Compos Mentis

La Dolce Vita

2011-07-24T10:23:00.002+05:30

As a general rule, Rohan let the alarm ring for about ten seconds before he hit the off button. Partly because that’s the time it takes for him to slowly rise to consciousness, and partly because that’s how long it takes Wagner to get into the roaring chords to the Ride of the Valkyries. Rohan hit the off button on his alarm, kicked the tangled sheets off his bare legs and groped for his phone. Friday 9pm. That meant house party at Sanjay’s place.

To say that Rohan enjoyed his singlehood is an understatement. He relished it the way fat people relished chocolate fudge cookies. His apartment was a tiny, sunlit two-bedroom on the top floor of an old building in the leafier parts of besant nagar. He once had a female roommate, and the cane furniture and floor cushions, yellow paper lanterns from auroville and framed black and white prints of old Madras were her touch. When she got a boyfriend, she moved out, taking with her, her shoes and things and leaving behind – one of the many things she left behind – a row of green bottles on the windowsill with money-plants crawling out of their mouths. These were duly watered by the cook, another remnant of the female roommate, who came into the apartment with her own key every morning and evening. At eight thousand rupees a month she was only too happy to cook and clean for this undemanding bachelor who never made a fuss about the food, always paid on time, and only occasionally greeted her with the unexpected remains of a late-night party; an overflowing mug of cigarette butts here, empty beer bottles strewn over there or some forgotten damp panties stashed under a bed. The spare room had its uses. All in all, Rohan led, one might say, the sweet life.

Rohan stepped out of the shower to see two missed calls and a text from Sanjay on his phone. He unlocked it.

‘de whr u da?? brng sum blck labl frm tasmac ok bloddy half the town is in my home only’

Alright then.

White shirt, blue jeans, watch. Rohan dabbed a dot of styling cream on his palm and ran his fingers through his lightly damp, tousled hair. He took the new shoes out of the shoebox, put them on and admired the rich, brown leather in the mirror for a minute before leaving the bedroom. He could tell from the sound of the jingling bangles emanating from the kitchen that Rukamma has come in already and had already started on the dishes from last night. He stuck his head in.

‘Rukamma, no need to come tomorrow morning. Late night for me today. No breakfast.’

Rukamma gave him a toothy grin, her arms and bangles covered in soap-suds up to her elbow, working the insides of those glasses in smooth circular motions.

‘Ah seri pa, naan naaliki evening varain.’

All the while her strong, lean forearms scrub, scrub, scrub-a-dub-dub away at the wine glasses in firm, yet careful, circles. Rohan grabbed the house-keys from its carelessly flung position on the floor cushion and was out the door.

‘De fucker, how long to wait for you da?’, Arjun opened the front door to Sanjay’s overflowing one-storey home.

‘Friday night, man. Going to Tasmac is a royal pain.’

‘Yeah ok something. Sanjay’s whining like a bitch.’

Sanjay’s home was cosy. Not in the way that brokers meant when they tried to fob off disgustingly-small homes upon you. His home was actually comfortable, with simple wooden furniture and enough space to throw a party. It was bathed in warm tones, with lots of paintings and crooks in the wall that he filled with small wooden figurines and sculptures he brought back from his trips. At twenty-four, he was three years younger than Rohan, but with a stable day-job at his dad’s business, and a home of his own, he was set. They met at one of the plays that Sanjay was performing in and that Rohan has gone to cover as a theatre critic and freelance journalist.

Sanjay wasn’t kidding about half the town being in here either. There were at least forty people at his place, mulling around the dining table laden with drinks and ice or spilling out into the small backyard garden through the French windows in the dining room.

‘That bastard won’t come. He’s found some honey from the play and is hitting on her’, Arjun said as he extended a plastic cup filled with some dark bubbly liquid. Rohan took a swig. It was rum and coke. He spotted Sanjay on the couch listening intently to a short, buxom girl in a floral dress.

‘So where’s Deepak?’ Rohan asked, taking one of the ice-cubes from the drink into his mouth.

‘De waste fucker da. That chute takes two hours to get ready, like some bloody girl.’

Rohan smiled at this. Bitching about how late Deepak was to everything was one of Arjun’s pet peeves.

‘De machan, I went to his home ok, bastard has some apricot fucking scrub in his bathroom. Fucking apricot machan... bloody think of the devil.’

Deepak walked over looking as immaculately put-together as always. His hair was carefully fashioned into that just-out-of-bed look. He came over and thumped Arjun on the back.

‘What re, bitching about me as usual?’, he casually asked as he pulled a pack of Wills Classic out of his stone-washed jeans and tapped it on the end before offering Rohan one. Deepak had just turned thirty last week and one of his birthday resolutions was to drink, smoke and whore around as much as he could before taking off to London in a couple of months. Having spent the last six years in a demanding job climbing all the right ladders, he decided to take a break, and after getting accepted at a business school in London, swore promptly to ruin both liver and lung as he reined in his thirties. Despite his general lack of attention to his health, he was the fittest thirty-year-old Rohan had ever met, owing not in small part to his unfaltering dedication to hitting the gym every day. That’s where Deepak met Rohan and Arjun six years ago when he first moved to Chennai.

‘So what’s the story here?’, Deepak motioned to where the guests were drinking and laughing in the living area. One of Sanjay’s cast-mates had broken into a gangster-rap rendition of his monologue from that evening’s play.

‘Who cares da. Some fat fuck. Looks like Ms Big Jugs is more interested in his antics than Sanjay‘, Arjun nudged Rohan as he looked over in Sanjay’s direction. Sanjay was staring idly into the cup in his hand as he swished his drink around, his face turning a deep shade of red. The buxom floral-print girl was bright-eyed and captivated by the cast-mate’s impromptu performance.

Arjun sighed, ‘That guy will never learn da. He goes and is all sensitive and interested and shit with all these young dumb chicks and then gets all dejected when they blow him off after a drink or two. Fucker needs to close his wallet and put it back in his pocket and try being a little rough with them for a change. And stop whining so much about not having a girlfriend.’

‘He’s young da’, Rohan said, ‘give him time.’

‘I wasn’t talking about Sanjay’, Deepak said as he took a drag and let a flume of smoke out his nostrils. Rohan and Arjun followed his gaze to where it settled, on a young girl, probably no more than nineteen, twenty tops, in a short white dress and pretty, fragile features. She was gently swaying on her pastel kitten-heels, her fingers sloppily clutching the cup in her hands. Rohan had noticed her when he walked in, leaning against the wall with a drink in her hand and not really talking to anyone else at the party.

‘Cradle-robber’, Arjun grinned at Deepak.

The girl was unmistakably drunk. Her hair fell in soft curls that framed her pretty, pixie-like face. She had a small, button nose and bright, dark eyes that darted wildly around the room. Every now and then she would look abruptly around at the party, at the paintings, at the dining table, at the drunken dancing, but her eyes would finally circle back and rest upon the man seated on the couch.

Rohan had covered enough plays and knew enough of the theatre scene to know who he was. Nikhil was the thirty-nine year old director of Sanjay’s latest play. The man was recently married, and was here making an appearance with his wife. Their marriage created somewhat of a scandal when it happened a year ago, in part because she was so young, so beautiful, so talented, and in part because Nikhil was as notorious for his roving eye as he was for his directorial talents. Last Rohan had heard, there were some murmurings of Nikhil being at it again with the young girls in his troupe, and all was not well in his marriage. The wife, it seemed, was tired of having left behind family, friends and fame as an upcoming contemporary dancer, to move to Madras and get married to a middle-aged man with a mid-life crisis. Nikhil sat by his wife’s side, looping an arm casually around her stiff stomach, laughing ever so slightly overloud at his friend’s antics. But Rohan was aware that Nikhil knew – and his wife knew – that the girl in white held her tormented gaze for only one person there that night.

‘She’s gonna drop it!’Arjun hissed as the girl’s grip finally loosened and sent the cup of whatever the hell drink it was splashing on to the tiled-floor. A few people around her looked up and past her, their eyes impatiently searching for the responsible sober friend she surely must have come with. Nikhil and his wife firmly looked straight on, her tight mouth tensing only the slightest bit, her waist growing infinitesimally stiffer under her husband’s cupped palm. The girl in the white dress looked around dazed and wobbled unsteadily on her heels, her face ready to break into a million fragments.

Rohan finished the last of his drink in a quick gulp, ‘I’ll drop her home da. Anyway I wanted to get that piece written tonight. Better get back.’

‘Useless. Ok fine. Don’t forget tomorrow’s the big after-party. Final show or some shit it seems. Anyway. Lots of booze.’ Arjun said, as he and Deepak walked over to where Sanjay was seated on the sofa, his shoulders slumped forward as he absentmindedly took sips from an empty plastic cup.

One... two... three... and she rode out valiantly, upon horse with sword unsheathed, her long golden tresses trailing behind her, from under her helmet, like a flag on fire on the battlefield.... six... seven... eight... she was fading into the dream and smoke and invading daylight, taking with her the slain heros and warriors to Valhalla... ten.

Rohan’s hand reached out and pressed the off button on his alarm. Daylight flooded into his small orange bedroom. He’d been up all night finishing off a piece about some women’s event or the other that he had the misfortune to cover last week. He glanced at his clock. 5pm. Good. That gave him some time before the show tonight, and he had all of Sunday to work on the play review anyway. He swung his legs to the side of the bed and got up and walked into the living room.

There was a plate overturned on another and set beside a porcelain cup with scrap of paper balanced over it like a lid. Rohan removed the top plate and found a slice of toast and some eggs, now cold. The porcelain cup held tea, although it appeared to have such a thick skin on it to be virtually undrinkable. It was probably sitting there since morning. Rohan smiled thinking of last night.

He had driven Parvati, for that was the name of the weepy-faced girl at the party, back to his home after many unsuccessful attempts at getting her to tell him where she lived. As far as he could tell, she came to the party alone, by auto no less, all the way out to Sanjay’s home in that godforsaken corner of Chennai. Between sobs, and soggy tissues and sips of hot coffee that Rohan made for her, she protested that no she was not drunk thankyouverymuch just a little under the weather and why shouldn’t she be since that no good two timing bastard who texted and called her incessantly day and night for the last three months claiming that she was the only woman who could make him feel alive again this gorgeous beautiful woman whom he pulled into this private intimate universe he created for just the two of them – here she blew her nose quite loudly into a crumpled wad of tissue – appeared to be nothing more than a liar and a cheat and a no good slut and why cant men be sluts youtellme this useless waste of a man mayhismotherswomb implode after carrying such disease into this world SO anyway shes not drunk and thats that and she will jolly well go home when shes good and ready and can she have more coffee please.

Between the tears and the warbling and the drunken tangential meanderings of her lovestruck and sleep-addled mind, Rohan found her absolutely, tragically, hilariously beautiful. At any rate he would never have made a move on a drunk girl although she clawed at him, weeping into his white shirt at first, then kissing the tanned exposed flesh where it peaked from beneath the shirt, then lifting her head with such melancholic charm and staring into his eyes that Rohan had to muster every ounce of his strength to not cradle her beautiful, tear-soaked face in his palms as he put his mouth upon her lips, on that wet quivering lower lip that he would have loved to suck, bite, comfort and caress with his exploring tongue.

At any rate, after her tearful story, her energy spent, she sobbed and snivelled into Rohan’s white shirt – now duly crumpled – and finally drifted to sleep, still muttering under her breath maythatcur burn in hell and his penis erupt in pus filled boils that two bit no talent man slut.

He put her in the other room, and placed an empty dustbin beside her just in case. After a long, cold shower, he had sat down to write about the botoxed ladies of Harrington road and their unremarkable shenanigans, and sent the piece to his editor in the wee hours of the breaking dawn. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep in the morning, and no doubt Parvati let herself out whenever she woke up without waking him. No note, no sign of her ever having been there – except for the breakfast she made before leaving, and the washed coffee cups from last night overturned and drying on the kitchen sill.

His phone’s loud ring brought him back into the present.

‘Fucker, where the fuck are you, bloody behenchod I’ve been trying you... Get here get here now’, Arjun was shrieking into the phone, his voice progressively climbing the higher registers of his voice box that Rohan was surprised to discover.

‘Hey chill, what happened?’

‘De machan, my mother came home da, she’s in the fucking living room with some useless fucking dogface she wants me to marry and this chick is in my room.’

‘I thought you said your folks were out of town’

‘De mother... BASTARD, I THOUGHT SO TOO! But they’re here no to ruin my life?? Get your ass here man, I cant hold her off for long.’

Rohan went into the bathroom to splash his face with cold water and throw on a fresh shirt. His house keys were in their usual place.

‘Then what happened?’

‘Then what da. Bloody I fucking shat my load. She wasn’t supposed to be home, and of all things, she decides to sit down on the bloody sofa then only and show me some dogface retard with crores sitting pretty in her daddy’s bank account’

Arjun was furiously puffing away at his cigarette, standing outside the small wooden roadside shack opposite the auditorium where the play was supposed to begin in half an hour. Sanjay was intently hanging on to his every word, evidently all vestiges of last night’s rejections purged from his mind. Rohan and Deepak were sitting perched on the low stone wall that ran alongside the road, gently blowing on their small, steaming glasses of tea.

The events of the last hour were this. Rohan drove over to Arjun’s home and rang the doorbell whereby he was promptly seized by Aunty and his opinion of her future potential daughter-in-law fervently sought. The girl that Arjun kept referring to as dogface, did not in fact resemble a canine in any way whatsoever according to Rohan, except for her rather unfortunate protruding front teeth that poked out from beneath her fuzzy lip and made her appear like she was snarling. At any rate, perhaps Rohan might be able to offer a better opinion once his parched throat was quenched and incidentally, would Aunty like some help in the kitchen, he always loved her Madras filter coffee, and my how he used to find some excuse or the other to go to Arjun’s place after school back when they were kids just to get a plate of her home-made murukkus and a small tumbler of coffee. And thus, a crisis was diverted, the hidden lover smuggled out of the home, a piping hot plate of murukkus and Madras filter coffee thrust into Rohan’s hands, and a very nervous chain-smoking Arjun bundled into the front seat of Rohan’s car and brought to the play venue where Deepak promptly laughed in his face for a full seven minutes upon hearing the whole story.

‘Ok, but who was she da’, Sanjay asked between sips of the tea he’d ordered for himself despite his director’s admonition that milk ruined the voice.

‘Some rich ugly beast, man.’

‘No da, the other one. Your girl.’

‘Oh that’, Arjun suddenly suffered from an unrelenting itch on his neck, as he scratched and averted his eyes and mumbled under his breath, ‘some lady I met.’

‘Oh give us a name Arjun’, Deepak called out from the wall, grinning at Arjun’s obvious discomfort.

‘Some chick I met recently man.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not the first time you’ve been in this situation before... your mom would throw a fit, but finally she’ll pipe down only. Why are you so cautious da? Some big-shot ah?’ Sanjay had finally caught on.

‘I bet Rohan caught a good look at her, what with his one eye in the kitchen and the one firmly on the front door. What eh Rohan? Who’s this mystery babe whose got Mr A’s knickers in a twist’, Deepak winked at Rohan as he fished out a Wills from his pocket and offered Rohan one.

‘Machan... free’ Arjun saw that Deepak was having too much fun to let this go, ‘Ok fine, but you shut your face about this. It’s Shoba Narasimhan’, he said, dropping his voice to barely above a whisper on the last two words.

The three of them let out a low whistle. Rohan suspected it might have been someone famous, maybe a rich socialite, or one of those newface-fairskinned actresses clambering to get into big budget Tamil flicks. But Aunty’s kitty party former-friend and current-sworn-enemy? Arjun was swimming in shark-infested waters.

‘Miss tight ass, tight face? How does she even move man, she’s got so much botox on her face’, Deepak said.

‘Botox that her husband paid for’, Sanjay interjected, ‘De why are you fucking around with that guy’s wife da! He’ll run you over with his BMW 7 series if he finds out.’

‘De why are you such a loser da! Shut the fuck up and lower your voice, useless bastard!’Arjun yelled back.

‘I heard she got a boob job man, is it true?’Deepak asked.

Arjun threw his half-smoked cigarette on the ground, stamped it out with great vengeance and started walking back to the auditorium in a huff.

Deepak started chuckling, ‘Guys, show’s gonna start in a few minutes anyway. Let’s go.’

Rohan was smoking a cigarette on the corridor outside the auditorium entrance. It had been fifteen minutes into the play and the lead actor was such an uncontrolled windbag that Rohan had to get out of there. As a critic, he was obligated to sit through the entire farcical proceedings, but as a normal, decent, sensitive human being he had to get the fuck out of there.

Deepak, on the other hand, had far too much sense to let a minor thing like a shitty play ruin a perfectly good evening of theatre, and he managed of course in his distinctly characteristic way of dealing with things by laughing loudly through the tragedy at the most inappropriate moments. The thing about Deepak’s laughs was that they were big, whooping, belly-laughs that went crashing through the auditorium, bouncing off the walls, breaking off into smaller fissures, and creating ripples of tiny laughs in pockets across the audience. Soon the entire audience was in splits as the baffled protagonist stumbled about on stage lamenting even louder the general despair and misery of his poverty-stricken situation, only to be greeted with a fresh wave of irrepressible audience laughter.

Outside, out of the corner of his eye, Rohan spied that he was not alone. A striking woman, an actress in the play no doubt judging from her dress and painted face, was out on the lonely corridor smoking in silence. He hadn’t seen her yet. Perhaps her part had not yet come.

‘So tell me’, she broke the silence, ‘Is Chennai usually this merry?’

‘No not usually’, Rohan replied, ‘but the heat does strange things to people.’

At this she smiled. ‘I’m sure it does’, she said and flicked the dying embers of her cigarette stubs into the abyss of night. ‘That’s a good line. I think I’ll work that in.’ she spoke half to herself as she disappeared in the darkness of the corridor, near the stage entrance.

Rohan lingered for a second longer in the corridor. He brought to mind again the imprint of her features against the full-mooned sky. Sharp, smooth-skinned and beautiful – even despite the war paint of stage make-up. She was by no means young. But God, what a voice.

‘Let’s make this city forget its heat for one night, hmm?’ the voice rang out from the darkness startling him, ‘You will see me from the audience’.

It was really not much of a request. Rohan extinguished his cigarette and pushed open the audience doors.

Her name was Lopa.

She was surrounded by people at the after-party at Sanjay’s home. This time Sanjay was playing the dutiful host, ensuring that cups were full, and alcohol ran a-plenty. The lead actor, after being equal parts insulted and flabbergasted by the Chennai audience’s reaction, declared them all a bunch of villagers unworthy of good theatre and remained in a dark and simmering mood when they last spoke to him after the show. Buxom floral-print girl, who it appeared had cast off her floral prints in favour of a tight white top with a plunging neckline, sat mournfully on the corner of the couch getting slowly drunk and hoping that last night’s entertainer will make another appearance tonight and perhaps maybe he might even take her home to show her that music collection of his she so wanted to see last night.

Rohan, stood on the fringes of the raucous crowd, for a change not flanked by either Arjun or Deepak, who both incidentally bumped into a friend of a friend of a friend who had all grown up and fleshed out and was new in the city with her friend and what do a couple of girls on a Saturday night do around here for fun anyway? So they left.

It appeared that Lopa was an actress of some repute back in Mumbai where she was from. Stage, not film, she told all the little moths than had gathered around her old-school silver screen siren flame, laughing as she tilted her head back ever so slightly, just enough to flash a dazzling set of perfectly set, perfectly white teeth. Rohan’s first impressions of her were right. She was stunning, with sharp beautiful features set upon smooth skin. She was older than him but not by much. In fact, he’d be surprised if she was a day over thirty-five. And she could command an audience and she knew it. There, smack in the centre of Sanjay’s house ultimateafterparty version two, she had the crowd eating out of her hands as she made her inconsequential small talk, taking offbeat pauses to suck on her cigarette while her listeners held their breath till she spoke again in that soothing voice like a balm over wounds.

When Rohan had entered the auditorium after their chat in the corridor, the audience was absolutely unruly. There were hoots and cheers and catcalls. Handkerchiefs flung into the air, tickets thrown up and fluttering down like so much confetti, even cell phones ringing in some sort of mad impromptu audience orchestra.

And then Lopa appeared.

She took one slow step and then another. At first the audience didn’t know what to make of it, hooting and cheering wildly. But she stood her ground, and she faced them all with the steely silent glare that you remember from your school days as you trembled under the anticipated rage of a headmistress disobeyed.

It would have been five minutes at least. Five whole minutes. Absolute silence. Not a line was spoken, not a movement made on stage on in the audience. Nothing but Lopa on stage staring down the audience under the bright spotlight focused on her deathly still, maniacal eyes.

And then she began her lines.

Needless to say, the play received a roaring ovation at the end, and Lopa stood outside her stage door smiling and waving, and smiling and waving, and signing autographs like an old-fashioned movie star. In all his experience, and perhaps in Chennai’s recent memory, such an experience was unprecedented. Rohan didn’t know what to make of it. But he will make something of it, that he was sure of, when pen would touch paper the next morning. But tonight, there was nothing on his mind but Lopa.

What a glorious name. Lopa.

From across the sea of bobbing heads, she caught his eye and smiled in a tired, endearing sort of way. Smiling, and clasping hands, and crinkling her eyes, she thanked warmly everyone for their dear, dear comments and made her way across the room in a fluid, meandering way like warm yolk running down a porcelain plate.

‘Well then’, she said when she was standing next to him, ‘looks like the evening wasn’t a total washout.’

‘Looks like it wasn’t’, Rohan said and smiled at her. Up this close and under the harsh yellow lights of Sanjay’s home, he could see the faint stirrings of crow’s feet from the sides of her eyes. Irrationally, he wanted to punch out the lights with his bare fists and kiss her roughly in the darkness.

‘This is a really nice place’, she ventured by way of small talk.

‘Yes, it’s Sanjay’s’, Rohan pointed him out to her amidst the bobbing black heads, ‘he’s not really a party-freak, don’t let that T-shirt fool you. But that needn’t mean this can’t be the most happening after-party party place in town.’

‘Mm-hmm’, she nodded in quiet understanding. ‘Does this have a terrace?’ she asked him abruptly.

‘Why...why yes’, Rohan floundered, ‘we’re actually standing on the stairs that lead up to it. It’s a one-storey house you know.’

Lopa stood on the step next to Rohan, tilting her head to one side, her cold glass held up to her face, allowing the cool drops of water on the outside of her glass trickle down her cheeks, as she drooped her eyelids. As if the lights were beginning to sting her eyes.

‘Come on then’, Rohan grabbed her hand and walked into the cool, night air.

‘So it was the night of a party at her agent’s house’, she said as she leaned against the terrace wall, ‘and the public was so upset that Elizabeth Taylor had taken up with her best friend Debbie Reynold’s husband so soon after her own husband Mike Todd’s death. And she was drinking champagne from a sparkling crystal glass. And she beckoned Shirley McLaine over to where she was seated, at the little table between the piano and the outside candles.’

Lopa took a drag of her cigarette, as she let Rohan form the scene in my mind.

‘She began to quietly talk about her love for Mike and why Eddie meant so much to her because of his deep friendship with Mike. Her eyes welled up with violet tears as she held her sparkling crystal glass close to her face. When the tears were about to fall, she subtly moved her champagne glass just under her eyes.’

Another drag. Another unbearably long silence following the lingering remains of her dulcet-toned voice as it hovered frozen over the deep purple night.

‘And then she says, Shirley McLaine in her book that is, that she would never forget it. Her tears splashed like diamonds into the champagne as she talked about missing Mike so much. She said she’d never seen anything more beautiful or moving, and the entire party seemed to pause in wonder for a moment.’

‘So’, she started again and let the half-formed word linger orphaned in the air, ‘so I say, there is truth; the unmistakable, stark, truth. And then there is beauty. And what is theatre, and what is performance, if it isn’t applying beauty to truth, to enhance it, to enhance life, to embrace this augmented reality.’

Rohan’s mind was reeling. He was listening of course – how could he not, how could he lose even a single precious word – and yet there was something here between their two bodies, something real and growing and tangible that seemed far much bigger than this conversation about Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley McLaine and Mike who and Richard what.

‘So sometimes that’s what I think I am’, she continued, ‘a sort of ‘truth-enhancer’. And when you live life that way,’ she paused again here and turned slowly to face Rohan. How could she be so cruel, so unbearably oblivious, to this tension in the night-air between them.

‘When you live life that way,’ she continued, as she turned back to the night, greeting him once more with the sharp features of her face in profile, ’it becomes such an integral part of you, that you forget where life begins and performance ends.’

Lopa fell into silence. Rohan was only aware of the rustling breeze as it entangled the tiny fly-away wisps of her hair. He wanted so badly to reach out and touch that inaccessible skin.

‘Do you want to kiss me?’ she asked him abruptly.

‘Yes.’ The answer rang clear and cool into the night without hesitation.

‘Then we mustn’t deny this moment’, she leaned back against the terrace wall, and tilted her head toward him, her eyes half closed, her mouth... Oh her mouth.

Arjun and Deepak were back. The stragglers were beginning to leave the party. Sanjay appeared to be quite comfortable sleeping in the corner of his living room, hugging a potted plant. Someone had made a shrine of beer bottles beside him. Rohan had been up on the terrace for almost an hour he realised.

Perhaps, he thought to himself, he really should consider it? Rohan’s life in Chennai was beginning to take on a sort of sameness as the days morphed into each other, and deadlines came and went, and events and social gatherings unfolded around the city, and Rukumma appeared every day, always smiling, always on time, with the reliability of the sun. Perhaps this would be the grand adventure that Rohan hadn’t known he was missing in his life. A new job, a new house, a new start in Mumbai.

As for Lopa... he wasn’t sure, but he expected she would figure somehow in his plans. At twenty-seven, he was already jaded, and she, with her maturity and grace and intoxicating beauty would be like a cool drink of water on a hot Madras day.

Rohan’s thoughts were interrupted by the booming voice of Ankur Walia, son of the Mumbai-based producer, the one with all the hits. He was blanking on the name, but he knew which one. Lopa glided across the room and into his arms, snaking one long limb around his waist and planting a small, platonic peck on his lips. How had he not noticed the ring before?

Of course she was married, Rohan thought and almost laughed aloud, like a mad drunk in an empty home. The kiss, the smoke, the talk.... it was all part of her larger-than-life persona. Part of her theatre, and her performance, and her augmented reality. And out there on the empty corridor, outside the auditorium, in the darkness – no wait, in the almost darkness, for there was a full-moon present – it was just enough light he realized for him to catch her perfect features in profile, and for her to catch his ‘Press’ tag as it hung innocently from his neck.

---

Rohan got in the car and locked the door. Beside him in a crumpled mass was Arjun, lightly snoring. Behind him was Deepak, who told him before passing out that those girls turned out to be a couple of nineteen-year old nitwits who got in their car, went home with them, got drunk on four beers and then started crying about needing to be home before curfew and oh god what will their moms say and who will let them in and it’s already almost two am and she doesn’t has the house key and... and.. and...

Rohan was drunk, but he’d been more drunk on other occasions and still gotten behind the wheel to drive people home. Besides, Chennai was lovely at night. He thought about the review for tomorrow and what he would write. Well, she certainly was one piece of work he’ll give her that. But in the end, Rohan thought as he drove down empty roads of tree-lined streets, Lopa never promised him anything; that was all his own fantasy. She gave him a beautiful moment, and she gave the audience the performance of a lifetime, and that was worth a few positive words at least.

Rohan stopped at a red light, more out of absentmindedness than any reverence for traffic laws. His phone blinked. Text message from Parvati. Parvati? Who? Ah that girl from the house party on Friday. He had almost forgotten her name. He unlocked it and read the message.

‘heyyyy!! listen m sooooo mbarassed abt that nite!!! plz lemme mke it up 2 u :))) thr’s a house party @ my place tomm nite. wanna cum? brng ur frendz. xoxo’

He looks at his friend sleeping next to him, his face etched in the borrowed red glow of the traffic light. Arjun was sound asleep, still snoring lighting, no idea of how his life with change forever with his impending marriage. Dogface or not, Rohan thought to himself, Arjun would soon get tired of being a toyboy and then it's one bachelor down. And Deepak? Rohan glances at his sleeping figure in the rear-mirror and wonders if he knows what his thirties have in store for him, liver-and-lung-ruination pledge be damned. The light turns green and taints his knuckles as Rohan rests his hands lightly on the wheel.

‘ya sure’ He types on the phone and presses send.

Yeah, he thinks to himself, why not. Perhaps some change in life is a good thing. Rohan smiles as he steps on the gas and drives through the green light. There would be some chicken curry in the fridge from Rukamma’s evening visit. God bless her.

This is the sweet life, he hums to himself as he drives through Chennai’s empty night roads, the sound of Arjun’s soft snoring filling the car with its steady rhythm.

RIP Toby

2011-04-30T22:37:00.002+05:30

Will love you always.

There are days when I feel so...

2011-04-09T09:18:00.001+05:30

meh.

Calamity child, where'd you wanna go?

2011-03-24T10:34:00.005+05:30

The worst thing to listen to when you're down in the dumps is Leonard Cohen. Bowie on the other hand, totally rocks.

Ziggy, I want to go to the magic place in your head.

Dhobi Ghat

2011-01-24T19:28:00.004+05:30

The last time I really ‘wrote’ on this blog must have been nearly two years ago; the night before I left to the states. And that was a ‘real post – not a rant, or a recycled piece from a contribution to a newsletter – but one of those rare things, this irrepressible urge to pour my turbulence into words so I could put some form to the anxiety I was feeling, write it, spell-check it, publish it and perhaps put it to rest.

Once again, this time I feel compelled to write on the eve of my trip back to the states, although this time it feels less like a journey and more like a pit-stop of six months before I’m back for a longer stay during the Madras summer. The difference is that tonight that urge to write is not borne of turbulence, but a frenzied energy – the kind that you can’t put a lid on, and so you decide to just haul yourself out of bed and take to pen and paper.

It’s a number of things, the prospect of going back to a happy carefree sort of student bohemian existence (for the last time I suppose), the knowledge of what awaits (and not the paranoia of the unknown like last time), the restfulness of four months of utter bliss under sun and sea and sand, and a deep, deep appreciation for having felt the warmth of the Indian sun on the back of your neck, something for which I had to travel to the other end of the world and bear seven frigid months a year of winter and darkness to really come to treasure.

But in the midst of those mingled emotions, there’s one kernel of pure shining sentiment, a simple… satisfaction. Last night I watched Dhobi Ghat, Kiran Rao’s directorial debut, and the experience was so delightful, so unexpectedly simple and so subtly beautiful that I was quite unprepared. I’ve come to realize fairly recently that the more promising the trailers appear, the more underwhelming the movie is likely to be. Perhaps I’ve been watching the wrong sort of cinema. Or reading too many reviews before watching the damn film for myself.

Either way, what I was prepared for was a nice likeable movie, a bit of melancholy, some grit, some unbridled passion and color without which we wouldn’t know that this is India (or Mumbai as the case may be, lord knows I have enough friends who insist Mumbai is quite unlike anywhere else in India). In short, a nice enjoyable experience for the price of 120 rupees (whee @ TN state cap on multiplex prices) plus some odds and ends on popcorn and the like. Maybe even a rant on the blog if it turned out to be suitably horrible.

I’ll try not to do a review of it, only because I’m sure there’s be more than enough of those floating around on the internet shortly, and also because I’ll probably get bored of writing this post halfway through it if I attempt any sort of objectivity. Nevertheless, what I will say is that it’s a lovely example of cinematic story-telling; A simple tale of four individuals whose lives interlace in that inexplicably tangled, delicately messy way that can only happen in India.

There’s Aamir playing the impressively self-contained artist Arun, whom we meet during one of his exhibitions and whose discomfort at being thrust in the limelight and having to rub shoulders with Mumbai’s who’s who and regurgitate stale small-talk is almost physically exhausting for the audience to watch. Aamir inhabits this character in a way that is sublime, with an intensity that is all the more hypnotizing because it is so beautifully restrained. It is easy to play a recluse, to live in one’s head to the point of disconnecting from the world and appearing always at arm’s length, always aloof and cold and measured.

But in this movie, I felt almost privileged to be offered a glimpse of the simple treasures inhabiting his world, the self-content and satisfaction that is inwardly driven, the million tiny joys in a day that only a calm, uncluttered mind can perceive and relish. I remember feeling the same way while watching Amelie, the tactile pleasure of observing tiny, deliberate motions on the screen. The texture of a cherished object in close up, the languid movements of a character, the immensity of silence, like an amplifying tunnel for the cascade of loud colors flung haphazardly on the screen or the turbulence of inner emotions. In many aspects this is an incredibility different film, but I found the one common aspect – that palpable pleasure of watching a film so tactile and sensuous – richly rewarding.

Then there is the investment banker from the US who is in India on a sabbatical, to ‘clear her head’ and revel in photography and give in to the gush of vibrancy and life that is Mumbai. At times clueless and achingly vulnerable, Monica Dogra plays Shai with the fragility of a fresh newly-returned-to-India wide-eyed-doe. For all her considerable intellect and New York I-banker sharpness, she’s incredibly dense and oblivious to her affect on the dhobi she befriends and tests the edges of what is deemed ‘appropriate’ friendly behavior and the condescending good-naturedness that one typically extends to another so beneath one’s own social status in India. Yet, there is a definite vulnerability to her that makes you forgive her blind hunger and curiosity for Mumbai and its inhabitants and for Arun, even when it morphs into an obsession with a force of its own.

Munna, the dhobi whom Shai befriends, and played deftly by Prateik, is a true innocent. From the time his path crosses with Shai and she breaks protocol after social protocol and razes cluelessly through the gossamer threads of social customs and conditioning, I feared for the inevitable tragedy this arc of the story was headed to. Thankfully, that didn’t happen although the story veered dangerously close to it on more than one occasion, and we’re left instead with bruised egos and a lightly-trampled heart and one laughably impossible dream that seemed palpable for just one shining, brilliant, crazy moment under the canopy of Mumbai rains. Munna is perhaps the only character of true inner strength, of the resilience of the human spirit and its ability to heal, and bounce back with little more than a few forgotten dreams and some photographs to show for it.

[spoiler alert in this para!]

The last character, Yasmin, played by Kirti Malhotra is poignant and mesmerizing in her transformation from a true curious outsider to Mumbai to a depressed and lost wisp in the forgotten corners of a thundering city. Her simple pleasures in the discovery of a new wonderful experience, a new city, a recent marriage, morphs over the course of the city into a colorless grey tableau of her caged life. The transformation at once so sudden and so stark is shocking to say the least, and there’s the dawning horror of where this can only lead. Despite it all, I felt the poignancy of her initial happy existence and unbridled curiosity only heightened by the wastefulness of her eventual death.

There are loose ends in the movie of course. There’s the character of V, a women who appears in fleeting glimpses and appears to have a crushing ‘want’ for Arun. Whatever the nature of this yearning, be it love, or longing, or just the human need to expunge the loneliness and the darkness of being forgotten in a crowded city, I am merely left to speculate on her frame of mind and her backstory and her motivations. As for Arun, is he oblivious, so fully consumed by the pleasure of existing within his own world that he fails to notice her giant, sucking desperation for him… or is he merely indifferent, coldly observant of the nature of her want but failing to dredge up any inkling of emotion to act. Then there is the story of his ex-wife, whom we hear of through a couple of sentences and the registration of perhaps one of only two instances of true emotion on his face.

But despite the loose ends, or perhaps because of it, I feel the movie is richer by it. The unexplained edges to Arun only intensify his mystique and draws the audience in to his special world, while never letting us forget that we are mere spectators in his enveloping, intensely personal universe. Perhaps a bit like Mumbai, the final character in this film, whose pervasive presence one cant escape, and yet can never truly articulate except through clumsily cobbled-together fragments of trying to capture its essence, a few brushstrokes here, an unearthed and forgotten video-diary there, a tableau of black and white pictures.

Nevertheless, for now, I suppose that will do. The experience of this film is no less richer by it. It was I suppose a fitting cap to the end of my stay, and in a small way an encapsulation of everything I love about being back in India.

Just that.

2010-11-13T23:00:00.000+05:30

Of odds and ends and random updates

2010-09-27T07:09:00.003+05:30

I remember a time few years ago when I felt the world was spinning and somehow I got left behind. When everyone seemed to be doing something, going somewhere, having fun, exploring new things and I was left to count the grains of sands as they fell one by one into the bottomless abyss of my future. An odd and strange dark land from a lifetime ago.

It’s a peculiar feeling to be here right now, when the world is spinning to fast that I’d like to stretch a hand and grab a flagpole, a branch, some Jane and get off this crazy thing so my stomach can stop lurching. Firstly, I didn’t think I would get here. I wanted to, but I didn’t think I would be able to uncage. Secondly, I didn’t think ‘here’ was so furiously-now as well. How odd that I would actually miss those snatched moments of solitude. It’s all very nice to be spinning around this fast, but boy does it make you dizzy. Thirdly, I didn’t think I would start talking in bullet points of threes, but there you go, and now I shall stop with this bulleted menace. There.

(But I will cheat a little and make a list instead, ha, of Things Gone By in the Year Past)

ITEM ONE: An acute case of homesickness.

The funny thing was, I didn’t think about missing my family too much even as I was preparing to leave and packing my things and meeting all my friends for a last round of bottoms-up and a horrendous drunken rendition of wonderwall. I did dread the thought of leaving my dogs, but not so much friends or family. Perhaps it had to do with over-optimism on my part that I’d be able to strike a balance between enjoying my self-indulgent life as a student in this country club called H and still being in touch/blogging/emailing friends and family…. Or maybe I just didn’t think about it because I knew no amount of thinking would ever be able to change the outcome.

Either way, the deepest cut I suppose was seeing my dad (who came with me for the big move and helped me settle in) leave on a Friday afternoon, between classes, and me in the middle of an ridiculously noisy student cafeteria hoping that this infernal chattering hoard of small-talk-makers could turn to dust and blow away with the snap of my fingers.

It didn’t very much feel like a hard-won victory just then, not the sweet taste of independence that I FINALLY got to savor, of no curfews and no checking-ins, and no ridiculously nosy network of spies lurking from the shadows. It felt empty, and sad, and miserable and not at all like the sort of feeling you’re supposed to have just before being off on some wild adventure and meeting new people and making new friends, and downing ludicrous amounts of alcohol. Nevertheless, like all things, it passed…. The dull ache of missing familiar faces, the frustratingly handcuffed feeling of time difference, the longing for familiar sights – of madras summers and mangoes and sundal on the beach on a Sunday. This place, well I wouldn’t call it home yet, but it’s really not that bad. Hmm.

ITEM TWO: An acute case of winter.

I think I can assert with a fair degree of certainty that snow and I do not like each other. It’s nasty and cold. There’s nothing remotely likeable about it. No it doesn’t look pretty and white. It’s cold and dirty and slippery and wet. It’s also windy as fuck. Despite my strong feelings for winter, I think the worst of it was the darkness. Endless days ran on into each other in darkness, whole days when I didn’t see the sun because it rose at 9 and set at 4 and between those times and beyond I was couped up in a window-less classroom in the basement. I think I will never fathom why some people find this so desirable, so…. ‘efficient’, this nonsensical notion of spending endless days cramped over a computer screen, burrowing through tunnels like a gopher, and then pushing yourself to head to a gym and running on a treadmill while you stare emptily at a mind-numbingly inane excuse for news on American TV.

That said, I think perhaps it has to do with all the rest of it. A friend put it best when he said that when Americans (or at least the ones at H) talk about work-life balance, it’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to appear put-together. When they talk about balance, they’re really talking about trade-offs. So you pick your battles and you make your peace with it.

ITEM THREE: No time to myself.

Definitely not to blog. But not even to do things that I hoped I would find time for, things I enjoyed and things that brought me happiness in the past. Like reading. Or writing. Or spent in laughter and randomness in the company of good friends. I don’t think I liked having my life hijacked and being told what to do and when by some master timecop in the sky. Although, I was warned this would be the case, and thankfully it’s a lot better this year.

ITEM FOUR: No dogs.

No dogs no dogs no dogs. Oh woe…. How much I missed them.

ITEM FIVE: Much less alcohol than I imagined

Although I’m to blame. I think I drank less in my one year here than in any given 2 weeks in India. There are a number of reasons (notwithstanding a bit of mopey pity party I gave myself for being homesick and not liking the cold) but also…. I just don’t like drinking with idiots who cant hold their drink. Not that my friends are wonderful at holding their drinks (or myself, for that matter) but I suppose that part of the perks of being a friend is the undeniable license to be a total and absolute drunken buffoon in the company of friends who’ll take you home and get you in your own bed, and probably be nice enough to leave a dustbin next to you for when you wake up in the morning.

Of course, that’s the whole reason why you go to the trouble to brush your hair, clean your teeth and go out all nice and presentable and make friends and work on those friendships. The concept of drinking with abandon with people you’ve just barely met, taking no consequences for your actions, and then coming back the next day with ‘omg I was SO hammered last night, I can’t believe I…..’.

Stop. Right. There.

You, yes you, you spluttering cow with a left tit almost hanging out of that dress with a suspicious looking vomit stain down the front. Don’t even bother opening that hole in your face because I can smell the manure a mile away. Yes, yes, I’m very sure how wonderfully important you are and all that because you’re here in the big H and you’re you and you’ve worked oh-so-hard-won’t-somebody-hold-my-hand-and-tell-me-how-pretty-I-am-because-mommy-didn’t-hug-me-enough-and-now-I’m-here-because-i’m-a-poor-little-overachiever-who’s-just-looking-for-love…. I don’t like you, and I don’t want to be your friend, and I think you’re a warbling wuss who’s too shit-faced to either say ‘Yes, I’m an obnoxious arrogant little fuck, but I’ve earned it, so I’ll do what I want and who I want when I’m five shots down’ or ‘I’m here to make it in the world, I’m hungry and ambitious and by god I’m going to get my pound of flesh, so you, you and you, I’m going to network the fuck out of you because you have something I want and I can be the resource you wouldn’t be able to live without’. This whole ditzy middle-ground of acting tough and then crying on the dance floor in your own vomit and then expecting everything to be just fine and forgotten the next day because ‘omg I was so hammered last night…. I can’t believe i… This is such a funny story’. Stop.

There. Rant over.

Ergo, in short. I think I’ve come to the rather sharp realization that I don’t like Type As very much. The sort who’ll stick a pastel-toned louboutin in your cranium because that’s the fastest way to get ahead. The sort who not just look at people in terms of what-can-she-do-for-me-hmm but are in fact too dumb to realize that it’s all very fine unless the other person sees through your game, and you’ve made a foe because of your abject stupidity and lack of grace. The sort who shriek and yell and stamp their foot and demand that they be taken seriously. The sort who’re sickeningly insecure and needy for your attention that you wish you could just say ’No, I don’t like you and I don’t want to be your friend you freak’ to see if they really would go and kill themselves.

But. I digress.

Despite all… it’s been a good year by and large. The no curfews, no snoops, no feeling of time slipping by in its toxicity. I think I quite like it. The freedom to live by myself, to be in a city where there’s the distinct murmur of good, fun things bubbling under the surface, of new experiences and new people. Despite everything, there is a decided lightness of being that I hadn’t experience before – and whether it was because of India or because of Madras or because of living with the family, I can only speculate.

I suppose part of it is just the experience of living in the US. Granted, the country’s obscene fascination with itself is a bit strange at time (I mean for fuck’s sake, people are dying a continent away and your breaking news is some two-bit politician wife’s botched haircut?)

But you’ve got to admit, it’s a darn good place to be for what it is. And I suspect very much that it’s my free-er schedule this year and semblance of control over my time that’s having me feeling…. charitable. Upbeat, even. That, or maybe it was just the summer and the feel of warmth on the back of my neck.

But that’s fodder for another post, and I’ve miles of cases to go before I sleep.

Window-shopping in Harvard Square

2010-09-15T07:46:00.003+05:30

Four delicate tea cups with gold leaf-lining gently cradled within each other

A stack of bright, shiny cookbooks bursting with flavor and the possibility of exquisite gastronomical feasts

A forgotten clock tucked away in a corner of the room, behind a discolored mirror

A flash of hot pink in a satiny dress, very trendy, very mod

An old weighing scale, circa 1949, with a dusty old weight stone in it

A whimsical hat with feathers in it, how delightful to sip tea with friends in

Bright jangly earrings, by the mirror, with a lovely wooden frame around it

A scented candle in a discolored glass jar with a rusty, beautiful engraved screwcap

A bunch of bright yellow pencils, neatly bound in a single rubberband, left on the wooden table with the books

One silk blouse, on a hanger, yearning to be owned, to be cherished, to be loved

Crinkly paper rustling in the breeze, beneath a low chandelier

One blue ribbon, and in it, a set of beautifully engraved perfumed note cards to send to old friends and lovers

Journey to the hinterland (HBS Peru IXP)

2010-02-08T10:54:00.003+05:30

As I packed my bags in the early hours of a cold Monday morning, I wasn’t sure what to expect over the next two weeks. I was one of forty-nine students from HBS headed on an IXP to Peru. Amidst the cluttered array of my last-minute packing, I picked up the required reading for the trip, stuffed them into my bag and made a mental note to read on the flight. Having just returned from India a day ago, this would be the first time that I was heading to a new country without so much as having skimmed through the country’s wikipage.

We kicked off the journey in the capital city, Lima. Starting the day with a series of talks on the country and its industries, we ended it with a tour of some of the city’s most famous attractions and a dinner which introduced me for the first time to the gastronomical exquisiteness of this country’s cuisine. As I broadened my understanding – and not to mention, my belt – I was amazed at the depth of experience this culturally diverse country had to offer. I was determined to know more about the country before the trip to Caral the next morning.

Caral was an archeological site just outside Lima and one of the highlights of the IXP. Discovered to date back to nearly 2500-2000 BC, it was the most ancient city of the Americas and possibly the world. The road to Caral was long and arduous but the destination was arguably worth it. At Caral, the local Peruvian guides pointed out sites of interest, identifying some of the most important archeological findings and their implications.

But there was a reason I mentioned the destination was only arguably worth the trouble of getting there. Given the cultural significance of this heritage site, I couldn’t help but wonder why we were the only ones here. I compared the experience at Caral to a more recent trip I made to Stonehenge in England, an archeological site of which much is not factually known. And yet Stonehenge has turned its lack of information into an asset for curious tourists, serving as a mystery for all visitors to explore and try to solve. The mystery of Caral’s lack of tourist interest is perhaps not as elusive, and the respectful commercialization of one of Peru’s heritage sites was another project that we undertook as part of the IXP experience.

The next leg of our trip was to Puerto Maldonada, where we were spent two days nestled within the Amazon rainforest at Inkaterra, a private reserve surrounded by a vast jungle canopy. Forewarned about inaccessibility to telephone networks or internet, I was surprised to find my notions of ‘roughing it’ in the jungles of South America give way to a decadent indulgence in the lap of nature’s luxury. The lodges were by no means rudimentary. Although there were trifling inconveniences, Inkaterra is an example of successful eco-tourism. The more-than-generous room rates support the rainforest conservation efforts and research initiative of the hotel. The questions of sustainability, replication and far-reaching impact are tougher ones to answer.

One of my most memorable highlights from the trip was the rainforest excursions. We set off in the morning on the canopy walkways: a series of narrow hanging bridges that link eight observational platforms. Heavy rain played spoilsport for most of the morning, dashing any hopes of sighting exotic birds, monkeys, sloths and what-have-yous. But even the persistent downpour could not take away from the experience of floating amidst a sea of green leaves and interlinked branches forming a misty canopy in the sky.

The lake excursion in the evening fared better weather-wise, and we set off for a ninety minute journey along muddy trails that led straight and narrow into the depth of the Amazonian unknown. The morning’s rains had only served to turn the dirt path into a squelching river of thick wet mud, massaged by the marching boots of forty-odd HBS students and the local guides. At the end of ninety minutes, when the cake of mud had climbed to the top of my boots and remained precariously perched on the rim, the mud trail cleared to the mouth of a water stream, where four wooden boats lay tethered. After washing our boots we clambered into the boat and snaked our way down the meandering stream to where it opened into a vast clearing of the most serene pool of water, enveloped by a fringe of green trees and thick vegetation on all sides. The rains of the morning had receded, causing the animals of the rainforest to make an appearance.

Catching the last rays of the dying sun, the lake seemed awash in a warm glow as we circled our way around it, spotting spider monkeys and macaws and caymens and a myriad of the most exotic species. Who knew that Peru had such breathtaking beauty to offer? One of our guides mentioned that the forest excursions we embarked on was through the primary rainforest – trees that had never been cut down – unlike most tourist-visited rainforest areas that have been disturbed in some way and re-grown (secondary forests). Why then is Peru not on the map like Brazil or Costa Rica? It was another piece of the puzzle that we had set out to discover during the IXP.

The final stop on our journey was at Cusco – a popular stop for most tourists to Peru. Partnering with local students, we embarked on a field study, surveying the local business owners to understand the underlying essence of life in this hybrid city. The social tensions was palpable: the feelings of suspicion against international businesses, the resentment at being treated as second-class citizens in one’s own homeland, the shockingly apathetic attitude toward government involvement – or the lack thereof. Was this the price of liberalization? Is the birth of political stability only borne in the dying embers of protectionism? Are natural resources truly the ‘curse’ of developing nations?

Perhaps these are problems best discussed in the hallowed temperature-controlled rooms of Aldrich. Perhaps not. Perhaps opinions are most honestly forged – and challenged – precisely through field exercises like these. A crucial component of our learning experience dealt with uncovering the darker sides of rapid industrialization. Despite that old joke that a HBS alumni is frequently wrong, but never uncertain, I found myself unsure of which side of the fence I lay on. The only emotion that I held with any certainty was a deep respect for the entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Cusco, which in another context, could perhaps be described as foolhardiness. Or desperation.

The crowning piece of the journey was the visit to Machu Picchu. Considered "an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization", the world heritage site was rediscovered at the turn of the last century by an American historian and has since remained Peru’s most visited tourist attraction and major revenue generator. Journey to the peak is either by the ancient Inca trail – a trek of three days – or by the quaint, though comfortable, Peru rail. As we journeyed by train from the higher altitude down to the town of Machu Picchu, the pale curtain of misty green slowly changed to the unmistakable thick, densely-packed foliage of the rainforests. After the train-side, a short bus-ride along winding roads circled its way up the mountain, where we then donned our rain gear and trekked to the top of the archeological site.

One of the most familiar symbols of the Inca Empire, Machu Picchu (meaning ‘old peak’) is often referred to as the lost city of the Incas. As I stood at the peak, watching the thick fog unfurl amidst the mountains and the rolling clouds play hide-and-seek with the stoned buildings of the Incas, I couldn’t help but marvel at the architectural sophistication of this ancient civilization. Why is it that only 400,000 tourists visit Machu Picchu, dwarfing the 6.2million to the Eiffel Tower? It was the final piece of the puzzle that we would hope to solve in Peru.

On the final day in Lima, all the groups presented their findings. Some parts of the puzzle were easy to piece together, others were more complex, scratching the surface of deep issues that required the coordinated efforts of the powers that be. Our goal was to explore, uncover and analyze each separate piece and understand how it linked into the whole while making our recommendations.

The professor crystallized the IXP experience when he said at the end of the journey – “when you are pleasantly surprised by an unexpected experience, you can consider it a happy accident. But when those unexpected surprises crop up again and again and again.... one asks then if it really is a series of happy accidents or whether it is a deeper, systematic failure that has widened the gap between perception and reality.”

I had set off to Peru without much notion of what to expect and was greeted by a series of happy accidents. Along the way, my experience working with the local students, long conversations with native business owners, first-hand experience of its cultural and natural beauty – and not to mention, the best part of the journey for me personally, its delectable cuisine! – had left me with as many questions as I came in with. Only this time, the nature of those questions was such that they could not be easily answered and I hope I have the opportunity to understand them more fully in my remaining time at HBS.

On the flight back to HBS, case discussions, section events and what-have-yous, I was already aware of how the two weeks had refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated me. I arrived in Boston with the best remnants of a successful learning experience – an insatiable curiosity to learn more. And a deep, deep contentment for having sampled the other side of what HBS had to offer.

---

Yes, I know, this is not truly a post. I will return to the blog. I promise. when I have time.

Le sigh.

To sleepless nights, and hopeless dreams.

2009-07-11T01:27:00.009+05:30

Insomnia is the frothing, gurgling beast that sneaks up on you like a drunk stumbling husband in the dead of night and clutches at your throat and drips its slow poison, drop by drop, tick by tock, into the cogwheels of your brain, patiently waiting for when the daylight breaks and you drag with it your drugged hollow carcass into another blinding day.

From where, this anxiety?

The anticipation, I suppose, of change. Of change, impending. Of doom lurking. Of transition. Of the slipping away of comfort zones, the ground beneath her feet, of not knowing what lies behind door number two.

Of being out of one's depth,

-- or out of one’s element.

Of unknown protocols, social and otherwise,

Of trying to fit in

Of trying to stand out

Of the struggle for…. what, really?

(and the vein-popping task of not letting the effort show)

Of submerging into unremarkable mediocrity

Of loneliness

Of homesickness

Of missing home, country, family and the familiar.

Of questions too troubling to answer

Of worries too fleeting to define

Of leaving

Home.

Country.

India.

That benevolent whore from whose bitch-tits we suckle, and fondly call the motherland. A society of a million people labouring under its sticky yellow sun, holding on to our illusions for dear life, our gracious host only too willing.

The beauty of India is the surety with which its parasitic inhabitants inhabit this land, the securedness of our existence in face of the undeniable truth that at any moment our host might decide to discard her unwelcome guests. Or perhaps it is precisely because of that knowledge that we hold so lightly a life that we know is not ours to hold.

Why bother with denials after all, when the very topics too unpleasant for any civilized mind, greet us shamelessly naked and underbelly-exposed, as if to say, ah well, would that you hide me behind pristine hospital walls or beneath lush green cemeteries, there’s no denying that one day, your time too shall come. Hark. Truth bears the form of a shiny-toothed beggar, one gangrened arm outreached.

And yet, we still cling to our carefully constructed illusions of ranks and hierarchies, of pure-bloods and uncleans, of denominations and status symbols. Holding a life lightly, and our opinions dearly. After all, how can you tell if you're successful if you can't find someone you can pay to fold his arms, call you madam, stand when you sit, nod when you speak, smile when you call him “country fellow” and then leave, knowingly, saying -- na varein -- that curious custom of saying, I'm coming, when one is actually going.

India is, it seems, the world’s greatest shammer. Who hasn't been sucked up to, sucked off, sucked in to the whole notion of some more equal than others, us more secular than them, we more tolerant than those, I more Indian than him.

This country is, let's face it, the best handjob you'll ever get. The best ego-massager, regurgitating a string of ego-massagers delicately balanced like a house of cards.

Misfits, miscreants and misanthropes, we are a body of builders, a building of bodies, each brick supported by the blood sweat and tears of the one above and below it, cemented with the crushed dreams of the unrealized –the dhobis prayer to win the lottery, the young girl’s dream of running away, the maids daydream of being the next undiscovered queen of Tamil soap, the housewife’s dream of strangling her philandering husband - the feel of another's pitiable dreams squishing beneath your toes lending credibility to your own aspirations.

And yet, this flesh-building stands supported by the very same dreams. Or rather, the reason behind their crushed unrealizedness, the reason behind their very existence, the common glue that holds this quivering house of cards together.

Hope.

That fervent, gnawing clutching at straws that oneday, someday, we will break out of this on to a better life, a better day, a better tomorrow. That whatever happens, this too will pass.

And that belief is the very fabric of India. Its the reason the wheels keep turning underneath the grime, the grit and the glamour, the reason you smile as you bribe another pot-bellied cop on the way home, the reason we live forever in a permanent status quo, the reason you nod patronizingly as you tell your master's ten-year-old daughter... na varein.

Hope.

That one day all this will change. What goes around comes around. As you sow, so shall you reap. Karma.

And yet, India is the only country capable of laughing in your face at your delusional reality. ‘What goes around...?’ Look around, she seems to say, at poverty, black money and corruption. ‘What goes around...’ Is something good people tell themselves because without their small lies and illusions, their worlds will sink into an abyss of hopelessness and cynicism.

And then, in the same breath, virgin-whore motherland hugs you to her bosom, pats your hair, the faint smell of coconut oil rising, strokes you under the chin as if to say... Now you see? Now you see why at the end of your journey, you will come back to me. When the curtain falls, and the applause is died down, and we have no more use for face makeup and costumes and canned laughter and constructed realities, this is where you will come. For truth. For beauty. For stark reality.

What will I miss from my homeland? From this welcoming beast that suckles lepers and benevolently tolerates parasites, us of fragmented minds and fragmented bodies, incomplete without a back to rest our legs on, without a dream to anchor our existence, without a hope to carry on for, without a stepping stone to step on.

What will I miss most?

All of it I suppose.

The benign servants, the well-meaning bystanders

The malignant cops, the corrupt officials, the leering roadside leches

The identity of self – that notion of ourselves only reflected through the ayah, the watchman, the dhobi, the autodriver

The undying optimism

The hope

The impossible possibilities

Of being oh so delicately poised in the vortex of paradoxes

Of seeing the truth and not seeing it

Of knowing and not knowing

Of hoping despite the hopelessness

Of being servant-master, husband-wife, virgin-whore, mother-father

Of the joy of holding your life so lightly, of knowing full well that tomorrow it might be blown like so much dust, blood and mangled metal with the next influx of extremists, nay, lackadaisical bureaucrats, nay, sleak-tongued crooks in suits that come knocking on your door grinning their lopsided toothsome grin, as if to say, arre sorry baba… what to do… you know the drill nah… and then cock one’s head apologetically, shrug one’s shoulder and unload a barrel into one’s skull.

The knowledge, the liberating knowledge, that there is no law, no law enforcement, no justice, no justice system, no system - of any kind - in India. That we survive by the skin of our teeth and the quick of our wits.

That should we fail - lose money, lose status, lose faith - that we are supported by blood-ties and families, not dole or rehab or government programs.

That should we falter, there always is a way - a bribe, a threat, a folded prayer to golden idol, a name dropped like a gold coin clanking against the tin cup of red tape and bureaucracy.

That should we fall, in the streets, in society, in standing, there always is that human ambulance of well-wishers and curious passerbys, that gathering crowd of mob well-meaningness who take on your battles as their own, beat up that chain-snatcher, take that woman to the hospital, climb into that pit.

That unshakable belief, that we will always have the kindness of strangers to rely on.

I will miss it all. The dirt, grime and unspeakable beauty that is India, and leaving it behind for clean pavements, orderly queues, and hand sanitizers.

I'm tired.

And insomnia is but like everything else.

This too shall pass.

A round-up of the various coffee houses in Chennai

2009-05-30T02:25:00.007+05:30

And I am doing this because

1) It’s time for a new blog post

2) I am bored and I cannot sleep

3) For the greater good.

With that fine preamble, let’s start off with (surprise, surprise) a round-up of the various coffee houses in Chennai.

Disclaimer: all opinions are mine and mine alone. Any resemblance to any actual fact, truth or otherwise coherent statement with grammatical syntax intact is purely coincidental and delusionary. In fact, you’re delusionary for reading this blog. Your mum’s delusionary.

Ergo, we begin:

Coffee day

Confucius say, wherever there coffee day, there noisy fifteen-year olds with too tight jeans and too high voice.

Confucius also drank tea and kept dropping his auxiliary verbs, which is why he is 6 feet under in China, while I am sipping my third mocha latte with delightfully non-tea-stained lips. Coffee day is where one goes if one’s idea of drinking coffee also includes the experience of having one’s eardrums shattered by insanely high levels of voice decibel – that is, those partial remains of your eardrums which have not already been torn apart by the super-high-turbo-charged-what-the-fuck-are-you-fucking-insane volume level of the TV.

This is assuming you still have control of your auditory senses and are not in apoplectic shock after having your visual senses assaulted by overweight fifteen year olds of indiscriminate gender in clothes either too tight to contain all that puppy fat (yeah, darling, keep telling yourself that. It’s not you. It’s the jeans. This relationship is not working out.) Or too loose to accurately judge the location of said fifteen year old’s posterior for the purpose of landing a well-placed kick. And of course there’s the fact that his bling-bling belt is about to take your eye out with all the fierceness of a total solar eclipse viewed through the Hubble telescope.

Like I said... CCD is all about the experience. Replete with apathetic waiter who goes that extra special mile to ensure everyone at your table gets exactly what they ordered, except you. It’s nice to feel special. Remind me to send him a vial of syphilis in the mail as a token of my appreciation.

CCD has also taken great pains to ensure that you never have to grow up as one of those traumatised kids who never had a CCD on your block, and therefore could not channel all his creative energies into a more productive outlet – like say wearing tight jeans and hanging out with your peeps y’all – and went on to become a socially-underdeveloped CCD-deprived adult who killed 47 people and one frightened goat as a consequence. Motivated by such altruistic intentions, the powers that be at CCD have planted one outlet roughly every 5 meters. It is rumoured that there are more CCDs in India than there are sheep in Australia. (But we all know what those weirdos do with their sheep, whereas we with our CCDs.... oh nevermind.)

Bottomline: if you like the prospect of paying 17 times that you would at your local tea-kadai for the same cup of tea, plus the sublime prospect of waiting roughly, oh I don’t know, 6700 times the usual waiting time, plus pimply fifteen-year-old eye-candy, plus one brain-damaged waiter absolutely free with that cup of ice blueberry crush that you did not order and he mistakenly heard instead of masala tea, then this is definitely the place for you.

Barista

This is where it at for y’all bitches who too old to hang out at CCD, yo – Old Jungle Saying.

According to tribal folklore, it is believed that in some cultures, the elder of the family when anticipating the nearing of his hour of death, will choose to spend his last remaining breath in the company of his peers. And voila, Barista was born.

Wherever you find old people, you will find a Barista not too far behind, clogging their aortas one Death by Chocolate at a time. Barista derives its name from Bar (meaning heaven, in Esperanto) and Ista (meaning, the-hot-19-year-old-I-married-the-night-I-got-drunk-in-Vegas-and-decided-this-whole-filthy-rich-octagenarian-oil-baron-thing-aint-as-cracked-up-as-it-used-to...grhahguhnghurngrrungrrhg*choke sputter die*.) Which together form a heavenly place where old people assemble to ogle over nubile young things, except minus the nubile young things. In fact, how about we just minus anything that needs to be preceded by the word young?

Everything about Barista is old. In fact, their tagline is “We’re old”. In order to cater to a younger demographic, their new-and-improved tagline now reads, “Yo dawg, we old, and don’t you forget it, I was alive during the Partition, aight?”

Their sandwiches are old....that is, whatever is remaining of the 1.47 sandwiches on display out of the 67 varieties cheerfully advertised on their menu. Of course, the waiter is in no position to point out the oldness of said sandwich on account of being senile and visually-impaired and therefore unable to correctly identify the particularly virulent strain of mould growing on one side of the sandwich in an uncanny resemblance to Mother Mary. Somewhere out there, there is a lost and confused religious nut on eBay who does not know what he is missing.

The chairs are old. The tables are old. The patrons are old. I would even say the tablecloths they wipe the tables with are old except carbon-dating can only go back so much and I would not want to needlessly slander any reputed establishment here. After all, one takes great pride in the veracity of one’s arguments.

In a move to cater to the more mature audience and ‘working’ professional, Barista introduced wi-fi in its cafes by way of a 14.4kbps modem salvaged from the Tateless Museum of Ancient History. Most of the time I am told it is not working however, and therefore I am unable to comment on the efficiency of this fabled device. It is rumoured however that it does exist, and at least one patron has claimed to have seen this holy grail of a device when it was used to prop up a wobbly table.

Verdict: if you are '>' 97 years of age and '<' age of the universe plus 2, then this is the place for you.

Amethyst

Tagline: We’re slow and we’re rude. So stop your bitchin’ and moanin’.

Amethyst is the first coffee house to have replaced their ‘Rights of admission apply’ board with a more apt ‘Entry for masochists only.’

It is rumoured that Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s last theorem while waiting for his lemon tart. It is rumoured that Edison accidentally invented the light bulb while waiting for his Garden salad. It is rumoured that one Mr Satya Narayanan sat at this very table, met his beautiful wife, fathered 11 children, lost one to bubonic plague, went on to become a miracle-healer of some repute, all while waiting for his Chilli Cheese Toast – which arrived burnt.

The secret behind Amethyst’s shockingly fast turnaround time lies in their painful adherence to details. When pressed, the waiters were kind enough to tell me the wait is because they ensure all food is prepared fresh. I went to the kitchen to investigate myself, and lo and behold! They were right.

There was the cook planting the seeds for what would soon grow into a lemon tree and yield delightfully fresh lemons that shall be squeezed into the most delicious lemonade. There was the cook’s assistant tenderly fondling an egg about to hatch and that would subsequently be raised into a full-grown chicken, perfect for my main course. There was the four-month old bouncing Brazillian boy being tenderly raised under the watchful eye of the culinary staff for the day when he shall go out into the wilderness and brave the coffee-plantations of Brazil, for only the choicest coffee beans to be put into my coffee cake.

Such dedication to service.

So much dedication in fact that they are always striving to find way to serve us better. Like the time when my friend pulled his chair a little to the side so he could perhaps not have to face 1/6^th of my ear while talking, and was gently told by a concerned waiter that he was blocking the waiter’s path and may definitely continue to be seated there if he so wished to get tripped on and splattered with a tray of very hot, greasy food. Such tact is rare in one so young.

Or the board at the store that gently reminds us that speed and accuracy are two mutually exclusive phenomena with the polite request to “Kindly allow us adequate time to bill all your items accurately.”

Such niceness is not lost on the people of Chennai. One day, we shall pay back in kind. As soon as I get my bill.

Verdict: Good time-pass. Literally.

Anokhi

Tagline: the peaceful abode of mosquitoes. And some humans.

Deep in the jungles of Madras, lived a hoard of peace-loving mosquitoes. Eminent anthropologists refer to them in different names like pests, blood-sucking vampires, disease-spreading nuisance etc. These mosquito tribes were concentrated in the northern region of Boat Club area, around Saint Mary’s road, in a small cafe of concentrated flora and fauna, completely detached from the outside world of modernity. These tribes led a long conventional way of living, maintaining their cultural and social heritage intact from the influences of modern day trends.

Till one day, the city man came and brought with him his tumblers of steel, his pots of instant coffee, his counters of polished white marble-top. And he razed and plundered and he raped the land and erected his bastions of trade. Soon followed wrought-iron chairs and tiny triangular menu cards. A retail store of some colourful knick-knacks and baubles. Fluorescent lights of the energy-saving kind. Even that dreaded concoction – herbal hibiscus lemon mint tea.

To add to it, these citadels of commerce brought myriads of patrons to the place. These new entrants broke the peace of this hitherto sheltered mosquito community and created ecological disturbances that rapidly led to a huge degradation in the numbers of the Anopheles clan peacefully cohabitating in the cafe thereby severely upsetting the delicate ecological balance. The period that followed were troubled times for these endangered tribes.

Till one day, Plasmodium Anophelia, an elder of the tribe decided to fight back against the evil that the city man invited upon their community and take back what was rightfully theirs. The entire mosquito community rallied in an act of solidarity that came to mark the beginning of the Sucky Mutiny, also known as the First War of Anopheles Independence. In this great and bloody war, large numbers of the Anopheles clan were wiped out – their numbers were mighty, but their primitive proboscises no match for the technologically advanced weaponry of the city-dwellers. In face of such WMDs like baygon spray and mortein mosquito coil, the mosquito tribes were forced to adapt and mutate in order to grow genetically stronger and take on the menace of these two-legged city-dwellers more effectivel. It is rumoured that Anokhi cafe was the birth-place of such highly-advanced innovative biological warfare like Chikunguinea and Dengue fever – offered free with every plate of Chicken and pea soup served at the cafe.

As we speak, deep in the recesses of Madras, the bloody war wages on. And the outcome of this – would man conquer beast, or shall the insects inherit the earth – only time will tell. Still such time as a conclusion is reached, there will always be those who boldly venture into such war-ravaged areas to bring you reports from the battle zone. And perhaps a couple of lattes to go, while she’s at it.

Verdict: A good place to donate some blood. And drink some coffee.

Coming soon:

JC’s cafe

Mocha

Learnings at work

2009-04-30T21:28:00.007+05:30

Managing people is not easy. The last two weeks have given me cause for introspection and some self-analysis. I’ve been thinking about work, different working cultures, different individual personalities and all the little intangibles that we confront everyday in the workplace. I wonder if there is a better way to manage things, or if just some things are tougher than others.

This last week I’ve been dealing with minor issues at work. On its own not significant, and stemming largely from people’s individual personalities and the differences between working styles. But like some things, this is one of those where the sum is larger than its parts, and adding up all the little anomalies leads to a picture of a workforce that is slowly losing its cohesiveness and collective efficiency and fragmenting itself into little serfdoms. The problem is not with work per se, or their working abilities or efficiency; it’s more of how they work, and how they work with each other.

I think I learnt that wherever possible, while selecting a person for a task, pick attitude over ability. Of course, finding the right person who’s got the right mix of both is ideal... but such people are so rare! That said, it’s awesome that a lot of core people I work with have exactly that golden balance. I guess professional maturity is something innate, and no amount of training can infuse that delicate balance of competence, common sense, self-secured-ness (is that the word?) in their own abilities and openness to personal growth and learning.

Before I embarked on my own venture, I learnt a lot from shadowing my father and watching him run a successful business. Especially in an organization like his/ours where we take them in young, and really dedicate a lot of resources to their personal and professional growth and training, I guess all that investment in their future does come back in good ways, whether it is in keeping attrition low, or in extracting the best out of our employees.

I always try to put people in their comfort zones, and capitalize on their strengths rather than focus on their opportunities for growth. This is something I realised on my own, and it was quite a realization although in hindsight it seems really obvious. I guess not everyone is wired the same, and whereas I get bored easily and always seek new challenges and opportunities for learning, some people are very comfortable dealing with issues they have experience handling. Luckily, I learnt not to fall into that trap of assuming everyone has the same working style, attitude to work or skillset as me, and have avoided making assumptions about how different people will look at a particular issue and whether they will take it in the right spirit or not. The problems happen when their job profile does not allow for a high level of autonomy or seclusion, and this is where interpersonal skills and communication abilities come into play.

My dad once told me about an incident when he was at B school. It was during a class on negotiations, and during the exercise his two classmates pitted against each other literally went in for the kill. Aggressive and ruthless, they were both extremely focused on extracting the best possible scenario for themselves out of the interaction. He said it was one of the most intensive and stimulating sessions. When the class was over, the two of them headed to the basketball court to shoot ball like nothing happened. “Americans”, he said, “understand it’s not personal. Work is work.” How I wish it was the same here, and we could just focus on work and not waste time in detangling frivolous issues that just sap energy.

There were so many times during this project I just wanted to quit, where I got beaten down, and disillusioned that instead of running a dynamic, energetic young team... here I was using up the major part of my working day dealing with people problems and managing egos. You would think someone with that many years of work experience and formal training in a corporate culture would exhibit professional maturity. But most problems I face while managing issues boil down to some people personalizing trivial issues, and getting emotional in the face of constructive criticism. Why don’t people understand that a criticism is not a personal attack? And in this case, it was not even a criticism of their ability or dedication to work, but merely asking them to be a little more considerate of other people in the team whom they need to work with, not fight against to get their way.

I suppose I need to evaluate my own sense of leadership while dealing with people problems. One thing I am thankful for is that I do not have incompetent people on my team; everyone here brings with them their own special set of skills and expertise and is truly committed to taking the vision forward. The problem is... whose vision? The company’s or the individual’s? I am still working on getting people more and more aligned with the company’s vision and culture, and I believe the best way to do that is through dialogue and free-flowing communication. It’s not been easy, but here’s hoping we eventually get there.

For my part, I try to impart some kind of training to all my employees and team members. We do interactive training modules, we do brainstorming sessions, we do knowledge sharing meetings... and it all adds up to trying to infuse the same spirit of enthusiasm, ownership and synergy within the company. It all adds up to getting everyone on the same page. Wherever possible, through my own actions as an example, and explicitly I have always expressed the need for open and honest communication, transparency and sharing of info. And I remain accessible to everyone within the organization, and again this is something I learnt from my dad, where he’s shown me how people feel reassured and secure and give more in their jobs when they know that if they have issues with their immediate superior, they can always approach someone higher and the company will do right by them. I suppose the biggest deterrent I face here is with people who have worked in a different organizational culture and are resistant to change.

I guess change will happen with time. And I guess I need more patience. If I am the one people look to for guidance, then I should be the one setting an example by staying cool and playing my part with tact and resolve. Perhaps I should a) focus on the positive things and be happy that at least the problems aren’t stemming from incompetence b) understand that egos are fragile things, and everyone just looks for appreciation and recognition in the workplace, and I need to congratulate them when they do deliver, and package my criticism better. It’s a fine balance; I hope I get there soon and am able to articulate my criticisms as clearly, succinctly and constructively as possible without getting annoyed with the other person’s defensive attitude.

Sometimes I wonder how my father manages a taskforce of 1500-odd employees, each with their own take on how best to fulfil his duties. I guess a lot of my dad’s working style has been shaped in part by his days at H, in part from his years of experience working in this industry and in part arising from his own innate leadership skills. I hope some of that has rubbed off on me. I am lucky to have had something much better than just formal training and years of work exp: a mentor.

A friend and B school graduate once said the best thing she learnt at B school were the people skills. Working with that many competent, intelligent, ambitious young people on the same problem where the ‘right’ answer is often ambiguous can be challenging. If anything, it teaches one diplomacy and tact while getting to the solution of a problem collectively and by utilising every member’s strengths. I hope I come out of B school a better boss, better team player and a better person.

One step forward, one step back.

2009-03-05T14:23:00.004+05:30

Today I feel like I have one foot firmly in the past and one firmly in my future and I’m being tugged along two different paths, down nostalgia in one direction and the great, wild unknown in the other, and somehow somehow magically in a Neil-Gaiman-esque fantasy way, both these paths will bring me to exactly the same place. Kind of like infinity and negative infinity (see, I know being a geek would come in handy sometime :D ) It’s like I am on the verge of some grand, fantastical plan and I’m peering into the endless possibilities of the future through the fog of my past.

Today I am seeing my grandparents after one year. A feud has fragmented our (extended) family into little islands of unsocial beings, and for these and other reasons, I have not had the opportunity to meet them or some others for the last one year. Sometimes I wonder at man’s capacity to be pigheaded and if all those years of stoic conviction and missed interactions is really worth it in the end.

Today is also the day I just returned from a week-long trip to Boston. This trip was essentially a chance for me to catch a glimpse of life at the two Bs – Boston and Business school. A place I will soon call home, and an experience I will plunge into headlong in less than 4 months.

I had always thought of Boston as this Americanized vision of London, a teeming cultural and academic centre of vibrancy and life. This city does after all house some of the best institutions of learning. As a cultural centre, I’ve heard enough and more about its patron-of-the-arts status (Good music and theatre, here I come!) And of course, the city is steeped in historical and cultural significance. I went in looking to find an American version of London. Well, I wasn’t too off – except about the London part. I think perhaps it’s time I realize London is unparalleled and no matter where I spend my nights, that place will always feel more like home than home ever did, and I should give up trying to find the next best thing. Sigh. Here’s to finally letting go…

With that out of the way, here’s the deal with Boston. I like it. There’s something about brick houses and empty trees coated with a fine dust of snow. (Note to self: Never ever go trampling about in the snow in silly cloth converse shoes; they turn your toes blue) What with the work frenzy just before I left, I think my mind really was completely somewhere else till I landed in the states. But on the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel it finally hit me; This is the place I will soon be calling home. And that realization was so sudden it jerked me out of my dazed reverie and made me quietly put away the blackberry, and sit up and take note.

Boston is a tiny city. Somehow I expected something colossal, perhaps not on the scale of New York or Paris or London, but at least Madras. Madras may not have much to do 1, but at least it’s big-ish. Not in an unweilding Mumbai-traffic sort of way, or in an unsafe-and-peppered-by-rural-ghettos-Delhi-ish way, but in a rather nice, balanced goldilocks sort of traffic and size manner. Boston on the other hand is not teeming with people, not teeming with traffic (at least none that I saw, not like Bangalore or Bombay at any rate) and with clean air and cleaner sidewalks. It’s... different. I guess it will take some time getting used to.

Which brings us to the other B: B-school. Walking down Soldiers Field, past the dorms, through Baker’s library, lounging about at Spangler, taking pictures standing on the ice outside... suddenly my dad tells me how being here brings back so many memories. While he’s busy reminiscing some of his best times and buying T-shirts at the coop, I’m wondering if I’ll fit in. Suddenly it’s the first day of school all over again.

I suppose I never thought I would be one to ever experience culture shock. But then again, Boston is not London, and HBS is not Anna. The only thing Church Park, Anna and HBS have in common is that they’re all donkeys’ years old and ‘legacy and heritage’ institutions – 200 years, 200 years, and 100 years. Oh yeah, and all the brick buildings. All of a sudden, being 24 seems a lot younger than I feel.

That’s one of the first things that struck me: how young everyone felt. And this had nothing to do with age, everyone from the professors to the admin working at HBS are really active and do go out of their way to make you comfortable and answer any doubts you may have. I’ve never expected to meet anything but bureaucracy and cold indifference at an academic institution. I think I was taken aback by all of the sudden effervescence.

I can handle chaos in the streets, mad work days and sudden, unplanned work trips but when it comes to actual work/learning... I like everything laid out, a German precision in preparing for exams and no ‘fat’ when it comes to classroom discussions. I make a conscious effort to be very controlled at work, and that lets me be mad and spontaneous in other creative pursuits. So when the two worlds collide and I see a more relaxed, fun and sociable environment creeping into my clinical world of ‘work’, it rattles me. I’ll get used to it I suppose. In time.

Another incident that gave me something to think about was sitting in at a class. The class was great, the subject they were tackling was really interesting and everyone was charged up and energized – I’ve never seen a classroom that proactive and engaged before. But the most perplexing thing was the comments and the actual class discussion. The professor was superlative in guiding the class discussion and reaching a solution collectively, but he did not discourage any comments. Most of the comments were very relevant but some only peripherally so, and were almost like commentary. This was my first ‘shock’ at HBS.

Coming from Anna, most of the instruction was lecture-based, and of course I’ve been lucky to have had some absolutely spectacular professors. We did have tutorial classes, those once-a-week periods that were dedicated for discussion and problem-solving and reflecting on what we have learnt this past week. During these discussions – and in some regular classes too – we’d tackle problems collectively; but mediocrity was really discouraged. If you had something to say, and it was an epiphany, or progressed the discussion down the right path (and you were absolutely sure you were right) or highlighted a critical flaw in the approach so far, or highlighted an infinitely more optimal way of arriving at the same conclusion... then you spoke up. If what you had to say merely added flavour to the discussion but was not deemed ‘vital’, then one was best advised to keep it to oneself. Here however I found the tables turned, and everyone was encouraged to participate.

At first I was a little annoyed, and wondering why on earth I would want to waste my 80 minutes of precious class time listening to pointless, obvious comments... but then I spoke to a friend who moved to the US twenty years ago when he was my age. What he had to say put things in a new light. What I witnessed in that classroom is probably indicative of American culture in general and their approach to work and learning. Small talk is big in America. No one really gets straight to the point and walks away when their job in done; if they do, they’re viewed as unsociable. I took a while to digest this information.... and thinking back I guess he was right and if this class served to train one in this country’s way of problem-solving, then I guess they’re placing emphasis on the right things by allowing students to really get a rounded education, and not just treat the class as a vessel to cram as much information into passive receivers. I think I will like it here; if I come in with an open mind and try not to get too many “culture shocks”. You know the old saying, when in Rome... pick up a fiddle and start fiddling.

The other thing that I found odd was the number of people who kept congratulating me throughout the day. Faculty, admin, students, you name it; everyone was about clapping, and congratulating and pats-on-backs and being cheerful and optimistic and energetic. Every time I heard someone say, ‘don’t worry, you’ll be fine’ for every doubt raised, I had a mini-panic attack. Don’t get me wrong: its a good thing – and rare – to find people that genuinely charged up and loving what they’re doing. I just wish someone would grab me and say, “Look, I’m not going to lie to you. This isn’t pessimism, its reality. It’s tough and you’re gonna have a hard time here. So brace yourself, and work hard.”

I can’t believe I’m actually worrying about slacking off at Harvard (if such a thing were possible!) but I wish people would stop saying ‘don’t worry’ all the time. But yes, these are early days yet, and really just my first taste of things to come. I’m sure all of that will change and soon I will be wishing I hadn’t wished for it. Or adapt to my new environment – which is also a good thing.

So there we go: fear, hope, worry, excitement, energy, nostalgia and optimism all bundled into one 5’4 frame. But I suppose the more frightful – and exciting – thing is my business venture, and watching the dream that I’ve nurtured and worked on for two years now finally culminating in a launch less than two weeks away. After that, I guess HBS would be icing on the cake.

Here’s to new beginnings. And nostalgic endings.

Note:

1 – Depends on what you consider ‘much’. It’s pretty much the seat of culture, with kutcheri-hopping, classical dance and performance in general finding a hugely appreciative and loyal following here. For the more ‘anglicized’ victims like me, there’s a fairly good theatre scene and lots of individuals who are trying to breathe some new life into an old city. And then there’s the beach. Personally I’ve loved spending a lazy Sunday with a book at a café overlooking the sea. The shore is where I go every time I feel blue (pun unintended!) And then of course, there’re lots of ‘hidden’ gems like Amethyst and Anokhi that provides the perfect place to lounge about. Come to think of it…. Madras does have a lot.

I suppose my only gripe is with people here. Conservative, nosy, close-minded and tight-lipped (except when it comes to talking about who’s wife’s sister’s daughter was seen sharing a coffee with which uncle’s brother’s son) and let’s not forget all the self-righteous moral policing. I suppose one could argue that Moral-policing happens anywhere in India (a friend of mine has currently set her status message to TALIBANgalore and I don’t think she’s too off the mark), but I also suppose Madras is the only city that wholeheartedly supports such activity with a tch-tch-they-had-it-coming-attitude. And oh yes, there are no shops. None. Unless you want to gorge on gold jewellery and silk saris, in which case, knock yourself out.

Sheba

2009-02-23T03:47:00.003+05:30

“Schrödinger was a son of a bitch” she said.

I was in the middle of crushing. I didn’t appreciate her theorizing all over my hard-pressed labour. I decided to humour her anyway.

“Why is that”

“He forgot a simple scientific fact.”

I proceeded to crush the tiny green leaves under my calloused thumbs.

“All cats”, she spat in a spitting way obviously irked by my disinterest, “have nine lives.”

I nodded. This was the problem with Sheba. She thought she was the granddame on the fundamental theories of physics. I have yet to break the news to her that she was hallucinating. She wasn’t a cat. In fact, she wasn’t even remotely feline.

“Let me do that,” she purred in her fake cat voice and sidled over to where I was sitting. It was hard to concentrate on what I was doing when Sheba started sidling and purring and bending over in that very fake-catlike manner of hers. She ran her tongue all along the side of the paper, rolled it, lit it and put it between her lips. I watched my hard work go up in smoke as she sat there with her big fat Cheshire-cat grin.

“So,” she said between puffs, “what’s this I hear about it all ending tonight.”

“You’re not in it.”

“I was in your last one.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t your ex-wife, she was as flat as a cutting board.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I decided to just agree with everything Sheba said. It was the only way to shut her off. I went back to my computer and started up from where I had left it.

I’d been working on this novel for nine years. It’s finally here. This where it all ends, tonight. My fingers began to itch. It meant something monumental was up.

“Speaking of your ex-wife” she said stubbing the last of her joint into the mahogany table, “I saw her with her lover today.”

I tried to ignore Sheba. She disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the clanking of ice upon glass. She came back and leaned against the desk. She placed a small glass of rum and coke on the table by the computer. She knows I don’t like ice. There were two cubes swishing in there. I took a swig.

“So what happens to him?”

“I can’t say.”

“You might as well. Or I’ll just come back later when you’re asleep and read everything you wrote.”

“Good. So then you’ll know.”

“You should make him fly, you know.”

“You should mind your own business, you know.”

She pushed the glass on to my lap. I picked up a napkin lying nearby and dabbed the inside of my jeans. These were new. I picked up the empty glass from the carpet and placed them on the desk again. I needed to finish this tonight.

Sheba was sulking on the sofa. She had lit herself another one and was cradling a drink. One of these days I need to tell her she’s not a cat. I also need to get her to stop stealing all of my drinks and cigarettes. But not today. Today was His day.

My bones were tingling. I’ve been watching him for nine years now. I spawned him, followed him, dissected every action of his insignificant life in minute detail. I knew how he liked his coffee in the morning, what shampoo he used, the length of his inside leg. I felt a little like God. Or the Devil. I’m not sure which. I get confused.

“So what’s going to happen to him?”

She was slurring now. I bet she’s gone through another bottle of rum already. I need to hide them better the next time. I don’t know how she always manages to find them.

“You’ll know when I’m done.”

“You’ve been saying that for nine years.”

“Yeah? So what’s nine more.”

She came up to the computer and perched herself on the edge. She was going to strip now, I knew it. That was always her way of getting attention.

“That’s another thing. Nine. Why nine lives? I mean, why not ten? Or seventeen?”

“You’re not happy with nine? Most of us just get one life.”

“Yeah, but one is fine. It’s like...” she started curling and uncurling her fingers in the air as though snatching as an elusive invisible word hanging in the ether “...meaningful, you know? Nine is just arbitrary.”

“So is 34.”

“What’s 34?”

“The length of his inside leg.”

“I thought it was your age.”

“You’re off by nine years.”

“43?”

“25.”

“You look 43.”

“Thanks, I love you too.”

She sat back looking smug and starting drinking again. Things were really happening now. Words were flying out of my fingers like lightning bolts slicing through a muddle of unrealized eventualities. I should have been Zeus. I can so carry off a toga.

“Getting somewhere huh?”

She had been silent for some time. I forgot she was still here. I was amazed she was still awake given the amount she’d drunk.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Want a smoke?”

“No.”

“Fine. I’ll get it myself.”

There were days when I wished Sheba would disappear. Like today. She was being irritable and cranky and breaking my concentration. Somedays I wished I never created her.

“I met you during my second.”

“Lover?”

“No, silly. Life.”

“Yes, that makes so much more sense. Seeing how you’re not really a cat and you’ve only had one life, and a shit one at that.”

“I could be a cat.”

“You’re not.”

She sighed loudly. She was getting whiny, I could tell she was getting whiny by the length of her sighs.

“You’re being a real bitch today, you know”

“Right back atcha, kid.”

She banged the empty glass loudly on the table and stomped noisily to the kitchen. That was her way of showing she was not amused. I got back to my writing.

The novel was a saga. At least, it was 700 pages long, and by my standards that qualified as a saga. The protagonist was male, and he drank and he smoked and he whored around. He was also slowly going insane. No one knew this, but of course I knew this. I had to know; I created him.

“What do I have to do with anything.”

She was back. I had gotten used to the comfortable clattering of the keys amidst the silence of the room – something she shattered with her whininess.

“What do I have to do with anything?” she asked again.

“You don’t.”

“Then why am I here?”

‘You’re not.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you back.”

“What are you, like, twelve?”

I didn’t look up from the computer. I was on a roll here.

“Maybe I’m here.... so I can fly.”

She was getting that wistful tone into her voice again. That never bodes well.

“You can’t fly.”

“You can make me fly.”

“No. I can make you disappear. It’s not the same thing.”

“If you can make me disappear, why haven’t you already?”

Sheba was really starting to annoy me. Sometimes she sounded just like mom. Especially when her voice hit that annoyingly mocking nasal-tone. It was like she knew she’s hit a nerve, but didn’t know exactly which nerve, and so will go on digging and digging and digging like trying to pick at a splinter with a pair of boxing gloves. And she’ll do it till I make her stop. Or drink myself to oblivion.

I reached out for the glass by the computer. It was filled with rum again. Neat, this time. She must’ve gone into the kitchen and fetched it for me. There was ice floating in it again. I gulped it down and set the empty glass on the table, cubes clinking against each other.

“Most writers I know always have their characters under control.”

“You don’t know any writers.”

“I know you.”

“Right.”

“And you’re not a writer.”

“Whatever you say.”

She was starting to give me a headache. I reached for the bottle of rum.

“So how’s the story coming?”

“Fine, till you interrupted.”

“I’m just eager to know the ending, that’s all.”

“You’ll get there.”

“Am I in it?”

“If you’re nice, I’ll put you in.”

That seemed to put her in a good mood. She settled in quietly nestling her drink and cigarette. Every time she comes home she litters the place with ashes. I tried telling her to use the ashtray. I gave up after she set my curtains on fire.

I could feel the end beating upon me. It was like this dark, looming thing just at my throat. I hadn’t realized how excited I was. Even I didn’t know what how it was going to end.

“Why does he always die?”

Sheba had woken up from her drunken half-daze.

“Who?”

“Your protagonists. Why do they always die?”

“Protagonist. Singular. And I never said he was going to die.”

“He is anyway... the rate he’s going.”

“Thanks for your insights.”

The headache was returning. I couldn’t find the glass. She must’ve taken it away when I hadn’t noticed.

“You drink too much, John.”

“Thanks for caring.”

“I don’t.”

I was furiously typing at the keyboard. Maybe the noise of the keys would drown out that dull throbbing ache in my head.

“Do you ever go back to read what you wrote?”

“No. Will do that later. When I’m finished.”

“I’ve read it.”

“Good for you.”

“I read it every night. After you sleep.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I tried to concentrate through the haze of pain. It’s never been this bad before. I can’t stop now. I pushed myself to continue writing.

“We’re out of cigarettes, John.”

“Fetch yourself a drink.”

“We’re out of that too.”

“Buy some.”

“We’re out of money, John.”

Almost there. If I could just block her nagging voice out of my head. She, it, that.... all of it. With the pain. I can sense the end drawing near.

“John.”

I ignored her and continued typing.

“John.”

Man, she’s persistent.

“John...” she purred. She put her fingers on my arms and started stroking it. Sheba could be good for things like that.

“It’s not going to end tonight, John.”

“Yes, it will.”

“Yes, it will. Just not the way you think.”

She was drinking from the bottle.

“I thought you said we were out of drinks.”

“We are. We’ve been out for nine years now.”

“I see.”

She wasn’t making any sense. I decided to ignore her again and finish my story.

“You drank yourself into a coma. This is limbo, John. “

This was her way of being melodramatic. She was always one for dramatic pauses and grand statements. And now she was standing there stark naked with a bottle in her hand and making these ominous statements. I wish she’d stop making that infernal racket so I can hear myself think. My fingers wouldn’t stop and all the words were coming out wrong. This is not what I wanted.

“You’re not writing a novel, John. You just think you are. You’ll been typing the same sentence everyday for nine years now, where do you think this story is going?”

Sheba is drunk and she’s fucking with my mind. If I could get her to shut up and get back in the story everything would be fine. She insists on talking to me. I wonder if all writers have this problem.

“Make him fly john.” She pleaded.

I stop. And look at the blinking cursor. There. One sentence. I was one sentence away from an ending. The entire novel has been one sentence. Was it a good sentence, I wonder. Too late to tell now. At least I created Sheba.

“Make him fly...” she whispers. Her voice is barely audible right now. She’s stroking my arm again, the way I like it. She’s drunk so much her body starts to shift shape like it always does when she drinks too much. This is the end, I think; she will finally be freed from limbo.

I leave the last sentence half-finished. There’s a dot missing at the end of the line. There’s a line missing at the end of the line. It’s alright. She’ll probably finish it in her next life.

I open the window and stand in front of it. Sheba climbs on my back. It’s a little like Schrödinger’s cat I think and laugh at the irony. Or maybe not. At this point, I can’t tell. I’m just relieved it’s over.

I leap. And Sheba spreads her wings. What do you know, she wasn’t lying after all. She flies with me into the darkness till we reach so high I can’t breathe. I always knew she wasn’t a cat.

Send in the clones

2009-02-21T17:03:00.009+05:30

In the summer of 1997, the Tamil Nadu government initiated efforts to introduce sex education into the school curriculum. This highly controversial move sparked a dramatic reaction from all fractions of the academic world, not to mention a whole slew of worried parents and one very troubled sheep.

Is this rot what they are teaching our kids in schools these days, one man asked, whatever happened to good old differential equations in the third degree. Another protested, sex is against Indian culture. To which the man next to him replied, how do you explain the one billion then? To which the former, after meditating long and hard on the seeming conundrum, replied – mitosis! This then sparked a nation-wide debate on stress-altered reproductive behavior and DNA replication in certain species, in which many noted zoologists, biologists, sociologists and one shady man in an oversized coat who kept winking at the female gynecologist and no one really know what he was there for, partook. But that is another story.

Amidst much public outcry and protests that this move would expedite the moral degradation of the general public, the government decided to still go ahead with this landmark decision in the history of Indian education. The education minister at the time, Ms Saswati Padhayeeiks, affectionately nicknamed ‘eeks’ by the opposition party members, had only this to say to all the dissenting fractions of the general public, ‘Because I say so’.

The delicate task of exposing young minds for the first time, to the concept of reproductive behavior and the actual mechanics of it, was one that warranted a great deal of tact, delicacy and an innate understanding of the actual subject matter under review. Selecting the person most suited for executing this task would be of paramount importance. After reviewing several thousand noted personalities from all walks of life, by the end of that year, one Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun, was commissioned by the government of Tamil Nadu to assume this monumental undertaking.

The following papers are excerpts from a series of correspondence between Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun and the government of Tamil Nadu.

To Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

In accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of education, Tamil Nadu, I have executed my duties to the best of my abilities and have produced the following passage for inclusion in textbooks for the Matriculation stream, standard 10.

A brief introduction to sex:

Reproduction is the fundamental feature of all life. Normal human reproduction occurs through sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is the act in which the male reproductive organ, called the penis, enters the female reproductive tract, called the vagina. The primary goal of sex is to merge the sperm and egg to make a baby.

When a girl child is born, she has all the eggs her body will ever use stored in her ovaries. As she matures into puberty, her body begins producing various hormones that cause the eggs to mature. The ovaries release one egg about once a month. If the egg does not become fertilized by male sperm, the egg and the lining of the uterus drain out of the vagina. If the egg does become fertilized by male sperm from intercourse, it will attach itself to the lining of the uterus and grow into a baby.

Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

To Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

After careful evaluation of your submission we feel that the subject matter under review would benefit from inviting inputs from other sources. After consultation with Ms Seskie Baybee, Director of the Indian Censor Board, it is our opinion that the language of the text should be scientific and educational in nature. Explicit vocabulary and suggestive writing should be avoided at all costs in order to safeguard the moral fibre of the country’s youth, especially since we are addressing a particularly impressionable populace. Please refer to the list of banned words as stated by the Indian Censor Board and find suitable scientific alternatives.

Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

Ms. Seskie Baybee,

Director of the Indian Censor Board

To Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

In accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of education, Tamil Nadu, I have incorporated the recommended changes into the text and produced the following passage for inclusion in textbooks for the Matriculation stream, standard 10.

A brief introduction to sex:

When a girl child is born, she has all the eggs her body will ever use stored in her thingamagig. As she matures into whachamacalit, her body begins producing various badabhimbadaboom that cause the eggs to mature. The thingamagig release one egg about once a month. If the egg does not become fertilized by whoopadedadoop, the egg and the lining of the dadadodedodum drain out of the female reproductive tract. If the egg does become fertilized by whoopadedadoop from theactformerlyknownassex, it will attach itself to the lining of the dadadodedodum and grow into a baby.

Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

To Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

After careful evaluation of your submission we feel that the subject matter under review would benefit from inviting inputs from other sources. After consultation with Ms Male Basheeng, Director of the National Commission for Woman, it is our opinion that the emotional aspects of reproduction have been largely ignored in the current text. We recommend highlighting the psychological and emotional aspects of reproduction from a female perspective.

Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

Ms Male Basheeng,

Director of the National Commission for Woman

To Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

A brief introduction to sex:

Reproduction is the fundamental feature of all life. Normal human reproduction occurs through theactformerlyknownassex. Theactformerlyknownassex is the act in which the male reproductive organ enters the female reproductive tract. The primary goal of theactformerlyknownassex is to merge the seed and egg to make a baby. Babies are wonderful. All women love babies. Only women have the power to increase the human race. They are sexy, sexy Von-Neumann machines 1.

When a girl child is born, she has all the eggs her body will ever use stored in her thingamagig. As she matures into whachamacalit, her body begins producing various badabhimbadaboom that cause the precious eggs to mature. The thingamagig release one egg about once a month. If the egg does not become fertilized by whoopadedadoop, the egg and the lining of the dadadodedodum drain out of the female reproductive tract in a normal but painful phenomenon that all women experience. This pain is rumored to be a mere 1/100^th of the pain of actual childbirth.

If the egg does become fertilized by whoopadedadoop from theactformerlyknownassex, it will attach itself to the lining of the dadadodedodum and grow into a baby, thanks to the awesome child-bearing powers of women. We must all worship women as testament to the pain they endure in the fulfillment of their noble duties to advance the human race.

Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

To Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

After careful evaluation of your submission we feel that the subject matter under review would benefit from inviting inputs from other sources. After consultation with Mr Iyama Pansie, Director of the National Commission for Men, it is our opinion that the tonal quality of the text is too heavily female-oriented. In the interests of equality, we strongly recommend that you stress upon the indispensible role men play in the act of reproduction.

Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

Mr Iyama Pansie,

Director of the National Commission for Men

To Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

A brief introduction to sex:

Reproduction is the fundamental feature of all life. Normal human reproduction occurs theactformerlyknownassex. Theactformerlyknownassex is the act in which the male reproductive organ enters the female reproductive tract. The primary goal of theactformerlyknownassex is to merge the seed and egg to make a baby. Babies are wonderful. All women love babies – especially male babies. Due to the limitations of medical advancements, currently only women have the power to increase the human race. They are sexy, sexy Von-Neumann machines.

When a girl child is born, she has all the eggs her body will ever use stored in her thingamagig. As she matures into whachamacalit, her body begins producing various badabhimbadaboom that cause the precious eggs to mature. The thingamagig release one egg about once a month. If the egg does not become fertilized by whoopadedadoop, otherwise known as sacred man-milk which every red-blooded male possesses, the egg and the lining of the dadadodedodum drain out of the female reproductive tract in a normal but painful phenomenon that all women experience. This pain is rumored to be a mere 1/100^th of the pain of actual childbirth. However, this pain is nothing compared to the pain of providing for the family – a noble task that all men undertake.

If the egg does become fertilized by the sacred man-milk through theactformerlyknownassex, it will attach itself to the lining of the dadadodedodum and and grow into a baby, thanks to the awesome child-bearing powers of women and the secret life-giving powers of man-milk. We must all worship women and genuflect at men as testament to the duties they undertake in their noble mission to advance the human race.

Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

To Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

After careful evaluation of your submission we feel that the subject matter under review would benefit from inviting inputs from other sources. After consultation with Sr Ivana Geddlaid, President of the National Catholics Educational Association, it is our opinion that the moral implications of the act of reproduction have been grossly underrepresented. We strongly recommend that you place emphasis on the spiritual aspects of this most holy act.

Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

Sr Ivana Geddlaid,

President of the National Catholics Educational Association

To Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

A brief introduction to sex:

Reproduction is the purpose of all life. Normal human reproduction only occurs after marriage. Only dogs have sex; humans have babies. Theactformerlyknownassex is the act in which mommy and daddy come together to make a baby. The primary goal of theactformerlyknownassex is make babies so that we can all marvel at God’s wonderful creation. Due to the designs of our lord and supreme master, only women have the power to increase the human race. They are pretty, pretty carriers of spiritual beings.

When a girl child is born, she has all the eggs her body will ever use. As she matures, her body undergoes mysterious changes that only God in his infinite wisdom can fathom. Only hell-fiends and infidels would try to uncover the magic of all creation through medical science.

When mommy and daddy indulge in holy union and consummate their marriage, a tiny miracle begins to grow inside mommy’s stomach, bearing testimony to the glory of God. When you grow up, please remember to get married and consummate your union. And finally: condoms are evil. Latex is made in hell, not China.

Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

To Mr Allvais Reddy Foryakshun

BE, MS, MPHIL, PHD, BED, COT, MATTRESS.

After careful evaluation of your submission we feel that the subject matter under review is finally at a publishable level. However, it is my opinion that the text could still benefit from some further tweak and polish. I would suggest we meet in my office tonight to address the problem in hand. Looking forward to working closely with you, Mr Reddy Foryakshun.

Ms. Saswati Padhayeeiks,

Minister for Education, Tamil Nadu

Footnote:

1 – Extra cookie to anyone who can tell me what this is all about :D

Dateless in Bangalore

2009-02-16T20:05:00.003+05:30

Ok, that title should actually read dateless on a Saturday night in Bangalore. Or actually, stood up on a first date on a Saturday night in Bangalore. Or even, stood up on a first date on Valentine’s Day on a Saturday night in Bangalore. Or… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

To begin from the beginning, which is always a very good place to make a start if you ever want to start from somewhere, let’s start with V day.

First of all, I hate V day (which is what we’ll be calling it from here on cuz it sounds so much cooler than Valentine’s day and my word is god, so there) I hate V day because this is the most mindless day in the entire year where mindless 15-year olds give pink plastic roses to other mindless 15-year olds who croon about how swwweeeeeeeeeet that is and then they all go live happily ever after in Karan-Johar-land while meanwhile back on earth the one-day sales of Archies Galleries across India spike by 7652%. The whole swapping of pink chocolates and teddy bears is like watching some incredibly primitive form of mating ritual observed in an intelligence-deficient species. It’s like watching sea slugs trying to build a particle accelerator.

Back in college, V day always fell during the inter-collegiate fest that the university organized. Since we were a bunch of highly intelligent and complex engineers living in a pre-orkut era, we devised a highly intelligent and complex system of color-codes to indicate to the opposite sex if we wanted to ‘mk frndshp w thm’. If you wore red, you were already spoken for. Green meant, go ahead I’m open. Yellow meant, let’s just be friends. Multicolored meant, I have multiple personality disorder and am possibly color-blind too which is why I dressed in the dark and wore this god-awful vomit-colored shirt.

Another common custom of this elaborate mating/dating ritual included random dudes walking up to you, extending a rose and saying – I love you. Do you love me? – And when you reply – no, you asshole, I’ve never seen your face before in my life – they’d get all depressed and slink away into some corner of the campus. Invariably, three days later, random dude’s best friend will walk up to you, call you out from class (random dude and his cronies are usually seniors, which means they can pull juniors out of class anytime) and say – why did you refuse his love? He used to be a gold medalist, but because of love failure now he is failing in everything.

Before you can devise a rational argument to counter his irrefutable logic, random dude’s best friend number two, who has throughout this conversation been standing in the background with his arms folded and his face expressionless, will hit upon an epiphany right then and loudly declare – machan, that time itself I told! Girls na eppome problem da! (translation: girls = problem. See, Tamil really is that easy.)

Then friend one and friend two will put their heads together and get random dude out of depression. Random dude meanwhile, him being ever the pro-active hyper-enthu cutlet, would have in this time been frantically reading up on wikipedia on what to do when love failure occurs and writing to agony aunts across all newspapers... dear x, I proposed a girl, she disagreed for my love, please suggest good brand rat poison.

So that’s the complex series of sacred rituals and customs that collectively make V day the happy pink-hearts-and-teddy-bears festival we all know and love. Joyful isn’t it? I can see why we all celebrate it.

This year however, that fine bastion of Indian tradition, Sri Ram Sene chief Mutalik has decided to safeguard Indian sentiments by cracking down hard on such unpatriotic acts like celebrating V-day. I agree with him completely. Valentine’s day is against Indian culture. How dare people publicly display affection! Abisthu abacharam! After all, everyone knows that Indians don’t have sex. One billion people? Dude, you must have double vision or something. It’s just me here in India. Who you gonna believe, me or the National Census Bureau?

So to show my solidarity with his cause, and as I would anyway be in Bangalore on Saturday, I decided I must find a random dude and then go out drinking that night (which is also against Indian culture, because we all know that the Indian body is anatomically programmed to only consume curd rice. This is backed by irrefutable scientific data that Mutalik possesses and guards safely in a vault within his underwater secret cave) and get arrested as an example and warning to loose and forward women everywhere. See, this is what you get if you visit bars! You get put behind bars. So with such noble intentions in heart, I called my best friend, who called a friend, who agreed to boldly go where no man hath gone before – or in this case, on a first date at Hard Rock Café.

While we’re on the topic of dating, a slight digression here. What with me moving to the States in four months, shifting to Bangalore in two, a month left to launch a new business initiative and then four months to stabilize it and implement a remote management system…. I don’t need boyfriend woes to add to my stress. Dating is the term I use to imply meeting interesting people. I don’t define a relationship and would much rather let things unfold at their own pace and comfort level… which means that a lot of my so-called dates end up becoming good platonic friends. It also means that at any time, I am casually dating a number of people. The way I see it, unless I’m absolutely sure about someone it doesn’t make sense getting into a commitment. According to my cousin, the term ‘dating’ refers to a much more sophisticated craft with clearly defined protocol, motivations and intent, and what I’m doing is apparently just ‘hanging out’. Tomayto, tomahto. Doesn’t change the fact that I’m still sexually frustrated.

So anyway, V night at Hard Rock it was. Except that at seven in the evening, blinddateguy messages saying that something has come up and he can’t make it. First of all, who the hell cancels a seven pm date AT seven pm?! And more importantly, who will take on Mutalik now? Of course, the fact that I’ve been stood up on a Saturday night in Bangalore, and all my other friends have already made plans, and my colleagues have left on an earlier flight while I extended my trip by a night just so I can head out for a night about town had nothing to do with me telling blinddateguy to go boil his head in lizard piss. I was merely vocalizing my frustration at being unable to carry out an act of mutinous rebellion as a symbolic protest against anti-social extremist factions in an otherwise secular nation.

Ironically, by a twist of fate I actually had pink chaddies that night, thanks to my very loose and forward thinking servant who had the foresight to throw in that one red sock with the rest of my tighty-whiteys, and I was all set to start a revolution. Waiter, a round of Molotov cocktails for the house!

So there I was, pink chaddies, and heels (um, and a little more) and all geared up for a night out about town with great music and greater booze and instead I’m staring at my wretched phone and wondering why I don’t know enough single interesting men in Bangalore.

Maybe it was the Saturday, or maybe it was the V day, or maybe all the planets lined up in a straight line and the universe thought, today is lets-screw-lav day, but they were all busy. Backup number one doesn’t do weekends. Backup number two wanted me to be his girlfriend after a second date, so I cut him loose. Backup number three fled town this weekend and Backup number four turned into a giant green tentacled thing and teleported himself to the planet Zyborm. I need to go on a recruiting spree for my harem again.

I was down to two options: call up another random dude (friend of a friend. Aren’t they always?) and head out with someone lame enough to stay at home on a Saturday night and be willing to go out with someone lame enough to be home on a Saturday night looking for someone lame enough…. Wait, did I just uncover an infinite loop of lameness? Ye gods.

Or option two was drag platonic friend and TLR (read: The Last Resort) out and paint the town red, or a mild pink hue at any rate. TLR being home and eating peanuts when I called was promptly bullied into meeting me at TGIF. (is it just me or is this paragraph suddenly being invaded by too many abbreviations?) TGIF is the place I used to frequent when the old airport was within city limits. Of course now that we need to take a flight, cab and bullock cart to another country to get to the new Bangalore airport, I hadn’t been there in a while. To cut a long story short, I didn’t like it – too much light, too much food and random smiling man in a suit handed me a rose at the entrance. I have a thing for flowers; I hate them. Ergo, we left.

The rest of the evening was spent waiting for transport, then waiting for traffic to move, then waiting for the lights to change, and waiting… and waiting… and waiting… till we got to a pub on Brigade Road at which point I changed my mind and decided to walk down to Hard Rock instead. Here’s the thing with Hard Rock; it’s like home. No matter how shitty your day was, or how tiring, or disappointing, or whatever HRC Bangalore always leaves you feeling top of the world by the time you’re done. So after walking 3 blocks in a pair of 4 inch heels through the most horse-shitted road in all of the country – I swear this is true, it’s like a horde of horses descended from the sky just ten minutes before I took a walk and held some sort of horsedumping contest – we made it to HRC at a quarter past ten.

The next one hour was probably one of the most fun times I’ve had in a really long time. Bangalore has a strict no-dancing rule in its pubs. Somehow that night I think they suspended it. Except for the few guys at the tables which were all pushed away to the walls, the rest of the space really was teeming with people in various stages of inebriation exhibiting loss of sensory motor skills. Around eleven, big guy in leather jacket starts tapping these group of men who look like they're participating in some sort of sponsored epileptic fit. Well, I guess they couldn’t completely suspend the no-dancing rule. I’m sure with his keen sense of perception leatherjacketguy was the only person who could’ve accurately determined what constituted ‘dancing’ in the real frog-in-a-blender-sense and what was mere alcohol-induced swaying with minimal loss of sensory motor skills, and was hence rewarded with a leather jacket as testament to his skills.

It was just one hour, but boy was that a good hour. I had calmed down enough to think maybe I was a little too harsh on blinddateboy. Boiling would be a bit much, perhaps he could care to go and gently marinate his head in lizard piss instead.

I must remember to thank TLR by the way – for the beer, the good time, the sympathetic ear to my grand plan of sending blinddateguy boxes of estrogen-laden chocolates and watching him develop man-boobies and, well, for turning up I guess. TLR If you’re reading this, I owe you one. Will send you chocolates, minus the estrogen or pimply fifteen year old.

As for blinddateguy, last I heard he was ‘really really sorry’ and said he’d call ‘in a bit’. Well, that was then, this is now… no call yet. Also my girlfriend just called today and wants to know if we should go catch that new movie ‘He’s not that into you.’ Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

I think the only explanation here is that blinddateguy is heading this super secret undercover covert operation and had to go away to defend our country from alien invasion while I was slowly getting drunk at Hard Rock. Also, I think all that contact with aliens and radioactivity fried his phone and also erased his memory of the last two days, which is why I’ve received no communication from him.

I’m sure he’ll call. Got a vial of estrogen and 'best brand' rat poison just waiting here for when he does.

30 Random Things

2009-02-10T03:34:00.002+05:30

I was tagged on Facebook. So that essentially means I am supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about me and then at the end, choose 25 people to be tagged.

It was fun. So I made it 30 and I’m putting them on the blog.

(I wish I had something cleverer to say to begin the post, but I don’t, so ha. I still maintain that I am a vortex of ozumness)

1. I never sleep before a trip. Never. It's 3am now and my flight to Delhi leaves in 3 hours.

2. Music sometimes gets me more high than sex, drugs or... er, booze.

3. When I was young, and the first time I saw the sunflower oil ad with the kid waking up 1/1000th his normal size and being chased by big fluffy pooris, I had nightmares for weeks.

4. I am secretly thrilled that I'm Gemini.

5. Smarts over looks anyday. And wit over smarts anytime. But all of this only holds if you're at least 5'11 and have a badass bank balance.

6. I can amuse myself for hours in my room imagining impossible imaginings. Like, what if I had a time-stopping device. Or what's the point of a 'moral compass' if you dont believe in afterlife anyway. Or who the hell stole one of my red striped socks?

7. I want to change the world.

8. When I was younger I used to fervently wish I would turn into a boy. Now, I just fervently wish I was 5'11.

9. I am finally living with no regrets, no expectations and no agendas. It still scares the shit out of me, but I wouldn't trade this phase in my life for anything in the world.

10. I hate birthdays and get severely depressed and listen to losing my religion all night.

11. I've never not gotten what I wanted. Really. Or I just lose the want for it. But usually I just get what I want. Men, grades, admissions, recognition, whatever.

12. I have poor taste in men.

13. I lose and gain weight very quickly. I've lost 4 kilos in a week once.

14. At my heaviest I was 74 kilos. At my lightest, I was 49. That was in a span of 2 years.

15. I was 5'4 when I was 12 years old, and then I stopped growing permanently.

16. I love my dogs. I doubt I can ever love anyone with such unconditional emotion.

17. I dont forgive people. I just stop thinking about them.

18. I want five kids one day.

19. I have substituted my support system with my blog, gtalk and facebook. Yes, google runs my life. Don't be evil.

20. I hate people touching my hair.

21. I once dated a different guy each day of the week. I didn't get any sleep, but I got a lot of beer. (And no, before you ask, didnt get any sex either)

22. I dont know if I will ever be ready for marriage.

23. My left eye is minus 5.75 and my right eye is minus 3.25 and my cylindrical is minus 2.75.

24. I once played pinball for 6 hours straight and hit 10 million.

25. I love London. I've never felt more at home anywhere else, Madras included.

26. I am more terrified of being divorced than of being married.

27. I never kept in touch with my first love. I sometimes think about him and wonder what happened to him. Are you out there? Are you happy? I wish somedays I could go back and not be mean to you.

28. I love getting gifts. Especially spontaneous ones – like your friend stopping on the walk back to your house and getting you a pair of blue earrings from the roadsidewallah. Just because.

29. I secretly look up to my brother. But I keep telling him he’s a stupid bloody moron anyway cuz I know he’ll never read my blog.

30. One day 700 million people will know my name, and they will know what I do, and they will name their children after me, and they will write about me and talk about me while passing the salt at the dinner table. That day, I will give everything up. And forgive all the people I have forgotten.

The hunt for Igor

2009-01-17T10:14:00.004+05:30

It was Sunday and I was plotting World Domination Plan 27.8i.

‘Igor!’ I yelled ‘Pull the switch!’

The twit made his miserable entrance.

‘Igor!’ I yelled again, ‘Pull the switch!’

He shuffled to the contraption and flicked it with his finger, mumbling beneath his breath about overtime. Nothing. The idiot must have got it wrong again. He shrugged and loosened the buttons on his grey suit, folded his arms behind his head, swung his legs on to the table and started reading the classifieds. I need to get a new assistant. They just don’t make them like they used to anymore.

I called the Ministry of Manpower last week and asked for an Igor, the good ol fashioned type. Gimme a hunch-backed, lisping, retarded shuffling idiot, I barked. MoM said I can’t have any more until I eat my beans. Plus, I have a careless habit of blowing up Igors, which means no one wants to work for me... except for the bunch of ex-Lehman Brothers layoffs.

I turned to the suited twit. He was working out a complex analytics program to evaluate his chances of getting a job as the Fries-girl at McDonalds.

I walked to the contraption myself and flicked the switch. Nothing. I miss Igor.

Before I lost him, the Igor I inherited was the best Igor I ever had. He came from a long line of Igors, majored in the Art of Lisping with subtle undertones of a cultured French accented cough, and had the most gloriously grotesque hunchback any mad scientist could hope for.

It happened last year. The cadavers were lying on the table, the bottle of newt was newly refilled and labelled, my clinical tools and protractor polished to a sparkle and the Chinese torture dentist chair dusted with fine corrosive rust. Even the pink striped curtains were washed and hung, gently fluttering in the putrid city air. And the lab was empty. No note, no explanations, nothing.

I agonized for days over what I did wrong. I treated him like my own flesh and blood, choking back on tears of warm pride as I kicked him viciously in the stomach for every muddling mistake he made. Laughed at him with parental affection every time he tripped on my outstretched foot and chipped another tooth. I even went out of my way to drop hammers and nails and the occasional anvil on his head while he slept. The sense of betrayal is numbing.

The phone rang.

‘Igor! Pick up the phone’

The dolt put down the Sudoku he was working on and lifted the receiver with a sigh. He stretched it out, a look of mind-numbing boredom crossing the delicate features of his face.

‘It’s for you.’ He droned monotonously. I snatched the receiver from him. It was Mansi.

‘Mansi, you miserable fat cow, I wish you choke on your own vomit and die.’

‘Sharaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, i was thinking maybe you should wear your purple jacket tonight to the art gallery. I’m going to be wearing my dark pink dress, you know the one with the black lace short jacket? I think it’ll look really nice to go in matching clothes. Like, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher do it all the time.’

I told that loser to stop calling me Sharad. My name is TzarRah’d.

‘Listen you stupid waste of sputum, you’re not my girlfriend, how many times do I need to keep telling you that? I’m not going with you to your stupid parties!’

‘Janani’s wearing a green skirt and her boyfriend is wearing green striped socks. I know cause she told usha told shruti told archana’s boyfriend told his sister told the maid told my neighbor told me.’

‘Eat shit and die.’

‘Ok, so like, UCB is having this sale, and you can pick me up in half hour. Bye.’

She hung up.

Mansi is a moron I had the misfortune to take out on a blind date. We watched Evil Dead 4 and then had dinner at the Bloody Vomit. It’s this new place on Rayanan Road, where every dish looks like puke, piss or shit. I hear it’s really popular.

I only went out with her cause I needed 1800ml of fatty cells to fuel up my death ray for Evil Invasion Plan 98.4. But then my last Igor was manic-depressive and used it on himself, and destroyed the ray in the process. I should’ve guessed something was up when he kept leaving yellow sticky notes all over the lab saying, ‘the end is nigh.’ He sulked for three days when I told him we were out of milk.

Anyway, I don’t need Mansi’s mammaries anymore. The idiot never got it when I said I’d call her back after the first date and I didn’t. I even changed my caller tune to ‘I hate you, you stupid bitch, stop calling me.’ But she didn’t get the hint. I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.

‘Igor’ I said. ‘Adjust the electrodes to 37degrees and isolate the isotopes. I’ll be back.’

The suited monkey grunted what sounded like an affirmation. I put on my shiny new labcoat and set out.

‘Saar, because of yinflashun auto rates from here to Aiyoyo Nagar is pipty rupees.’

‘What the f#$%@!’

Auto drivers are the bane of human existence. I had once used them in world domination plan number 17.69 but then they all went and formed a union and started a tea stall and sat outside it all day reading Malayalam Manorama and discussed world politics.

‘The inflation is under control. 20 rupees.’

‘Bredher, because of yackanaamic depreshun I have to charge pipty wonly.’

‘It’s a recession, not depression. And you’re not affected by it.’

‘Mistaar, because of petrol price...’

‘..which have gone down, I will pay you 15 rupees.’

‘Thambi, lorry strike is happening...’

’30 rupees! Just shut up and drive!’

I reached Mansi’s house in a foul mood. Her maid gave me tea and milk bikis while I sat in the living room and waited. Mansi doesn’t keep Igors. She recently got a Rhoomba and sent the old one over to my place. It came in, woke me up every morning in a suffocating cloud of agarbati fumes at 4am, threw out all my labelled bottles of animal parts, mixed my super-cooled semiconducting liquid dust into her chappati mav and finally died from consuming radioactive rasam. After that, I stopped hiring Rhoombas manufactured in Mylapore.

‘Sharad!’ her mother shrilled at the pitch of her voice.

Mansi inherited her god-given assets from one half of her parental units. I could hear the groan of her over-worked bra hooks as she bounced up and sat next to me on the sofa.

‘Are you and Mansi going shopping?’ she squeaked, ‘Will you please puhleeze be a darling and get me a small tub of this Body Butter? They have this one flavour see, it’s a Lavender box with...’

I never understood why women went and did things like rub cocoa butter on their bodies. I thought it was something you ate. But then they also squash papayas on their face, take chocolate wraps, put cucumbers on their eyelids, pump their lips with strawberry infused lip gel and then turn up at a steak-house and order a salad. Mansi’s mother was still talking. All those cocoa butter fumes wafting up from her cleavage was making my head spin.

‘Mother!’

The cow was wearing a ghastly thing in purple fur that looked like it was it was trying to choke her.

‘Sharraaaaaad, you’re late’, she sang annoyingly in her annoying singsong voice, ‘and you’re not wearing the right coat. Now we’ll have to go all the way back to your place and find you something nicer to wear!’

‘Go boil your head in lizard piss.’

Motherrrrrrrrr, Sharad and I are taking the driver, bye!’

I sulked all the way back to the lab. I bet that useless waste of an Igor hadn’t done anything all day. The door to the lab was open. Some street urchins were playing with the Van de graff generator. They were standing upon the insulator, fully charged with their clothes and hair sticking to them like they’d been dipped in a vat of oil. I used a couple of my pyrotomic pellets on them and they disintegrated. I transmogrified one of them into a half-decent hunchbacked demented cripple. It would do for now. I need to hunt for another Igor.

‘Sharaaaaaaaaaad, we’re late!’

I could feel a migraine coming on. I grabbed the coat Mansi extended and dragged the clumsy oaf masquerading as an Igor out the door with me.

The art gallery was exhibiting the works of Janani, Mansi’s pseudo-friend, the pseudo-artist. At the exhibition, a bunch of pseudo-intellects were waxing eloquently on the vivid surrealism and the phallic overtones of her latest masterpiece.

‘Jananiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ Mansi squealed in her high-pitched voice and pseudo-airkissed her pseudo-friend. ‘I am so thrilled for you, this must be exciting!’

Janani was a painfully thin stick-insect shrouded in sheaths of green fabric. Her eyes bulged out of her alien-looking cranium and she whistled through the gap between her front teeth as she whispered. She always whispered. I think someone once told her it would help maintain an air of mystery. Behind her, hung her latest masterpiece. It was a picture of a dildo with ‘made in china’ printed on the bottom.

Out of the corner of my peripheral vision, I spied a sharp movement and turn just in time to spot a...could it be....oh god....! He was gone in a flash as quick as I spotted him. I ran past the crowd and into the kitchen where the caterers were bustling about with silver trays of finger foods. More Bloody Vomit. It looked like poop on a toothpick.

‘Shaaaaaaarrrrrraaaaaaad, where have you disappeared?’

‘I thought I saw Igor.’

‘But you have Igor!’ she sang annoyingly, pointing to the shivering lump of cripple huddling in a corner.

Janani appeared just then, sashaying in in her insect-like way. ‘You mean Rogi, my boyfriend? Well, he’s got a busy day tomorrow, he just had to dash. He’s working on this...thing. It’s some world annihilation thingamagig of some sort. Very fascinating, I just can’t seem to remember what exactly. He’s always in the lab tinkering on something or the other.’

My head was spinning. Rogi? She was talking about my Igor. And my World Annihilation Plan. I couldn’t breathe. Igors don’t steal plans... Igors don’t have labs! Why, they just slink about in the background serving their criminal masters, they’ve always done that. This must be some mistake. Igor is still out there, he’s just lost his way as usual. He’ll come back to me.

‘Sharad is also always doing something or the other in his lab!’ Mansi cutted in with her glass-shattering voice, ‘Tell her Sharad. Tell her about that something something death ray you’re working on. I helped design it see, it was this really ugly steel casing, but a true girlfriend always...’

‘Mansi!’ I yelled. She stopped talking.

‘I don’t like you, you’re not my girlfriend, I only went out with you in the first place because I thought you'd come in handy for an experiment!’

Mansi turned, in a very slow-motion tamil-serial type turn and looked me squarely in the eye. Janani had slinked away unnoticed to find some new prey.

‘You could’ve just said so you know.’

@#$%&*!@#

‘Come, Igor.’ She said, and walked away with the only half-decent, demented hunchbacked cripple in the state. I let out an agonizing moan and slumped to the ground. My life was in shambles, and I was Igor-less.

‘Igor... Igor...’ I whimpered,’ wherefore art thou?’

I walked out into the night. Somewhere out there was my Igor. In the distance, the formidable grey building of Lehman Brothers rose into the sky.

A new year...

2009-01-09T05:43:00.003+05:30

...and new beginnings. [Ok yes, it’s a little over a week old already, but it’s the thought that counts :p ] Speaking of new years and new beginnings and all that, historically it’s always been the birthdays that give me a serious case of introspection. I suppose the idea that you’ve aged one whole year and suddenly you’re filling in a new, alien number in all those age-boxes in forms is more hard-hitting for some reason. But this past year has definitely been something special.

As a friend of mine put it, it's been a year of massive ups and downs. Thankfully not so many downs. Or perhaps I’m just learning to deal with the turbulence better in my life. With age comes wisdom, patience, a few grey hairs and floral pants. The last year has been a lot of fun, a lot of learning and a lot of hard work. Most of my energy has been spent at work and also at a new project I am initiating. I suppose there are few joys greater than watching an idea take root and infect an entire workforce with raw energy. I have been lucky – to have experienced a period of great change and optimism, to have the resources to capitalise on it, to be supported by a dedicated and passionate team who share a singular vision, and most importantly, to have the strength of mind to quieten any self-doubts that do surface from time to time.

That’s an up.

Another up was a major news I received just before Christmas. This time it was a call from the US interrupting a long chat with a good friend, informing me that I’ve been admitted into a top business school in Philly. It’s been weeks since I received the news and I’m still pinching myself to convince myself it’s for real. There was a time when I looked at getting an MBA like a ‘get out of jail free’ card, and grasped for it like a drowning man gasps for air. Looking back, and what I started out with and where I’ve come since then, I am glad I didn’t go in for it back then in that frame of mind. I’m finally choosing to go because I want to, and not because I feel I need to. It’s a good feeling to leave feeling that you’re not running away from anything, but that you’ve moved on and need a fresh perspective and a new experience. A new learning.

So there’s another up.

Coming to the not-so-peachy aspects... this year’s seen a lot of em, massive downs. For some reason, I’ve been more rattled by ‘world events’ than ever before. Especially the latest horror that unfolded in Mumbai. For the first time I couldn’t convince myself that things will be fine tomorrow and everything would be back to normal. It wasn’t about the around-the-clock/in-your-face news coverage, or the blatant audacity of the attacks, or even the crippling realization that no one is safe anywhere anymore. Something fundamentally had altered, and as everyone all over the world changed their facebook status, their gtalk status, updated their blogs and the murmur of horror, confusion, outrage and hurt rippled through the collective consciousness, for the first time I saw – in myself, as much as in others – a slight pause and introspection before launching into action. I felt the need to process this information and that it was important I not analyse it, categorise it and stash it away some way in a corner of my mind behind a label and a point-of-view. Something had jolted the individual out of the usual mob-mentality, out of the numb everydayness of a crowded existence, out of the chalta-hai attitude, and into something more personal and more immediate than ever before. I didn’t blog about it when it happened, and I’m still struggling to find the right words or even the right emotional response. The only thing I can say with any real certainty is that as far as downs go though, that definitely was a low spot for a lot of people.

Other downs this year... breakups. A more than usual share of unions and breakups peppered the year. Much laughter, love, celebrations and nostalgia at the weddings of dear friends. Much sadness and heartbreak as well as I’ve watched the people I’m close to grapple with relationships, marriages, time-differences, communication-breakdowns, work stress and god knows what else. I’ve watched as my friends, the ones who’ve come from happy families and walked into happy marriages with the perfect soul mate, came face to face with doubt, confusion and frustration. People who’ve seen their parents enjoy a long blissful union, struggling with their own unions and asking themselves after the deed is done... what now? I’ve watched my friends – the ones who ‘made it’, the big job, the fancy paycheck, the trophy husband/wife – searching desperately for context, some kind of understanding of the strange new situation they were in. I guess the world’s changed so much from when our folks got married that we need to find our own grounding and the old yardsticks have lost their meaning in this brave new world. Especially when one is confronted with the reality of a ‘long-distance’ marriage with no end in sight to the temporariness of the arrangement, no close-knit family or support system and no reference points to learn from.

Breakups are hard. And I guess it doesn’t matter how many you go through, it really never gets easier and it’s the same pain all over again. I didn’t think I’d go and get involved again, or breakup again, but life always has a funny way of handing you a winning lottery ticket and then kicking you in the balls doesn’t it?

Another down – which doesn’t actually qualify as a down since it’s really the lack thereof that I am bemoaning – is that I didn’t have the time I wish I did to work on more er creative projects. A creative project, anything wild and mad and completely ridiculously challenging, has always had the effect of a full service check up. Theatre, story/script-writing, whatever it be, it had always served as a creative outlet and vent for pent-up energies for me. Plus, when you’re working hard on a problem, it’s great to be able to switch off, take on a diametrically opposite project – one that requires a completely different set of skills – and tackle it. If anything it leaves you fresher and more energised to head back to what you were doing in the first place. The beauty with that kind of challenging creative work is that it really forces you to push your mind to work in ways that you normally don’t exercise in the context of everyday existence. If real life is about societal conformity and protocol, creative work has been the exact opposite and rejection of this view.

I suppose the word I’m looking for is stagnation. Not in a general sense, but in a very specific meaning, I have fallen into a creative blackhole and definitely not been doing the kind of work that I truly love and enjoy. But then again... who knows what the New Year brings? One can always hope.

In the meanwhile, what I’ve really been enjoying are the trips my work (and not-quite-work!) sees me taking. Two trips this year, one to London – a quasi-work trip – and another, a New Year’s celebration in Bali. Both remarkable and both extremely cathartic in their own way.

I love London. It is without a doubt the best city in the world. First of all, I absolutely love how design is so integrated into their culture. Whether it’s simple stuff like ‘mind the step’ signs placed discreetly but visibly at eye-level and well-designed without screaming from the rest of its settings, or stumbling upon a Banksy graffiti, or art in the underground or just everyday people and the things they wear or carry. There is always something fresh and new to discover. I suppose I like it so much because it’s one of those fire-and-life cities that’s constantly evolving in front of your eyes. Not only does London have an extremely evolved sensibility but you can actually see new influences emerging and adding to the fray. It’s nice to be in a city that’s organized and clutter-free but with a strong identity and a real design aesthetic. I didn’t used to notice design as an element in culture much before, but even then, I was always spending hours in London bookstores and I do have a soft corner for British authors. And it’s precisely for the same reason – I always happen to stumble across some quirky and offbeat rare jewel of a book while browsing through a dusty bookstore.

Bali meanwhile was amazing; more so because I really had not expected it to be so. What I thought would be a regular sun and sand resort-type vacation and drunken revelry turned out to be much more. First of all, I was very pleasantly surprised at how clean things were. It sounds like condescendence but after travelling to Thailand I hadn’t expected such a pleasant change. Secondly, and more importantly, I hadn’t realised exactly how culturally rich they were – from heritage sites to indigenous crafts. It truly was an insight into a highly developed culture, even if it was only a short trip. I hope I get the chance to go there again. Another place I want to revisit is South Korea. Again for the same reason – there’s a country that completely altered my preconceived notions of it, however feeble. Again, very culturally rich and very evolved and design-oriented.

Another major incident, perhaps something that can’t really be neatly classified under ups or downs, is something that happened and stirred up a lot of soul-searching and introspection earlier this year. I lost a friendship, perhaps the confidence and support of the one person closest to me. It took months of hurt and agonizing self-analysis before I finally achieved closure on my own. I suppose it was exceptionally hard for me because what reference points does one draw upon in dealing with the grief of a breakup or disintegration of a friendship? It was eye-opening at any rate to have arrived, after much pain and thought, at the realization that despite talks of absolute rights and wrongs, even the closest of friends have different underlying belief systems. And this core system of self-governance dictates how we respond to one another. In events like that, protocol really doesn’t help one navigate through the complexities of human relationships. In situations like that, I guess pain and hurt become just a waste of emotional reserve, and the sooner one realises this, the sooner one moves on.

So there we have it. Ups and downs, big news and no news, periods of stagnation and intense activity... the year certainly has whizzed by and not without leaving its share of scars and battle-wounds. I hadn’t meant to make this an entire blogspot about the past year... but what the heck :)

Happy New Year – belated greetings and suchlike. Here’s hoping for much fun, laughter, success and madness in the coming year.

*chinks glass*

The Equation of XYZ

2008-10-02T15:00:00.005+05:30

There is this girl, let’s call her X. And there is this boy, let’s call him the sonofabitchwhostoodherup, conveniently shortened to Y for the purpose of this post. And then there’s this friend of X, let’s call her Z. The story goes like this: X is supposed to meet Z for a movie and a chat and some good ol bitchy girl talk – something X hasn’t had for a really long time. And then Y calls up X the night before and asks her to meet him for lunch, and because Y’s fantastically busy all the time and it’s an extremely rare and unusual occasion when he does decide to grace her with his presence, X says yes, only to be stood up by Y who fell asleep cuz he’s too fuck-faced to give a shit.

As a consolation price, Y matter-of-factly tells X to not sweat the small stuff and why don’t they just meet in the evening instead because of course Y gets up just in time for his impossibly important event so whenever that’s done – oh around five-ish but it may get stretched to say, 2011? – they can meet. What happens at that meeting is another story involving a psycho X, two-psycho sidekicks, a chainsaw and a castration device that looks alarmingly like my grandmother’s nutcracker.

Which brings me to the point of this post... why do women all around the world insist on selling themselves short? And also, where can I find a suitably rusty nutcracker?

I am at that stage where all my single and working female friends are not so single any more. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for free kalyaanam sapad, but I really wonder if there is some secret 1984esque brainwashing club that they’re all required to subscribe to. Or maybe it’s some sort of married-womens-manifesto that gets handed down to every new member of the ol ball-and-chains club. Is all that new-bride-glow really because of good sex, or is it some form of mind-altering substance that mother-in-laws all over the world are mixing into their bahu’s milk? Whatever it is, what I’d like to know is, when one becomes two, why does the protocol for social interaction between the sexes change?

Specifically, what the fuck is wrong with X?!

Strangely enough, this perplexing phenomenon is not confined to the married masses. X’s all over the world that’ve found a Y to share an ‘it’s complicated’ with on facebook are exhibiting this trend. On behalf of Z’s all over the world who are right now sitting with a tub of unbuttered popcorn and a look of confused disappointment while enduring the horrible cacophonic catastrophe known as Mamma Mia: the 90-minute musical that will make you want to rip your arm off and poke yourself in the eye with, I’ve got a message for all the X’s out there: Child, if he says you’re a priority but continues to stand you up for his work, his male-bonding-time, his haircut appointment, his third cousin’s wife’s brother who is getting a facial and needs him there in his hour of knead... wake up and smell the degree kapi. He’s promising you the mooncake and giving you crumbs. You shouldn’t be spending evenings dressed up and waiting by the phone when you can be giving your one-armed popcorn-popping friend company and a much needed helping hand. Meryl Streep or no Meryl Streep, Mamma Mia is after all the sort of calamity best encountered with a pair of eyeshades, heavy-duty ear plugs and preferably a frontal lobotomy.

Which brings me to the topic of Ys.

Why?

Maybe it’s just my slow Mamma Mia- addled brain, but I mean really, why? If someone is a priority in your life, stop telling her that mothafucka and put your money where your mouth is. Somewhere between the 1467th and 2769th time that you’ve promised to meet her and then cancelled cuz agent 006 and agent 008 were both busy tripping to Abba songs and therefore it was up to you to save the world from a 90f-oot Godzilla, who incidentally turned out to be just a menopausal marsupial experiencing a hot-flash, there is someone out there waiting for your call and marking the dates in her phone and keeping herself free and giving up geriatric Abba warblers and looking forward to spending a popcorn-free afternoon with you, minus 90-foot city-crushing lizards.

If you’ve made a commitment, honour it. If she means a lot to you, show her. If you love her, then love her. Really. We all love our house of cards, but when your carefully constructed illusions collapse somewhere between the Queen and the Joker, even the most staunch X can turn into an ex. Verbal assurances can only go so far. And when empty words stop becoming isolated incidents and turn into an inkling of a more disturbing pattern, even a dorky Scandinavian band in bodysuits can’t put humpty dumpty together again.

And X darling... don’t go wasting your emotion. Lay all your love on you.

Dream on a sunday afternoon

2008-09-28T12:34:00.005+05:30

The wailing women descend upon the house like an air-raid siren. I am lying on my cot and counting the pixies that fly in from the afternoon heat and settle on my fingers. The one that looks alarmingly like my mother settles in a mess of red sari and gold border by the foot of the bed and starts in her loud voice.

‘Have you thought about marriage?’

‘No’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know’

‘All self-respecting south Indian women get married’

I yawn.

The old one in the corner starts coughing violently.

‘I want to see you married before I die’ she wheezes. ‘I want all my children to be married and happy’

‘I’m not your child’ I tell her.

‘I want all my grandchildren to be happy.’

‘But I am happy.’

She coughs and brings up a jagged stone of heavy black from her mouth and sets it on the floor to keep the room from spinning.

‘You’re wasting your life’, the one who looks suspiciously like my mother starts up again. She is slicing onions with a knife, a safety pin gripped tightly between her teeth. More pixies float in from the afternoon scorching heat. I watch them settle on my big toe and implode into a ball of furry pixie dust.

‘Do you know to tie a sari?’

‘No.’

Chop chop chop.

‘You will learn.’ she says.

Chop chop chop.

‘It is your duty to get married.’ She continues.

‘Why?’

‘Then I will be a success.’

‘How?’

‘Then I have raised two children, put them through engineering, and got them married into respectable families.’

‘And then?’

‘Then you’re on your own.’

‘What if I fail?’

She doesn’t answer. The one is the corner has thrown up four glistening black stones. They have flecks of vomit-and-blood coloured spots in them. One of the black stones crumbles and begins to wail in a slow and steadily increasing Doppler Effect siren.

‘And if I don’t?’ I ask.

‘Then I fail’.

‘And me?’

‘You’re a failure anyway’.

Chop chop chop.

The wailing is beginning to spin the room. I walk outside the spinning room with the wailing ladies chopping onions. There is a crooked trail of red ants that lead to a stone well. I follow it and look down.

‘The water is fine’

The voice from the well echoes up. I look into the black hole and see four naked women standing at the bottom.

‘Where?’ I ask.

‘Come down.’

I am standing on the edge of the well. The cold stone creeps up between my toes and bites, injecting little darts of formic acid into my flesh. I step back and shake my head.

‘I haven’t been touched in a long time.’ she says.

‘I know’

‘But I’m free.’

‘What’s that?’ I point to a muddy puddle of brown on the floor of the well.

‘That’s my left tit.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘It died of dejection.’

‘I can’t talk to you anymore.’

‘Why?’

‘Mother said to stay away from divorcees, spinsters and lepers. You can catch it from them.’

‘We’re not divorced.’

‘Then you’re prostitutes. You’re in heels.’

‘Prostitutes don’t wear heels. They’re bare-footed and wear a red blouse too tight to contain their small breasts, and sport lipstick stains on their teeth’

The edges of stone are starting to lap and suck around my ankles like quicksand. I extract my feet with a slopsound and walk away to the small brick wall. I hear singing from the naked women in the well.

I sit on the wall, resting my elbows on my knees. The folds of my sari collect in a pool of crumpled cloth between my legs. Wails emanate from the spinning house.

‘Why don’t you marry’ the wail forms words and carry to where I am seated.

‘What if I fail?’

‘That won’t happen.’

‘Then I’ll be divorced. No one likes a divorcee. They throw stones at her in the street and lorry drivers try to force themselves on her when she sleeps at night. I’ll lose all my friends’

‘Then don’t get divorced.’

‘Then I’ll be unhappy, and he’ll force himself on me every night like a sweating grunting pig attacking a dead fish.’

‘You’ll have a family and you’ll be happy.’

‘I’ll have a family and I’ll be trapped. If I leave then, daughters will blame me, my sons will grow cold and stop talking to me, my in-laws will burn my ears with their red-coal words and my parents will wear my shame in their house like a soiled sanitary napkin on a marble floor.’

‘What other way is there?’

‘I’ll just wait.’

A girl in a blue synthetic pavadai jumps from the spinning house and squats down on the grass next to me. She is carrying a handwoven palmleaf rice-sifter containing white jasminey flowers that have just started to wilt. She fishes a needle and string out from somewhere inside her clothing and begins to string them together.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask her.

‘I am stringing a garland of Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.’

‘How will you know which is which?’

‘Look’, she says and picks out a wilting flower with a strong smell from the heap of white and throws it away. ‘That was a Sunday afternoon.’

‘And then what will you do?’

She gathers the Sunday mornings in her hands and tightly clasps her palms together. A small drop of glistening metal emerges from the folds of her hands and slides into a dirty glass jar she has placed nearby. She opens her palms and wipes the wet crumpled flowers on her petticoat.

‘Be careful to throw out the Sunday afternoons. And definitely no Mondays. They are poison.’

‘What will you do with it?’ I persist.

‘I wear it when I get older’ she says.

‘What for?’

She lifts her top and dabs a little between her small unformed breasts.

‘When they smell it, they will come.’

She hummed as she strung the afternoons and mornings together in a tidy white garland. I saw the string she used was cutting the soft skin on her fingers. She was bleeding pixie dust. She turns to me and smiles, her teeth stained with borrowed red lipstick. Her humming drowns out the singing from the well and the sound of wails from the spinning house.

Of lost souls swimming in a fishbowl

2008-09-23T03:24:00.007+05:30

Guppy was. Actually, I should say Guppy was happy, but Guppy was a fish, and fishes do not have a perception of happiness, or any sort of emotion for that matter, and therefore, Guppy simply was. Guppy was in a large pond filled with lots of other fishes and other forms of marine ecosystems. Guppy swam and swam in lots of pointless circles and ate when he ate and slept when he slept, although he slept with his eyes open since fishes don’t have eyelids and no one can tell if a fish is asleep unless you poke it with your index finger and it wakes up and swims off into lots and lots of pointless circles again. Guppy was definitely a he, and this we could be sure of because he didn’t think too much, unlike the other fishes who thought too much and started putting powdered-valium on their seaweed. Also, these other fishes laid eggs and sometimes thought their bums were too big.

Guppy was a fish of simple pleasures. He liked the sun. He liked the sea. He liked the other fishes. And most of all, he liked pointless circles, which he swam in swishing his tailfin this way and that. Life was good, and Guppy was.

One day, a large net lowered into the water and fished Guppy out. The net was attached to a large manhand and the large manhand was attached to a small plastic bag of water into which Guppy went. He swam and swam in smaller pointlesser circles till he was transferred again by the large manhand holding the large net into a slightly larger rectangular apparatus. Since Guppy was a fish, he had no concept of space or dimensions and continued to swim in pointless circles inside the rectangular tank with many different coloured fishes, fishes he’d never seen before, and lots of funny looking plants and a small scary thing near the floor that kept blowing bubbles and didn’t seem to want to be his friend, although Guppy tried.

Guppy no longer found strange and interesting coloured plants to eat. He found strange and interesting little tiny balls bobbing on the surface of the water, and he ate them, because fishes don’t have mothers who pinch their ears for putting everything they find into their mouths. The tiny balls made him happy and so Guppy was. He forgot about the plants, and he forgot about the net and he forgot about everything except the little balls that floated down every day. Guppy swam in lots and lots of pointless circles bumping into other fishes on the way. He tried to make friends but sometimes the others fishes would be here and sometimes they would not and there would be new fishes and this would all be very confusing for Guppy if he could think about it, but he couldn’t and so Guppy kept swimming in his pointless circles bumping into all the other fishes. He bumped into them because this tank was a little crowded and his old place was not so crowded, but Guppy had no perception of time or self-awareness to understand and compare his former state of being with his present condition. Therefore, Guppy simply was.

One day a large manhand attached to a small net lowered itself into the tank and fished out a fish and Guppy found himself in a small glass bowl, only he did not know it was a glass bowl because he was inside it and moreover because he was a fish of (comparatively) limited intelligence. Soon all the shaking and moving around stopped, and Guppy was once more swimming in lots and lots of smaller pointless circles. This new place had no plants. And it had no other fishes. And it didn’t even have the scary thing with the bubble in the bottom. Guppy swam and swam in circles till he saw the familiar little balls bobbing on the surface. He swam up and ate the little balls and soon he was full and he was feeling.

Day turned into night and night turned into day and sometimes when the mandhands drew the curtains there would be evening or dawn or some other hour of the day that was marked, sliced and measured in the continuum of experience of higher beings. But Guppy simply swam and swam, in small circles almost chasing his tail because the bowl was so small, only he didn’t know it was so small, he only knew that he was, and that sometimes there would be the little balls and then he would eat and then he would be. But time went on, and with the passage of time, Guppy began to act strange. He would do what other fishes wouldn’t do. He would stare at the surface of the water for hours. He would bump his nose against the glass of the bowl and do it again and again in a circle till he got back to where he started from. He had nothing to do, except swim in lots and lots of pointless circles.

One day he stopped swimming in circles and went to investigate the bottom of the bowl. Only, Guppy was a fish and therefore did not know he was in a bowl or conducting an investigation. He poked his nose around the bottom, and lay there for a long while, till the tiny balls appeared again at the surface of the water. Sometimes he leapt to where he knew the tiny balls would come from. He wondered what was outside. He wondered about the balls and how they made him feel. He wondered if being ontheotherside would make him feel like he felt after he ate the tiny balls. For the first time, Guppy wondered, although fishes don’t wonder or think or pontificate, but this only went to show Guppy was a special kind of fish.

Guppy lay at the bottom of the bowl more and more and thought about the tiny balls and the manhand and the large net. He thought about the bowl and the water and the surface. He thought about the bottom and the top and the sides. He thought about the inside and the outside. He wondered if he was and he wondered what it was like to be not. Guppy lay in the bottom of the bowl for hours thinking and thinking. The manhands would poke him to make him move but Guppy was. The tiny balls would float on the surface and crowd the little opening to the jar, but Guppy was.

Finally, one day, a large manhand reached into the bowl and fished out the fish and threw it outside to make way for a new fish that came in a plastic bag attached to a manhand.

Guppy lay on the grass, but he did not know it was grass. He saw the sun shine above, but he did not know it was shining. All he thought of was the tiny balls, millions and millions of strange and interesting tiny balls and the bright shining light moving towards him, and he knew that beyond the light he would find the tiny balls waiting for him… if he could just get ontheotherside.

Random musings, epiphanies and odds and ends.

2008-09-08T23:21:00.003+05:30

My blog needs to be updated more often.

Chaos is beautiful.

My shampoo contains beer. It’s a good conditioner.

Sunlight makes me happy. So does rain.

Most of my friends are married. They hang out with other married couples, or stay at home with their spouses.

If you spent your twenties married to someone that you couldn’t make it work with in the end, have you thrown the best years of your life away? Or is that just something single 30-somethings say to console themselves for the lack of regular sex in their lives?
I designed my own calling card. Its pink. With a rainbow-checkered cow in gold heels on the back.

The silk moth is born without a mouth. After emerging from the pupae, it flaps its useless wings about – years of domestication and inbreeding have rendered the worm unable to fly – till it finds a mate, copulates, lays eggs, and then dies in a day. Are we actually giving their lives meaning by killing them and rendering them useful?

If I could be reborn whenever and wherever as anyone else other than myself, I’d go back to the 70s and Woodstock and become a groupie for Led Zep.

Beer rocks. Champagne tastes like shit.

After two years of living in the US, my nice well-mannered friend has turned into an obnoxious American who talks loudly and incessantly about things no one really gives a fuck about.

I like India. It grows on you.

I feel a pang of nostalgia when I see school or college kids these days.

Some days I feel the ground slipping away from my feet, and I remember I’m too old for sex, drugs and rock n roll.

Thank god for oasis. That’s the one band from my generation I will pass on to my kids.

I will always pair my kurtis with keds.

I wear jeans to work everyday.

Starfish are capable of regenerating any part of their body.

If religion is the opium of the masses, is insanity the drug of choice for those privileged few?

If I killed because I was cornered, would I feel guilty?

I hate twilight.

Are fat people happy? Really?

Thank god for Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

I will name my daughter Zopa. No surname.

If you’re feeling blue, find a psychiatrist and pay her to listen to you whine.

Sex and the city’s a half-decent show. Vacuous, self-obsessed and peripherally intellectual, it makes for good tv nonetheless.

Am I the only person in the world to still use the word nonetheless?

I also use albeit.

If by some quirk in the universe tomorrow we woke up and everyone was clairvoyant, what would happen to the world in 24 hours?

Would you rather be dumb and happy than the opposite?

I get high on the Beatles.

Kids are great. Parents are scary.

If I have kids would I turn into a different person?

A good pair of stilettos turn you into a bitch. Really.

I never tire of falling in love.

One day I will have a toned taut body and then I will take nude black and white shots to look at when I’m old and flatulent.
I have an over-developed superego.

Money makes you happy.

Good food makes you happier.

I just had ox tongue. And I liked it.

I still haven't finished season 2 of scrubs.

In an industrial family, your family politics are your office politics. Do your friends then become your family?

How many lovers is too many?

I wish I was taller.

Can you feel yourself descend into madness?

One day I will read the entire discworld series.

I listen to Floyd in darkness.

How many special people change?

How many lives are living strange?

Where were you while we were getting high?

Kamala

2008-08-03T16:30:00.005+05:30

Kamala was wiping the edge of the wooden shelf with her white cloth. She loved the serenity of housework. There was something soothing about wiping away dirt, in long graceful movements, from the surfaces and edges of all these things that she possessed. She stepped back and looked at the shelf, the sunlight softly dancing on the glass panes. She was pleased.

All the rooms were swept, the beds made, the clothes washed and folded. She hummed to herself as she wiped the glass doors of the cabinet. After this she was going to curl up on the sofa and finish her book. She felt happy thinking of it, curled up on her comfy sofa, feet tucked in beneath her, in the sunlit warmth of her cozy orange apartment. She caught her own reflection in the glass, intently absorbed in cleaning the glass. She smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

Kamala had been married a little over a year now. It was a surprise to everyone. Her parents had all but given up hope on her. Kamala’s mother had tried to coax her daughter down the matrimonial path many times with no success. She ultimately resigned herself to the belief that her self-sufficient daughter will be too busy finding happiness within herself and her immediate environment to ever seek the deep contentment of a blissful union. Whenever she was depressed, Kamala’s mother would take her jute bag of coconuts and flowers and head to the small temple nearby. There, underneath the clanging of the bells, surrounded by the dreams, and hopes, and wishes of the city-dwellers, she would tightly shut her eyes, clasp her hands and quietly entreat Lord Ganesha: please... please make my daughter happy.

Kamala’s mother was a small-town woman. She’d moved to the city when she married Kamala’s father and had lived there ever since. She was happy, and enjoyed the sort of wholesome contentment that only a happy small-town upbringing could support. She had seen her parents, happy and in love, and she had seen herself with her husband, happy and in love. When Kamala was five, she saw her mother smile at her father as she brought him his morning coffee. He took the steel tumbler from her hand, the tip of his finger lightly grazing hers, and over the strong sharp smell of Madras filter coffee, Kamala watched her father’s gaze linger for a second longer and she knew that her mother found reassurance and bliss in her father’s stolen glances.

It was not difficult to understand why Kamala should grow up feeling trapped and claustrophobic in her sheltered cocoon of a childhood. Happy as her parents were, Kamala knew from a very young age that it was a kind of happiness she will never know. Her face pressed tightly against the grill bars of her window – a pastime she found immensely pleasurable – she looked at the blur of colors as the cars whizzed past her window, and wondered how it would feel to fly.

Kamala’s parents were simple creatures. They feared the gods, washed their hands before eating, worked hard, complained little and were grateful for the small happiness and peace they had found within their little unit. Kamala was a product of that love and gratitude, and when she was born, pink and wrinkled with tiny arms and legs open and searching for the world around her, her mother looked at the tiny bundle of life in her hands and knew instantly what to name her.

Kamala grew up like any product of a bustling city, and Madras – glorified village that is was – was still a city in terms of size and industry. She was denied the simple, free joys her mother enjoyed: growing up amidst neighborhood cricket matches, Saturday morning cycling races, and lazy summer afternoons dozing off on the branches of her neighbor’s mango tree. But Kamala found happiness at the edges of freedom in a cloistered city. A sense of liberation and heady pleasure in asking for – and getting – cut raw mango pieces dipped in red chilli powder. She knew her parents wouldn’t approve; they’d told her time and again how unhygienic street food was. But Kamala loved nothing more than to spend an entire day by herself at the beach, watching the waves lap at her feet as she felt the delicate sharp taste of chilli and mango as it hit her tongue.

This wasn’t to say that she was a loner. Kamala was a bright active child, social and gregarious and she easily made friends. But her moments of the purest and most intense joy came when she was alone, away from family and friends, and surrounded by the noise and bustle of the city and its throng of strangers. This is why she loved the beach, and the roads, and the tall buildings; Kamala had always seen herself as of the city, rather than in it.

When she was seventeen Kamala discovered her own desirability. She was an attractive woman, tall and bronzed, with sharp features framing her quick intelligent eyes. She had been told many times that she resembled a cat, with a calculated languidness as if she would spring at any moment and dart out of the room in a flash. Even her movements were fluid and graceful, with always the suggestion of hidden agility. There were no dearth of men, and Kamala entertained them all and their small demands, with the effortless grace of a good hostess. It wasn’t much, a shy clasped hand here, a fumbled kiss there.

As she grew older, she had lovers. And as fumbled kisses turned into furtive gropes which turned into something else, Kamala watched the drama of her life played out to her, like a benevolent lord ruling over his kingdom from his golden throne. She never held them too close, so as to inspire hurt, or had too many, so as to invite talk. And she always stayed in touch and shared a real friendship that lasted across and beyond the conventional confines of the endpoints of a relationship. She flitted from one to the other as gracefully as a cat leaping from wall to ledge to windowsill, always poised, always calm, and good-humoredly. She was never cold or detached while with them, and never bitter when she moved on. She took it as the natural course of things, as casually as one takes day following the night.

It was a testament to her skill that she was always introduced to the wives of her ex’s as their best friend and closest confidant. It was a testament to her intelligence that she knew enough to smile and make conversation with the women while their husbands were away, rummaging through their den for something or the other to show her. Kamala knew these women needed their private moments of sizing her up to keep their inner peace. She always bore a tired expression of polite interest to greet her ex’s when they finally emerged from the den with their wildly interesting object. As lovers became ex’s and ex’s became good friends, Kamala drifted through relationships, unscathed and unscarred.

Brilliant in academics and in career, success sat on her like a light cardigan. She wore it with ease, and the casual grace with which she held everything in life. She never wished too hard or hungered after the things she desired. To her amused mind, it seemed she desired a thing and it would fall in her lap of its accord. She gripped so lightly, and pursued a thing so casually – if diligently – that the effort was never visible to her or others around her. It was in this manner that she lived her entire adult life.

The day she met Raj was a normal day. It was an uneventful day; a cog in the wheel of a city’s busy machinery. He was a friend of an ex, and they were all sitting around having dinner, fighting over the chicken pieces in the gravy and reliving embarrassing tales from their college days. Raj was funny and smart, a good friend of a friend who had just moved to the city. She learnt he was a successful consultant at a successful firm. He was easy on the eye as well, and Kamala could tell from his soft voice and good humor, his neat combed hair, his well-groomed nails and his impeccable table manners that he was a product of a happy and respectable household. Raj was in fact that perfect boy to bring home to her parents.

She realized this fact as strongly and suddenly as she realized the absolute unsuitability of all her ex-lovers. The tortured geniuses, the misunderstood outcasts, the troubled writers, the arrogant yuppie, the talented, volatile artists… the realization struck her like an anvil fallen out of the sky and she stared dumb-founded wondering how she could have failed to have noticed it till now. She caught herself, a stupefied expression blunting her fine features for a moment, and quickly composed herself with a sharp intake of breath that only Raj noticed out of the periphery of his perception.

That night her mother, weary but persistent, asked her the question it is every mother’s duty to ask: Kamala, it is time you got married… do you want us to look out for you? And in the shock of her daughter’s reply, her knees gave way and she nearly dropped to the floor as she heard Kamala’s voice from the bathroom: No ma, I think I found someone.

The marriage was quick, the families were pleased. In India a marriage is a coming together of families more than it is the coming together of individuals, and in this mingling of communities and peoples, this blending of families, each with its own strange customs and quirks, Kamala and Raj found laughter and happiness in the drama of their marriage played out to them. Kamala’s mother found a small shady clearing in the garden outside the marriage hall, and under the mango tree of her childhood, she tightly shut her eyes, clasped her hands, and whispered softly to Lord Ganesha: Thank you, for making my daughter happy.

It was soon after Kamala and Raj moved into a place of their own that she gave up working and flitted into the role of a housewife as effortlessly as a cat jumping from wall to windowsill. This soft warm morning, Kamala was wiping the glass pane of the wooden cabinet, humming to herself, thinking of the delicious pleasure that awaited her on the sofa; her blanket and her book. As she opened the glass door to wipe on the inside, her glance fell upon a small white cup, hidden behind the expensive chinaware.

Rajeev, she thought as she reached inside the cabinet and took out the lone porcelain cup. Rajeev was a painter, an artist and a writer. One of those madly talented geniuses whose minds worked beyond all constraints of discipline and convention. She had met him at a concert, a friend of a friend, they went out for dinner together and he dissected her spinach, sprinkled pepper on it and turned it into a work of art. She had to go home hungry because he wouldn’t let her eat it. The next day she turned up at his apartment with a loaf of bread and nothing else. They made love and feasted on desire alone for three days. The loaf of bread he turned into an objet d’art that was pecked and destroyed by the crows. Kamala turned the cup over in her hands as she remembered Rajeev. It was white on the outside and a bright red inside. How Rajeev loved painting.

The single most joyous thing for him was to take an empty canvas and convert it into a riot of bright colors. He once told her as she lay on his chest, her breathing in time with the rise and fall of his chest, that the only true expressions of ourselves are our colors. And Kamala, he said, was an orange, just as true as he was a red. She turned the cup over in her hands. She realized with dismay that she had not kept in touch with Rajeev. He vanished with his delicate beautiful things, leaving behind his love for color, this chipped white porcelain cup and the crows.

She sat down and looked around, noticing the orange walls, the sun gliding in through the sheer curtains and enveloping the room in a fiery glow. Something seemed to unsettle her and she tried to think. Did she really grip them all as lightly as she thought she did? She noticed small things in her apartment that she hadn’t before. The books stacked in the corner of the room, a makeshift table that held on it a photo of her and Raj holidaying in Goa. The books were a touch she picked up from Akil.

She met Akil at a conference years earlier; him the arrogant know-it-all yuppie, she the bored bohemian. He had never had a beautiful woman pull the rug out from under his feet. And do so in such a subtle and charmingly disarming way. They had a one-night-stand that lasted for thirty nights before she jumped from wall to windowsill again. Books, Akil said, could furnish a room; and he did. She had made love to him many times in the middle of his room, on his low cot bed surrounded by walls and walls of books; a fortress he created for him and her in his imaginary world many years ago.

Kamala went into the bedroom and looked at the photographs. A collage of pictures of her and Raj, happy together, laughing and smiling, arm-in-arm, sometimes with family, sometimes just them… it made a mosaic on one wall of their bedroom, asymmetric and overlapping. She had told Raj there was beauty in its asymmetry. She remembered Murali, the photographer, with his curtain of photographs. They had spent the better half of a hot summer weekend in bed feasting on mangoes. He had shot 117 pictures of her in the nude, clasping a mango in her hand there, bringing the fruit to her lips here, sinking her white teeth into its soft flesh, the juices running down the sides of her mouth. By the time the sun rose on Monday, he had taken those pictures of her and sewn them together in long vertical blinds that caressed the light as it filtered through. Kamala wondered if the mosaic was not her own original idea.

She looked around her home and discovered the little touches she gave it; and the horrifying truth of the stories behind them. She went into the kitchen to make herself a glass of water. As she reached for the glass, her hand faltered, paused for a moment, suspended above the steel tumbler and container she served Raj his morning coffee in. It was here, all of them, all of it, all around her invading the home she created for herself and her new husband. She was grieving for leaving them all.

And what of Raj, she thought. What of him? She tried so very hard to think but she couldn’t recollect a moment they shared. A year, a whole year, and every moment of it filled with memories… and yet she strained – unsuccessfully – to come up with a moment they shared together, just him and her, all of their own.

Kamala sat down on the sofa, gripping the cup tightly between her fingers, her heart racing and her mind a screen of static and noise. Why was this minor detail shaking her to the very bone? Surely the marriage of Kamala and Raj was based on a mature love, a grown-up love, a love of understanding and compassion. Raj was never her lover. He lacked the mad impulsive urges of one; the intense bouts of passion and madness bordering on obsession. He came into her life as a friend and a companion, offering her a life of stability and steady contentment with none of the intensity of emotion or volatile spikes of mood that mark torrid affairs. She knew this the moment she first looked into his quiet enquiring eyes. She said yes, and he took her hands in his. She saw her future then, a life of contentment and peace after a decade of running away from demons she could not articulate or understand. He took her hands and clasped them in his. She noticed in his hold the promise of loyalty and undying faithfulness; he noticed in hers the slipping-away of resistance. She said yes, louder this time, and returned the gentle squeeze of his hand.

Kamala remained on the sofa, unmoving, playing absentmindedly with the handle of the cup in her hands. She thought of Raj and their lives as husband and wife. She thought about the dinners, and the dancing and the holidays. She remembered the times they shared with family, his and hers. She thought of the times they walked, hand-in-hand, late at night through empty lanes. Surely they were memories worth keeping, memories of Raj that must have manifested themselves somehow in this space they created. Raj, with his functional gifts on birthdays and anniversaries – a washing machine for the home, a microwave for the kitchen. Raj, with his striped shirts and white socks. Raj, with his side-parting, who always parted it that way, who smiled good-humoredly and combed it whenever she ruffled his hair. Dependable, reliable Raj… never swerving, never faltering even for a second, solid as a rock, and as trustworthy as the blue sky. Kamala realized, shocked and numb, that she had not a thing to remember him by in this home that they created together.

Kamala sat still on the sofa. She became aware of the object she clasped tightly in her hands. In the warm afternoon sun she looked like a giant cat poised on her sofa, her fine features picking up the orange glow of the room. Kamala looked at the cup, moving her head slowly and gracefully to gaze at it. Please… she thought to herself as she gazed intently into the red insides of the cup… Please… let me be happy.

And this birthday's resolution is to grow a year older.

2008-05-12T16:53:00.004+05:30

It’s a 6 hour flight from Sydney to Singapore. And on it, there’s 87 movies, 106 TV programs, 180 CDs, 12 radio channels and 60 interactive games. The amount I been traveling these past 6 months, I know the in-flight entertainment programs of most major airlines like the back of my L’Occitane moisturized hand. Back home of course, I don’t know how many TV channels we subscribe to – but that’s a different story.

There’s a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer called ‘I could never be your woman’. In it, this beautiful older woman (Michelle Pfeiffer, duh) falls for a funny, insanely talented, much younger man (Paul Rudd). The rest of the movie is shit and one long whinorant – which btw is a cool word and something I just made up so I’m gonna hang on it on account of its coolness. But it’s not the flat storyline, or tired plot or slow pace that turned me off. There’s just too much old in it.

I used to worship Michelle Pfeiffer. She was the paragon of beauty. I watched Ladyhawke when I was growing up as a pudgy preteen with bad eyesight…

- Look at me now, beeyatch!

(Ahem. Ok yes I'm done.)

Truth was, I marveled at her ethereal beauty. I thought she was more perfect than a sugarcube. But watching this movie and the jowls of loose flesh hanging off that once taut jaw-line… I'm sorry, I couldn’t pay attention to the dialogues cuz every time she appeared on screen my brain would scream: HAG!

What is it about getting old that we dread so much?

My friend is 26 and she’s got a jar of anti-wrinkle cream that she religiously applies every night before turning in. She also wears elbow cream, foot cream, a face pack, hair curlers, under-eye gel, anti-cellulite cream, shea body butter and an exfoliating mask every Thursday night, before she goes to bed. Here’s news for you, the anti-aging and beauty industry is $72 billion with a growth rate of 9.5%. That’s a shitload of money made from assaulting unsuspecting otherwise healthy women with images of Andie McDowell applying L’Oreal Anti-Wrinkle cream. Yup, there’s big bucks to be made from making regular middle-classed women feel insecure about their looks.

Most of the moolah, of course, eventually finds its way into the pockets of the board of directors – average age 60 – of a huge multinational cosmetic giant, money, which will eventually trickle down, after his alimony payments to his three ex-wives each born a decade after the other, to his latest 20something pneumatic beauty, who will ultimately blow it on botox injections to her left nostril. Hurrah for modern economics and breakthroughs in cosmetic surgery. Can’t pay for the loan you took on the house you can’t afford? Screw it! Lets all go inject poison into our skin that’ll paralyze our face muscles. That way, you cant tell if I'm lying when I say, I feel your pain, you poor Lebanese baker sonofabitch who’s out of a livelihood thanks to the growing wheat prices set off by the US Subprime mortgage meltdown. Eat my shorts, Adam Smith.

My other friend is 28 and she’s a dancer. She’s also the hottest chick I’ve ever met. Ever. She’s got a body that’s built to drive men – and some women – insane. Add to that, insane amounts of brilliant mad talent, childlike charm, a genuinely great personality and the face of a Disney angel, she looks like she was spit out by Pixar’s PerfectAngelFaceMakingMachine ®. She eats well, sleeps well, keeps fit, dances for joy, lives for love, is with a younger man and that’s pretty much all I think she needs to fall out of bed looking like a bombshell. Next to her I look like the pigeonlady in Home Alone. With a couple of grey hairs.

But really. Why do we all fear getting old? And why do I always feel this way just before my birthday? Somehow at 23, I get the sinking feeling that it’s all gonna go downhill from here. What’s even more tragic is that I'm depressed at the prospect of being depressed in the future. Is this some sort of annual PMS thing that women go through? If there’s a God up there I’d like to tell him… Dude. I know the bitch ate your apple but give us a fucking break man.

But I digress. Back to the movie. The annoying thing is not so much the fact that Michelle Pfeiffer is old, but that she insists on rubbing it in your face. Ok lady I get it, you’re a few years closer to dying, your ovaries are prunes, you have so much loose skin they could make an entire range of Louis Vuitton luggage out of your hide, we get the point, enough already, Jesus!

Sigh.

One day I will be old. I know that. By 25 I'm probably gonna run out and buy my first anti-wrinkle cream, or turnaround cream, or freshness cream, or jar of formaldehyde or whatever euphemism they have for these skin-searing acids. I miss the good old days when I laughed as I watch Jerry dip himself into a tub of vanishing cream and walk invisible into the kitchen and scare the living daylights out of Tom. Oh to be as timeless as a cartoon.

- Lisa Simpson! Is that a beard? It’s probably the menopause hitting you, dear, those hormones can be a bitch.

But yes, the thing with getting old is we’re all gonna get there anyway. Heck, you’re getting there right now. Right. This. Second.

Wait.

Listen.

You can hear the sand-grains of your dying youth slipping away into the abyss of decaying decrepitude and eventual death. Pop goes the braincell. Cant change that. What you can do however is decide if you wanna hit old age kicking and screaming, or wear it with grace. Like Cher. With cans of industrial strength hairspray.

I'm prepared. I have a plan. And it is genius. My plan is... *drumroll*... I intend to get fat.

Ok, hear me out here before you write me off as a neurotic insanobitch! (Um. Ok, hear me out here despite you already writing me off as a neurotic insanobitch.) Think of all the gorgeous, delicious, beautiful woman you remember or see everyday. Marilyn Monroe. Scarlet Johansson. Sophie Dahl. Even the older ones, the ones that got old, and still stuck around in the public HighDefinitionTV eye. Nicole Kidman. Julia Roberts. Catherine Zeta.

Here’s what I noticed. Thin young chicks look hot. They’re hotter than hot. They’re sex on toast. Thin old women, look like dried out vultures that the earth spat out cuz the grave couldn’t stomach so much botox and skin. When you’re 45, your beauty’s come to a screeching halt anyway. Might as well fill out the wrinkles with all those hateful fatty-cell demons you’ve been staving off with that chainmail armour. Remember all those calorie-counting years in your 20s where you put your advanced knowledge of arithmetic and Laplace transformations to good use? Yup, don’t need it anymore. That last spoon of death by chocolate? Go ahead. Heck, buy yourself a whole new cake. And a bakery.

If there’s light at the end of the tunnel, it’s this. At last, you finally get to stop sucking in your stomach everytime you pass a man, and start turning into that sweet old lady in the oversized floral pants who's always fishing out chocolates from her purse to give the kiddies. Starve all you want for the whole of two decades between 20 and 40 cuz face it, you’re never gonna look as great as you look now. That whole deal about woman aging like fine wine? Yeah, I don’t buy it either. Women age like fine wine the way fine wine gets menopausal and neurotic and flatulent and wears orthopedic shoes and granny pants.

A friend of mine put it all into perspective one day during one of my dark moods. Do you know a woman looks the best between the age of 21 and 27, he shrieked. I nodded. Do you also know what an absolute dearth of hot Indian chicks we have, he screeched. I nodded. Then fuck woman, he screamed, if you’re thinking of killing yourself you sure as hell better be ugly.

Amen.

But really, you’re gonna hit an age anyway and start looking like shit. Might as well make the most of now. And when you do realize the inescapable truth the morning you wake up and you get to the bathroom before your tits do, dragging on the floor, you can think to yourself… well, those were some good years and some great pushup bras. And then reach for the chocolate cake.

What’s the point at 40 of looking like an anorexic twig whose sole comfort is that she still fits into the same jeans she bought back when Madonna was a virgin. Inside every thin woman is a fat woman waiting to get out. Be that woman. Eat that cake. If you’re gonna get old, you might as well look like you’re happy you got there. Like a giant benevolent Mrs SantaClaus, all smiling and red-cheeked, with her fat-pig arms permanently hidden in a cooking pot, cooking up a storm for all those hungry little bastards at the north pole. Ho ho ho, mofos.

As Rocky Horror would say… Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

Tears in the Rain

2008-04-30T02:26:00.004+05:30

“I can’t see you anymore Shiva” she said. “We’ve got to cut our losses and move on.”

She got into the car and left. She didn’t look back.

“So,” her friends asked, “are you ok?”

She was silent. And then a slow grin spread over her face. “Come on man. Let’s go get some ice cream.”

Outside, the trees sped by in slow-motion, awash with the orange glow of a sleeping city. She wondered if it was true what they said. Was she really devoid of emotion? She tried to feel. Nothing. Except numbness, like a cloud over any shred of emotion buried deep inside. She remembered the words an ex-lover had once spoken.

‘You, darling, are cold. And you don’t need me, like you don’t need anyone. You always have, and always will, take care of your own self.”

What store she had set by self-reliance. And now she wondered, as she sat silent in the backseat.... was it worth it?

She was always the protected one, the sheltered one. She spent her childhood passed on from kid-gloved hand to hand in the great symphony of life, afloat on the kindness of strangers. Scared, and shy, she remembered a time when she laid open her trusting heart to anyone who would have it. There was after all, no reason not to.

But pain has a way of hardening – or withering – even the most delicate petals. And as she slowly comprehended the human spirit’s resilience to bounce back – and bounced back, faster than she could ever imagine herself capable – she wondered now, if in the process she hadn’t lost a more human part of herself.

She thought of the dances. The kisses. The long talks into the early hours of dawn. The comfort and the freedom she hadn’t felt in years. The smell of him, when she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder. She thought of them all, as coldly as one flipping through the pages of a photo album in a stranger’s living room. She tried to cry. And failed.

She had spoken to Shiva once about numbness. Was it an emotion, she asked, or merely a state of shock. An emotion, he replied, as valid and as true as tastelessness is the taste of water. Sitting in the car, dry-eyed and meticulously adjusting her hair she wondered: am I emotional now? Or numb? Or is this what it means to be cold?

Flecks of water started to fall on the car. She watched as it barrelled into drops, and drops into sleets, till it rained down like the floodgates of heaven had opened to make up for the drought in her. When was the last time she cried? She couldn’t remember.

“Stop the car”, she said.

“What?”

“Stop the car.”

She spoke with the clipped tone of someone not to be argued with. The voice she saved for the ones she called her minions. The car rolled to a halt by the side of the road. The water spilled into the gutters in rivers of dark liquid. She got out of the car, paying no heed to her friends' protests. She stood by the side of the road, as solid as a rock bearing the onslaught of rain.

At last she thought, her face raised to the sky. At long last...

And she began to cry with the borrowed tears of the night.

broken

2008-04-23T12:01:00.005+05:30

my broken shard of glass
how i miss the colors
you splayed upon the cold marble floor
as you broke
the light
into a thousand million pieces
of you.
how i miss your dark pools of self-loathing,
you tiny cuts upon the retina of sanity,
your toxic tar-pits of mangled ambitions
and half-congealed dream.
my broken shard of glass
how i miss your cold beautiful hatred.
i miss the comfort of washing my sins in your warm blood
the night you broke me
like you broke yourself
with laughter bouncing off the smooth insides of my hollowed cranium.
the night we gnawed the fingernails of emotion down to its bleeding stubs
the night we lay, you and i, a mangled mess of bones and hair,
of groin and heart,
blood and semen
how you ate off me, like i fed off you, and we both feasted on
brilliant hate
like rainbow-colored gummy bears.
my broken shard of glass
how i miss
your beautiful madness
your venom
your sharp claws down the back of my soft exposed flesh
you.
my love.
how we wallow now in cold grey silence
and bleak indifference.

The future's bright

2008-03-11T00:35:00.005+05:30

‘So, what do you think about going steady?’

She was standing on the doorway, a toothbrush idling in her mouth. I looked up from my book. She grinned at me and went back into the bathroom. She left the bathroom door open and leant over the basin and spat into it. She was in her white cotton knickers and striped-socks; she always wore socks to bed.

‘Don’t freak out or anything’ she said as she splashed water on her face, ‘I was just thinking about it’. She wiped her face on the towel and came in and sat on the bed, facing me. I closed my book and waited for her to finish. She put her head on my knees, and looked up at me and smiled.

‘I mean, we’re kind of seeing each other anyway. It’s like this,” she ventured as she drew circles on my thigh with her finger, ‘you’re gonna be here for another year anyway, and then it’s anyone’s guess. Me, I like my job. I’ll be shuttling between Madras and here till, well, something always happens, and then who knows. I might settle there, or here, or... I might up and away to the States to some fancy B school.’

I smiled.

‘I might, you know!’ she grinned and grabbed the book from my hands and mock-whacked me with it. ‘So while we’re here,’ she continued, ‘this, you, me, us... well, it’s pretty perfect.’

I nodded.

‘I mean, we’re comfortable. The pieces fit... I drive down, we spend weekends together, I’m back Monday. You have your space, I have mine. It’s cool, you know.’

I waited for her to continue.

‘So I was thinking,’ she went on, ‘why not. We’re not really changing anything. Let’s give it a shot. Let’s date.’

She’d stopped drawing circles on my thigh and looked up at me.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s pretty perfect, the way it is.’

‘I mean, I’m not saying, let’s get serious, let’s get committed,’ she continued. ‘It’s just, we’re already sort of there you know. And it’s a nice, easy zone, this.’

‘Of course,’ she added quickly, ‘anything could happen and we both know it. Things could change, I could get busy, you could find someone else... Or,’ she paused hesitantly. ‘Or... we could take things up a notch. With us.’

I smiled at her. A lock of hair had fallen across her cheek and she was blowing it from the side of her mouth. I brushed it off her face and tucked it behind her ear.

‘Always a possibility,’ she laughed. ‘Who knows, huh? The future’s open. The future’s bright! The future’s orange!’

She jumped to her knees and mimicked the voice in the Orange Mobile ad and started laughing. I grinned as I grabbed her by her orange-stripped socks and pulled her legs on either side of me.

‘Just... think about it, you know,’ she said as she put her hands around my neck.

‘Mmhmm.’

I leant in, and we kissed.

...

That was seven years ago. I didn’t go through with it in the end. I was scared. Besides, I was nineteen, and still in college back then. She was twenty-four.

We made love that night. She never brought it up again. We lived that way for a year; living together on weekends, working on weekdays. Every Friday she’d land up at my door with her bag, and by Monday she’d be gone before I woke up. It was good. A comfortable arrangement like she said. That is, till she up and away-ed to some fancy Business School. I wasn’t really surprised.

I remember the first time I met Padma. I’d just moved to Bangalore, and found a place of my own. I was seventeen and just into college. I ventured out that Friday night to celebrate my new-found freedom. I walked into a nearby pub to grab something to eat, and she was there. Sitting at a table by herself, furiously scribbling on a sheaf of papers, she was absentmindedly stabbing her fork into her garden salad.

“Is this seat taken?” I asked.

She looked up at me blankly and stared.

“I mean, there aren’t any free tables… I just thought if no one’s joining you…”

“Oh! Shit. Yeah. Sorry,” she laughed and slapped herself on the forehead. “Yeah sure, grab a seat. I was just so completely immersed in this, for a moment there I had no clue what you were saying.”

I smiled at her and sat down. I placed my knapsack by the chair.

“So, do you live here?” I asked.

“Only the weekends” she said and winked. “I’m from Madras. Drive down to Bangalore every weekend though. Just to, well, recharge my batteries you know.”

She had put her sheaf of papers away and had signalled the waiter for the menu. I noticed she wore a ring on her left finger.

“Besides, Bangalore’s so much nicer isn’t it? Much more open and inviting. It’s great, and social. I love it here!”

She turned and caught my eye. “Oh that,” she’d grinned as she fidgeted with her ring. “My mum gave me that. I wear it to chase away eager boys on a Friday night.” She laughed as she leant forward and rested her chin on her hand.

“So what about you? Any of those fingers spoken for already?”

…

And that’s how she came into my life. It wasn’t long before Padma moved in with me. She’d come over every weekend and we’d hang out. She’d bring her work over; I’d do my college stuff. She loved to sprawl herself across my stomach while I studied. We spent hours in our room just lying in comfortable silence, like a giant plus-sign on the bed.

She never asked me what I did during the week. And I never told her. There were other women that I dated; some girls from college, and others as well. But the weekends were always for Padma. I’m not sure if she saw other people while we were together. It didn’t seem to matter, so I never asked. We spent a lot of time doing things together, watching movies, catching plays, spending the evenings at the bar nearby… like a regular couple. It was a good existence; nice and easy.

We never did bring up the topic of going steady after that first talk. I wasn’t really sure about it; and besides, I’d just met this girl at college. I told Padma about Shruti once I was sure and things were getting a little serious; it was a couple of months after the talk. She seemed to understand. Shruti was just more aligned. Padma and I still met up some weekends after that; it wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t long before she left to the states like I knew she would. Met someone there, I heard. And now she was sitting here, sipping coffee and looking out the window. She hadn’t noticed me walk in.

“Hello Padma.”

She looked up and saw me standing in front of her table.

“Amrit!” she shrieked and jumped up from her seat. She came around the table and hugged me tight. When she pulled back I saw that she was laughing; she hadn’t changed much.

“So,” she said as she straightened her kurti down the front and sat down, “what’s been happening in your life?”

“Five years is a lot to catch up” I grinned, “you go first. What’re you doing back here in Bangalore.”

She leant her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “Well”, she said, “You probably heard. I married Pradeep, and things were great. We really got along well.”

“I heard.”

“Yes,” she smiled, “it was pretty perfect. We were both working and settled and... Marriage just seemed like the most natural thing.”

I nodded.

“Ah well, that was then. Then things... well, things started to unravel. Like little things you know, stuff I hadn’t noticed before.”

“Like what?”

“Like how he’d chew with his mouth open. Or how he’d use the same spoon for everything, he’d dip it in the gravy and then shove it into the side dish and... God, it was infuriating!”

I was holding my sides and laughing. Padma grinned at me sheepishly.

“I know, I know! Picky huh. Man, I always was finicky. It was all the little things that added up, and it just created tiny fissures that stayed and never really went away. Somehow, we just couldn’t fix it. It wasn’t… comfortable you know.”

“Like nice and easy.”

“Like nice and easy,” she said softly.

I picked up a bread roll from the basket and started tearing off a piece of it.

“So anyway,” she went on, “we decided, very amicably, to part ways and, well, that’s that.”

“So you’ve come back to Bangalore. For good?” I asked as I chewed on the bread.

“Well, I dunno,” she said as she picked up the bread from my plate and tore a piece off for herself, “There is this...”

“You still do that huh?”

She looked up puzzled.

“Steal someone else’s bread.”

She cracked into a grin. “Yeah, it used to annoy the hell out of Pradeep. I’d keep stealing his fries.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “there’s one for the divorce hall of fame. Reason for separation: she kept stealing my fries.”

She smiled nervously and started thumbing her ring.

“Hey no, I didnt mean...”

“Hey chill!” She laughed and mock-whacked me with the menu. “So anyway, what are you up to?”

“Work’s great. Been working for quite a while now with the firm. Might be getting another promotion soon. Bought a house recently, close to the old place. In fact, right next to where we used to live.”

She smiled, absentmindedly fingering her ring.

“So how’s Shruti?”

“Ah. That didnt last. We broke up a while ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Nah, it’s ok. She found someone else. More...”

“...aligned?”

I grinned back at her. “Hey, these things happen huh?”

“Yup.”

I hadn’t noticed how much she changed; and how she still looked the same. She’d cut her hair shorter, so it fell in soft dark curls that licked her neck. She still dipped her head to one side as she laughed. There were tiny lines on either side of her mouth.

I remembered the day I spotted her jar of face cream. That was five years ago; she was twenty-six. She came over one Friday as usual and laid out her things on the bathroom counter. I walked in and picked up the new jar lying by the sink.

‘What’s this,’ I’d asked. She grinned and wrung it out of my hands. ‘I’m getting old’ she’d said, and tucked it away into her purse. She never brought it again.

I looked at her now. I wondered why I never brought up the topic of going steady.

“Listen, do you wanna come over?”

She looked up from the table and held my gaze. She stayed silent.

“For old time’s sake you know...”

She started nervously thumbing her ring again. It was the same one her mother gave her; she still wore it. Her other fingers were bare. I wondered if she ever wore a wedding band.

“You know, I’m not planning to stay in Bangalore long.” She started, “They... I’ve asked my parents to look out for me. I figured it’s for the best. It’s been a couple of years since the divorce, and it’s not like it used to be you know. People remarry all the time. I...”

I reached across the table and took her hands in mine. She stopped talking.

“Come... it’ll be fun.” I whispered.

She smiled and gently slipped her hands out from mine. “I can’t. It was, well, pretty perfect. But that was then, and things had to unfold the way they did.”

“Yes, they did. But you know, here we are meeting up after years and... You know what? It still feels the same. That nice, easy comfortable feeling.”

She smiled.

I leant forward, “Just… think about it”

“I...”

She was interrupted by a phone call. She gave me an apologetic look as she fished through her purse. I nodded to let her know it was ok. It was work. She listened very intently and spoke quickly into the phone. I asked for the cheque, and signed for it. She looked up when she was done with the call.

“Well, looks like I’d be headed back sooner than I expected. Hell, there’s loads of stuff I need to do before then and there’s an early kingfisher tomorrow, maybe I could catch that, first…”

“First flight out on Monday.” I chorused. She broke off and smiled at me.

“Well,” she said. “Looks like I better get going then. It was great meeting you.”

She got up. I walked over to her and let my arm rest on her waist. We walked out to her car.

“So, Amrit,” she said turning around to face me, “This is where we kiss and say goodbye.”

She leant in and kissed me on the cheek. I put my arm around her, and we hugged. I hadn’t forgotten the scent of her hair. We lingered for a while, and then she gently broke free and got into her car.

“By the way,” I said, taking out a small wrapped package from my bag, “I got you something.”

“Oh shit, I knew I should’ve got you something...”

“Open it.”

She pulled the wrapping free and opened the box. She stayed silent as she looked at it.

“You know,” she finally said, “Pradeep used to hate...”

“That you slept with your socks on?”

“Yeah!” she laughed, holding the socks up to the light “These are perfect! And they’re orange!”

I smiled at her and put my hands into my pockets. She put the socks away, and got into her car.

“Thanks,” she said, sticking her head out the window, and she pulled out of the driveway.

I wondered what it was that stopped me the first time. I was much younger then, and maybe it was the age. It seemed like an unbridgeable chasm to me at the time. We weren’t suitably aligned; or so that’s what I told her the week I met Shruti. She hadn’t said anything, except that she was happy for me.

Padma and I never really ‘dated’. Not the way she wanted to. Although I think I probably loved her. I don’t remember what it was in the end though. It was just the little things. Like how she curled up in bed at night, with her head on my shoulder. Or the way her hair smelt. Or the way she thumbed her ring every time she got nervous. Or how she always slept with her socks on.

I watched as she drove off, her hand out the window, waving, as she drove on ahead.

An objective review of my experience at an international film festival

2008-03-05T21:34:00.008+05:30

This morning a friend of mine woke me at the unearthly hour of seven to go watch an art film at a women’s film festival. First of all, who are these people who get up at seven to catch a movie at eight, and why are they still alive?

Secondly, from a series of sleep-addled grunts I seemed to have given the mistaken impression that I'd enjoy a morning of watching Yvenska the Norwegian bisexual forge an unlikely friendship with Olga the 37 year old alcoholic who is dying a slow and painful death of ovarian cancer.

Thankfully, the gods seemed to have taken pity on me, and I was spared Yvenska and her award-winningly heartbreaking story. We caught an Iranian film instead aptly titled “Rush, it’s gone” to highlight its glacial pace.

A note about the film festival: it started five days ago and was being jointly shown at Sathyam cineplex and the South Indian film chamber. The women-centric films were a collaborative initiative of the Indo-Korean Chamber (Inko), in association with the National Film Development Corporation Ltd (NFDC), National Film Archive of India (NFAI) and the Association of Serbian Socialists.

The Iranian movie wasn't bad, and I rather enjoyed the story-telling. The highlight of the morning however was the South Indian film chamber where the film was being screened.

This gem of a building is tucked away in a narrow by lane off mount road. It’s the sort of place the classifieds would term 'charming' and 'quaint'. The walls were coated with a luxurious layer of centuries-old grime. Beneath which, it is rumored, are a series of drawings by Neanderthals depicting their courageous battle against a woolly mammoth. They seem to have perished sadly, along with the woolly mammoth who suffered a brain hemorrhage from watching a Ukrainian art film and ultimately went extinct.

On the wall by my seat I spied a rather artistically-rendered appeal. One lone cockroach, after years of desperate confinement amidst film critics and art films, had taught itself the English language, ripped its head open, dipped its feelers into its own blood and wrote on a small portion of the wall, a tiny 'help' - with perfectly rendered Korean subtitles below.

I hear that they have since converted the brave cockroach's ordeal into an art film starring John Malkovich as le cockroach, and Nicole Kidman as le love interest, an anorexic albeit ethereal dung-beetle. Tickets available at the South Indian film chamber.

The Iranian movie seemed to be quite popular as evinced by the number of Kanchipuram sari-clad women who kept sauntering in well after it had started. The sari-clad women, who were all seated in a row behind us, enriched our movie watching experience greatly with their insights – in case any of us required clarifications on the motives behind the characters’ actions. A rather stunningly beautiful woman arrived just in time for the end-credits and wept softly at the quiet beauty of the typography on screen. It was, like, very moving.

By the time the movie was over, a couple of enthusiastic kids at the stall gave us a list of films being screened as part of the festival, along with a brief synopsis. I was disappointed to see Yvenska's tale was woefully absent. Nevertheless, a rather intriguing Hungarian movie caught our eye.

The synopsis of the 1968 film “The Girl" by Hungarian director Martha Meszaros enticingly read:

This film is about a tempestuous love quadrangle in Paris. All of the exposed skin is supposed to pass for drama, but instead has the dreary one-track banality of a feature-length version of an episode of the ‘Red Shoe Diaries’, Showtime’s late-night series for people who like soft porn but are too lazy to leave the house.

I figured watching such a greatly-applauded art film as this would elevate my standing among my artistically-inclined peers. Also, I'll finally have something to talk about when my artsy friends conglomerate and start deconstructing the latest obscure art flick they caught. So now when they talk about Yvenska and the poignancy of her struggle, I can say ah yes, but it’s no comparison to Kovacs’s search for meaning in a dangerously borderless world. Or when they talk about the gentle play of light and shadows in Monet’s Water Lilies, I can say ah yes, but it’s no comparison to Kovacs’s search for meaning in a dangerously borderless world. Or when they ask me the way to the bathroom I can say ah yes, but it’s no comparison to Kovacs’s search for meaning in a dangerously borderless world.

And so compelled by the integrity of my desire, we headed to Sathyam Cineplex to catch the film. Having an hour to kill before the show, my friend and I headed to a coffee pub nearby. I ordered a masala tea and custard biscuits which I then proceeded to dip in the tea. I had not fully taken into account the viscosity of the liquid in question, with the result that of the 4 biscuits I dipped, I was roughly left with .37 when they emerged. I then proceeded to drink the quicksand mixture so as not to offend the waiter and left in time for the show. The significance of this paragraph by the way has nothing to do with anything. But no post is ever complete without some mention of my experience at a beverage establishment, or a polka-dotted one-eyed cow.

At this point, on account of my guilt-ridden conscience, a final attempt at veracity requires me to reveal that contrary to all protestations of noble intentions, my sole motive behind watching this film involved the words 'exposed skin' and 'soft porn'. Tragically, I was confronted with neither. I will now proceed to give an objective review of the film, ‘The Girl’.

There is a girl. She works in a factory and lives in an orphanage. Wanting to find out about her real parents, she traces her mother and leaves to her village to meet her. On the train she meets a man who wants to talk to her but doesn't because maybe if he plays hard to get then she will talk to him. Or maybe the girl is suffering from an acute case of laryngitis just then and wants to save her voice for when she meets her mother so she may sing out her greeting in seven octaves. I am assuming this is the custom in Hungary whenever an orphaned child meets her biological parent for the first time.

At the village she meets her mother who introduces the girl as her niece and then they all watch tv. The father seems to be some sort of private detective as I gleaned from the following subtitled-conversations at the dinner table:

Father: you must eat.
Girl: yes.
Father: food is important.
Girl: yes.
Father: you are from Budapest.
Girl: yes.
Father: I can tell from your clothes and behavior. This proves you are from Budapest.
Girl: … (I am assuming she is speechless at his powers of deduction)
Father: I work hard and eat a lot. You must eat. Food is important.

From this insightful interaction between father and child, layered with concealment and pain, I gleaned that food is important. Also, Hungarians believe there is much virtue in redundancy.

The girl then goes to church where a boy asks her if she's from Budapest but she doesn't reply and another boy asks her and she agrees to go to the dance with him that evening but not before taking a dip in the pond where she is spied by some of the villagers whose identities are not revealed when told of the fact by her mother later that day before the dance.

The girl goes back to the orphanage the next day. But not before dancing with her father and telling her mother that she - the mother - is very afraid, and would she always be afraid. I think the director is trying to say that the mother is afraid, and this is symbolic of a larger sense of paranoia in an increasingly cloistered world. Or maybe she means that the mother is afraid and this undercurrent of fear is reflected throughout the movie and in the girl’s own psyche as evinced by her clumsy, almost detached, interactions with men. Or maybe she means that the mother is afraid because the souls of countless rodents in art houses everywhere will die and go to heaven where they will haunt the netherworlds with their restless spirits. I was loudly speculating on the protagonist's intent to my neighbor when hit on the head by a flying brick. I miss the commentary of the sari-clad women.

So anyway, the girl goes back to the orphanage where she kisses her friend’s boyfriend while a 16-year old who is in love with her and jumped off a bridge to prove it and was subsequently released by the police after the girl paid a fine for illegal bathing in a Hungarian water body, attempts to capture her attention by gyrating to a high-pitched song by hippie Scandinavians high on helium. The end.

In the course of the movie, the girl meets a person on the road from Paris who proceeds to speak in French and is therefore not subtitled. Although I think he was saying, my toast is not buttered. Or this table has four legs. I cannot be sure because of the slight difference in accents in various regions of France.

She also meets a smooth-talking man claiming to be a tailor who knew her father, a handsome rogue who slept with her mother, who died of sorrow, and then the smooth-talking man drinks four cognacs that he asks the girl to pay for. The girl then deduces from this interaction that the man is, without a doubt, her father. She also sleeps with two people - not explicitly shown since this was the 60s - or perhaps it was one and not two people, or maybe they were twins and therefore had similar eyebrows. Or perhaps it was the chin.

Somewhere in the middle of this, the girl’s roommate has a deep philosophical discussion with the girl on the virtues of sun-tan lotion or perhaps it was the economic rate of growth in Poland, while standing topless for all of four seconds. Unfortunately, I missed those four glorious grainy black-and-white seconds as I was busy reading the subtitles.

To summarize my experience, I would like to say the film festival offered many rare and poignant insights into the psyche of women through their richly textured and expertly-chosen international films. To whoever wrote the synopsis for the 'The Girl', I extend my heartfelt gratitude and two custard biscuits and strongly recommend she watch 'Yvenska and her polka-dotted one-eyed cow', a tragic and poignant tale of love in the time of ovarian cancer, artistically interspersed with full frontal nudity and senseless sex scenes.

Don’t forget the sun-tan lotion.

Panels

2008-02-01T11:16:00.000+05:30

I took a long slow drag on the stub of cigarette.

“I need you to do this Sam” he said, “you know I wouldn’t come to you unless it was an emergency”

I released the fumes from my nose. He coughed.

“Panels?” I said

“Panels” he asserted.

“Panels”, I said with an air of finality and unleashed another dragon from my flared nostrils. The thin strand of smoke rose high above his balding head, and unfurled under the old wooden fan.

“Tomorrow at 11 Landons Road. The client is Earnest&Nubile. They want a series of...”

“Details”, I said, “are for accountants. I will come tomorrow”, and dismissed him dismissively.

I looked out the window of my dingy office. It was one of those, I thought, pristine walls and glass panelled doors. They probably had hand-sanitizers in the Johnnies. I took one last drag on my cigarette and stubbed it in the overflowing ashtray. A smooth black bowl with a naked woman hugging the edge, her ass in the air. It was a gift from Bebo.

I got up from the chair and walked over to the window. The glass pane was black with grime. I pushed it up and looked out at the concrete below.

Panels, I said softly under my breath.

...

“And this is main conference room” she said as she clacked her way past the glass doors. She smiled stiffly as I stood at the doorway.

It was worse than I thought. The carpeted hallway was lined with frosted-glass offices on either side. Fake potted plants sat discreetly below humming air conditioners.

Her well-heeled foot started lightly tapping the wooden flooring.

“So...” I said, “no sensor thingies huh? You know, the ones that open when you walk near...”

“No Mr Sampat Trivedi, we do not have sensormatic doors in our...”

“Please” I interrupted, “Call me Sam”

She pursed her lips and looked at me. Her small diamond ear studs glinted in the light. I held her gaze.

“So if you’ll follow me...” she said as she sharply turned her head and walked inside. I followed.

She wasn’t bad-looking. Her black hair was pulled tightly into a bun perched high on her head and the few wisps of hair in front, neatly pinned by the side and out of her face. Her eyebrows were pencil thin and looked drawn on. She had a small ski-jump of a nose and very small, delicate lips, shut tight. Not bad-looking at all, I thought, as I watched her tight ass move beneath the fabric. Although her ankles looked a bit thick, I noted.

She was probably the kind who bought anything in the supermarket with the words “organic” or “natural” or “holistic” on it and then went home and shoved two well-manicured fingers down her throat.

“This is where we entertain our ‘bigger’ clients”, her voice pierced the stillness. She could say a word with the quotes intact and she knew it. “Some of our biggest deals are finalized in this room. This is the room where the landmark merger of...”

“So that’s seven in all?” I asked.

“Yes, Mr Trivedi”, she snapped back, “Seven conference rooms. We have sent you the brief, the details are in there. You will revert Thursday with the copy and artwork. Upon approval, you may proceed.”

“Well now, Thursday’s not too far away, is it?” I drawled as I opened a cigarette pack.

“The accelerated pace is much appreciated” she said tightly. “And Mr Trivedi”, she added as I fished out a lighter from my pocket, “we have a no smoking policy in this building”. She smiled curtly. I stretched out the cigarette pack to her.

“Ms Fernandes”, she said coldly, “will escort you to the exit” And she left, her stilettos sinking into the carpeted floor. I watched the grey-suited figure receding down the grey hallway.

“Mr Trivedi!” a shrill high-pitched voice shattered the carpeted silence. The horrendous Ms Fernandes stood in a floral patterned dress and brown shoes, a HB Natraj pencil stuck behind her ear. I sighed, and put the cigarette pack away.

...

“...will be able to provide a complete design solution for the newly-designed conference rooms at the Ernest&Nubile corporate headquarters. The scope of services include interior signage – including office and room identifiers as well as directional signs. Type and illustration may be used together or individually to create a look to describe and reflect the spirit of the space ...”

I threw the sheet of paper into the dustbin and lit a cigarette. So that was the job. A bunch of rooms for corporate nitwits to sit around and bullshit all day. And now they wanted bullshit about the bullshit rooms. I chuckled at the irony of it.

I got up from the desk and went over to the window. I looked at the ashtray on the window sill. I would have never taken the job if it wasn’t for her. I ran my fingers over the smooth stone of the naked figurine. A gift from Thailand, she said. She thought the Thais were perverts. I made a mental note to take her to Kajuraho.

I put the ashtray back on the sill and went over to my desk. She had sent over a bunch of papers to my office. Research, she called it. The courier package still lay on my desk, untouched.

Ok, I said I under my breath, let’s see what you’ve sent. I ripped open the carefully sealed brown envelope and dumped the contents on the desk. It was a bunch of neatly typed papers. I picked up the first page and read it.

“The charanam is a part of Indian classical music made up of different stanzas of the compositions. It is usually the third part of the composition or melody. Charanam is usually followed by pallavi”

I threw it back on the cluttered desk. Bebo was efficient. She must’ve spent days compiling the research. The brief outlined seven musical terms, for each of the seven conference rooms. I spat on the floor. Well, I thought, if it was that important to her... and picked up a pen and a grimy sheet of paper.

“Charanam” I wrote, “is an important part of Indian classical music, and together with the Pallavi and Anupallavi, gives birth to countless compositions.”

I looked at the ceiling fan slowly turning round and round. I took another drag on the cigarette and started furiously writing on the paper. That’s one done, I thought when I had finished, and looked at what I had just written.

I was pleased.

It was the best bullshit I’d come up with in days. I still hadn’t lost my touch. I licked the tip of my fingers and picked up another sheet of paper from my desk, and started writing.

...

Ms Banu looked at the paper, pinching the edge with her well-manicured hands. Her hair was pulled up as usual, in a tight black knot. She was in a blue silk blouse today, and I could make out the outline of her lace bra against the fabric.

“Is this your idea of a joke Mr Trivedi?”

She mouthed the words slowly. She had placed the sheet of paper on her lap and leant forward, her legs crossed and palms folded. Her foot betrayed her impatience, tapping the hard floor in sharp clacks as she held my gaze, straight-faced. I stared back.

“Charanam” she started reading, “is an important part of Indian classical music, and together with the Pallavi and Anupallavi, gives birth to countless compositions.

In fact this process of giving birth is highly complicated, since being a threesome of women only makes it impossible for any of them to get pregnant. However, this minor difficulty is overcome by inserting a certain amount of Anusemenum to the most fertile one of the trio. The compositions emerge after nine months, the numbers depending on the amount of Anusemenum.”

I grinned at her as I fished out a cigarette from my pockets and lit one.

“It gets better”, I told her as I flicked the ashes on the carpet.

“Santoor”, she continued reading “is a Persian string-instrument made from walnut wood. Played with a pair of curved wooden mallets, the resultant melodies are similar to the music of the harp or piano.

The word santoor is actually a perversion of the words sand tool. This refers to the long members of certain members of the Royal Persian Desert Hunting Unit. Their units were indeed covered in sandy hair, as they were often courting blonde women. The idea to make an instrument called the sand tool came from the perverted mind of one of these blonde women.
The wooden mallets were originally the ball sacs of men who got a little overtly enthusiastic. The ragas were sung while kings who were not exceptionally well endowed in the nether regions needed to get it up hoping to perform better in the sack.”

“Mr Trivedi” she yelled, “This will not stand” and she threw the sheaf of papers on the floor.

I looked at her coolly as she hardened her gaze. I slowly got up from my chair, bent, picked up the papers and started to read.

“Abheri is a very pleasant raga that shines in brevity. With no scope for lengthy elaboration, Abheri emerges beautifully if the raga rendition is short.

As the name (a berry) and the above description suggest, this raga was first composed specially for men with short sticks and problems with premature ejaculation...”

“Mr Trivedi” she interrupted, as she suddenly stood up, “I expect the revised copy mailed to me this evening. I trust you have not forgotten our appointment at 10 30am tomorrow with the head of Ernest&Nubile.”

I watched her pert ass move as she stormed off. I took another long drag on my cigarette and waited for the shrill cry of Ms Fernandes to shatter the silence.

...

Ms Banu was nervous. I hadn’t mailed her the revised copy yesterday. Moreover, she wasn’t able to postpone the appointment in the morning. I looked at her nervously drumming her manicured nails on the glass tabletop. It was the first betray of emotion I’d seen.

“Mr Trivedi” she snapped under her breath, “I don’t know what you’ve done but it better be good. My boss is slated to arrive any minute now. With him, there will be representatives from the Department of Marketing and Brand Management...”

“Babe” I told her as I shook the toast crumbs from my crumpled shirt, “don’t fret. You’ll give yourself a wrinkle.”

She looked at me shocked. I winked at her, and yawned. Bugger was late. It was just her and me sitting in that conference room. I looked around. Glass tabletop...whiteboard...projector on the ceiling... Swivel chairs... It even had an automatic curtain control system to adjust the light. Wonder which one this room was going to be. I blew my nose into my dirty handkerchief.

“Ms Banu!” Ms Fernandes flung open the glass doors, short of breath “they’ve arrived...” she was cut off by the sound of voices in intent discussion. The Department of Marketing and Brand Management walked in. There were seven men, all dressed in the same suits and with the same smile plastered across their faces. They probably all used the same shampoo.

Ms Banu sat ramrod straight in her chair, and a hush fell on the room as The Man walked in. He nodded, and everyone sat down. He looked nondescript. He sat at the end of the table while one of the grey-suited men used the curtain control remote to lower the shades.

“Mr Trivedi” Ms Banu started, “has worked on the type for the seven conference rooms. He will present the copy...”

I threw the sheaf of papers across the table. It slid across the table and stopped in front of The Man. The room went silent. The Man slowly picked up the first page and handed it to Ms Banu.

“Charanam” she started reading in a faltering voice, “is an important part of Indian classical music, and together with the Pallavi and Anupallavi, gives birth to countless compositions.

Like the different components of music that together create beautiful harmony, diverse inputs come together in this space to craft a unified vision. Charanam embodies the spirit of partnership and teamwork through the emergence of a single vision from individual thoughts.”

She stopped and looked nervously at The Man. He nodded. At least, I imagined he nodded. From the shadows it was difficult to make out exactly what he was doing.

Ms Banu continued, “Santoor is a Persian string-instrument made from walnut wood. Played with a pair of curved wooden mallets, the resultant melodies are similar to the music of the harp or piano.

Like the sound chamber of walnut wood that houses exquisite harmonies, Santoor is a sanctum of thought. Like wood, signifying strength and stability, this sanctuary exemplifies strong values and solid ideas rooted in sound judgment.”

The Man leant forward in his chair, and rested his elbows on the tabletop. I imagined he placed the tips of his fingers together in an inverted V as he brooded over the presentation.

“Abheri” she continued, “is a very pleasant raga that shines in brevity. With no scope for lengthy elaboration, Abheri emerges beautifully if the raga rendition is short.

A space exemplifying lightness and simplicity, Abheri sees the appearance of fresh thoughts and new directions. Wisps of ideas take flight in this light and refreshing space.”

Ms Banu paused. The Man made an impatient gesture for her to continue. I couldn’t be sure; it was too dark to see. Ms Banu read the rest of the copy. She reached the final one.

“Raga Malhar is a powerful and legendary raga in Indian classical music. According to legend, Raga Malhar is so powerful that when sung, it can induce rain to fall from the sky.

A powerful space where great decisions with far reaching implications are made. Intense discussions tackle the toughest problems here, till even the most complicated issues are unravelled, leading to a downpour of clear ideas and solutions.”

She placed the sheet in front of him and sat down. The room was still. The only sound was the sound of humming from the air conditioner. The Man spoke. “Mmm” he said.

“The Man approves”, said Ms Banu. The Department of Marketing and Brand Management broke out in exclamations of approval. “We will release the payment” she continued in a low clear voice, “for the remainder of your commercial terms immediately.”

The Man got up from his chair and walked around to where I was seated. I got up. He gave me a single-pump handshake while I peered intently, unsuccessfully, in his heavily shadowed face. If there was a face, that is.

“Secretery” He said in his assertive, nondescript voice, “Follow up on this.” Ms Fernandes dropped her HB Natraj pencil and got on her knees to look for it. The Man turned to me.

“Good job, Mr Trivedi” he said, and left with his army of grey-suits.

I fished out my dirty handkerchief and wiped the sweat off my brow. I hadn’t noticed I was holding my breath. I took out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket.

“I am sorry Mr Trivedi,” Ms Fernandes’ shrill voice rang out as she sprang up, “but smoking is not permitted in this building.”

I cursed under my breath and put the pack back in.

...

That crack on the ceiling seemed to be bigger. I lay on my bed and watched as a cockroach ran up the wall. I need to clean up this mess.

“Good job today” Ms Banu said, leaning against the doorway. She was in her silk blouse and heels. She lit a cigarette and took a slow drag.

“Like I said Bebo” I told her as I propped myself up on the bed with my elbows, “don’t fret. It’ll give you wrinkles.”

She laughed and walked up to bed. Her blouse was open down the front. She leant over to kiss me, and I moved my hand up to exposed left tit.

“My father was impressed” she continued, as I kneaded her soft breast, “so were the Department of Marketing and Brand Management. He’s considering giving you a permanent position.”

“That” I said, as I pinched her hard nipple, “would be ideal.”

Bebo gasped as I moved my fingers down to the wetness between her legs. I took the cigarette from her with my other hand.

“The next time you have a job” I continued, “you can forget that bald nitwit, and come straight to me.”

I took one last drag on the cigarette, and stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray.

...

note: Much thanks to Mayank for his perverted interpretations of the classical terms. Monkus, I owe you one.

Nunsense Worse - Part 2

2008-01-22T11:29:00.000+05:30

he picked up a sketch pen and drew a picture on the white board.
It looked at him scornfully
it was a circle
a scornful circle
wait no, he cried, i’m writing
balls it said
and refused to be written
and then the world exploded and everyone died

---

i stood there in the rain and my yellow boots
i can alienate squirrels i said
ha she said
actually she said ha with an exclamation mark
i watched the spittle eject from her mouth and catch the last rays of the setting sun
it was beautiful
i cried and the snot mingled with the rain
and then i said colon and an asterix
she said she had prostate cancer so i killed her with my blackberry
all that was left was her prostitute red heels and one forlorn gonad

---

she came in through the bathroom window
like an interstellar bunny from outer space
and she told me the trail of nonsense has ended
and we must now write a story
and then she sucked the verse out of me
her breath smelt faintly of almonds
i wondered if she killed kenn..n.. .. .

Discerning shapes

2008-01-22T01:12:00.000+05:30

Characters: X,Y,A.

(Three actors on stage, wearing white sheets. A approaches X who is watching Y contort body into weird shapes)
A: What is he doing?
X: He’s fashioning himself into a duck.
A: Er…Why?
X: You see that little speck there? He seems to be pretty amused.
A: (Visibly disturbed. Takes moment to compose self) Let me explain to you how this works. We, are clouds. We, are free flowing droplets of ice and water suspended in air. We don’t form shapes for the people dwelling below. They discern shapes in clouds… What is he doing now?
Y: I am rearranging myself to resemble a phallic-shaped object.
A: And pray, why?
Y: You see that middle-aged woman sitting by herself, with a cat on her lap?
A: Yes…?
Y: I’m messing with her mind.
A: You can’t do that! You mean, you’ve been arranging yourself into oblique
X: …phallic-shaped…
A: phallic-shaped objects just to mess with people’s minds?! This is… this is… morally repugnant.
X: Dude, what do you think we did to Freud?
Y: Oh look, punk kid, spray-painting graffiti on walls. Hey kid! Do you know what those things do to us?
X: CFCs man!
Y: Look, sunset!
X: Oooh… trippy colors!
Y: It’s the aerosols!
X: The aerosols! They’ve ruined it for us! Give him the finger.
Y: Oh yeah, I’ll show him…
A: Ok, stay calm stay calm. We don’t want to get angry, no dark thoughts or dark clouds. Could set off a storm and ruin a beautiful morning. Think light white thoughts.
X: Man, that’s like a total work of art. I mean the juxtaposition of the erect middle finger to the index…
A: STOP IT! (takes deep breath) Now, clouds... We do not signal gestures of obscenities to people living below. We… are noble celestial beings. We rise above such petty behaviour. We come from a noble lineage of cumulus…
Y: Man, look at that dumb dog. Why’s it barking at me?
X: I dunno. Cuz you kinda look like a cat?
Y: Yeah? Could be cuz of the cat-ear-like projections here. Maybe if I…
X: Dude, that is so cool. You look like a rabbit now.
Y: Still barking. Maybe it’s a hunting dog. Heh, let me do a bone. That’ll just drive him wild.
X: Oh man, that’s brilliant.
A: Happy thoughts happy thoughts… White fluffy thoughts… No dark stormy thoughts clouding my mind…
X: Man, look at that babe!
Y: And look at the guy she’s with. What a loser!
X: Do the penis, do the penis!
Y: One erect phallic symbol, complete with ginormous head, coming right… up!
A: Breathe… Flow… Glide… Auuuuuuuuuuummmm….. Auuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm…
X: Geez, just look at that guy! He doesn’t know where to turn.
Y: And look at that chick blush!
X: Dude, do the tits, do the tits!
Y: As Howard Hughes, so eloquently put it… I want clouds. Like giant breasts full of milk!
X: Man, that’s priceless!
Y: I know! Now the guy’s turning red.
X: I’m so loving this!
A: Think of a gentle summer breeze… Drifting slowly over serene mountain tops…
X: Do the position!
Y: Which one?
X: All 69 of them! The cumulus Sutra. I wanna see them cry.
A: Arrrrrrrrrrrgh! (Grabs heads of X and Y and knocks them together. Lights out. Sounds of lightning and thunder. Sound of Rain)
A: Oh crap.

--

This was a short sketch that I wrote and performed @ pif (installment one) at Madras in December 2007. Anyone wishing to use these, please do ask for permission and give the author (erm, me) due credit. I am just a poor girl though my story's seldom told.

Strange Proposition

2008-01-22T01:10:00.000+05:30

Characters:
M/W – Man/Woman. Long pause everytime there is a line break

(Woman reading book. Newspaper lies in seat next to her. Man enters)
- M Hi. This seat taken?
- (Shakes head. Signals he can sit next to her)
- (Points to newspaper next to her) Uhm… are you done with that?
- Hmm? Yes.
- (Picks up and starts reading. Chuckling to himself)
- What is it?
- Reading the funnies.
- Ah.
(He carries on laughing. Girl closes her book and looks at him, amused)
- M Guy jumps off a 13th storey building… so as he’s passing by 9th floor, someone sticks their head out the window and asks him. So, how’s it going? As he’s falling, guy replies, well… so far so good.
- (Chuckles) That’s a terrible joke.
- Is it? I thought it was supremely funny.
- (playfully) Well maybe you have a low threshold for humour.
- Well maybe you’re too uptight to appreciate good humour.
- What? Who? I… I’m not uptight! I’m just… well… what’s wrong with being uptight anyway?
- Nothing. Whatever works for you.
(He goes back to paper, chuckles. She goes back to book. He keeps chuckling)
- W (irritated) Why did you say that?
- Hmm?
- Uptight. Why’d you say that?
- Ah. No reason really. Just… I don’t know. Maybe the way you tie your hair up.
- Oh. I see. And that gives you profound insight into my psyche does it?
- No, I didn’t mean…
- Has it occurred to you, it might simply be functional? Maybe I just don’t like it falling all over my eyes. Or having it stick to the back of my neck in all this heat
- Hmm. Point. (smiles. gets back to paper)
- And what of you then? Sitting there in that… that white shirt and jeans and, what are those, loafers? On your feet. So predictable. The laid-back, easy going drifter dude. It’s too… perfect, too coordinated, too carefully chosen. You try too hard.
- You certainly have astute powers of observation.
- It’s my job to pay attention to details.
- Interesting. What do you do?
- I’m an accountant.
- I see. (gets back to paper)
- No you don’t!
- What?
- I find it very offensive.
- That I see?
- No… your tone. It’s very condescending.
- I see… offensively?
- Precisely.
- I see.
- Stop it.
- (He grins. Girl cracks smile)
- Anyway. What do you do?
- I’m a laid-back, easy-going drifter dude.
- Right. (gets back to book)
-
- M So how many kids?
- What?
- How many kids do you have?
- Five.
- Really now?
- No.
- Ah.
-
- W So how’s the wife?
- Run away. With male lover.
- Sorry to hear that.
- Not her. Me.
- Ah.
-
- M Would you marry me?
- What of your male lover?
- He’ll survive.
- And my five children?
- We can have five more.
- What would I do with a drifter?
- You can teach him how to dress.
- And what would you do with an accountant?
- (Guy reaches over, removes clip) Lots of things.
-
- W Are you serious?
- Yes.
- Really?
- No.
-
- W Yes.
- Really?
- No.
-
- M Hairstylist.
- What?
- It’s what I do.
- Do you?
- No
- I see.
- You do?
- No.
- I see.

- W Next stop.
- What?
- There’s a church.
- So?
- They perform marriages.
-
- W Will it work?
- It might.
- You don’t know anything about me.
- I know you look gorgeous with your hair left loose.
- I don’t know anything about you.
- You have the rest of your life to find out
-
- W I’m actually a designer. Just turned 28. never been married. Don’t particularly like kids. I live with my five cats. I hate tomatoes. Oh, and I love the funnies.
- Im a struggling actor. 24, but can pass off for 20. 30 if nursing a hangover. Live with my mum, have my own key though. Hate cabbage. Love dogs.
-
- M Here’s our stop.
- You really think it could work?
- Well... (looks out the window) So far, so good.
(Lights out)

--

This was a short sketch that I wrote and performed @ pif (installment one) at Madras in December 2007. Anyone wishing to use these, please do ask for permission and give the author (erm, me) due credit. I am just a poor girl though my story's seldom told.

Caffiene fix

2008-01-22T01:09:00.000+05:30

Characters:
Salesperson, Customer, Manager
(first exchange between salesperson and customer, the next is between customer and manager)

- (says in monotonous drone with no expression) Hi, Welcome to CafeCoffeeCoasta. My name is David, how may I help you?
- Er… Yeah… I’ll have coffee
- Regular, decaf, flavoured?
- Uh… regular.
- Would that be cold coffee, or hot?
- Hot.
- We have a fascinating range of cold coffee. Today we have a special offer on…
- No, just hot coffee, thanks.
- Ok. Lowfat, nonfat, semi-skimmed, full fat, cream?
- Uh, do you have like just regular milk?
- Sorry sir, that’s not on the menu. We have lowfat, nonfat, semi-...
- (getting impatient) Yeah yeah, I’ll take…. lowfat.
- Sugar, honey, sugarfree, demerara?
(One by one, people slowly start forming a queue behind him)
- What?... Just sugar.
- Would you like me to add that to your coffee or would you prefer sachets by the side?
- I don’t care. Ok fine, just add it.
- Sorry sir, we don’t have coffee.
- You what?! (takes breath to calm self) Ok. Then please enlighten me, why, did you take me thru this entire mindless exercise?
- You asked for coffee. Store policy requires us to inform customers of our vast range of…
- Ok, Stop! I’ll have tea.
- Would that be organic…
- Do you even have tea?
- Would that be organic…
- No! It’s a simple question. All you have to do is say yes or no. Do. You. Have. Tea?
- (pause) Would that be darjeeling, assam, earl grey, masala chai…
- Earl Grey! Earl Grey! Earl Grey!
- Would that be with milk or lemon?
- Milk.
- Lowfat, nonfat, semi-skimmed, full fat..
- Forget it! Lemon then, give me the fucking lemon!
(Queue behind him keeps getting longer. People getting restless)
- (voices from queue) So… are you like gonna buy something or just waste space? … Yeah man, hurry up…
- Sugar, honey, sugarfree, demerara?
- I don’t fucking care! Take it to the goddamn fields of Sri Lanka and manually squeeze the juice from sugarcane with your bare hands, if you like! I don’t care if you have to personally fly to Venezuela and handpick the beans. Just give me my fucking coffee!
(Manager arrives)
- Hi. Is there a problem?
- No! No fucking problem. I just want my fucking coffee.
- Sir we will have to request you to kindly refrain from using that kind of language this is a family establishment.
- (is sobbing) I just want my coffee.. I swear… I don’t mean any harm, really I don’t.. I just want my coffee…
- Sir, if you will step aside please.
- No! I will NOT step aside! I refuse to budge! I absolutely vehemently refuse to step outside… this circle (takes sugar pot and spills in circle around his feet)
- Sir, you need to relax. Have something to drink.
- (grabs huge cup from table and wavesaround wildly) What the fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past fifteen minutes you moron!
- (grabs nearby spoon and points) Sir. Calm down. Don’t make any false moves. Put the cup down gently… and step away from the counter.
- (taunts) Oh! I’m soooo scared. What are you going to do, stir me to death? Wait, let me make it easier for you, I’ll get into the cup myself! And then you can infuse me with milk… no wait! I mean, low fat, nonfat, semi… (raises cup high above head, about to smash to floor)
(Security tackle him, carry him out kicking and screaming. Thrown on pavement)
- (Pause. Notices guy in tea-kadai behind him) Ay! Chai.
- Tho!

--

This was a short sketch that I wrote and performed @ pif (installment one) at Madras in December 2007. Anyone wishing to use these, please do ask for permission and give the author (erm, me) due credit. I am just a poor girl though my story's seldom told.

einstein was right, she said, pity i slept with feynman

2008-01-22T01:04:00.000+05:30

Since pif (installment one) is over, I shall now post on my blog the short sketches that I wrote and that was performed at the festival. Anyone wishing to use these, for performance or otherwise, please do ask for permission and give the author (erm, me) due credit. I am just a poor girl though my story's seldom told.

Nunsense Worse - Part 1

2008-01-22T00:41:00.000+05:30

i kissed her
and i thought of worms
and how her fingers touch worm spit everyday
and yesterday she feasted on bee vomit
and now her giant mouth came towards me
like a gaping hole where light was lost forever
i threw up on the sidewalk
and then i ran
she died under the streetlight
and two days later kim jong il exploded a small nuclear bomb on the planet of zordjnark23.pi
i cry for my red felt hat.

---

i like u she said
i thought of how like poles repel
i am bipolar i said
u are mean she said
and then she cried
i watched her coldly
and then i started teaching about poison distribution
meanwhile in cherapunji one man died of heart failure

---

she told me she had cancer
i told her she used too much deodorant
she said she’s breaking up with me
i asked if she was sleeping with my best friend
she blamed the Koreans
and then transmogrified into a small misshapen chunk of meat
i drove a stake through her and ate her with peanut sauce
her Alsatian howled outside in the cold night air

you ate my doughnut?

2008-01-20T13:39:00.000+05:30

Characters:
Karthik and Sonya.
First dialogue spoken by Karthik. Alternating dialogues.

- You ate my doughnut?!

- I need carbs. You know that.

- That was… my doughnut. I was saving that doughnut.

- Yes. It was quite tragic. But I believe, on this occasion, my needs were greater than yours.

- But why… my doughnut. Why… that doughnut. I even put a sticky note on it. '13th February'.

- It had blue sprinkles. You know I cant resist blue sprinkles.

- I had it all figured out… a nice quiet dinner for myself. By the bedside, where I always dine. And this doughnut… this particular doughnut.

- I opened the fridge… and looked at the doughnut. It had blue sprinkles. And a note. February 13th. That's… six months. To the day.

- I don't think I can take this anymore… this… doughnut… this… arrangement.

- And I thought… god, that's a lot. Six months. I must be mad. I mean, who would do such a thing?

- Its too… its too much. I cant take this anymore. It was fun... in the beginning… but… (reminisces) man, we had some wild times. Remember how we were? Remember…. (runs to fetch notebook and eagerly flips through pages and reads) September 9 th. Today, we feasted on chocolates. 75% percent cocoa, godiva dark…

- Man that was some night… We jived all night to Billy Joel. No wait, it was the Beatles. Old school.

- (still reading) It was 2am when we went up to our room. Sonya has had a little too much red wine. We finished an entire bottle of pinot noir. 1976. Good year.

- And you kept twirling. And my skirt flew up to my waist. And we danced and we danced and we danced… and I wore out my heels.

- (still reading) we made love seven times tonight. Sonya had a multiple orgasm. Her first.

- Remember how we woke up the next day, in each other's arms? Sigh..

- (closes the book) that was some good chocolate we had that night. (pause) All the chocolate is gone now.

- It felt… so good. So complete. Like we were made for each other. And we didn't need anyone else.

- And then the wine ran out too… and we had no wine and no chocolates. And there were doughnuts. And only the doughnuts remained.

- Such a cool idea. Lets run away. lets… be together. Just you and I. Alone.

- And the bread. We had lots of bread.

- We don't need anyone else! If they don't let us get married then.. then… we'd run away! And it was exactly what we did.

- And baked beans. Crates and crates of baked beans. Man we bought out the whole grocery store!

- We'll go into hiding. Lay low. I'd cook and you'd clean. And we'd read and watch movies and dance all night. Just you and me, like husband and wife.

- Guy thought we were mad. Thought we were stocking up for the Armageddon or something! Well… we did buy enough supplies to last three years. Good thing you stole that money from your dad.

- And then we can get married. And no one would touch us. Not your mum…

- Or your dad…

- Or my brothers… or… anyone!

- Who invented these rules man! Who the hell sat up there and said, you, yes you, now you're mature enough to decide who you'd want to spend your life with. Who the fuck..

- (quietly) fuck that…

- Yeah, fuck that! We'd show em. Good thing we knew about D's warehouse huh? Turned it into a makeshift home and holed ourselves up underground.

- Another 3 and a half years to go… 1182 days.

- (quietly) your dad's scary you know.

- I know.

- Said he'd break my legs, when he found out you know.

- I know.

- Sent people over to my home.. broke everything… all the furniture.. the clothes… goondas.. Broke down the door middle of the night and turned the whole house upside down…

- I know.

- Scared the hell outta my mum… she thought we were gonna die for sure..

- I'm not my dad.

- Damn straight you're not! He's a…a… loony. A fucking inbred bastard with all the intellect of a fly! Not good enough?! Im not good enough for you? Ha. HA!

- I miss my dad.

- Problem with these fuckers man… you make a little money. You get a little famous. You come into power, and you think you rule the world.

- And mum.

- Said he'd break my legs and hunt down my family if I came after you. HA! I showed him. (grabs her and holds her close) Who'd she choose, fucker? Who'd she go with, in the end, huh?!

- Karthik..

- Too young. What the fuck do they know?! I'll be 15 in a month. And another three years. And we can get married.

- Karthik... I miss my friends. And school. And my mum. And…

- Hey… what are you saying?

- Six months… six months. The… the supplies are running out. We're out of… of… chocolates, and wine. And the eggs went bad a long time ago and the butter turned rancid. And its baked beans everyday… (hysterical) Baked beans baked beans baked beans! From a fucking tin! I'm going insane.

- You mean… you want to go back to your father? (pause) just like that? Leave.. Me.. Us, and everything we've shared… Jus walk out the door after six months and go, hey daddy, guess who's back?

- (Sobs)

- (agitated) You stupid… idiot! You think you can change this?! (Grabs her by the shoulders and yells) You think you can just…. Change your mind?! We made a pact! Till death! We'd run away and stay in hiding till we were both old enough to get married! You cant leave now!

- (Cries) Stop it… you're hurting me…

- Why did you eat all the doughnuts, you stupid fuck! Why?! I told you to save it. I told you to keep it for another month. Didn't we decide?! Didn't we write it all down? Everything! Every single thing we did every single fucking day. What we were going to eat and when and how much, why don't you just follow instructions like you're told!

- (Screams) let me go! You're hurting me!

- None of this would've happened if YOU haven't climbed into my room that night with your packed suitcase, and… (in a high voice mimicking her) "lets run away, just you and I, and its all arranged... I know where dad hides the cash"… Who did that?! Who?!

- (sobs) I'm sorry... I didn't want any of this.. I don't want this anymore..

- Your stupid loony dad and his.. his.. Goondas! He's nothing but a small time goon. And you! You knew this! And you still ran away and landed at my house in the middle of the night and... I left everything behind.. And mum and sis and..and…they're probably dead!

- (Screams and pushes him away. He falls. She sobs. Then silence)

- (quietly) why'd you have to eat the doughnut?

We come in pif

2007-12-18T15:21:00.000+05:30

Pif is a brand new performance festival, organized for Chennai by Chennaiites (mostly) with a focus on original work, collaboration, and an irreverent, ironic and socially conscious tone. A group of professional and semi professional writers, musicians and actors based in Chennai are the driving force behind Pif-- the first avatar of this festival will be staged on Dec 22 and 23 at the Top Storey, Alliance Francaise de Madras.

Pif is an idea, an esprit [and other exotic words that usually mean squat, and are used in boring QC meetings where the visiting white man has the only good chair in the hall], an emotion, an invocation, and a cuss word.

Pif cannot be defined. It is however, not a gimmick. Not a movement. Not a fad. Not the name of a lost Teletubby.

Pif is for individuals who are amused and irritated by the flow of meaningless phrases and words that we swim in everyday, in order to be polite and grown up towards each other.

There will be two shows per day, @ 3pm and 7pm-- The show content for the 22nd will not be repeated on the 23rd. Yes, you heard right! That's two whole days of brand new, original material.

Tickets are priced @ Rs. 50 if you have your student i.d. and Rs. 100 without. Tickets available at Alliance Francaise and Cafe Mocha. Or contact 98402 17447 for bookings.

Come experience the Pif festival, which gives a Pif for bad accents, says Pif off to overpriced tickets, and is indubitably, an ePIFany, if anything at all.

The focus is on collaboration, on the individual, on fun, on truth, especially ironic truths. Don't miss out on the Pif parade, on the 22 and 23 of December.

With Molotov cocktails of love, truth and sharpened pencils,

The Pif Parade

-----

On a sidenote:

I be part of that small group of ramshackle chennaiites. It's been a heady last two months as director, actor, performer, organizer, spoken word artist and general all around mad person revelling in the madness. And I sing too. One line. In tune. (hey, dont knock it till you try it. It's hard singing a line in tune! )

Been an intense and very positive experience thus far. And now showdate's looming large, and we will be performing this Saturday and Sunday. All original, real issues, real emotion and humor.

It has been, and still is, much madness, energy and general pandemonium. With two days left to go, we're still rushing ahead, clearing last minute hurdles that always pop up, losing tempers and finding them again, much bettering, fine-tuning and soul-searching amidst life, chaos and aye, hectic readying.

Here's to great theatre... and charging toward that elusive goal.

*chinks glass*

Do come.

Scribbles from darjeeling.

2007-11-12T21:43:00.000+05:30

Love small steam-train that breaks down in the middle of nowhere and seven men pour out of the carriage wielding only a hammer because it’s all they have.

Love that the train is moving again in five minutes and all seven jump in with their hammers and look out the window like this is perfectly ordinary.

Love losing phone signal and looking out the window at Everest thru the clouds, like shards of mountain bits tearing thru a white cloak, and the hint of rain hanging in the air.

Love small miracles and how easily one finds perfection.

Like snow.

When you're expecting rain.

Just.

2007-09-30T19:47:00.000+05:30

Driving back to our house from Manhattan after a good day and a great show and muskrat love starts playing on the radio and we all listen to it and I am writing postcards and just a little amazed by how little it takes to make perfection.

Like pink balloons adorning the front porch of a house in suburban new york, or cobwebs on the window sill at Junior's cafe off Broadway, trapping the last rays of the five o clock sun while I'm into my third spoon of devil's food cheesecake already and outside a young man speeds by on his mobike with his girlfriend's laughter hanging in the air like white linen on a clothesline in harlem.

Perfect day.

Like a crisp sheet of white paper.

Like a full house.

Like a standing ovation.

Like music and beauty, intricately entwined. And quietly heartbreaking.

Like acorns and fire hydrants whizzing past on the highway as meatloaf starts playing on my ipod.

Like a single dewdrop on a thin blade of glass.

Like a thin blade of grass.

Like a sunday in Manhattan.

A brief guide to some less popular career options

2007-09-19T01:07:00.000+05:30

A brief guide to being a muse:

First, find a sufficiently impoverished artist. If this is not possible, a poverty-stricken writer or director or, if truly desperate, a poet will do. A typical example of this specimen has long, unkempt hair that is usually a nesting ground for various insects, small birds and – in one recorded instance in 1874 – a very frightened kangaroo. His face tends to be typically oval-shaped, unless it is round or perhaps square in which case it is not, in fact, oval. He is also conspicuous by a look of perpetual failure and a general state of sulkiness.

Second, strive to look as muse-like as possible. Try to be genetically-endowed with impossibly long legs, an exquisitely small curvy waist, voluptuous hips and goddess breasts. Remember to exhibit at all times a perpetually pained expression not unlike that of one who’s just walked past an open sewer. One is advised to grow to be a staggering 6 feet.

Refuse to wear clothes as a mark of protest against society’s obscene fascination with materialistic possessions. As one will soon learn, this stance will stand you in good stead when one realizes that a poverty-stricken artist will usually not be able to afford Prada. Gucci maybe, but not Prada.

Do not talk. Ever. Merely grunt when spoken to. When one desires a ridiculously expensive object of no functional value whatsoever – as a muse, being unreasonable is a way of life and a deep philosophical principle – a light tip of the head 1/8th of an inch in the general direction of the desired object will fetch instant results.

Strive to be as volatile as possible. In fact, the more explosive your mood swings, the better a muse you’ll make. It helps slightly to break a small but expensive object from time to time. As your inspired artist/poet/writer/struggling dentist will typically be monetarily-challenged, this may not always be possible after a certain point of time. In which case, one may try breaking windows, doorknobs, body-parts and an egg occasionally.

As a muse, you will be required to do something sufficiently inspiring from time to time. This being the arrangement, in exchange for free food, housing, various shiny objects and the undying adoration of a struggling albeit genius-before-his-time-on-the-brink-of-stupendous-success artist. Or if not an artist, at the very least, a mildly disillusioned plumber who feels he was destined to be greater things, like say, Picasso.

But not to worry, evoking inspiration is effortless for a muse of great talent. The easiest thing to do is to drop one’s clothes, and stand poised in a state of heightened rapture, one’s face glowing with the borrowed radiance of the rising sun. Of course, it is easier to exude a quality of heartbreaking beauty if one is not an over-weight East-European hag with a rather conspicuous mustache. If this is unfortunately the case, consider instead living in absolute darkness and find a sufficiently disillusioned dentist to inspire.

A brief guide to being an intellect:

Intellects are those strange creatures whose sole aim in life is to one day have an entire closet full of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and 7 pairs of horn-rimmed glasses. An intensely annoying high-pitched nasal voice is highly desirable. If one is doubly blessed with a lisp, then this may be the perfect profession for you.

When you invite friends over, make sure to have none but the most boring people in the history of mankind invade your abode. Serve only shredded duck in oyster sauce canapés and foie gras with fig and orange blossom chutney – carefully fashioned into exquisite mickey mouse shapes. Always serve wine to your guests. Remember to announce that is only the best fleufdelablooblahbleh, made with grapes hand-pressed by Louise the X1V himself.

As an intellect, you are expected to be well-read. Take pains to pepper your home with books. Playboy does not count. The more incomprehensible, the better. If you can, always surround yourself with books by French authors. It helps if it’s the original language. It also helps if one actually knows French.

A good reply to the question, have you read (insert book title here) would be: Not recently. This absolves one of resorting to mendacity.

Have highly-opinionated opinions on everything, particularly life, philosophy and the universe in general. For reference, try Kierkegaard and Nietzsche for Dummies, 2nd edition. Whenever anyone objects to your opinion, invoke the double-core induction theorem. Hence proved.

Never enunciate and always speak with a drawl, as if it is too much effort to discipline one’s tongue to frame a coherent sentence. In fact, the less understandable you are, the greater your intellectual standing among your peers. When faced with a particularly difficult philosophical question, remember that square root of negative 73 is always a good answer.

Invent your own philosophy. If you can, invent your own system of ethics. Do not, however, invent your own language. That’s just plain stupid. If somebody objects to your system of ethics on grounds of deep flaws and blatant moral relativism, invoke the double-core induction theorem. You will soon realize it’s a good theorem to know.

Hence proved.

A brief guide to being an insufferable snob:

To paraphrase a famous green furry er person: Be or be not. There is no try. In the same vein, one cannot become a snob. One is either born with the gift, or isn’t.

Never call anyone by their names. Snap your fingers instead. If you can, avoid any sort of tedious labour, like snapping fingers. You will find a barely perceptible flick of your fingers in the general direction of the hired help should be sufficient to elicit response. If one is forced to use words, choice vocabulary includes: garcon, slave and minion. While talking to entities of lower bearing, make sure to scrunch up your nose like you’re in the vicinity of a dead animal in the advanced stage of putrefaction.

Refuse to drink any water except a particularly obscure brand of water bottled at the foothills of the glaciers of Ukraine. When it comes to clothes, only wear obscenely expensive brand labels. And no, made in china does not qualify as a brand label.

Ostentatious display of jewelry is considered tacky. Instead, request your local cosmetic surgeon to inject your cheekbones with 200 carat Belgium-grade A diamonds set in gold. You may die, but it’s a small price to pay for such a noble cause.

When you die, leave your house, cars, diamonds, and all your money to your dog. To not seem like a heartless wretch, remember to leave 64 paise and a wad of used chewing-gum to your bastard son.

Of course, it helps greatly if in addition to these traits one also possesses a shit-load of money. Preferably old (read: inherited) money and a ‘name’ – not the ones they call you behind your back. It’s always a good sign if one can trace one’s ancestry way back to one’s own father. If one finds oneself insufficiently endowed in this regard, fret not, find a decrepit old person and get married immediately in the presence of a lawyer and two witnesses. A Russian oil-baron is always a good choice.

Happy hunting.

Of scraps and other debris

2007-09-15T23:44:00.000+05:30

Sometime last year, or perhaps the year before, I joined orkut. After months of holding out, refusing to join another pointless networking site, was finally coaxed, cajoled and charmed into doing so. It wasn’t all that bad, although the lingo did take a little getting used to:

– Hey, she scraped me!
– Eh what, who? You got in a fight?
– No man, I’m gonna scrap her back once my boss leaves, he’s hovering over my shoulder looking into the comp.
– Er… right. Have fun ‘scrapping’.
– Yeah, I’ve got 1900 scraps already.
– O…k… (freak)

And so it went. To be fair, I did meet up with a whole lot of childhood and school friends and other such ghosts from the past. It was nostalgic and quite charming, ‘scrapping’ each other and howling over the time I burnt a hole in my friend’s chemistry observation or the time she got a book thrown at her for snoring during assembly or the time we high-fived everyone as they left the exam hall, cuz no one, no one attempted the 10-mark geometric progression proof. Sigh. Good memories.

But then, there were also the other kind, the truly scraptastic stream of spelling-challenged imbeciles with a fierce aversion to vowels and a burning desire to ‘make friendship’ the way other people made, say, car engines or 700-tonne bridges. I stopped orkuting, because there’s only so much of ‘hi i m suresh frm choolaimedu chmical enginr I wnt 2 mk frndshp wid u ad me pls’ that I could take. And then of course, as these things usually happen – more often in Meg Ryan movies than in actual reality – something happens that makes you go… hmm.

Perhaps it would be easier, to simply copy and paste the entire exchange.

The one that started me off on this rollicking rhyming spree. A scrap, from an absolute unknown to me:

Hail! Devourer of Pratchett style fantasy
The gurgling gargoyle has deigned to write thee
While ranging through Orkut in search of life forms
That can weave worlds with words, songs with syllables
And 'tis now your turn to engage in boisterous banter
In rambling tales that up the tree of life do squirrables
Speak of thine own self, of dreams and rants
Of homoerotic fantasies and marxist slants
Of rambleworthy nightmares and ridiculous fears,
Of events causing both laughter and tears

Me:

Shalom. Hello. And greetings to thee.
Scavenger of scraps, and other debris,
The time has come, the eggman said,
To speak of many things,
Of dreams and rants and traveling pants,
And a walrus that sings,
I have, you see, no fantasies – homoerotic especially –
But for what I lack, I make up with my stack,
Of maoist bags and communist tees,
As for boisterous banter and rambling rants,
And elementary penguins and hare Krishna chants,
Drop by, oh amusingly alliterative one,
To my blogspot, at squarerootofnegativeone
But while we’re here, sipping ankh-morpork beer,
Let me toss in your bowl and orkut hole,
A hi, hello and how do you do
And throw in for good measure, a truly orkutian treasure,
hi i wnt 2 mk frndshp wid u.

He:

Ohmigod Ohmigod Ohmigod! Now what do I do?

My pretensions to poetry have been exposed through and through!

Yikes, shites, bring out the kikes

That I may vent my frustrastripes

Upon their backs, bellies, and gripes

That erupt from my failed pen in floods of tears

May turn to foamy head, and thence lager into beers!

But hold, for I have yet one weapon still!

If rhyme be a crime, then prose shall be my pill!

Friendship with thee I certainly shall make

For now 'tis not just reputation at stake.

Granny Weatherwax did hint that things would go astray

But never once mention my tongue'd have to enter the fray!

O exalted one, I lay my pen beneath your feet

Let's can this cranberry, and go grab a bite to eat!

Me:

A bite? Why, yes, I think I might.
It would, after all, be a welcome respite
From endless work, and dreary disquiet
Thus said, I accept, your timely invite
To travel and traverse across the multiverse
Swimming past stars and swinging by seas
Taking flight by night, past moons of green cheese
Past suns of red, past leaves of lead,
Past discs on elephants that by turtles are led
Past restaurants diverse, at the end of the universe.
We shall rest on clouds, going from bed to verse
Till daylight cracketh, as sure and as true
As Dorothy and her ruby shoes, two
And the house that fell on all she never knew
But for the dog that was spared and a scarecrow, shit-scared
And a tinman, some sheep, and a lion that weeps
While my guitar gently creeps
Across skies of blue that a winged-monkey flew.
So pick up that pen, while I grab my wand
And together we shall go far and beyond
The limits of time and the restraints of rhyme
To Valhalla and oz and Scarborough fair
And penny lane and the sorcerer‘s lair
As for your tongue… well, the night is young
But for now I think,
We shall make do with ink.

----

To be continued? Well let’s see. And in the meanwhile, here’s to scraps and things much verse.

*chinks mug of ankh-morpork beer*

Thalaiva Vazhga!

2007-07-06T19:04:00.000+05:30

First, the facts, which we will examine, gently even, with powdered latex gloves and tweezers that no one really knows are used for what, or cares. Or wants to know I suppose, in light of latex glove revelation. Ah so, without further ado.

Fact: I have seen Sivaji 5 times – and no, not under captivity.
Fact: I whistled, cheered, hooted and threw ticket confetti in air when Superstar Rajni delivered punch dialogue.
Fact: I delivered punch dialogue
Fact: I delivered punch. (This be accidental tho. Over-excitement during fight scene)
Fact: I capitalize Superstar AND Rajni.
Fact: I plan to watch Sivaji again. And drag friends. And translate punch dialogues for the benefit of non-tamil speaking companions.
Fact: I cursed obscenities at slightly balding, middle-aged man sitting in the next chair the last time I saw the film.

Ok so I gripped him by the collar and called him a bleddy ayogya rascal country brute. But in all fairness, I was really just rather vociferously exclaiming my slight disregard for the baddies, and balding middle-aged guy being in the path of least resistance, got, for lack of a better word, whoop-assed.

Hi. My name is Lavanya and I am a Rajni fanatic. This is when we all hug each other and cry. *whips out cigarette mittai and throws into air, which then flips three times and lands – gracefully even – in delicate rosebud shaped lips* To paraphrase a great man… Owww eez eet?

How did this happen – as some of my friends have asked. Actually they’ve been rather vocal in their lack of understanding at my seemingly intellectually-impaired decision. As one friend so eloquently put it – you bleddy mad. *taps side of head*

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense would like to present its case.

First of all, Sivaji is a good film. In fact, it’s a brilliant film. To put it another way… which makes you wonder about the circular redundancy of the phrase, first you plan to reiterate an already stated and accepted conclusion, and you announce the arrival of said redundancy with redundant phrase. Why would you want to put something another way anyway? Just get it right the first time. Idiot. To put it another way, is probably the most redundant and completely useless phrase in the English language. Right after, Hi I am calling from 1C1C1C1C1 bank would you like a credit card? And then a buttfuck? Preferably in that order?

But I digress. To put it another way, for the second time, it’s got…Ishtyle. And loads of it.
If I were snooty reviewer smoking clove cigars and peering over hideously expensive horn-rimmed glasses at laptop, I’d say the film possessed a certain stylistic superiority quite surpassing that of its predecessors. Not unlike Tarantino’s masterful rendition of old-style martial arts films in Kill Bill, where a 6 foot blonde in a yellow jumpsuit fends off the crazy kung-fu 88 – some of them in black and white – replete with tubes of blood spurting out of decapitated bodies. Ah, what craft. What a supremely fine balance he strikes between artistic reinvention and collapsing into a parody. Bravo. *gently claps well-manicured hands and scattering clove ashes in the process*

Sivaji thus, in the same vein and ruptured blood vessel, takes the entire class of ‘superstar’ full-action-masala-flick and goes above and beyond the confines of the genre it was meant to occupy. For something commonly known as the all encompassing B(K/T)ollywood extravaganza, recent fare has fallen somewhat shamefully below the mark. With Sivaji though, it once again straddles the line between comedy and action. And drama. And mass entertainment. And visual extravaganza. And… in short. Ishtyle ma ishtyle.

A word to all the hoity toity la di da types who think superstar antics and punch dialogues and the like are far too juvenile a pursuit to be enjoyed by anyone over the age of two or anyone in fact in full control of his higher faculties… actually I have two words for them, but respect for decorum dictates I restrain myself… so we shall settle instead for a semantically correct phrase thrown in the general direction of said la-di-da’s.

There is a reason we have a man who can fling a cigarette butt four feet into the air, have it land in his mouth and have an entire packed theatre of a thousand-odd otherwise perfectly respectable people go ballistic as he lights up. Beyond of course, the stylistic simplicity of the elegantly coordinated action, there is the fact, that it is actions like these – flinging of cigarette butts, rapid criss-crossing of legs, quick flick of the wrist and repositioning of thundu, or as in the latest case, the rather complex mechanism of flipping a coin/popping a peppermint into one’s mouth or rapid run of fingers over his baldpate – that will be repeated time and again at every tea-stall, every cool-bar, every footpath bench across the land for years to come. It doesn’t even matter what it is as long as it’s quick, it’s dramatic, and it’s got, you guessed it, ishtyle. On a sidenote, kudos to Shankar for replacing the iconic cigarette-butt flick with something a little more health-friendly.

Exhibit Two: Songs, sets and costumes. Songs are the inescapable evil of tamil movies; like death and taxes. Its not a question of, do we needs songs, so much so as it is, so how do we dispense with the procedure as quickly and painlessly as possible? There is of course the very practical consideration of the general viewing public needing a window – figuratively speaking of course – to go answer calls of nature, cigarette breaks etc. A five-minute song provides the perfect respite during the three-four hour long ordeal. In the past it is believed filmmakers traditionally made their songs as unimaginably awful as possible and their costumes so outlandishly garish as to induce even the most dehydrated individuals to visit the state-of-the-art bathroom facilities, which consisted of little more than a hole in the ground. This in turn fueled sales of overpriced aerated drinks and century-old fungus-infused popcorn during the mandatory twenty minute break from all that fatigue of being bombarded by visions of singing men in tight pants and white shoes jumping around trees chasing women suffering from a severe case of visible panty line disease. Now you understand why you suffered through all those waterfall/torrential rain song sequences? Oh the horror.

In short, songs were a necessary evil – part of a larger plot by MNCs and snack and beverages makers to pry hard-earned Indian rupees from white-knuckled clutching fingers of the unsuspecting suffering masses. Sets and costumes were as important a part of the film, as ceiling fans are in engineering colleges the nation over – purely for show, and absolutely no thought whatsoever gone into its actual purpose and function in the grand scheme of things. How else can one explain Telugu movies? Unless of course the entire Telugu speaking community happen to be color-blind in addition to hearing-impaired. Needless to say, ishtyle is a phenomenon least understood in golt land. Probably all the gonkura gone to their brain.

Thankfully, this not being a Telugu film, I did not have to suffer a brain hemorrhage while watching it. Sets and costumes, normally falling under either the tolerable-but-boring or ridiculously-hilarious category, were pretty decent. Songs were good, not mind-blowing, but enjoyable and definitely hummable. Sets were a visual feast. Every detail, every object in the frame, insignificant as it was, was taken care of and the effort definitely showed. Costumes were a spectacular treat, down to the minutest sequined details on Rajni’s 3 inch thick belt. Over the top? Yes. Outlandish? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes yes yes, all of that. But! That be the magick of a Rajni flick. To be all of that, and to still draw you into its story and characters and have you cheering and hooting all the way to the end credits.

Exhibit Three: Dialogues and superstar-masala-flick elements. Read: pandering to the lowest common denominator and/or mass entertainment aspects. You’d think it stands to reason that if one were looking at a movie from a purely commercial aspect, throwing in a generous dash of crowd-puller, item number and mass-entertainer bits and the like would invariably lead to a dip in overall story-telling impact. Not so. One of the good things about Sivaji is that there is no vulgarity or blood and gore violence – a rare, well-deserved U rating for the certified ‘family movie’. All necessary superstar-masala-flick bits – punch dialogues, fight sequences, basic storyline and plot, essential characters – have been tastefully incorporated into this mad celebration of the quintessential superstar masala movie. I did find the Angavai/Sangavai/Pongavai sequence a tad insensitive, but that’s my only gripe with an otherwise funtastic roller-coaster of a ride.

Hilarious dialogues and light, humorous comedy sequences. Essential snarling and frothing at mouth by necessary sub-characters. Yes, strips of paper from nowhere fly all over the place when our hero walks in. Yes, his hair – I still haven’t figured out HOW they got him to look the way he did. Brilliant stuff – flies about oh so elegantly at just the right, dramatic moments. Yes, he has the ability to bend space and time and single-handedly overturn five hundred odd years of math and science and the basic principles of physics and everything our understanding of the universe is modeled on. But really. Who cares? This be an epitome of The Rajni Movie. Bleddy sheddup and watch. Rascal.

Exhibit Four: Special effects and other odds and ends. Special effects are, for the most part at least, seamlessly crafted into the film. Fight sequences fairly entertaining, tad longish in parts, but overall quickly executed and never monotonous or tedious. Dance routines, rapid-paced and stylistically rendered. Pure fun and energy, more than anything, which is why when our man Superstar Rajnikanth stops a bullet with his glance, or throws a gun that boomerangs, shoots his victim and returns to palm, or throws off fifty odd baddies piled on top of his back without breaking a sweat, one can’t help being sucked into the whole mad over-the-top affair and whistling one’s head off. Hey, if I can clap for a wooden-faced leather clad sunglassed Keanu Reeves fending off a hundred Agent Smiths, I figured I might as well go crazy here.

And finally, the final and most important element of the defendant’s argument… here is a movie that is quite simply, fun. Forget sets, costumes, songs, dialogues, cinematic grandeur, mass-entertainment elements, socially-conscious message, cast, crew everything… at its core, is something undeniably enjoyable: pure, simple fun. Every song, every flick of the wrist, every punch delivery is infused with the light-hearted reverie that Rajni is known and loved for. But going beyond the obvious star of the film, there isn’t one person here who doesn’t make an impact with his presence. Right from the top, main hero and baddy and sidekicks, down to the poor musical-instrument buyer or the Angavai-Sangavai twins, memorable performances all. What a relief to watch a fun, jam-packed, energetic film – and performances – that doesn’t get weighed down by its own self-importance.

Ah but then again, one can simply say, tis a simple story: riches to rags to riches again, and along the way, boy meets girl, defeats baddie, saves world from itself, boy wins girl and all the sidekicks live happily ever after in eerily dust-free buildings. Tis not rocket science, true. But surprising how even overly simplistic movies tend to take themselves too seriously and end up becoming a gloriously bloated weep/preach fest for the miserable paying public. Bollywood extravaganza indeed. Where have all the good Superstar films gone? Kudos and more to Sivaji for converting this staunch-superstar-flick averse movie-goer into a born-again fanatic.
Now that the snooty reviewer in me has artfully deconstructed the Sivaji phenomenon, the defense would like to rest its case and go stand in line to purchase another ticket. Or to put it another way.

Summa adurudhullai!

Oww eez it?

identity

2007-05-01T18:59:00.000+05:30

who am i?

line and dot

dot and line

on the dotted line i sign, i

i am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together

i is my identity

have i an identity?

i have no roots

i have two roots

i think, therefore i am.

i imagine i am imaginary.

are you real?

imagine.

imaginary and real.

simple.

together we are complex.

together we are complete

but not whole

for then, i have naught, a hole

and no negatives

but i can be negative

i squared is negative

i am positive i am negative

so i am Z

the end

and the beginning

the all, the nothing, the infinite,

increasing infinitely in infinitesimal increments i tends to infinity.

and beyond.

who am i?

i don’t know.

do you?

i do

i does

i must do.

i make do with what i have.

i must make do with i

i am limitless, ceaseless, timeless

i am black, i am white, i am grey,

i fight, eye sight, i bite… i might

i write

i writhe

i right

i wrong

so i left

still

am.

i am the little straight line with a dot on top.

i am the square root of negative one.

i am me.

but mostly, i am

Don't be evil

2007-04-25T18:55:00.000+05:30

Funny thing, Google. Their search engine's become a sort of Xerox or Ipod of the internet. And with good reason. They pretty much rock.

But this post isn’t about their revolutionizing the information retrieval genre, their massive page indexes or almost absurd retrieval times. It’s about pussy pillows.
What happens when you google for home décor products, cushion covers, pillow cases and the like? Well, you get this.

The pussy pillow - Celebrating the vagina as a symbol of pride, power and creativity
Our sumptuous yOni pillow is a must for every goddess and goddess lover. In the tradition of the 'naughty' goddess Baubo, the pussy pillow celebrates the vulva as a symbol of pride, power and creativity.
One woman we know has her yoni pillow on a pedestal in the foyer of her mansion. A mini temple declaring to all that enter her home her reverence for the Source and Beauty of Feminine Power!
Hidden among folds of silky satin, a secret zipper reveals a hidden sanctuary for your personal treasures ... those in the know can seek and find the elusive g-spot within! A beautiful rhinestone is strategically placed for any vagina challenged individuals in your life.
The yOni pillow is a grand 24 inches by 12 inches and features more lips on the reverse! A queen among cushions, a pillow for a princess, this gift will delight any woman who appreciates the blessing of being born with a vagina.
The vagina pillow - US$ 60
Now available worldwide

(The site btw, is here. http://www.yoni.com/vagina_lips_cushion.html)

A sumptuous yOni pillow. (Notice the big O, btw) With strategically placed rhinestones for ‘vagina-challenged individuals’ even. A declaration of the Source and Beauty of Feminine Power… at this juncture I would like to interrupt myself and ask a supremely pertinent question. Who are these people, and what have they been smoking?

Imagine this. Your vagina-challenged friend comes home for the first time. You do the expected thing, make yourself at home you say, feel free to look around. And while he feasts his orbs on your bookshelf of volumes to Empower the Feminine 1, he gets a crick in the neck from all that reverencing at the foot of the enchanted tunnel.

Here you say, rest your head on this. Oh go on, don’t be shy, it’s not going to eat you, you know. Btw, it’s got more lips on the reverse. What, a blanket?

Stick hand inside delicate revered folds of silky satin. Rummage rummage rummage. Fish out a ratty old blanket, dark-red with knotted pieces of sticky brown fabric clots

Oh that’s just my sacred goddess menstruating blanket to usher in those Feminine days. Now, would you care for a drink? I’ll fix you my own special concoction, honey-nectar of the divine deity… here, where you gone?

And so you’re left standing there, with a glass of Rasna in your hand, wondering why on earth vagina-challenged individuals feel so threatened by a celebration of the hallowed source of feminine power and wisdom.

But take solace. There are some enlightened ones among the vagina-challenged populace. So what if they lack a sacred gateway to cyclical wisdom? They may yet embrace the Feminine Divinity in all her hole-iness by getting one of these things.(http://www.realdoll.com/dolls.asp) And they cost less than a sex change operation too.

But the fun really begins in the FAQ section. So say, you’re the kinda guy who wants to spend USD7000 on the ‘world’s most realistic love-doll’ – the FAQs tell me btw that customers include futurists, artists, art collectors, film-makers, scientists, health professionals, housewives. Yes, I see the obvious need for these people to own a latex doll with extremely soft and life-like er cavities. Right down to the subtle texture. Scientific research I suppose? Right.

Anyway, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are spending your hard-earned cash for the betterment of mankind and progress of civilization. What are the things that you really need to know before you plunk down 7000 big ones?

An essential information is that the silicon doll ‘can withstand upto 400 degrees of heat’. Just in case you’re the type of guy who likes to bonk inside a furnace. Her nipples meanwhile ‘can withstand approximately 400% elongation before tearing.’ So the next time your clothesline snaps you know what to do. But be careful tho! While she’s flexible and can sustain almost any reasonable position, she’s not meant to sustain extreme violent abuse. Violent abuse as opposed to setting her on fire and elongating her till she tears. And finally, she can support over 400 lbs. Dude. If you’re over 400 lbs, you probably need more than a latex chick with steel joints. Like perhaps a sufficiently padded construction crane.

But forget that. What I really want to know is who the hell conducted such ‘extensive’ research? Imagine a conversation at the Employment Agency.

- So what do you do?

- I test the tensile strength of the latex mammaric extremities of silicon filled humanoid replicas.
- Er…?

- I pull nipples for a living.2

- O…k… If you would kindly step aside sir... those men with white strait-jackets in their hands will escort you to your division.

But really. Someone’s got to do it. Why not just get a statistician, put him in a hard-hat and lab coat, stick a HB pencil in his hand and a clipboard in the other and leave him alone in a room with one of these things. He’ll get down to doing the only sane thing any mathematician would do when confronted with a life-size replica of a naked woman, down to the tiniest subtly textured detail.

Now you know why statisticians don’t get laid much.

What anyone would want with nipples stretchable upto 400% is beyond me, but ours is not to reason why. Blessed are those with simple pleasures.

But for the rest of us normal, statistically-challenged individuals who don’t stand much of a chance of making it on Guinness World Records, standing next to the dude in the dorky glasses tapping on a 400% elongated nipple with a HB pencil and measuring tape, take heart. There’s always google.

Don’t be evil.

Go ogle.

1 – Hot Pink: the girl’s guide to primping, passion and pubic fashion. For only $29.95, you can get your hands on ‘seriously useful information’. Like Chapter 2, Creating Pubic Art: A Style Guide. http://www.hotpinkbook.com/

2 – If you think this dude’s got it bad, the FAQs inform us the doll’s pubic hair is realistically embedded, one hair at a time, into her silicone flesh… So, what do you do for a living? Er… yeah, about that…

Sun People

2007-04-18T18:52:00.000+05:30

How many tired souls this city houses…
On every pavement, I see sleeping people.
How in the midst of noise chaos and life, one slumbers so peacefully
Oblivious to everything but his own inner being.
Still.
Unmoving.
Except for the faintest heaving of his bosom.
To sleep, to lose oneself, to leave behind everything… and to never wake up?
You would think it looking at them.
Perhaps it’s the stillness within.
The sleep that follows the satisfaction of a job well done, a day well spent,
A life well lived.
How many of us sleep their sleep?
Tomorrow they will rise with the sun,
and while the world tosses and turns on goose-down pillows
and wishes wistfully for a temporary respite from their inner turmoil,
They stir from their inner calm, and return to chaos and life once again.