Mirth, memories and more

The 100% Perfect Girl

2012-01-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

Winter is still here. The park is frozen.

You're wrapped up in an old green sweater that smells like home. Your nose is runny. Your eyes are tired, your hair clumsy.

We've been sitting quietly all evening, the air between us heavy with distance. It feels like we have weighed it down with all the words that could ever be spoken between two people. It feels like we could go another hundred years without talking.

But then you turn to look at me.

Those beautiful big eyes blink into mine.

Before thought can spark into language and ruin everything, before the cold can clamp its claws around our hearts, before time can ply its trade and memory can trap us with its tyranny, our souls understand the simple truth in our eyes.

A smile seeks its way out, feeble like the sunshine. On your face and on mine.

And the walls crumble. Just like that.

I want to reach out, hold your hand in my hand, ask you how you are, where you've been hiding from me all this while. I want to tuck the stray strands of hair falling on your forehead behind your ear, tell you how beautiful you look even though I know you'll snort in disbelief. I want to tell you that I'm sorry, that I've been an idiot, that I didn't know what I was doing and all the usual lies men tell women.

But all that can wait.

I want to erase every memory, wind the clock back to the beginning of time. I want to take every word I have said and throw it back into the well of silence where it belongs. I want to hold you in my arms and never ever let you go; no, not even if you want to go sleep.

But all that can wait.

For now, all I want to do is gaze back into your eyes, smile till you start squirming despite all these years, till you start laughing and ask me to not look at you that way, till you look down and away, shy all of a sudden.

For now, all I want is this tiny piece of heaven to last forever.

Even spring can wait.

Title reference

Hello World

2011-10-05T16:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning. First sunny day in ages. Or at least the first one you've managed to see.

Bend, double tie your laces, look left, look right, plug earphones in snug and set off.

Fifty strides in, Anushka Manchanda shuffles in neatly and starts to crank it up inside your head.

Mit Jaaye Gham, the chorus croon around all her spunk.

The delicious perversion of running to a remixed song about rebellion hits you. A smile spreads its warmth thinly across your lips. Smoking it up couldn't have found a more bedevilling evangelist.

You find yourself starting to stretch your hamstrings. The calves begin to tighten. You reach deep into your lungs. Hold it. Stretch it. Let go. Let go. Let go ...

Let go.

Mit Jaaye Gham. Mit Jaaye Gham.

The sun slips behind a cloud, the stride swings sweetly into form and hits the rhythm -- stretch, float, land, let go, stretch, float, land, let go ... You put the girl on loop. Her high-pitched angst screams its way into your soul. You let it flood your insides and pump it clean right out of your lungs.

Dum Maaro Dum.

DUM.

MAARO.

DUM.

One more stride.

Stretch.

Land.

Let go.

One more stride.

HARE. KRISHNA. HARE. RAM.

Thirty minutes. Sweat starts stinging your eyes. The lungs start to hurt. The stomach tightens every time your shoe crashes down on the concrete. Every breath burns its way in and out of your chest.

The pain starts to wall up.

You start searching. Probing. Looking desperately inside yourself for something to hang onto, to keep you going.

And then out of nowhere, the voice cuts through the fog:

Duniya ne humko diya kya. Duniya ne humse liya kya. Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun. Sabne humara kiya kya.

Somewhere something gives. The sky explodes into a thousand pigeons.

Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun...

You clench your fist, start grinding your teeth; the more it hurts, the harder you breathe. You turn a sadist after your own self.

Sabne humara kiya kya...

With every step, you draw more into your self. Diving. Plunging. Snorkelling right down to the depths where you've buried yourself.

Andar ke bandar se ho guftgu si ek baat...

Just when all hope seems lost and you're running out of breath and the pain threatens to drown you, you start to surface, climbing, shrugging aside all that sea-weed, out, into the sunlight where the world's waiting for you, and you alone.

Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun. Sabne humara kiya kya...

And just like that, there's no pain any more. There's no point to it any more.

Mit Jaaye Gham.

Dum Maaro Dum.

Breathe. Run. Breathe. You just got yourself an unlikely anthem.

Her first letter

2010-08-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

i'm chewing through my nails,
the thick sharp taste of dirt
on my tongue, when i read
your letter the second time.

in the years to come, you might
never learn of this, my first
act of love, my needs

breeding into greed; you will
never know how i touched
what you touched, how i ran

around every bend your
evasive sentences took till
i lost myself between

paragraphs, how i pursued
your blue words till they
surrendered all

their meanings, how my eyes
paused for breath at the end
of the page only to climb up

and start reading a third time.

2010-07-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

He looks at at the labels on the drawers.

"NEEDED REGULARLY"

The words cleanly snipped out from a print-out.

"NEEDED BUT NOT REGULARLY"

Tacked onto the laminated wood with a stretch of cellophane tape.

"WANTED BUT NOT NEEDED"

He wonders which one he falls into.

Positive Impetus

2009-07-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Goal for August: A sparkling sonnet in smooth iambic pentameter.

I'm putting this meter-and-rhyme bitch away for good.

I will.

Watch this space.

PS: I don't even know how to count syllables properly :-/ {Oh yes, what's the point of achievement if you don't start off by undermining yourself? That way the dopamine lingers for longer :)}

:)

2009-07-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

3.2.19 ஊடலுவகை Sulking Charm
She
1321.
இல்லை தவறவர்க்கு ஆயினும் ஊடுதல்
வல்லது அவர்அளிக்கு மாறு
He is flawless; but I do pout.
So that his loving ways show out.

Look what I found in the good old kural :)

6:22 Slow to Borivili

2009-07-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

the train worms its way
into the mouth at Dadar,
wheels chewing in and
chewing out suburban track;
stations speck the distance
one route or the other.

the platform seems to float,
half-empty, like early morning
dreams or the inside of
a church after mass, bathed in
an aftermath of quiet, buoyant
with breathing-space.

the engine ploughs to a halt;
a slipshod crowd steps
back from the concrete edge,
converges quickly at the equally
spaced mobs hanging from,
and hiding, the doors.

sunlight surprises faces
spent looking out years
of locomotive windows.

the 6:22 travels at the pace
of a footnote, tunnelling
the collapsing slipstream
of the 6:21 fast, a lesser twin
trailing the trembling shadows
of speed, an afterthought

on sedatives shunting
through quicksilver evening,
trundling into sanatoriums
for the straggling, where
commotion is thin and
withdrawn, where the air

is already stale with the
distress sweat of waiting.

milliseconds later, it mows
onwards, motors humming,
to Matunga. inside, subdued
acceleration drums
the ears; electric smoke
shrills the nostrils; commuters

pinch inches, eyeballs
slapped stuck together:
slow-and-steady tortoises
squeezed inside a glove
compartment, shoving,
elbowing, climbing, testing

each other's shells, cajoled
into a play for patience
in this caravan of twelve
aluminium cages that
at least doesn't flee
before it arrives.

2009-07-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

I want to write. I want words from lands full of lush-white silence and bleeding-green language.

I want to disappear and not have to explain why.

I want to know that there is some meaning to the pursuit of truth, to wanting to do the right thing the right way with the right intention.

I want to be left alone with my contradictions.

I want my spirit burned clean by a pure blue flame from the skies.

I want love.

I want all the pleasures of music.

I want the warmth of memory to flood my insides and ooze out the pores of my skin.

I want to be reassured that intelligence can be gentle and uplifting; that wisdom is not boring, that it's worth all the delight and the pain of experiencing experience at its minutest; that ignorance of the heart's voice is the most vicious and vulgar of crimes.

I want a solitude that will chant life into my ears.

I want conversation that will make me want to come down from the mountains.

I want a consciousness that will rise clean above the surface and see what we all need to see, feel what can't be felt.

I want to be able to walk and breathe and run on and on and on and on.

I want to live.

2009-06-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

So, the rains are here. About time too. {cue: grin :D}

And I have a cold to boot. Which is not surprising, if you know the history I share with my barely functional respiratory system. Falling sick when you're alone has got to be the suckiest thing in the world. Yes, you grow used to it, but the suckiness stays.

Did I tell you that the rains are here? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy {cue: more grinning :D :D}... everything is so wet and so f***in' green - it just kills you to look at it. Wait till it gets heavier. Just wait. I'm gonna stand outside my balcony and watch it pour. All day. Better still, I'll pull out a chair, sit with my feet on the railing and read a book. Who needs music?

The last two weeks, every single day, I've been like Calvin, except that I've been pleading for it to rain. And now it's here, and it's gonna be like this for a good two-three months. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ... okay, okay, need to get a grip on myself.

In other news, this blog is the first result on Google if someone looks for Neruda's Ode to Bicycles. {Pats self on the back} No, I didn't have anything to do with it. Apparently people kept looking and kept coming here. And Google rewards quality, you see. Or at least, that's what I delude myself into thinking. {Before people start lining up to explain how Google's algorithm works, I'll be all snooty and say: I know}. The funny thing is that post doesn't have even a single comment on it. Bah.

Talking about poetry, read this book of poems called "Ultramarine" by Raymond Carver. Carver is a writer I'm beginning to like a lot. His poems are like short stories and don't quite fit the "notion" of a poem but I like them all the same. The intensity does waver a little here and there but it's a solid collection of poems. They are never about the writer or his craft, no showing off, no "ooooh! am i clever or what?", just moments snatched from a life and presented as is. It's interesting how he makes his poems work and how they leave that lingering bit of emotion in you even after you're done reading. Need to reread them again. One "cute" {ok, so I just used that word} poem from the collection:

An Afternoon

As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn't that. No,
it's because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy, not even sure where she is
for a moment. She waves the hair from her forehead.
Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,
head down. Legs sprawled. He sees her
through the doorway. Maybe
she's remembering what happened that morning.
For after a time, she opens one eye and looks at him.
And sweetly smiles.

It's fascinating how he paints these "word pictures", as he calls them. Lots to like about the guy. In case you're new to Carver, you might want to read this.

Polished off this book called "The time traveler's wife" by Audrey Niffenegger over the weekend. A friend had recommended it a few years ago and I finally got around to picking it up at a book sale last Friday*. It's "an old-fashioned love story" between Henry, who time-travels because of a genetic condition, and Clare, who meets Henry for the first time when she's 6 and he's 36, and gets married to him when she's 22 and he's 30. Did that intrigue you? Then you should read the book.

It's a good, well-crafted book, although the craft does show here and there. The book is downright hilarious in some places {like when Clare asks Henry if he thinks they are having too much sex; like when Henry's librarian friends bet about why he keeps disappearing; like when the older Henry time-travels to teach the younger Henry how to pick locks and pick-pocket}, delightful in the way it carefully ties every knot, engaging, moving, and much much more, leaving you with a lump in the throat when you put it down finally. I really should put a review up but then it's so much work. Oh, gah!

Other books read during a surprisingly good month for book-reading: The Black Swan, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, Selected Poems - Wislawa Szymborska and The Essential Hemingway.

Life is good :)

Meanwhile, it's raining outside :D

* - In case you're in Mumbai and love books, you might want to check out Magna Book Gallery in Fort; they have a 30% off on some books and 20% off on most others. The sale's on till July 3rd, if I remember right. They don't have a lot of books, but you can snag a few bargains if you're looking for classics. I got a Fitzgerald for 80 bucks :D

PS: A quick hi to people whom I don't know and are "following" this blog - much flattered.

Wish you were here

2009-06-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

I keep feeding the darkness my loneliness and soon, the night morphs into a monster, one with a hundred eyes.

Because silence can eat
only so much.

Nowhere to hide now. No use pretense. No escape. Nothing to do but lie back on the grass, hold on to my shadow, gnaw my knuckles and stare these fears down.

I'm so tired.

Because patience wrings
the heart dry.

Every minute is an exercise of tongue-biting will, every hour a recurring nightmare, every dreamless day a deliberate act of absurdity. Time agonizes, admonishes, apologizes, but it goes about its routine like only time can, quietly counting, one second at a time. Every night, I fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Never knew this could be this hard.

One touch. One whisper ...

So bloody goddamn hard.

... of eternity together.

I hug myself, trying to feel you in the space between my arms, searching for the memory of holding you till dawn came looking for us. I try.

One hug. One wish ...

So hard, so hard, so so so so ... hard.

... for lingering bliss.

Why is it that two people travel best hand-in-hand? Maybe I'm a little ahead of you on this road. Maybe, I'm a little behind. How would I know? You seldom call out. And so, my confessions are all a little tempered; my need carefully calibrated. Lest I get ahead of myself. Lest I lose you in the distance.

When I was little, my father bought me a pair of binoculars, the green of a billiards table.

Because distance breeds
demons and doubts.

One summer afternoon, I discovered that if you looked in the far end, where the black eye-pieces were smaller, the clouds no longer became bigger; they just grew tinier.

Because truth is a trickle
too little, too
fickle.

And if you turned the knob, the birds flew farther and farther away till all you could see was just the blurred outline of the horizon.

Because evenings grow purple
with twilight dread.

Have you ever done that? There was always this brief moment, before I turned the binoculars around and looked in the right end, the right way, one infernal instant when I used to think "What if ...?"

Because tomorrow will come
crashing through the curtains.

Have you ever been caught in that moment when you didn't know if your world was coming back?

And I will wake up
wishing you were here.

Well, have you?

2009-06-03T23:59:00.000-07:00

So the f***er finally did it. Well, like my brother used to keep prattling about, twenty years from now, nobody will remember Nadal's early exit and Fedex will have a career grand slam to show his fat kids.

2009-04-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that both the artist and the philosopher are preoccupied with the same domain, that of the self.

One seeks to cling to the self, to explore and expand it, to eke out a place of one's own. For the other, all attempts at uniqueness seem folly.

One seeks expression; the other, release. One yearns to be visible; the other will settle for nothing but oblivion.

Trouble is, I don't know who's what.

***

The smallness of your heart comes in various shapes. But then that is bearable even though it's the one thing you have been trying to escape.

What is inescapable, and hence unbearable, is when you confront it in someone you don't want to confront it in.

***

Anger and desire seem to be conjoined. You distill anger from your spirit and later you realize that desire has slinked out the back door. And when anger makes a special appearance, desire starts licking the edges of your soul. While the artist needs both, the philosopher seems dead set against them.

2009-02-16T09:08:00.000-08:00

Age is a quiet shutting of doors as day deserts.

Turn your back, knot your robe, shuffle around the house, lock the windows, draw the curtains, turn on the light and wait for the lizards to come out of hiding.

Age is renewing the newspaper subscription, feeding the cat when it isn't hungry, watering the cactuses shrubbing the porch.

Plumber fixes leaks for free. Neighbours make excuses to check if you're still alive. Careful : don't bore the kids.

Age is valium, bed sores, wispy hair, sagging breasts, oatmeal memories, cataract evenings, cancer lurking around the prostrate.

Fall asleep in the arm-chair. Drool on your shoulder. Forget dreaming. Forget worrying.

Age is a phone call nobody makes.

Watch the world shrink. To the street. To the door. To the puddle of urine around your feet. To the hardened lines on your nails. To your thoughts. Feel it shrivel inside your pajamas. Feel it warp into the furrows on your forehead and trickle down the wrinkles around your eyes.

Age is a dusty calendar two years old.

Slice a vein. Inject an air-bubble. Slip in the shower. Drown in the bath-tub. Easy does it.

Age is an ache for life that refuses to go away.

2009-01-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

today, in the afternoon, i saw someone walking. just like you. with those same free-swinging arms and small, tightly clenched fists.

i resumed reading but my head whirled around to see if it was indeed you. all along knowing there was not a chance on earth, or mars, that it could be.

and it was, of course, not you.

it's not the first time something like this has happened. a couple of weeks ago i thought i heard your voice and it turned out to be someone else. apparently, i've assimilated you more than i realize.

i seem to know the exact length of your stride, the point to which your hair tapers down your back, the slight narrowing of eyes when you walk, the way you wear your clothes, the rhythm of your footfall, the sound of your breathing, even the weight of your shadow. i don't know if you remember me in this way too. maybe. maybe not. does it matter? maybe. maybe not. i don't know. perhaps, i don't want to know.

thinking about the way you walk, the memories come tumbling down. like leaves shaken free by a gentle breeze. vivaldi's hopping violins in 'autumn' start to play inside my head. the air seems lighter, clearer, crisper. a sigh slips out from in between my lips. my heartbeat steps up a few notches. i feel as if i'm standing on the edge of the world, inside a small chalk-drawn circle; blue, blue sky all around me, not a cloud in sight. that is what you feel like: the edge of the world on a glorious sunny day. with no vertigo to throw me into a free fall.

it's strange how memory works its magic even when we aren't looking, how we end up in the strangest of places without trying, how two people can condense the world between them; it's stranger how clinical memory can be when it cleans up, how we've chosen to live amidst the mundane despite knowing the beautiful, how two people can drift apart, like ghosts, into separate universes.

i look down at my phone wondering if i should call you. and tell you what? that i saw someone who walks just like you? and what would you say in return? what would we talk about after that? breakfast? will we still argue about who should cut the call? i shrug and put the phone back in my pocket.

but then something's not letting me sleep tonight. yes, hindsight is where we all want to be sooner than later and wisdom sometimes can't wait till tomorrow. but right now there are memories pleading to be pickled. so here i am, writing this.

to let you know that i saw someone walking today.

just like you.

2008-11-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

the party simmers down.

sleep softened voices
cart across the terrace
faint bitter whiffs
of whisky; lemon-peel
laughter parachutes
into the night. above,

slow-moving clouds,
shapeless maps
of despair plotting
the longitudes of distance,
moor under the full moon. now,

his languid arm tugs
at the complying convexity
of her waist; soon,
they will be shadows
kissing
behind the water tank. there,

bombay skylines right
into the sea: a school
of anonymous windows
plunge earthward, drowning,
one square-lit pane
at a time. somewhere,

you are finding your way
back to yourself.

2008-11-16T00:34:00.000-08:00

sometimes
the only way back
to the beginning
is from the end
forward

***

how are we to see
each other
if we are both
invisible?

***

he eats
the newspaper
and reads breakfast

***

the staircase
is silent
upstairs or
downstairs

***

why does it
still rain
if all of us
carry umbrellas?

2008-11-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

The problem of looking for love, today, is a problem of handling multiple selves.

What we look for when we look for love is for someone: who will allow, and not just tolerate, these selves; who will have the curiosity -- and consequently the patience -- to want to understand us, and continue to understand, and not force us into spiritual cul-de-sacs and hold us hostage; who will nourish -- and not mutilate -- our various selves. Someone for whom we will be more than willing to spawn more selves, on our own terms, as we reciprocate.

Do we have many selves? I think it's safe to say that. But we need a little clarity here as to what we mean about a self. Is it the same as a mood? Because then that would mean what we are looking for is someone who will just tolerate our mood swings. And if a self is different from a mood, how?

The difference between a mood and a self is, in my opinion, one of longevity and democracy. Where a mood comes and goes as it pleases, a self seems to be ... umm ... self-sustainable. While there seems to be a default mood that all moods are supposed to defer to once their fifteen minutes under the spotlight is are over, our selves, on the other hand, seem to co-exist peacefully, having agreed among themselves as to who will take over when, depending on the utility of a particular self under the given circumstances. Where a mood is puerile, a self is mature. To make it more fascinating, perhaps a self is just a grown-up mood that refused to go away.

So then, do people have multiple selves? I'm going to be slightly presumptuous and say that the majority doesn't, based on anecdotal evidence (very suspect, yes). And even among the minority which does, most of them -- that is the majority of the minority -- are not aware of all their selves, in the first place, or what drives these selves. These people, then, either struggle to accomodate these selves in a world that is, it has to be said, more kinder to such schizophrenia than it was before because it offers more opportunities for peaceful reconciliation of our multiple selves without self-destructive rebellion, or, are confused about these selves because more often than not a greater degree of ... ummm ... self-control is required to attain a reconciliation of selves than it is to shun parts of themselves to retain the illusion of control; it's easier to give in to order and method than it is to push oneself to the precipice overhanging the abyss of madness that such schizophrenia naturally is. Because, all said and done, the precipice induces a vertigo ~~that is tempting to succumb to~~, a tempting vertigo at that*. "Madness is like gravity. All it takes is a little push."**

So, this then is the challenge of love: How well do we know ourselves? How well do we know each other? How selfless can we be as we strive to realize the essence of our selfishness? How patient can we be in our efforts at self-realization in the face of hormonal impatience? How willing are we to allow, understand and nourish? How willing are we to give in to the madness of our selves and yet not go mad ourselves?

* - Now why is it tempting?
**- Line from the movie The Dark Knight.

Emptied

2008-10-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

where love arrived
on the prairie that summer,

gallopping down the hills
on fourteen hundred hooves,

a lone wind-whipped willow
now stands quietly,

rooted in tallgrass,
silhouette dissolving

rapidly into the welts
of a scarlet-scarred sky,

broken branch fingers
pointing
towards the sunset

she left chasing.

FM

2008-09-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

needle sweeps
the bandwidth bare,

seeking to flood
the radio's circuits
with a station's soul.

needle -- lissome, steely,

lonesome --

glides down the glass dial,

aches across the numbers
of these deserted frequencies,

tuning through the wilderness
of dry raspy static,

yearning,

feebly feeling

for a crackle of life
from the atmosphere:

a probe

night-hopping between

planets plumbed in
linear megahertz space,
scanning the heavens

for signs of love.

Rerecording

2008-08-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

"Mmmm ... It is nice."
"Hai naa? See, I told you ... you like it?" :)
"Absolutely." :-)

A little after noon. Rain-washed campus frocked in green. Pitter patter of footwear on wet sidewalks.

"Do you wanna sit here?" Points. "Or do you wanna sit under the tree?" Points again. :-?
"Under the tree."

Two glasses of steaming tea.
Two pairs of hands.
Warmth.

"We used to come here just for the tea. Walk over from college, sit somewhere and just while away time over cups of tea."
"Mmm hmm ... I can see why." :-)

A deliberate initiation into rituals. A careful parting of veils. Peeks into the past. Hope for the future.

"What are you looking at me like that for?"
"Nothing." :D

The beginning of an understanding. A coming to terms with the reality of a dream come true.

"I know that man ..." Points.
"Who?"
"That man ... the one wearing the white t-shirt ..." Nods.
"With the beard?"
"Yup. Beard and the black jeans."
"He doesn't seem to have a butt ... you seem to know some strange men." :-D
:D
"He was my lecturaar at M------"
"Lecturaar? Is that what you call them?"
"Why? What do you call them?"
"Oh we call them lecturers, you know, just like how the English intended."
"Hmmm ... we call them lecturaars."
"Whatever."

Birdsong after the rains. Carefully testing the breeze, asking if there's more in store.

"Oooh ... look, there's an earthworm!"
"Where?" Looks.
"There, near the tree ... "
"Oh yes ... but is that an earthworm?"
"Yes, it is, must have come out because of the rains."
"Earthworms are like lizards, aren't they? As in, if you cut them into two, a new one grows out of each piece ... No?"
"You want to cut this one up and see?" :-o
"No, no, I didn't mean that ..."
"You're the one who likes beheading children" ;)
"No, no, I didn't mean that either." Exasperated.
"Really?" :)
"Oh, you're having me on."
:)
:-)

"I think he's going to the canteen."
"Your lecturaar? If he teaches at your college, what's he doing here? Your lecturers bunk class too?" :-o
"Maybe he likes the tea here too." :)
"Or maybe he's here for a smoke." Points.
"Oh ... I didn't know he smoked." :/
"Well ... seems like you know a lot else about him." :-)
"Oh I do know that he married this Scottish woman ..."
"... Scottish?" :-o
"...yes, Scottish ..."
"Really? That guy? With the beard and no butt?" Shakes head.
Giggles.
"Yes ... this place is full of these intellectual types, you know ... cigarettes and Sartre, wine and women ..."
"Hmmm ... Scottish women" :-/
"He used to teach us Horace, I remember ... had this sweet, melodious voice ..."

Eyelids narrow. Eyes start to twinkle. Thumb and forefinger of the left hand curl up into an 'O'. The other fingers stand slightly apart. A gesture from memory. An expression of fondness for the intangible.

"... barely carried past the first few benches ... you had to strain to make out what he was saying ..."
Looks.
Looks right back and smiles.
"... but it was worth it ..."
"Mmm hmm?"
"Mmm hmm." Nods and bites lower lip with a goofy grin. "And I would go 'aaaaa....'"

Laughs.
Gently rests head on shoulder. Dishevelled hair falls hesitatingly onto t-shirt.

"I should go and say hi to him, shouldn't I?"
"Yup, you should. He'd be happy to see you. My teachers from school are always happy to see me."
"But it's been a few years. I'm sure he won't recognize me ..."
"How does that matter? How do you know he won't? All you have to do is go say 'Hi' and take things from there ..."
"I don't know." Mewls.
"You're so useless ... I mean, it's barely 20 yards from here to there ..."
"I don't know." Mewls.
"Go ... go ... go now ... look, he doesn't have company and it won't be long before his cigarette runs out."
"I don't know."
"You're so useless."
"You know what ...?"
"What?" Raises an eyebrow.
"You should go talk with him." ;)
"Me??" :-o
"Yes. You." Bites lower lip and grins goofily again.
"Me go talk with him? Yeah right! And what would I talk with him?"
"Anything. You know ... you could talk to him about Schopenhauer ... I'm sure he'll be happy to chat with you."
"Yeah yeah yeah."
"Go naa ... you should go meet new people ... that's how you make your life interesting."
"Look who's talking!" Raises both eyebrows. "Forget new people, you don't even wanna go say hi to someone you know and here you are asking me ..."
"See, it's easier to talk to strangers ..."
Pauses. Looks up and smiles.
"Is it now?"
Looks down and smiles right back.
"Especially ghosts." :D
"Especially ghosts." :-) "I know what I'm going to do. I'm gonna walk up and tell him 'Hello, there's a friend of mine who wants to talk with you but is a little shy, so would you mind joining us for a cup of tea?'"
"You would?" :-o
"You know I will." :-)
"No, no ... don't do that. Let's just sit here and watch him."
"I can't believe how useless you are."
"I can't believe you don't wanna meet new people, especially interesting people."
"Look, he's your 'lecturaar'." Mimics.
"Oh, hush ... let's just sit here."
"Lazy bum." :-D
"Yes, that it is." :D
"I mean, God knows when you're gonna see him again."
"I know." Mewls. Sighs.
"Gah! Useless."
"'Gah! Useless.'" Mimics.
"Stop imitating me!"
"'Stop imitating me!'" :D
"Look, your lecturaar is leaving!"
"Oh dear ..." Sighs again.
"You're gonna regret not talking to him all your life. Go now. It's now or never." Exaggerates.
"I'm just gonna sit here like this." Rests head a little more firmly on shoulder.
"Useless."
"'Useless.'" Mimics again.
"Stop imitating me!"
"'Stop imitating me!'" :D
"Gah!" :-)
"'Gah!'" :))
...

Stretch

2008-07-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Note: Reader discretion advised.

Nobody told you this.

That the desert will feel this cold at night. A cold that permeates through to the marrow of your consciousness. Till you can't feel anything else but a dense blue haze freezing the behind of your eyes. Till your thoughts start chattering about inside your head, like icicles inside a matchbox.

That you won't know how far you've come until you're too far out to go back. That then it is but natural for you to feel vulnerable. That having experienced your vulnerability, it is a logical progression to pretend otherwise. That pretty quickly you grow into a routine of pretend and feign. That then, one day, tired and weak-kneed, you will give in to feeling whatever it is that you've not been permitting yourself to feel. That whatever it is, it will leave you crying, heaving, retching, will make you want the night to open its arms and take you in.

Nobody taught you anything.

To walk that emotional highrope between overconfidence and depression. To play shadow chess with pieces of yourself. To weave light from drops of darkness. To plunge a knife straight into your heart, watch the blood drip, then pull it right out and bring yourself back to life.

I'm teaching you this.

Fuck around with your mind. Turn it inside out. Try it on now and if it doesn't fit, keep fucking till it does. Feed yourself bits of your heart. See how they taste. Let your feelings simmer on a hotplate till they suit your palate. If something doesn't, spit it right out and pick the next one. In case you thought otherwise, you don't need a soul. Souls are for suckers.

I'm telling you this.

There is no desert.

There is no cold.

There is no you.

Everything's changed.

Nothing's the same.

Go now.

Idyll talk

2008-07-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Boundaries are crafty things. You breach them, break free, push them out as far as you can, pretend they don't exist, fool yourself into thinking you've escaped them, but they will always pull you back.

I see you sprawled on the bed like this and I have a feeling I know how angels look when they are sleeping.

Five more minutes. The alarm will go. But until then the peaceful rhythm of your breathing pervades the room. Every morning this room feels full of your soul, exhaled in tiny puffs throughout the night, for me to breathe in and fill my lungs when I wake up. I'm grateful for that.

It's good to wake up before you. This way I can see how ungainly you can become if only you would let yourself; how your limbs lie askew, lacking in their natural gracefulness; how your otherwise well-mannered mouth lies open, blissfully unaware of my surreptitious gaze; how your carefully disheveled hair is now a clumsy mop covering most of your face.

Yesterday, somebody asked me a question. An important question.

It was only after I finished answering that I realized I had used your words, your lines, your answers. A grin and a shake of the head later, I was back at work.

I bend down to your ears and tell you about this rather curious incident. You mumble something about keeping it quiet.

You look beautiful. I tell you this too. When you are sleeping. You mumble some more. Yes, precious, I know I'm a little mean. But then I like talking to you when you're sleeping. In the silly hope that I may figure in your dreams. Also because, sometimes, there's not enough space between two people to accommodate two sets of feelings; especially feelings of the magnitude you and I possess for each other. So yes, I talk to you when you're sleeping. I'm perfectly fine with that. Maybe you're not but then how would you know huh? Wait. Do you talk to me when I'm sleeping? Hmmm ... now that would be very naughty.

Sometimes, seeing you asleep, I wonder where you wander off to behind those closed eyelids, think about what those fluttering eyeballs might be seeing. There have been times when I've wanted to ask you about your nightmares. But then I was -- and am -- content holding you close till you fell asleep again. Some day, maybe, you'll tell me; you'll tell me about those magical lands you go visiting every night, free from the pressures of circumstance and the demands of protocol; you'll tell me what makes you wake up on some mornings with a twinkle in those soft lovely eyes; you'll tell me what scares you too. And as you tell me, I'll hold you closer. And listen intently to every word that you will say.

There is so much that I don't know about you. But then there's so much that I don't reveal too. Yes, I know it worries you a little that my eyes don't tell you a lot. I also know how courageous you are to believe in me despite that. Especially when you're so fluent in the language of the eyes. But then how do I tell you that I hide myself in between your worlds? That the only way for you to truly know me is to sleep and yet not sleep?

Perhaps, the resulting distance because of this lack of knowledge really doesn't matter. Yet, with every hectic day, when the world forces our lives apart, when uncertainty pulls us asunder, this distance only grows. Only for us to furiously converse through the evenings and the nights, in a desperate bid to come closer again, till you fall asleep out of exhaustion from too many thoughts thought and too many words spoken.

Running to stay at the same place.

Yet we try. Not because we have to, but because we want to.

And then there are times, like today, when I get tired of the purposefulness of our words, when I feel like tying my share onto a balloon and setting them afloat in your general direction without worrying about whether they will reach you or not.

At times like this, I talk to you when you're sleeping.

And my lips are slowly getting used to the intimacy of whispering your name between them.

One more minute. The alarm will intrude rudely. You will wake up, like a diver coming up for air. And in the ensuing sloppiness of your movements, when your arms flail out, when you reach for me in that endearing half-asleep-half-awake way, when your love lacks the sophistication that you insist on imposing upon it, I will steal a kiss, or two, so that I may feel the trembling hope of heaven on your lips ... for one more day.

Confession

2008-06-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

This is what they call "inspiration". Talk about about role models.

More Murakami.

PS: One is still on a break ...

brb

2008-06-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

Soon. See you in July.

PS: Yes, I've hardly been here the last few months but still ...

Loyola

2008-05-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

[Rewritten to eschew obfuscation]

Where does time go?

Ancient walls whitewashed to hurt the eyes. Smell of fresh paint moistens the imagination. The mind is visited by visions of time serving detention between layers of fossilized alabaster, by the feeble shapes of stairway conversations snatched during recess.

The weight of a century bears down on the cross-beams. The heaviness of routine, like a stubborn odour, hangs everywhere: of 45-minute periods and weekly time-tables; of monthly tests and quarterly exams; of annual fests and summer vacations ... generations of rebellion disciplined around a time-regimented education.

Cool hard benches, languid yet orderly; ebony and varnish. The familiar comforts of butt on academic wood and desktop graffiti. 'Suneetha'. 'Crazy bitch'. A mean bolt of lightning in fashionable Powerpuff pink -- someone with a sense of humour.

***

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

-- Lines from 'But I can't', A villanelle by W. H. Auden

***

Tension ticks in the air. Twenty minutes left.

Tall Jesuit windows paired with ventilators above; three spare pairs to a wall.

Wind hustles the broad corridors outside. Neem trees sway religiously in the morning sun. The 9.17 rolls into the station in the distance, slows downs, breathes itself to a stop.

A small steel stool stands outside the doorway, shining in the sun; a green plastic pot sits on top, filled neck deep with water; uncouth aluminium tumbler lolls from a blue nylon cord tied around the mouth of the pot.

The train booms, leaves.

Pitted blackboard sprawls across the wall up front; poster of the Virgin Mother overhead. Chalk-white-dust nostalgia. 'Class Strength: 40'. 'Boys: 23'. Boys ... 'Girls: 17'. Girls ... 'Present: 37'. 'Absent: 3'. The luxury of redundant information.

The 9.27 rumbles in punctually. Pencil points are poked against trembling fingertips. Three minutes left. Prayers push past pursed lips.

***

Time doesn't go anywhere.

Time comes here to file her nails sitting in the library, to dry her long white hair while she waits reading a book in the cafeteria, to lie under the trees in the campus and balance her soulsheets.

Time comes here when she's tired of herself.

Time comes here when she wants to grow old.

Kleenex

2008-05-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

ANNABEL: What is that?

KATHLEEN: A handkerchief. Oh my, do children not even know what handkerchiefs are? A handkerchief is a Kleenex you don't throw away.

-- You've Got Mail, 1998

I have this little ritual I go through whenever I leave home. I feel myself up in the following order: right back pocket: wallet - check; left front pocket: mobile phone - check; right front pocket: handkerchief - check. The last part of the ritual's been the same for the last 12-13 years, ever since I started wearing "full pants", before I started carrying a wallet and before a mobile phone became a "necessity". And prior to "full pants" I didn't bother about sweat or snoot. A sleeve was always handy.

Now imagine me walking around with a box of Kleenex in my pocket. I might as well carry a wad of toilet paper around too. Just in case.

I don't understand this Kleenex fascination at various levels.

It's not economically viable. A kerchief is a one-time investment. Kleenex is just recurring cost.

The logistics are horrible. You can flirt with Kleenex but you can never bring it home. But a handkerchief's like that boyfriend who's always around. And when you want to dump the Kleenex, you need to find a dust-bin because oh-the-horror of being seen with a used Kleenex! A self-effacing handkerchief, on the other hand, can be neatly folded and tucked back into your pocket or a hand-bag, as the case may be.

I used to think it had something to do with sophistication but what could be more sophisticated than the elegant tip of a double-folded silk handkerchief sticking out of the top of a breast pocket?

Besides, I haven't heard of people gifting Kleenex at weddings.

Point is: One handkerchief is worth a thousand kleenex.

Period.

2008-05-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Every evening, the sunset fills up my room.

No, make that: Every evening, I let the sunset fill my room up. It's a very deliberate act, delusive, egocentric and narcissistic.

Tchaikovsky starts to play on my Nokia at 3 'o' clock. I switch off the fan, reach for my mobile phone -- a little amused at the thought of the eternal inside a box, switch it off, reset the alarm from 1500 to 0700. I walk over to the windows on the western wall, pull aside the curtains thereby diluting the darkness, unlatch the panes, swing them open and stand back.

I watch how sunlight instantly floods the room, how its fingers seem to intimately know every nook and corner of my room. Like the caresses of an old lover. Well, almost.

I then plod back to mulling over information asymmetry and the marriage market; or plunge right back into a conversation about Chitrangda Singh on GTalk; or come back to a high-pitched argument with Mr. Schopenhauer about women ... sometimes I just listen to Atif Aslam and sit in my chair, doing nothing.

Self-improvement is masturbation.

Sometimes I talk with a certain Tyler Durden.

Self-destruction is the answer.

Presently, the superstar in the sky dips below the sunshade, swinging down his chosen longitude for the day.

Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to stand somewhere on that precise geographical minute, in the full glare of the setting sun, at that confabulation of space and time.

Sometimes I think about a ball of sunlight, bursting out of the sun's core, unravelling untrammelled through millions and millions of miles of nothing, the photons then tumbling through the atmosphere and a convenient hole in the ozone, thrashing through all that smog, past the grill on my window, all that distance, only to be stopped flat by a puny plank of wardrobe wood. Sometimes I think about how it's happening all the time and I'm depressed. Sometimes I think it must be lousy being a sun. Who'd want to be a sun? Not me. A meteor shower -- now that would be cool.

Dad comes in to ask me something and starts clamouring about how hot it is in here. I tell him I'm meditating and silence his protests. Sometimes I think parental salvation lies in being outsmarted by one's kids.

The room is turning a shade of ripe summer yellow. The marble flooring starts to heat up. My skin feels like a flame has been drawn across its surface. Naturally enough, I'm sweating now. Trickles start to crawl down my forehead and my temples.

Sometimes, I think of sweat and the travesty of its colourlessness. Would sweat be any precious if it was the colour of blood? Or would blood be any trivial if it looked and smelt like sweat? Sometimes I remember asking my sister if sweat evaporated and became rain. Sometimes I can recall the look of disgust she shot me across the dining table.

The window panes gradually blush a flaming orange, and I think of the rasna kid. Sometimes I wonder what happened to her. Sometimes I wonder if executives at Coke and Pepsi are involved in efforts to accelerate global warming. Sometimes I think of frisbees on the beach, of budding biceps and capri calves. Sometimes I think of our dog, Tiger. Sometimes I think of coming back home after kindergarten and tumbling with him in the yard. Sometimes I think of how he died in a pool of his own blood. Sometimes I don't think at all.

A twilight purple on the walls announces the arrival of a violet dusk. I'm drenched now. Hair roots, arm-pits, t-shirt, shorts ... I get up, shut the windows, flick on the compact fluorescent lamp, grab a towel and head for a shower, gently closing the door behind me, a little satisfied at having boxed the eternal. For today.

Ghost

2008-03-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

it’s almost eight.
they will be here soon.

doing push-ups on the floor,

turning your questions
inside out,

28, 29, 30 ...

trying to undo the answers
you knot me with.

the house

feels heavy,

like a thousand nights
spent sweating
inside a packing crate.

these alabaster walls,

still wet high
with your misty sighs.

my ears,

still blood-warm
where your whispers bit.

oh, this sweet distance ...

this ether between heartbeats
where darkness sows
chloroform seeds ...

and time? time is just
a crafty old river --

promises destiny
down its course,
but drowns our boats
before we even get close.

the door’s flung open;

they are here.

an inspecting wind also arrives
in swirling coat-tails;

they are here.

swiftly, like ants
without existential angst,
they set to work.

curtains curled aside,

the ribbed-iron shutters

spit you out,
off the flower-pot lined balcony,
down into the lily garden,
onto the streets.

slanting sunbeams

puncture the eastern windows,
releasing
the pressure of your presence.

this refrigerated togetherness
finally starts to perish.

the bed --

beachhead

where spiders crawled
on the sands,

where habits teethed
into salty syndromes --

stands straightened,
bedspread conforming,
the mattress blank and shapeless --
a stretch of windswept coast.

where we lay watching movies,

the carpet

is now swept
free of consequence and memory,
out into the cold February morning,

where you stand
framed in the doorway,

dissolving,
disintegrating

into dust distilled sunlight.

and so,

after the kitchen
has had its teeth picked,

after the rooms have come clean
and the corners have confessed
their claustrophobia,

after our conversations
have gurgled down the drain,

they leave

the house

an antiseptic tomb,
a skeleton ship,

and i sit hunched on the footsteps,

mourning,

turning your questions
outside in,

hoping to find you hiding
somewhere in the folds
of your words,

trying to exorcize
the answers you haunt me with.

Untitled

2008-01-16T06:53:00.000-08:00

along the sun-drenched roadside*
memories bathe in shimmering gold;

i pick one, turn it around:
a coin between my fingers

you - taunting the stars one dark night,
screaming how they will never know the gleaming road,
baiting them to walk down;
cardsharp gaming the heavens.

you - who became the game
of roaring rolling stars along this road;
us - a pair of roaming dice, rolling
under reluctant stars, watchful skies.

the coin of memory flashes gold,
light spilling from my fingers -
you of yore

your rebellion on the road, imprinting itself
like the warm smell of summer on skin
three years ago -

that night along this sun-drenched road
the stars you rebelled against
rebelled against you.

---

* - This line from here

Deconstructing

2008-01-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

Absurdity. Aquarius. Australia. ABBA. Ayn Rand. Arsenal. Alaipayudhey. Amol Palekar. Auden.

Besant Nagar. Beach. Beer. Beatles. Bhagyaraj. Badminton.

Cats. Cunning Linguist. Cruciverbalist. Cricket. Chess. Cooking. C & H. Coldplay. Cotton. Crazy Mohan. Conflicts. Contradictions. Compromises. Conversations.

Dad. Deep blue. Dumas. Dylan. Doom. Dravid. Dreamer. Deserts.

Engines. Economics. Eagles. Evanescence. Emma Thomson. Evasive. Elusive. Experiments. Escape artist.

Finding Forrester. Fall. Freedom. Ferrari. Football. Frost. Friends. Family.

God. Goli. Golmaal. Grass. Gremlins.

Happiness. Hope. Humility. Hunger. Help.

INTJ.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Jack Higgins. Jeffrey Archer. Jam.

Kerala. Kundera. Kishore Kumar. Kindness. Kites.

Lazy. Little women. Ludo. Lucid dreaming. Lucky. Linkin Park. Louis L'amour. Loyalty.

Murakami. Mourinho. Modesty Blaise. Meryl Streep. Marriage. Markets. Mentors. Maggi. Musafir.

Neruda. Norwegian Wood. North Sea.

OCD.

Paris. Purpose. Poetry. Programming. Philosophy. Photography. PGW. Pirsig. Peter O Toole. PhD. Pirate.

Quixotic. Questions. Quizzing. Queues. 0-0-0.

Roti. Rhaita. Rubik's cube. Realist. Redemption. Retreat. Renege.

SRM. SCL. Snob. Snoot. Seinfeld. Steve Waugh. Steffi Graf. Smita Patil. S & G. Sangarankoil. Sacrifices. Solitude. Sinner.

Tamil. Thirukkural. Tracy Chapman. Terry Hatcher. Top Cat. Tennis. Trees. Theories. Trial and error.

UCAL. Unforgiving. Understatements.

VVV. Vitriolic.

Writing. Wolfenstein. Winter. Warmth. Wisdom. Whimsical. Wistful.

Yellow. Yoghurt. Yojimbo.

Zero maintenance.

PS: I was bored.

2008-01-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

A particularly perceptive line of dialogue from the movie The Village goes thus:

Sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others
will not know we want to do them

Yesterday, at dinner with friends from college, when we talked about a whole lot of people from back then, it was instructive to note the names that weren't taken up; names that should have popped up without any effort on anybody's part; names that eventually had to be content with hanging around the dinner table like shadows.

More importantly, it was interesting to see people walk gingerly around their memories. Which is when that dialogue came to mind.

Seven eight lay them straight

2008-01-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

So after years of not believing in resolutions, I'm putting myself on the line here. Will review this once a month to see where I'm heading. Will expand/trim list based on progress.

Things to do -

Reading:

Lord of the rings
The wealth of nations
Intelligent investor
Genius
Get RSS aggregator organized

Writing:

Two blog posts per week
Review each book to increase take-away
One essay per month
One poem per month
One fiction piece per quarter

Thinking:

Work through Critical Thinking

Speaking:

Travelling:

See the Himalayas. Properly. (7 days?)

Sport & Fitness:

Continue playing Cricket during weekends
Continue working out

Music:

Movies:

Chip away at list. Least: 50. Most: All.
Review each movie on blog

Food:

Finance:

Get papers in order and file returns on time
Pick an index fund to invest in
Pick an infrastructure fund to invest in
Open that bloody demat account
Bring liquidity down to ___

Altruism:

Continue working with the RTI act
Teaching (?)

Kaizen:

Do what you say and say what you'll do. Commit and finish.
Give up coffee
Sleep less (6 hours?)
Learn to shave with a safety razor
Give up TV
Read for 2 hours everyday
Write a 100 words everyday
Work on that wordlist

Career:

Here, here or here.

And oh, happy new year everyone :-)

Sleepless

2007-12-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

He stands in front of the windows, looking down at the sprawling city.

It's three in the morning. The rain had woken him up, the drizzle easing itself in through the windows. Sliding off the bed, he'd staggered to the windows and shut them forcefully. By the time he trudged back to bed, sleep had left him stranded; incomplete dreams rapidly shrinking behind his eyelids.

He stands in front of the windows, curtains drawn apart and peers into the night, past the pattering rain, at the glistening road twenty floors beneath, at the occasional traffic slithering into the distance. He's grateful he can't hear the noise up here.

He looks up, his gaze sweeping across the sleeping city, his eyes moving from window frame to window frame. Neon landmarks punctuate the dark landscape; the lights ghostly and electric in the rain. Concrete spires reach into the sky in search of a capitalist God, one who will reward ambition and achievement. Office lights flicker in the distance all around him. Dish antennas mark the terrain; milestones marking individual progress.

The city never ceases to amaze him. Another symbol of a civilization's narcissism, an offspring of its obsession with itself, with the ideas of optimism and progress. He's never comprehended these concepts completely but he likes being here. Likes the anonymity that shrouds his existence here. Likes the relief that comes from realizing that he did not have to hang on to his identity. Likes discovering himself without any biases. Unlike a few other people, he relished his rootlessness, this sense of drifting that comes from living in a city and letting its routine overwhelm you.

The city somehow encouraged him to have a certain bent of personality. It fed and nurtured in him a set of virtues that permitted him to thrive here. The ones who flourished here, he often thought, were those who seemed comfortable with these ideas of rootlessness and anonymity, accepted them without questions, people who inculcated a self that sought itself in everything that it came across, people who were cool with the concept of an identity that is as much gushing sewer as it is languid shoreline. In that sense, a city was an evolutionary culmination as far as civilizational constructs went, a compromise between between complexity and utility.

MS distracts him as her voice rises above his thoughts. Kurai ondrum illai plays softly on his laptop, the blue glow from the screen lighting the walls of his apartment. He should switch the monitor off, save energy, be a conscious citizen, stop global warming, but he lets it be for now and listens to the song, paying attention to the lyrics, sleep slipping away into the distance ... Kurai Ondrum Illai ... his life has been like that for sometime now, without complaint. More importantly, without being conscious of the need for complaint. He smiles as he wonders why anyone would want to thank the Lord for that. But then he would take anything as long as it was sung by MS.

A plane sweeps in from the north. He watches it descend slowly. Again, he can't hear anything. Just the muted experience of watching a plane sans its defining sound. What is it about identity, about personalities, that makes people cling to them? He watches the plane circle the city. The rain must be making it hard. Must be a long night at the control centre. Control. Chaos. A city, he thinks, is man's best attempt at the impossible -- large scale chaos control. Every council regulation is ostensibly to control, but then it is a desperate attempt to accommodate more deviation. The framework keeps bulging as a city grows. And as cities evolve, this framework of rules and control dissolves into a polite, gentle anarchy that everyone learns to live with.

The rain gets heavier. He draws the curtains shut, walks away from the windows and settles down on the bed. The city will soon awaken and he tries to get some sleep. But then his thoughts claim him again. A city also represents that ultimate challenge which man is confronted with in these troubled times: the reconciliation of individual with society. The more he thinks of it, the more futile such an attempt appeared. If at all there is a pattern to civilization, it is one where individuals came together to form societies, societies from which they later detached themselves to retain their individuality, an individuality which later broke the societies, a pattern which is easily decipherable in the motivations of most cities. And that detachment marked the beginning of the end.

The next song comes on. Another favourite.

(to be continued ...)

2007-12-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

This.

And this.

I never knew a search to better understand Bayes' Theorem could be so rewarding :-)

2007-10-31T02:45:00.000-07:00

He stands on the terrace, stripped to the waist, hands on his hip, looking up at the sky with eyes closed.

A cloud covers the noon sun, lumbering from east to west. He can feel its shadow sliding across his face, as if someone was conducting a slideshow up there. Evaporating detergent from the clothes hanging nearby tickles his nose. Wet tiles underneath remind his soles of the storm yesterday.

He waits, counts the seconds, his lips mouthing the numbers, eagerly anticipating that energy bursting through from the sun, imagining the heat on his face.

The city revives itself all around him after the rains. Like a gaint clearing his lungs after a cold. Dry streets, noisy schools, scrubbed docks, pavement stalls back in business, packed buses purposefully commuting from suburb to suburb ... he senses all this around him as he waits expectantly.

The shadow leave his cheeks. And then, light. Warm uninhibited proud clean light.

He feels it on his forehead, on his freshly shaved chin, on the curve of his stretched neck, on his chest, on his back, on his feet ... on his soul, on his mind ... feels it everywhere. Sacrifices begin to make meaning.

He opens his eyes and squints.

Sunshine never felt this good.

Two stories

2007-10-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

Hell-Heaven.

Excerpt:

... while I was at a Girl Scout meeting and my father was at work, she had gone through the house, gathering up all the safety pins that lurked in drawers and tins, and adding them to the few fastened to her bracelets. When she’d found enough, she pinned them to her sari one by one, attaching the front piece to the layer of material underneath, so that no one would be able to pull the garment off her body. Then she took a can of lighter fluid and a box of kitchen matches and stepped outside, into our chilly back yard, which was full of leaves needing to be raked. Over her sari she was wearing a knee-length lilac trenchcoat, and to any neighbor she must have looked as though she’d simply stepped out for some fresh air. She opened up the coat and removed the tip from the can of lighter fluid and doused herself, then buttoned and belted the coat. She walked over to the garbage barrel behind our house and disposed of the fluid, then returned to the middle of the yard with the box of matches in her coat pocket. For nearly an hour she stood there, looking at our house, trying to work up the courage to strike a match. It was not I who saved her, or my father, but our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Holcomb, with whom my mother had never been particularly friendly. She came out to rake the leaves in her yard, calling out to my mother and remarking how beautiful the sunset was. “I see you’ve been admiring it for a while now,” she said. My mother agreed, and then she went back into the house. By the time my father and I came home in the early evening, she was in the kitchen boiling rice for our dinner, as if it were any other day.

My mother told Deborah none of this. It was to me that she confessed, after my own heart was broken by a man I’d hoped to marry.

Once in a lifetime.

2007-10-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

Long personal post ahead. Read at your own risk.

I had a brief but interesting feedback session with my manager and my VP the other day. It was part of a performance assessment ritual that happens now and then. More to the point, it was my first such session at the new place having joined the company in February this year.

Among other things, they told me that I had a lucid structured thought process, that I communicate well and report early, that I seem to lead my team by example, that they are happy with the rapport I share with my superiors, my peers and my juniors, and that, in their opinion, I've gone beyond the call of duty when it came to maintaining good customer relations (the customer being our collaborators in Hannover). They didn't have any negative feedback and wound up the session asking me to raise the bar a notch.

I somehow downplay achievements and tend to obsess over my failures to the point of losing sleep. I think it's a throwback to a middle-class upbringing where one was told not to 'think too much of oneself' and that failure was always around the corner. To be fair to my parents, I think it probably was their way of instilling humility in their children (and God knows my brother and I needed to learn that quality!). And there have been times when I've regretted not feeling good about things I've done. So I left the cabin with a grin plastered on my face and a warm feeling climbing up my back (no, it wasn't the difference in the AC).

I guess what made me happy is that a few months after I started working three-and-a-half years ago, I came to the painful conclusion that my thinking wasn't as good as it needed to be, and that despite being good at my job, I sucked when it came to communicating (not just talking and arguing, you know). More importantly, I could never fit snugly into a team. I guess it was due to my inability to take sides, my commitment towards being unbiased and a strange principle that personal relationships at work could only hinder professional output. My team-mates tended to look at me as this humourless guy they could turn to for help but not someone they could feel comfortable with.

Introspection and self-improvement are something I'm big on. Looking back, I think my interest in philosophy seems to have paid off in other areas of my life as well. Being an engineer, in my opinion, asks you to play the devil with yourself on a daily basis (which is not to say other professions don't; I'm just talking from my experiences and from a purely personal viewpoint). It somehow is never enough to solve a problem. You need to solve it in the right way. And at times, the most beautiful way possible, even if 'most beautiful' is synonymous with 'cheap' (or 'cost effective' to use jargon). One somehow needs to cultivate the dual ability to tirelessly generate solutions (De Bono anybody?) and choose between them without being sentimental. Philosophy, to me, seems to ask of you the same. To look at various truths, see if there are any others that have been left out in the bargain and evaluate them objectively purely from a need-to-use basis. This is where people get it wrong when they say philosophy is such an arm-chair science (or art, if you want) and that poetry is for the jobless. If poetry is about acknowledging human frailty, philosophy is about the human ability to gather the courage to find ways to live with that vulnerability. Philosophy is all about practical usage.

This blog seems to have affected me in ways I can't quantify. If anything, I've learnt to communicate, to write for an audience logically and clearly, to listen and argue patiently, despite the few occasions when I've lost my cool (For a SWOT analysis at my first job, I wrote 'Weakness - inability to tolerate fools'; I think I've improved on that too :)). I can't overstate the importance of keeping an open mind, to acknowledge that you were wrong (and stick to your guns when you're right) and to understand that the point of a debate are the perspectives that one comes away with. But then again, I've learnt to be ruthless when dismissing trite, poorly reasoned arguments. It's a tricky balance and one I struggle to achieve on a lot of occasions. I've learnt that when communicating, it's not enough to be professionally blunt but that with every word you speak and with every line you type, you are building a relationship that will help you do your work better (I know that's a very capitalistic way of looking at it but let's not give in to romanticism here). That, in many ways, is the single most important lesson I've learnt. Anything that will help you work better without sacrificing your integrity needs to be worked upon.

Leading is something that comes naturally to me only under certain situations -- either on a playing field or where there is an established hierarchy of authority. Whenever I find myself outside these "set-piece" situations, a social outing for example, I'm a very reluctant leader. I think I like it when people don't have a choice but to obey. But if it comes to coaxing or cajoling people or using one's charm, I shy away (too egoistic you see). It's not something that comes naturally to me. But then like everything, it's something I've worked upon. You see people like Ganguly and Dravid and you learn that charm and man-management are as important as leading by example. One without the other is useless. Grovel when you need to grovel; yell when you need to yell. Like I said, anything that helps you to work better without sacrificing your integrity. Earlier, in my first job, my boss used to like me because I would "call a spade a spade" and that I would not think twice about "challenging people outright". While I still think those are qualities one must have, I've realized that the "packaging" matters. That you need to take people along with you. Iniya ulavaaga innaadha kooral / Kani iruppa kaai kavarndhatru.

While I'm glad that I've been able to break out of a 'personality-shell', I can't help but think if I've lost a little bit of myself in the process. Like I was telling a friend the other day, I seem to have lost the ability to write poetry spontaneously (not that those poems were any good but still ...). Whenever I write a poem these days, it's with a lot of effort and exertion of every nuance of the craft that I've learnt. I used to be able to sit back, not let pressure get to me and generally be lax. But now I'm running all day to meet some deadline or the other, professional or personal. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I think the trick with self-improvement is to indulge in it only as long as the marginal utility of improvement remains high and let go once the law of diminishing returns sets in. That is something I still need to figure out. But in the meantime, there's a bar I need to keep pushing higher.

2007-10-09T03:02:00.000-07:00

A poem discovered recently.

***

No Matter Where We Go - Henrik Nordbrandt

No matter where we go

we always arrive too late

to experience what we left to find.

And in whatever cities we stay

it is the houses where it is too late to return

the gardens where it's too late to spend a moonlit night

and the women whom it's too late to love

that disturb us with their intangible presence.

And whatever streets we think we know

take us past the gardens we are searching for

whose heavy fragance spreads throughout the neighborhood.

And whatever houses we return to

we arrive too late at night to be recognized

And in whatever rivers we look for our reflections

we see ourselves only when we have turned our backs.

Translated by Alexander taylor

***

Found this poem in "The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry". The reason this poem appeals to me is the quiet sense of existential anguish that it's dowsed in, the realization that life lies tantalizingly close but perenially beyond one's fingertips and that it's always too late.

What is more important, I think, is the realization that -- for some of us at least -- the possibility of something -- dreams, an alternate world, love -- will always appeal more than the reality around us. This conflict, this emotional tug-of-war between yearning for a distant possibility and settling for an immediate secure reality, this confrontation of the abstract with the concrete is a theme of many lives*.

What I like is the way Nordbrandt brings about the insufficiency of this mortal life, how meagre it is compared to the substantial human appetite for experience, how there is never enough time to know anything completely -- even yourself (And in whatever rivers we look for our reflections /
we see ourselves only when we have turned our backs), how one cannot love as much as one wants to (the women whom it's too late to love), how no search will find what it set out to find and how knowledge as we know it is completely useless because it can never ever be complete. I like the way he does not over-dramatize but instead chooses to just simply say, "disturb us with their intangible presence". Intangible indeed.

Oh and the loneliness that runs through this poem like a quiet stream gurgling through a forest -- one cannot but quote Bertrand Russell, "...an individual facing the terror of cosmic loneliness". It is rather discomforting to come home and realize that nobody recognizes the real you. But then the lives we lead don't afford us the luxury of such truths and before we know it we've plunged headlong into the delusions that sustain us. Because, at the end of the day, one somehow has to find a way to remain content, to continue with life and believe in the possibility of happiness.

Another poem by Henrik Nordbrandt - Sailing.

* - Including my twenties thus far.

The honesty argument

2007-10-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

In response to this post, a few comments talked about how honesty is a virtue. That it can't be a vice. My opinion is that "a virtue is simply a form of systematized behaviour that helps one to live life in the way one wants to", a means to an end. A vice is simply something which doesn't help the cause.

So let's suss this out.

Claim - Virtues can't be vices.

Counterclaim - Virtues are relative. Or, they can be vices depending on the "climate"[1].

One of the first interesting puzzles that one comes across in logical reasoning[2] is the "door-puzzle". A popular version of it goes like this - you're a prisoner awaiting execution. In front of you are two doors, a sentry guarding each door. One door leads to freedom, the other leads to death. The guards know which door leads where. You also know that one of the guards lies. But you neither know which door will keep you alive or which guard speaks the truth. You are allowed to ask only one question to one guard. What question will you ask? And which door will you choose based on the answer?

The key to solving the problem is consistency[3]; that the guards won't deviate from their behaviour; that both the guards are capable of virtuous behaviour based on their own moral code; that you can use your understanding of their moral code to your advantage.

What if the guard who speaks the truth speaks a different kind of truth? A truth which believes that the prisoner (who is actually guilty of theft) should be punished, that the guilty should not escape. According to that truth, he would actually lie (so that the prisoner chooses the wrong door and dies) but still speak the truth. What if the guard who lies believes in a different kind of truth? A truth which believes that theft is a demonstration of superior physical and mental ability. According to that truth, he would actually speak the truth (in terms of the doors) but still lie (if lying meant any act that helped the guilty escape).

I hope you are thoroughly confused now.

The point is, in the problem -

1. Dishonesty is a virtue as much as honesty is. That is if one looked upon a virtue as defined in the counterclaim.

2. Dishonesty is the opposite of honesty.

3. So what we are essentially looking at is something like -

Let's assume that, as per the claim, A is a virtue and A' is a vice.

Therefore,

A' = (!A) {inverse of A}

But as per the problem,

A' = A {the argument that lying/dishonesty is a form of truth in itself}

=> A = (!A) [4]

Or, if A can be a virtue, A can be a vice as well.

The problem with terms such as virtue, vice, truth, lies etc is that these are all dependent on the prevailing moral climate. The virtue (pun intended) of reading Nietzsche is that he awakens you to questioning the basic premise of society as it exists today -- why should the weakest survive? Why should the strong have to relinquish their strengths just to fit in with society? Protecting the weakest is the basic rallying call of society today. And honesty -- as a virtue -- is based around defending the weak. Defending the weak then becomes the way society wants to "live its life", and honesty is a form of "systematized behaviour" to achieve that. If society were to focus its efforts towards ensuring the survival of the fittest (fittest in any form), then the form of honesty required in such a society would be different. Why did the SS thrive during the Nazi regime? Why was betraying the Jews seen as honesty? Were they all so brainwashed? I don't think so. Just that almost all of them believed in the moral code which Hitler espoused.

To conclude, 'honesty' is just a term to denote a form of behaviour which helps society achieve its goals. What is important to note -- and think about -- is that there is no intrinsic value difference between protecting the weakest and ensuring the survival of the fittest[5]. They are simply two different ways of organizing society, each with its own arguments.

1 Climate being moral, social and political

2 A certain three-lettered exam should come to mind right now

3 Now is consistency a "universal" virtue? ;-) Answer to the problem somewhere on this page

4 "A is A" anybody?

5 Which is why I will always consider Pudhupettai a fabulous movie.

2007-09-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

This made my morning. I'm no Aussie hater and I have a lot of respect for them. But every pre-match sign they gave out spoke of a lack of interest and maybe a sniff of over-confidence. This should get them to "start respecting the game ". They might have been rusty and over-confident but I wonder if they were smart enough.

I grew up in a sizable colony with a lot of kids my age which meant every evening saw an army of us playing cricket. Every now and then we would be chased off the streets by somebody who had enough of us breaking windows or trampling their garden, snooping around the crotons, searching for tennis balls. And we would shift to a new street with a totally new set of dynamics. If the earlier "pitch" was long and narrow, the new one would be short and wide. More often than not, one had to develop new strokes to utilize the spaces in the new "ground" and also shed old ones which no longer fetched optimal returns. The bowlers had to rethink their areas and the lengths they would bowl. More importantly, in the first few matches, the captains never knew where exactly the balls would go to place their fielders and what scores to set if they batted first.

Those first few matches were when you needed to be tactically capable and adapt quickly. It no longer made sense to have a good long-term strategy in place. Rather, a clutch of tactics became strategies for the time-being. It made you streetsmart, literally and metaphorically.

Point is, the T20 promises to be entertaining. Although the format appears to be more swashbuckling than scholarly, what will be interesting is the kind of tactics the teams use when they know that they have a whole new set of simultaneous equations to solve. This is as short-term as short-term can get. Australia have always been strategically strong -- have the best bowlers, fielders and batsmen and play the game hard. But the T20 is like hit-and-run guerilla warfare (although that might be stretching the metaphor too much). Strategic strength might not be as vital as it is in the other forms of the game. Each side has more resources than it can spend. It looks like an interesting couple of weeks.

Sun Tzu would have had a field day, I imagine. As would have Garry Kasparov.

Dil Se

2007-08-29T04:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday being a holiday, one sat around revisiting Bollywood favourites, namely Dil Chahta Hai and Dil Se. As a few friends know, the next best thing to the Chinese Water Torture is to hear one talk (endlessly) about DCH. Hence, in all magnanimity, one has decided to spare you that ordeal.

Dil Se is a totally different matter. What a screwed-up movie. One wishes one was in close proximity to Mani Rathnam when he was shooting the script; one would have promptly kicked his rear end every time he messed up the screenplay.

But then one likes it for a few reasons -- Ladakh in Santhosh Sivan's eyes, Manisha Koirala (yes, yes, one can be irrational) and one scene that loiters in the mind, long after SRK and MK (sound like a pair of monkeys, don't they?) blow themselves up (Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! One always wanted to say that).

This scene is the one where Meghna (MK) comes to meet Amar (SRK) at his office, asking him to get her a job at the All India Radio station in New Delhi. This is right after, as the world knows, Meghna walks into Amar's house in the middle of his engagement with Preeti (Preity Zinta) and he decides to accommodate Meghna and her crony in his house without any questions.

Moving on, there they are, standing in a dimly lit corridor, with people going to and fro. Amar, after having postponed his conflicting feelings, confronts her and asks her why she's there, what she expects from him.

That's when this door at the end of the corridor opens and shuts as people pass through. The camera focusses on Meghna, an eerie light from outside the corridor illuminating her face one second and the door swinging shut, eclipsing her in its shadow the next. This keeps happening, the door opens and shuts. Amar feverishly asks Meghna if she ever had any feelings for him; Meghna's face goes alternately from light to dark as she evades Amar's questions, refusing to answer.

And in that precariously balanced moment, when you feel like thwacking Amar on his head and drilling some sense into his skull, when you want to shriek out and remind him of Preeti and her endearing dimples back home, in that eternally oscillating moment, as Amar's voice pleads, cajoles and threatens Meghna, you understand; you understand the pain of a doomed love, of how the mind questions because it can't do anything else in its desperation when the heart has already lost; you understand how Amar will not learn the truth about Meghna until it's too late; you understand how it feels to be trapped in the temptations of twilight.

Finally, when Amar gives in to Meghna's evasion and accedes to getting her a job, one can only curse and shake one's head in disbelief.

What a screwed-up movie.

India Vs England, 2nd ODI, Bristol, 2007-2008

2007-08-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

England's bowling looks healthy even without Harmison and Hoggard. Anderson appears to have sorted out his rhythm problems and is carrying on his fine form from the Tests. I particularly liked the way he bowled at the death; yorkers and slower balls, disguised between just-off-a-length deliveries. Stuart Broad seems to have a good head on his shoulders; he just needs a little more experience. Tremlett had a bad game yesterday but I like what I've seen of him so far -- hard-working and sincere. And what can one say about Flintoff? Even on a pitch like yesterday's, even on a ground like Bristol, it was tough to get him away. If he continues to bowl like this and stays clear of injury, he's all set to become one of the finest defensive fast-bowlers ever of this generation. Though one Mr. Mcgrath would have something to say about that, I imagine.
There is a warm feeling that I get whenever I see the Ganguly-Tendulkar pair in full steam in a ODI. There's something about the way they build partnerships that makes me want to believe in marriage. They seemed to be very conscious of the run-out at Southampton and were keen to not repeat it. Tendulkar seemed to sense that Ganguly was having a bad day and took on the responsibility of scoring. What was nice about Sachin's 99 yesterday was the way his feet moved -- swift, twinkling and purposeful, like a samurai; made all the difference. Two paddles for four off Mascarenhas had me grinning. And did you notice those bat-twirls? Looked very deliberate.
The most significant statistics, for me, were -- Flintoff 10-0-56-5 & Powar 10-0-43-1. I personally thought Powar would be taken to the cleaners, but looks like he came good. Powar comes across as very gritty, but I don't think he'll last long in this side. Dravid is just looking out for a younger, fitter off-spinner to come along.
Dravid's 92 will go down in my memory as one of the finest ODI innings I've seen by an Indian batsman in recent times. I'm not taking anything away from Sachin; he was very good and showed that he still has it in him to go back to his old ways, if he wants to. But Dravid was imperious, like a tall, Mathematics professor, strutting about, expounding on geometry; his batting was all subdued straight lines and acute angles that frustrated Collingwood's field placements. And he kept running his runs all through. He drilled his drives, flicked fine for fours and in one memorable moment, splayed his legs, made room and sliced one over the point boundary for six. You could see that he knew India needed more runs, that he preferred a 340 over a 320. In the end those runs of his seemed to make all the difference. One other shot that stood out was how, having moved to leg and seen the ball pushed wide on the off, he loosened the ~~bootom~~ bottom hand, and played a left-handed backhand slice to sneak the ball past short third-man for four. Simply brilliant. The next time someone accuses him of being slow, they're going to get it in the face.

Ode to bicycles - Pablo Neruda

2007-08-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Another day, another favourite.

***

Ode to bicycles

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn't
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it's needed,
when it's light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

***

I tend to read a lot of Pablo Neruda simply because I locate his sensibility at the opposite end of the spectrum when compared with someone like Auden. Where Auden is flighty, form-perfect, obscure and intellectual, Neruda is rustic, free-flowing, grounded in reality and direct. It is precisely for this, this difference in perspective and approach to poetry, that I like Neruda. His poems inform my intelligence and mould my imagination in a totally different way than I'm used to.

Ode to bicycles is one of a collection from the 'Third book of odes' which includes, among others, another favourite called Ode to a Village Movie Theater.

Ode to bicycles starts with a few compact lines setting the scene up. I like how, in the first stanza, Neruda immediately creates an expansive feeling of oppressive afternoon heat so much so that you can almost feel yourself squinting your eyes. The usage of the verbs -- 'sizzling', 'popped' and 'blazing' -- is perfect simply because a) they suit their objects wonderfully: 'sizzling road', 'popping sun' and 'blazing maize', and b) these verbs are made to work a lot; they are physical verbs "that paint a definite picture" (see section 6). And they work well with "field", "infinite" and "empty" to create a visual effect of sun, sweat and a rolling countryside thrown open.

It is in this setting that Neruda introduces his posse of bicycles -- "insects" -- and within a few lines elevates them to a surreal status -- "silent ... translucent" -- ensuring that we'll never look at them the same way. I admire the placement and the use of the metaphor "insects" because it somehow captures the mechanical, oiled and creaky quality that a bicycle has, bringing it to life while keeping the proportions intact -- bicycles are insects on a scale measuring means of transport; small and unobtrusive. Metaphors can make or mar a poem and this is one which immediately raises the quality of the poem by a significant notch. I particularly like how Neruda maintains a) the narrative of him walking and the bicycles passing him by thus retaining the sense of time in the present, and b) that hot sensation ('dry' and 'summer') which conjures up images of muscles pedalling and battling friction. Moreover, the most important adjective, in my opinion, 'translucent', in addition to tying up well with "insects", brings the poem alive, instilling on paper an image of a bicycle glinting in the sun.

Having focussed his poetic camera finely in the first two stanzas, Neruda zooms out, adding other incidental elements to the picture -- workers, girls, factories and other vegetation. This seems to be important in maintaining that magnitude of space introduced in the first stanza, of a sweeping landscape where the eye can see till the horizon, unhindered in its vision. He also seems to say that these other elements are not quite as important as the object of description, the bicycle, which has now gained momentum and whirs as compared to barely stirring the air previously. Neruda also cleverly builds up that thirsty feeling, using "summer" and "midday" quite intelligently. One also gets a social sense of the bicycle -- that it belongs not to the rich, but to the poor, to the young and the physically fit, not to those suited to a pedantic form of life. Another thing to note is the "hard / beetle backs" which sustain the thread of the "insects" metaphor and also lend a quality of hardiness to the lives of those who cycle.

Tightly reined in so far, Neruda now lets go in the coda. He makes a few quick switches: from the reality around him into his imagination -- "I thought"; from the sweeping landscape to the confines of an imagined house/ common room (as hinted at by the door); from day to night. That carefully built up feeling of sun, thirst, sweat and grime is now rapidly quenched, extinguished, with words such as "evening", "wash" and "wine" which seem to instantly cool the poem down, descending it to the lower temperatures of the after-work hours. Neruda facilitates this by evoking "love" and "life" which slow the poem down after the marching motion of the first few stanzas. Having cooled down, Neruda again focusses back on the bicycle and closes exquisitely, knitting it with the "insect" metaphor, bringing it back to life in our eyes, even if it is to show that it is now lifeless, at least temporarily. He infuses a notion of sadness and abandonment -- the bicycles now "waiting / at the door" and then "fallen". The last few lines, in particular, are exemplary, especially "the bicycle, / stilled, / because / only moving / does it have a soul, / and fallen there / it isn't / a translucent insect / humming / through summer / but / a cold / skeleton". The rapid back-and-forth shifting of contrast is breathtaking: "stilled / moving / fallen / humming"; "soul / skeleton"; "summer / cold"; "insect" (alive and warm) / "skeleton" (cold and lifeless) -- a fabulous flourish at the finish.

One misgiving I do have with the poem is regarding the line-breaks. There appears to be no logic to them. Maybe it's got something to do with the translation, but they make me one very unhappy reader.

Noticed ...

2007-08-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

... this on a girl's t-shirt on my way to lunch -

I'm rich ...

I'm single.

Pink short t-shirt. Glittery lettering.

*Sigh*

The O word and Goosebumps

2007-08-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

Song - Jalsa (Remix).

Movie - Chennai 600028.

At least in two places, once in the second minute and once in the third minute, you can distinctly hear a voice chastely uttering the O word.

Postmodernism - 1, Censor Board - 0.

***

Saturday and I finally got around to watching this earache of a movie. But no this isn't about the movie.

A few of us were at Santham, settled in, when a slide comes on saying "Please stand for the national anthem". The audience stands up; the Bharat Bala video comes on (I hadn't seen this before). I start mouthing the words, more out of an attempt to see if I remember them than anything. Bhimsen Joshi, Balamuralikrishna, the Mangeshkar sisters ... one by one, a line each, all clad in pristine white.

And then, just when I was wondering when Rahman would come on, he appears to conclude, singing 'Jaya he' in that boyish voice of his.

The way he lets that first 'Jaya he' hang, the earnestness of his patriotism ... goosebumps. Totally*. Especially if you're standing in the dark with all your senses tuned to the screen.

* - Found the link while I was bloghopping; forgot from where.

Unforgotten

2007-08-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

your words lie
littering the floor,
like newspapers
flung here and there.

they lounge ~~lazily~~
on the couch, crowding,
cramping
the spaces of my soul,
confusing
the way i see myself.

my patience bends,
sweeps them up,
stacks them in a corner
of my memory,
to read later, at leisure,
when i’m tired of us.

i close the door
on you,
slip the latch in place,
locking within
a roomful of anger
that could burn
photographs and promises.

i cook lunch,
wipe the windows clean
of our arguments,
watch the news, and
take out the trash
from my mind.

when evening balds,
i stand on the porch,
anxious for you
to return
your love
at night.

but up in the attic,
newspapers lie
piled up,
awaiting
a whiff of disillusionment.

2007-08-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

The perfect metaphor is not that which insists upon a new way of seeing things. It is one that reveals a connection which was always there but never noticed. And having revealed, quietly recedes into the background, never drawing attention to itself but the connection.

Sunset

2007-08-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

raindrops slice
this sodium-vapour evening,
impaling
unassuming pedestrians and
black-and-white pavements
with tears from heaven.

soda-orange sky
hangs above
spotted with labour-union crows --
raucous wings
quarrel
with impassive statues;
voices caw dissent
against the statutes of time.

under a shy moon,
waves flourish
water-carpet merchandise
on shore markets,
trading foam
with salty ankles
and bare calves.

night, meanwhile, seeps ink
from underneath the sea,
drawing its blanket
over another day
of a hyphenated youth.

A Neighbour's Grief

2007-07-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

we gather like wolves at dawn,
clad and clawed;
grief rises early.
we hunt in the clouds
for lofty words,
hungry for meaning --
like starved vultures
pecking at a festering corpse,
constructing careful combinations,
rummaging our vocabularies,
pilfering phrases from books,
composing eloquent speeches,
seeking the aristocratic elegance
of that balanced sentence --
i'm so sorry ...
bad way to go ...
my condolences ...
fate --
whose polished weight would appear
neither hospital-maudlin
nor fossil-dry.

*
we hug, pat and
shake grave hands,
doused in a post-lunch psychedelia
of soberness and sorrow;
when tears spill,
we let them bounce
on our generous,
laundried, silk shoulders.
we speak whispers,
tracking conversations,
noting down a phrase or two
for next time,
preening when others struggle
and stutter,
gloating over the skeletal awkwardness
of their gawky emotions,
keeping score --
Oh! She was over the top;
What was she going on about?
Why was he so cold?

*

mourning, we walk out,
backs hunched from the exhaustion
of everyday grief,
gathering our slippers
and umbrellas -- what if it rains?
in time to catch the 6 PM bus,
pondering take-away pizza and
the office meeting tomorrow.

Shudder

2007-06-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

It is a little petrifying when right after this (where mention was made about a "value-vacuum"), one should read this (err ... don't judge a blogger by the url of his links) -

To assume the right to new values - that is the most terrifying assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. To such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.

Nietzsche talks about how the spirit metamosphoses from camel to lion to child. One can see how this is the basis of his argument towards the Übermensch. But somehow I have this nagging feeling that both Nietzsche and Camus had a similar end in mind while propounding their respective philosophies -- an end where man lives "non-destructively", despite the realization that life is futile and meaningless.

With Nietzsche, my problem is with the child phase.

But tell me, my brothers, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes. For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred Yes is needed: the spirit now wills his own will; the world's outcast* now conquers his own world. [Emphasis mine]

Consider a spirit having shed its camel tendencies and adopted a lion form. Now what is more easier? Creation or destruction**?

Nietzsche outlines three stages towards attaining the Übermensch -

1. Destruction of already existing "weak" societal values.

2. Creation of new values (purportedly anti-nihilistic values).

3. Continuous improvement or self-overcoming, so as to repeat steps 1 and 2 above.

But then the problem with the idea of a Superman, in my opinion, is in step 2. What is to stop these values from becoming destructive? What justifies creation? Why is creation morally superior to destruction? Even Nietzsche argues for relativistic values i.e. one man's virtue is another man's vice, which is in fact the founding basis for a Superman. So it is not hard to imagine a Superman who seeks values contrary to those of Nietzsche's idea of Superman.

In other words, why not a destructive Superman?

Jesus F Christ.

Tyler Durden all over again.

* The outcast or he who is lost to the world. Very tempting here to draw parallels to Camus's The Outsider -- should the Meursaults of the world go on to become Supermen? Where Camus seems to advocate an indifference and apathy which is, to go out on a limb, characteristically French, Nietzsche is all for progress and creation, which, at the risk of generalization, sounds wonderfully German.

** On a moral plane. It all fits in now -- why Ayn Rand had to go out of her way to paint Ellsworth Toohey as a sissy, at least physically.

Filler

2007-06-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Since we are indulging in fillers until I get writing again, a poem from W. H. Auden. Yes, another all-time favourite.

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total darkness sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

UPDATE - Thought I'd put down some of my thoughts as to why I like this poem.

There is no breathtaking sweep about the poem and neither is there stunning imagery. The language is all the more conspicuous by its lack of disguise. No, this is a poem straight from the heart, without any gimmickry of the literal sort.

Auden asks us to keep our expectations at the door with the first two lines. No, he seems to say, it's a simple one this time, listen well, and oh, in case you didn't notice, I'm still rhyming*.

Indifference is nothing, Auden posits. What's more difficult is dealing with feelings of affection and admiration -- even love -- when the object of those feelings does not reciprocate in equal measure. Hence, the title. No, this is not about indifference. No, this is not about unrequited love. This is about distance. And pride. And that's where the reference to "stars" comes into the picture. Why "stars"? Why not something else? Auden perhaps wishes to tap into the notions of distance and exaltation that we commonly associate with stars. Perhaps the object of his affections is not distant in a physical sense but is more immediate and out of reach, out of his league maybe, and he can only stand and admire from afar.

I like the poem for the way Auden stands and reflects on this emotional precipice, threatening to plunge down into self-pity. In the end, he restrains himself nobly but for the two lines that mark the poem out - If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me. He gives in, acknowledges that he's the one at fault for seeking an "affection" that cannot be "equal" in the first line, and then in the very next line, redeems himself by asking permission (in a voice that would be quiet and soft I would imagine and without melodrama) for a subsidiary position, which in fact places him on a higher ~~plain~~ plane, morally and psychologically.

The rest of the poem is about how Auden, having voluntarily relegated his feelings, sustains his pride despite the blow to his self-esteem that such an acknowledgement would obviously ~~deal~~ have dealt. He says how, despite admiring his stars, he cannot bring himself to "say / I missed one terribly all day." There is something about the words he uses -- "go to hell" and "don't give a damn" -- which gives us a clue about the true nature of these stars of his and where he stands with them. We've all been there, where ego takes over and seeks to heal the wounds of the heart. How we don't say what we should lest we appear "clingy". Confessions are to be private and even then only within the closed confines of one's conscience. Communication of such confessions to the object of one's affection (especially when they "don't give a damn") are not to be engaged in, lest the self injures itself further. No, one can't afford to appear needy. It is beneath one's dignity, despite what one feels otherwise. That seems to be Auden's stance.

Finally, Auden seems to conjecture - what would happen if the stars were to "disappear or die" and concludes that even if it takes "a little time", he would "learn to look at an empty sky / And feel its total darkness sublime". That, all said and done, all affection is ephemeral -- stars do die, for whatever reasons -- and we have to live with our selves, even if it takes time and patience, and that solitude sometimes is neither refuge nor escape but the only way to live in a complicated world.

Brilliant pithy poem. Shows how an emotion should be carefully examined and nurtured into words.

* - A friend once told me that he looked down upon poems which rhymed. In his opinion, a rhyme scheme always forced the poet to settle for effect rather than concentrate on meaning. Of course, he liked free verse. But I wish he would read Auden. If not for anything, for the effortless ease with which Auden rhymes and makes it sound all so natural, without compromising on the content.

P & C - 2

2007-06-18T05:11:00.000-07:00

Calvin - So this Radha girl ...

Partha - Yeah?

Calvin - You have feelings for her?

Partha - Hmmm ... maybe.

Calvin - That a yes or a no?

Partha - Actually, NO! Why don't you go update that blog of yours? Idiot.

Calvin - Who you kidding huh? I've seen how you shape around her, playing Pink Floyd on your flute.

Partha - Argh! I don't "shape" around her. What's wrong with you? And it's kambakth ishq, by the way, not Pink Floyd.

Calvin - Whatever. She's kinda cute though ...

Partha - Hmmm.

Calvin - What do you think?

Partha - Why do you ask me? How should I know? Somebody's left a comment on your blog. Go check.

Calvin - But you know what they say ...

Partha - What?

Calvin - [with an evil grin] Get to first base before you think of a home run.

Partha - Shut up! SHUT UP! SHADDDUP!

Calvin - Par rehta hai jab tak yeh kambakth jannat dikhaata hai ...

***

The strip that's linked to is an all-time favourite. The more I read it, the more I admire Watterson's genius. The way he slowly builds up Calvin's irritation (and equally, Hobbes' curiosity) using the wheelbarrow's momentum as a metaphor reeks of class. And the look on Hobbes' face in the final panel is absolutely priceless. To appreciate the idea, think of the same strip with the two walking at a slow pace, like they do in the more philosophical strips.

UPDATE: A friend writes in to say that "Partha" is not you-know-who. All I can do is smile knowingly in my eternal wisdom and say simply, "Postmodern".

P & C

2007-06-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

Partha - Learn to be detached and to take joy in renunciation.

Calvin - Hmmm ...

Partha - Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle.

Calvin - Hmmm ...

Partha - Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then, you will achieve your destiny.

Calvin - [blinks]

Partha - Calvin? You there?

Calvin - Dude, my brain always rejects attitude transplants.

Bhagavad Gita quotes from here. And ... umm ... pun in the title entirely unintended.

2007-06-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people noticed but this page completed two years of existence on the WWW a couple of months ago. Been an interesting time so far. Like I told a friend when I started blogging, "It's not simple."

I started this blog to get myself to write. To see if I could do something with one of the few talents that I have. I kept a journal in college where I would put down my thoughts now and then. But after I started working, the journal took a back-seat and writing ground to a halt. So when I started this blog, it gave me sufficient impetus to start writing again. And through two years of largely sporadic writing, I've had a good time here, met a few interesting people, exchanged lot of ideas, indulged in comment-wars and in between, managed to improve my writing skills as well.

That said, in the last three months, I've come this close to shutting this blog down on at least four occasions.

I think it's primarily because I find myself in a netherworld of sorts, a phase where I seem to have a lot of ideas but no port to anchor them in. I find myself in a value-vacuum where any piece of writing that I come up with is not me, so to say, simply because the emotion seems to be slightly insincere (which might be because I've been grappling with issues of identity for a long time now). And whenever I've managed to write something that's intellectually honest and not deluded, it's taken a lot out of me. Besides, considering the fact that I have no illusions about my mediocrity (please let it be; I'm not being modest here), it's become very tough to get myself to publish anything.

There are other reasons, like my life in the offline world and certain things that I dearly want to accomplish in the coming months, my poor time-management skills and the beating that my other interests have taken as a result of constantly having to spend time thinking about what to write.

Simply put, I've not been enjoying blogging. I need a break. Until I find myself again.

I don't know how long this will last. Maybe you'll come back tomorrow and find a new post up. Or maybe never.

Until then, thanks for all the comments and the traffic.

Bye.

PS: musafirblog[at]gmail[dot]com, in case you feel like a shout.

55 - 1

2007-06-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

He enters and realizes something's amiss.

He knew his apartment like a lab-mouse knew its maze.

Curtains open – too much light.

Sneakers slotted into the rack – too orderly.

And then in the kitchen, where she knew he couldn’t miss it – “With all my heart”.

He had to talk to the cleaning-girl about the hand towels.

Rahman Mornings

2007-05-31T13:28:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've learnt to carefully bypass is any "Raja-Rahman" debate I'm confronted with. I guess it's primarily because I'm not comfortable with my music know-how to even qualify to adopt a position and also because I believe one need not take a stance always. Another reason could be the fact that I enjoy both of them, albeit for different reasons.

I listen to Rahman mostly during the mornings, when I'm up and running for work, when I need to reaffirm my faith in the world and its ways. You know, just to tell yourself that "Yes, this place is going to the dogs but hey, it's a new day and you never know what's gonna happen". Ilayaraja (IR from now on) is reserved for the night when I need to lull myself to sleep -- his songs have this pleasant way of soothing frayed nerves and bringing the night quickly to an end.

It's not like one can't listen to IR in the morning or Rahman at night. It's just that my preference seems to be that way. Any inspiration I can milk out of IR's music in the morning seems insipid, jejune and foolhardy and not the cautious optimism that Rahman espouses (I do agree that the lyrics play a part too, but still ... ). On the other hand, Rahman is too angsty to listen to just before you fall asleep, whereas IR is just about perfect.

Anyway, here's a list of five Rahman numbers I enjoy listening to almost every morning -

Nila Kaigiradhu, Indra, 1995 -- I prefer the Harini version to the Hariharan one. My "Wake-up playlist" has this on number one. Ideal ambience would be to stand on the terrace and watch the sun rise while Harini's voice pierces the ears, rubs the sleep off your eyes and gently welcomes you into the day. Favourite line - indha vaazhkaiyae seedhanam adhil jeevanae thaeyudhae ...
Vellai Pookkal, Kannathil Muthamittal, 2002 -- Rahman as a singer is very under-rated. I agree he kills a few songs with that nasal voice of his (that's more the exception than the rule) but the depth of feeling he manages to summon makes each and every song that he's sung very special. This one is number two on my list. A sort of personal prayer to start the day off. "Hope is a good thing" (Shawshank Redemption anybody?). Favourite line - koadi keertanamum kavi koartha vaarthaiygalum thuLi kaNNer poal arththam tharumo ...
Endrendrum Punnagai, Alaipayuthey, 2000 - The dude song, as I like to call it. The undercurrent of youthful masculinity -- and it's not just the rap -- is so enthralling I would be very surprised if any member of the female species has a soft corner for this song for reasons other than Madhavan. I like to loop it sometimes, especially when I'm walking to work, because there's this mall abounding with women that I need to go past to get to office, and the song suits the situation to a T. Always brings a grin to my face. It was an anthem of sorts in college but then Camus came along and changed all that.
Margazhi Poove, May Maadham, 1994 - Very sophisticated lyrics. And as feminine as it gets. I used to skip this song as one of those "suppressed-woman-gone-mad" when I bought the cassette, but then Rahman is nothing if not insistent and the song grows on you. Moreover, Shobha's voice is so contrary to the kind of effect that the song aims at, it ends up complimenting the music and the mood. And yes, December mornings have never been the same again. Favourite line(s) - aezhai manam kaanum inbam naan kaanavillai ...
Anbendra Mazhaiyilae, Minsara Kanavu, 1997 - A rare evangelical song, and Anuradha Sriram's full-throated yet tender rendition melts you away. It is difficult to come to terms with the song ideologically but the promise that it holds of a saviour is too tempting, so I eventually give in and end up listening to the song a few times continuously. Favourite line - Like the entire song, but if I were to pick, then it will have to be: poarkonda boomiyil pookkaadu kaanavae pugazhmaindhan thoanrinaanae / ... / nootraandu iravinai nodiyoadu poakkidum oliyaagath thoanrinaanae / irumbaana nenjilum eerangal kasiyavae iraibaalan thoanrinaanae ...

An interesting biography of Rahman is here -- a tad too long but fabulous collection of anecdotes and quotes.

Contemplation

2007-05-31T02:09:00.000-07:00

Snapped during a weekend trip to Copenhagen.

Untitled

2007-05-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

Bing!

He wakes up. Looks down at his watch. Ten thirty. "ETA 15 minutes" says the monitor up front. He reaches sideways for the seat-belt, breathes in and buckles himself up.

"There, that's the city," the girl to his side gestures at her grandmother. The old lady sits up to look out the window. He leans back so that she can get a better view.

The plane turns to port, homing in on the airport, breaking through the last of the clouds. The city looms up slowly. All is quiet inside the aircraft. No banter. No calling out to the airhostesses. No watching tv. No talking into cell phones. Even the babies have stopped crying. If silence is prayer, then they were all believers now. Very soon, they will be back to being people, back to their quotidian lives, back to the numbers and words that populate daily existence. But for a little while longer, they will remain passengers, deprived of their egos and the security of their bounded imagination, forced to exchange faith for convenience, rebellion for conformity, time for thought.

He reaches into his jacket and starts his ritual.

Passport. Check.

Did Icarus have a checklist? Did it have a bullet point saying 'Beware the sun at all times'? Was it just testosterone, a fatal transgression committed in the fever of youth? Was it because he wanted to go to heaven without dying that the Gods sent him back? Or was it just disguised suicide? Pity. Someone should have told him. The sun never lets you near. Maybe that's why we glorify him. Flaws shine in intimacy.

He takes his passport out, flips to the visa, looks at the immigration stamp.

That's when they take your identity away, don't they? That's when you take a break from existing, don't you? That's when you become a position on the plane, a statistic curled up inside a spreadsheet, that's when your life remains suspended in this aluminium coccoon where hope is neither absurd nor a refuge, but a compulsive state of mind. Suspended until you land. Suspended until they stamp you back into the assembly line of existence, returning your self to you whereupon you drive away into the welcoming morass of your life.

Wallet. Check. Ipod. Check. Paperback. Check. Ipod. Check.

He smiles when he catches himself double-checking the primary source of music in his life. Music removes him from the mundane, heightens every moment, shades his life with colours he would otherwise not perceive. Music is what he uses to negotiate with the world.

Terms of negotiation. Give and Take. Give, give, give, or take, take, take. At times slave, at times master ... every moment you trade with the world, but then you like to play games on the planes of your consciousness, you don't like to believe that you don't barter, that you are above and beyond human need. But then you need. All of us need. Love, hate, solitude, communion, power, submission ... it pays to adopt an attitude to help you get through your days. As long as it helps you trade.

"Pretty excited huh?" the girl asks him. He smiles at her and nods his head. "Yes."

He'd helped her board her grandmother. They'd got talking. She was touring the continent with the old lady. He was on business. Strangers thrown together for the duration of the flight. And like it happens sometimes in such situations, a common chord had been struck ... You get on this plane or bus or train. You meet people. You strike a conversation. Sometimes you like the other person. At other times, you keep politely skirting the fence of personal contact and decline to venture further. Sometimes you bid goodbye and remove these people from the vicinities of your memory. Sometimes you exchange phone numbers, fall in love, marry, beget children, die. Where is the excitement in all this? Excitement exists in those shadows where the light of consciousness cannot penetrate, in the deluded mind which thinks but does not realize it thinks.

And yet, when people ask him if he's excited, he almost always says yes. He cannot understand why. Maybe it's wonder, a sense of intirgue, a need for confirmation that he feels, but he cannot bring himself to accept that since these, in turn, would spawn excitement. Or maybe he realizes that the glaring light of awareness is too much to bear and that people are better off living in darkness.

So, either way, he says yes. Because he's undecided.

The plane starts dropping. His ears pop. Another reminder of the imminent confrontation with reality. He can feel the plane tense, the metal plates pull together as the aircraft plunges through the stratosphere. All pretense is up now. Anything could happen. The earth zooms up rapidly, streets and houses whiz by in a blur of urban colour. The overhead cabins get rickety as the plane picks up speed. Faster and faster.

And then the feel of rubber on tarmac, the bumpiness of the earth below them.

Touchdown. Deliverance.

Relief in the air inside the cabin as the passengers let out a collective sigh. The plane taxis down the runway to the gates. If it were not for propriety and seat-belts, he believes they would all get up and let out a cheer and pat each other on the back. It brought to his mind a conversation from the past.

So did you like flying?

Depends. I don't like to fly for long. I like the earth too much.

Poor Icarus, he thinks and reaches up for his bag.

***

In Hannover, Germany on work. Expect posting to be sporadic (as if it already wasn't).

2007-05-08T04:46:00.000-07:00

"... and I've been working like a dog."

Work + Half-a-dozen books and the accompanying guilty conscience + Music constantly shuffling its feet in the background + A little travel + A couple of choices eating me away + Genetic laziness* = Zero blogging.

"When you've seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists” -- Someone I've been meaning to read for a long time and finally
got around to. Strongly recommended (if I may).

And somebody actually ran a search for this. I'm sure there's a message lying hidden somewhere but I'm not able to put my finger on it.

Be back soon.

* - Blame the genes for everything bad and praise yourself for everything good.

Doctors for villages?

2007-04-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

Why is nobody making any noise over this?

If you don't have the patience to read through the article, what the Government is proposing is this:

... for all new MBBS graduates to serve in a rural area for one year as a
precondition for being granted permanent registration...

It's the perfect socialist scheme. Government abdicates responsibility, puts clueless, young people on the spot by entrusting nation-building in their inexperienced hands and watches the fun while people squirm in their seats. It's a scam because our villages deserve better. It's a scam because our medical graduates deserve better than being asked to sweat their asses off, trying to clean up the Government's mess.

Here's why I think this is wrong -

1. It violates individual freedom and choice. Why should this be made compulsory? Does that not say something of its own? Why should social service be obligatory? People become doctors for their own reasons, some to save the world, some to make money. Why should the government assume that it has the right to tell doctors where to work? What next? Engineers being asked to compulsorily intern for a year, building generators and setting up communication networks in villages before they can graduate? If that's the case, why not bring in a minimum period of social service for politicians before they can contest elections? All I'm saying is leave it to the individual. He or she knows best. Starry-eyed idealism should not be forced down people's throats.

2. Why should the government have to introduce this scheme in the first place? Sixty years of fiddling around with the health-care system means (as the article says) "up to 40 per cent of the doctors posted in primary and community health centres fail to turn up". That's almost one in two. I wonder what happens when they do turn up. Maybe the patients are dead by then. Why doesn't the Government learn? It's simple labour economics. Make it worth their while. Invest money where it is needed. Establish a better network of clinics/hospitals with better equipment, hold the doctors and other paramedical staff responsible, bring accountability into the system. But no, they won't do that, they will continue to rob Peter to pay Paul, they will continue to squabble about Greg Chappell in parliament and wait for the next elections to come around. We so have our priorities in place.

3. Read this for more. You can see the situation already. Rookie doctors saddled with non-existent equipment, scratching their heads when required to make a speedy diagnosis. It's like taking someone from the junior Cricket leagues and dumping him right into the pressure-cooker scenario of a Test match. I'm not saying our medical graduates are dumb. Just that from a working knowledge of the present educational system, I'm very sceptical about their abilities to provide quality medical assistance, especially with zero experience. If anything, our villages need better doctors than our cities.

4. If you look at it from a corporate angle, our villages being customers would end up at the receiving end of very poor service. Why should they accept this scheme? Because the system is in such a sorry state they will be happy to get anything that comes their way, instead of rapping the government on the knuckles for suggesting this hare-brained scheme.

5. Why are the doctors and the medical associations keeping quiet? Why aren't they protesting? Where are all those placards and those marches? Because the medical profession is a "noble profession" and because if they say anything, they will be labelled "selfish". Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

6. In fact the Government deserves more credit than we give it. Staffing community clinics with quality doctors and then retaining them will mean higher health-care costs and hence they can't swindle as much as they are swindling right now. So what do they do? Ensure an annual supply of low-cost personnel, who a) won't have the inclination to hold themselves accountable and b) will purely be looking forward to the end of their tenure so that they can get on with furthering their career aspirations. Brilliant solution for eliminating any worries about attrition.

7. And why is The Hindu sucking up to this scheme by calling it "commendable"? Later on in the article, there is a mention about the real problems, which are, to admit, quite obvious. So why isn't this scheme being judged in the face of these serious issues? But no, it talks about "systems in place for the graduates who are thus posted, not only to widen but also sharpen their knowledge and skillset through programmes for professional enhancement and continuing medical education." But of course! The Government would be very keen to do that now, won't it? I used to wonder why people called The Hindu "Leftist". I understand fully now. As a so-called "responsible newspaper" why is it not taking the opportunity to slam the government for taking the easy way out? Cop-out, if you ask me. Both government and media.

And then people ask me why I don't read newspapers.

Ignorance is bliss.

Update -

I'm posting my arguments on some positions as an update. Counter arguments can be posted on blogs and a link left in the comments here, or can be emailed (find email id on my profile page).

The subsidy argument - "Government subsidizes medical education, so it has the right to force Doctors into one year of service in the rural areas". Assuming that a subsidy gives the Government the right to force the one-year stint, the radical free market stance would be to ask for zero subsidies and indulge in "richest will survive" rhetoric. Since that is not practical (India having a lot of poor people), I'm suggesting three things - a) Give a loan to cover the existing subsidy, b) Give students the chance to decide whether they want their education to be subsidized or not. That way, students who choose the subsidized education also agree to serve the one-year term, c) Provide the subsidy based on economic status, so that the students from the lower income groups get cheaper education and also serve the one-year stint.
The one-year term is an additional subject/ It is just like an internship - I have problems with this on many fronts. First, the motive. That such an internship will provide valuable education is a baseless and flawed assumption. Is there any concrete evidence for this? Has a study been conducted by any medical education board to say such a stint will add value? No. On the other hand, given the existing facilities and the current educational scenario (as evidenced by the article from The Telegraph), it won't be wrong to say that any education that such a stint might provide would be of lesser value than one pursued by a doctor on his/ her own. So, there is no evidence to suggest that this stint will be a good "subject" to add to the syllabus and moreover, the Government does not have the authority to unilaterally add such a "subject". The motive is not one of education and learning, but to somehow tide over a problem, caused by the ineffectiveness of the Government, with cheap labour. Second, internships are again choice-based. The student decides where to do the internship. He/ She has the freedom to make that choice. As far as I know, no institute demands that internships should be done only at a place of their choice. Third, assuming that it is a valid additional subject and that it is just an internship and that it's good training, why make it compulsory? Why not make it optional? Fourth, the proposal (thus far) is for the freshers to work, with very little guidance. How can one call this a "subject" or an "internship"? Again, this argument simply doesn't make sense.
Lassitude/ shirking responsibility - In a democracy, one has the right to employment, consequently the right to voluntary unemployment, and education. It is morally wrong, in a democratic public domain, to deny someone education, and hence discriminate against them, just because he/ she doesn't want to work. If a doctor doesn't want to treat a patient, it is still his/ her individual choice, one with negative consequences. You simply can't deny him/ her that right. You can't force them to treat patients. I will defend their right to not treat a patient but I will condemn their actions and insist that they pay the necessary penalty. That's the whole point of liberalism! And what is this about shirking responsibility? If at all anybody is shirking responsibility, it is the government! You elect a government, pay taxes to keep it running (which includes providing health-care to the rural areas) but you find it is not doing its job properly. So what do you do? You don't pull up the people concerned, you don't take them to task, you don't file RTI applications to find out where the money went, you don't ask why doctors don't turn up for work, you don't ask why facilities -- for which money was sanctioned -- are non-existent. You don't realize that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. No sir, you won't do that. What will you do? Suggest that stringent measures be introduced for certain professions, including forcing unwilling doctors to serve a year in god-forsaken places. Brilliant. Heck, why have a government in place at all! Might as well run the country ourselves. In my opinion, the well-to-do citizens of this country are being sent on a guilt trip. People find they are doing well in life because of their own efforts but are being made to feel guilty about not doing enough for the country (what with movies like RDB). And what do they do? Instead of being active citizens participating in governance and making use of the RTI Act (which in my limited experience of working with it has yielded amazing results), they support such schemes. Why? Because, hey, participative governance and the RTI Act are just too much work and not as cool as asking doctors to sacrifice a year of their lives. Why be intelligent with my actions when I can be stupid with my sacrifices? Might as well support this scheme, go easy on individual rights and feel I'm patriotic. My stance is this: the citizens should focus on repairing the existing system, which can work provided the bureaucratic hassles and corruption are removed. We need to make sure that all has been done and the system is still not working before going around begging for people to spare some time for their country. Even then, it will have to be of their choice.
This is an experiment and can be judged only after it's been tried out - If the motive is just to see if it works, why make it compulsory? Make it optional. I'm sure there will be certain service-minded doctors who would want to give it a try. We can still judge the concept by keeping it optional. I don't see the logical connection between judging this scheme as an experiment and making it compulsory.
We are disgruntled anyway/ Choice and freedom are mirages - (Personally, being a participant in an almost free-market, my actions have been directed towards optimizing my happiness, and I'm happy with where I am) Even if choice is a mirage, I make that decision to consider choice a mirage. I choose to believe in that. Someone else can't tell me "hey, choice is an illusion, so you might as well come and work for me for minimum wage". And even if people are disgruntled, they have the right to choose to be disgruntled. Nobody else can force them into a choice they are disgruntled with.
A couple of instances of strawman fallacies about how I'm advocating privatization of the health-care system make me reiterate my stance: I'm NOT asking for privatization of health-care. I'm purely asking for the Government to own up to its failure, clean up its act and restore the system to what it should have been in the first place.

Crossroads

2007-04-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

Will you remember these minutes whiled away at the crossroads, amidst the melting tension of traffic? Will you remember waiting for the lights to turn favourable, surrounded by the futile rhythm of idling engines, choking us with the exhaust smoke of wasted time?

Will we remember this claustrophobic interval, spent silently navigating the schizophrenic hemispheres of our minds, confronting the abrupt ebb in the ambition of our journeys, contemplating destiny while it evaporates like fuel from the alkaline river beds of our lives?

Will you remember this agonizing countdown towards the resumption of motion and the comforting continuation of our obsession with petty notions?

Will our lives become less ordinary? Will we stop having to squeeze enthusiasm from the pores of our dried up souls? Will we ever ride out with hope singing in our hearts? Will we play slalom with the lane-markers?

Or will you continue to stand and gape while life passes by in the opposite direction, forever? Will you have the courage to turn off the ignition and reassess the shape of your destination? Are miles more important than milestones? Or is it the other way around?

Will you remember revelling in the paralysis that lack of self-belief is? Will you at least concede that you chose to not choose and that the choice picked you?

Or will you, when you see green, shed all these thoughts like uncomfortable clothing and drive away, spiritually naked in the searchlight of your fraudulent existence? And how much longer can you live like a chameleon, alternating identities between hopeful romantic and caustic cynic?

Kal-El, Son of Jor-El

2007-03-22T06:26:00.000-07:00

I think superheroes are socialist propaganda in disguise (All that red in the costumes always made me suspicious). Not only are most of them disgustingly nationalistic (Captain America, for crying out loud), they charge no fee for their services. Come on, a cheque now and then wouldn't hurt, would it? Besides, why do they have to adopt alter-egos to earn a living? Disclose your identity, bask in the mindless adulation that is bound to follow, copyright your insignia, your costume and everything else that's got to do with you, start selling memorabilia and rake in the moolah while you go about saving the world. Nobody's going to bother. Unless, unless and until you, the superhero, are a commie. And think about how everything Superman stands for goes against the concept of democracy, federalism and capitalism. All that power concentrated in one place. Hah! So much for the moon mission. If you take comicbook heroes as the metric, the Russians won the cold war hands down. I was over the moon with this brainwave until I got suspicious about my own thought processes. Google gave me this which is as comprehensive a conspiracy theory as any. And while you're at it, check the date on that. Am I behind the times or what? Oh well, never mind.

Of course, if I had the chance to be Superman ...

Dear Mr. President, The attachment contains the invoice for all services rendered for the month of February. 798732 lives saved at a special price of $1 each ...
What do you mean I'm late?
What do you mean I can't get a driving license?
No Lois, no, don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking ... I turned off the x-ray vision, I swear, you've got to believe me.
Stop saying that everytime, you morons. Can't you tell I'm not a bird or a plane? Idiots. All of you.
Now, which one of you rascals stole my underwear? I'm gonna count upto three ...
What's a guy got to do to get a drink over here? Save some lives?
Listen Lex, I'm telling you for the last time -- get a wig, okay? Forget Kryptonite, that glare is killing me already.
Don't get wise on me now. I know what Bruce gets paid for his ads.
If it's my movie, why the hell can't I act in it? Besides, I do my own stunts.
Hi, you've reached Superman. If your emergency can wait a couple of weeks, please leave a message after the beep and I'll get back to you after my vacation. However, if your life is on the line, dial 911 now. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The little known joys of a weekend

2007-03-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

Friday evening.

I'm inside the lift, on my way home from work. Along with me are three middle-aged firangs in business suits, from the office across the corridor. One of them is going on about a house-warming ceremony, drawing parallels across cultures. The guy he's talking to nods, apparently very interested. The third one wears glasses and stands too close to the door, head hung, lost in thought.

The lift stops. Mr. 3 almost steps out. The talkative guy restrains him, "No, not here. This is the third floor. Still three left."

He then turns to Noddy, "Statisticians need bodyguards, you know."

Laughter erupts. Mr.3 goes red in the face. I smile sympathetically at him.

I can so see this happening to me a few years from now.

Saturday morning.

The alarm clock wails. I smack it down with disdain, wake up and loll about in bed, staring at the ceiling, looking out the window, thinking about the long weekend stretching out lazily in front of me.

And then I go back to sleep again.

Sunday morning.

Nila kaigiradhu at 6 A.M. on the terrace. Harini, A. R. Rahman and my MP3 player.

Bliss.

Sunday afternoon.

Home-cooked lunch and then shooting the breeze with a friend.

Warm nostalgia.

Sunday evening.

The soft, furry feel of a brand-new tennis ball nestling in the hollow of my palms; a catch well taken.

Contentment.

Life is good.

Rite of passage

2007-03-09T02:40:00.000-08:00

Years vanish down the drain without as much as a blip on the memory. And then one night, or one day, can hold enough memories for a lifetime, memories which mould your identity in ways you don’t understand. After all we are not the day-jobs we hold, the clothes, the electronic cards and the annual vacations; defined by all those places inside our minds we secretly visit, shaped by all that we feel but can’t articulate, we are ultimately a zero-sum of our days and thoughts and actions. And, of course, our memories.

The TV plays in the otherwise dark room, casting flashes of uncertain light. A commercial break. A little girl appears, all milk teeth and pony-tail, dressed in a doctor’s coat. Her father smiles at her. Insurance policies. For children.

He reaches across the divan for the remote control, his thumb already on the mute button before his mind can record the need for silence. It’s like that sometimes. You know what you want before you can think it through.

There are times when I have no questions, times when I seek no answers. These are times when there is no trepidation, when peace stretches every second into a tranquil eternity, when life is a maze without walls, holding no more mysteries, when I am the tongue that speaks every language, the hands that reincarnate, the eyes that see everything.

She lies silently beside him, her round face looking – and not looking – at him. The TV lights one half of her face, the other half in the shadows equally delicate and beautiful. His fingers trace the ridges of her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, the symmetry of her lips, engraving on his memory the geography of her face, the contours of her body. He ventures north – to the arrows of her eyebrows - and then south – to the cleft in her chin, to the undulation of her throat - and then back up into the soft mess of her hair. He kisses her eyelids, her neck, her shoulders … she pulls him up towards her.

Every now and then, a story settles in the corners of your mind,
In the corners of your mind like cosmic dust caught in a cobweb.
And then you have to write,
Write about eagles and hunters and deserts and gypsies,
About old men and young women, about love in the afternoon sun …
And when you’re done writing,
Done writing the story, you don’t know.
Don’t know if you lived and wrote,
Or wrote and lived…

She breaks away, a little breathless, her lips a little softer now. The game-show is back on. She turns away from him, pulling the woolen blanket up to her chin, and reaches for the remote.

“Shall I lock it?”

The host’s voice booms into the room, the glassy silence shatters into a thousand tiny slivers, retreating to the four corners of the room. Reality intrudes into the privacy of their physicality, pounding at the tenuous link between their heartbeats.

She looks at the screen without registering, without acknowledging the truth of the past few minutes. She ignores the warmth she can feel rising inside her. She had been there, had had the choice and she had made it. Made a choice she thought she wouldn’t choose. Now she had another choice to make.

The audience laughs; another contestant done away with. The host simpers, and ushers in another commercial break. She switches off the TV, turns, and looks at him.

There are times when questions plague my heart, when the answers ravage my carefully developed certainty, when the rat race becomes a refuge. These are times of anxiety and anticipation, a period of doubt waiting for my faiths to turn into my future, when life lies thrown open riddled with choices, when my courage seeks companionship, when I am the sheep that could so easily get lost, when I am the shepherdess who doesn’t know if she wants to be one.

She can see him in the dark, smiling at her, his eyes all crinkled up. It gave his face an odd mixture of youth and experience, an attractive blend of the sanguine and the sad. She lies on her side, facing him, feeling him under his shirt, running her hand along the side of his face, playing with his hair. She is amused by how familiar their bodies have become to each other, how some places are visited as a matter of routine, how certain touches are expected and received, amused by how natural it is to want without knowing.

He caresses her body under the blanket. They kiss again, eagerly, tongues and lips, hands and fingers, legs and thighs, teeth and nails, exploring, engaging, exhuming long-dead emotions. The clothes come off quickly. And they make love. Man and woman.

There is time, I tell him,
To ponder theory and technique and perfection,
To discuss postmodernism and Neruda and evolution.
But hurry now, for it will soon dawn,
And the night, quickly gone.

Tell me a story, sing me a song,
Make it haunting, make it long,
And wait for me to sing along.

Tell me how the earth smells where you come from,
How it rains, how the roads lead up into the hills.
Tell me about forest fires and famine and fever,
About your lovers and the temperature of your evenings,
Tell me about old men and young women,
About wine in the afternoon and lazy love under the sun …

He stops. They are making too much noise, he realizes; the landlord might wake up. He reaches urgently under the pillow for the remote, switches on the TV, turns the volume up, watching the green counter on the screen increment from right to left. 30 … 42 … 58 … he turns towards her.

Kaise Bataaoon Kis Kis Tarah Se Pal Pal Mujhe Tu Sataati …

Kishore Kumar sings. Dev Anand. Waheeda Rehman. Prem Pujari. She giggles, breathing under his weight, shifting to help him settle comfortably on her. He grins at her, at the ridiculousness of the moment.

Tere Hi Sapne Lekar Ke Soya Teri Hi Yaadon Mein Jaaga … he whispers into her ears, singing softly, tickling her ear-lobes ... Lena Hoga Janam Hameh Kayi Kayi Baar

The TV goes off the blink -- power-cut. The fan grinds to a halt. They giggle, unmindful of the interruption and return to their love-making, oblivious to their noise.

Be patient, my dear.
Did I tell you I once was a sailor? A voyager
Into the vocabulary of the heart,
Dropping anchor in time-trapped islands;
Islands populated by mermaids with long green hair
And unblinking eyes.
Mermaids who looked inside you and sang in a strange tongue,
Bewitching sailors
Who lost their way and never returned home.*

Be patient, dearest,
While I say my story and sing you a song.
I’ll make it enchanting, I’ll make it long.
I’ll wait for you to sing along.

Let me tell you
About boats and broken nets, about storms and sticky seaweed,
About men trapped
In the nobility of their ambitions.
Let me explain my secrets, my promises,
The bargains I struck with my dreams.
And then let me tell you
About wheat fields in the wind and rain-rusted ploughs,
About forgiveness in the dusty shade of a church,
About the flame in the villages that never dies,
About the songs of old men and young women,
Who sip wine in the afternoon and make love under the sun …

They lie on the mattress, a mass of naked skin, sweat and urgent breathing, engulfed in the quiet afterglow of their union, sated, spent, speechless, love-bites all over their bodies.

She lies on top of him, her hair sprawled across his face and chest. She tells him she thinks their bodies fit well. Like always. And he, like always, laughs at her.

He lifts her gently from him, sits up and reaches for the alarm clock. She reaches out swiftly, grabs his wrist and pulls him down. He looks at her quizzically.

“What is it?” he whispers.

“Happy Birthday,” she says, and smiling weakly, plants a kiss on his forehead.

***

* - The Mermaid reference influenced by Ulysses, with all due respect to Homer.

Bad Music Junkie

2007-03-02T00:21:00.000-08:00

“Picture of you in my mind” plays on the ipod. It’s a nice song when you’re walking. I wouldn’t admit listening to it normally. I have taste, you know. But yes, I like that part where it goes, “Why did it take me so long …?” Know what I mean?

I swing out of the office gates and stride right into rush hour on Mount Road.

Mount Road at twilight. Surreal. Gemini flyover dominates the landscape, soaring in and out of glitzy billboards which make me giddy with their glare. The people, the cars, the purple, the lime green, the nylon white, the breeze that dips and lifts, the fast food joints and the smell of oil, all that light and noise … totally hypnotic. I could stand there all night, watching the traffic go by and not get bored. That said it is so unlike Madras. At least the Madras I knew once. Someday I’ll show you a picture.

Bipasha Basu beams down at me from a height of hundred feet. “Cruise with me,” she invites. Thanks lady, but no thanks. Don't let hair-care advertisements take over the imagination, I admonish myself and join a waiting group at the pedestrian crossing.

I see her straightaway.

“Words” shuffles itself nicely into play. She’s looking from right to left, assessing the traffic. Shapely eyes. Nice swing of the head. Pretty. Instant heartache.

She’s almost as tall as me. Short hair falls gracefully on her swimmer-like shoulders; a few strands are a little frazzled at the top and the sides, but nothing a shampoo can’t fix -- Bips would vouch for that. Mustard coloured short-top, “wheatish” complexion, dark jeans that hug her hips and flare out fashionably at the bottom.

The light turns green and I fall in line behind her. A silver-coloured watch hangs daintily on her wrist…and she can walk, oh yes.

She’s talking into her mobile phone. I hear her voice rise above Boyzone. “No, I didn’t” … “When?” Nice voice too, I nod in appreciation. Not too girly. A little more base and it would be perfect. But then you can’t have everything. She ups the pace and I quicken my step.

The breeze picks up and that’s when the perfume hits me. Christian Dior. Poison. So, she likes to be classy, but not too classy as yet. I hesitate and then go right ahead with a deep breath, losing a little bit of myself in the process. Yeah, right! Poison, indeed. I slow down a little, letting her get ahead of me, shaking my head free of the scent. “From the coast of Ipanema to the island of Capri”, Enrique quavers into my ears and I grin sheepishly as I start following her.

Who is she talking to? Is it her boyfriend? Guilt grabs my throat and jealousy sprouts its green weeds somewhere in my heart soil. No, she looks like a level-headed woman. She would know that love is too much trouble. Probably reads more than one newspaper and wants to head her own business before she starts looking around. I cheer up, and start catching up with her. Maybe there’s time yet. Hope is an eternal spring, you know. Maybe she likes Enrique too. I say hi to Mr. Christian Dior again.

“Where does mom want to go?” Ah, it’s her dad probably. I picture an old man with gold-rimmed glasses who wears Polo shirts and goes golfing on Sundays. Yes, it would be her father. Has to be. I'm certain. She’s too sensible for boyfriends. They’re leaving on a trip tomorrow. They even have an SUV parked in the garage. I bet she has a dog as well. She looks the type.

Traffic on the other side of the flyover. We stop. Now it’s just the two of us. And she starts to step back as the traffic roars by, too close for comfort. My pulse quickens and starts to race. I don’t think she’s noticed me yet. That gives me a stupid little thrill. A yellow blur of an auto-rickshaw whips past nastily, and she jumps back, almost bumping into me. I hold my breath. Poison can wait. “I will stand by you forever … you … can … take … my breath away”. Enrique again. The idiot. Shut up dude.

We stand in the shadow of the flyover, watching the headlights whiz past, immersed in our own worlds. She’s at the edge of the kerb and I’m on the impossibly little footpath, playing stalker. The traffic thins and she ventures forth again. The sodium vapour lamps light her up, like sentries paying tribute. Christ, she’s beautiful.

I stand on the pavement, wondering what to do. Maybe I should go after her. Do I know you from somewhere? Oh sorry, you looked like someone I once knew. Where are you going anyway? Oh, I‘m from there too. Mind if I walk with you? Naa, that’s too old, wouldn’t work. How about I thought I should let you know that you look stunning? Might work if I just walk away abruptly; she might get curious about me. Like hell she would! Might get a tight little slap as well. Oh, she’s getting away. Quick! Do something! Where’s a poem when you need one? She’s near the median. I jump right out onto the road and a bus screeches to my left. Rubber burns. Curses mount. I can hear my origins being questioned. I run out.

Too late, she’s already on the other side, a sea of traffic sandwiched between us now. I'm stranded in the middle of the road, watching her white slippers turn around a bend.

And then she’s gone. Just like that. I stand with the drone of the traffic drowning the music in my ears. What are the possibilities of you seeing her again? I rue in hindsight.

Bye bye Poison.

That’s when I see her.

Long hair, proud jaw line, purposeful stride.

I catch her eye. “There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me...” -- Ronan Keating purrs into the earphones. Man for the moment.

I laugh into the night and quickly cross the road. Maybe there’s time yet.

Broken Watch

2007-02-22T20:09:00.000-08:00

My watch, it lies broken.

Time-scratched dial -
Gap-toothed grin
Frozen on friendly, golden face;
Limp hands -
A collective imagination
Which doesn’t tick anymore;
Numbers mutedly stare -
Hourly vanity dented,
They vainly wait, for validation,
For regulation and routine to resume;
Beautiful brown leather strap -
Stained with sweat, salt and defeat,
Hoping for familiar time
To make my wrist heavy again.

My watch, it lies broken.

My seconds, like over-eager raindrops,
Fall uncounted,
Their ambition misplaced.
My minutes, like unmapped miles,
Go missing in time’s wasted ocean.
My hours, at the mercy of the sun,
Make me night-blind.

Like a planet displaced
From disciplined orbit,
I spin aimlessly in space,
Unmoored into an emptiness where
Asynchronous dreams and
The unfulfilled schedule of my life
Remain suspended, listening
For the sounds of time,
Because my watch, it lies broken.

Competition

2007-01-31T03:28:00.000-08:00

Sometime last year I won a badminton tournament at work. Even before it unfolded, I realized that there was something fundamentally different between this and other competitions that I have taken part in.

I have problems competing. I don't see the point in it. No, not that I find competing obscene or vulgar but just that competitions amuse me. Because I can never want anything that badly, and it amuses me to see people act desperate. Again, not out of superciliousness or condescension but out of, as Camus would say, "a gentle indifference" to everything that has to do with existence. That said, I'm more of a golfer than a wrestler (or a fencer) -- the conquest of the absolute interests me more than temporary subjugation. The course, defeat the course. Not the opponent.

Anyway, back to the badminton tournament. The idea came around because we have a court in the garden where we thrash around in the evenings and thought a tournament would help build camaraderie in the team. So, the draw was fixed and notifications sent to opponents. But then I was already deep into my everything-is-futile mode, overwhelmed with "existential angst" and I didn't want to take part. That was also the period when I was contemplating, and sounding out, Absurdity as a philosophy to live life by. And the tournament seemed like a perfect place to try it out.

Basically the reasoning behind my taking part went like this - the fundamental choice was to take part or not, with each of the choices intrinsically not being superior to the other. This is where I've had most of my problems -- the justification of a choice. Not taking part, while going with the natural inertia of my habits, did not excite me and implied a continuation of ennui. Taking part however intrigued me. Not for the challenge of winning and the temptation of the prize, but to see if I could confront futility, acknowledge the meaninglessness of action and still engage in positive activity leading upto accomplishment, thereby pushing further out certain personal boundaries. That, to me, sums up everything -- to know something is pointless and still engage oneself with it. It is not a compromise; a compromise is a barter, but with the absurd there is no gain. It's not giving in, it's not weakness. Rather, it is the greatest of challenges calling for a greater mental and physical endurance. And probably the only one left if one ignores suicide.

In the end, I won both the singles and the doubles. Not without pain or labour ... I spent the next three days -- including a weekend -- in bed, wheezing and recuperating from a marathon doubles final played in the most gruelling of conditions. And I didn't feel anything about winning. The victory didn't mean anything -- the trophies lie abandoned in my room now. The games don't mean anything. The scores, the arguments, the pain in the knees ... nothing means anything. All that matters is confronting the absurd and choosing to live in spite of it. It is easy to dismiss oneself as being dead for feeling nothing, but to me, this is when living begins, when the faculty of feeling is heightened, when life is stripped free of the kitsch that everyday emotion is, when one is able to have a greater appreciation for things despite being aware of their inherent meaninglessness.

That then is where I stand. At the precarious precipice separating life and suicide, vacillating between action and inaction, choosing stimulation over boredom. This then is how life is going to be, to quote Camus again (I know! I know! But how can one not feel respect?), "To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpt in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day, while being aware that fundamentally, this has no more importance than building for centuries - this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."

Untitled - 4

2007-01-30T01:20:00.000-08:00

Dead skin and instant coffee
that grows quietly cold.
Bare branches and undried clothes
with traces of mould.
Winter's fingerprints linger,
her crimes untold.

Sour cynicism; a discoloured soul
that grows quickly cold.
Charred dreams; a shrivelled sensitivity
now layered with mould.
Love's fingerprints linger,
her crimes untold.

Filler - 1

2006-11-17T20:38:00.000-08:00

You know what's the best part about this whole globalization thing?* It shifts the focus from earning a living to actually living. People have the wherewithal to try and answer questions other than those associated with basic existence. And that can be bad as well. Because knowing what you should be doing, and can actually be doing, but not doing does little for the self-esteem. I know very little about History, but I would imagine that a correlation might exist between significant economic progress and cultural revision (both with individuals and societies).
This is simply brilliant. All I need to do is to start writing.
Recently I got into an argument about taste. My opinion is that a person's taste evolves, and just because something (which is actually good) does not appeal to one's taste, it doesn't mean it's not good. It just means one is not at a stage where one can appreciate it. This is a very dicey argument to make because you then risk being labelled a culture snob. However, the point I wished to make is that art merely serves to sensitize the soul and elevate one's sensibility, and that as one's taste evolves, one is able to appreciate the best in art. More importantly, I was trying to convey that taste in art, like taste in anything, has both an objective as well as a subjective side. The subjective evaluation is a reflection of oneself, rather than the art piece itself. So, when people say something is not good because they didn't like it, it says something about them rather than what they are talking about. The objective evaluation, on the other hand, is what informs about the art itself. And as one's taste evolves, the objective and the subjective tend to merge. Like I read elsewhere, a good critic's subjectivity is his objectivity. So, why am I saying this? Because I just read someone else say the same. And I have to say, I agree.
The right brain-left brain fallacy and the myth of prodigy (found this link on S Anand's wonderful website).
Of late, I've had a need to upgrade my Mathematics knowledge, which means refreshing my basics and learning advanced concepts. As a result I have to admit (and I never thought I would say this), Mathematics is beautiful, and I'm beginning to suspect it might just be the mother of everything, just like what my teachers told me. There, now you can see what I meant by taste. This realization, I realize, is a significant one. Throughout life, one's personality tends to evolve (just like taste and everything else). But sometimes it is not possible to be conscious of this evolution. However, now and then something remarkable pops up and you know what you've become compared to what you thought you were. That said, I like what I'm becoming :P
What are the keys to being successful? (By successful I mean doing what you want to do in the best way possible; no connotations of fame or popularity) Just direction, discipline and motivation. I have the direction and the motivation now. Just need to be disciplined. But then that's easier said than done.

* - Of course, I'm being tongue-in-cheek.

2006-11-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

But men get lost sometimes
As years unfold
One day he crossed some line
And he was too much in this world
But I guess it doesn't matter anymore

In a New York Minute
Everything can change

-- New York Minute, Eagles

Camus is so irritating (yes, we're on first name basis now). Because he says stuff like "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal" and "It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all". And you hate him because you realize how bloody right the guy is.

Sometimes life is about forcing yourself to wake up every morning and saying "f**k you" to every meaningful thing that happens to you.

It's a friend's birthday today.

It's always that way with me. I wake up and I know it's someone's birthday that day. Just that I don't know whose, and I spend the day frantically trying to remember. Sometimes I get the feeling a couple of days earlier and I keep telling myself not to forget and end up forgetting anyway. This happened quite recently too.

Anyway, I've known this guy for, what, eighteen years now. We were buddies (note the past tense). We spent Sunday afternoons playing one-bounce cricket in the backyard with a broken bat and my dog. We traded answers inside the exam hall, exchanged cricket cards outside. We stayed a bicycle ride away. His friends became mine. Mine, his. Weekends were spent at his place or mine with sumptuous lunches and goodbyes that lasted half an hour spent chatting at the gate. We once stumbled on a girl changing clothes in the school staff-room (she's a model now, so you can draw your own conclusions), swore each other to secrecy and then boasted about it anyway. My brother taught him chess. He taught me Hindi. I taught him how to fly kites. We were, what's the word, close.

And then things happened.

We grew apart. He switched schools. We grew further apart. He went to college in Coimbatore and I stayed on in Chennai. I became a city-slicker while he picked up the rural lingo. He wrote me during the first year (note - wrote, not emailed). I didn't reply. Every time he came to Chennai during the semester holidays he would come visiting, play chess with my brother, exchange insults with my sister and later, all of us would stand chatting at the gate after saying goodbye half an hour earlier. And he would go away to Coimbatore. He would have been the perfect friend. If I would let him be, that is, but then I guess I never let my scars heal. Second year, third year, and we continued to grow apart. I emailed him once asking how things were. And I felt stupid about it afterwards. I shifted to a place near my college, and his visits grew less frequent.

He was a star at college while I brooded my way through four years of engineering. Final year, and campus recruitment. An IT company with a three-letter abbreviation for a name took him in, while I chose to work with a firm few had heard of. He got high on code and I was confused. His mother probably wanted for him to earn a lot of money, buy a car, build a house. My dad just wanted me to do my thing.

The abyss widened.

I went to see him once during the break before my finals -- he was in Chennai for a few days then. His dad had bought him a computer and we ran amok installing all kinds of games. I gave him Commandos-2 and showed him how to get past level 4. We went around visiting other friends I had lost touch with (he hadn't) and played a game of cricket later in the evening. Before I left we planned another meeting when we would also go visit our school.

We've seen each other twice after that. In the last 30 months.

He called me recently. He had just returned from an onsite visit where he had torn a ligament in his knee playing soccer. Seven weeks of hospitals and ortho specialists. Said he was reporting to work the next week. We chatted briefly and I said I'd call him. I haven't.

And today's his birthday. Damn.

I wish I could call him. Wish him a birthday and chat like nothing's changed between us. But then I know I can't. Because it's different now. Or maybe, I want it to be different. Whatever.

I wish I could tell him I'm no longer the guy who took pleasure in pipping him at school. Wish I could tell him I don't see the point in cricket anymore (the Windies won! Did they hammer SA or what? Go Gayle Go!). Wish I could tell him news of his onsite visit and snaps in front of the Big Ben are boring. That I'm least bothered about what his sister did at school. That despite everything else, his uncle's death still leaves me sad -- the one person in his family who was 'different'. That my parents and siblings still adore him, but that he doesn't occupy my mind-space any more. That an MBA may not be the way I want to live my life, although he thinks it's his life's purpose. That I don't agree with his definition about anything, including "social life" and "friends circle".

I wish I could tell him I don't relate with his way of life anymore, and that we now move in different circles which don't intersect.

That it takes so much energy to be normal when I'm talking with him over the phone, trying to be someone I'm no longer in touch with myself.

That the memory he has of me is what I have to give away in order not to lose what I have left.

That I still consider him one of the few good human beings I've known, one of the few genuine people I know.

That I want it to be on record somewhere that I wished him -- Happy Birthday KK.

Heh

2006-11-01T02:20:00.000-08:00

I just had the greatest insight of all time a few days ago.

Damn ... all those days of browsing through blogs with my body positioned strategically so that nobody could see the monitor, constantly expanding my peripheral vision to check if anybody was checking me, minimizing and Alt+F4-ing every time someone sneaked up on me ... Damn. I didn't know.

I didn't know that people think you're 'reading' when you're actually blog-browsing. Think of it. There's (mostly) no advertisement on the page, which means you're not putting that credit card of yours to good use. No HTML crying out 'Inbox', which means you're not checking email every 5 minutes. No scantily clad women leaping out of the screen, which means you're not doing anything you're not supposed to be doing. You don't have headphones plugged into your ears, neither is there a video streaming on screen. There's just text, text and more text. Of course, they think I'm 'reading'. They think *snicker* they think you're updating your knowledge (yeah right), reading stuff from multicoloured websites (A colleague actually asked me, "What's with that black coloured website you keep reading?").

Damn. Well, better late than never.

So what do I do with my newly found knowledge? I play it up, of course -

So I'm reading about how a friend finds religion and God fascinating. I notice this guy peeping at my screen from his desk. I lean back from the monitor, make sure he gets a good look at the screen. At this distance, he can only see a lot of blue, green and yellow, and of course, dense text. He goes back to work. I should ideally cut my scene here. But I don't. I lean back into the chair, do something intellectual (like scratching my head), look away into the distance, make intellectual noises (like 'Hmmmmm' and clucking my tongue), open my notebook, look at the screen, and write today's date in a page already filled with a lot of dates, and get back to my 'reading'. This way everyone within hearing distance knows I'm engaging in something productive.
So I'm a little sad that another friend will not be updating his blog for the next three weeks. And I spy my teammate typing code furiously, and glancing at me now and then. I look at her and say, "You know it says here MATLAB has an auto-code feature which is as good as hand-coding ... it could put you ... I mean ... us ... out of work". She looks at me, and gets back to work as if nothing happened. And then says, "Send me the link." Argh! Oh well, I do know there's a link somewhere. I just have to find it. Meanwhile, teammate is suitably impressed about my 'reading'.
So I was reading how it's not just me who's jobless enough to talk about curd rice on the internet. I look at the time. 3 'o' clock. I open my mailbox, navigate to the newsletters folder, open a latest one, pick a link making sure it has the words "embedded" or "automotive", send out an email to all my teammates with the link saying "makes for interesting reading". And I resume pondering about how jobless people are to talk about curd rice on the internet. The next day, I get replies saying, "Fabulous link! Thanks for sharing :)". I'm wicked, I know.

So there, feel free to use these tips at work. They work for me. No money-back guarantees though.

Of course, the network administrator sees everything.

PS: Sometimes, I suspect the only reason why I don't get fired is a little similar to this.

Trying

2006-10-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe it wasn't your fault, maybe
it wasn't mine either.

Maybe, one day, the dress will fit,
and it won't lie crumpled
in a corner of the cupboard.

Maybe, one day, I'll fit in
with your crowd, and you'll
learn to leave me alone at times.

Maybe, one day, the coffee
will taste better, and the sports
pages will make more sense.

Maybe, like you said, the sky
is indeed schizophrenic,
just like all of us.

Or maybe, like I said, he can't
decide what colours to wear,
just like the rest of us.

Maybe, like you said, every door
is to be opened, looked inside,
you never know what you'll discover.

Or maybe, like I said, some doors
are kept closed for a reason,
sometimes you shouldn't discover.

Maybe, one day, we'll go walking
and I'll fall in step with you,
an unforced rhythm to our strides.

Maybe, one day, I'll remember
the important dates, and you'll
not forget the important words.

Maybe, one day, we'll dream
the same dream and decide
to watch the same channels.

Until then, let's keep trying.

On printers and other problems

2006-10-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, my workplace was a 15 ft X 10 ft lab crammed with 10 Engineers. And every time one of us needed to take a print-out or a photocopy, we had to walk up to the first floor where we had a printer and a xerox machine.

All of us in the lab were scared stiff of the printer, primarily because even though it was brand new, it had this proclivity to jam and give out noises like it was a schoolgirl and we were molesting it ("We just want a print-out dammit!"). So much so that if one wanted to use it, we would often take a colleague along for moral support ("No! I didn't touch anything! Ask him!"). To make matters worse, the bloody machine was located in a particular section of the Product Engineering department where all the senior engineers sat. And the last thing any of us wanted was to be stared down by ten pairs of eyes wondering what we were doing poking our heads around the printer's private parts.

Anyway, one day, being engineers, we found the user manual. Of course, some sadist had stashed it away in a corner of the store-room, but we found it. And that was that. Under the pretense of working, we spent the better part of an afternoon mugging up the "troubleshooting" section (part of the "learning curve" you see). The world was suddenly an easier place to live in.

The point of this post being, fear is like that printer.

There's a user manual lying around somewhere.

Euphoria and Melancholy

2006-10-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

Note: I have zero knowledge about music. Will be grateful for any errors that are pointed out. Thanks.

Not "learning" music is something I regret a lot. Something I intend to put right someday. But then I guess I never was the musical type when I was a kid.

So anyway, having an interest in music and there being not a lot to choose from, film music occupied -- occupies -- a lot of my "music time". The following clips are two of my favourite pieces of Tamil film music.

But if you're going to hear them, I suggest you get a pair of good headphones/earphones, crank up the volume on the PC and the headphones, and really listen. The effect is totally lost on speakers.

Now that that little technicality is out of the way, here you go -

powered by ODEO

The piece, of course, comes from the song "Rakkamma", in Mani Ratnam's movie Dalapathi (1991), composed by Ilayaraja.

And it's the closest I've come to finding a musical meaning of the word 'euphoria'.

The guitar starts the piece and sets the raw tone and mood that then continues till the end (Again this is where I suck. Is it the guitar? I'm sticking with guitar for the rest of the piece. Let me know if I'm wrong). The sound has this unoiled quality to it (you can actually hear it whining as it strains) just to make sure that the perfection of the violin isn't overshadowed. I particularly like the way the guitar hovers in the background all throughout, keeping pace, taking over after the violins have climaxed. Brilliant.

Euphoria is never an abrupt emotion. It builds up. Slowly. And one is aware of this process of building up. Almost as if joy keeps increasing in tiny little increments and suddenly everything boils over and you're drowning in euphoria. Like how the first four in your innings is encouraging, the second reassuring, the third convincing, the next dizzying and before you know it, you settle into the zone. Euphoria is never gentle, always dizzying, always aggressive, leaving you on a peak you are reluctant to leave.

That piece of music is precisely how euphoria should feel. First the modest guitar, establishing base camp. Then the two violin strains -- the first one steps up the tempo, you're climbing the first of those steep ravines, gasping for breath. And just when you sit back to get your breath back, Ilayaraja nails you with repetitions, each more violent than the one before, the crescendo taking you higher and higher up the precipice of joy, finally leaving you with the guitar again as you plant your flag at the summit, all sweaty from the climb, looking down superciliously, condescending at mortals wallowing in misery. And you feel like saying, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

In fact, the song, the lyrics I mean, not only matches the music fabulously, but also the situation in the movie. Mani Ratnam is indeed a master in using the song as a narrative device.

Anyway, after the euphoria of Ilayaraja, Rahman -

powered by ODEO

That piece is from somewhere in the middle of the song "Chinna Chinna Aasai", composed by A.R.Rahman, from the movie Roja (1992).

I've always felt that there was more pain in Rahman's music than in Ilayaraja's. To me the latter always strikes a hopeful chord even in his saddest pieces. Maybe it's their personal philosophies, Ilayaraja making his name in the '70s - '90s, when life was probably simpler and hope kept people going, while Rahman is a product of the global '90s, when futility and hopelessness came to stay.

Anyway, I digress.

The song itself is an all-time favourite, both for the nostalgia that it evokes and the simplicity that drips from the words. The song was meant as a girl-growing-up piece in the movie, a supposedly cheerful, pastoral composition. But somehow it's never been that for me. It's nothing if not melancholic. Every little image the words draw up, every little note in that song -- especially that interlude in the clip above -- leaves me sad. I guess the past makes us all sad in one way or the other. And if you notice, there is this clear dichotomy between the video and the words. The video shows the girl doing everything she talks about in the song, but the words have this "I would love to do this, but then ..." feel to them. Almost everything that is sung about is frustratingly out of reach, almost as if the protagonist is being prophetic, proclaiming "This too shall pass."

Back to the piece. I absolutely love the transition that it brings about in the song. Until then, you're there, enjoying the words vicariously, and then Rahman chips in with his absolutely heart-wrenching "Elelo", and you know he set you up. Almost like how the sanguinity of childhood sets us up nicely for the bear-trap that adulthood really is. You want it, you got it. I can almost hear A.R.R. chuckling, 'There, so you thought this was another of those everyone-gets-what-they-want pieces eh? Take this!'

The transition starts with a kind of "stick music" (please tell me what instrument this is! I have no idea what to call it) accompanied by sounds, I imagine, of stars twinkling. That's where Rahman invites you to take this brief ride on a magic carpet, asking you to leave behind the idyllic world suggested by the lyrics. He then shows you sweeping valleys, broad, meandering rivers, brooding hillocks, all coloured in the scarlet dusk of twilight, cloaked with the sadness of the evening, the earthy drum and the rueful veena pinning you firmly to the ground, not letting you escape to the skies. And you begin to realize the enormity of everything about you. And of course, that solitary fisherman singing "Elelo", the perfect metaphor for Life itself.

And then, suddenly, smoothly, seamlessly, just like how it all began, Rahman drops you off right back where he picked you up, and leaves you to enjoy Vairamuthu, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he speeds away on that carpet of his.

Genius.

And to think, it was his first movie. Oh, well ... I'm probably over-analysing as usual.

Untitled - 3

2006-10-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

an apple on the table.
round, and not too much;
red, and then not too much;
half-eaten
and left to rot.

a puddle of muddy rain water.
devoid of velocity,
smug in its pothole.
'Careful'. Step in - slosh! -
with pants pulled up.

a story in the sunday paper.
sad and short,
in black and white.
to be continued
next week.

a window over a cerulean ocean.
an empty home inside,
pictures afloat on the alabaster walls.
a curious breeze,
and the drapes billow.

a million images
play merry-go-round
inside the chamber of my heart.

their wispy fingers
teasing emotions from
the veins in the walls,

their little feet testing the floors
for strength,

and I know I am
apple, puddle, short story and window.

Camus and Einstein

2006-10-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

In The Myth Of Sisyphus, Albert Camus says that suicide is the only really serious philosophical problem. True. But then it's based on the fact that the scope of Life -- as we know it -- is defined by Time. Would suicide still be the only philosophical problem if we had infinite time? I know all this sounds ridiculous and childish, this gibberish about infinite time, time itself having as much meaning as we give it. But it's a thought. And I guess Einstein might have had the same thought. To me, both -- Einstein and Camus -- were trying to answer the same question. In their own terms. One came up with Relativity. The other, Absurdity.

:-|

2006-09-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

Round 1 (Knock-out)

6 - 8; 3 - 2 (7 - 7); ~~4 - 0~~ 8 - 1.

~~Rain~~.

~~Damn~~.

:)

Round of 5 (League)

Match 1

0 - 3 (7 - 7); 8 - 3; 8 - 3.

:D

Match 2

8 - 2; 8 - 5.

B-)

Won both the singles and the doubles. Badminton tournament at work.

Innocence

2006-09-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

err ... Haiku?

2006-09-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

billboards illuminate
a neon night.
the city sleeps.

*

unpressed uniforms
on a monday morning.
wrinkled dreams.

*

summer load shedding.
dinner on the terrace
with the moon.

*

sparrows nest on the roof.
wheels rumble
through the station.

*

before sunset,
writing love letters
beside the lake.

Interested?

Delayed

2006-09-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

He hurries through the narrow alley, checking his watch every ten paces. The downpour had started earlier that evening, and was continuing to thrash the city, rattling its roofs, spraying clean its corners, inundating the roads, bringing traffic to a crawl. He curses himself for not leaving office earlier. Now he would have to come up with a strategy to pacify her. There's a cheap bouquet of red roses in his hands, bought from a hawker on the pavement just outside the station. He adjusts his shoulder-bag feeling the strap biting into his skin.

Suddenly, two men spring from an alcove.

He looks at them. Oh Lord! No ...

Even as he's sizing up their masked faces, he reaches inside his bag, hoping to find something he can use. The steel of a knife flicks menacingly into life.

"Haath oopar!1", one of them commands.

He looks at them both. Average height, 5 foot 5, shorter than him, clad identically in blue jeans, tight T-shirts and cheap leather boots. He stares at them. But the rain's making things difficult. He can't make out their features.

"Haath oopar!", irritation in the muffled voice now.

He pulls out a magazine, rolls it in his hands, and lunges at them. They weave away and one of them swings a punch at him.

A white bolt of shock jolts his body as the fist connects with his jaw. He's thrown off his feet and collapses on the street in a heap, the bag flung off his shoulders. He sees stars in front of him. The shock subsides, and a blue wave of overwhelming pain floods his face. Blood swirls inside his mouth, its metallic taste strangely soothing. He debates getting up and fighting. But the pain is persuasive, the risk foolish. He stays down.

The guy with the knife stands over him, while the other runs over to the bag, checking its contents. Cell phone, lap-top, digital diary, food coupons ... there's too much maal 2 in it. They decide to take the bag.

He sees it late, and doubles over as the foot swings into his groin. His stomach churns as the pain knots him up. They pound him with their feet, like kids fighting over a football. He curls up like a foetus, protecting his body, but they continue to kick him methodically, in his stomach, in his kidneys, in his back, on his head, till he's not moving any more. They turn him over to take a look at him. He keeps his eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious. He feels hands reaching into his trousers for his wallet. They kick him again. Once. Twice. He hears them walk away. He doesn't open his eyes fearing they would come back if they saw him conscious.

He counts to thirty before opening his eyes. He looks about from where he's lying. There's nobody around. Not even a dog.

He rolls over carefully onto his back and looks at the sky, assessing his body, the rain stinging his eyes. His jaw feels like it's come loose. His body is soaked with pain. The pain is a strange creature to contend with. As long as he stays still, it's dull and placid. But the minute he moves, it streaks violently through his muscles, leaving him gasping for breath.

He chides himself for jumping off the bus and taking the short-cut. Now look what happened. Damn. Never ever take a short-cut, sermonizes a part of himself, a vestige from his middle-class upbringing. Hell, it's not your fault. At this rate, there will be no roads to walk on. It's not your fault, rationalizes the finance professional in him.

He waits a while before deciding to move his body. Leaning his elbow on the road, he props himself up. The pain is agonizing, and there's only so much he can gnash his teeth. But he discovers that if he gets through the first few seconds of pain, it's not that bad. He's grateful he's obese; the fat seems to have softened the blows.

The reality of the mugging sets in slowly. This is not supposed to happen to me. He always thought people who got mugged were really stupid, stupid people who couldn't take care of themselves. He thinks about his assailants. He wonders how long they had been waiting there. Or did they get into position on seeing him stroll down the alley? Damn, they chose their spot well. And talk about timing! Smart chaps, he muses ironically.

He looks at the tall, narrow buildings lining the alley. He wonders if there's anybody inside.

"Arrey, koi hai...?! 3", he calls out, more out of hope than out of reason.

"KOI HAAAAIII?", he feels his voice quavering with the effort, his body shivering in the rain.

No answer. No movement from inside the curtained windows. He realizes the futility of his situation. Mugged, beaten up, without a paisa on him. And nobody to help him out. The world can be a testing place.

He ponders going to the police.

Too much of a hassle. Besides you can't give them anything to work with. You have no idea what those guys look like ... maybe you should have fought them out. What good are you if you can't fight for yourself? If you can't protect what you've earned?

And get myself killed? No way. Not worth it.

He gets up on his feet cautiously, buckling to his knees more than once in the process. The pain is now numbing. He's no longer aware of it. It's like wearing a hat -- you forget you have it on after a while. He loosens his belt and lets his shirt tails hang out uncouthly. The rain feels nice on his face, and he loosens his tie to let it trickle down his body.

He sees the bouquet lying a few yards away; he stumbles over and picks it up. The roses are undamaged and he's thankful for that. Not everything went wrong, he consoles himself.

He thinks about tomorrow, even though it is far, far away -- for now, he just wants to get home to his wife. He will have to file for a new lap-top at the office, apply for a new mobile phone. He can already hear the questions - What happened? You got mugged???!! Where?? When?! Man...you gotta be careful...Did you fight them? No? Yeah, right, not worth it at all ... What did they look like? Oh, OK .. Did you go to the police? Hmm... He wonders if he should lie when they ask him. Tell them that he got a couple of punches in and that it made him feel good, despite being mugged. He wonders if people would think him a sissy otherwise.

His mouth tastes awful. He gingerly pokes his tongue at where thinks he's bleeding inside his mouth. One of the molars is loose, knocked out of its socket, hanging on by a slender scrap of gum. He reaches inside with his fingers, and with a jerk, pulls the tooth off, and throws it out. Fresh blood bubbles out of the cavity and he spits it into the rain. He bends over and catches his breath. The pain is tiring him out. But he needs to get home which is at least another kilometer away. He starts walking slowly, dragging his feet along, the rain insulating him from the pain.

He already disliked the awkwardness he will have to face, the questions he will be asked, the story that he will have to repeat over and over. Just for a week or two. Two weeks and then everyone will forget, even you.

He wonders if he can really recover from this. Already, he's glancing everywhere with each step. Every corner hid a mugger in his mind. He was on red-alert now. Would I ever relax? What is the guarantee that this won't happen again? Who knows where the next mugger is hiding? Is this how it feels to be raped and have your faith about the world violated? Is this how it feels to live in a state of constant fear? And what good is being alert? What if someone pulls a gun on me? Is this why countries war? Damn...

He reaches the main road from the alley. The house is just two streets away. He hobbles along the road, attracting curious glances from passersby. One or two venture to help him, but he refuses them. He can't trust anybody now. Everybody was a thief now. He realizes the helplessness of his situation. What could I have done? What could anybody have done? How can I trust anybody now? Whose fault is it if I can't trust anybody?

He flings open the gate, the pain in his back almost unbearable now. He goes up to the door,and rings the bell. He can hear her steps from inside the house. He looks at his clothes soiled from the rain, the gravel and the blood. I must look quite a sight, he chuckles, and looks at the bouquet in his hands. At least I won't have trouble explaining why I'm late.

1 Hands up.
2 Loot.
3 Is anybody there?.

Untitled - 2

2006-08-29T11:41:00.001-07:00

You always know when it happens.

That morning had a greater need for sacrifice than most others in his life. Mornings always blaze into life, he felt. Ebullient, aggressive, purposeful. But today, as he stood looking from the balcony out onto the park, the light seemed to hesitate as it found its way through the trees. Slowing down before it fell on earth, pondering before it lay itself on wet grass.

There are times when you find you have no room. You look hard, but no, there's not an extra inch of space. Not on that sagging bookshelf for your dog-eared comics. Not on the swanky mobile phone for saving any more smses. Maybe you're keeping something you don't want but can't bring yourself to throw it away. Everything comes with a pre-defined size.

He threw his scarf around his shoulders and strode out into the morning, the hard heels of his boots crunching on the sidewalk. He liked walks. They gave his imagination the respite of motion.

You always know when you hit rock-bottom. You're plunging and suddenly there's this distinctive shudder while everything around you goes still. You open your eyes and find yourself at the bottom of this huge ocean, finding it difficult to breathe. You wonder how you got here, but then vaguely remember how you'd tied the lead-weight around your legs and thrown yourself into the water. You struggle to move, thrashing about in the water, entangled in the weeds. And as it gets more and more difficult to breathe, you realize you really should take that key from your pocket, unlock the weight, and swim up for air.

He waited for his turn at the ticket counter. He liked the patience of queues, the quiet shuffling of feet towards a common destiny, the empty acknowledging stares and the discipline in waiting. A ticket in his pocket, he planted himself on a vacant bench under a bare tree. He liked autumn. If you listen carefully, you will hear the leaves whisper tales as they fall, his grandmother had once told him. He believed her.

There are times when you can't look in the mirror. What for? becomes difficult to answer. Why not? tempts you with its truth. Understanding becomes betrayal. Promises become compromises.

He checked his step as he climbed into the compartment. He always did that. He found seat 31. As he unfurled the morning paper, his thoughts turned towards her involuntarily, wondering if she had found his note.

Sometimes, there simply is no room in the heart. And you always know when that happens.

Recollection

2006-08-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

Late afternoon. An unforgiving sun, oppressive heat and a salty breeze. Crabs lie frying on the sand.

He's sweating - around his neck, under his armpits and at the waist, where the elastic bites into tender skin. His languid body lies writhing on the beach-towel with the peculiar discomfort of those half asleep.

Waking up is always a compromise, he thinks, rolling his eyeballs underneath his eyelids. A compromise between freedom and choice. A choice made is a freedom relinquished.

He opens his eyes.

Sky. Bare, brilliant, blue and overwhelming. A compromise between space and light, between emptiness and enlightenment, between the physical and the surreal.

He removes his tongue from where it's wedged in a corner of his mouth. Rolls it about. Swallows hard, letting the bitterness of his sleep permeate his insides. He blinks into the distance. The light hurts. His eyes crinkle up. So does his nose. The sky breaks into fragments.

He can sense that something is wrong.

He rolls onto his side and rests himself on an elbow. The beach is empty. Not a soul around. The sand is a funny colour, he notices, black at certain places, a grainy brown at others, sheer white otherwise. A crow flies from atop a palm on the shore, swoops down to the foam and picks something up. He can't see what. Probably a dead fish. Or a snail. Or something which caught its eye.

The feeling builds inside him slowly. Like mercury inside a thermometer on a hot day. He falls back. Looks at the sky again. Where is this ...

He sits up abruptly.

Where is this place?

He laughs. The very thought preposterous and amusing at the same time. He shakes his head, clearing his mind. And thinks.

He can't remember. Tries again. No. Not working.

He looks around in panic. There's a bottle of beer lying nearby, in a stubby with pictures of naked women on it. The stubby is familiar. He remembers buying it. Buying it - somewhere, for someone ... Where? For whom? And why is it with him if he bought it for someone else? He strains his memory, staring hard at the crimson stripes running along the length of the towel. Where? For whom? He notices that the stripes have smaller white stripes running inside them. Who ...

Who was he?

There's sweat in his eyes, his breathing a combination of heaves and spasms.

There's something wrong here. He looks around again. He can see a woman far off, walking along the shore, towards him. From where he sits, he can see she's tall, and pretty in her fluttering frock and coolers. She's carrying a bag. He wonders what she's doing here. Maybe he should ask her about himself.

For chrissakes ... get a grip, he curses silently. Think. Focus, he orders himself. Or maybe you shouldn't focus, he reconsiders. Maybe you shouldn't think. Maybe you should let your consciousness wander. Yes, he agrees. Falling back, he closes his eyes.

There's nothing on his mind. He can feel the threads in the towel eating into his sweaty back. There's a sharp pain in his wrist. He then realizes it's been there all along, ever since he woke up. There, he kids himself, there's a memory for you. A painful memory, he laughs at his own joke. He rotates the wrist masochistically, relishing the pain, clinging onto it like one would cling onto a ledge when pushed over a cliff. He then starts moving each of his joints, searching for pain ... somewhere, some memory, some trigger. It's a bizarre sight. There? He feels his knee-cap. Wasn't that pain? He rubs it vigorously, almost sadistically, wishing there was pain. But no, he moves on. The ankles, the shoulders ...

And then, like fireworks on a night sky, an image bursts inside his head, like ink splashed violently on paper.

The fireworks die. The ink clears. And he sees an old woman, wrapped in a shawl, with graying hair tied in a knot. She's buying fish. There's a small kid standing beside her, holding her hand, pestering her. He concentrates on her face. And the old woman disappears, dissolving inside his mind. But the kid is still there, looking up at the old woman who's no longer there. The kid's now crying. He focusses on the kid's face. And presently, the kid disappears too.

The ink draws in quickly and clears away. Another scene. This time he sees a boy swimming in the sea. The boy looks like him. He wakes up. The boy looks like him! He closes his eyes quickly, and the image forms again. The boy's swimming. Eager for a clue, he looks into the vision. It's a race. There are other boys swimming besides the boy who looks like him, but they are ahead of the boy who looks like him. There's an island a few hundred metres ahead, with yellow breakers and red buoys and people cheering. The boy who looks like him is striving, stretching every muscle, but with every stroke, the others seem to surge ahead. He finds himself urging the boy ahead, exhorting him to swim faster. He looks up into the vision and sees the island nearing. He looks down and the boy is no longer there. He focusses into the sea, scanning the waves. And the vision breaks.

He opens his eyes again. Frustrated. His back is itching, and the pain in his wrist is irritating. But he knows he must try again. And he closes his eyes.

He sees a man and a woman making love. He looks around them, and all he sees is darkness. He realizes that the darkness is not in his vision of them, but around them in the dream. The woman is pretty. Not beautiful. Just pretty. He looks at the man, but the man's back is turned towards him. He realizes he can't see who the man is. He tries rotating the vision. But no. It's stuck in his head. It doesn't change any more. The couple is frozen. Suspended in his imagination. Locked in an eternal embrace. And he keeps looking at the woman, expecting her to disappear. But no, she stays there, her face serene and divine. And just as it seems as if she's going to smile at him, the vision breaks into a million little pieces, and the ink draws across. He waits for it to clear, but it stays that way.

He opens his eyes. Waking up is such a compromise. It's like you know where you are and where you want to end up, but you still have to look up the map and make the journey. It's like building a bridge just for the sake of it.

He turns over on his back, thinking. Of the old woman. Of that boy who looked like him. And of that couple locked together.

Who are these people? Do I know them? Or are these just images from some B-grade movie I might have seen recently? Like yesterday? Oh damn ...

He sits up, looking at the sea in front of him. The waves break, advance and retreat, break, advance and retreat.

What have I got now? A beach-towel. A half-drunk bottle of beer. Do I drink beer? I don't know. Hell, I don't remember! Add to that a few stupid images stuck inside my head. Where do I go from here? I don't know where I am, don't know where I want to go, rather I don't have a clue where to go, and what's worse, I don't have a map. Big journey!

He spits into the sand. The spittle rolls into a ball, gathering some grains before it stops.

Maybe it's all for the good, he rationalizes. Who knows what I was? And why should I take the trouble to find out? Maybe this is a chance to start all over again. I just have to decide not to choose. Choose not to remember. Choose not to be what I was. Choose not to go where I should go. Choose to see everything in a new light. Make new memories, start a new life. He feels his thoughts fleeing.

Maybe I'll go work in a restaurant, save money, travel around the world. Or maybe I should make a movie. Or, or, maybe I'll go live in a faraway island, and fall in love with a native girl. He catches himself fantasizing. Rubbish. Need to remember, need to get my bearings, he reminds himself. He feels tired all of a sudden. He plops back on the towel, and closes his eyes.

And almost immediately, the couple reappears. Almost as if they were waiting for some imaginary curtain to part.

The woman is smiling at him now. Again, he's curious about the man. This time, however, the image yields as he tries to rotate it. Slowly, the man's face emerges. The jaw, the straight, long nose ...

"...jaaaaaayyyy!"

Someone's tugging at his shoulder. He wakes up.

"Ajjjjjaaaaaay ... wake up. Let's go. It's getting late"

It's her.

The pretty woman from his vision.

The tall woman in a frock. A pair of coolers on her head, and a bag of shells in her hands.

"Ajay, what's wrong?"

Ajay.

He feels like a man who fell off a cliff and discovers he has wings.

Ajay.

Images whiz in front of his eyes. ID cards, driving licenses, mark-sheets, people, places, a beer stubby bought for a friend who died, badminton and an overused wrist, voices calling out - AJ, Ajjie, coffee machines, credit card bills, mobile phone numbers, parties at work ... and amidst all these there are other images and thoughts. Images of an old woman buying fish, of a boy swimming, of a couple making love. And thoughts of a faraway island and a native girl.

"Nothing Anjali," he says, smiling at her, "Let me go get the car," and reaches under a corner of the towel for the keys.

Waking up is a compromise.

A compromise between freedom and choice.

The choice to dream.

And the freedom to live.

Timepass

2006-07-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

MK tagged me. So here goes...

I am thinking about -

How frightening it is when you're scared of nothing, how freedom really means being shackled of your own accord, how poetry and programming are not too different, and how denial is my primary mode of existence.

I said -

I would come back and I didn't.
"...be sure to crack stupid jokes. Women like men who crack stupid jokes..."

I want to -

Obtain a Ph.D. in Economics, take up teaching and live one day at a time.
Learn to play the violin.
See the inside of a rain-cloud.

I wish -

I could free my imagination of the bounds that logic imposes.

I miss -

A lot of people than I would care to admit to myself.

I hear -

Waves crashing on a faraway shore in my sleep.

I wonder -

How long it will be before fuel cells dominate the Indian automobile market?

I need -

Zero maintenance, infinite space.

I regret -

The low traffic that my blog generates.

I dance -

That's a lie.

I cry -

Rarely. And alone. And then uncontrollably.

I am not always -

Nice.

I make with my hands -

Paper boats.
Sandwiches.
Love.

I write -

In English, mostly.

I confuse -

The hot water and the cold water taps.
Compassion and love (the generic kind).

I should try -

Mango milkshake with chocolate ice-cream.
Pickles and idli.
Writing haiku.
Watching more Malayalam movies.

I should finish -

Dr. Zhivago.
One hundred years of solitude.

I know -

Very little.
How to bowl the 'Doosra', the top-spinner, the flipper and the googly.

I am -

Just passing through.

And finally -

"We are where we are at the only time we have." - Shashi Tharoor, 'Riot: A novel'

I tag -

catch 22, STALLION and Srini -- Give it a try guys. Should be fun.

Late thoughts on the Wimbledon and World Cup finals

2006-07-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

Ecstasy and agony, hours apart. One man will sleep easy and the other will probably never for the rest of his life.

Wimbledon Final

What is it with Roger Federer when it comes to Rafael Nadal? Why is he so determined not to compete when he faces the Duracell bunny from Spain? Is it just me or is Federer reluctant to acknowledge Nadal as an equal?

One of the commentators got it right on Sunday when he said, "The longer this match goes, the deeper Nadal will penetrate into Federer's psyche." That has got be the single most insightful comment I've ever heard on T.V. It accurately diagnoses Federer's problem with Nadal, and also offers the remedy. Federer has got to admit to himself that he has serious competition, and that too not from someone who is as graceful or as gifted as him, but from someone whose philosophy of tennis is the very antithesis of Federer's.

While Federer swoops and skates across the lawn, Nadal scurries from corner to impossible corner, fetching balls with all the eagerness of a golden retriever. While Federer is calculative and polished, Nadal is direct and desperate. Federer flits demurely between the tramlines, a quality of shyness about his ballet-hall grace as he slices his backhands. Nadal is all adrenaline and testosterone, his hunger naked, his ambition delightful. Federer fences, Nadal punches. Federer is King; Nadal, heir apparent.

Federer's problem, in my opinion, is that he feels he’s too royal to acknowledge the proletarian talent of the resourceful Nadal. He even said he didn’t expect Nadal to make it to the final, which, while being admirably honest, says a lot about what he thinks of Nadal. Did you see the post-match photo session and the interview? All the while when the camera was on the two of them, Nadal and Federer never met eye to eye, and not earlier either, when they shook hands at the end of the match. That, to me, says a lot. So much for Alan Wilkins harping about how the two players are great friends!

Earlier this season, when he was losing to Nadal with such alarming regularity, I got the feeling that he fooled himself into thinking that it was the surface, clay, and not the opponent, Nadal, that got the better of him. Somehow I feel that all this while he's been playing golf on the tennis courts -- focussing inward and refining his game to such a level that it didn't matter who the opponent was; he just had to beat the course. It is only recently that he's woken up to the reality of an adversary facing him across the net. And a capable one at that.

On Sunday, when Nadal had him panting in the second and third sets, Federer was visibly reluctant to shift up that extra gear, which he finally did in the fourth set. And he was so eager to get back to his I-don't-believe-you-exist-I-refuse-to-compete-with-you mode that he ended up losing his serve the first time he served for the match.

An athlete is a competitor first and artist next. Federer would do well to remember this and let Nadal "penetrate his psyche" so that it hurts him the next time he loses to the Spaniard. Only then will he motivate himself to play at top gear always and not just when needed, especially against Nadal.

Nadal for his part showed what a truly wonderful player he's going to be in the years to come. He is a terrific competitor, the best among the current crop. And all he has to do next time is to stand deep on Federer's first serves, step up on the second serves, use that decent return of serve he has (Did you see that blistering forehand cross-court return of serve in the third set tie-break? Left Federer gasping, it did), leave the mid-court moon balls back at the French Open and start hitting his balls deeper towards the baseline so that he has the approach shot all set up. The French is all about patience, whereas on the grass, aggression alone is rewarded. You need to force the issue. Ask Ivanisevic.

I'm really looking forward to the next final between these two. To see if Federer lets himself compete against Nadal, and to see if Nadal learns his lessons well.

World Cup Final

World cup victory as a captain. The perfect last match. Talisman.

Zinedine Zidane.

I've been a great fan of his ever since I saw him play for Juventus and execute that trademark twirl which left me in raptures. I thought you could do that only on EA Sports’ Fifa! Feet that cast a force field around the ball, the balance of a trapeze artist, the midfield vision of a general and the introverted genius of a chess champion … And all that people will remember him in the years to come? Not that knifing brace which plunged deep into Brazilian hearts in the '98 final, not that screamer which left Bayer Leverkusen fans bawling in the 2002 Champions league final, not all those Player of the Year awards, but that one moment of insanity which nobody will ever understand, that one instant when the dream died. I can already see him being reduced to a trivia question:

"Which player holds the dubious distinction of scoring in two World Cup finals and being sent off in one of them?"

Damn. So many emotions went through me when I saw that replay. Disbelief, shame, anger, agony, regret ... watching him walk off the pitch with his head hung in shame was heart-wrenching to say the least. And this in a match which had seen him entice and exhort his team through 120 minutes of the best World Cup final I've seen. Damn. Why oh why oh why?

It’s easy to slam Zidane for being irresponsible and postulate how he ruined everything, but how many of us understand what he did? Not for a moment am I excusing what he did, just that maybe we need to redefine our understanding of genius (can you really believe how people say that it’s because of him that France lost the penalty shootout? That’s rich, oh yes!). Was it just a simple rush of blood? Or is it the evil of genius finding a perverse delight in defiling that which others hold sacred? This perversion is essential to genius, I believe.

Roger Federer and Zinedine Zidane. As different as geniuses come -- one plays a sport in which the only contact allowed between players is a shake of the hand after the match, while the other plays a game which considers Gary Linekar special (Linekar was never cautioned in his career; he never got as much as a yellow card in his playing life). But then are they that different? Is there any common ground?

Unlike other forms of human endeavour where genius is encouraged to blossom, sport is twisted in that we ruthlessly challenge our geniuses day in and day out, ungratefully asking them to prove themselves against mediocrity, often in conditions unfavourable to them (it is the rare sport where genius is left alone to enthrall us). And it is in how they treat their opponents that Zidane and Federer share the cruel fate that extraordinary talent is confronted with in sport. Both of them refuse to believe their opponents exist when they need to. Zidane, in the way he pulled (past tense already) off those outrageous dribbles, only to find a gawky defender charge in with a clumsy challenge; Federer, in the way he refuses to acknowledge that Nadal could retrieve his razor sharp volleys. And this refusal is essential to their psyche, for if at all genius thrives on anything, it is the denial of the obvious.

I had a wonderful time that night, really. And in the end, as I switched off my T.V. set and went to bed, Sunday threw an insight into the nature of sport. Sport is poetry, drama, theater … all that is fine. But above all it is ugly. Ugly in the primitive way it forces its finest exponents to compete, ugly in the way it taunts and reduces a subliminal genius to a subhuman primate. And the funny thing is, it is this ugliness that we find attractive!

Aurangabad trip - photos

2006-06-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

The company sent a team of us on a customer visit to Aurangabad. What you see above are the results of us going camera-snappy.

Descriptions (starting from the last one, and moving up)

Sunset at some forsaken station in Andhra Pradesh. I think it was Krishna-something, don't remember exactly. I'd just woken up after sleeping through the entire day (We left last Thursday), and was rinsing the sleep out of my mouth, when I got lucky with this one. No, no, I had to go get the camera.
After spending Saturday and Sunday (We reached Aurangabad on Friday) at the customer's facility, we took off early on Sunday afternoon and spent the rest of the evening sight-seeing. First stop, Daulatabad fort. Wiki it up, I'm weak when it comes to history. This photo is of the "Chand Minar", which when translated using my superlative Hindi skills, means "Moon Tower".
View from higher up the fort. At 1 o clock, you could have seen a strategically placed weapon of mass destruction (aka a cannon) if it were not for those pesky tourists who wanted to touch and feel everything. The bridge runs across a moat which surrounds the greater part of the fort.
Open Sesame! From inside the dungeons.
View of the Moon Tower from one of the ramparts.
The front view of the fort, or at least whatever the camera could cover. It actually runs for quite a length.
Mountain climber.
On the way to Ellora, when the rain put up quite a show.
The Kailash temple at Ellora. I kept thinking, "What on earth drove these people to do this?" Amazing.
And amidst all this, diligent farmers trying to beat the rains.
Yes, we took an auto. Actually, we ran into this very friendly auto-driver (who it seems is the regular chauffeur for our company personnel; we bumped into him accidentally) called Ayub. He was our guide throughout the tour, taking us to all the little known places and making sure that we were there on time. In case he comes across this, thanks a ton! There was this poignant moment during the tour - Ayub took us to Aurangazeb's tomb, and just before he dropped us off, he quipped, "Look! Such a great emperor, and look how he lies in the rain!" Ozymandias indeed.
The fort, snapped from inside the auto, with a cloud boiling behind.
Raptor footprint.
"...and I'm proud of its rich and varied heritage..."
The clouds were lovely over Ellora. Lazy and metallic gray in some places, a mischievous blue in others and at twilight, a sad, velvety shade. On our way back, we were stuck behind a small truck. It was carrying women back from work, women who were singing a sad evening song (in Marathi I suspect), which sounded like one about a cloud which lost its way in search of a setting sun. Or so it seemed.
Silhouette of a proud lion roaring into the darkness (at Ellora).
Perspective shot of a couple of stupas (?).
'Coffee' would be an apt name I guess.
On the ride back from Aurangabad to Pune. We had a lot of equipment with us, which meant taxi rides between the two places. And the route is so picturesque! I felt cheated when we entered Pune with its high-rises, and no sky to be seen anywhere. There is something about seeing the land undulate in front of you for miles on end, stopping at the horizon to meet a sky that bends over, unveling its colours. It does make the heart ache. Sigh!
Sparrows at Pune station.
One of the minarets at the Mini Taj.
Last stop during the sight-seeing tour was Bibi-ka-Maqbara (aka Mini Taj). This was built by Aurangazeb's son as a shrine to entomb his mother. It's apparently a replica of the Taj, only smaller. This is inside Aurangabad, and the road to this place runs through a Muslim neighbourhood. From whatever little time I spent at Aurangabad, the one thing that struck me was how the city is a microcosm of India, with Muslims and Hindus living together, but ensconced in their own, separate worlds.

We took a lot more photos and I might be putting them up on Flickr soon. But for now, enjoy!

The break

2006-06-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

It' s been raining intermittently since morning. A mug of dark, black coffee grows cold on the table. An abandoned cordless beckons plaintively from a forgotten corner of the small, one-room cabin. Newspapers lie in scattered sheets on the wooden floor, vestiges from a session with the cartoons and the crossword.

He stands in front of the glass wall that overlooks the dark, green jungle underneath, watching drops patter the verandah, bouncing off the hard teak like pearls dropping from an unstrung necklace. The bluish-gray sky lies lazily above him. The clouds are today heavy with rain, and lumber across purposelessly. He'd woken up at dawn and had made good progress before it started raining. And then, like mice lured by the piper, the rain had drawn him out.

Sunlight soldiers through the shaggy, thatched roof from over and behind his head, catching drops in mid-flight. A delicate warmth suffuses the nippy air, which now smells of dead, and wet, leaves. A mini rainbow struggles on the glass. He can see his tall frame in it now, bare-chested, hair dishevelled, unshaved, his khakis falling from his slim waist to just below his ankles. The cordless continues to wail.

He plods across the verandah to where the glass wall ends and the ladder begins. The drops have formed a small puddle here. Balancing himself on his left leg, he stretches his right out, and with the big toe, writes her name on the water. The water cedes as his toe scrawls, and then spreads back to erase. He carefully draws each letter on the surface, watching them vanish even before he finishes, but the image of all of them together is firm in his mind. Just like her memory.

The cordless goes silent. He notices it. In the jungle, it's not the noise, but the silence which catches the attention. It rings again. He walks bare-footed into the cabin; looks around for the cordless. He checks his writing table. A sheaf of notes, papers from the morning's work, a box of cheap ballpoint pens, with one missing, the one he's been using. But no cordless. He can hear it nearby.

He bounds across the mattress, homing on the sound. There's a backpack in the corner, filled with supplies from his latest visit to the village. He flings it aside. The cordless blinks at him in innocence, its tone now louder and adamant. He grabs at it.

"Hello?"

"Daddy?"

Why people have clocks/watches on their blogs?

2006-06-15T03:05:00.000-07:00

1) Because you want to know what time it is before you answer nature's call in the middle of the night. So holding your bladder, you boot your PC, wait for the damn dial-up to connect meanwhile debating between using Firefox or IE, use Firefox anyway because Bill is such a sissy, visit your blog, look at the time, and then scurry into the bathroom where you go, "Sigh...!" in accompaniment to the sound of running water.

2) You fritter away your youth looking at your site stats all day, counting each hit as it trickles in, and you need to know if it's time to eat or shower or ca-ca (not necessarily in that order) or whatever it is that you do in between. Of course, you're too preoccupied to notice the task bar.

3) Digression. Ever noticed how bloggers have two clocks on their blogs? Chances are one shows the time of an American city/town with a university, and the other, of some place in (Replace with third world country). Have you wondered why? It's because the aforesaid blogger (again too preoccupied to look at the task bar) can then time his call to his girlfriend (third world country = India) when she's in the middle of a meal to have the following conversation:

"What you upto yaa?" - blogger.
"Eating." - bored girlfriend.
"What you eating?" - blogger.
"Onion Oothaappam" - bored girlfriend, feeling slightly disgusted.
"Onion Oothaapam?? Sigh! I so miss home food yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend wary of oncoming mush attack.
"And I miss you too yaa" - blogger.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend with appropriate measure of love.
"Do you miss me?" - blogger, slightly desperate.
"Hmmm" - bored girlfriend who can't say anything in front of handsome male colleague accompanying her.

4) Transcript of a chat between Blogger and his Bluggle* friend.

Blogger - Dude! Got myself a new watch yesterday...
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - It's got this ultra cool electric blue dial, with sexy white hands man.
Bluggle - Kewl.
Blogger - You can even see the time in three countries at the same time!! Awesome naa?
Bluggle - Kewl.
Bluggle - Is it water proof?
Blogger - $%#@&*

*Bluggle - A person who doesn't blog and knows nothing about blogs. In other words, someone with a life.

Feel free to add more rational explanations of this ubiquitous phenomenon.

UPDATE (June 18): "Bluggle" is something I coined perchance. Remember, you read it first here :)

Slow poison

2006-06-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

That is what the world is these days. A slow poison circulating in my veins, its venom diffusing through the hallways of my mind, desensitizing my soul to pathos and purity, ridiculing my ideals, clouding my vision about what's wrong and what's not.

The world is gray. Make no mistake about it. An understandable shade of gray, and this is precisely the frustration that I face daily. Nothing/nobody is so bad, or evil, that it/they can't be redeemed by a little (misplaced?) compassion and understanding. Everything is circumstantial, and nothing is absolute. Objectivity and opinion seem to switch places with alarming ease. There is no evil. There is only evil. Depends on what side you're on. Depends on how much you're willing, or unwilling, to allow. To even attempt to have a vision of life seems at once foolhardy and preposterous. For what is today, is not tomorrow. To try and transform from what you are to what you ought to be is futile, like trying to fuse together an object and its mirror image. One derives its sustenance solely through the existence of the other, and to merge the two would be to kill both. Because Life, the mirror, doesn't permit you to. The two are destined to be conflicting apparitions. Illusions because you're in a constantly suspended state, moving from one to the other. And at times you wonder whether you're moving in the wrong direction too. It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where with every piece you place correctly, the puzzle modifies itself, forcing you to shift perspective and start all over again. All because the world is that way.

The world is a slow poison. And I'm dying a little each day.

Good news...

2006-06-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

...is always great to hear.

***

Calvin: I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.

Hobbes: What if you find someone you can talk to while you eat apples on a bright fall morning?

Calvin: Well, yeah... I suppose there's no point in getting greedy, is there?

Perplexed

2006-06-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

How do you choose between honesty and compassion? How do you preserve your integrity when it implies inflicting pain on somebody else? How do you bridge the distance when neither of you are willing to meet midway?

Lost sole

2006-06-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

Go read! Catch you guys at the premiere, I have a movie to manufac...err..make.

PS: Spare me the lecture about being PC. It's a blog, for God's sake.