, she would thank her stars that she got her first lesson on keeping the ol' chin up - inadvertently, mostly because her mother had such a bad sense of style.

A dream

2010-07-30T22:13:00.001+05:30

The car goes thump-a-bump
As I shut me eye
And there goes ol Missus Golita
She always smells of apple-pie

Look a little further
Ho, 'tis that monkey of a lad
Truanting off from school he be
Aye, will end up something bad

And who goes in that hansom cab
All clip-clop and shutters drawn
Would that be the military gent
His wife left him, they say, 'is heart is torn

O there comes the postman
Rat-a-tat he sharply knocks
Telegrams are the worst of all
A gentle man, he'd rather be darning socks

Ump! There is a terrible bump
And my brain jumps inside my head
My mum she turns and says to me
What were you dreaming about Fred?

Sheroo

2010-07-13T22:25:00.000+05:30

I read Alec the other day and something she said made me realize that I have not yet intimated junta about one of the most amusing displays of weird human behaviour I have seen.

I hate nicknames. And find people who have a natural proclivity to nickname - hilarious at best and annoying at worst.

I have seen people get on nickname basis with complete strangers after two meetings, probably a couple of loo encounters, no more. I have seen people shorten already short names ridiculously - like say, Pilu to Pils (That is another one, why must we add an 's' to everything? Anyways is not a word, nor is chalos or byes or lols!)

So in the world of unnecessary nicknaming, Shraddha becomes Shrads and Namrita - Namu, Aditya is Adi and Natasha, Nats or Nuts.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for having cute funny names for people, which symbolize them or came into existence because of some un/fortunate incident. But it seems sometimes that people do it just to prove or impress familiarity or to sound cool!

Also nicknames are the prerogative of people who are actually close to you, logic being that they have to call your name out so many times that they have to shorten it - it would actually save time (there does not have to be a logic for everything, but I do believe there is). So it's ok if your mother calls you Namu, or your best friends or colleagues call you Adi, but if your friend's friend who just met you starts to call you that, it's time to hit him over the head!

I have had some nicknames or something like nicknames. People have called me Shrek, billi, S, Dola, DR among others. But nobody constantly keeps calling me any of that. Also, these are fun names, meant to be used in fun.

Half of my family calls me Ruchi. That is, strangely, my nick. More understandably, my mother's nick is Binny from her actual name Vineeta and everybody in the family calls her that. But I have never heard anybody from outside the family calling her Binny, that would be weird. Similarly, if somebody arbit was to call me Ruchi (am ok with really close friends doing that) or worse - Ruch, it would just piss me off.

Point is everybody should know their place in how far to go, trying to come off as friendly. It is the fake affection that people usually try to denote using such things, which is annoying.

Patna and then some

2010-07-06T11:03:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about work. It's gets grimmer when I reveal that that also happens while I am on leave.

The other day and why only the other day - I have been cribbing about this all along the past one year - I said something about the responsibility of my job weighing heavy on me. Well, it struck me suddenly that doctors, young doctors, surgeons have infinitesimally more responsibility and that compared to them, my job is a breeze. No?

Patna has been great this time, considering that I have 'grown-up' so to say and bring into the equation a lot of wisdom now. Ahem, relatively. Wisdom to look beyond the petty difficulties of living for some time in a small city and a joint family set-up - the lack of privacy (that used to rankle when one was seventeen and one thought one had a life which had to kept a secret because firstly - just, and secondly - the parents would be liable to throw a fit at some of the ingredients that constituted said life), the unpredictable status of electricity (although all homes have generators and inverters now), boredom (yes, grown-ups can be boring. Oh wait, only those above the age of thirrrtyyyy-five. Now, fortunately, there is the laptop loaded with stuff waiting to be watched, there is the phone which is connected to the internet and also, one is old enough to engage fruitfully in adult conversation). So, really, due to reasons known and unknown, Patna has been different this time.

Mostly because for the first time, I saw it from the outside.

Till the time my grandmother, my Nani passed away, Nana's house was the regular haunt for all us cousins - an entire cricket team, or something close. We would do the same things again and again every summer holidays - watch the same movies - Naseeb, Namak Halal, Apne Paraye, Woh Saat Din - these are the movies my Nani had (which got robbed some time back, yes - ROBBED). We would go to the same places to eat, our favorites - the Chow Cart serving up huge quantities of noodles, delicious to our young and innocent taste-buds, Sweet Home with the best Pizzas in the world (those were times unsullied by Dominoes and Pizza Hut, but I still maintain that Sweet Home Pizza is the best I have ever tasted) among many others. We would lie in wait for this guy selling Golden Ice-cream to show up, banging his ice-cream box and we would plead with out mothers to let us have it just this one time, as if our lives depended on it.

Patna would mean cousins, food, movies, gossip, some fighting and visiting relatives one didn't even know one had.

My Dadis's house was relatively sober in comparison, the cousins there younger and not quite so rambunctious. It had a pond though. A green taalaab just behind the house, where I used to believe one could go and fish. I also remember us having ducks in the backyard - batakhs. Angry little things, always flapping their wings. And best of all, there was the bhandar - the storeroom. A dark little place piled high with all sorts of things stored in glass bottles and tin cans. I was a regular raider on those premises, stealing achaar (which people around would keep insisting would darken my complexion and lead to unimaginable consequences). I remember how my Baba and Dadi would constantly keep fussing over me, wanting to know what I wanted to eat and I would constantly keep asking for Maggie.

All this came to an end, when first my Dadi passed away around ten years back. And my Baba came to live in Mumbai. Then my Nani passed away around six years back, my Nana continued to live in the same house, though much changed.

And now that I have come here after almost eleven years, I see the difference. That feels like an era and I am looking at it from the outside. Reminiscing about simpler times, although I must admit, I was always a great one for complicating everything inside my head, a great, or at least an incessant thinker if I have to put a positive spin on things.

But all said and done, I don't think I ever woke up in the middle of the night, obsessing about holiday homework. No Sir, that is a recent phenomena. And I daresay, I need treatment.

The heat is on

2010-06-30T17:12:00.000+05:30

Delhi is radiating heat. I, one who spends close to one-third of the month in the burning haze of Northern Maharashtra (places like Jalgaon etc, where the Jal in Jalgaon can be interpreted as burn and also ironically as water), bow down to the Surya dev and plead with him to leave this city alone. Yes, even if it peoples folks such as it does.

I am on leave and struggling with the concept. The mind is not at ease, it is thinking of all the stuff that is piling up silently and ominously on the side, like a tottering tower of Pisa.

The meet with the parents went well. Actually, very well. Like I remarked to somebody recently, the problem with that boy is that he does not have a bit of vice in him (except for narcissism, which I condone, seeing how it is my Achilles heel) and hence comes across as extremely accommodating and ernest. Well, parents have a liking for that kind of thing and they took a shine to him. Not that I had any doubt, but phew.

Apart from that, have been watching a lot of tv. Finished reading this book called The Unbearable Lightness of Scones - Alexander McCall Smith. Funny sort of book. First hand accounts from various characters, all Scottish, and consisting of mostly only conversations. Next on the list is the Meluha book - having heard so much about it and it being on the premises, how with my sister being gifted with a copy.

Speaking of books, the other day I was thumbing through an Oscar Wilde play (I have made The complete works of Oscar Wilde my read-in-Landmark book. Every time I go to Landmark and that is quite often, I continue from where I had left off) and I came across this intriguing idea.

So basically it says that while men love women with all their flaws and sometimes, because of the flaws, women love men because of the good in them. In fact, most of us play up the men in our lives to be better than they actually are, putting them on a pedestal so to speak (that would explain my comments earlier about you-know-who, heheheh) and then obviously, nobody is that perfect. Hence, women are more liable to feel hurt and such like, when their dream-world comes crashing down. I do agree. I feel we women don't have too strong a grip on reality. We are floating somewhere in between our fantasy worlds (comprising and because of, all the movies we watch, stories we hear, books we read) and ground zero. Every young girl has a version of her Mr Right and some fortunately grow up and realize that he does not exist before there is any lasting damage, some don't.

In that way, women seem to be more impressionable than men. Men to me, seem to be ambling through life, letting all its barbs and stabs slide over their rough hide, simplistic and naive whereas women are constantly hyperventilating all those barbs into a conspiracy by the Universe.

What do you think?

Glee

2010-06-25T20:52:00.001+05:30

Things are looking wonderful. (Almost). My parents are getting here tomorrow, we are attending Bua's and Chhote Papa's 25th wedding anniversary and then I am heading off with them to Delhi. But that is not all. From there, I shall go to Patna for a few days. After eleven years. Hard to believe it has been that long. I can picture that place in my head like it was just yesterday.

And still, that is not all. My parents are meeting Ankit this weekend and I am thrilled. It will be good to watch him squirm.

I just finished reading 'The Kite Runner' and I think it is well written, but I failed to experience the protagonist's pain. The protagonist as a child commits an act of betrayal towards a friend, whose loyalty towards him remains as staunch as ever even after the incident, and he lives to regret it everyday of his life. I know only too well how disproportionately big all the silly worries of childhood seem, and this is not even a silly thing that he does - it does have immense grief value, but even so, the ghost of this incident at every point in his life and him thinking that it is equivalent to having a hidden past and a terrible secret, is a little hard to digest. I also think the book drags a little in the end.

There I go, critiquing away to the high heavens. I guess I was expecting more. The descriptions of Afghanistan are breathtaking though. That and the stomach-clenching tales of the Taliban. Cannot believe such violence exists. And such bigots breed in our midst. I wonder what the Universe is playing at? Is there really no concept of divine justice? Nature's fury?

On the work front, this week I had to let a guy from my team go. I mean, I had to sack him. Don't feel good about it. I wish I didn't have such responsibilities. I am not capable of taking them lightly. I work myself up trying to beat the balance between encouraging my guys and kicking their butt when they don't deliver. At the end of it, I just want to have made the right decisions, not just for the business, but also for them. And sometimes, it is not one and the same thing.

Well, what with all this, have started feeling like a million years old. No, really, like there isn't any room for mistakes. Like the phase is past when I could call myself a beginner, a newbie, bound to - nay - expected to, make mistakes. I know that mistakes made by me now are not just going to affect me but many other people also. And the knowledge of that still takes my breath away.

Hmm..let me not end this post on a solemn note, what started out as happy. So here is a brief description of my room.

My room looks pretty. I have a television set, on which I have put my Oktoberfest hat. The television sits on a table for which I am thankful as I have stuffed, no, aesthetically arranged my books on the racks inside it. Had there been no room inside this table, my books would have been gathering dust inside some ugly brown carton. There is a tiny cupboard next to this television-table ensemble (everything is tiny in my room, like it was made for Hobbits) on top of which, due to lack of other places to keep them in, I have kept a few soft toys (all gifts, I find myself clarifying) along with various perfumes (gifts again), massage oils (I bought them - fancy - I know), free deos and facewashes (I do have some perks, few and far between though they are) and other assorted items. This cupboard is a pretty brown color too, like caramel. Next, there is a knee-high glass-topped wooden table on the other side of the television, with an in-built drawer which serves as my DVD store. On top of the table, I have carelessly flung my Red Bull mat (the one that we flicked from Geoffrey's in Bangalore) and a Scrabble set. On the space in between the glass top and the drawer, resides my Shakrukh-Khan-coffee-table-book (It was a birthday gift from him and I am pretty sure lugging it around was the final straw on the camel's back, quite literally as my back started to play up soon after. But oh. Did I forget to mention that I love it and will take that book to my grave and no, not because of SRK?).

So there's a corner of my room, all described. I rather liked describing it. I have always wondered how authors of serious novels describe the simplest of things in so much detail. I don't even know the English (or Hindi) names of half the things around me. For example, what do you call those things that curtains have, the ones by which they hang on rods? I am sure Hosseini could write a page on them.

Just generally

2010-06-19T16:30:00.001+05:30

I do some blog surfing nowadays and a couple of blogs are my favorites. One of them bloggers is really into it, she visualizes her blog as a bar and herself as the bartender, serving up posts or drinks for everyone who drops in. What is amazing are the labels under which her posts are categorized - Polls, Bollywood Buzz, Recipe for the month, etc. She is pretty consistent with her content. Her blog is well thought out and well laid out apart from being just well written. And she regularly meets up with the other bloggers taking what is largely for me a way to vent and derive some creative satisfaction at times, to an entirely new level.

Here is the link - http://sayesha.blogspot.com

The weekend has arrived and I find myself incapable of feeling entirely wrinkle-free happy. Well, not true. Friday evenings are like that - not-a-cloud-on-the-horizon kinda happy. The part of me that plays the figure of authority about these things allows me that one evening to put everything on the back-burner. Come Saturday morning and I start worrying about how to plan the weekend so that all that pending stuff gets done and fun is also had. Ironic, huh? There is also a bit of work and my team is working Saturday so I am not completely off. Saturday evening is again a sort of respite from it all, and then dawns the Grand ol' Sunday.

I remember a time when Sunday used to be only about watching cartoons early in the morning, I used to have a pretty busy schedule, then an awesome lunch and a lazy evening spent doing not much that I can remember, leading up to Monday, eagerly awaited. Those were the days when school was the one thing I would look forward to the most. I had to be dragged away from it for holidays and stuff, or even when I would be unwell.

Now? Hmm. Let's see. Sunday brings with it the worst sense of foreboding about the week that is about to begin. It brings with it that feeling of hastily wanting to enjoy the last few moments of freedom knowing that those moments are going to run out very soon. It brings with it the feeling of having wasted the weekend - if worked too much, then wasted the weekend working too much and not sleeping/having fun/ticking off all those other jobs to be done apart from work; and if not worked at all - then wasted the opportunity to peacefully sit and analyze some or the other data, or put on the hold some not-so-important-thing which would come and undoubtedly smite me between the eyes on Monday morning.

Sigh.

No no, Life isn't all this bad and I am not this implacable.

I do sometimes wish I had been wiser fifteen years back and known that those were the Golden days, although that would not have served any purpose really. Well, adulthood sucks. I still see myself as a loafer who does not know what she wants. Still trying to decide what to make a career in. Still at a stage where Lipstick seems too grown-up and hence, does not figure in the scheme of things.

Life is slipping me by and I am selling soap. Albeit in a way that is adding a lot of skills and experience and all that to me. Still. I tell you, that is something to be slisha concerned about.

Porn and Popcorn

2010-06-17T23:28:00.000+05:30

Weird thing I noticed today.

I had some time to kill at the Sangli railway station, so I was loafing around. I went to the bookshop brimming with curiosity, and what does five seconds of standing there reveal? Magazines of various names and sizes, brimming (yes, nice word, innit) with pictures of voluptuous women in compromising poses.

Yes, with titles like 'Chulbuli kahaniyan', 'Yauvan ka josh' and lots of other colorful stuff that has slipped my obviously geriatric mind.

Hmmm..

The other day, I needed to go to a cyber cafe in Solapur and all people directed me to one 'Balaji' Cyber cafe like it was the Victoria Memorial. And it did turn out to be quite a place. It was buzzing with youngsters, rather - boys. It was like their regular adda spot. They were playing games on LAN, surfing (one can only imagine what) and generally hanging around and smoking.
Life in these little towns is changing. They are probably at a phase in their evolutionary cycle where the Metros were fifteen years back.

But while some things change, some remain just the same. And one of them is the maybe-uniquely-Indian adult obsession with soft-pornography.

The eight wonders

2010-06-14T22:08:00.001+05:30

There is a Hakim-Aalim-Hair-and-Tattoo-lounge near my old place on Carter road and it has since the past half a year sported a hoarding in its vicinity which says - "Javed Habib is pregnant, delivering soon".

It almost sounds ominous. Like who knows what Mr Habib will unleash upon this world and the bourgeois better beware.

So, dear readers!! Tralala..lala..laLALA and all that. I am told that I have eight followers. I see there is merit in not going and checking the number of followers that one has - every hour. One is pleasantly surprised when the number leapfrogs from two to eight. A 300% for those who ingest numbers and unfortunately I know many who do. Although I can derive some solace from the fact that they are probably not among them followers.

I must here insert a statement which umm..states that I am aware of the insignificance of having eight followers. I blog-hob-nob with people who win blog-awards. Eight followers is what their toenails have.

..

It is raining like the blazes in Mumbai. I have never been able to decide whether I love the rains or hate them. I guess, both. It is frustrating when you are stuck in a hell-hole of a traffic jam for three hours and it is pouring, and because it is pouring. It is beautiful when you are watching it raise hell and high water, insistently, persistently, from the safety of the terrace, in the company of a good book, or conversation. It activates sound, light, touch - the works.

One thing suddenly came to me though - it has been close to twelve years since I have thrown all caution to the wind, or the rains in this case, and reveled - getting drenched to the bone and not caring. With no worries of where I need to go, what I am wearing or carrying, how I am going to look or whether I am going to catch the cold of my life. It has been that long since I felt all that.

Prisoners of our own device, we are.

..

Saw Sex and the City part II and came out with a very happy feeling. All glowy and lovey. And he was wearing specs too. That added to it. The women all look old, no doubt. Makes me wonder, do these American women grow to look older before their time? Or is it just the naivete of youth that made me spake these words? Apart from that, their clothes are as bizarre as ever. Big is domesticated and Carrie, the eternal seeker, is still seeking. Let me not even get started on what Samantha is upto.

On slightly more morose topics, work - that heralder of old age before its time (did I just proclaim to be suffering from the naivete of youth?), is doing its job well. My back is fragile and the dentist says I grind my teeth too much. Weird, the kind of things doctors diagnose me with. Next they will be calling me a hypochondriac.

Harvesting Pain

2010-06-09T20:30:00.000+05:30

Breezy is over-rated. I don't want to be one of those cheerful, chirpy, always-happy things, these people who bear any and every one of the atrocious misfortunes that befall them with philosophical stolidity. Also, do they even exist?

I have my own perversity through. I have always chosen to torture myself, thinking, as does Calvin's dad, that it would build character. Laughable.

At this point I feel that character has been built enough and is being subjected to the violent blows of this hammer that goes about calling itself Life. It is starting to wear away - character, not the demonic blows.

If only these years would fly past. I would happily wear the crown of the 'been-there-done-that' as opposed to sitting on this rather thorny throne of the 'here-now-and-doing-it'.

A weird week

2010-06-03T20:44:00.000+05:30

I love the coffee culture. More than coffee itself. I treat these coffee shops as 'homes away from home' - taking books and newspaper to read, the laptop on the rare occasions that I am working from home or at those times when I have to work late and doing that from a warm, buzzing, promising-to-be-serving-up-mugs-of-coffee kinda place makes it so much more tolerable, almost cool. I also treat these places as a meeting point, with brokers and the likes. Glorious is life when there is a coffee place nearby!

In a stroke of bad luck, my back played up again. Must be because of all the carrying and lugging that packing and unpacking entails. Also my landlady generously put a pair of plump mattresses on the bed that she also so kindly provided (yea, I have an actual bed to sleep on now!) but that played havoc with my back. Unlike the Princess in the Pea story, who could not sleep all night due to the presence of a pea beneath some millions of layers of mattresses, give me a hard plank of wood and I will sleep like a babe. Not princess-material, me.

So this week there has been no traveling and lots of staying at home and frankly, I am bored. Traveling is now so much a part of my lifestyle that a week of not, makes me feel as if - hmm..mm..hmmm..as if my nose has suddenly disappeared off my face, you know, an improvement for sure in the general scheme of things, but weird.

Also paid a visit to the dermatologist after the recent escapade at the salon, while I was at the hospital for my back. I have never been to one, and I was a bit apprehensive. I had not even checked before paying the exorbitant consultation charges whether dermatologists do look at scalps. However, he did not miss a beat when I told him that some hairstylist had advised me to get my scalp checked. He checked, and told me lazily - Hats off to her that she managed to scare you like this. They are evil, these beauty parlors. While I kept insisting that he check again - well, I had to get my money's worth - he seemed to get more and more amused.

If you ask me, he seemed like a bit of a sham himself, slightly bored, kinda like he was reserving all his energies for the truly meaty clients like hmm..Hrithik Roshan, whom he had a framed photograph with, in his office. Or ladies who have enough moolah and time to go nip-tuck-lift-botoxx!

Anyhow, what with all my visits to Lilavati hospital, I am now a card-holding member of that landmark institution. And by landmark, I mean, actually so. I always use it to give directions to my home.

The television is also part of the paraphernalia that the flat has come with. And I must say, I wasn't missing much. Although when you are a bit lonely and all that, it does help having a television blaring familiarly from the corner.

As part of the grand initiation ceremony into the new place, I tried to whip up some bread pohe. I love the bread pohe. The only thing that has prevented me from making a staple diet out of it is the fact that I don't eat bread. Such is life. But now that there is whole wheat bread, and multi-grain bread, and three-grain bread and an assortment of healthy options to plain old bread, I decided to get back at it. So in went bread, and some onions, and carrots, topped with some thai sauce and Olive Oil (yea, I bought Olive Oil to cook, I am that pretentious!) and I discovered that I didn't have any matchsticks or a lighter. So I put the thing into the microwave, and skeptically put it on 'Auto-cook' wondering how on earth would it cook the carrots, which are about the hardest things to soften.

I was wrong, oh so wrong. After about ten minutes, when I went in again, I was greeted by a delicious aroma and the sight of molten plastic. Yes, the microwave had reduced my plastic bowl to an abstract-artsy-looking thing. The pohe turned out well though.

All's well that ends well though. Will use the half melted bowl for potpourri. Nice and bohemian. Yes, I am that pretentious. I have potpourri.

Sock in the Solar Plexus

2010-05-31T17:34:00.000+05:30

There are some people who were probably reading magazines not meant for them when they should have been in the line where some or the other of the many angels was administering some modesty.

Got the flow? No? Okay. You were probably doing it too when quick-grasping-ability was being ladled out.

The point is that some people strut through life thinking they are the bees knees. But this post is not about that. This post is about how to make them fall down on theirs.

And after rigorous and I must say, excruciating research, I have hit upon the most effective method - A visit to the hairdresser.

Hairdresser? Isn't it O.Nash or some such bird who said that the worst thing that could befall the human race was a visit to the dentist?

..Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.

No, that is olde hat. If you want to kill a chap's self-confidence such that he is never able to rise from the depths again, send him for a haircut.

These hair-salons nowadays are peopled by folks of such fortitude that they don't hesitate to bluntly state what your mother would quake in her Bata flip-flops about. Oh, they are brave, undoubtedly in the wrong profession. They should have been operating guillotines during the French revolution.

Disdainfully, across the years, I have been painfully acquainted with the fact that my hair is too thin, is falling too much, is not the right texture, has an extraordinarily high percentage of split ends, turns North when it should face South, and is in general the follicular equivalent of a drug addict caught trying to pawn his blind mother's scrawny jewels. Furthermore, I have been chided about not using the right shampoo, conditioner, toner, light beam, laser. My scalp has not been spared either. I have, on occasion, sported an oily one, at times an extraordinarily dry one, undoubtedly, with sheets of dandruff flowing down the back, and today - horror of horrors, it was accused of having a disease, with suggestion in place that a visit to the Dermatologist was in order.

As I walked away humbled, my spirit a mere shadow of its former self, a scene floated in front of the pensive eye. Date - April the 30th, circa 1945. A little man, with a furious expression and a toothbrush mustache, sits down to get his daily trim, while a somewhat sinister looking character hovers around him with a pair of clippers. A snort, a questioning glance, eyelids heavy with disgust - "They are not what they used to be, Sie ware besser dran ohne sie".

Past Vs Present

2010-05-30T02:51:00.000+05:30

I was going through my older posts, the ones at the beginning, the ones that inspired me to start this blog because I felt I wanted to tell people these things.

I was such a different girl then. Less confused, more aware of my strengths and weaknesses, more honest and brutal about where I stood.

B-school changed me? Taught me how to project an image? I don't know, I have strictly maintained that I have remained honest all along and never pandered to the image-game. But maybe that's an image too.

I was less cynical. Also, the kind of person who believed that anybody else being good, even great, does not mean you are any less. There is place for everybody under the sun. Life as I know it today seems to instinctively suggest that it is a zero-sum game and if I am to save myself from thinking and acting as per that, I need to be wary, guard against getting over-competitive.

Less cynical, I mentioned that. I was more inclined to admire people, accept their ambition and marvel at their brilliance. Where did that go, replaced by a cynicism that questions whether the people who have it all, really deserve it, or whether they really have it all in the first place.

Let me correct it. Let me publicly register admiration for the success of some people/groups of people I have been in-two-minds about at some points in time earlier -
1. Aishwarya Rai - She did do quite well for herself, talent or no talent. And that in itself, is a talent. To be smart enough to know what works for you.
2. Consultants - Difficult lifestyle, to be on the go like that, to gel with the client and its way of working and make oneself useful. Underneath all the B-school shroud of glitz and glamor, a profession that has its place in the sun, it's utility in the food chain. I know some people who are doing great work, learning lots and enjoying themselves too.
3. Sachin Tendulkar - Yes, I know he is a great cricketer and all that. But beyond that, his attitude is what makes him such a legend. Unassuming. And eternal.
4. Angelina Jolie - So I love Jennifer Aniston. But Angelina Jolie has the x-factor. Something about her makes her stand out. Her confidence maybe. Her work with the UN. Her incessant adopting. Her devil-may-care attitude. And she is a good actress to boot.
5. The Tata group - No organization is without its drawbacks. Corruption is like bacteria, it does not require much to survive and multiply. But the Tata group and its stalwart status has survived all that and stands tall today in the world arena - Tetley, Land rover and Jaguar, Corus. The many sectors they are present in in India, and the fact that they have such a strong nationalist image - cannot be just a cleverly-crafted mirage. The name of JRD Tata invokes respect and Ratan Tata has managed to sustain it.

In other news, a ring has been booked. It feels weird and new, that such a thing could be happening to me. I mean, I am still a kid (Not really, I am going to hit the 30's in a couple of years) but it feels like such a grown-up thing! He will tell me that I am an attention-shark and that is what all blog-writers are, as per him, but it makes me so happy, how can I not mention it?

In other non-flashy news, went for Anusmaran. Met people, ate the bizarrely expensive food and came back.

Also, at the verge of shifting houses. Half the packing is done and tonight is my final night in the present acco. It was great fun, being in the heart of Bandra - the room with no view. And not even a bed. Well, nothing much changes. My new home is also pretty much in the heart of B, has no view again and probably will not have much room for a bed. The only difference is that I shall be living all by myself now - which has been my dream since I was an adolescent bemoaning the lack of privacy in an all too crowded family of four. Like all things in life, a dream remains alluring only till when it comes true.

300 sq feet and a fortune for that. Such is life in this megalopolis if you want to live anywhere within cycling distance of someplace to restore the overwrought nerves at - not that I cycle. I never learnt to. Yes, there, I have said it.

What else. The mood of this post has got decidedly jauntier by the word. Such is the power of positive thinking. And love.

Amusement Park

2010-05-12T11:42:00.000+05:30

Alec's latest post comes like a whiff of fresh air. While I look around, struggling to find things which are going right, here comes a post laden with little packets of joy which burst into remembrances about things which make my life so much richer - like a favorite smell, a favorite month, a favorite season, without my I even realizing it.

Kavity's latest also resonates and I am surprised to see how many people it resonates with. Looks like all these foreign-migrated people have been terrorizing junta back at home with details of their lives and worse - expectations of us knowing all those details by heart.

My life is, as usual, doing its roller-coaster routine. At times, I feel like this has to be bliss. Now this, has to be bliss - waking up on a Saturday, going to one of the many (although now that I have gone to all, the choices seem limited) places around that serve a good breakfast. Bandra has a very chilled-out air about it, actually certain bits of Bandra. The young or the young-at-heart throng these coffee-shops, I see young families with their cherubs and their ayaas in tow, single men and women with a book in one hand and a large mug of coffee in the other, looking rather bohemian and extremely at peace with the world, couplets or groups of girls, catching up on news from the week, couples of slightly older women, discussing everything from their neighbor's children to the businesses that they run, young guys and girls - groups of friends, and young guy and girl - out on a date (although these are mostly in the evenings) playing their stereotypes to perfection - the guy trying his best to take her case, make fun of her, and the girl trying her best to look half-annoyed, half-flattered over all the nervous, flirtatious undertones, then the slightly older guy and girl, been dating for some time, obviously not married, looking like they don't have a care in the world.

The point being that at times like these, when I am tucking into a 'healthy' and scrumptious white omelet-brown bread-nutralite butter spread, the heart takes wings and I see it fluttering high above the Bandra skyline.

Recently read this awesome book called Exploding Mangoes, written by a Pak-born journalist residing in Britain now. He has spoken with a lot of audacity about the charade the Pakistani governance is, or was, under military rule. It is an alleged (in the author's own words) fictional account, of an attempt to assassinate General Zia, along the way giving us a peek into the military training that the Pakistani young go through, the way they use India and Indian references as a form of insult and their ease with the Americans and their role in the Taliban as we know it today.

Also, watched a couple of really good movies - Guess who's coming to dinner and Cactus Flower. I would absolutely recommend them, GWCTD for the crisp dialogues and CF for the brilliant performances and amazing background music.

Will end on a warning note though - whatever you do, do not watch the latest Gurinder Chaddha disaster. It makes me sick.

DLE

2010-05-01T14:47:00.000+05:30

It is difficult to explain what really happened in the last four days. Because it is really quite absurd.

The company has this tie-up with one global firm which does leadership development courses for many companies. They have a four-day program called DLE - Developing Leadership Effectiveness. It has been a tradition in my company since long to send groups of unsuspecting managers to this program with the hope that they come out knowing how to become effective leaders.

Smacks of cynicism. I was, a cynic. A closet cynic till I went there. Even till the third day. Not any longer though.

So there is a group of peers, around twenty-eight of us from all over the country who land up and are confined within a room from 9 am to 6 pm for four days without any mobile phones or laptops along with the founding pillars of this program - a Mr Gareth and a Ms Amelia.

The modus operandi, and that is what it is, because Gareth and Amelia have been in this business since the last twenty years or so and everything that they do is calculated to the last insult. And insult is what they do. They insult us till we feel like we are morons.

The intention is to make us own up to our fears and our hang-ups. Our pretty little escape algorithms. The stories we tell ourselves whenever we do anything we know that we really should not be doing and is not going to help us.

It sounds like a lot of humbug and frankly speaking, I did not like being screamed at for the first three days. But that is what drove it home, when I am being dishonest with myself, I am doing a great disservice to my potential.

I also noticed, or rather it was brought to my notice that I, and in this case, I shall speak for most people, tend to seek refuge behind the safety of the collective - WE or the non-committed - ONE or the indefinite - YOU. For example, most of our sentences there begun like - "When such and such thing happens, YOU tend to do such and such..Or ONE thinks one is committed, when ONE is really not..Or WE always think that is the right way.." SAFETY! I want to be emotionally safe. I want to say things such that there is always some exit room to wriggle out. Instead of taking sole responsibility, I want everyone present to bear the guilt of what I have said.

I didn't participate much and I got screamed at for that. Because not wanting to open up in front of near strangers is also a hang-up and merits thinking about.

But here goes, I mean to change a few things and here they are -

I tend to take the back-seat when I find myself in a group where somebody knows how to do the task at hand better than me, or so it seems. I sort of take for granted that person's superior role in achieving that task.

I do not open up to strangers, or even people I have known since a long time but am not 'close' to. Why, because I would not know how that person would think of me and my insecurities. Would only open up in front of people who I know would love me/like me irrespective of what they hear. So, I don't accept myself the way I am and fear that others will not.

I link my self-worth to my success at the tasks I perform. If I fail at something at work, it means I fail, period.

There are many others. Like they said, we are born free of any hang-ups. But as we grow up, based on our experiences, we collect all these beliefs and build a personality around these beliefs.

I really want to shatter these so-called truisms of my life. I want to come clean, and to remain that way. So here I am, all of me, for-public-consumption.

Degeneration

2010-04-18T12:40:00.000+05:30

Alec's latest post triggered a certain slightly repulsive memory which I had thought to share earlier but had forgotten.

I was at the airport (all my posts seem to revolve around airports nowadays) and was juggling some coffee and some other assorted pieces of luggage. In came galloping a 7-year old and I pointedly took my coffee and kept it out of the reach of his prancing feet. But he decided to come rushing in from behind in such a way that the coffee got spilled and some of it, over his foot. He raised hell and high water and his mother started screaming at me, calling me an Idiot and what not. People all around rushed to administer gallon after gallon of water on his foot, ice, whatever they could find while he kept howling and she intermittently screaming at me.

Now, I would have been extremely sympathetic and apologetic and all that in the normal course of events. In this case however, because of being shouted at, I found myself unable to sympathize and hung around purely due to a sense of responsibility to see that the kid was fine, which he was, considering he had been wearing proper shoes and socks anyway.

I thought about this some more. We tend to be very careless with our speech, and constraint has no nobility anymore. I say this for myself also. When an auto driver mistakenly takes me to Vile-Parle early in the morning, when I had said Bandra to him, and as a consequence of which I miss the bus to that godforsaken Belapur, I lose it too. Annoyance is definitely warranted and maybe a certain degree of admonishing will induce him to be more careful from next time. But not a full-blown abuse session, no Sir, that is a bit much, even if what he did leads you to be at the receiving end of your Boss' ire.

We are fast becoming a group of people with zero tolerance levels and no respect for basic human courtesy and dignity. Our problems are the dire-est, our time the precious-est and the injustices meted out to us - the most unjust.

Aurang-ajeeb

2010-04-15T18:13:00.000+05:30

Aurangabad airport feels like home. It is as small as, okay not anybody's home that I have ever visited, but enough to feel cozy. I know the staff, they know me. In fact, some of the women who frisk me are on rather intimate terms, having posed a variety of questions to me, ranging from where I work to whether I am married and suggesting good naturedly (or so I choose to believe) that I should now find a good boy and tie the knot. It does feel good to come to this airport after a long day of being in the hot sun which threatens to beats me into a sweaty, pulpy mass of headache and dehydration. It does feel good to know that I am soon going to board a cute little ATR and zoom off to what is really really home.

It is a small airport, but it has international flights. It also has a good percentage of foreign passengers, what with the caves at Ajanta-Ellora being some sort of firang magnet. And that explains the availability of Diet Coke and Pepsi. I would know, being somewhat of a pro on small-town-ism that Diet drinks being available is a sure sign of the place having arrived.

But amongst all the contradictions that this airport presents me with, what really smites me between the eyes is this - Karlsburg, the International brand for men's clothing and accessories!

This airport does not have a restaurant and consequently perhaps, even working flushes, but it has a Karlsburg showroom! The sole upholder of consumerism in this kindergarten of airports! The brave lone Columbus discovering new lands, albeit a little barren but having the potential perhaps to turn into an America! Hats off to the guys who own the label in India. They have clearly been paying attention to the Diet Coke Index.

Rant

2010-04-12T22:52:00.000+05:30

It is one of those days when I just don't know which way to turn. And writing it out for the whole world to know is not the best thing to do, I know.

If you want something bad and the whole world apparently conspires for you to have it, what if the world does not like you too much? Then it could easily conspire for you not to have it, what? Go actively out of its way to ensure every attempt of yours is thwarted, nipped-in-the-bud.

A pretty little optimist I am not. The world is to blame, yeah.

Technotroubles - Part II

2010-03-29T00:29:00.000+05:30

In the sequel to the heart-wrenching tragedy of the phone passing away, let me detail the events of the day..

Started out with waking up at 11 am. How I managed to snore soundly while aforementioned love of life was lying cold next to me, is beyond me. Anyhow, made a futile walk to the mobile shop closest to my place, discovering it to be in shutters-down state, which effectively brought home to me the fact that Sundays have their downsides too.

Decided to get a little more structured. Got home, did an online search of Nokia service centers, located one close enough and set out again. But being the true-blue son-of-the-soil that I am, a Nokia service center was to be the last resort. What would make my day and repair my phone would undoubtedly be the entrepreneurial occupant of a small, shady, 10-feet-by-four-feet gap in the line of shops along Bandra station or some such buzzing place; at one-third the price and taking one-fourth the time of a Nokia service center. What's more, he was more likely to let all the important parts of your phone be left intact, not pilfering them for some gray market smuggling.

Called up a friend (a colleague, whose number is the only number in the world I remember since only the last digit is different from mine) who had visited and benefited from such a shop only a couple of weeks ago and got the name, location and phone number of a Mr Aris, aforementioned kindly entrepreneur.

Such inconspicuous shops and their owners also have the bad habit of disappearing, a Sunday driving the probability of such an event occurring sharply northwards..

But where one disappears, several others spring up. Such is life.

On getting extremely reliable information from an auto rickshaw driver on who around repaired mobile phones, I was directed to a picture-postcard-as-described-above-hole-in-the-wall which at the moment was doing a brisk trade in top-ups and mobile phones-Chinamake. (Oh did I mention that the Nokia Service center at Bandra was no longer operational, so I cannot be entirely blamed for partaking of the services of these enterprising tax evaders).

The benevolent people behind the counter assured me that the job would be done in half an hour upon which I would have to separate with 300 INR of the blood and sweat. The look on my face of disbelieving relief must have been apparent. I thanked myself for living in the holy mecca of the below-the-table-ism and hole-in-the-wall-flourishing-business-ism and went and sat at some nearby Barista, for a long due breaking of fast.

After the promised 30 minutes, I headed back to my saviors, and with great anticipation asked for the phone, relishing the thought of having a link to the world again, so as to assure myself that I had not suddenly died.

Imagine my surprise when I was told that the phone's display was not working (oh by-the-way, what was wrong with the phone was that the switch-on button had come off the board and hence the phone wasn't able to switch on). So they went on about the fact that they had, as promised, installed a new heart (yes, I am not a doctor) but the patient had gone blind and hence appeared to be in all certainty, still dead.

What ensued was not poetry. At least not the John Keats variety. I would advise patrons to not be fooled by my size (by which I mean my height, Bipasha may have called me petite, but it is certainly not because I have a 24 inch waist).

I ended up not paying them and came home, humbled. Sometimes, Mumbai fails to deliver.

This incident marked the end of my efforts at trying to get phone fixed pronto and heralded the beginning of a new phase wherein plans were laid of obtaining a proxy phone for the next few days while this one was sent to the ICU.

Life has a strange way of moralizing. The trouble is, it never practices what it preaches.

Technotroubles

2010-03-28T14:28:00.000+05:30

One fine day (actually 3 am in the morning) my phone stopped working.

My first reaction was of incredulity. What? My phone? MY phone? My PHONE?

That is not to say that I wasn't expecting something of the sort to happen. Because I was, somewhere in my system there was a small ominous voice. My phone had been behaving funny since long. But as a species of optimistic (read stupid) homo-sapiens (yes, it's DNA programming, not my fault), we always tend to ignore these diligent little things (ominous voices) and I figured this would never actually happen. I would preempt it by getting it repaired or buying a new one before it could die on me.

But no. It's like a heart attack. All your life you think - let me have this last day of indulgence, from tomorrow on no more white sauce on pasta; or let me just sleep a little longer today, from tomorrow it's 6 am jogging; or are you crazy, I can't stop smoking right now, just as soon as this extremely critical project is over and done with, I shall quit.

A tad extreme, I agree, comparing a heart attack to the phone dying on you - at least there's no loss of memory in the case of a heart attack.

Seven

2010-03-24T23:07:00.000+05:30

I got tagged.

After being around in the blogsphere (that is what I believe it is called) for over four years, someone else apart from myself finally decided to call some attention to my dubious endeavor of entertaining the masses, albeit the attention was deceptively called with the wrong hyperlink in tow, undoubtedly in an attempt to obtain exoneration from all blame forthcoming from the click-happy.

Must pay a tribute to the noble soul of Alec in the coffee table book I shall shortly be unleashing on my life and times, the title of which is yet under wraps (which in itself is as good a title as any). Don't worry Alec, shall not reveal your true identity.

So the tag is about revealing seven things about yourself that the people at the gates don't know about. So here goes -

1. I eat my meals - piece-meal. It would be exaggeration to say that I never mix food, because sometimes I do. But in most cases, I don't. In fact, I have been known to separate the buns from the pattie of a MacD's burger and eat them like that. Am unable to provide any clues as to why I do that. Maybe, am just lazy. Does that make sense?

2. I love walking, I would walk to the Fiji islands if I had the time. Of course, nowadays, if I sprouted wings and started to fly, I would be flapping them with the ferocity of a duck caught in a time-warp, so walking is rather on the back-burner.

3. I like shopping alone and even when I have company, I rarely come out of the fitting room and get a second opinion. Shopping alone because then I do not have to feel guilty about trying on ten different outfits and not liking any.

4. I have been making abortive attempts at novel writing since I learnt how to write. I tried writing detective stories (there was even a dog called Raja in it and had anyone decently well-read chanced upon it, they would have found it hugely 'inspired'), mythology, space fiction, fairy-tales, romance, contemporary fiction, and nothing has worked. Maybe I should try my hand at erotica.

5. I have a lousy memory for faces. But I can remember things that were said from as far back as 1988. I also have a special memory for smells. It's like these smells are wafting through the world and if any familiar ones find their way up my nose, they immediately bring back a flood of memories.

6. I am a cusp between a Cancer and a Leo. But I tell people I am a Leo because I want to be dynamic, leonine and graceful instead of loyal, emotional and a good cook.

7. I am a closet foodie. I would have been a practicing one had nature not played one of her cruel jokes and given me a sloth-like metabolism. One could argue that a true-blue foodie would not be deterred by metabolic rates, calorie content and all such balderdash. Maybe.

So here I am, a virgin no more. Let me tag a few people too.

Kavity - The world needs your pearls of wisdom, which are sure to glisten their way through random things you will be revealing about yourself.

Gaurav UP - Just for the simple pleasure of reading what you write.

Manikandan - I can almost imagine chuckling at the sweet little things you will say and equally twittering wickedly at those aspects of your personality which your readership is ignorant of.

AA - Mr Freaky, stop being so geeky and entertain me.

So that's it guys. A little bit of me, for-public-consumption.

Welcome to the real world?

2010-03-17T15:49:00.000+05:30

Ages ago, when I used to be a little girl, I used to be quite fruity.

Yes, bonkers, if you please.

So looking at those cotton-wool clouds, with the sun streaming through, the whole deal looking like a painting (absurd similie this, comparing the real flesh and blood sky to an unreal, albeit exquisite painting as if the latter were the actual and the former just a pale comparison), I used to imagine feeling a strange stirring in my chest - like somebody was calling out to me from the over and beyond. Yes, really. Hazards of an over-active imagination and a curiously romantic take on life.

Just the other day, watching the Alice movie, brought back memories of the time I had read the book - Wonderland and The Looking Glass and how much I had loved it. The inane conversations, the ridiculous but extremely hilarious and clever poetry - The Walrus and the Carpenter and A-sitting on a Gate (if I remember correctly) and many many more, it was all rather brilliant. I would hugely identify with this Alice chippie, spending more time day-dreaming than anything else. Ruchi DD was my moniker for sometime (for those who don't know, Ruchi is my nick, my parents call me that). I remember growing up getting into all sorts of troubles due to this habit of mine to switch off from the here and now, with a dreamy glazed look coming over, so that several ditches, manholes etc had the pleasure of warming my butt over the years, many poles suddenly found themselves looming horribly out of nowhere and getting attached to my person and various detours were taken on the way to or back from somewhere simply because I never knew directions, too busy dreaming. I also remember at a point of time feeling like it was all a bit much and that I should attempt taking on a more normal hobby which didn't interfere with the other important functions of my existence. That is when I started rationing out time for these metaphysical musings. Insane, totally insane is what I call it now.

I still suffer from a hyper active imagination, and so it happens that I dream every night. Everybody does perhaps, but I even remember my dreams and they mostly feature people I know, engaging in strange activities which may have some connection with my deepest darkest thoughts and fears, or so would Freud have me believe. I remember some of my dreams from ten years back too. The subconscious in my case is a living, breathing humongous hippopotamus.

I can just go on and on. There are many and hundreds of tales which prove beyond doubt that I was a special kid. Still waters, rippling with the sub-surface tensions of growing up, listening, absorbing, reflecting and holding it all within, juxtaposing all these images into a rich alternate universe to where I would retreat at the slightest opportunity. Always a little disdainful of the real world.

Ratnagiri Ramblings

2010-03-10T19:19:00.000+05:30

Me: Er..Could I have a word with you?

L: I hope it's about removing that silly plastic film that you have covering me. How would you like wearing one on your face?

Me: Well, people have become maniacal about keeping you guys dust-free nowadays. I know this person, who first bought some elaborate liquid-solution-set for the purpose and has lately added a mini vacuum device to his arsenal. Would you like that? This is simpler!

L: Who is this guy! Stop hanging out with him!

Me: Errrr..hmmm..yes, will think about it. So, as I was saying, this is important..hmm..ho..hummm..yes, here it is - IthinkIwillgoexplorethetown.

L: Okay, I pick up signals which are of the speed of 3-into-ten-raised-to-you-know-what. But this even I couldn't understand!

Me: Hahaha, you are funny! (Jeez, what a moron). I said, umm..I think I will go explore the town a bit.

L(incredulously): Explore? But you never do that! You spend all your time only with me! Especially when you are not in Bombay, oops, Mumbai (Small Saffron dots blink up everywhere)!!

Me (patiently): I know, I know. But suddenly I feel that I should have some more perspective about the places I visit apart from knowing their godowns better than the back of my hand, you know?

L: No, I can't say I do.

Me: There is a world outside of this hotel room, you know.

L: Again, no.

Me: Okay look, I think you need some time off too. What with all those blue faces you have been pulling off-late. Why don't you spend some time alone and I will remove myself from the premises.

L: I have been sort-of over-worked. And spending a large part of the day cooped up like this, with nobody to talk to, while you go around gallivanting to all sorts of interesting places, it's not easy, you know.

Me: (Interesting?!) I do. Yeah, so why don't you recharge yourself, while I have a look around.

L: Hmm..sounds ok.

Narrator: No sooner than this reluctant 'ok' makes itself audible, a hole in the shape of the author appears in the door as a fast getaway is made. I mean, really fast. Before something can come up which has the potential to push all thoughts of arbit ambling through the streets of Ratnagiri to the dark recesses of said author's mind. And as you may or may not know, she has many of those. Last seen, she was sitting on a dark sandy beach along the Konkan coast, staring somberly at the sea, undoubtedly thinking thoughts of great psychological depth or universal importance.

Me: Damn. I wish this place had some Diet Coke.

S

2010-03-08T20:53:00.000+05:30

The cognition of sadness
Startingly grabs you when
No self-pity however righteous
Can really help

The tragedy in high art
Is glamorous no more
And martyrdom is not
Treacherously desired

Not a searing-second's job
But a dull persistent ache
Which by evil design
Plays imp-like

It seems to go away
When the mind is occupied
But it comes to roost
Like a scavenger to its home

BOP goes the weasel

2010-03-04T21:23:00.000+05:30

I found myself in a village called Daruj the other day, a small dusty place, with a population of around six thousand. It was your typical village, a rather big one, with four five dukaans, people sitting around and generally passing time, the few big men - the influencers, moving around with that special arrogance that comes out of being the big fish in a small pond. Nothing special.

But this is India. Even if you are not looking, you will find something in every inconsequential corner that will blow your mind away. And it is my job to look.

The B-O-P. That oft-used-abused phrase which in recent times has mainly been used to outline the growing needs of the bottom of the famous pyramid (which my company insists will become a diamond soon, yes, now that is practical application of geometry.) The theory that there is a fortune there for companies has been sufficiently debated and discussed. I myself have had conflicting opinions about it at different points in time.

What I saw that day in Daruj was testimony to the fact that companies are paying close attention indeed to CKP.

Now we have all seen those cute little parachute bottles that come for a rupee each. Among others, they are meant for the consumers who live in shanties and cannot risk purchasing a big bottle out of fear that it shall be purloined. We have also seen minuscule Fevicol and Feviquick sticks, add to that small units of milk and surprisingly even Lassi. Yes, Lassi at Rs 1.5 for the adventurous but thrifty consumer. Shampoos sachets are old hat - people have found multiple uses for them even. In UP, they are used to wash cows and give the family goats their daily baths. In many other places, they are used to wash bikes and cars. Then there are mobile top-ups which start at Rs 3. Yes, talk is cheap nowadays.

But nothing beats this - that day, hanging next to a hundred different kinds of sachets of detergents, shampoos, paan masala, tobacco, toothpaste and what have you, I saw perfect miniature versions of international brands of perfume - the likes of Charlie, Lomani and John Musk, for all of Rs 3!

Perfume?! Is that what the rural consumer demands nowadays? I can understand the urban poor, they are hugely aspirational by association. But gaonwale bhi? To maybe wear to the christening of that new pair of bullocks that the Sarpanch recently bought. Or on a 'date' by the local pond, or community electric pump perhaps. Perfume? Really?

Will they 'upgrade' to bigger bottles? Because the company must be losing money on the sachets. Will there be sufficient word-of-mouth publicity? Are these sachets even selling or are they just hanging, literally, some fresh-from-the-oven MBA having won accolades for this brilliant idea? Or have they always been there, only we never noticed? Have they been flying off-the-shelves in cities, and somebody thought what works for a vegetable seller's kith in Mumbai would also work for the vegetable grower's kin in Shegaon?

Questions, questions. But one thing is for sure, this country never ceases to amaze me.

V.I.Ps

2010-02-26T16:53:00.000+05:30

So while the world, or at least one-sixth of it, ponders on how to make ends meet this year what with the powers that be taking a long-term view for once and suited and booted men and wo-men give expert opinions and not-so-expert opinions on how India well save itself, we here at Belapur sit and dissect responses of our distributors to questions asked to them on around ten different parameters, each of these parameters broken down into five or more sub-questions and then each sub-question broken down further into more questions, and if you think that these are amateur attempts to take feedback, think again, because there is a huge amount of regression, data interpretation, analysis that is done, after which the results are compiled into sexy ppts by consultants and shoved down our throats and also made to count in our year-end ratings which decide our career paths, so yes, we are a bunch of people engaged in what we believe is extremely important activity, while the world waltzes by.

Phew. Seriously.

Statement of Purpose

2010-02-26T10:05:00.000+05:30

I am sitting in office and blogging. Yes, I am. I am, I am, I am.

How the week looks and other items

2010-02-22T07:54:00.000+05:30

Some people shall be nonplussed by my FB status message.

Coming back to the same bed every night, now that's luxury. And that is exactly what I have planned for this week, not to mention a weekend where not a single cell in my body shall murmur the name of its day-time master, the company.

Work seems like a breeze.

Oh that reminds me, have to sell more breeze.

I-box

2010-02-11T00:16:00.000+05:30

Today I saw what very few people on this planet must have had the good fortune to. I saw..

..Salman Khan in a guest appearance on CID. Yes, that very same show on the Sony channel which plods on and on - and on. And apparently presses dubious stars into doing equally suspicious cameos. Old man Sallu is playing himself at the brink of a release - Wanted, no less. And the CID storms into his residence to tell him that they have found a pirated copy in somebody's home. Sallu tries to act puzzled. Then the CID baldie goes on to say that the problem at hand is much worse than just movie piracy. And Sallu gets to act even more perplexed. He says - Maayne? (Meaning?). Then the baldie throws in the punch line, something to the effect - Along with the pirated DVD, we also found a murdered body! Sallu breaks all records which have been established uptil then by equally fishy blokes for terrible-acting.

And then I switched channels to watch a game of musical chairs being played, between all of Rahul Mahajan's wannabe wives, while he is standing around, squealing with glee, dressed as a school-boy.

Hmm. I have always had a certain attraction for the bizarre. And the most outre thing I can think of at the moment is to switch the channel again and tune in to - Raaz pichhle janam ka.

Dil toh bachha hai ji

2010-02-07T16:28:00.000+05:30

Ishq nein humko kaayar bana diya
Billi raasta kaate, toh dobara ghoom jate hain
Ishq nein aisa chanchal-adhir bana diya
Sooiyaan saath nahi dein, toh ghadi phek aate hain
Ishq ne naapaaq-nikamma bana diya
Raat ko aankhen band hoti hain, khwaab din ko nazar aate hain
Ishq nein dekho kaisa bachha bana diya
Jo bol humse nahi hon, woh bol kaat jate hain

The girl who died

2010-02-06T13:35:00.000+05:30

A lonely evening
Shadows falling heavy
The only sound
The tick-tock of the ebbing clock

Some old letters for company
And photographs
The joys of youth
Stamped clearly across each

Look up at the glass window
And the stranger looks back
This stranger is no stranger
Fashioned out of your own two hands

Look again at the photos
And hungrily devour
The girl who died a nameless death
In order for you to survive

It takes all kinds

2010-01-31T23:58:00.000+05:30

I recently went to Kanha National Park in, well, Kanha. For those of you, who aren't avid tiger-lovers, Kanha is one of India's finest tiger reserves, it is also home to many other kinds of fauna.

Set in Madhya Pradesh, it is said to have inspired Rudyard Kipling to write the famous Jungle Book, part of the movie also having been shot there.

We went there as part of a family meeting, around a hundred people, my team with their wives and children. Kids as young as 45 days were part of the thing, appropriately bundled into several layers in order to withstand the biting 1 degree Celsius temperatures.

It was good. I did not get to sight any tigers, but some of our people did. Indeed I got to see many varieties of deer, so much so, that I slept during the second part of the Safari.

An interesting thing - I came to know how the Tiger census is taken - the conventional method is for the team to spend several months at a particular park, branching out everyday into different directions, tracking and taking photographs of pug-marks - no two of which are the same - and repeating this process daily for months, to cover all the different pug-marks and eliminate any duplicate counting. Nowadays, they also use tranquilizer guns which lodge transmitters - innovative paparazzi.

Some days back, I also finished reading - Paths of Glory - Jeffrey Archer's latest, a sort of brief biography of the life of George Leigh Mallory, a superb mountaineer, who, as public records show, came very close to climbing the Everest, years before Hillary and Tenzing did. What Archer is trying to say is, he did actually reach the peak of the Everest, but could not come back alive.

However, the point of this post is this - it amazes me that people will suffer any kind of hardship to pursue their passion. I cannot for the life of me, imagine spending months on end, in a tiger park, going around peering at pug-marks and taking photographs, only to sit around and compare them later in the evening with your other, equally committed-to-the-cause colleagues. And that is not the end of it. I met people in Kanha who have been to every tiger reserve there is, several times over, have had near-death encounters - getting sucked into the marshes of the Sunder bans by crocodiles and suchlike and are still going strong. Nor do I have the slightest of desire to stand atop the highest point on earth, after first having weathered (-)40 degree temperatures, icy gales and a treacherous mountain. That along with a lifetime of disciplined living to keep oneself in top form. Undoubtedly, along with the passion, individuals who devote their lives to such pursuits also have the talent for it.

It is good in a way. Imagine a world where all the Hillarys, Livingstones, Vasco-da-Gamas and Robert Scotts want to be masters of business administration after having acquired a redundant degree in engineering.

I shudder at the mere thought.

Life - then and now..

2009-12-28T23:21:00.000+05:30

Somehow writing in broad daylight, with the world around steeped in normalcy, seems like a daunting task.

In the last few days, I -

..Was part of a school re-union - his, as part of the 'WAG' gang. Made me long for one of my own. I long to bask in the collective reminiscences of the women who were so much a part of my life then. My own memories don't do justice to my childhood.
..Sat around with some people from my team and my Boss, and drank. Like I have often said, sales is a combination of the three Ds - danda, dimaag and daaru, not necessarily in that order. Why daaru? It is an enabler to bonding, which leads to passion, without which Sales is not possible.
..Watched the three idiots. And liked it. And got excited over the fact that it was shot at B. And that I could recognize a few of the people in the frame as juniors. Liked Aamir Khan's acting - that man really tries and most often, succeeds.
..Partied the night away and decided that Eristoff is rather strong for my Absolut tastes.
..Flew to Delhi and realized that Delhi is less cold this year.

Saw some really awesome advertising for movies. Love, Sex and Dhoka - the 3-D eye that follows you from the hoarding. Sherlock Holmes - the cardboard house hoarding with doors and windows that open and shut. Neat. Is it a testimony to me being an engineer that I am fascinated by things that slide/click/turn precisely and exactly into their holes?

Maybe it is a testimony to me being a 'marketeer' that makes me so enthusiastic about searching for patterns in human behavior.

I had a brilliant 2009, one of the best ever. In retrospect, 2008 and 2009 feel like the years that changed the course of my life.

Leaping, frolicking, gushing with life
The spring raced its way down the mountain
Selecting paths at its whim and fancy
Taking along all who came
Not looking back for those who didn't
Motion being the motto if its existence

But one day the landscape changed
Greener, gentler, and still
Birds, wind and trees
The spring could now hear sounds
Other than just its own roaring rush
No longer racing against time, it fell to thinking

With a jerk, it realized that a spring it no longer was
Falling in love with the flora and fauna
Inside its vast waters, looking to it for sustainence
In love, most of all, with the bank that kept it company
Guiding it, defining course
And holding it in its protective embrace

Beached

2009-12-03T00:31:00.000+05:30

It finally so happened that I found myself in Goa. Ah, says the reader - this is a tale of debauchery.

Well, not really. It was due to a conference that I found myself in the vicinity of the white and sandy. Nevertheless, fun was had. To say that spirits were high would not be over-stating, in fact, quite the contrary.

The highlight of the whole thing had to be these two gentlemen making themselves available to give, what was meant to be - an inspirational talk and turned out to be, quite surprisingly, just that. These two were none other than - the man who lives by his ready wit and an eyesight powerful enough to spot a googly across 90 yards - 'HB' and the man who makes sincerity fashionable by being painfully so - 'AK'.

And cricket it was.

Off-late it has to be said that my proclivity to trust complete strangers has gone up quite a few notches. Tailors in dinghy corner shops, who hand over visiting cards saying - this is as good as any receipt, have never before met with a nod of perfect understanding for the modus operandi and a smile to ease things along. One can only hope that the artiste in question delivers the goods a week from now, that is, if the establishment does not get blown away first by an errant sea breeze.

On another slightly jarring note, I recently perused an article on workaholics with a mixture of mild amusement and not-so-mild indignation at the suggestion that they should seek medical help. Hah! As any workaholic worth his back-ache will tell you - Who me - a workaholic?

Also, if one were to list down all the things one should be seeing a therapist for, it would cause an outbreak of festive cheer and many a champagne uncorking in the offices of those remarkable mind-fixers.

And as we all know, champagne can kill. Goa comes to mind.

Bluff-master

2009-11-15T12:39:00.000+05:30

They met over Orkut
Funny way to meet
Carried on over facebook
Got intimate over Tweet

The first date was so-so
He was nervous as hell
She thought he was either shy or arrogant
First time, who can tell

But yes, there was a second
And many many more
They agreed they were different in ways
But the same at their very core

There were soon in courtship
And the city did comply
Beautiful walks and lovely dinners later
She gave an encouraging reply

Flowers were given
Teddy-bears and chocolates too
She showed them to her girl-friends
They drooled with many a Aah and many a Ooh

Undying love was professed
From both parties' side
No one must have ever felt this way before
Their love was like a tsunami in high tide

Their talks got serious
With each passing day
And the M-word crept into conversation
In an unobtrusive way

One day on their way back
From a play of no great caliber
They encountered in a dark alley
A suspicious bloke with what looked like a Sabre

He came at them menacingly
She shrieked her loudest best
And wildly turned her head to lover-boy
Who had fled from the spot with admirable zest

And so their story came to an end
A sorry finish I must say
Coz their love would have definitely endured
Had it not been tested this way

A day in the life of..

2009-11-07T13:41:00.000+05:30

So my week-days can undoubtedly be categorized into two parts - the days I go to office and the days I don't. And it's the days I don't which looked poised to contribute towards that first shade of grey on the (not-so) luxuriant mane.

Monday mornings dawn bright and full of promise. What do you know.

A quick bath, followed by throwing-on a pair of jeans so old, they probably remember the day I was born, and something on top that I reserve only for office-wear, given the fact that tank-tops, halter-necks, and other universally-acknowledged skimpy attire would not be met with appreciation, is more or less step-one. Then begins the long trudge to office.

While I must document here the fact that I live in what most people refer to as hep environs, my office is attached to the other end of that rainbow, with no proverbial pot of gold dangling from it. Now I have tried all sorts of routes to get there - and am pleased to say that after exhaustive research and on-ground experimentation, have zeroed-in on the optimum mode of transportation.

So I take the Bandra-Belapur bus that leaves every twenty minutes from Bandra station and deposits me at my destination a neat 90 minutes later. These 90 minutes are spent in relative luxury - a-listening to the radio, a-working on the laptop, or a-reading.

Office is absolute delight. Breakfast, my fifteen minutes of me-time, is followed by a karara cup of chai - the joy is enhanced by the fact that it is delivered by an amiable and industrious man, who would rather die than not oblige someone's heartfelt plea for that life-restoring beverage.

Work gets crazy after that, the phone never stops ringing, and the mails flood the mailbox tsunami-like. What I like, is that most of the people who I need to keep going back to for my daily bread like Jack-OCDingonwhetherdoorshutproperlyornot-Nicholson are situated on a couple of floors above or below.

Lunch is quick, unless there happens to be at the table, a certain mix of people, the coming together of whom, results in explosions. There are many things we Sales people are not, and aggressive is not one of them.

So the day melts into evening and suddenly the clock strikes 7 and I am left ruing the fact that even if I leave the premises that very instant, home will not be reached before good ol' 9. Nevertheless, such ruminations apart, the premises are left no sooner than a solid hour later, what with one thing and the other.

The journey back by train, is another epic one. Belapur to Wadala, Wadala to Bandra, and let me not forget the bhel at Wadala. There are few things in life, that would make one miss a near-empty train that is going expressly to where you want to get off, and said bhel is one of them. The actual taste is not much to write about, it is quite typical in its construct. It's the idea of it, the joy of looking forward to this little snack in the midst of a two-hour journey home; the alacrity and adroitness with which it is made, the sheer professionalism of never handing over the final product until completely satisfied with. Like a Bong would day - it is Bhel-made.

And then there are other post-coming-home benefits of being in town, which I shall not elaborate upon here, since they are not, my dears, for-public-consumption.

You strange foreign bird

2009-11-03T08:06:00.001+05:30

Silence -
Has me in knots
How can it be

No agonizing question-marks?
No below-the-surface prickin-frickin' needles?
No existential WhoAmIs?

O wait, what is this I detect
Is this really..can it be true..no way!!
But it so does resemble..

Contentment.
A fleeting emotion, a visitor
Must be nice to it, the strange thing.

Lizards and their fancy degrees

2009-10-29T20:54:00.000+05:30

Met a man on a flight. Small flight, all of forty-five minutes and we managed to discuss the herculean work-pressures of aircraft-controllers at Atlanta airport, and insidious ways of wiring the phone so that callers are met with an engaged tone, within those forty-five minutes. Make no mistake, most of it was led by him.

He was one of those old men, who travel the world, picking up languages (he knew fifteen!), acquaintances, and a way of chatting up strangers.

At one point, he said -

A lizard stuck on the ceiling probably thinks it is holding the roof up. You young mbas have the same weird notion of yourselves. You'll think the company would go kaput were you to take an off-day. So, stop being a lizard.

The moral of this story is that old men have character, confidence. Young men? Are like investments. A man at twenty-five has just started to be what he really will be. A man at fifty has lived and even his scars have stories to tell.

Gourmet or Glutton?

2009-10-18T12:32:00.000+05:30

Cooking is a bit like art. First of all, you are creating something. And more importantly, no two people can end up making something that tastes exactly alike. You put a bit of yourself - your sense of proportion, what should go in first, what should go in at all.

Great cooks have an incomprehensible passion for their art. Unlike conventional art, it starts to pay well from early on if you take it up professionally. Everybody needs to eat, not everybody needs to read or buy a painting.

While artists in our midst are praised and encouraged, cooking is seen more as a hygiene skill for women and customer delight kinda thing for the men. (Today times are changing, and these extremities are moving towards each other, slowly but surely. Men at times, need to be able to cook to survive, and women don't.)

Art has an inessential quality about it. We don't really need it. Whereas food is - well, is fuel. That makes its preparation more mundane - one of the reasons why cooking misses the high-art train. Art has more of the snob-value.

Also, the body does not need art. Art is on a higher spiritual plane - catering to the mind, the soul, the spirit. Whereas cooking satiates that primal instinct of man - hunger. The paapi pet. Centuries of conditioning through spiritual and religious philosophies and texts have led us to believe that anything that provides corporal pleasure cannot be entirely free of sin. Few would sit in a gathering of socially accepted intellectuals and proclaim proudly to be a student of food and cooking, just for the sake of.

Exploring another aspect - a lot of people claim to be fond of eating, they have little interest in preparing it. Whereas, it has been seen that most ardent readers are also closet-writers. This divide between the host and parasite varies across art forms - depending perhaps on the degree of difficulty of the art form or how much fun it is.

I enjoy reading accounts of cooks, history of food and the like. Not that I have read a lot, just a couple of articles on Gayatri Devi's book and some stuff from Padmalakshmi. But I feel that in spite of fulfilling such a basic need, cooking hogs very little of our cultural mind-space.

So for all you great artists whose talent is as priceless as the cardamoms, cloves and chillies of the Malabar coasts - If food be the music of life, stir away!

A song

2009-10-17T01:02:00.000+05:30

When I shake my head
You give a toothy grin
When I wag my finger
You wiggle your pointy chin
When I glare at you
You turn around and shake your butt
When I turn away
You come and call me a crazy nut

Let me scream, and let me shout
That I am butter in your crazy mouth
I may rant and I may pout
And call you a miserable lout
But you just put me out
And-you-just-fuckin-put-me-out

South South East

2009-10-11T13:27:00.000+05:30

The vacation was brilliant. Just what the doc had ordered. Ten days and I must have spent around ten minutes thinking about work. To add to the bliss, neither the laptop nor the phone were working for the larger part.

Thailand - don't claim to know it all. Delved into Bangkok and grazed past Pataya. Bangkok, with its many many many mega malls. I am quite the mall-rat you know. Asian food is also my thing. After making it through six weeks in China, the stir-fried noodles, Nasi Gorengs, Phad Thais etc sound heavenly and taste even better. The roads are terribly and inadequately narrow though and traffic is nightmarish in Bangkok - the worst I have ever seen, I, whose veins are hardened by the clogged up arteries of Mumbai.

One of the most striking things about Thailand - even good hotels there have scrapbooks for tourists with pictures, maps and details of places in and around they want to visit, and the last few pages of these scrapbooks are devoted to sex shows, nude beaches, places where you can get action of any and every variety, complete with pictures and addresses. Mammaries of Thigh-land.

Malaysia - is the ultimate multi-cultural hot-pot. Malays, Indians and Chinese form almost all of its population. Most of the Indians are Tamilians. There are Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and you can detect multi-racial notes in people - their features, their dressing. There are 'Happy Dipawali' signs everywhere and the newspapers talk about Beyonce's skimpily clad concert being a threat to culture and moral probity.

Kuala Lumpur is vast and sprawling. Roads, gardens, bridges, monorails, rapid transport system - all well planned out. The twin towers are grand. Could not go up as they were shut for maintenance work the day we were there.

We managed to catch a Tamil movie shooting in front of the national monument there. A dance sequence was being shot. The hero was tall and good looking, standing around watching the choreographers explain the steps to him. The choreographers had conjured up some crazy steps, same old ants-in-pants routine which looks ludicrous without the music but strangely normal with. The heroine was nowhere in sight. There was a smattering of Malays watching trying to imitate the steps. At first when the hero tried, he made mistakes and I thought to myself, just cause this idiot is better looking than the other people in the cast, he gets to be the hero. But then, they started the music and he switched on his expressions and the scene was transformed. Whereas earlier, it was pure technique I could have admired, now the entire scene came together as being paisa-vasool. He may not dance as well as the choreographers, or even the extras, may not act as well as some of the stalwart character artists, can not sing for nuts, has no talent for directing, writing, shooting, but he is the one people will pay to watch. The Hero.

Like Bangkok, there was only so much one could do in KL. We headed off to Langkawi, an island in the Andaman Sea for the next two days. And that was idyllic. The beaches were white, sandy and all of that, the waters were crystal and the people around few.

And then there was Genting. Enough cannot be said about Genting. We have all heard of white, sandy beaches and pristine waters, islands that inspire getaways and glossy catalogues. But have you heard of an entire town-ship that is indoors - complete with amusement parks, shopping boulevards, 'roadside' cafes, cinema theatres, casinos, restaurants and everything else that the average tourist can aspire for? Have you heard of hotels which have huge waiting areas, for the people who throng there every weekend and wait hours in line to get themselves checked-in? Waiting areas, with the same system of electronic numbering and counters being assigned to numbers, that is employed in banks and for railway bookings?

Genting was all that and we did some fun stuff there - like winning ten times over in Blackjack, or Pontoon like it is called there (although I did not put in any money, maybe next time I will), go-karting, boating, cable-car-riding and other normal touristy stuff. The thing I must mention here though is the free fall amusement park ride I took, where they elevate you first, let you hang in the air for some extremely anxious seconds and then let you dropppp! I must mention it because I took this ride against all instincts. I don't think am too fond of heights, as was clear from the rappelling experience earlier this year.

And then there was shopping. Ah. That the was the high-point. I got some good funda-clothes. Which means clothes which have a different funda to them. Also did some good clubbing, visited a couple of Hard Rock Cafes across. Managed to read alongside, watch a couple of seasons of Coupling and a few movies. And of course, there was the ubiquitous Starbucks. Starbucks is my happy place, it resonates with the ethos with which I want to live my life.

Nuff said. Now must get around to reading those 400 e-mails in my inbox.

The train

2009-09-28T00:16:00.000+05:30

He runs towards the train
With all his might and steam
As it starts pulling out slowly

He jumps over junta sleeping
Pushing ardent coolies away
They look at his flying form with contempt

Somebody pull the chain!
But nobody is looking at him
They would not care anyway

He sinks to the ground
And screams out aloud
Tears mingling with sweat

The train picks up speed
And disappears from his view..
..he was late - again

Wedding belles and cow bells

2009-09-26T15:39:00.000+05:30

Rashmi got married. We went to the reception. A whole lot of us and it was great fun. I rediscovered the joys of hanging out with more than two people at a time.

It's always a little strange to see one's friends with their family. Even stranger to see them with in-laws. It's like Copernicus discovering that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

Some time back, on one of my travels, I chanced across a Cattle Bazaar. Yes, that means a congregation of folks who want to sell their cattle and folks who want to buy those cattle. There were around a hundred buffaloes there, with their owners sitting around them, waiting for bids. The most striking thing about the whole shindig was that these cattle were all done-up like they were going to dance at Kareena Kapoor's wedding. Their vast jello bodies had been covered in abeer of various colors, some had bells on their horns, some colored ribbons. Maybe Big Ben is right. The markets do look - bullish.

As I sit and write, I steal a glance at my deflated de-beaned bag. And I just cant hold it in anymore! People of the city of Bombay - have you never wondered about Bean Bags? Not actually about bean bags, but about these two words scrawled all over the city, with a phone number in tow? I have been around in Mumbai since the past thirteen years, and in almost all of those years, have seen these omnipresent signs at the least expected of places - on asbestos sheets at constructions sites, steel pipes, chipped walls that you pass from the inside of a train. How, why, what? Which surreptitious bean-bag store owner stalks the city post mid-night and makes the whole world his visiting card? Do these owners have secret associations? The Priory of Sion? (For non-mumbai junta, Sion is also a place in central mumbai).

Back to the wedding. Kavity looked resplendent in black. Lighter, much. Deepa-sans-hubby, was the only one who knew the pain of standing on stage with arc lights beaming and strangers - coming-grinning-shaking. (Although it must be said that the bride was more preening than pained). Jags, Shahrukh-esque, 'stole' stylishly flung around neck, was the star of the trip. Don't ask me why. Katrix, though a much-improved version as far as socializing with the female of the species is concerned, spent the day with both his feet inside his mouth. Tatha, at one point, turned to me and said - Good you are here, at least one other person beside me shall be boozing. I had to pick up my jaw from the floor post this shocking revelation. Mani, the lean-mean-case-writing-machine Mani. Also gym-going, daaru-drinking, laundi-aspiring Mani. VVB, quiet, quite.

Rashmi looked like she had the whole evening in the bag. She knew what to say, whom to say to, how to say. In her element, centerstage, beautiful, shimmering, glimmering, Mrs Rammohan. Dijo promised not to read that night.

Think marriage is not all that bad. My sidie am sure will rock the other side of that prickly fence too.

The Rock Star

2009-08-27T23:11:00.000+05:30

Stoned and blurry-eyed
He looked at the pulsating crowds
Some were waving hands
Screaming his name

His guitar hung limp
Oozing blood
His hair stuck to his face
Beads of loftiness

He swayed back to his room
Unseeing of all the madness
His room felt like a silent scream
He turned on his heel

Floating on a cloud
Drugged into legend
Only his music living
He was the rock-star

Chronicles of an ASM

2009-08-11T19:40:00.000+05:30

So as I stand in these godowns, I sometimes have these little out-of-body experiences, wherein my spirit floats outside of my body, hovering somewhere a couple of feet above my head and watching the proceedings with not a little amusement.

Here is how the scene looks - straight out of a Manmohan Desai flick – it has weird characters, extras and props. There are a couple of prosperous-looking (read well-endowed around the stomach region) men invariably in shabby clothing (in complete contrast to the prosperous image that the pot-belly arouses) - they are the dukaandaars - let me refer to them as mai-baap from now on. Then there is a sharply-dressed guy, in formals, who looks like an Income Tax officer conducting a raid. He surveys the godown with the eye of a hawk and the sure-footedness of a mountain goat. He is also playing the part of a tour-guide, displaying the attractions, rather ruins of an erstwhile shrine to his hapless boss - this guy is the Territory Sales Officer, in other words - the company's eyes, ears and bald pate on the field. Next there is a suspicious looking bloke in uniform - he is the sales equivalent of the 'aam aadmi'. He carries samples for new launches, takes orders for 150 products, manages to have around him some twenty odd sheets with various data tables detailing how much maal each dukaandaar on his beat took in which month, in what state of mental sobriety etc etc. He claims to his dying breath that he refers to these sheets. This guy is the Salesman, that epitome of hard-work, efficacy, intelligence, selling-skills, mathematical prowess that gets Levers its 14000 crore per annum revenue and him his Rs 7000 per month salary. And then there are the distributors - these mini-ambanis and birlas, the difference being that an Ambani has only his stern mother or political godfather to answer to, whereas these poor guys are pulled up to task more often than Ram Gopal Varma makes flop-busters. There are a few extras dotting the landscape too, for hauling-and-carrying purposes.

And the company boss, or the madam in this case. This girl, who, in happier circumstances, would not look out of place getting her nails done in an up-market salon on Carter road, instead paces around these shady holes – in basements or attics, drinking in all that they carry – sacks of flour, overpowering and enticingly sweet smell of jaggery, bags of green, blue, yellow detergent powder, stacks of green, blue, white, pink, yellow detergent cakes, drums of oil, sacks of masalas, battalions of mice. She counts the bags, pokes the stacks, and looks around with blood-shot eyes, shooting questions faster than quick-gun-murugan. That’s her role – to squirm the hell out of all around.

It’s a funny scene alright.

Inspired

2009-08-05T22:30:00.000+05:30

As day moves into week, week into months, I realize that many many things are going unsaid. While a whole lot that has never been said before is being painted in scarlett letters across the evening sky.

I vacillate between trying to be good and trying hard to not be all good. The goodness in me prevents me from succumbing whole-ly to it, because nothing ever is, all good. Selfishness keeps us sane.

There's a balance to be striven towards. Life is about balance. You need to get the scales to be carrying just the right quantities of love, hatred, belief, cynicism, naivete, worldliness, individuality, collectivism, poetry, practicality, defiance, submissivity, objectivity, subjectivity, indifference, compassion, the yin, the yang to reach that point of absolute perfection.

And yet, they never will. For, what's the point of living then?

Twenty-Seven

2009-07-25T08:43:00.000+05:30

The fool bumbles along
Falling into ditches galore
Dusts self off and sets out again
Singing a happy tune

Songs of friendship
Love and great riches that await
The promise makes the going
More exciting than the reward

He meets travelers
Who have buried their boots
Their cauldrons simmer
Granaries full of grain

He looks wistfully at them
At times, wanting a full meal
And the assurance of one all winter
But the stars twinkle-ingly beckon

Everyday is an adventure
Though he knows not where he is going
But he is the fool
And he can do as he pleases

A full ton

2009-07-19T00:14:00.000+05:30

Read Smart Alec's blog today where she writes about it turning 50. This is my 100th post, in over three years. Not Sterling by any standards, except maybe Smart Alec's.

But let me not put any more pressure on this just-born-post by going on and on about it making that turn of the century. Let me just - write. Let this post be a mosaic of all these wispy thoughts that are flying around in my head.

Sometime back, I stumbled across a cracker of an idea - THE EXIT ROOM. A getaway. Every relationship must have one. It is to be noted that it is a 'room' I suggest, not a retreat or a farmhouse in the country, a villa in France, or a cabin in the woods. Point being, it must be a hop, skip and jump away. Your oasis.

Having spoken about wispy thoughts, they are getting wispier by the second. Getting increasingly difficult to pin them down. How can it be that I have nothing worth blogging about. Writer's block? Mid-life crisis? Ahem, let us not dwell too long on the latter.

Luxury. We all have different definitions for it. For me, luxury is functional. Non-indulgent. I would not appreciate monogrammed pillow cases. But somebody to do my taxes would be put on an engraved pedestal and fed grapes.

Mumbai is having a swim-athon. I dont like the rains, at least not when I am caught in them. I refuse to carry an umbrella. Who wants to go armoured against something as depressing as the skies howling their eyes out. I'd much rather go out in denial of their existence.

A member of my team recently resigned. He is getting a much better pay-package at some other company. He called to inform me and I was quite speechless. Not out of shock, but out of a genuine lack of anything to say. On a slightly different note, I call my line manager - Boss. It feels just awesome. To be part of that culture where he tells me - Shreya, you must really hump your people if they dont perform. And I say, Yes Boss, I will.

Tambakoo

2009-07-18T02:05:00.000+05:30

Some things in life are simple.

The other day in Satana, which is a town somewhere near Dhulia - if you know where that is, I learnt that the government had made it mandatory to put pictures of cancerous crabs on local zarda. Which had resulted in a 50% decline in sales.

Wow. That's cause and effect. As simple as it gets.

Pain and Prada

2009-07-11T15:05:00.000+05:30

I like Carrie from Sex and the City. That is one honest character. In all her relationships, she has never shied away from asking questions. Even potentially dangerous ones, which could leave her out in the dry.

I admire that kind of honesty. Most people struggle to get that honest with themselves, let alone others.

Why is it so that we so love to live in denial. Why is it so difficult to accept that our lives will have some troubles, that it will not be as picture-perfect as the Swiss Alps.

We need to come to terms with the fact that sometimes happiness does not fall out of the sky. Like marble has to be chiselled to be made into a 'David', life has to be worked upon.

No pain, no gain. Pain is the single most important constant of our lives. It's an indicator of the love we feel, of the effort we make, of the heights we rise to. It is at the center of all human existence.

Back-pack and a road-map

2009-07-06T00:46:00.000+05:30

I don't know what it is with traveling and me. One of those infamous love-hate relationships. I have traveled more than most people I know. Have lived in numerous cities, had homes in four. Traveled eighteen countries and over forty cities in Europe. Been to the far east - the land of the stinky food and chinky people. In the last year itself, have been to more than seventy cities, towns and villages in India. And I love it. I love my job and my life.

Yet, yet. Most of this is not the kind of traveling that sets my pulse racing. I dont like going to places for four days, blurring past all the hot-spots, leaving with a lot less money and a zillion photographs in my touristy bag. I dont like squeezing out time from sardines-in-a-can like day to clock in some moments as a wander-lusty tourist, laptop firmly in bag.

Traveling isn't a morning-evening journey. It isnt going to the famous Lucknawi chikan market on the way back to the airport and buying half the shop in a tizzy of excitement to carry gifts home. It isnt staying in the best hotel in Gorakhpur with toilet paper, but being too fatigued to get the ayurvedic massage in Varanasi. It isnt disembarking on the red-earth of Chiplun at 5 in the morning, having the best haafuz and pomfret that coastal Ratnagiri has to offer and then throwing-up after four hours of non-stop travel on those serpentine roads of the ghats. It isnt visiting a Sericulture farm in Kolar in between village visits, watching the moth and the female mate, after which the female gives birth and dies and the males are recycled. It isnt having the best filter coffee ever at T-nagar in Chennai in between gruelling interviews, or spending some now-missed idle moments at one of the beaches of toy-town Pondicherry in the midst of that one-week schedule packed with assembly lines, pack mats, gigantic distillation chambers and safety boots. It isnt having sweet bengali rasmalai at a dhaba on the road between sultry Kolkata and buzzing Burdhawan.

None of this is travel. Or atleast not the kind of travel that I can say I have a passion for. What is it then?

Traveling is - when you have a sense of timelessness. When you can get up at 4 in the morning and watch the sun rise, come back and sleep till noon. When you stroll aimlessly in whichever direction the wind takes you in, spend the day being a spectator, and come back with a sense of accomplishment. When you take the same buses and trams that locals take. When you shop at the same markets that they shop at. When you hang out at the same joints. You do visit the famous places, but you also revisit. You want them to become a part of you, you don't want to leave with just photopgraphs, you want to leave with memories - you want to leave the Eiffel with memories, of your visit.

But maybe I am wrong and need to get my priorities right. It is not about squeezing in a coffee when the flight is delayed at the airport in Kolhapur, but about squeezing in some work while primarily on a visit to the Ajanta-Ellora after having spent a couple of fully-paid-for-by-company days at the awesome Taj, Aurangabad.

White Hot

2009-06-26T00:06:00.000+05:30

The sea was as calm as ever. More importantly, she was calm - it always had that effect on her.

Such an endless expanse of blue-green, a little scary at times. But she had grown up with it, seen it turn within a span of 10 years into less of the blue-green and more of the black-brown that this city is so famous for.

Why only this city, why blame only this city. Isnt that the way of life? A baby - pure as untainted snow, a water-cress lily. The entire transformative journey into adulthood and beyond is paved by dark encounters with this degenerate world. Any aberation is just that - an aberation.

She wondered - was life meant to be this difficult? Is that what the challenge of it was? Would we be just cardboard cut-outs of the Brady family if things were any different? Would she mind?

The waves made these swooshing noises. And some spraying noises. She could feel the salt on her face. It stung. Especially at the places where her wounds were still healing.

But the scars inside ran far deeper and were dangerous, as dangerous as righteousness. Righteousness gives us a special kind of anger, that seethes and seethes, sending out little sparks before engulfing all that comes in its way.

The scenes kept coming back to her. The smell of charred human flesh filled her dreams. Her anger was white-hot.

Where is my funny bone

2009-06-15T19:21:00.000+05:30

I think I am getting unfunnier by the day.
I write funny no longer. I read funny no longer. No wait, make that - I read no longer.
I dream about work. Everyday. Every-single-fucking day.

Maybe I should turn up in office one day wearing just a jute bag, go slap a few people around me and then take a dive off the emergency exit.
Nobody will take me seriously after that. Ever.
Problem solved.

ASM-ing in the hinterland

2009-06-15T00:17:00.000+05:30

Sunday night. Back from another one of those weekends.

Life has been so hectic in the past couple of months. All the new people and places. The responsibility. What gets me is that if I screw up, twenty other people get screwed too. I am not sure I am ready for that. It is a heady feeling, people saying 'Yes Boss' to you all the time. The first time I was called Boss, I didnt realize it was me being addressed. The flip-side to being this boss person are many, though. Like I said, I can't switch off. Then, I can't just do my own bit and mush-off. I need to remember who did what, bring it up in the right forum, ensure they get suitably appreciated/rewarded/promoted/reprimanded/punished for it.

Am I having fun? Most times, yes. Sometimes though, I wish I could just quit and run away from it all. Those times being Tuesday mornings, in particular, when I have to get up at the crack of dawn and head out of Mumbai.

Maharashtra rural. My playground, my workplace, my mecca. People - not from HUL, I tell this to, visibly wince. But I know that at this point of time in my life, nothing else would have been good enough.

Schizophrenia

2009-05-31T01:08:00.000+05:30

The wheel turns full circle
Ordainment happens
Honeymoon finally over

December Day turns into week and weeks
From a hazy shade of hesitant winter to full-bodied spring
Good times only rolling stronger

Long rides through the dusty
And simmering roads
Seat belt firmly around the neck

The longest ride in a long time
The most fun too
Learning to let go of the safety clasp

Poha for breakfast
Errant marathas for lunch
She-boss

Morning chai
Lunch by the Viao
Girl and friend

Deep thought and the answer is not 42

2009-04-16T11:25:00.000+05:30

Lately I have been thinking about creativity. It seems to me, that the more creative a person is, the more self-loving they tend to be.

While it is possible to be self-loving or narcissistic without being creative, the other way round - is that possible?

Imagine a painter. What great emphasis must he be putting on his vision of the world, that he decides to express it.

Creative people are consumed by their own thoughts and interpretations and want to put them out there, somewhere, for the world to see and enjoy, sometime - if not today.

(A person could argue that some people create for the sake of creation and not for other people to enjoy. By world, I don’t necessarily mean people though. Anything, plants, rocks, rivers. And the fact that they think what they can create is worth creating, means they must have a sense of self-importance. Does it not?)

A writer must be deeply aware of self. He cannot just be narrating incidents. He puts a bit of himself in everything he writes. People reading him relate that bit to random bits in their own self.

Being self-aware is not the same as being narcissistic though. The line may appear blurred, but people who are self-aware are also aware of their fallacies. Well aware.

Are writers simply self-aware? Or also self-loving?

The other side to this coin is that most writers, especially writers of fiction are excellent observers of people, scenery, human nature.

“Her body-language was fatigued. Hunched back. Sagging shoulders. Un-flexed arms. Sitting across from me, she was reading The Financial Times. While chewing gum - slowly, lazily. The impression was entirely of someone who was supremely disinterested in life.”

I can imagine a writer, Rushdie, Lahiri etc, traveling the world, doing research - meeting people, observing them, taking notes, taking in.

One can’t both be an excellent observer of other people and deeply narcissistic? It’s a paradox. Narcissus had no place in his life for observing other people.

Maybe it’s a professional requirement. Or maybe writers aren’t really all that creative - just talented at observing and then expressing.

Or maybe, my hypothesis that all creative people have a bit of Narcissus in them, is flawed to begin with. Perhaps they are only deeply respectful of their self, their ego.

Spike me!

2009-04-13T09:44:00.000+05:30

I still get nightmares from the time that the ‘resume mentor’ would inspect records of my flimsy achievements with steely-eyed determination, just like a Chinese woman inspecting her face for clogged pores. And then sport a look of resigned frustration, just like the afore-mentioned woman’s husband footing the bill for pore-opening creams, lotions, essences, masks and serums. A pore, after all, has to breathe.

But I digress.

The point is, I finally have my ‘spike’.

I have climbed The Great Wall twice.

Beat that - any of you 9+ pointers, who win Olympiads or design regression models for fun. And maybe play a little tabla on the side. At concerts.

The child inside of us

2009-03-29T15:16:00.000+05:30

Why do we like children?

I like kids because they are cute. First of all. But the larger reason is that they are so upfront about most things. Comfortable with their vices.

Scenario I - Two kids playing with a ball. They will fight for it with all their heart. One will sit on the other till he/she relinquishes the object of objection. Scenario II - You playing with a kid. Making funny faces, trying to make it laugh. The kid does not think it funny. Will make no pretense. Will raise hell and high water if you don’t let it go when it wants to.

Children are endearingly selfish. They know what they want, are not afraid of taking action on it, no matter how silly the desire may be - candy floss or your attention. They are huge attention-seekers too.

They are miniature us with no-holds-barred. We love to see them go at each other with such unbridled enthusiasm. We figure let them have fun while they still can. But somewhere, children are endearing to us because we live our vicarious desires, especially the baser ones, through them.

On the other hand, some of the most annoying grown-ups I have met are the ones who have not outlived the child inside them. The ones who still think that their wishes should be uppermost on the minds of all around. The ones who will ruthlessly engineer events around them to get what they want because they actually believe they deserve it.

A child is all that we love with gusto. A ‘childish’ man we abhor.

Selling my soul, while helping you find soul-mate

2009-03-27T09:33:00.000+05:30

I hope you guys are noticing some of the advertisements that Google has been throwing off-late at my blog.

Flirting and Teasing Tips - Meet Beautiful Women. Never Feel Lonely Again.

How promising. And what a brilliant piece of advertising. Beautifully laddered.

MaverickMoneyMakers - Goofy Southern Boy Teaches You His Online Money Making Machine.

My toes are curling at the thought.

Man Seeking Woman - Meet like minded people and find your soul mate - Register free today!

How cool is that.

The bigger question to ask here is why these ads are finding their way to my blog. An even bigger point of curiosity for me is, why aren’t any of you people clicking? I don’t see any hefty google pay-cheques in the mail.

Have we become so jaded as a society that even promises of meeting beautiful women, making an endless amount of money and finding the soul-mate, fail to excite?

What do we really want?

I, for one, want some dollars, courtesy Google. Please do click.

Peace-time love

2009-03-20T17:31:00.000+05:30

They were in love

Oh, it was anguish

It was candlelight

It was music and heady perfume

And traveling for two hours just to spend one together

It was long phone calls

And silly fights

Beautiful words and stolen kisses.

And then came the day

When he didn’t feel the need to bathe

And she didn’t feel the need to wax

They love each other more deeply now

Anguish firmly replaced by

Formless pajamas and a five-day old stubble

Sun, Shanghai and S

2009-03-18T09:11:00.000+05:30

I am glad I got the chance to work with a woman. There is this notion one has about women bosses. They tend to go overboard in their zeal to appear efficient, no-nonsense. This one has the perfect balance. Yin and Yang. She is the most soft-spoken person I remember meeting in a long time, and she cuts to the chase too. Cultural barriers are inside people’s heads. This lady cottons on to my thoughts, before I utter them.

So, a lot of really great things happened yesterday.

Sun happened. Spring came to Shanghai and my happy feet contracted the delicious disease. I tapped my way to office. To the beats of everything from Atif to ABBA, Shanu to Simon. With jacket carelessly flung over arm.

Random people smiled at me. On the subway, in the supermarket. Here’s the thing about the Chinese, they don’t smile at you of their own accord. They maintain distance, protocol. The Great Wall of China. Although people here are always staring at me. As a Brazilian colleague, recently drawled - Yeaaah man, they are always staring at you, and they want to touch you and they want to take pictures with you and...it’s crazy.

My sympathies to him. I may not be quite the tourist attraction that he claims to be, but people definitely do stare. Only non-chink for miles, in the Yellow Sea. Imagine being Paris Hilton at a Nobel laureates' convention. Or Albert Einstein at a rave party. Well, on second thoughts, he would have been quite in the Einsteinium there. The point is, I look like a freak. And that these descendants of Confucius smiled at me, without provocation. It was like the aura of happiness surrounding me penetrated their reserve.

I succeeded in my mission of befriending a Chinese woman. I drafted a plan of action, did some ‘target-setting’, practiced a few ‘opening lines’. They worked. I am trying to seduce her into showing me places around during the weekend. Don’t judge me, it’s mainly for the conversation.

Past deeds bore fruit. I met an Indian in office, a senior guy. First of all, we spoke in Hindi. Bliss. Secondly, while talking I happened to mention that I was working in the Andheri office for some months last year, sitting in the adjacent cubicle to this person, who happens to be his boss. A look of awakening dawned on his face and he immediately started rummaging through his cell-phone. And came up with a picture he had taken of a ‘quote’. Written by blue felt pen on a bit of chart paper in terrible handwriting. You guessed it and if you didn’t, go do some syllogisms. That quote was one of the many I had put up in my cubicle; he, on one of his visits, thinking it was interesting, had taken a picture of it. Okay, okay, not quite the Slumdog saga, but it felt good. To see one of your whims having made this journey across the continent. With me in tag.

Sex and the city. While sex in this city is more or less off-the-charts, I did manage to find a DVD set of the series, seasons 1 to 7, for 20 Yuan. Quick calculation. INR 140. F*** me.

Too much stimuli is there. Coming soon is an account of the Chinese woman’s obsession with her skin, me being all too painfully aware of it since the unit I work for is called - Beauty Care. Along with some tid-bits regarding the way the Chinese government manages PR through its newspapers, and how, if things were left to it, the much touted India-China story would have the ‘India’ part determinedly scratched off.

Scent of a city

2009-03-13T19:14:00.000+05:30

Shanghai. It looked just like Gurgaon at first glance. The ride from the airport to downtown was marked by a feeling of deep satisfaction as all things fell into place.

It’s still early days. Been raining off-late. Cold winds. The works.

But I like it. The city is convenient. It didn’t take me any time to adjust to its beat. The beat itself is not distinctive. Shanghai is like one of those world-cities. Center of finance and business and what not. Or maybe I haven’t discovered the finer notes yet.

The Chinese are inscrutable. They look unapproachable. Serious people going about their business. Like they have the weight of the entire world’s manufacturing on their petite shoulders or something.

Ouch.

So anyway, although they look like Sir-when-I-ope-my-lips-let-no-dog-bark-Oracle, they actually are the sweetest people on earth. If you ever are in trouble and there’s a Chinese near, have no fear. Talk about the ‘State’ being different as different can be from the people it governs.

About those errant notes, by the way. I tried to discover them. I undertook a 2 hour walk, one way, to The Bund. Beautiful. In a surgical sort of way.

While I like the comforts of Shanghai, nay, I adore the comforts of Shanghai - where the streets have signs and no one knows my name, I do have a few questions. I wonder what brought those disfigured beggars at the Bund Tourist Canal to Shanghai? Was it the dream of a better life? Or are they native Shanghai-nese and have nowhere to go? How did they get disfigured? Is it similar to the racket that runs in Mumbai? How do the guys incessantly peddling their wares to exotic looking foreigners - from fake watches to portraits - make ends meet? Are they making enough money from all the people they dupe, o-so-sweetly? Which are the areas of Shanghai where the not so white-collar live? Have they lost their jobs yet? What do they have to say about China’s recent declaration on a news channel - China refuses to acknowledge the recession?

I want to see the underbelly of the city, any city. I don’t just want to go to the Bund, marvel at the array of retina-blinding-white-neon-golden-lit-branded-displays at People’s Square, restrict myself to traversing the criss-cross of super-super highways and architectural marvel that is Shanghai. I want to get into the brain, the heart, the soul of a city. Walk across its dirty gullies, be privy to the shameful secrets that it tries to hide so religiously.

Say my name, Shinlee Xihou

2009-03-09T09:33:00.000+05:30

They can't pronounce my name here.

That pleases me. Makes me feel exotic.

On another note, need to get better shoes.

Mirror mirror on the wall..

2009-03-01T12:58:00.000+05:30

Met an old friend today. It’s that time of the year when west-gone birds come home to roost - for a bit, what with Christmas vacations and all. Old friends have a way of bringing you face to face with a self that you barely recognize now. They remember things you used to say and do, things which you yourself have forgotten. They surprise you at times with their acute observations, their little windows into your soul.

Most of all what surprises you is how you used to be. Am I the same, slightly ditzy, seemingly carefree thing now that I was then? Life was that simple? Or is just the rose-tint of nostalgia that makes it seem so…so endearing?

So we got discussing about this and that. A girl we both know, me - on the fringes, as one of the most staid and conservative people ever, is getting married. She met the guy on a flight. She is a Southie - steeped-in-the-wool, he a Catholic. People never cease to amaze. Another woman, who met her now-husband through Orkut came up. She met him via a common birthday community.

Almost makes me feel conventional. One may question the almost bit. Engineer-IT-MBA. What’s not conventional? On the other hand, have come to believe that convention really does not exist. It is just a façade. Everybody has a funny, irregular, mould-breaking story to their lives, which is at most times hidden from public view. But yes, the eccentricities-oddities, well-hidden though they might be, definitely do exist. Perhaps just a scratch of a nail below the thin ice.

One thing has definitely changed about me. I used to revel in my oddness. I used to like being ditzy, irregular, forgetful, crazy, irrational at times, impulsive. Unapologetic. No longer. I have spent the last year ironing all of them out. Trying to get discipline and sense in. Caution. Responsibility. Look-before-you-leap kinda thing. It’s there in my writing even. The style, the content. Suddenly it’s a different set of attributes that seem desirable.

The face I saw in the mirror today, when I met him and the day I met those two, was somebody else’s. What is it? Growing-up? B-school? Life?

Use Detergent/Wear Sunscreen

2009-02-24T02:13:00.001+05:30

I met a woman the other day. And asked her about her favorite ads on television as a way to get some more ‘insight’ into what she was all about. Rather what her ‘attitude towards shopping’ was all about. Yes, that is of paramount importance to me nowadays.

She thought for some time, while I waited with a cultivated look of pleasant encouragement on my face. After some time, she said she liked the Pepsi ad featuring Mahendra Singh Dhoni best.

I laddered.

She described the ad. Minister ka beta. Line mein ghus jata hai. Dhoni kehta hai. Pyaas honi chahiye.

Why does she like the ad. What does it mean.

I laddered some more.

She said. Zindagi mein aage badhna ke liye pyaas honi chahiye. Yeh baat humko achhi lagi is ad mein.

This amazingly complex country.

In a village called Etaunja in Uttar Pradesh

Lives a woman, like every other woman

She goes out in ghoonghat

And runs the home with a measure tape

But she watches and she dreams

Thirsty dreams of unfettered flight

Aspiring India of the glorious ambitions

Your children go to school in collars of impeccable white.

The double O

2009-02-16T23:26:00.000+05:30

First Love -

Is something else

A shrine to an innocent self

First Love -

Which when comes your way again

You brace to get overwhelmed - again

First Love -

Her walking into the room

After all these years, and it’s like the Mona Lisa

Overhyped. Overrated.

Yes, Emotional Atyachar

2009-02-12T16:16:00.000+05:30

Dev D is the perfect movie. A coming together of people bursting with the juice.

The music oozes passion. Not only does it not stick-out like a sore thumb, it gives the movie direction. And Emotional Atyachar is well - the new anthem. The movie itself is brilliantly put together with pace changes and contextual lighting. Minimal dialogues. Raw.

Mahie Gill exudes sex appeal and energy. Kalki Koechlin is like a cat. Graceful and mysterious. And Abhay Deol. What can one say. Tortured. Absolutely.

The actors fit into their roles like cork in a champagne bottle. They are brilliant actors, no doubt. It’s mostly clever casting though.

Dev epitomizes obsession. Paro passion. And Chanda survival-instinct.

I am as taken by the characters as by the people who made them. So Anurag Kashyap encouraged Abhay Deol to drink while filming. And to land up on sets right out of bed. Hung-over. Mahie Gill broke a few doors, the hand-pump, somebody else’s hand and sprained her own ankle during the course of the movie. Chanda’s character was auditioned extensively, actors were give the orgasm part to read out. Kalki K didn’t know Hindi very well. But she spoke French and Tamil fluently and hence the final scene turning out the way it did.

There are movies and then there are movies. This one was a pleasant surprise. Watching it makes one wonder how it would be - to create your labor of love, to see it taking shape in front of you. To hit upon inspiration, to get others impassioned about your vision. To see yourself vindicated as the curtain falls. To lose yourself in front of the camera. To overcome the fears - of ridicule, failure and commoditization.

One of SRK's many quotable quotes - I leave behind a little bit of myself in each of my movies, and I fear that one day I will have nothing left.

Technicolor Dreamcoat

2009-02-12T01:16:00.000+05:30

It struck me today that I am a boss-person. I get inspired by people around, maybe more than the work.

My room is a mess. There are things lying around. The bed is never made. Newspaper strewed. It still looks pretty damn neat. It is Wadala Sheraton, all said and done. How bad can it look. Like Aishwarya Rai having a bad hair day.

I don’t like the Sheraton though. It’s amazing how people have raved about it so much. I don’t want to live in a sone ka pinjra.

So trip to China happening sometime next month. Will like that. They have gorgeous hair. Should find out what the secret is. Can’t be good genes. Cant only be good genes.

The Chinese are secretive people. Inscrutable is the word. Plus they have the Mandarin. Must be a very narrow group of non-Chinese who can tell the Lee from the Loo.

I see people all around me trying to maintain the work-life balance. In fact, I am one of the last few to join the bandwagon. This says something about young people fresh-into-their-careers nowadays, does it not? And all of these people are ambitious, make no mistake. Coming of age, methinks. Of sensibilities.

'Sensibilities' seems to be my most oft-repeated word off-late.

The gist

2009-02-04T16:20:00.000+05:30

It stares me in the eye
Like a sarkari office peon certain of my imbecility
I turn away
Chewing on my lower-lip in concentration

This question that comes up at times
The answer that I struggle with most times
Give me this day my daily bread
Also tell me how I should be

Should I stash my woes behind the daily dose (of laughter)
Or treat this life as pursuit for nirvana
Check for expiry dates and tell-tale signs on birthday gifts
Or maybe believe. Just believe

A goal. A goal. Should I set one
Or just drift along till I see someplace to anchor
Believe all men are born equal
But then why do so few rule and many others - just root

There is no - to be or not to be
Am and want to be
But what, and why, and how
That is mainly the question.

God in Gucci

2009-02-02T20:45:00.000+05:30

I have discovered that when you boycott something, or proclaim disdain for it publicly, it is actually because you like it more than you care to admit, to the world, and sometimes, to yourself.

Like perfume. I never buy and rarely wear perfume. The only perfumes I own have been given to me by friends. Why? Because I don’t care to smell good? Wrong. Because smell to me is the most inebriating of senses, the most powerful, the most heavenly.

Smell is an obsession. I associate everything with smell. A sliver of a long-forgotten smell is like the key that opens long-locked doors inside my mind, the lubrication that gets those rusty hinges to swing.

The smell of my sister’s baby skin in the days when she would still let me hug her, the stench of Salt Lake City when I was a hot-headed-wear-heart-on-sleeve kinda punk kid, the cold remembrance of the air conditioning at Sinhal classes where I was easily the most painfully-shy, short-skirted, fifteen-year-old in her own ditsy Neverland, the perfumed nail-polish and the musty odor of second-hand Sweet Valley Highs from then, when I was quite the bimbo, the skin cream we all love to hate on my lips for the first time - the feeling’s gone, but the smell remains, the ghastly gobhi-aaloo when I would wake up feeling homeless and lost - remembering the smell of my mother’s love, the Vodka in plastic cups - brilliant hazy nights and freshly-laundered rosy mornings. And lately, the roses that smell of Hugo Boss.

The list is endless.

I love smell so much that I don’t think there is any smell in the world good enough for me. And so, I never wear perfume.

The same goes for love. People who say they don’t believe in love, in fact, believe in it so much that anything less than the over-powering, all-consuming, absolutely-exhilarating emotion is not acceptable - is not love.

The Energy Crisis

2009-01-29T00:53:00.000+05:30

A friend recently, while narrating his trysts with the good ol’ arranged-marriage-beast, ended with - I like a little bit of passion, energy. It’s not that I want her to agree with me all the time or say only nice things. In fact, even when she says - You are an asshole, it should compel me to think - Am I really?

A tale of many cities - A tale of just one city

2009-01-20T20:02:00.000+05:30

You know you are in Kanpur when

1. You go to a mall, the city’s best and biggest, itching to spend some money and the only stuff you find to spend it on is some really oily dosa and half-boiled corn
2. A walk on the main road at 2 in the afternoon is punctuated by vulgar comments and some really vulgar comments
3. There is no transport that looks palatable, except if you want to make your journey with some suspicious looking characters in ten-seater tempo-vans. I dare you, especially after having had a sufficient dosage of the afore-mentioned vulgar comments
4. Every T,D and H (and by that I do not mean Tall, Dark and Handsome) dons a leather jacket
5. On the subject of leather, you see carts and trucks piled with leather shavings. You see towering tanneries dotting the landscape fortress-like
6. There are more educational institutes and coaching classes than tanneries
7. There are more chemists and angrezi dawakhane than educational institutes and coaching classes
8. There are more angrezi sharab ke theke than chemists

Like my Senior from Savories, I too fall in love with cities. I fall in love with the time having spent there, with the people.

That special Kanpuri accent, actually central-UP accent. Enunciate every word. Not like your Dilli-rajdhani that eats up half its words and blurs the edges of the remaining.

Nahi Bhaiiiyaa. Har ek shabd ko dabake boliye. Haan. Bilkul aiise hi. Kya samjhe?

For the first time in my life, I don’t feel I will be taken to be an outsider because I speak with the newspaper-wala and the dukaandaar and the traffic cop and the thanedaar in Hindi. Hindi is the local language here. (In Delhi, you don’t speak to anybody. I don’t know if they have devised an advanced technique of robbing you just by speaking to you).

Then there are the paan-walas of Kanpur. I saw a board which said - Ladies Paan Center. Go figure.

Oh, the milk-trains. UP and Bihar are not called the cow-belt for nothing. So everyday thousands of men from villages make their way to the towns and cities with their pitchers of milk. I saw a train the other day and the entire length of it had milk cans hanging from outside its windows.

Yes, I have lived in many cities and each one has a place, in my mind, in my memories.

I do feel like an outsider though.

I always will. In any place in the world. Except one.

These others, they mean nothing. I keep coming back to you and you draw me into your steely embrace. You make me feel like I belong. I admire your sensibilities - your ability to absorb, your ability to bear, your temperance, your infinite aspiration, your tendency to flatten everybody into nameless entities - the great leveller that you are, your resourcefulness - you never disappoint, your devilish dual nature - you want to crush people into oblivion and yet and yet, you want them to crush you, you want them to prove their mettle to you so that you can elevate them to the dizzying heights of achievement.

You know you complete me.