~What!~

I thought I had an idea
An idea which sought 'change'
And in this changing situation
I left "Don't change if it ain't needed."
Quite simply "out of range"

~The Now~

The more I wake up the sleepier the past
All feelings suspended at half-mast
This is my 'now' like it has always been
A forgotten relic in yesterday's cast

And will this 'now' run through my life
Like a piercing single strand?
I think I should give up this sorrow
For the 'now' of today feeds the 'now' of morrow

‘To See More’

I sat in the stuffy room till I couldn’t take the parchedness of my throat anymore. The idea of water though eternally brilliant for anything parched seemed brilliant but boring. So I decided to step out. I decided to step out of the room simply to see some life, hear people talk and move. And that is exactly what I did. Looking back it seems that it was not the throat that was parched. Quite obviously if it wasn’t the throat that was parched it must have been something else. I know what this something else is. Looking back it now seems that I stepped out of the stuffy room merely to observe people. I felt this need for observation because something had changed in my understanding of people and quite naturally I wanted to step out of the room to try and understand what exactly had changed. I still haven’t figured out what that is. But I intend to find out. Just like I intend to take responsibility of all success and failure and all victory and loss.

Though things are looking up they are looking up rather slowly. Yes it is a matter of patience, like catching fish, to hang in there with this observation business and ultimately to see more. To see more than an ordinary person can see whose ordinariness lies in the fact that he has never been initiated in life, to see more.

Till very recently I used to think that it is easy to understand the behavior of human beings by simply observing them and then asking ‘Why?’ but now since I have begun to see more, I think the actual challenge is in observing because I have a feeling that what is being observed is merely the tip of the iceberg. And to make matters look bleaker what is being interpreted in terms of ‘Why?’ is a fraction of what is being observed.

‘The Being of Trust’

I thought, no I believed with all my life that the images that I saw on the inside of my eyes were no good. And I believed that with all the life, this for the sake of emphasis. And today the situation is that I hope for the same images to flash back on the back on my eyes. And just as when you forcefully exhale, the air rushes into your nostrils, I squeeze everything out of my mind, and images do squeeze in. Not in quite a rush as does the air in my nostrils, but it is certainly happening and I wait till it becomes a gush. The important thing here being that besides the images, it is important to know that unhindered inhalation hinges on forceful exhalation and not forceful inhalation itself, which might seem as the simple way circumventing what the evidence suggests. In simpler words, things aren’t what they seem, even if they are exactly what they seem.

While the air rushes and waits gushing, I ponder about stories which these images bring along, the stories in which the strongest fiber always makes itself shown, no matter what the degree of the tempest. For the sake of emphasis, every story when remembered, the strongest fiber, makes itself shown. And in this story, [story?], too the fiber leaps forth like an enthused soldier falling out of file to accept the challenge that most probably would mean death. Well, most probably is a term of very ‘most probablistic’ nature and by virtue of that death for this soldier might just turn out to mean life by some twist of most probablisticity, here I sincerely hope I am thinking clearly.

So what is the strongest fiber here? The fact that when I sit to scribble these lines I scarcely know weather the weight of my own pen on my shoulder determines the clarity of expression, or is it something more concrete, something which like a leaf from the book of life, thus inscribed into a page, left for the reader to decode out of the simple writings, something that contrast heavily with a book with leafs like traps and hollows of tunnels and wells, not like fields of exploration and the cool high ridges of mountains of thoughts which the mind peacefully ascends and that too at the climber’s patience, the fact that I scarcely know this, means that I may not be that good at spotting strong fibers in stories so best hope for the fiber to make itself shown.

So the strongest fiber yet is…in the time that I have spent in Bihar is…I’ll decide in the morning. For now let me go to sleep with the thought of why should this call for a decision, why isn’t sixth sense ever given a chance..hm…I think I know the answer to this one, sixth sense is not given a chance because that requires trusting something…something that I struggle equally hard with to define and also its need to define, something called destiny…and well since the strongest fiber has made itself shown, that being of trust…well it is only right that the strongest soldier in the realm of trust step forward for the challenge:

Soldier name: Hira
Specifications: Died hair, old age mainly because of life exhaustion, a common form of exhaustion found in this area which basically means that you run out of time before time. He thinks that when I switch the lappy, off I lose everything.
Mission: to stay put when all his pseudo sisters and brothers are gone or as he says in the most yogic denouncement way, ‘I don’t give a shit if my brothers remember my name, I would stick around.’
Implications: his pseudo sister, my mother, showed up after 10 years gap with her son who showed up after 12 years gap.

Hira stays home or goes for a short stint of day labor which may give him ten bucks, the currency which he knows, a frequent restoration of ten bucks for life’s perpetuation, something he asks for quite casually from my Nani having substituted his day labor to do an errand for her, so Hira stays at home or leaves home to earn a ten bucker, while we, me, my Nani, and mom, in that order, though we walk quite alongside of each other, go and have a look at the church, the neighborhood church, a marvel of communication, to dazzle anyone into taking up Christianity as a religion. But I did feel when I stepped into that church what Jesus is all about, quite a cool dude, tough to live up to his life…but not impossible. Standing beside his wife like a cool husband oops no that’s his father I am talking about all this time, he had now wife or did he I dunno, then giving the Romans a taste of his passive yet gory resistance, and spreading the ideal through the ordeal and then yes culminating into a miracle of returning the third day, the incredibility of which is ofcourse quelled by the fact that he is God or is he the son? Exactly the reason why its tough to live up to him…but it is easy to reach a sort of a human truce looking at him eye to eye in this church in my Nani’s town…yes the way she talks about winning elections it might as well be hers one of these days..but anyway to me, me Nani’s town- Bettiah. This also brings us to soldier no.2

Soldier name: Nani
Specifications: ripe old age, respective because of life exhaustion, a common form of exhaustion found in this area which basically means that you run out of time before time.
Mission: To win elections because she believes she can. When she walks down the road, I have to salute in the old fashioned way, pranam pranam, to the whole world, irrespective of their socio-economic status. Its hard to believe it is my Nani…, ‘oh Nani how can you be so liberal with time..move on..yeah okay stick around if you want votes.’
Implications: Power woman is soon going to harvest a ripe harvest of well-groomed, keep me out of it yet, post graduate grandchildren who will definitely give her the queen grandmother status, not that there is any competition. She not like Indian cricket telecast that almost all content on TV seems to be a worthy enemy.

So I am walking down to the church and it is quite easy to discover that I have shit on the soles of my shoes. It’s as common as life exhaustion in these parts.

It’s easy to catch us, after having walked over all that shit inspite of being wary about it but because of the sheer numbers that surpassing the Iraqi landmined scape, talking to townsfolk on one of these roads and my mom somehow suppressing the expression of embarrassment on her face on being absent from her hometown for ten years and quickly looking towards me for self-approbation for I seem to be the only one leading her by two years in that regard. And after having done all this hi-helloing the old way, walking down to home and then there would be Hira to greet us talking in his pitched, colloquial tongue and expressing the trust of years all around which makes me question why I don’t trust people the way he does, what does it take, and the constant smile on his face does let me know that it is worth it for the smile seems to be of the realization of a kindered happiness, the kind which is kept alive like shrubs in the garden when there are no roses or for that matter thorns. No matter what the time of the year, what the season, or what the weatherman says, the smile remains like the symbol of constant trust. So Hira has been here for long, and he claims that he is not going to abandon my Nani who he considers his mom and so does claim my Nani that she has treated him close to a son…no quite but quite close to one…and that is as good as it happens in these parts though situations have entrusted people with greater deeds of generosities in these parts or any parts I am sure for anyone reading this would have a story to tell. Not necessary about trust I trust because it may look as if this is a passage dedicated to trust, it is not quite, it is a simple product of my insecurities which I am only too insecure to claim. Be gone insecurities, come sunshine hm…which makes me wonder if sunshine is the opposite of insecurities. Whatever may be the case, Hira claims to stay even if the children of the children of the children of Nani forget him or his services, for they aren’t any services, they are just acts performed when entertaining trust, and shining acts of goodness are those, those which come with a smile on the face and patience in the heart. God I am your preacher.

I hope, as I have planned for all my plans essentially hinge on hope, that someday I will land in Katmandu, on a plane from wherever I get placed, and make the trip down here, for I think I have had enough of rail travel for a while, it no longer pleasurable headache, it’s a plain headache sometimes. Crossing the border here is like drawing lines on a map, like the childhood games in which my room and your room used to be divided into India Pakistan and such and we used to freely crossover on beats of whatever the music of the season be, no strings attached.

When I come down flying one of these days, I want to se how while Nani’s election plans which are more of popularity plans unfold, how do the children of the children of the children of Nani treat the them both. That, I believe is again going to be set in this very house, a very historical house for personal reasons of many persons, well yes…and though nothing quite unfolds exactly the way I picture it in my mind, I keep on doing so and do it in different ways so that it covers all the ways, and when there is a surprise it truly knocks me off my horse for sure and its as surprising as realizing that the horse I ride is made of inflated plastic and someone busted it with a pin. No matter what you can always trust surprises and that is what someone else’s grandmother world have said sometime or the other I am sure, not my Nani.

Finally, here’s to sunshine, the soldiers in question and a future plane ride into Kathmandu and the events that may unfold thereafter. Till then what to do but to expect fervently in my life, the being of trust. Cheers!

‘The Argumentative MICAn’

MICA is a place where I have come to admire the ability of people to put anything forward with conviction. After all you need not be an expert on the subject to lay down a convincing argument which could even make the expert wince in pain of not much more than maybe a passing instant, but enough to disorient momentarily. Leaving remote ambitions aside, this is what we think of doing in this place, i.e. to be on the better side of the shave, be it shaving in the morning for guys, shaving unwanted hair for girls or having a close shave with a cryptic quantitative subject or for that matter accounts (not true for all MICAn). The bottom-line is that we all adore a good lick, as long as our hair doesn’t catch fire for rest assured the kind of knowledge stock we base our arguments on, is certainly not enough to put our teeth on fire just as good old Mathew used to say that we are no more than bacteria to whom MICA provides an outside chance of becoming a possible mould and then maybe a more developed life form thereon in.

So what do you do when you run short on actual fuel? You run the argumentative machine on what else? With what else but that oft used, over used and by now a word with the probability of occurrence of 60% in all b-school entrances, that golden word called “passion”, which when used as an undiluted substitute for strayed emotions leads the interviewer to push the eject button (the direct connection from which goes right under your seat) with enhanced swiftness, if you happened to be that “passionate one”, whose passion once inflamed doesn’t pacify until you have been kicked out of the interview room (don’t worry in the next interview you can always say that you have a passion for getting kicked out of interview rooms).

So what do you do when you run out of that actual fuel? Make a short comic film about interviews once destiny has lead you into the environs of MICA propelled by that stroke of coincident intelligence (not directed at you Ganty or me for that matter or to any other deserving MICAn), or you become the queen of PR, become an empathizing machine, or simply go on typing something on a blog whose credibility would be dealt an act of mercy if you rechristened it ‘Jumping the Gun’.

No matter what you do, one thing is for sure you do evolve here till you become one of those seven-eight personality types which MICAns can claim to produce (yeah-yeah we all are unique and different) and I don’t need Mathew’s backing here to say this (where is Mathew anyway?? PGP-1’s only hear fables about him). You can be that MICAn type who has that immaculate sense of timing to be there at the right moment to hog the limelight, to put up which the sweat and blood of many a fellow beings went into a power station of dreams, so that the mind of all MICAns were kept alight when they slept comfortable over loud rock music coming out of one of those unmistakable rooms which are miraculously found in each hostel. Someone somewhere is sick and thinking may be it’s ‘chiken-gunned-me-down’, but the music goes on playing propelled with the vision of ‘the show must go on’, it doesn’t matter if ‘chicken-gun-ya-down’ or ‘chicken-gun-me down’.

Now don’t even let me go into implicating the MICAn based on the implications which can be derived by juxtaposing the caustic spirit of this article alongside the celebrated book ‘The Argumentative Indian’, which by the stroke of hark luck I was also given the task or reviewing in the first year by that elusive creature of the bamboo jungles, now close to extinction but one definitely found in MICA and one who is a herbivore, has adjusted to the omnivorous nature of the food chain here, if you still haven’t got it, I suggest you shove your finger in a socket and switch it on, it might put you straight, and I mean this in the strictest of non-sexual sense, for we maybe anything but we are surely sexually liberated at MICA, aren’t we now?

Now before I go on about something else let me get over with what I started writing this …this…whatever this is… for…it was about ‘An Argument for Argument’.

Suddenly sitting in the library (what a place for realizations, very close to the loo in that respect) I remember when I was young, whenever I would have a standoff with my parents I was brutally crushed by saying that I was doing nothing but propounding the weakest of arguments and then blatantly defending it. This was so forcefully beaten into my psychology that when during the time of my dissertation I realize that a dissertation is nothing but an ‘argument’ (which may or may not end in your favour, but if pursued effectively will get you a good grade), I remember those days when I was discouraged to start my argument (dissertation) though it is not exactly charity which I was beginning at home…but still. I guess they were just being parents, tomorrow I have my dissertation defense… (Defense? sounds like a battle half lost)…like my parents, I guess the panelists will be just judges…and I will be just, as expected…a MICAn…going about trying to convert half-losts into winnables.

God bless.

Blackened Rose IV : 'The Broken Roses'

But as I like it
my sweet is not to disappoint
all the promises
that she hadn't promised
she broke them all
to be hung and then flung
like broken roses
and then she got back
at the habit again
now it's pleasantlness that reigns
I have more marks on my hands
and if I am anyone
my life though collectively insane
these are the ones
that keep it safe
from becoming
boring dry
mouldy muddy
and ofcourse
downright lame

Blackened Rose III : 'A Rose not Red'

And so it happened that
she said enough marks
I know it too well
too give you any more
so expect only roses
and this is not a promise
for it will be broken
now that's a promise
I looked at my hand
it was a rose
red and bright
textured right
but nothing compared to those
marks that screamed on my hand
which collectively were
almost there
almost there
to be a rose of their own
a rose not red
but a blackened one

'Blackened Rose II: 'The Rose of Thornes'

So did my sweet give me day to day
until today
a blackened finger everyday
so many thornes that would have gone
into something else
went on going into them
but one day when my sweet arrived
in a mood to brood
and showing it
she had in her hand
a red-red rose
and I extended my hand
even knowing it
another black spot on my hand
another instance to know her by
she has given me another mark
is what I would like to think
but instead when I looked at my hand
there is a rose without a thorne
and my blackened fingers holding it

Blackened Rose I : 'My Sweet’s So Sweet'

My sweet’s so sweet that she gave me a rose
She gave me a rose so that the thorn could prick me
But I knew what was up my sweet’s sleeve
So I stopped my hand from grabbing the rose
At least that’s what I would like to think
These days whenever I look at my finger
I just ignore the blackened thing

‘Missed You…Not’

No didn’t miss you
No we didn't part
Forever close
To the heart

‘Love in the Time of Viral’

I was visiting Preeti in Sterling Hospital and I happened to be hungry so I decided to head to the canteen to eat a cheese sandwich, whose legacy was passed on to me by Su with her breath diffusing the scent of the cheese as she did that, and so with that intention I found my way to the basement where the ‘Cafeteria’ was supposed to be and I did not waste a second in ordering a cheese sandwich, which in its minimalist charm held nothing more than two slices of bread with a thick layer of cheese between them, and like many things simple brought down to the basics for the sake of extracting the most basic reactions from us…it looked intelligently crafted for extracting the water of the mouth.

As I munched the sandwich I saw the people around me and suddenly, surprisingly I was transfixed by the eyes of a man who stood nearby, the kind of character who you would find tempting to frame in the ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ fashion, the kind of character who becomes the victim of not only his own suspicions and insecurities but other’s too. He was also the kind of character who is the product of circumstances and can’t claim to have shaped even a moment of his own life effectively. His eyes were beautiful. To say the least, they were mesmerizing.

As I munched my sandwich trying to appreciate the beauty of his eyes, I looked around me to other people…and to my surprise all of them seemed to have beautiful eyes. The whole room was glowing with the presence of these beautiful eyed people.

I finished the sandwich and came out of the room which I now call the ‘Basement of Beautiful Eyes’ thinking that was it the lighting that made them look beautiful or as I would like to believe, an acquired perspective where one finds beauty in anything?

I vacated the basement and headed straight upstairs to Room 308…Preeti’s room. I had forgotten the visitor’s pass up in the room for the nth time so the stair guard put on the stern expression for the nth time and asked me about it and I did a little ‘I am a loser I dunno where’s my life going’ act but this time he didn’t let me go anywhere. So on the landing I was stranded thinking how I would get to Preeti which three guards blocking me at three levels. Had this been a computer game called ‘The sterling Rescue’, it was all a matter of spanking the crap out of them and progressing to the subsequent level and then liberating the beautiful princess kept captive by evil doctors who can’t find the vein to insert the IV properly so that it all leaves her forearm black and blue.

Then I thought I would just take the lift. So I hopped into it. The liftman didn’t seem much bothered about the pass but too much bothered about the ‘anti-pass’ I had which was nothing but my Frooty pack. He was so intent on having me dispose it off before riding the lift that he even pointed to the left where I could throw the carton and climb in. I followed his finger and looked around and found nothing remotely resembling a dustbin except for patients in weird postures on wheelchairs…so I decided to rush back…only to find the elevator doors sliding and closing in fast. I could still see the smile of the guard on it and it wasn’t pretty…I would like to see it without teeth actually…but surprisingly his eyes looked beautiful…fantastic…as if not obeying his malicious intentions for Frooty pack carriers. And everyone else in the lift had beautiful eyes too.

By then I had had enough…and I decided to head up the stairs. I was of course stopped again on the landing. And I said… ‘I am not carrying any bombs…I am here to take care of a patient so would you please let me go up.’ and this time I was heard. so I went up and reached 308, opened the door…saw Su first…all set to go back to MICA…she had beautiful eyes…and then my eyes fell on Preeti’s…filled with the expectation to get discharged from the pink, pretty looking dungeon of disease-combat…filled with the good news of her AIMA paper doing well…they looked beautiful…and so did every single person’s eye since that sterling day at Sterling.

In this time of viral…I fell in love with eyes…left, right and centre…all colors and all size. And the syndrome continues. I can say with my eyes closed now that if you too are lucky enough to have a pair, which you must be to be reading this, without a doubt, they must be beautiful too!