Pigeonhole

A Rockstar Movie !

2011-11-16T10:45:00.001-08:00

just back from seeing Rockstar.
Simply put, it is a movie that "grips".
A movie about the grandeur of magnificent pain...

....such life-defining agony that the muffled hum-drum of a comfortable, predictable daily life almost appears to be hiding from one the sense of being truly alive....

ज़िन्दगी में ऐसा दर्द तो हो
जिससे जीने का एहसास मिले
आने वाले लम्हे का बेसब्र इंतज़ार हो
यूँ न लगे दबा हूँ मुर्दा लम्हों के तले

ज़िन्दगी एक रुई के गांठे सी है
सुन्न है ! भरी है, पर खाली है....
कोई आकार नहीं, कोई विकार नहीं
न अज़ान है और ना कोई गाली है
बस, बेमतलब, निस्पृह और खाली है
...............खाली है

मौत की देहलीज़ पे लगे,
कि मौत नहीं क़ुरबानी है !
या मौला! .......तेरी नज़्म......तेरी ग़ज़ल,
हर एक ज़ख्म तेरी निशानी है !

यूँ पैदा होने की
यूँ जीने की
यूँ मर जाने की
कोई वजह तो हो
कोई वजह ना सही, कम से कम एक बहाना तो हो

कटे नस से बहता हुआ खून ही सही .....
पुलिंदों को हिला दे, ऐसा कोई जूनून ही सही !!!!
--------------

---------

-----

दुआओं के दरख़्त पे ये क्या धागा बाँध रहा हूँ
या खुदा, ये मैं तुझसे क्या मांग रहा हूँ !!!

It Is Done ! :)

2010-11-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

Long ages ago - when Blackberry wouldn't advertise, Rakhi Sawant was a minor nuisance, Ali couldn't get married - I had written a post about "Vakola ke Chiraag".

Today, it gives me great pleasure to share that it is done ! :)

we took our first class on 5th of October 2010, and we have had classes every weekday since then....thats a solid 2 months of tremendous support and commitment from my colleagues in APL.

The support from my friends in Asian Paints has been simply amazing !

They have supported me and held me to account.

Whenever I have had the silent, sinister urge to just take it easy for a while and let things drift they have jerked me back to the game that we are upto, the difference we are out to make.

Its a team of 15 teachers now (3 every day - 1 each for class 4, 5 and 6) and there are 15 to 18 students who turn up regularly...

From what we have heard from other well established NGOs doing similar stuff we must have done a real great job to have kept the students interested for so long.........and yes, there is still a long way to go.....we need to keep on figuring out how to teach Maths to these predominantly Tamil medium students......how do we start making English more real and easy for them......and so on.....and we are on it......we are making progress....and in each class we are making a difference, how so ever slight, how so ever minuscule, but it is a grain in the right direction......

We have also had one meeting with an amazingly energetic lady by the name of Prachi Mangaonkar who is with an NGO called Akanksha who in half an hour's time made it quite clear for me as to what needs to be done...

I am attaching here a couple of pics I took in today evening's class.......the only adults u see in these pics are Gopal M V (he has never missed a class !) and Kiran (our 1st teacher) from my office and Nagappa Ji, a a man held in great esteem by the community these kids come from and who offered us the temple premises and set this teaching thing going..................more to come as we roll along....

P.S. - Darn !!!! I still dont know how to arrange the pics in my blog......guess i just have to wait for that level of enlightenment for a while.....

PFMS redefined

2010-05-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have these amazing conversations in office...when seeking respite from the relentless summer of work you seek shade under an aimless chitchat and to your great surprise a juicy fruit of conversation falls into your lap.....I just thought they might make for interesting reading.....Here is the first in the series...

Since these conversations originate in real life, they have that peculiar quality of real life as well......any sense of direction and coherence is purely a coincidence and there is no The End, no definite closure, no Happily or Sadly Everafter......so one will have to contend with the open-endedness of these blogs.

=============================================================

Saturday afternoon.

If there had been a clock in my office it would have been striking two.

That day of the week and that time of the day when self-respecting south indians lie supine, eyes half-closed, meditating on the divinity of curd rice sitting deep inside their hairy tummies.

And here I was, in my office, fighting my battles against stock-outs, marshaling my tanks....er, oil tankers....., shouting commands to my generals...er...vendors....

And I get this ping from one of my colleagues....for the sake of anonymity and out of sheer survival instincts I will call him here GM.

Now GM is one of those people who remind you of those extremely competitive and extremely studious kids at school...who are often portrayed in movies with oil-slicked hair and big spectacles and nerdy dialogues....but our GM in addition to (probably) being all those things is also a good sport.....with a taste for verbal fencing....

And GM had just been back from a (sponsored) trip to the Vegas.

I mention sponsored here, because otherwise what GM did there in Vegas he didn't have to go to Vegas for doing.........attend business seminar, have good vegetarian food, relax, sleep and come back home.....no gambling, no bars - the strip kind or otherwise.

And here is what followed....

GM - what are you doing!!!

Me - sitting in office, reading my blog

wat ru doing online?

chatting with the women u made friends with in vegas?

GM - hmm...

but... u readinng your own blog...

Me - yes...

GM - on DCO std oil?

Me - hehe

patthar ka jawab eent se....sahi sahi...

GM - saale... eet ka jawaab pathar se... misaal tosahi diyaa karo!

Me -

misaal ekdum sahi di hai bhai..

vegas ki women kahan aur dco stand oil kahan...

GM -

hmm...good one...you plan your honeymoon at Vegas na...

Me -

fir honeymoon me hi divorce ho jayega

GM -

expectation management kaa baat hai

like PFMS

(now PFMS is the dirty little Big trick that HR plays on all employees of our company......when completely unfurled it reads Performance Focused Management System.....but when read closely it is deciphered as "No, you are not that good, but we will tolerate you")

Me -

agar biwi ko vegas leke gaya na honeymoon pe to PFMS ka matlba hi badal jaayega

it will become

Piranha Female Murders Spouse

GM -

haha

PV -

ye to sahi ek aur blog ka material ho gaya

Vakola ke Chiraag - Tadaaaaaaannnnn!!!! The Introduction.

2010-05-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

I thought it was going to be easy.

Yeah, I really thought so.

I am part of a small miracle in Mumbai called “walking to office from home”.

No being squished like a pancake in the locals - where your chest finally gets to touch your own back and you start wondering whether intestines, lungs, heart are all just concepts and not real things. Well, if they were real shouldn't they have been turned to juice with all that pushing and squishing that happens...or maybe its all that packing of vada paavs inside which cushions the insides from turning to a missal-like consistency.

No getting stuck in traffic jams with your car.

Just a simple walk.

I live in Vakola, behind the Grand Hyatt Hotel and work with Asian Paints, which is bang in front of Grand Hyatt. So, it’s like a walk of 5 minutes (though that has not prevented me from taking rides from bewildered auto-wallahs to just make it in time to office) from home to office.

Everyday when I walk to office I pass by a group of make-shift slums – not the kind of settled, structured slums that you normally see around apartments in Mumbai, but really make-shift slums.

It’s a colony of ragpickers.

A lot of them sleep on mats/bedsheets right out on the road.

And I never much thought about them. They were as much a given and inconsequential part of the background of my life as were the other absolute strangers I passed by daily on my way to the office.

Until I started my SELP program with Landmark Education.

Now this is a very powerful education for life and in SELP one is supposed to take up a community project.

I love teaching and I was convinced that the kids living in this slum would definitely not be going to school, and hence, if a group of my colleagues from Asian Paints join in this project with me it would have a big impact on the lives of these kids.

So, there it was – my project is to teach these kids with a group of my Asian Paints colleagues.

And our project name - “Vakola Ke Chiraag”.

I know, it’s a little too dramatic and has the cheap flourish of one of (actually, any of) Ekta Kapoor’s serials.

There are 3 areas to be addressed before this project actually becomes a reality –

1) Form a group of 5 – 7 people from Asian Paints who would be willing to give an hour a week (from 7.30 pm to 8.30 pm) to teach these kids

2) Find a place to teach these kids at night

3) Design the curriculum

I was simply amazed by the easy, large generosity of my colleagues whom I approached to be a part of this project. Now we are a group of 5 people – and trust me, 5 very interesting people (if I were to just write about their idiosyncrasies here I bet you this blog would be bought over and turned into a syndication) - committed to making a difference to the lives of these kids.

Now the next big thing to close is to find a room to teach these kids at night.

And boy, oh boy, am I running around here.

I have visited a couple of convent schools in my area who directed me to BMC schools who were extremely cooperative and polite in telling me that they can lend out their rooms only to NGOs.

So, I am actually a little stuck here.

And today I am going to talk again to one of those convents. Fingers crossed.

And I thought it was easy to just get a room, find kids to be taught and people to teach them.

I really thought it was easy.

---------------

This, my lovely blog here, which has endured my long periods of absence, my vulgar jokes, my benumbing PJs, my dazzling, insightful moments of pristine vapidity (yeah, I know, she sounds like the devout wife of this degenerate Thakur) - is going to be a chronicle of our journey as we relocate the existence of this project from paper to real, physical life.

Legalize prostitution if you can't curb it: SC to govt

2009-12-10T06:32:00.000-08:00

but i thought it was already legal...

i mean, aren't we getting paid for being screwed and ass-whipped left, right and centre by even those who cant get it up enough and end up using it as a wet whip.... ...

Ass licking is as common in our workplaces as it would be in the Wall Streets of the world's oldest profession... .

..and taking all of that in even we have to fake pleasure....

...we too are expected to show innovation time and again once the older method no longer excites interest...while what is expected is the same old basic stuff just begun in a different way to end the same way...

...and we too run the risk of contracting diseases...pretty dangerous and life-sapping ones at that...Cynicism, Pessimism, Sarcasm and Aimless-ism....

...We are not just prostitutes dude, we are pro-prostitutes...the very finest, the very professionals at it...the avante garde....

corporate climbers

2009-11-27T05:58:00.000-08:00

Some people grow in companies...
some others grow on companies...like moss...

2009-11-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

I must write because I love to write.

I forget the name of the guy….sorry, I must more precisely say, I never remembered the name of the guy in the first place…but there was this guy who was an author kind of person who had written many newspaper columns and perhaps a book or two also…..this guy was on TV and he was saying “one of the first things I learned as a newspaper columnist was that I should not think about who I am writing this article for. I should not think about the reactions of those who are going to read this. Only then can I write. So I just wrote whatever I felt like writing, without worrying about whether it will be appreciated or put down”. That’s probably the best advice I have ever received. And maybe the reason I feel myself capable of taking it is because it was not intended for me personally.

My friends often ask me why do I not get down to writing a book.

I offer my entire range of theatrical shrugs and poignant sighs by way of explanations. Work, frustration with work, life, frustration with life.
But I know the real reason.
And its something which ashames me as I admit it – even to myself. Such a damn delusionist I am.

Till the time I don’t write anything significant, and just keep shooting off a glib mail, a sarcastic reply, a biting review here and there I keep convincing myself that Oh Yeah, I have this talent as a writer. But what if I write something more substantial, say like a book, and it falls flat?

Then, I would convince myself and everyone else that I never had any gift of substance.

And that would be it. That would be the end of this feeling that I have of being a good author, of being able to write stuff that interests people. And that’s why I don’t try writing a book. That’s why.

Well, if no book, then no book.

Writing, out-pouring of thoughts and ramblings.
That’s something I can do and I will do.

I do not consider myself a person of any deep or incisive thoughts – about life or anything else.
But there are times when I feel like I have understood something, like some fact that everyone else, or most people have already been aware of for quite some time, which I have realized just now. This feeling is quite something I tell you.

The way I see life, myself, the world around in those moments, I wish I could see the same way throughout life. At all moments, in all occasions.

I just finished reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
(Considering the heavy analysis of psychological theories and alternate viewpoints in the second half of the book, it might even be called as “Man’s Search for Meaning…of This Book”)
Pretty interesting book.
And more than that.
If one reads this book and finds it no more than interesting or touching then it’s as wasted as a conversation with a pretty woman without appreciating how intelligent she is.

One of the interesting things I found in the book is the importance he attaches to the past. The past is real. The future is all potential.
What has been achieved and done has been secured in the past.
What is there in the future and undone is a mere potentiality.
Hence, to live life one must try and put as many things as possible in the past.
The potentialities must be converted and secured as permanent indelible pages in the book of Past.

Each moment spent in regretting is a moment stamped and sealed as “Moment of Regret” and that’s it – it has been lived, it has become real and it has become saved unalterably as a “Moment of Regret”.

I was walking back from the Churney road HDFC ATM, rolling these marbles of thoughts in the palm of my head - ‘look, I have got these 5 minutes while I walk and whether I like it or not these 5 minutes will definitely become history 5 minutes hence. Irretrievably cast into a statue of sand. Nothing bad is going to happen to me in the next 5 minutes. Despite all the transitoriness of life and treachery of fate I can still say to myself very re-assuredly that nothing bad is going to happen to me in the next 5 minutes. Now whether these 5 minutes freeze into wax statues of drooping, wizened listlessness or rising little angels of joy was upto me. Is that a decision that I can make? Oh yes. In the face of all the fatalism and determinism of the world, that is still something I can decide. '

And I just decided to fill the next 5 minutes with feeling good. Just feeling good. No regrets, no worries, no expectations, no evaluations. And I tell you, it felt so beautiful. So calming. Maybe that’s what Bliss feels like. Such peace.

Now, as I write again, I am looking for that 5 minute walk here.

a monday morning conversation

2009-11-22T20:53:00.000-08:00

Cast - Myself and Ali
(the missing link in human evolution from apes...er..also a fantastically enthusiastic guy)

Note - This is a true conversation. It could be emotionally unsettling to young people growing old in their workplace. Parental discretion is advised.

Note2 - Ali is notorious for spelling mistakes. Parental discretion is advised. I have underlined all the ones i could find....Ali is a stud, he can spelling mistakes in hinglish too..

Pradeep Vedula - monday....lovely, beautiful, sweet mondays
Aliasghar Bawa- :)
Pradeep Vedula - such brightly coloured feathers, such sweetly melodious birds...such joy in the
air
no wonder i dont see any of it around me
Aliasghar Bawa - hmmm
Pradeep Vedula - as its all filled within me
and i have none to spare for the world outside
mondays, sweet mondays
Aliasghar Bawa - i see someone has had a blast on the weekend
mom still around? mr poet
Pradeep Vedula - "blast" is a term i now associate only with workdays...
we have aged ali...
Aliasghar Bawa - not me
Pradeep Vedula - yeah, u have the privilege to say that... a guy who travels miles and spends thousands to watch people race around in cars....is still naively youthful at heart
(whenever there is an F1 in Singapore, Ali makes sure he is lost somewhere among all that flat hair and silky legs)
Aliasghar Bawa - offense taken to naive
Pradeep Vedula - all youth is naive
Pradeep Vedula - mom leaving today afternoon
Aliasghar Bawa - the kind of stuff i did this weeknd brings a tear to my eyes
Pradeep Vedula - wat did u do? cut onions?
Aliasghar Bawa - 2 movies, 2 shopping trips, 2 long droves
Pradeep Vedula - ailaaa.... fantastic
Aliasghar Bawa - 250 kms of droving
Pradeep Vedula - now dont say with 2 couples
Aliasghar Bawa - 4 hours of sleep
Pradeep Vedula - ahhh, now i understand the tears
Aliasghar Bawa -2 meals with 2 sets of close frieds
total of 8 hours at home from 9 am saturday to 9 pm sunday
total maddness
o n shradhra were asking of u
(no its not shradhra...its shraddha...a very sweet woman who is married to lolo - my dear friend from B who balances off all that sweetness)
Pradeep Vedula - how is shradhha? how is her website coming along?
Aliasghar Bawa - ask her na, i m not the messenger
Pradeep Vedula - arey, i thot u wd hv discussed those things, thats all....stop resopnding like k***
(all the stars obviosuly mean we are referring to some 5 star general in the office)
Aliasghar Bawa - saale kaam hota hai toh login se baat karta hai, warna nahi
Pradeep Vedula - mujhe kya kaam hai yaar ab
koi kaam nahi
aise hi madhur monday morning ke bahaav me tujhe ping kiya, aur kuch nahin
Aliasghar Bawa - hmmm
i m sure boss wil call u soon
Pradeep Vedula - tht will crown this morning
Aliasghar Bawa - tru
Pradeep Vedula - now i am feeling like i will have a blast
Aliasghar Bawa - :)
Pradeep Vedula - and little tears are hanging like kids preening over just tall windowsills on
the edges of my eyes...
Aliasghar Bawa - chal, let me get back to working... rather start
Pradeep Vedula - lotus dear lotus
(lotus is our e-mail service...the real lotus goes far more quickly from bud to flower than it takes our lotus to open mails)
Pradeep Vedula - that keeps me from working too hard
Aliasghar Bawa - mr poet
Pradeep Vedula - i am not a poet
poets are hungry
i am not
poets are angry
i am not
Aliasghar Bawa - u r just in sorrow
like a hara hua aashiq
Pradeep Vedula - please
i am not in sorrow either
Aliasghar Bawa - ok, lament
Pradeep Vedula - i am celebrating bright monday mornings
Aliasghar Bawa - hmmm
Pradeep Vedula - u hv heard of black fridays and black sundays
have ever heard of a black monday?
never...
Aliasghar Bawa - :)
Pradeep Vedula - mondays are always blue
the colour of calm and peace and serenity
Aliasghar Bawa - have u noticed how many pple waer blue shirts on monday
Pradeep Vedula - thts called starting with the best intentions :p

Aliasghar Bawa - chal be, kaam karte hai... later
Pradeep Vedula - chal...bye

Those awful Sunday Mornings

2009-11-14T21:32:00.000-08:00

(I know awful is normally for monday mornings, but some sundays can also go bad)

you know, some sunday mornings, you wake up and just lie in bed....and are not feeling good about it..... life and career seem to have reached a zen stage where they intend to just sit at one place in ostensible meditation, but which is actually more like energyless slumber... ...

"excitement" sounds like one of those words that taint old pictures of childhood and irrationally hopeful days of youth...

... yeah...i am talking about one of those bad sunday mornings when u wake up, staring long into the distance watching Life become a smaller and smaller dot on the autobahn of Time as it walks away from you.....

And there is just one cure in the entire South Indian world for such Sunday mornings.....a good, strong cuppa of filter kaapi.....

2009-11-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

Why this urge to create?

Why this urge to write?

Maybe, when we create something, a little of one's being is crystallized into something more tangible than a presence inside.

It is the only way one can hold oneself in the cup of one's own palm....and appreciate the beauty and wonder that God has put inside us.

When we create, we feel the creation of God that we are.

Yes, Again...yet again..

2009-11-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

i have decided to start writing again...

maybe someday i will write a book,
maybe not
but atleast my grandkids will have something to read about
and feel embarrassed...

Guess a few thanks are due for this resurrection..

Thanks,
to Andy.
for his mindless courage.
Courage is anyways, by definition, mindlesness.
Courage is the inability to see the most obvious and logical outcome of one's decisions, and hence the possibility of creating some shockingly wonderful alternative realities.

to Fart, Vishy and Varath.
for their honest, comforting, cynical brand of curd-rice encouragement.
In Fart's case, make it curd rice laced with vodka.

Whenever I have fallen into the ice cold pool of dark, depressive thoughts these guys have grabbed me by my hair...and pushed me a little deeper into it.
So that I clearly felt and saw what I was comfortbaly sinking into... then they let me free, and I rush up gasping.

to Pondy.
for showing how stupidly one can fall in sensual love with nothing but ideas.
even if they are not one's own original ideas.

to Adak.
for alternately giving advice and laughing as if on dope....laughing, as if that's the only way he knows to breathe

to Narayan.
for long my better half.
a better half i long for even now.
(well....if that scares the girls away from me....sweethearts, u havent exactly been falling all over me either)

to Shantanu.
The jagat-uncle.
who has been trying to make me grow up as hard as he has been trying to grow himself down

to Ali
who keeps dumping horribly written books by grammar/decency/sex-starved fresh engineering grads on my desk with a "if-they-can-so-can-you" shout hurled down his pointing index finger right into my face.

to Hima.
the critic-who-is-dangerous-when-drunk.

to Pappa.
for just being such a pleasant sight to the eyes.
I remember the mornings you would bounce in like a hot-air balloon into my hostel room...and i would wonder in my half-sleep whether it was again one of those complete solar eclipse days....such round darkness...

to Zahra
well....i finally met her ;)
and she is every bit a hot tumbler of strong filter kaapi....

and to someone who makes me half-scared-half-hopeful...

There....I am done with the "Thanks" page of my book, if ever there would be one.
I just re-read it and it surprisingly reads like a farewell note.....

So, dear Grandkids....
if you are ever embarassed of your grandpa...you know exactly which of his friends to avoid...

A Father's Prayer.....Or......God's Prayer

2008-10-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

Do i protect you from getting hurt,
and let you become angry at me
for not letting you do what you want to
and never knowing that i did it
to protect you
Never even knowing there was
something to be protected from..

And maybe making you love me a little less for that,
if not less than your love in the past for me,
definitely a little less than your present love for your friends
who, like you, see your dream
but can't see the distance..

Or,

Do I let you go and dare?
I let you go....and....
wait,
hoping
praying
crying
silently
that when you do come back
the damage is not so much
that i can't nurse you back
that i can't make you whole again
i hope...
knotting and unkontting my fingers in teary prayers
i hope..
that when you come back
from your flight
there is some you still left inside of you..

I love you, my child,
I love you..
What do I do?

2008-10-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

A Beautiful mind
An ugly thought;
A dream of the night,
In morning mist lost;
Meanings and Purposes -
A troubled search in the surreal hours,
Counting victories and Losses
Not realizing this battle is not ours ;
Dying to make a difference,
Dying to be different,
My life above all !!!!!
A call in vain…though eloquent;
Relax O' restless Traveller,
Remember you are just….. a traveler
The journey is all there is, all there was,
A destination was never.

can you believe it...somebody wants em to write :))

2008-09-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.yourstory.in/blogs/team-blogs/6-a-personal-search-.html

dear Zahra,

i am awed by the strength of your good wishes, finally someone has asked me to write for them....

God bless you :)

excerpts from another mail

2008-06-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

yeah, yeah, see u on sunday....for sure...

...and i guess, the day u write that big mail to me about all the things that you have been wanting to tell
would be the day you will see an Al Jazeera exclusive video footage of Bush and Osama kissing each other outside a niche marriage court in California....

:((
i got into such trouble today...
and not for much good reason too...
my room mate had forgotten his mobile at our home, i went back at home during lunch for some small work,
and saw his mobile lying there,
i took it along intending to return it to him
but then my conscience balked at the thought of returning back the phone unmolested and its owner unconfounded,
so i just typed an sms
"Call me immediately"
and sent it to the first 7-8 female names i found on his list
and then gave the mobile back to our guy...

and in a couple of minutes he is getting calls from relatives long forgotten
but the worst part was
when a couple of women he had been seeing for marriage, but where the talks had collapsed unceremoniusly much like Israel-Palestine peace talks,
started calling him up and asking what the shit he was upto after such a long time....

as would seem logical from the above delineated sequence of events
our man got mightily pissed off
and the first hints of it came to me
when he passed by my desk in office, and made a certain twitching gesture of his right hand fingers
which somehow my mind inchoately processed as a demand, and far less a request, of wanting me to meet outside...

his soft body language, and soft grimaces notwithstanding, i deduced --- drawing from my deep
experience in studying and understanding finer human emotions of not-so-fine humans--- from his cryptic words
that he was not happy with me :
"What were you thinking!!!???? This is deep shit now !!!!! You have gotten me into deep shit !!!!!
You are @#$##^& &^%**((*&&^^%%$%^& ))(*&^^&^%$$$$$
I don't want to discuss this here,
we will go home and talk about it "

He is already at home
waiting for me
And i sit here, typing this mail,
trying to work off my state of fear through my trembling fears on this keyboard...

he is a soft-spoken guy
what i am concerned about is that
he might not be such a soft-fisted guy.....

2008-05-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Poignant deaths??
Ideas and words that die inside a person.
And they don't die alone.
They kill many innocent Opportunities, tenuously courageous, wild-eyed Change and many smiling Alternate Lives with them.

Wish You a Happy Married Life - The Longest Oxymoron in the world????

2008-05-09T12:49:00.001-07:00

I looked outside the big windows and realised it was night.
But it was not dark.
The thousand, mundane lights of Mumbai sat sulking outisde like rows of sullen, tired beggars.
My fingers made some rude love to my heavy eyelids, rubbing them this way and that on the water bed of my spent, watery eyes.....I looked again at the computer screen and let out the 3rd one in a long line of royal sighs.

Late in the office, I was checking out my yahoo mails before leaving for the day when I came across a marriage invite from one of my friends at B. Satyam Darmora, Captain Satyam Darmora - a leader of men, with a staunch following of one.

Satyam Darmora - one heck of a hell raiser, but the kind who is very likely to get thrown out of hell for his troubles rather than be crowned its king of mischief..

Nevertheless a guy who is good fun and adventure to hang around with....Satyam Darmora was getting married...and he had sent an e-mail invite - one of those strange creatures with a BIG head and a small body - to the entire batch.

The Head :"All Good Things Come to An End"
The Body: And so has my bachelorhood. :-(Please be there to support me on this occassion. Iwould like to invite you all to please come & shower your wishes and blessings on this rare occasion. Attached is the wedding invite and following are thekey metrics :

[key metrics not inculded in this blog]

----------
I sighed, closed my eyes, remembered Darmora, and the following words literally poured out from my sensitive (and a lil leaky) soul..
-----------
Many Many Heartiest Congratulations yaar!

Even though time, space and their child - circumstance - conspire against any possibilities of my presence at that really momentous occassion, I assure you that as the tiny stars spin like paper boats in the blue street waters running thousands of miles over blushing maids and cowering grooms in Dehradun, I shall be looking at those very same stars sitting on the bar-grilled bal-cony of my Mumbai flat, currently shared with a couple of guys getting too late for marriage, and as the jewels of time tumble and the moment approaches when you shall be tying yourself into knots as you put those 3 knots around a decieptfully delicate neck I shall close my eyes and breath a deep sigh, the mists of which shall haze the air below my nose making some of my prodigally long nasal hair shiver like fir trees in an icy winter night breeze, and shall remember with respect and awe and a sense of homage the great Captain who never heard an "Aye" the entire heroic part of his life, the Great Captain, who almost won the Lead India Campaign. Now that Captain shall be leading a train of kids, himself lugged by the engine of a wife.

Yeah, my friend, yeah, I shall sit on that lonely fateful black night in my green shorts on the grey balcony, looking beyond the emptiness of air into the inviting, embracing hole of the mouth of my beer bottle, i shall look down its slender, smooth neck and into the sudden yet graceful expanse of its chest, and I shall look down into the tiny bubbles of joy and beauty and promise and hope, and on the tiny, ephemeral, dancing surfaces of those froth bubbles, I shall see mirrored your entranced face as you partook of the same beauty of a beer bottle on L Square nights, with a delicate fervour which made seem that you were kissing the bottle instead of drinking beer from it.

And as the soft magic of the beer spreads warmly in my memory, I shall remember how happy simple things made you - which from that momentous moment in Dehradun would be like poison to you - things, such as a women's legs. Nay my friend, at your very sights they stayed no more legs, but turned into flaming torches, which lighted fires in your eyes, and melted your heart which dripped down your open mouth, and your yearning, burning sighs blew like smoke from a burning coconut hemp. In those moments my friend, I tell you, I could smell a man's conscience burning. But no more shall such heat and fire and light burn you...no more......

...But even in this difficult passage of time, that makes you swallow so difficultly...I know that you can still hold your head up and proud, and say to all those that have gone before you on this path - Hari kishan Mowa, Kiran Babu, Sagar Sahu, Jabba and many many others - you can say to all of them, in the very words of the venerated Shree Atal Bihari Bajpayee....

"Maine ab tak shadi nahin kee,
par iska matlab ye nahin ki maine brahmacharya ka paalan kiya hai"

Happy Married Life Dear Satyam Darmora Captain Saheb,
Your memory shall be enough to give us courage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He hasn't yet replied to my words of homage, but I guess he is busy with other things.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. - This blog is dedicated to Zahra, another anonymous reader, whose kind words made me put this mail up here.

Mallus, National Parks and Husbands

2007-12-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

There is something about Mallus and me.

I have one theory about Mallus - All the Mallus are half crazy, and half the Mallus are All crazy.

You might be tempted to say that this theory holds equally true for Punjabis in general, and Sardars in particular. My friend, there is a difference between being crazy and being totally cuckoo, totally unhooked from reality...I mean you can't compare Sardars to Mallus. In fact you can't compare Sardars to any South Indians, or any Indians - not even the Red or West kinds. Sardars are the only people in India who wear lungies on their heads...imagine..!!

It is not that I hate or dislike or mis/dis-trust mallus.
In fact, its the other way around.
They are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met...nevertheless crazy.

One of my very good friends in School was a Mallu.

During my summer internship at Castrol my boss was a Mallu.

In Olam Uganda my first country head was a Mallu, the guy I used to stay with was a Mallu.
In Zimbabwe one of the guys I worked closest with, and who kept bailing me out of all kindsa trouble was a Mallu.

And at IIMB, one of my closest friends was a Mallu - Jubin.
A genuinely nice human being.

She got married sometime back, and just wrote in last week saying that she and her Australian Kangaroo (aka her husband, Kevin) had gotten a week off between Xmas and New Years - some nice things about working in Singapore, which is otherwise such a boring place. They have been spending this long break by visiting National Parks.

Below is part of my reply to her -
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

visiting national parks n all.....nice....our kango must be "hopping" with excitement at it all....
i don go near such parks....am afraid they will catch me and put me too in a cage, with some brown wooden plank reading outside my cage...

RARE ANDHRA FROG

physical characteristics - big, bulging eyes. Rest all features incidental.

habitat - survives in most places, so far tested in africa, thailand and all rural areas of south india (remember my castrol summers, where my loo ws the same size as my hotel room - in which i and the small bucket could not fit in at the same time....yeah bucket, no fancy flush.....was definitely the water-loo of all my glorified mba-images..).

diet - not much, basically survives on eyecandy.

weight - depends upon time of day. 4 times a day weighs more than the average human - breakfast time, lunch time, snacks time and dinner time. Once a day weighs less than the average shastry.

di-nocturnal creature. Sleeps during the night and dreams during the day.

unique characteristics -
intense salivation and pupil dilation observed when subjected to external feminine stimuli

---------------------

You know what, actually i think all married men should visit places like natural parks, zoos and natural museums more often.
It will be good therapy for them.

In all those places they will find creatures they can relate to - once free kings of the wild, now caged, tamed, or worse, extinct and stuffed - good only for display...

Imagine how much pain a man would be able to share as he sits next to an orangutan cage...and looks into the misty, poignant eyes of the ape - just above the nose into which he has stuffed his fattest finger - how they would reminisce with each other about the happy, free-swinging times, and how the temptation of a banana has gotten them both into a prison.
One got a cage
one got a wife
s..i....g.......h.........

if you think im just spinning a yarn,

do one thing....take a couple of pictures...

1) kevin next to a monkey(male, plz) in a cage
2) kevin next to a goat about to go gor a slaughter

you will uncover the eerie fact that all their eyes hold a similar pain.....a dull pain, one of resignation to fate...

u don't believe me ?
still don't believe me?
what? you say you can hear the truth in his voice when he says "i love you too sweetheart", "whatever you say love", "your wish honey".....hmmmmm...he is very sweet n nice n caring....takes care of all ur needs, never hurts you....always understands you...

lemme tell u smething..
go to a circus..
and understand what "well-trained" means...

see....husbands r the worst of all the lots...
animals in zoos/natural parks r caged,
in national museums they r stuffed with hay
in circuses they r trained to please and do stuff that they are not meant to...

husbands suffer all the three fates...at the same time...

believe me, if God indeed created woman frome the rib of adam, then it proves that God is a woman!
And having seen that happen the first time,
women, to this day, keep trying to wrench out the ribs of their men..

Now do you understand why women keep saying "i dont want anything....he should just have a heart of gold"....its not the end they are interested in, its the process.....how do u get to a man's heart? simple, pull out his ribs one by one....
"bas dil, achha hona chahiye" sure, why not !!!

------------------
<<>>
-----------------

Look, all that I said in there might not be true, except for the first thing I said.
All Mallus are half crazy and half the Mallus are All crazy.

(Dont be too surprised if you read in the papers in the coming week that the promising career of a young manager at Asian Paints got cut short by a mysterious flying coconut...... My current boss is a Mallu, and so is half my team)

This Ain't in my DNA

2007-12-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

News papers – how much they have changed!! Now they are carrying articles and news which people like me – Engineer MBAs – can just not relate to.

Only the other day, there was this article in DNA, with a header like “No Eve on New Year’s Eve?” and detailed some 10 odd simple-easy-to-execute-failproof tips for getting a date for New Years. One question that immediately came to mind was that if each of those tips were so effective, simple and fail-proof then why ten of them? The first one should work just fine na…

And this morning I saw an article saying that with New Years approaching, the gigolo/escort industry in Bombay was seeing an upswing, and how the Y-o-Y growth has thus far exceeded industry expectations. It also went into the pricing dynamics of it and explained how prices continued to remain stable despite the heavy demand due to temporary capacity expansion caused by influx of seasonal labor – basically college students willing to hire out their services only for the festive season (this is what you call real social responsibility, no matter what we won’t let the poor couple miss out on a good new year’s eve in Goa, whatever it takes to keep them happy). An in-depth article that highlighted the intense, choking, performance pressures that exist in this profession. Everybody the paper spoke to confessed to feeling drained out at the end of a day’s job. It seems that they very rich people like to go for South African cricketers because of their “choking” reputations.

Now, these are things I can’t relate to. And am damn sure most of my friends too wouldn’t be able to – notable exceptions being Bhaskar (married, so out of scope), Rishabh (about to be married, as good as dead), Moron (the Guy is God, he is the Don Bradman-Symonds cross in matters of women – way above average with a deadly hit rate) and Appachu (the male equivalent of a dumb blonde).
Andy, I know you are trying very hard, but we only have hearsay so far, no hard eve-dence. So you are not in he hall-of-fame yet.

I mean, such things don’t happen in our lives.

In our days (surprising how early “our days” start for people who dont drink, smoke, dope or have girl-friends) we used to get news that we could relate to, identify with, and use. Things like –

“Onion prices continue on the rise”

“Shools closed due to state-wide strike”

“Leader Dead. College Closed.”

“CAT paper leaked”

“UPSC papers leaked yet again”

“Paula Jones says it was slightly bent”
(And they still call the damn guy straight. Now don’t ask how we could relate to/use such bent revelations)

“Clinton denies anything happened”

“Clinton denies everything happened”

“Vajpayee says Ye Achhi Baat Nahi Hai”

" Sonia retorts Ye tumhare bas ki baat nahi hai"

“Mandal Reservations”
(not again!!)

“Reservations for OBCs”
(When will these guys wake upto reality???!!!)

“Reservations for Women in Engg. Colleges”
(Finally, they have woken upto reality!!)

I mean that was news.
These days whenever I take up the paper, and see all these pieces on youth, style, women (without having to get married to), swinging, escorts, love, I just say to myself, “This ain’t in my blood, not in my DNA”

Fundaes to a Cousin

2007-12-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

I have a cousin.
(Innner Voice - So?)

He is currently studying engineering in Surat.
(Inner Voice - Big deal. And btw nobody "studies" engineering. People "survive" engineering)

He would be sitting for CAT next year.
(IV - Hold on, hold on, hold on! Dont tell me his parents asked you to guide him. Shastry, listen to me carefully...very carefully.......you can't do that. More importantly, you should'nt do that. Just because you got through to IIMB doesn't mean you know how to do it. And knowing you, I am sure you wouldn't be knowing how you did it either. You guiding someone is like a hen teaching cats to lay eggs. And you are like that hen who doesn't even realise there was a rooster behind - literally - your success. Tell me you asked him to go to some professional people. Tell me you didn't speak to him. )

Well, I asked him to come over this weekend.
(IV - Screw you Shastry! Screw You!)

Initially I thought I will teach him a dew DI tricks, a little speech on why reading speed will make a difference, how to build a monster vocab and all.....but then with my damn Inner Voice ranting from within (wouldn't be wrong to say my feeble conscience is alive only because its on IV), I decided to show him the things that really work for an MBA aspirant.

(IV - This sounds worse than I feared)

I knew I had to keep it simple.
Down to some 2-3 basic points only.
Else he will forget it all, or get confused.
Did I tell you he is an engineer - basically someone who knows how to close his mind to information?

He came here on Friday.
After dinner that night, I took him to a movie - the 11 pm show.
There were 7 other people with us of who I knew only 2. They were all married but for one guy (my darned luck!!).
The movie finished at 2 am.
On the way back home, I told him the late night movie with 7 strangers was a MBA parable.
The learnings from the parable were thus -

1) Working in a group of people whom you hardly know and can in no way relate to.

2) Staying up late into the wee hours, whilst folks at home think you have been slogging all night, and thats why you sounded so groggy on the call from home the next morning

Next day morning, I took him to a Hanuman temple and a Ram temple.
There were three learnings here -

1) To stay happy, a bachelor must tag on to a married couple.
I know this was not an MBA funda. But I still gave it to him because it was a life funda. And
life fundas can be, and should be given anytime. This was the MBA funda - that MBAs are
giving life fundas all the time.

2) Once you are married, you have had it man! You are buggered for life (you can leave everything in between and read the bold parts as one sentence, it still makes sense). Relatives don't give a damn for you as you are no longer marriage material. You may leave your home and all and walk away into the jungles, lekin wo peechha nahin chhodegi. You will pick fights with absolute strangers because of her. And at the end of it all, you will turn to your bachelor friends who you thought were apeing around with life, for help.

She is not after your money, she is after your happiness dude, she is after your blood. Ask female mosquitos if you don't believe me. Women thrive on that. Have you seen the movie Monster Inc? It is based on the funda that monsters store the screams of little kids in huge battery tanks, and use that "scream power" to charge themselves. Similar is the case with women and men's happiness. Women suck all the happiness out of a man to charge themselves. It is one of the beauty secrets of a married woman.

Still don't believe me?

Well, there is an ancient yet secret Indian ritual I think I should tell you about, which might convince you.
Have you seen the movie Kalidas - the new one with Shahrukh and Aishwarya and Madhuri in it? In it there is a funda that the idol of Durga for the Navratri puja must be made with earth taken from the doorstep of a whore's house. The idea being that a man leaves behind all his goodness, all his "punya" at that doorstep before he enters the house of sin.

The ancient, secret ritual I was telling you about is on similar logical constructs.

The idol of the God of Happiness is made from the earth taken from the doorstep of a married man.

Such men leave all their happiness at the doorstep before entering the house of marital "bliss".

(IV - Another Life funda.....I wonder, what next)

3) And this is the most important funda -

Only God can help you.

Only He knows how to get you into an IIM, and more importantly, how to get you out of it in time.

Rest all is MBA Bull.

(IV - Hmmm....perhaps....you might have actually avoided doing any damage...Otherwise also, he is an engineer...he knows how to block information from his mind)

In Defence of Bald Men

2007-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

"Tu Ganja Ho Gaya Hai"

Narayan sent me a deeply poignant message last night. He had just met Sachin Jain, one of our engineering batchmates, after a couple of months.
“Yaar, I am very sad. I just met Sachin and he said Narayan, tu ganja ho gaya hai. Not ho raha hai, but ho gaya hai”.

Narayan had been hearing that “ho raha hai” for a long time now. Not only had he been hearing it, he had been saying that to many others too – including me. It is like one of those things that people like us universally bond over – a smoke, a drink, girls, approaching baldness and paunches growing at the pace of an adolescent kid. Like one of my friends put it, “shrinking topline and exploding bottomline”.

The Many Faces of Baldness

Baldness comes to men in many ways. The most graceful of them is the receding frontier. Akshay Khanna is a famous example. In fact, for some lucky dudes it serves as a heightened forehead.

And the worst is the shiny spot that springs up like a desert in the midst of an oasis. That is the kind that can’t be hidden, can’t be camouflaged, can’t be modified or mollified.

If you look at the top-view of a male head you will notice a round spot where the back of the head seems to stop to climb, and the skull starts sloping in a convex to end in a forehead. All the hair seems to grow out of that single spot in an expanding spiral. That spot is the epicenter of this center-baldness.

It is like drying out the source of a river, like choking the water supply of a city.

It is like hitting in an enemy in the balls – no balls, no more kids to carry on the struggle. Its like a siege – the enemy is not allowed to replace resources. When one falls, you are irretrievably one less. Death comes as a calendar – an intercalary death. Each day you rip off one page, cross off one date, and brush off one more strand; knowing there are only a limited number of pages, a finite no. of dates, just that much more hair left. It’s a remorselessly losing battle.

Men who lose hair in the centre lose much more than a few strands of keratin. They lose their place in the world of possibilities and excitement. They lose their right to delusions. Even a fat, black man with a face like a ball of dough kneaded by a disgusted house-wife will look at a woman and sometimes fantasize that she noticed him, gave him that fleeting look, that had he not been so shy he could have won her over. A balding man has no right to such illusions. The hair lying in bunches in his wash basin when he combs it in the morning speaks to him much louder than does his potato-nose in the mirror. He sees all those individual, prone strands, and feels the same desolation that a WWII general might have felt at the sight of so many fine youth, or parts thereof, lying strewn on the battlefield, hanging from the trench wires, spread out on each other on the muddy-bloody grounds. What cruel loss! Ahhh!, the pain that wrenches the heart! How the sight stings the eyes! Can’t see it and can’t take the eyes off it either! A balding man sees death every day. In small parts, and whole in each part.

Couldnt you Think of Something Better?

The most common strategy resorted to by such balding men is also the worst possible. They grow the hair on the fringes of that barren patch to ridiculous lengths. It is almost as if they are afraid to cut it. That fear is understandable, yet irrational. They grow those long beauties and then pull them over carefully to cover the empty patch. It only makes it worse. It not only fails to hide your loss from the world, it exposes your shame too. It tells the world that you are ashamed of what is happening to you. It breeds guilt. It is like saying to yourself “I know I am balding, and damn it, I feel so bad because of that. It’s all my fault. Now no one will love me, and everyone will make fun of me. And they are right to do so, because I am balding. I am ugly because I am balding”. They don’t even stop to think for a moment as to why balding should make them not beautiful.

Ahhhh! The Big Question on the Big B..

Actually, come to think of it, what is beauty?

How do you know what is beautiful and what is not? Why is white skin beautiful and black not? Why is black hair considered beautiful and white is not? In fact, even that is not correct. Black hair is considered beautiful only in certain parts and among certain people of the world. There are places and people who find white hair or yellow hair or blonde hair or copper-coloured hair more beautiful. That is why all those hair color products. Even white skin is not considered the most ideal. Else there wouldn’t be the sight of delicious women trying to catch that tan on sun-kissed beaches, and our campus comps would never have been graced with interesting wallpapers. A slender figured woman might take the heart of Gujju bhai, but an African hunk would ditch her any day for a wide-hipped full house. How do we know what is beautiful?? Why is a big eye more beautiful than a small, slanted one? Why are brown/blue/green eyes more bewitching than simple, plain black ones? Beauty, it would seem, is as subjective as food.

The problem, accompanying thought, expands.

No, Dear Holmes, It's Subjective, not Obvious..

Even values are subjective.

What is right and what is wrong is not the same across the world.
A teacher can be killed, “in righteous public indignation”, if she names a teddy something in a country, whilst in another bar dancers wear star-spangled, blue-striped bikinis – perhaps in a tribute to the intensely patriotic men manfully swinging beer jugs.

So, food is subjective.
Beauty is subjective.
Values are subjective.
Religion, we all know, is subjective.

Back to the Big B Question.

Yet, that doesn’t answer our initial question.
How do you know what is beautiful?
There is one simple answer to that (Of course, there are more complex and logical ones too, but I leave them to 204 to provide those. Btw, 204 is the anonymous, enigmatic, mysterious, sole commenter on my blogs).

You believe something is beautiful if a lot of people tell you it is.

If you are fed a lot of stories in which men die for women who have 6 fingers and are cross-eyed, you will find that beautiful. In fact, and I am not fibbing here, the Mayans used to tie a small plank to their foreheads so that it became slanted like a bird’s. For the same reason they used to hang little pieces of thread between their eyes, so that looking at them they would gradually get cross-eyed which was again considered a beautiful “bird-feature”. Just like, say, a “lion’s mane of hair” (remember the Jap prez who was always described as the prez with the flamboyant mane??).

The idea of Beauty, like that of imperialism, is a poet’s to define and glorify.

Instead of being labeled brutally as ujada chaman center-baldness could be made into an ideal of beauty, if only there was a poet to take up cudgels for fallen bushels.
Beauty not just lies in the eye of the beholder, it is born there.
Like some one very famously said, (though not famously enough for me to remember his name) – I don’t love you because you are beautiful, you are beautiful because I love you.

Gay men are standing up for their rights and all, then why aren’t bald men?

I very strongly believe that women should find bald/balding men very attractive – more so because I am also “headed” the same way – if only they look at them in the right way.

Hawa chali, aur baal ude, to unhone gungunaaya, "Chand fir niklaaa..."

If eyes could be “deep blue pools in which my soul drowns”, and lips could be “rose petals rubbing sensuously against each other” then a bald head too could be something very beautiful if described in the right way.
Just think of that shiny pate, hidden behind those carefully combed strands of black hair……and you could be thinking of…….

A lovely plain fringed by swaying poplars,

Or as premchand said so sweetly,

Baadalon me chhupa chand

Or

Ghoonghat ke peeche lajaati nayi bahu

Or

The gently rippling, shimmering, wet reflection of the moon in the dark waters of a princess’ private pond

Or

It could remind you of shining, glittering silverware in a split open, half-buried treasure chest in black earth

Or

Van me ek chandramani jiske chaaron aur ek makdi ka jaal buna hua hai..

Or

A pearl sleeping in black velvet.

In fact, baldness, along with paunch-ness, is considered a sign of arrived or approaching prosperity in many parts of the world (probably those parts where men go balder faster – definitely not those parts where head bangers come from).

So next time a pretty young thing giggles at your empty patch (which incidentally is shining like a big silver coin) you tell her sweetly

ये गंजापन नहीं है पगली, ये तो आते ऐश्वर्य के देवी के निर्मल पद-चिह्न हैं;
ये तो लक्ष्मी की लैंडिंग के लिए बना helipad हैं

And meanwhile, the struggle continues to prove that
Bald is Beautiful
(only in men)

Fire-fly Loves of Mumbai

2007-12-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

My dear friend 204, the brilliant voice couched in darkness,
had left a comment on my previous post with the same name as this one.

I sensed the answer floating within me then, but could not entice it to the surface.
Now, something has come up.

By "fire-fly loves" I meant those many momentary romances in the busy city of Mumbai, where young people living away from their families, in stressing jobs seek solace in a faint semblance of love. If there is not total commitment, its fine. They are not seeking a cure for life, they just want a pain killer for loneliness, a band-aid for other relations - family, friends - torn thin by distances.

These loves - in the intense, empty darkness of overcrowded Mumbai - seem to burn as true and bright as sunshine. There is a false, yet glowing warmth in them. Its easy to fall in this love, and far less painful to get out of it.

And for some people that is not only sufficient, but perfect.

These people are veterans of such loves.
With someone this week, and someone else the next.
Chance meetings ending in crumpled bed spreads.
Burning brightly now, dead the next moment.
Its perfect.

What really hurts them, what burns them, is when the embers of one such dead love continue to burn in their memories.
When they frighteningly realise, that perhaps, they have actually fallen in love. The purity of it is a scary thought.

sunshine I didnt seek, for it
binds me
blinds me
The small, glowing, ephemeral intensity
that hugs you tight for a moment, then sets you free
a falling feather from a flying dove
I just wanted a fire-fly love.

---------------------------------------------

पिशाचार हूँ मैं
निशाचर हूँ मैं
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की
प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
बस एक भूख थी निर्लज सी

तुझ संग खाए कुछ फल यौवन के
पी कुछ बूँदें तेरे तरल मन से
कुछ बूँदें
जो उस रात मदिरा बन छलकी थी
अब कंठ में हलाहल बन जलती हैं
जलती हैं
गीली आग सी पिघलती हैं

बस दो पल साथ चलना था, फ़िर अपने रस्ते जाना था
तुमने भी तो इस शर्त को माना था
.......................फ़िर क्यों ?
फ़िर क्यों अब भी जब भी सांझ ढलती है
तेरी याद मेरे संग संग चलती है........
>>
>>
>>
>>
प्यार नहीं माँगा था
पाक नहीं माँगा था
आस नहीं थी मुझको सूरज की.

Happy Birthday Dear Sarwade,

2007-12-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

I have been very fortunate to have had a very crazy set of friends right thru life.

And just like young people anywhere else
all of them had nicknames they proudly wore,
but at which their parents swore..

In school it was Kartik (Jacko the Whacko),
Bhaskar
( Bas Kar flirting - whose biography titled "International Flirt to Domestic Husband" Or "Kingfisher Airlines acquired by Air Deccan" or "Sher bhi Ghaans Khaate Hain" OR "Once Upon a Time....I was happy" should hit the stands some time soon),
Sanjiv the Sadist Humorist,
Santosh (aka Limca, Kundali Baba, Santoshi Mata, Lottery, Theda, Pepsi - and I swear to GOD these were all (extremely popular) real nicknames of this fantastic, mostly-intense-mostly-funny guy),
Shinda and quite a few others.

In engineering it was the 5 S.

In MBA, it was the blokes of the block.
E-Block Rulzzzz man !
Evil Genius.
That was our block name..

We were 7 guys - of which just 2 had any serious intent to finish MBA in 2 years....for the rest 5 of us it was a small miracle come true...2 years and done.

Hehehehehe....thats all that comes out when I think of these fellows

Andy (this guy from Mussorie was also called Nanga Parbat for his two loves - mountain climbing and roaming half-naked in the block after his gym sessions),

Kedar Deshpande (Desi Pondy, Encyclopeedit - a huge cesspool of random facts and strange theories about Jats and all),

Rahul Adak (words that changed his life - "Udita Goswami kitni lucky hai na, jo usne John Abraham ko kiss kiya"..hai meri Jon......),

Hari Kishan Mowwa (Murgiyon ka dushman, whose plate on wednesdays - when non-veg was served in the mess - looked like a mass burial grave for chicken),

Kiran Babu (the oddity among men, a soft-spoken, gentlemanly son of a telugu politician),

me (Kabutar...yeah that was my nickname...long story, some other time) and

Sarwade (perfect warning for having a balanced exercise regimen which does not miss the small details....else you have this big superstructure supported by a tiny, puny, buttockal-region mounted on teeny weeny spindly legs.....he looked les a man, and more a balancing act....i remember that his swaggering walk used to remind me of a teetering beer bottle balanced upside down on a finger's end).

The Sarwade

The Sarwade.

Simplicity, I love you - thus spake Sarwade, always.

Dec 11 was his birthday.

On campus we had this tradition of writing birthday mails for our close friends on their B Days.
I wonder how it would be if Sarwade wrote his own B'Day mail - guess it would come out something like this.........

वैसे मुझे ये mails पे birthdays wish करना बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं,
ऐसे cake पे मोमबत्तियां लगाना
उन्हें जलाना
फ़िर बुझाना
मुझे बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं

ये happy birthday के गाने गाना
कागज़ के तूते बजाना
घर मी कागज़ की लड़ियाँ सजाना
दोस्तों का घर पे तोहफे लेकर आना
उनका अपने साथ बीवियों को लाना
और बच्चों को खुल्ले आम हड-दंग करने के लिए छोड़ जाना
मुझे बिल्कुल पसंद नहीं

ये हमारी सभ्यता नहीं
इसमे हमारी सम्प्रदा नहीं
और जयाप्रदा बिल्कुल नहीं
(sorry for the PJ, मुझे थोड़ा control नहीं)

मुझे अच्छा लगता है प्रातः समय मी जागना
माता पिता के चरण लगना
ठंडे पानी मी नहाना
हर लोटे के साथ हर-हर-गंगे लगाना
फ़िर धोती पहन के मन्दिर जाना
माथे पे तिलक लगाना
और अन्नदान का पुण्य कमाना

मैं बहुत simple आदमी हूँ
30 ml मे संतुष्ट हो हो जाता हूँ
60 ml मे तो रुष्ट हो जाता हूँ
और 90 ml मे तो भ्रष्ट हो जाता हूँ
मुझे ये नखरे, बाजे गाजे पसंद नहीं

आप लोगों ने इतना simple सा मुझे wish कर दिया यही बहुत है
कोई तोहफा देकर मुझे शर्मिंदा न करना
हाँ पर treat मांगने मे मत डरना
---- आपका सभ्य, संतुष्ट, सरल sarwade.

When wedding bells become alarm bells

2007-11-25T14:06:00.000-08:00

Got a mail lately (actually this blog is quite late considering the mail under discussion is already about a month old...how time flies, especially when you are getting a bad screwing at work) from Rishabh Sinha, that pseude-pseudo-bihari friend of mine from maniacal engine-erring (otherwise known as mechanical engg., that course of great penance where one finds out the true meaning of "sex-starved", with nothing for even the eyes to feast on) - one of the 6 S's, the others being narayan swami (who has been heaped with false praise elsewhere in this blogpage), soni (who has been reported LOST in all friendly neighborhood police stations ever since his marriage - whoever shall FIND him shall be immediately put behind bars....married sardars who have been in totally un-ludhiana like places such as bhubhaneshwar for more than 2 years suffer from a double trauma which makes them very very unstable and dangerous), Shantanu Somani (yeah, being the true marwari that he is whose blood pressure rises and falls with the sensex, he has got 2 S's where the rest of us are managing with one. Little does the fat one know that the amount of S you actually get in life depends upon the size of P you got - i.e., in more pragmatic, less exciting terms, success depends upon your personality - anybody else got better expansions [you frigging raging, raving, infatuated fatso, stop reading it as expansions ;)....its just simple "expansions" i am asking for the S-P relationship] shall get a horrible thrashing in the next post if they make it the Shantanu-Pradeep relationship), Sudhir Gulati (who belongs to that very rare species of Punjabi men with a great sense of humor, decent height, [reportedly, by Shantanu, who claims to be able to read men like books......which essentially means, in the pot] impressive length, and a bearing of dignity [which has always, always evaded me somehow......truly, i will fall to any depths to achieve some dignity] in his manner and speech, yet without a consort (female - temporary or otherwise).....a girl-friendless-punjabi-born-delhi-bred-engineer!!!!! Can you imagine his secret shame and ignominy???? How left out he must feel when with this cousins or others guys of his breed ! No wonder, he hangs out with our gang of mis-shapen, mis-spoken, mis-behaved-with, mis-girlfriend blokes.

{How many brackets, and brackets within brackets, in the above passage, OhMyGod!!!, Excel is getting to me.....lemme just quickly check if I have closed them all}

Well, coming back to the mail, Rishabh sent it informing us all that he is getting married, to a lady from MIT (Mahila Institute of Technology...No, you wouldnt find it in the ratings that include the Massachusettes' one. You are more likely to find it in the ratings measured on the Richter Scale....man!!! an engineering college full of women, Delhi women, !!! Ho Ho Ho baby, nothing feels like a bigger earthquake than entering such fecund grounds. You step into that college, look around at all those pretty women with books tucked under their arms, and you curse yourself for not being born a T-Sqaure, to be moved around all night on a white sheet by those delicate fingers. Massachusettes, on the other hand, is just another engineering college for bright nerds who can get its spelling right. Actually, it sounds like a strrong, native hindi abuse about mother-and-all not yet mastered by the english tongue).

Unexpectedly it is a love marriage.
Between two engineers.
And we thought such things happened only with doctors.

Trust Rishabh to break stereotypes.
Like that of the pan-chewing, stone-throwing, eve-teasing, lush-underarm-foliage-waving-in-the-air bihari.

But then, Rishabh has something about MIT ladies.
All the cute ones there seem to like him.
Just to correct any 6 ft tall, fair, handsome, broad-shouldered image of Rishabh you might be building up, let me describe him.

He is dark, not-so-tall, with a pot belly, and hair he never combs.
None of his muscles have seen a gym.
The only sports he plays are on the comp.
And no, he doesnt do any of those romantic things either like writing poems (I do, what a waste!), playing a guitar (reminds me that narayan plays a violin, but the only people he has been able to impress with that are starched-white-lungi-clad uncles, their wives and their 6 yr old kids) or dancing (BWAHAAHAAAAA.....dont even let me describe that).

Yet, all those pretty women from MIT kept falling for him.
And he was the only one of all 6 S of us who ever had a girlfriend.
His having had more than one; in sequence - never in parallel - to be fair to him ; made him much more than an achiever or a role model for us. It made him a figure of envy. Great envy.

So, his marriage was like always on the cards.

And so his mail came.
Rishabh was getting married. In Feb 2008.

And so is Narayan. In March 2008.
I am sure Rishabh's love story, whenever it is told, shall be interesting, but it would be nothing - absolutely nothing when compared to Narayan's. We will, hopefully, be talking about it someday too.

And Soni, as mentioned above - far above - is already married (albeit under some very suspicious circumstances)

So that leaves only me, Shantanu and Sudhir Gulati.

After spending a few reflective, silent moments on that thought, I wrote Shantanu an open letter.

In that letter I had refrained from discussing Gulati's predicament (perhaps one that needs an ointment) as he is very demonstratedly-capable of giving me back much more than I can humbly offer him in terms of repartee.

Before I submit to your kind attention my epistle of pain and doubt and fleeting time, let me put Shantanu in your imaginations - which, I assure you, is much safer than you being in his imaginations.

I shall try my best to avoid any references to his physical appearances, as far as possible.

He is short, pudgy, with a huge paunch, and a face that looks as if it were born thirty-five years before the rest of his body.
(phew...that is how far it was possible)

Now, let me turn with all my soft kindness towards other endearing aspects of his persona.

He has been often suspected, and sometimes convicted, of being gay, of having had improper relationships with his maid servant who happened to be an innocent boy called Damodar.
Now thats what you call a man-maid disaster.

Now that you are well acquainted, and in some cases duly warned (Shantanu's and Soni's, to be specific) of all the bearers of the names mentioned in the mail, please find below the entire text of it.

Dear Rishabh,
तेरा खरबूजा तो कब से दर्राती पे रखा था, लगता थी का अब कटा की तब कटा, चलो आखिरकार कट तो गया.....

सोनी का टिंडा भी कटा,
नारायण की लौकी भी छिल गई,
गुलाटी का तो तब जब वो करेला अपने रस को लगाम दे....

रह गए (रहे गे बोलेंगे तो भी ज्यादा ग़लत न होगा) मैं और तू शांतनु

तेरा कद्दू कब फटेगा?
मेरे अनार दाने कब फूटेंगे?
अपने खेत मे हल कब चलाएंगे? बीज कब बोएँगे?
अपने नस्ल की फसल की कोई उम्मीद है की नहीं?
या ये जवानी की बरखा खाली ज़मीन पर बरस कर, गाँव के नालों से बहकर चली जायेगी?

यौवन के सावन मे
ये हलके झोंके पवन के
सिर्फ़ सूखे पत्ते ही हिलायेंगे???
औरों को हरियाली दे,
हमे सिर्फ़ आती पतझड़ की आहट ही सुनायेंगे?

क्या हम दोनों की किस्मत मे औरों के पौधे बड़े होते हुए देखना ही लिखा है?

कब तुझ बरगद के पेड़ से कोई कोमल लता लिपटेगी ?
कब मुझे पे बेल चढेगी?

"Baby Uncle" कहते थे लोग तुमको..
Uncle ही रह जाओगे?
Baby कब बनाओगे ?

ज़िंदगी है दोस्त, कोई बैंक अकाउंट नहीं,
की जब चाहा डिपॉजिट डाला, कुछ तो इन्टरेस्ट पाओगे..
इक बार वक्त निकल गया,
हथोडे मे से लोहा फिसल गया,
अपने बांसुरी मे चाहे जितनी हवा फूंक लो,
एक धुन भी नहीं बना पाओगे...

कहीं ऐसा न हों की मियाँ गालिब के लफ्जों को कुछ इस अंदाज़ से कहने के दिन आ जाएं हम दोनों के....
"engineering ने गालिब निकम्मा कर दिया,
वरना हम भी आदमी थे"
(काम के तो न तब थे, न अब हैं)

---------------------------------
By the way, A Very Happy Birthday to Narayan and Shantanu !!!!!
(God must have had a bad day - 2 mistakes in a single day, damn man !!)

This post I dedicate to you 2 dudes on your bithday.
Cheers!!!!

Fire-fly loves of Mumbai

2007-11-10T21:29:00.000-08:00

My feelings are shallow,
yet the pain is deep;
If you were just a bad dream
why can't I go back to sleep?

Dreams stare at the empty skies,
sitting in my empty eyes;
If you were just a passing star, a falling one
Why does the sky still burn?

WHY AM I HURT????
Why this pain??
If it was just a dance in the rain,
Why are my eyes still wet?

If it was one of those ephemeral fire-fly loves of Mumbai -
now-burning-now-dying -
just a fling,
Tell me, my sweetheart, tell me
Why does my heart sting?

Teri Ek Muskaan

2007-11-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

रोज़ ओस इकट्ठी करके उसमे रखी है भिगोके मुट्ठी भर चांदनी,
बारिश के निकल जाने के बाद, तारों से झूलती कुछ बूंदों को पिरोया है,
पहले पहर में जगते एक नन्हें से गुलाब के कलि की अंगडाई चुराई है,
एक छोटे से बिल्ली के बच्चे के डगमगाते कदम हैं,
कुछ गजलों के अल्फाज़ हैं
एक तनहा समंदर की आवाज़ हैं,
जिनके साथ बैठ के लिखी हैं ऐसी कई नादान नासमझ कवितायेँ
उन रातों की खामोशी लाया हूँ,
और लाया हूँ मेरे दिल का वो बचपन
जिसे एक नज़र, एक बात भी कर दे ज़ख्म.

इन सब के बीच बैठा हूँ,
कुछ ज़मीन पे फैअली पड़ी हैं,
और कुछ गोद में रखी हैं,
ये सब चीज़ें जिन्हें देख कर मैं कभी मुस्काया हूँ,
और फिर संजोके रखा मेरी यादों के संदूक में,
ये कुछ पल - मेरे जीवन की पूँजी,
सोचा ये सब तुझे दे दूंगा.

यही तो दौलत हैं मेरे पास
जिससे खरीदने निकला हूँ....

तुझसे तेरी एक मुस्कान.

-----------
(May God bless Kedar, and Google Indic Transliteration)

2007-10-26T06:17:00.000-07:00

In New Delhi, a few kilometers away from the Parliament House, two roads cross each other at right angles – Shanti Marg and Satya Marg.
I wonder if that’s always true in life.
The road to truth has to cut away from the road to peace?

Bombay would be...

2007-10-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

Do cities also have desires and ambitions?
A sense of destiny, dreams troubled by visions?
Does a city say, when I grow up,
I will be so gross, that people will want to throw up
(kolkata)

A city that feels that discipline is all that the world needs
A straight jacket to fit all human greeds
For licentiousness too a license
Rules! Yes rules! whether or not they make sense
Walk the line
Else pay the fine
(Singapore)

Pining for the unrequited love of that imagined beauty divine
Chewing on words
And spitting out verse
the colour of heartbreak and wine
Does a city want nothing but a poet’s life
Never mind the spit marks, and the querulous wife
(lucknow)

ever ready with a clap-on-the-back or a slap-on-the-face
wearing idiocy without disgrace
swinging between “Saale ke do thappad maar”
and “Kee farak painda hai yaar”
a loud guffaw
an eternal faux pas
The democracy of fun, food and boisterous..err....sex…ahem..
the world laughing with them, for them, and at them
A city that will grow up to be a joker,
And so absolutely hopeless at poker
(chandigarh, punjab)

An elegant, extravagant beauty
Loved and hurt
Desired and burnt
A smile trampled to bits
Lovely, long, wet, downcast lashes
As little men fight over the ashes
Of this burning phoenix

Free from being coveted…Free from being owned…..FREE!!!!
A beautiful lady who just wants to be.
Queenhood she doesn’t want,
she pines not for a king’s stares
Her dream, is simply
to be free of nightmares
(Srinagar, Kashmir)

Does a city want to grow up to be a historian (Delh)
Or just a coarse mouthed ruffian (Haryana)
A delighter of senses, a belly dancer (Goa)
A worshipper of death – a necromancer????? (Kabul)

If cities can dream, if cities can desire
to make it big, or in peace retire
If a city can choose between
steady love and a passionate fling
Then Bombay is the mad genius
that wants to be everything.

2007-10-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

What an irony – Hinduism’s colour is orange, just a shade away from the red of blood.
This for perhaps the only major religion in the world to advise non-violence towards all living beings.
And Islam’s colour is green, a peaceful, content, agrarian green - for a religion that has had to fight every step of its way to definition and determination.

(P.S. - this is not to imply that Islam is a militant religion or anything. Remember that a lot of Indians embraced Islam because they found it to be more humanitarian than the caste-ridden shackles of Hinduism)

2007-10-26T04:34:00.001-07:00

Disappointment is always measured in cms of expectation.

2007-10-26T04:25:00.001-07:00

A lot of people when they say “I love you” actually want to say “I want you to love me”.

2007-10-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel Life is a big Hoax.

They make you run around, as if caught in a big moment, where every decision you make could mean the difference between life and death. At the end of it, you realize it was all for nothing.
There was no bomb.

It was just somebody’s idea of fun.
God’s?

2007-10-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

In a soft voice, leaning a little close to her I said,

Every night, I think of you before going to sleep ........
(she smiled)

........ It takes something really boring to put me to sleep ...
(I couldn’t help smiling)

2007-10-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

Why did you marry him?
Oh, for his wealth.

Why did you marry her?
The first time I saw her, I was like, this is the woman of my dreams. I was completely lost in the blue of her eyes. I saw the turgid pale pink of her lips and felt a parched thirst I have never known before.

She was beautiful man, amazingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

------------------------------------------------

Is marrying for looks any better than marrying for money?

If I fall in love with a women because she looks so lovely, or angel-like, or amazingly cute, would I be any better than a woman who falls in love with a man because he is oh-so-rich?

Actually, that woman would be better than me. Because she has fallen for something which speaks something about the man’s will, desire, his character and his ability to achieve,

whilst I desire her for something for which she is not even responsible.

2007-10-26T03:48:00.000-07:00

A man’s ego is like his shadow. Its size has got less to do with the man himself, and determined more by the time of the day (or life).

2007-10-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

Rain in Mumbai is like an assassin’s hit – a few brief seconds of life-shattering intensity in a busy street.

Thanks.

2007-07-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

Vishy,

Thanks.

As always, you grab my hand, just when I am about to slip into the muck.

Children of a Divorce

2007-07-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

Narayanan and I are getting divorced.

I would be moving out this Saturday. Moving out from Narayanan and moving in with Palash, my lovely little elf.

Narayanan and I have spent the last month like a long-married couple. We slept in the same bed without sex crossing our minds once. We fought for bathroom rights every morning, before work. I would often stay up late reading a book while he dozed off. We wrote down all the expenditures of the day before going to sleep. And I snored.

We are not gay.
We are worse.
We are bachelors working in the corporate city of Mumbai.
Gays are brought together by love – in varying degrees.
Bachelors in Mumbai are brought together by cold necessity.

When you are an MBA working in Mumbai, you feel the smell of puke hitting your insides everytime you read those business magazines shrieking about the exorbitant salaries that companies are paying at the “top institutes”. For all those “exorbitant” salaries, no MBA in Mumbai can afford not to share his room and life with a guy he hardly knows. It is a lot like arranged marriage. You allow a complete stranger to become a part of your life and intrude all corners of it. And like arranged marriage, it works great most of the times.

Narayanan is one of those genuinely good people who are neither naïve nor harmless. Most “good” fellas are essentially confrontation-avoiders. They are nice because they don’t want to pick fights. Narayanan doesn’t shy away from slang-fests. He calls a spade a spade, and will also tell it how dirty, old and bent it is. He can be angry, harsh, make you feel like an idiot, scold you like you are an idiot, and worse, prove it that you are an idiot. But I have never once seen him lose the respect for an individual’s dignity even in the smallest of ways. He genuinely cares for you, but won’t spoon feed you. He will help you out and expects you to appreciate his help, but doesn’t like you to express your gratitude.

I know him from my engineering days. We were together at Delhi College of Engineering, studying to be Mechanical Engineers. He is one of the twin reasons – the other one being Shantanu, that philosophical bean bag – for making me finish my engineering in 4 years. We were a group of 5 friends in D.C.E. And it was a funny group. There was me - a fraud gult, born in Andhra and brought up in Delhi; Narayanan – as core and orthodox an Iyengar Tam Brahmin as you could find; Shantanu – the Baniya of Baniyas; Navjeet Singh Soni – the ever excitable Sardar and Rishabh Sinha – the psuedest Bihari I have ever known (and being an engg. Grad I have know quite a few).
If it had not been for Narayanan and Shantanu I would have become a Studying Super Senior at D.C.E. (It’s a rare species in engineering – the Studying Super Seniors, but let me briefly say here that it describes all those people who keep coming to college for more than 4 years because they couldn’t finish their degrees in time. I shall elaborate on this later in another post. Just remember to remind me).

The lives and times of Swami (aka Narayanan) at D.C.E. are chronicled in “Swami and Friends”.

After engineering he went on to work at Tata Motors, and I joined IIMB. 2 years later he joined IIFT and I went off to Africa. 2 months back he post-graduated and was offered a position with SBI Caps, and I left Zimbabwe to join Asian Paints.

We joined our jobs within a space of 10 days. Both in Mumbai. And both wanted to stay together. I wanted to stay with him because I knew he would do the worrying and organizing while I could focus on the freaking. And he, probably because he has this strong desire to reform hardened freaks.

Well, both of us did succeed, to a certain extent, in our motives for staying together. He does the accounts every night. He bought the iron-box and the ear-buds, and the shoe polish and the brush. And I keep rushing him to movies in all parts of Mumbai straight from the office. There is the organizing and freaking part I wanted.

I brush my teeth every night (also) now, and cut my nasal hair every week.
I move to a distant seat, if available, whenever I fart during the movies.
There is the reform part that Narayanan wanted.

He sits down after his bath every morning, says his prayers, changes into his office wear and then leaves for work.
Rushing from my bath, stuffing my shirt into the hungry open mouth of my trousers, I say the first half of my prayers which essentially mean “God, please help me”. The other half I say in the local, and they mostly consist of “God, please forgive me”.

At office, we pretend to work.

Around 180 degrees past six, I give him a call asking him what time he shall be leaving office, and cook up dinner plans. Then we meet at home, or some restaurant, stuff ourselves and then head for home in the sweaty clothes of corporate toil – he a project financier and me a purchase manager.

Once home,
he does the accounts.
Then watches the night’s half-hour quota of his current movie, and dozes off.
I read while he is sleeping.
Then I switch off the light, lie down next to him. And I snore.

Now it is to be all over.
Both of us have to move out.
No we didn’t have a fight.
The Mumbai that brought us together is now doing us part. I am moving to Vashi and he to Andheri.
I shall be moving out this Saturday and he a couple of days after that.

Starting day before yesterday, we have 6 days together.
And in these 6 days I have decided that I will take him to as many movies as possible. And I shall review those movies, for him.
I have never written reviews before. I hate doing that.
But these reviews I know I shall cherish for long.
They are the children conceived in our divorce.

So far we have done Shivaji, Cheeni Kum and Life in a Metro.

Just a few thoughts on them here. Detailed reviews to follow later, hopefully.

Cheeni Kum
When I first heard about Cheenie Cum I thought it was one of those cheap, Chinese porn flicks.

Life in a Metro
Konkana Sen has very quickly carved a niche for herself in the industry – as the leading lady opposite gay men. She did it in page 3, she does it here again.

Shivaji
When you spend 200 bucks on a movie you feel like you own a part of it. You come out, and criticize or critique the story, the cast’s performances, the stunts, the comedy (in most Indian movies it is still comedy, only a few like Cheeni Kum and Pyaar ke Side Effects have achieved humor). You can say, with no hesitation, that the heroine has gone fat, she looks wooden, or just as easily declare “paisa vasool” for the smooch-shots.
Shivaji doesn’t let you feel like that.

You don’t own this movie – not any small part of it.
You can’t critique this movie; you can’t call it good or bad – it is beyond that, it is above you.

P.S. I am not a Rajni fan. This is the first Rajni movie I have seen for more than 5 minutes.

Mumbai ki Baarish...

2007-07-03T05:10:00.000-07:00

Dil tha mera kala samandar sa,
Sannata tha isme bhayankar sa..
Lekin aaj is samandar se ubharta
attahaas ka tufaan nazar aata hai..
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Aaj subah se ek khushi bewajah hai,
Ek chanchal bechaini naache hriday ke satah pe
Uchhalti, Khelti....Taaron se jhoolti, Sheeshon pe fisalti
boondon me natkhat muskaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota....aasman nazar aata hai

Ye chhaaton ko katoriyan banati purzor hawa,
Pyaari si ladkiyon ke baalon me ulajhti munh-zor hawa..
Rahgeeron ke beech daudti,
chhedti,
Hawa nahin, ek bauna shaitaan nazar aata hai
seene ke kisi kone me chhupa lun
itna chhota...aasman nazar aata hai

Yeh geeli barsaati subah
Yeh meethi khushi bewajah
Yeh Khelti boondein natkhat
Yeh daudti hawa sarpat
Mumbai ki barish ka rutba
alishaan nazar aata hai
Yeh faila seena, yeh chhota asman,
kisi ka....ehsaan nazar aata hai

2007-07-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

Mumbai is a straight-line city,
where the people keep moving in spirals and circles - dizzingly upward spirals of immense opulence and downward spirals of crushing, dehumanizing poverty....or just circles of survival.

It is a city that will make you run very hard just to stay in the same place.

It is a city that works on a huge amount of grime and human grease.
It is life accelerated.

Mumbai sometimes scares me. But what scares me even more is when people say, "Three months in Mumbai, and then you can't live anywhere else. This city grows on you."

I always beleived that there is no city in the world that I can totally hate.
Do I hate Mumbai?

No, I am still struggling to come to terms with its intensity. With its accelereated densities.
How can I bring myself to hug this giant when its immensity and rawness still awe me?

I am suddenly, brutally shocked - like hitting the cold water of a pool flat with your chest - into the realization that there is no other city like Mumbai. There is nothing you can point to and say, "this is a bit like mumbai, with perhaps this and that changed, intensified, decreased, enlarged" No.....you can't compare Mumbai with anything. It is a concept in itself.

Perhaps, I need three months.

Till that time I shall continue to impress these pages with whatever Mumbai hits me with.
If these small images turn out to be the footprints of my reluctant love story with Mumbai then let it be so.

2007-07-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

Integration (of the Calculus kind) is a show of great music and fireworks on a lakeside.

It has all that beauty, wonder and majesty.

2007-07-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Virginity is not dignity...not security....nor a sign of purity.
Its the lack of opportunity."
- William SexFear

(contributed by my dear elvish friend Palash)

2007-07-02T06:45:00.000-07:00

Just as V.Good is short for Very Good
S.hit could be short for Super Hit!

I wish I could be as satisfied as him

2007-07-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him",
he said, in the same calm, measured slow manner in which he had been spooling out his words for the last half hour. He was an old man, past fifty. The few remaining grey, oiled strands of his hair lay down lazily across his head like the arms of a palm tree. Just as you can see the moon through its leaves you could see his bald, oiled pate shining through this last, long hair.

He had contentment about him - a sense of never being in a hurry. He spoke slowly, as if measuring out the words that left him. A small chest and a hanging paunch. If RK Laxman's common man had a paunch, this would be him.
If the ancient, wise monkey of Lion King had a few hair, this would be him.

Languorously, with hazaar ancient anecodtes, he took us through the problems of working with contract manufacturers - sometimes with touching sympathy and sometimes with prickly cynicism. A twinkling, impish humor kept background score for his soft recital. It was then, as a part of that tapestry of many colourful stories, he told us about this immensely laid back, content contract manufacturer who refused to expand his plant to take on more work.
"Saab, jitna milta hai usme khush hain", was his mild rebuke to compelling economic logic. It was then that our gentle old Aesop remarked,

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him."

I wish I could have told him then....that,

Being happily satisfied is not a choice that we make.
It is a choice we choose not to make.

This un-choice is what makes successful men. And unhappy men.

This un-choice is the stuff from which dreams spring.
And inhuman, brutal greed.

This un-choice makes conquerors and barbarians.

It is a strange force this. It makes us. It destroys us. But it never completes us.
No ambitious man has ever died "satisfied".

2007-07-02T04:25:00.002-07:00

Mumbai, wet and dirty, sucks.

Not in the way that makes you want to come.