‘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!

‘Memories of a Geisha’

Foreword

All these days that I have known her, a short span of time in terms of time, but a long one in terms of events, I cannot help but draw a parallel between an artist and her. She’s so good at her ordinary art that whenever I think of her, the artistic image of an accomplished Geisha flashes across my mind. The fact that her face is oriental has some role to inspire this image. Apart from the fact that I have seen the movie and have had my share of disappointment after having done that, that the movie was forgettable, that the picture on the cover of the book was haunting as opposed to the movie, and because I have been perceptually influenced by these, I have come to cherish her image as a supreme artist who has an insight in the ways of the world just like a Geisha, an artist who has the ability to penetrate the heart of the matter simply by borrowing the confidence of her ability from her primary art which is nothing but one of ‘constant discovery’. And I am willing to contest that her art lies in loving the people around her, and making a difference by not only loving them but also expressing that love frequently and more importantly abruptly.


‘One night at an internet café on Grant Road’

Technically, she is gone but she is here more than ever. I can feel her presence stronger than even when she was present here physically. That is the kind of everlasting quality she possesses, a simplistic charm that binds her acquaintances in a continuous rapture of time and space. And its not strange that I find myself saying this about her after knowing her for what…12 days?, because for me time has coagulated in the past few day.

‘I don’t even know if we will meet again.’ I found myself saying when she preparing to leave for Thailand, her family having decided to migrate.

‘Just stay in touch. And leave it to destiny if we will meet again because chances are that if we keep in touch we will definitely meet.’ I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that even after hearing this from her, doubts about us meeting again crop up in my mind considering she’s leaving for a place so far. I try to overcome these doubts but since it is well established that I am a slave of habit and considering habits take time to change, more so when you have nurtured that belief for years, these doubts will be entertained for some more time to come.

How can I forget how we met! And not surprisingly, our meeting was facilitated by the World Wide Web, which has consistently been a dynamic mode for countless people to unite online...all that and blah-blah. The only difference in our case was perhaps that the World Wide Web had an indirect role to play as, as opposed to the usual online route, we met in an internet café, one of many on that well known thoroughfare called Grant Road. I happened to be surfing the net on that ‘Grant Road evening’ and reaching out to friends, news, issues and all other things MICAn. Engrossed in my surfing function as I was, I unconsciously heard a melodious voice sing Kajrare and instantly I thought of Potnis who is what can be termed as ‘The Gift of Kajrare’ much like how Egypt is the gift of Nile. At that point in time, when the feminine voice pervaded the café air, had anyone shaken me up and diverted me away form surfing and asked me with my eyes closed about who might be singing, I would have easily passed the voice as of a girl with the description of being in her late teens, living in the neighborhood, possibly Muslim for the sake of that refined Urdu accent in the voice, and addicted to Bollywood. As it turned out I couldn’t be more wrong. As soon as I lay my eyes on her, my imagination was proved to be an inferior product of all the images that are fed to it in the environment. Not only was my imagination a slave of the external stimuli but also it completely lacked the quality of absurdity which after a point separates all things genius from ordinary. I was very disappointed with my imagination but fortunately I was adequately appeased by the discovery of the face behind the voice. The idea of ‘impossible’ that had initially struck my mind at seeing the face of the girl that claimed the voice soon transformed to one of ‘marvelous’. And the flurry of moments that saw me become a cork pulsating on sea waves, ended on an elevating note.

Michelle is a Thai of Chinese descent. She has been living in India as long as she can remember. I think, there are two things about her that must be told. Her body cannot be more Thai of Chinese descent. Her mind cannot be more Indian. And I am yet to find out the nationality of her heart though I have made a tentative prediction that it will come out to be a world citizen.

Going back to the cafe scene again, one could have easily predicted that the only thing that could possibly bring her to break that fantastic musical encore could only be someone interrupting her by calling her on her cell. And it goes without saying that that is exactly what happened. It was her mom talking.

After listening to her mom, the unknown girl that I now know as Michelle barked into the cell, ‘I am on my way, I am in the bus, will be there in ten, sure.’

There was a pause which was due to her mom barking in on the other end of the line. By now everyone in the café, mostly guys happily addicted to online gaming, and I, were listening intently to the conversation and I can’t say the same for them but I was surely thinking, ‘Will she sing again? Huh? Will she sing again? Huh? Huh? Or will her evil mom succeed in stealing her away from our invisible clutches, clutches that surround all things that are perceived to bring joy?’

‘I had some work to do, that’s why I got late. I’ll be there soon. I am on my way.’ She assured her mom.

I tingled with excitement on hearing her lie to her mom with such mind-numbing ease. I reckon that had she been in the company of thieves, she could have earned some real respect. But for now she would have to make do with the silent respect that my eyes were dealing out.

It was then that Kadir, the owner of the café asked me if I would like to play counter strike at 15 bucks per hour. I don’t know why but I said yes.

And then began a structured, repeated assasination of my virtual player by one player that called himself ‘Toma’. After the game ended, I found out that Toma was none other than Michelle. And we instantly struck a conversation which began at Strike Force, went on to MICA, and ended at the agreement of a meeting on the Marine Drive the following day as my office was terribly close to that place and so was her music class, the kind of classes you join in the short break after having taken your class XII exams.

The following day, Marine Drive, evening

I dragged my sagging spirits through swinging doors of media agencies that I was supposed to cover for the day for the sake of keeping my project alive and barely in the range of possible completion. I merely did this because the rendezvous with Michelle was like some sort of a break at the day’s time tunnel, at a point somewhere close to the sunset. She wasn’t the one to disappoint. She was already there at the agreed point even before I reached. She smiled, I smiled, and we smiled on seeing each other. The sea bathed in her company felt a much improved version of itself.

‘How was your day?’ That’s how I have generally come to begin the conversation with her. It’s almost a tradition now.

‘I just lazed around like a cat throughout the day. It was burning hot outside. Oh yeah, I did catch a movie though, I watched ‘The Mask of Zorro.’

‘How did you find it?’ we had started moving along the drive.

‘Everything was fine except for the action sequence in the end, there just seemed too many, what’s that word…um…weird explosions.’

‘What do you mean by “weird explosions”?’

‘I mean…well…have you seen the Titanic?’

‘Yeah’

‘You noticed how James Cameron takes you all about the ship showing you places which are most vulnerable, acquainting you with the ships construction, the crew in detail all along?.’

‘Yeah’

‘You know why he does that right? He does it so that the spectator knows exactly how the ship is giving away under the brutal forces of nature, when the action is being shown in the end. I mean when something breaks or blows up, the viewer knows exactly why that happens. And he does it so well you never even come to know when he has given you so much information about the nature of the ship because you are too busy concentrating on the love-story between Kate and Leo all through the movie.’

‘Okay so what about ‘The Mask of Zorro'?

‘In the mask of Zorro, when the last sequence is being filmed when the director wants to show the gold mine exploding all over the place, he does not explain anything about the nature of the mine, he just shows close-ups of explosions. Let alone the nature of the mine, he doesn’t even show an easily recognizable landmark near the mine so that the spectator can associate with the place that is being blown up. I think Indians have done it better at times than the director of The Mask of Zorro.’

‘Which director are you talking about?’

‘I don’t know about who the director is but I remember the movie. I remember a lot of scenes being filmed in this little courtyard on which you would always notice this big bullock cart wheel kept against one of the walls. You kind of keep on wondering why that wheel is kept there. But during the climax you realize that the wheel suddenly becomes a creative weapon in hands of the actors and it was crucial to the fight sequence in the end when the hero give the villain a good wheel bashing. I think the director overdid it, though. The presence of the wheel was not as subtle as the way Cameron informs us about the Titanic. We know it like our own home by the end without making it look like a documentary.’

‘Are you sure you were watching the movie for time-pass?’

‘I couldn’t help it. I was actually thinking about you while I was watching the pathetic explosions which meant next to nothing because you know how frequently you use the word communication when you talk about your college. I think, if you look into it this explains a huge part or what communication actually means.’

I smiled at what she had said and gestured to her to sit on the concrete barricade along the sea.

This is one of the many conversations we had as we walked along different parts of the Bombay coastline. I hope, I can recall more of such conversations and pen them down. Till then I can do nothing but promise myself to remember everything that happened.

‘The Summer of Satisfaction’

The first page of his summer-diary read something like this:

I will kick your butt ...
I will kick your butt …
I will kick your butt …
I will kick your butt …

And each blank that I have left was filled with a name of some arrogant fucker or the other he knew. I have chosen to leave it blank for the sake of sweet sham. On the next page a single line in big fat letters said,

I will kick your butt …(followed by his own name)

On the bottom in minute lettering it said, ‘Judge not yourself or them. And judge not judgment itself.’

The blanks in no way mean that he will restrain him from trash talking. He might just bump into one of these unmentioned people and tell them right on their face, ‘I will kick your butt …(followed by their name)’

He had no ordinary way of trash talking though. It was mostly something that he called ‘Internal Trash Talking’. He never did it aloud. The intentions closest to his hearts could never swim closer to his mouth; if they happened to he would chew them and swallow them again. It was his belief that if he let the intent grow in himself enough, one day it would have no choice but to materialize. Hence, his self imposed ‘shut up and listen’, mode.

‘Project: I will kick your butt…’ was nothing but a projection of his enhanced competitive spirit which dictated to him that he should not only beat his competitor but brutally bury him in the crushing cascade a humiliating defeat. Nothing less will do. Nothing less will motivate him because ‘No Mercy Till Victory Secured’ had become his motto.

Afterall he has known failure so well that he knows exactly what not to do, which city not to head for, and which thoughts to never turn to for empathy. His mind mostly ran on nothing else but the ‘Failure-fuel’ that he had earned in his past years, but it was one of the few things that brought him warmth, as it buzzed along.

All the confidence that he seemed to exude, all the faith that seemed to emit from his eyes was nothing more than the gift of a passing moment that had touched him that summer. It was no ordinary passing moment though, that had passed him that summer; it was almost something that he had forgotten where he had once buried his soul. Now his soul showed and with it showed the faith with which his eyes glowed.

He seems to be getting closer to something that he calls ‘The Universal Nature of Intelligence’ and another something that he calls ‘The Unified Nature of Intelligence’ and the closer he gets, the more fiercely the waves of satisfaction run through his supple body. Theses two concepts on which he pins his life’s hopes, according to him, are not to be divulged but to be interpreted, even if that means inferring their meaning from the meager face value of the words used to coin them into convenient terms.

He rejoiced in the golden sunshine of that summer while he walked the path of his personal growth. That summer he discovered his true self, a self which he believes will never completely unravel. That’s how ‘The Summer of Satisfaction’ unfolded for him that year while people passed him by on the paths he treaded, mostly traveling in the opposite direction and talking in a language that he understood but never spoke.

And after a long-long sleep, he woke up to the sleep that he had almost forgotten the taste of.

That summer, he surrendered everything that he could claim as his own as ‘The Summer of Satisfaction’ grew on him unhurriedly.

“And Why do You Support Brazil???”

As unbelievable as it may sound to the inhabitants of the great metros, Jalandhar is a decent enough place to eat and drink. I am basing this generalization about the disbelieving lot on the frequent queries about the eating and drinking circuit of my hometown that have been flung my way with considerable skepticism. The ones who threw up these queries were not surprisingly the inhabitants of the great metros which are ‘well known’ and not just ‘rumored’ to have a well defined bar culture.

When I happened to venture out to one of these bars here which claimed to showcase World Cup games with the availability of an affordable platter of food and drinks, I was not only performing a first in terms of expressing my serious interest in the World Cup and thus seeking an opportunity to feel the excitement by being present in one of these places frequented by “serious” fans, I was also performing a first on the bar circuit front because ‘Talli’, which when directly translated from Punjabi to English means ‘Drunk’, was also the first bar that I have entered after starting to drink a decent amount of vodka on certain limited number of occasions, and though I am stating this, I am stating this irrespective of the purpose of my visit which may lie in drinking suspicious vodka or watching football of decent quality or enjoying the twin pleasures of both at one go.

As the evening unfolded at this bar and Germany started harassing Costa Rica but not without hazarding the harassment of its own goal and the gloved man who guarded it, I began talking to a man in sitting on one of the bar stools beside me. Our curiously close position to the World Cup screen proudly disclosed to our bar-mates our enhanced interest in the goings on and the desire to lead the cheering on their behalf.

Soon enough, I don’t know what inspired me to but I found myself asking this middle-aged, well groomed gentleman perched on a leather cushioned stool beside me about his favorite team but not without the apprehension that the question inspires by the sheer predictability of the reply. And needless to say, my apprehensive prayers were answered true to the tradition when my co-cheer-pilot informed me cordially that he is a big Brazilian fan. Now again, on hearing this, I cannot tell why but I felt a strange stirring in my stomach, my vodka began to taste sour and the match suddenly lost its fervor and my head felt as if someone was using its inside as a substitute for a calypso drum.

While these strange reactions occurred, I found myself asking him not without straining to avoid dawning a sarcastic tone, which by the way, comes more naturally to me than regulated breathing, ‘And why do you like Brazil?’

He replied briskly, ‘I like them because they score goals, they have great players. They have Ronaldinho. And most importantly they win.’

I could have been quite impressed with his reply had I been on some high quality ‘MICA-brand dope’ but as the cruel circumstances would have it, I was neither doped not drunk enough to let pass the implications of what my cheer mate had just said.

What he had just said would have been more justified had he chosen the words more suited to the tone that he had answered my question with. Had that been the case, I humbly imagine his reply to be something like, ‘To be honest with you sir, I support Brazil for lack of something to do, for lack of something to support. I have had an excess of club championships. And what did I do at the end of it all; I supported an English club all my life without actually contributing any money directly to their cause, maybe a little indirectly in terms of GRP by watching TV though. And then 20 years from now I am destined to die leaving behind a family and a kid who would wonder why his father was the sham he was and so he might decide to make a difference by having better reasons for watching football.’ That would be an ideal reply for him for the question, ‘And why do you like Brazil?’

“Would have-could have” scenarios apart, not surprisingly, it was now his turn to ask me the same question, which he, quite evidently, did not seem to hold in as high a critical esteem as I was bound to hold by the sheer virtue of my interest in the fate of teams jumping gallantly into the multi flavorful World Cup soup and in turn the associated fate of their fans.

And then he asked me unhindered, ‘Which is your favorite team?’

I said flatly, ‘Brazil’.

‘And why do you like Brazil?’ he asked.

And the reply that came out of my mouth cannot be claimed to be wholly mine but influenced greatly by one Mumbai returned Namibaba of the forty-four roomies fame.
And this is what I found my mouth blabbering to him uncontrollably as he looked on intently while I couldn’t deny that the calypso company in my head was having quite a party now, ‘I like Brazil’, I said, ‘because Spain’s superstitious coach thinks yellow is an unlucky color according to Kaballah. Going by that “philosophy”, I would be tempted to think that Brazil have to put up with a lot of ill luck because all they play in is yellow. If they are world beaters with the unlucky color on them, just imagine what would happen if they dawned another color in place of yellow. And to tell you the truth it’s the superstition that I hate and that Brazil proves it wrong is why I like them. To be honest, I can’t even stand that daily horoscope column in the papers. Apart from that, Brazil has flair…their football is born in slums…they are a poor man’s team….Ronaldinho never dives; he is an excellent ambassador for the game. Brazilians-they are not the European mechanical firing squad…they have Samba footwork and because I like dance of any form is why I like them. I like them because even after so much internal turmoil the country wins the cup through sheer talent. Despite not being the richest foot-balling nation, they have a renewable talent pool year after year…and of course the following is so amazing that it would make any supporter proud- Brazilian or not. Apart from that…or rather because of that they win. That is why I like them. And though it’s beside the point I would like to mention that that I think their wining is more to do with their culture. By culture I mean all that is not included in the sporting culture and still deemed as culture, you know. I hope I am making sense. I think if one has to form a formidable football team, one must do a microscopic analysis of a Brazilian citizen’s social life and I am sure one would come up with the ‘how’s and why’s’ of top-notch football. Well this is pretty much why I like Brazil.’

My cheer companion couldn’t look more dazed by the reply. He promptly ordered a drink and offered me one. But I merely told him that I had had enough for the day. To which he promptly addressed me as sir ji and gallantly said the drink was on him…I said I didn’t care even if the drink was on Maradona…I had had enough and by the way he had a lot to do with it. The game too had come to an end and all the cheering in the club had given way to a strange euphoria in the room which it appeared could only subside with a thorough battering of Brazil at the hands…or rather the feet of a team of lesser sporting mortals.

I picked up my bag, the black one with the orange question mark on it, paid the bartender and left the building.

PS : This is what took place in ‘Talli’ in Jalandhar the other day. Though I am over it now, I cannot resist asking all you die-hard Brazil fans out there…‘Why do you support Brazil?’ If you are, woman enough, man enough but most importantly fan enough, don’t hesitate to let me know.

‘Don’t’

Don’t let your hair lose
Don’t put on rouge
Don’t paint your lips
Or your finger tips
Don’t wear that dress
That you bought with care
Don’t walk that walk
Don’t acquire that look
For if you do
You will look too fine
And I will not know
If you are the same woman
That filled with love
Not too long ago
This weary, worn out
Heart of mine

‘Writers-It Takes All Kinds’

-A bad writer after reading the piece he has freshly written would say, ‘By Jove! Revelation of revelations! Is this what I actually meant to write?’

-A good writer would say, ‘My thoughts feel a little distorted on paper but I don’t care as long as they are distorted for the better. ’

-A great writer would say, ‘I have nothing to say, for all I had to say is on the paper.’

“Wish: Death”

Die -You know you want to
Why?-You have your reasons
I-Can be your reason if you don’t have one
High-Can be your new home
Fly-With angels who have no hope
Lie-with God in heaven
My-you look so happy when dead
Smile-I just blew your brains out of your head

‘The Mechanism of Ventment’

Einstein was wrong
You don’t have to travel faster than time
To tow it across its natural line
Stretch it and slow it down
It can be done while doing
Something as simple as returning from office
My mind buckling under tired thoughts
Weary legs carrying me home through the town

My body may be tired
But I have sold ad space, I have donned that role
That would sell anything that I happened to have in my hand
I have that smile, that body language
That would help me sell anything
Afterall I am no more than a sophisticated salesman

Once home, I want to write
My body won’t obey
I’ll fall prey to an involuntary sleep soon
That is the best way to be ready for the next day
And just as my eyes would begin to close
A couplet will be born in Namibaba’s head
The lappy will be out the next minute
And the night will be spent typing in the dark
My bed an island in a sea of 70 bodies as good as dead

Sleep would overwhelm me finally
And I would go down with the thought swimming in my head
"It's a message from the spirit
It must be sent
Whenever the feelings overwhelm me
There would be ventment"

Quotes from Namibaba (1983-Alive and kicking till now)

“The truth is in here.”

“A flash in a pan is worth hiring the cook for.”

“A stitch in time spoils the time-piece.”

“Early bird doesn’t get anything in a city of late risers.”

“Peace is a dish best served after war.”

“Give peace a chance. Or else we always have war.”

“The most well supported kind of dog is underdog.”

“I am a life built on underestimations.”

“It’s hard to trust a man who goes an extra mile to earn it.”
.
“It’s easier to trust a man with an evil smile than one with a straight face.”

“A man with an innocent face must learn how to bargain.”

‘Who’s This Man?’

I climb up the train and see this man
And though I have seen him somewhere
I can’t quite say where have I seen him
Who is this shriveled up in a corner seat
This man who is so engrossed with everything?
This man who would think strange thoughts
Who always pushes himself
This dreamer, this immodest creative
This vane being, not free from conceit
Showing traces of manic disorder
This man at times lovable
But at times inspiring mistrust and deceit
This man so simple yet unpredictable
Who is this man, shriveled up in the seat?
This tender mouthed
Sometimes a boy
But a man when he needs to be
Who is this man?

And then this man speaks to me
He says
‘Stupid it’s you
It’s you, it’s me
Will you stop staring at me?
It’s us man
Stupid it’s we!!!’

‘This word that I have put here’

This word that I have put here
Is meant to be written in this place
This word which not a foreign word
This word is you and me and in-between
And everything that we’ll never know
And when we’ll be gone, it will stay
We will leave back something of our own
This word though lone
Will be here
The word of love
That I have written here

‘See ya…sad eyes’

Here I go dissecting what happened but that is my fate and I am in love with it absolutely. So, here, I go guessing, speculating, deducing to an extent that can hurt people and most of it you. But undeniably and ignoring the risk of hurting you if you may be reading this (fat chance), there was a kind of sorrow; here I go about you, in your eyes and which expressed itself more boldly and threatened to break its eye-prison-cell at the squeeze of a hand, your hand. Yes, at a reassuring, steady, empathizing, a mere squeeze of your hand dictated by feelings unknown, unintended, instinctively but acceptably and undoubtedly mine. In spite of your eyes, you talked and laughed and it was as normal as you intended it to look…but if only I could hear it from your mouth…no you could not say it…not the first time we met…I know…

Now, getting over an interaction with you and letting a reluctant air or normalcy to prevail would be letting myself to take to your ways, so I’ll choose to desist from that temptation to be your alike, rather I will keep your memory fresh and wait till we meet again and next time, though it seems a long shot (but then every impossibility ceases to be one not till we reach the very verge of razing its mirage), I will ask for answers from your eyes and not just try to read them with my own…whatever momentary joy may belie their state. See ya…sad eyes. I leave it to life to bring me about you or you about me…what’s the difference anyway?

‘In This Moment is Everything’

My eyes dreamt of far off times
The advent of which is not guaranteed
My eyes dreamt of enriching years
The years that no one can promise me
My eyes saw better days
The realization of which depends on today
My mind hoped for hours of peace
Which are mounted on this moment’s lease
And at the awe of all this
When my heart advanced to skip a beat
I cradled my nerve, embraced my breath
The breath that enforces this passing moment
And makes my heart beat with ease
That beat that my heart was unsure of
The beat it would have naively skipped
For in this moment
Does my heart soon realize
In this moment is life itself
That in this moment is everything

‘How Far is The Land…’

I live on only to see that land
Where I will land and not recognize me
The land where after a string of changes
Will I only finally reach

Where is that land?
Where is that beach?
Where I will put my head at rest
And no further any change beseech

While I walk toward that land
I see the signs which tell me that
This is the gold that is everywhere
It’s scattered in every land
To all, by the need of each
There is no treasure greater than this
You are the king of this moment
There are no kingdoms other than His
But the heart insists
And leaps ahead with a view to breach

Hope is something that floats
So I keep on walking in search of the land
Of which there is still no sign
The signs just whisper
‘This is it
This is the land you look for stranger
Look no further, you are already here’

‘A Rendezvous with God’

If you look at it, it’s not that strange that there are only a handful of events, incidents, and an equally small number of resulting feelings that define the way our personality shapes during the progression of our days. What you are today might seem to be a cumulative sum of all that has happened to us in our lives, but if we think about it, there are a very few crucial incidents and moments that have drastically influenced the way life will shape our personalities if it is to be believed that we are a direct result of what we undergo beside of course the part that is influenced by our genes or what our forefathers underwent.

I have had my share of influences. And one of the things that have always influenced me is ‘the nature of beauty’. I have to my discredit have converted a thing of such simplicity into a mystery, but all in the hope that it will reveal to me a facet of itself which till now has escaped the eyes of everyone who ever came close to laying his/her eyes on something that he/she considered a real thing of beauty. It might seem completely pointless and vain to have such a pursuit when we have enlightened souls constantly declaring that everything is bathed in beauty if you have the ability to see it. It might sound like an intelligent excuse but may be it’s only the beauty of that vision what I was after.

It’s again to my discredit how I continue to dissect beauty and love, the two apostles of greatness, and carry on categorizing them, calling them all sorts of names in my head for personal reference so that when I come across them I can draw on that particular sort and call it something that helps me to systematize my understanding. I do this, to my increasing discredit, with a view to limit the insecurity that is generated out of the lack of my own beauty and in complete knowledge of the fact that the sources of the two and all their kinds are constant and common.

My foolish pursuit of this fictional mystery is such that even the slightest conversation on the topic is deposited consciously into the finest grey cells of my mind I have (the best of whatever I have) for the sake of convenient retrieval. One such conversation occurred when I was talking to my friend Pierre. We were talking about beauty without specifying the type and form and not surprisingly by default we were talking of ‘physical beauty’ when he said that research says that children of young parents are found to have more symmetrical features and symmetry according to the laws of design is one of the intrinsic features of beauty. The talk then could have easily meandered into discussing how physical beauty effects mental beauty during the course of one’s life or vise-versa, but the sporadically rare work at the office surprisingly helped hold our horses.

Anyway, I narrated what Pierre said because I saw something on the streets today that I have come to call nothing less than ‘absolute real beauty’. I witnessed it from the bus while going to Express towers. The red double-decker bus I was traveling on had just stopped on a traffic light where all sorts of vehicles were lined up along the zebra crossing. Two imposing Mercs and the macho Pajero stood proudly parading their striking beauty, the perceptible physical definition of it which dominates our understanding despite the fact that there is no dearth of car enthusiasts who would stop at nothing short of comparing their mechanical beauties to the most striking beauties of human flesh and blood of spirit themselves. In any case, irrespective of if one considers them live or not, the steely grills of the Mercs and the Pajero and the ‘less beautiful’ cars glinted in the killer sun arrogantly. The stately smooth lines on the metal of the cars seemed to pompously defy the angular sensibilities of yesteryears. The impeccable paint jobs on the cars were beginning to encourage another discussion about the role of color in beauty to crack open when I saw something that put all debates to rest and questioned the very definition of beauty as we (as in increasingly more people) have come to believe it, mostly because they have been programmed by that another huge influence in our lives, which comprises of an equally vast array of dominant messages, called media.

If you are wondering what put an end to my foolish search for beauty, it was only a brown boy that I saw who effortlessly put my little self-amusing (or self-tantalizing) mystery to shame. A little boy of about 10 years or so, evidently paralyzed in one half of the body, bare breasted in the killer sun, trying his best to cross the street on the zebra crossing. From my place in the bus I could see him struggling with his body to cross the street against the backdrop of the ‘beautiful’ cars. By a conservative estimate, it would take him five times as much time to cross the street as would take a ‘normal’ person.

The red light on the traffic pole seemed to have been frozen in time as he crossed the street. The sound from the traffic seemed to evaporate as he crossed the street, his body inching forward somehow supported by the tiny supply of balance that he could manage with in his paralytic state.

In the bus, I felt a few more necks turn in the direction, his direction in which I was looking so intently. He was almost at the other end of the street when the red light turned to orange. A few more feet to go before the beauties lined up on the crossing would roar to take their masters to their important destinations. And then it flashed, it happened. It happened and put my vain mystery to shame. Apart from that, it curtly put me again into the club of firm believers who believe in the universal, unified and simple nature of beauty which makes it a free flowing force, which can move between any two or more places, people, and points in time.

What had happened was that the little brown boy, paralyzed in one side of the body, without a shirt on his back and struggling to cross the street had smiled bravely amidst his struggle. What seemed like a mammoth task for him, just a few more steps and he would be on the other side of the street. Even as the little brown boy teetered along, the signal turned red and it gave me that faint feeling of apprehension about the steely beauties that were just raring to roar off. But fortunately, to my disbelief and relief, the mechanical beauties had seemingly been sensibly restrained till the struggling, smiling boy would cross the street safely. Meanwhile, the boy, unaware of the status of the traffic lights carried on to the other end and once he was there, he stopped to rest immediately. As soon as the boy appeared to have made it, the beauties lined up on the crossing promptly sped away displaying the kind of aggression one is accustomed from them.

I moved on too, aboard my bus, my mysteries solved, my doubts dispelled, my insecurities about the nature of beauty shattered, my heart applauding every single wobbly step the little brown kid took. What do you know; the incident of the boy at the crossing made me feel like I had come across God in the street today. And I couldn’t help thinking about the boy in the context of the discussion that I had had with Pierre, ‘if his beauty had a face...if his beauty had a face…’ and then another thought (more sensible) trailed close behind it. ‘Stupid, his beauty does have a face; his face.’

Namibaba is not in a condition to say anything today ‘cause he has just met God on the streets of Bombay and he is still in a state of shock.

‘Made in China’

Disclaimer: Choose your warning.

[Warning 1: This post is RATED X, visitors’ discretion is advised]

[Warning 2: This post is RATED X, yippee...all the more reason to read it]

My roomies are a recyclable lot. Never at a point in time do I have the same set of roomies. In fact, the only roomy in this room that appears to be a constant is me.

The minor advantage of having a renewable pool of roomies is that you keep coming across different characters, which I can make the target of my penning indulgence.

Because of this continuous current of renewal, recently two roomies were added to the merry lot of Namibaba’s forty-four roomies. And as is the tradition with the merry band, they were instantly granted their nick-names by Namibaba. These nick names are inspired from the most intriguing qualities of their personality, something that when one comes across in them, one learns to love to hate in due course of time.

One such roomy is Double-tits called so for his buns, which bear a striking resemblance to the more widely known physical trait double chin. To imagine a double tit all you have to do is to imagine a double chin’s close cousin interpreted in terms of chest muscles.

Another roomy is Slowmo called so because of his strange obsession of walking in slow motion in the aisles between the beds in Ship. Only God can be your savior when you are in a hurry and you happen to be trailing Slowmo in the aisles. No amount of pushing and shoving will motivate him to move faster. It appears that by delaying others in the narrow aisles, he is stocking up his invaluable ego reserves.

Another one of my roomies is ‘Made in China’ who apart from being a Chinese, is called so because his sad face lights up on the mention of ‘Made in China’, even if happens to be something as seemingly as inconsequential as a mineral bottle with the tag of ‘Made in China’ on it. It is another matter that in this post this otherwise inconsequential bottle, at best fulfilling the thirst need of the Chinese on bed no. 15, assumes a critical function of that of being a symbolic representative of a fundamental tool that plays an important tool in perpetuation of the human race.

What happens when you put these three roomies of distinct flavors on a small bed of 3 by 6 feet? This was quite close to the scenario when I noticed them interacting on bed no. 36 (Doubletit’s bed), and answering the above question in the context of organizational dynamics, it was rather close to ‘pandemonium’. Also, it’s interesting to note that from the point of view of organizational dynamics; the three member group on Doubletit’s bed was a one that consisted of 66.66% Indians and 33.33% Chinese and the Indian fraction seemed almost too aware of the fact that India has lost two wars with China incurring huge losses on both the occasions. And as far as the size of bottles is concerned, this faction is as unaware of the truth as were their forefathers who owned the responsibility of losing the wars. [I would hereby advise the reader to exercise patience about the mystery of the bottles. Rest assured, the mystery will be revealed in the coming passages.]

But before we get on with the dynamics involving the bottle, a little about ‘Made in China’ should be told first. ‘Made in China’ is a super-chikna character with feminine body language which automatically makes him vulnerable to strayed perceptions in a room overcrowded with men. Something I admire about him is that he is a self sufficient character who goes on scribbling in his notebook without ever taking a peek on the TV, as I go on typing on my lappy. He looks like a very young Buddha in the respect that he has a nerdy appeal and a liking for expanding his knowledge constantly. So, when I saw Made in China talking to the Indian faction consisting of Doubletits and Slowmo, the Little Buddha was talking about the three letter word that seems to be the very basis of life- Joy. From his talks it seemed that joy is not a result of anything, it’s rather a daily, independent decision that one takes first thing in the morning. It’s almost as if he wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Come hell or high water I am going to find joy today’. And rightly so, he seemed so focused on joy that it is what he seemed to derive even when the talk drifted to his very own Made in China bottle and the associated sentiments.

After having finished the talk about the religious hangouts that Made in China had been to, the Indian faction became too aware that they cannot let him go without some ridicule because he was joyful to an extent of being irritating. His joy came across as a sacrilege because supposedly only Indians are to be as joyful as him, given the extensive history of only-a-dhoti-clad sadhus spending their days in uncontained bliss even amidst a supremely materialistic environment. The Indian faction seemed to be offended by the spiritual joy that the Chinese seemed to exude. And hence it became extremely crucial to talk about the bottle of Made in China.

Made in China’s face lit up when Doubletits pointed to his mineral water bottle, which looked nothing like mineral bottles sold in India. It had twin characteristics that made it look unmistakably Chinese. Firstly, its shape seemed to be an offshoot of the architecture of the ancient Chinese monasteries that sported multiple roofs, roofs that seem to me synonymous to the spiritual planes that one is required to ascend when practicing Chinese spiritual arts. Secondly, the plastic of the bottle seemed to be a derivative of the Chinese made TT balls because it had the prominent opaqueness which contrasted starkly with the transparence associated to the ‘purity factor’ observed in preferred designs of Indian made mineral bottles.

So, when Doubletits pointed to Made in China’s mineral water bottle, which also appeared to be smaller than most of the bottles we come across in India, the Chinese was filled with joy because it was his chance to say proudly ‘Made in China’, as if it was enough to explain comprehensively the reason for the way the bottle looked. Not unpredictably, Doubletits had other plans in mind. He pointed to the bottle in Made in China’s hand and said, ‘Chinese bottle’ then he promptly pointed to the mineral bottle kept on the side table which happened to be a one liter mineral bottle and said, ‘Indian bottle.’ As the Chinese looked on with a confused, but joyful expression, Doubltit’s gesture was promptly followed up by Slowmo’s Andhra-accent laughter. The joyful Chinese still didn’t seem to get it. So, Doubletits pointed to Made in China’s penis and said, ‘Chinese bottle’ and made the gesture of ‘small’ by his fingers, and then he pointed to his own penis and said, ‘Indian bottle’, and made the gesture of big with his hands. The Chinese seemed a little taken aback by the sudden aggression; something like India was when China had attacked without much warning in 1972. It seemed to be the golden revenge of Doubletits for the Chinese aggression of 1972.

Although I wanted to congratulate Doubltits on his micro coup which did not make any difference to the Chinese rate of economic development or the rapid rate of modernization of its defense forces, I merely reflected on what’s the size of the bottle got to do with anything? I mean, let’s even assume for a moment that the size of bottles of our ancestors compared to that of the Chinese’s ancestors was something to be proud of (although there are no Olympics for ‘size of bottle’ and even if there was, China would have promptly gone on to bag the organizational rights and would have made billions out of it), how instrumental was it in influencing the outcome of our wars with China or receiving more FDI than China? History seems to be hinting that we might just have lost the wars in the overconfidence of the bottle-size when it was not uncommon to hear stuff like, ‘Hamare gama pahelwan, dus dus Chinky ko pataki de denge.’ I think, in those days the comparative size of the bottle was pulling the strings somewhere in the back of the mind.

I fail to understand, why there is so much claim going around about whose bottle is bigger. Moreover historically also, wars have never been fought by bottles. They have been fought with swords. And the size of the bottle has never affected the outcome of wars, even more so since ‘technology’ and ‘technique’ came into being and I am talking both in the context of war and love respectively. Yes, even if we consider love for that matter, a whole lot of research seems to point out that the bottle’s size is not as crucial as the technique employed to use the bottle for the purpose love-making and to be more precise, of satisfy a female companion.

And even if it is a world that is run by the size of the bottles, no one can ignore the way the Chinese race has improved its physical condition and health. I am sure the smart use of the bottle to curtail the birth rate has a lot to do with it. When compared to the smartness of the Chinese bottle, the size of the Indian bottle, if at all still in the lead, after the drastic improvement in health and fitness standards that China has seen post economic liberalisation, the presumed marginal lead of the Indian bottle in comparison seems to be blown away (no pun intended).

And as far as characters like Doubletits and Slowmo are concerned, who know nothing of the Chinese revolution (which stretches way beyond bottling), I would imagine only two hypothetical scenarios to dispel their doubt about the much publicized comparative study of the bottles.

Scenario 1: As for Slowmo I hope the Chinese Olympic gold-medalist for the 110m hurdles- Liu Xiang doesn’t decide to trail him in one of the aisles between the beds, I am sure the gold-medalist will empty Slowmo’s ego reserves in a hurry, by simply hopping over all the beds in all of less than 13 secs.

Scenario 2: And as far as the national hero Doubletits goes, I hope he does not come across the fabled bottle of Yao Ming of the National Basketball League of the US one of these days because if Yao Ming decides to empty his bottle on Doubletits (pun intended), it’s going to be one hell of a slam-dunk (pun intended).

Baba says:

‘It is not a coincidence that the Chinese are good at both miniaturization and expansiveness. The former is what they have treasured for years anatomically, the latter what they have always dreamed of achieving.’- Namibaba of the forty-four roomies fame

‘Where Angels Dare’

Look up; I am up here, employed by God
There are deadlines you’ve got to meet
Heaven is a depressing place
Of dead people who are terribly neat

The place is filled with these angelic souls
Who even put me to shame
Despite being an angel highly appraised
My soul has dried up playing this game

I look down upon my golden lyre
To whom I my secrets confide
For I cannot complain directly to God
Will I ever get a chance to explore my dark side?

But by God, I am a dreamer and that day is not far
When I will pull up my spotless socks
Exchange my lyre for an electric guitar
And make this place called heaven rock

‘A Forgettable Conversation’

We sat beside the sweeping sea
With secrets swimming in rather deep
Our eyes talked and we looked at ease

Then we lit a little flame
It burnt between us like a dancing blaze
Of all feelings that don’t have a name

We spoke and we spoke of us
And hurled our pride into the flame
The fire created quite a fuss

It now became a sarcastic fire
And for our little conversation
It soon became a funeral pyre

‘An Ode to You Oh Visitor’

And only yesterday I was boasting to my friends over dinner at Leopold that how personal the blog is to me and the advent of a visitor will not influence how I proceed with my writings, but as is evident, the very first few visits have already made an impact which is quite evident from the extent to which this very post is inspired by the visits. I guess what I said to my friends yesterday was one of those times when I say aloud the complete opposite of what I think is the truth. But that comes across as so wired when I think of myself as an honest person. Contrary to self-expectations, I think I just keep on fooling myself into believing things which aren’t true. Taking that hypotheses further, I think I am completely opposite of honest. Now since I happen to be stating this, having proved myself dishonest, it might be a completely wrong assumption. But who knows maybe the assumption that it’s a wrong assumption is again a way to fool myself. I think this is going no where. So I would just let you know what made me think of myself as a self deceiving idiot in the first place.

‘An Ode to You Oh Visitor’

My prose is gross
My verse is worse
To keep on venting
Is my curse
But I value you dear visitor
Cause without you
My blog is a sleeping log
The posts are ghosts
And I’m an addict of solitude
Carrying on without a cure

‘Counting on Life’

And when I am feeling not that well
And I feel like ending everything
Which would not take but a severing act
To free my soul and make it sing

And when I think of this in a single breath
The only thing between death and me
I think of life and how it’s a search
Can’t count on death to set me free

‘Fully Oded’

Oh my heart
Write an ode
That can take to her
The entire load
That’s mounting on
This little wagon
I am riding down
This bumpy road

Oh my heart
Guide the wagon
Which with my love
Is fully loaded
And make sure
That by the end
Of this ode
This load of love is fully oded

‘Why I’m Tempted to Believe in Rebirth’

March 2005, home, Jalandhar Cantt.

Flies are crowding around him. They are in his eyes and everywhere. Why doesn’t he go snap-snap at them playfully, trying to catch them in his mouth? The mean looking cat is staring at him while it cools off in the shade, why doesn’t he get up and chase it away, feeling the taste of the cat’s paw in the bargain?

I can see him clearly now. There he is lying in the freshly made clearing, a perfectly circular cleaned up area of radius 1.5 meter amidst this dense shrubbery. I am thinking, while my heart is flooding with pity and my mind is nervously imposing courage, ‘My God how is it possible?’

I walk toward him, wishing him unwell for the first time. I am thinking, ‘I hope he is feeling unwell, and having felt so has munched some juicy grass, of the one particular kind he likes, and is drowsing off in the killer sun, waiting for the puke to come, because his body is feeling cold and he gets so confused when not well, just like me. He is just like me, only more respectable.’

My mind is tossing up past memories, ‘Why doesn’t he get up and lie in the shade for a while? He is feeling confused after all isn’t he? He doesn’t know whether to lie in the shade or the sun when unwell, then how come he has made up his mind to lie in the sun today? His body is feeling colder than usual isn’t it?’ But God his body, please not this cold.

The clearing around him is a miracle. It is as much a miracle as his just lying there for all these hours when he is the very icon of ‘life’ for me.

I close in on him and catch the glimpse of that chain, the thick one bought after the wisdom gained from countless weaker ones broken by him previously, ‘God please not that chain around his neck. God please, not that choke-chain around his neck.’, My mind is refusing to make sense of it all, ‘I mean, what are the odds of his chain getting stuck in the shrubs and on top of it no one ever hearing him barking during his struggle with death, a struggle so fierce that the clearing looks like a royal gardener’s job.’

His body is lying there lifeless like a warrior’s who has just lost a bout with death. I have never seen him give up. I have never seen him let go. Tell me God, what do I make of his body that is lying so dead-still in front of me?


May 18, 2006, an alley near Ship, VT

I am walking toward the VT bus stop. I am walking through the ally. And suddenly my mind is flooding with memories of Dodge, so extraordinary a dog that he simply couldn’t do with an ordinary death. The son-of-a-bitch just had to grab the headlines even while dying. He just had to grab all the attention even while leaving despite of the fact that he never fell short of it in his reasonably blissful life. The point being that the playful bugger just couldn’t have enough of love.

As I am standing there, the trigger of this deluge of memories is sitting on his hind legs right in front of me with his tongue hanging out. He is hardly 4-6 months. He has the same sandy body with white markings on his forehead which continue to his muzzle, the same white on all four paws, and a bit of it on the tip on his tail. He has that confused expression on his face which says, ‘I am going to be a fool for the rest of my life. And I am going to love you like a maniac. I don’t care if you ever love me. I will always love you.’ I find myself say in surprise, ‘Dodge’. He doesn’t look my way. I cry out again, ‘Dodgu…’ He still doesn’t look. I try for the last time, ‘Dogde…’ He looks my way, rotating his ears like he has just heard something familiar. As I look on, a little girl emerges from one of the huts lining the road, picks him up and starts petting him. Having been tempted to reconsider a belief which has always been a source of curiosity for spiritualists, philosophers and a the reason for the immortality of a magnificent line on Pharos which inspired a whole civilization to value life more than any other wealth, I move on toward the VT bus stop, my heart carrying on stronger, now that it is infused with a sense of a distant joy.

A confession: This was one of the most difficult posts to write because I had to constantly struggle with my mind to gain access to the memories which are soaked with sorrow, the memories whose very recollection is regarded by the mind as hazardous.

Miss you Dodge

‘The Curious Incident of the Pussy in the Night-time’

It was a typical Marine Drive evening and the breeze was hell-bent on sweeping everything resting on the promenade a shade further toward mainland. It was during this tussle of the multitude of things lining the coast with the stubborn sea breeze, when the sun had freshly set, the sky had just acquired a mysterious dark shade of blue, and I was consciously gazing at the concrete rocks lining the beach, that I happened to notice something that instantly registered in my mind as odd and I thought, ‘That’s odd…’. It was what seemed like a glowing diamond, moving circuitously within the murky mesh of the concrete rocks lining the coast, what I have been told are called ‘tripod rocks’. Though the movement of the diamond slightly erratic at times, given the concrete caves it seemed determined to negotiate, it was making a pretty smooth job of it. The diamond glided within the multiple caves, vanishing into darkness at times. Quite naturally, I was enamored by the beauty of the glowing diamond and instinctively started following it. As it was, I happened to be quite close to the end of the causeway where the tripod rocks merge with the sea rocks without exhibiting discernible traces of separation. And it so happened that I reached the end of the causeway following the floating diamond only to find a cat emerging from below one of the concrete rocks, its eyes now in full view and clearly showing intentions to flee, which it promptly did the very next moment, laying my curiosity to rest.

‘I love You Because I Love Me’

And then the much awaited moment arrived when she said, ‘I love you.’ The love-story wouldn’t have ended before beginning had he simply brought himself to believe her. He had done it again hadn’t he? It was just like he had done it to others before her. He cared for her too much to have her fall in love with someone like him, someone who he held in so much contempt. Had he known the basis of his own suspicion he would have been better off, but having spent most of his life away from books, he was in no position to know his own mind. When they met later and her hand was in someone else’s hand he still didn’t know what to say or what had happened between them or how to end it i.e. if there had been anything to begin with between them, he just went on staring into her eyes trying to find the traces of the love that he had once questioned. It would take him another year just to realize that he is a victim of fate like millions of other people, another year to find out that the emotional calamities he went through were because he refused to take his life in his own hands, no matter how strong were the hands that were holding it. And he would also understand that his only victory would lie in turning it around. He could only do it by not being himself any longer. That is the very definition of change is it not? In the future he would only remember himself as someone who he had met once and had had a lot of trouble with. And then he would claim the persona of remote stranger by saying, ‘I was that stranger once.’ without actually becoming him in that moment just as he was unable to become the man he is today when he had looked into her eyes with suspicion, had questioned her love and had wished to become lovable but had failed. He will know then that he is a product of his fate, and the combined fate of all the people who live in this world and it was only that doubt for her love, the hurt in his heart and the hurt he had given her that has led to the understanding that has dawned on him today. And then he will learn to love himself enough to rightfully deem himself a deserving object of affection. And then his ability to dream will be the only limit because his mind would be a place without fear.


Some famous person: ‘Our first and only love is self-love’
Namibaba: ‘Well thank God for that.’

‘Ship Floats’

Sometimes I see this weird dream. I see my hotel- Ship transformed into a real ship on a full moon night and setting sail on PD Mellow road. I see all the beds except mine moving neatly in a file, as if obeying an algorithm, and stacking up neatly in one corner of the hall. I see a starboard emerging from the floor on one end of the hall. I see a mast rising from the middle of the hall and a sail climbing the mast simultaneously. My forty four roomies take their positions on this Ship according to their experience and qualification in merchant shipping: navigators to the navigation panel, the junior engineers and the engineers to the engine room, the captain and his commanding officers on the starboard and I to my bed no. 24, which is stationed bang on the middle of the deck near the mast.

This ship called…ahem…Ship soon sets sail and it sails across the government dental college, the GPO and finally reaches the Victoria Terminus where I can see the lady atop the dome in her glorious deposition, faintly covered by the thin sheath lent by the moonlight. My mind registers awe at the sight.

At this stage the dream invariably hits a snag. And every time I have this dream, it proceeds in the same way because my mind has not developed an alternate solution to the snag yet. I hear screams coming from the announcement system, drowning the emergency alarm, ‘All hands on deck, we have hit iceberg: VT.’ And then I lift my eyes to the mysterious lady atop VT and see the light illuminating her turning faint red. Confused, I shift my gaze to the moon, I see it turning into a shade of red too. At this point I panic.

Then I hear the captain’s blaring voice on the announcement system, ‘We have just calculated that in order to save the ship we will have to lessen the load. Get rid of the most dispensable object on board.’ As soon as I hear this I freeze in terror.

I see all sailors on deck heading toward me like zombies, their hands reaching out for me. I try to get off my bed and escape but I soon find that my hand is tied to the bed with a handcuff, and I can’t free myself. The sailors lift me with my bed and chant, ‘Sailor God, Sailor God’ in unison and then with a single united effort, thrust me overboard, entirely on the mercy of the ocean. In my panicky state I try to find a dry oasis in the wet desert surrounding me but without successes. I am strained to think that my bed will soon sink but the luggage compartment underneath it, seemingly keeps it afloat. Aboard Ship I can see faces of confused sailors, who don’t know whether to celebrate their survival or to mourn my state. Ship gradually fades out of site leaving behind a trail of darkness.

I, perched on my floating haven, my bed, my launch pad of dreams, continue to drift dangerously close to iceberg: VT, clutching my folded legs together out of apprehension. In this lull before the onset of trauma I let go of all hope and bury my face between my knees. All of a sudden, I feel a cold a hand grab my right shoulder. The fingers dig insensitively on my shoulder. I turn around slowly in apprehension. As I turn, my eyes catch a faint red glow and I find myself looking straight into the stony red eyes of the lady no longer atop VT.

This is where I usually wake up to reality.

‘How He Wished’

He wished for the power to dream
He cracked when the dreams asked him to surrender

He asked for change
His mind ached when it ensued

He wished for the power to think
The power to think a blank mind at will

He soon gave up even the wish
That he wished to give up all desire

He searched for love all over
Only till he decided to look within

Then came life’s deluge and swept him
He gave up…to win

-Namit

‘Impoverished’

She looks on, bearing the puzzled expressions on her face, which has probably now become a permanent fixture. She is no mistress of riches but yet, the weathered pram that she tows carries her most prized jewel. A jewel that I soon find out is third in its generation. The other two jewels soon arrive on the seen. If there are degrees of confusion, the two wear much less confusion on the face, but more importantly they are not entirely devoid of it. I cannot blame them. India can surprise you for a lifetime irrespective of whether you are a foreigner or not.

Her clothes, glaringly of Indian style that no one in Mumbai wears these days, are soiled. The jewels are soiled, as if freshly mined. They wonder if their mother has enough money to buy them Mewar Ice-cream. One of the jewels, girls both, makes her wish of having an ice-cream cone known to her mum. The mother disregards the wish and continues to stare into space as if unconfident about the potential of her wallet. I continue to munch on my ice-cream insensitively.

The mother asks the jewels, ‘What is that? What’s that man selling?’
‘It looks like ice-cream mama.’ they reply with anticipation.

All of them then proceed to sit on the side walk which is dirty enough to form the collective throne of the countless beggars who have suddenly found an excuse to vanish somewhere. I try to infer the country of origin form the accent of the mother. It seems to be a European accent. I wonder how long they have spent in India, which other countries have they been to before this, have they always been in short supply of money and who might be the father of the dusky jewels, who sport mixed Indo-European features.

I wonder what other cultures have they come across before? I wonder if they are enriched by the experiences or only gradually robbed of their own culture. I wonder, while they look about with puzzled eyes, what life makes of people who are not only economically poor, but also have a confused cultural identity. I wonder how life treats people who are impoverished not only economically but also, culturally.

As these thoughts rush into my mind, they keep looking about as if in search of something elusive. I, having finished my ice-cream walk on, back to Ship. It’s time to sleep.

‘Bombay Chronicle’

It is the morning of May 06, 06. I woke up feeling weak. That is what you get after getting the viral infection for the umpteenth time. But I don’t think that viral is the only culprit. The other culprit is the doctor who I saw at the St. George’s medical college which happens to be in an alley right in front of my hotel. This wannabe male version of Florence Nightingale is as fresh in my mind as is the taste of the sizzler that I ‘assembled’ at ‘Out of the Blue’. The doctor and the sizzler, together they make up for the wild blend that is forever lacking in my dull mind. I will not forget the way the menu of ‘Out of the Blue’ ensnared me in having a meal out of the blue even when I meant to avoid eating a full meal at all costs. Well I think that the modest creativity of assembling a sizzler was did me in. And as far as the doctor is concerned, I will not forget him for prescribing me the most temporary relief medicines for a six month old chronic viral attack cycle. His prescription consisted of an analgesic, a paracetamol and an anti-allergic, all of which I happened to have in my arsenal already. I wanted to shout right there and then in his office, ‘Please for God sake gives me something extreme, something of industrial strength.’ But then I thought how it would scar all the ultra young age citizens and the old age citizens who had come for a diagnosis and I didn’t do it. Now I am reprimanding myself for not being selfish. I should’ve just gone ahead with it- scarring or no scarring. The result is that I am the one who has ended up scarred now. Now I will never forget how the doctor spent ages with the poor and the needy and neatly sent me packing with an illegible diagnosis in 40 sec. flat. His solidarity with poor also left me wondering if Florence Nightingale shares her family tree with Robin Hood.

Apart from waking up and feeling weak, I also woke up begging for more sleep. I don’t think the only culprits are the viral and the St. Georges doctor. I think the other culprit are the bedbugs in my…well where else…my bed. I have figured that the only way I can get sleep these days are to sleep only when the bedbugs are sleeping and that happens only once it’s daytime. I have no clue how these buggers come to know if it’s day or night. I guess it has to do with biological crap like adaptation, mutation and hereditary intelligence. I couldn’t care less what it’s got to do with. All I know is that I have rashes all over my body and if I can’t sleep during the night, I can’t work at the Express. I have two options

1. I can align my sleep cycle in an alternating pattern with that of the bedbugs, which is not viable since I have to work at the Express during the day.
2. I can go and make a complaint to the hotel admin. But the way my previous complaints have been flushed down the sewer, the very prospect of making a complaint makes me shudder.

But since the second option seemed to be the more viable one, I avoided making the complaint to Attendant-Prince (to know whom better you can read ‘Project: Budget Brainwash’) and chose a softer target i.e. the right-handed right hand man of the left- handed Attendant-Prince. I made their natural orientation clear because it is one of the most preferred pastime of the Attendant-Prince to make it clear to his cronies how he thinks that lefties are generally more clever. I couldn’t agree with him more after having met him. And I wonder if that’s the reason why his left hand man is left-handed. Here we need to take into account that for the Attendant-Prince the left hand man scores over his right hand man because the Attendance-Prince is a lefty. Anyway, one thing I most dislike is conspiracies and a conspiracy which is against right-handers is a conspiracy against me. I will make sure that the attendant-prince will pay for this sometime soon. I still have to figure out how though.

Waking up and feeling weak first thing in the morning is not good. So I was looking to fix the problem. I summoned the right-hand man of Attendant-Prince i.e. I walked over to him while showering respect all the while I approached him, and said, ‘Raat hote hee badan khujlane lagta hai. Mujhe lagta hai mere bistar mein kutch problem hai.’ And he instantly offered to change the bed sheet, which was very kind of him. But I brought to his kind attention that the problem was lying much deeper than that. The problem was not in the superficial bed sheet, but deeper, in the mattress, where the buggers borrowed, so I requested to him, ‘Woh spray karva deejiye naa.’ And he said, ‘Abhi to karaya tha do din pehle’ and I did not say anything because now I was looking up to him as the ‘pesticide spraying demigod’ who would save me from the attack of the bloodsucking buggers in the night-time. So I decided to show him something more impressive. The ultimate weapon of persuasion that I had reserved for the last, ‘Yeh ched dekh rahe hain aap?’, I said pointing to small perforations in my gray shorts like someone was shooting them with an air rifle when they were drying on the clothes’ line. Or can a high tension cable do this to your shorts (Read ‘Drying Clothes can be Injurious to Health)? Anyway, I was saying that I said, ‘Yeh ched dekh rahe hain aap? Kal tak yeh yahaan nahin the.’ And he whispered in a tone filled with dread accompanied with respect, ‘Cockroaches’, and I thought, ‘Now I got your attention huh?’ and he promised as soon as I went out in the evening, he would spray my bed with the pesticides, full strength. ‘I wanted to shout at the top of my voice, ‘Make it industrial strength.’, but I kept quite because now I have realized that it would dilute the gravity of the issue that I had raised. And after I had talked to him, thanks to this episode, I have also realized that I have a bad habit of fucking up the advantage at the last moment by being sarcastic, or trifling. And which is a habit it’s time I let go of.

And what about feeling weak? I don’t think it can be solely attributed to viral. I think the lack of parks in Bombay has something to do with it. I am a person with multiple complications when it comes to health and well being. And one of these is my weakening knees and back. I have concluded that it would be suicidal to run on cement surfaces. It would be like trying to drive a beat up beetle over the Rockies, in that event, a lot more than the bumper is likely to come off. And I am not ready to compromise even a bumper anymore. I have lost enough things in life. And so I make sure that I only run on clay or grass. But the lack of parks in this city makes it remarkably difficult. I remembered how I used to hate MICA alumni at the alumni meet referring to their paunch and calling it an occupational hazard. But now I know how that hazard comes into play. Anyway, it’s hard to picture myself ending up with even a slightest of paunch. It’s just not cool. And more importantly it’s just not me. But given the lack of parks in the city, given my growing love for the city, and assuming that I will most probably end up working here, it will have to be some treadmill kept in a gym that will have to do the trick.

When I woke up feeling weak, I had to just stay still for about twenty minutes to gather enough courage to move to the bathroom. But the conversation between my bed-neighbors, the merchant-navy-big-bully and his bed pal kept me engaged, so I decided not to move for another few minutes. The big bully, who supposedly once had a brawl with the captain of his ship and taught him a lesson by getting himself fired from the job (don’t ask how) was once again narrating the stories about life on the big blue. And then when he got stuck on a minor detail, something to do about the coldness of the food served in life on the big blue, he referred to me. Then, his bed pal asked him about me and he mentioned casually, ‘Yeh babu hoga engineering side ka officer, hai na babu?’ And I had been thinking that all these days I had made it crystal clear that I have nothing to do with ships and the closest that I ever came to a ship was when I watched the movie Titanic. Actually my most frequently spoken sentence in here is, ‘Main shipping mein nahin hoon.’ I promptly made it clear to them that I knew nothing about the serving temperature of the food on the big blue and that I had nothing to do with ships.

I woke up feeling weak and suddenly the promise that I had made to Vishal on the evening of May, 05, 06 started to look weak too, like it would snap any moment. The promise had been about going to catch a movie because it is a natural thing to do when you bump into your Career Launchaer, Chandigarh (presently at IIM-L) buddy on Churchgate after you have just flipped though a few pages of ‘Penthouse Girl on Girl’ on one of the pirated book seller’s hangout but have ended up buying ‘The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time’ which after reading left you wishing that had you been the dog that got pitch forked in very beginning of the novel you wouldn’t have had to go through this sedate, overrated crap. So now it’s almost 4 in the afternoon and I am not too good at remembering movie schedules around here and besides I’ve got a courier to make to mama before I can call him. And the most crucial thing is that I don’t have a cell, so the communication between him and me is like one way traffic. When do I call him? Maybe I’ll make the courier drop at 4:30 and then call him at five so that he can catch the evening show of whatever Bollywood crap is playing.

The weakness that I felt in the morning was not alone. Not alone in the sense, it was accompanied by a serene, contemplative frame of mind. And because of this contemplation inducing weakness I couldn’t help but remember the chain of events on the night of May 05, 06. How I entered the STD after going to the Thomas Cook office and then saw him- that bastard. I know I am not making much sense. I think, in order to make sense the elevator of Ship, which I have screwed up once before, is the right place to start. Let me make this clear that I don’t have any special liking for this elevator. It’s just an elevator. It does nothing more than what an elevator is supposed to do. It just shuttles people up and down through a dark vertical channel, which if you happen to look into otherwise, would seem pretty spooky. Though I think the elevator is another reason for me to feel weak. This is how. Because of it I do not use the staircase and I am kept from getting even that exercise which I would get in case I used the staircase. No matter how unappealing this elevator might be, there is a special thing about it though I am not sure if it’s face-saving or defacing. The thing about the elevator is that (I am speaking for males here because I don’t know how it would affect the female body) it can make you grab your balls. Yes. Believe your eyes. Look I’ll write it again for your sake in bold. It can make you grab your balls. It can do that because it is the most abrupt elevator I have ever been on. When you press the down button, your balls come all the way up to your throat and choke you, and when you push the up button, your balls touch the floor and rebound. It is nothing like the caring, gentle and thoughtful elevator at the Thomas Cook office, which accelerates slowly and decelerates as slowly. It’s not like this one at Ship, which behaves like a brick hurled at the sky. Good thing that I screwed it. Had they not hired an elevator operator, I would have screwed it over and over again. I can screw it at will because I know how to if I want to. Okay I accept that I had lied when I said I don’t have a particular liking for the elevator, what I really meant is that I hate it from the gut. So where was I? Yes I was saying that it can make you grab your balls. What I meant was that, to ensure the integrity of your balls when traveling in this one of a kind elevator, you tend to secure your balls. And since now I have become habituated to this elevator ritual, I happened to grab my balls even when I was at the Thomas Cook office, purely out of habit, which elevated one of the eye brow of the elevator operator. Seeing the eyebrow go up, I instinctively let go of my balls. Quite contrary to expectations, soon I and my balls were in the 5-star comfort of cloud nine when the Thomas Cook elevator sensitively whisked us from ground floor to fourth floor. On the fourth floor I collected the money which I was supposed to from the Travel Insurance Department, smoothly traveled down the building in the thoughtful elevator, and proceeded towards the STD to call mama to inform her that I had received the money. I made it a point to enter this particular STD because it’s always 'AC on', and because it’s terribly hot and humid, even in the evenings. I entered one of the cabins to make the call to mama. I made the call. When I was making the call to mama and was half way through of what I had planned to say to her, he walked in and instantly I knew it was unmistakably him. No one could look more…well…‘him’. He was with who I thought was his wife, and only yesterday he had told me in the street that he was traveling alone. Despite being a person who lies frequently I can’t stand liars. And this little lie of his was indicating that everything that he had told me was a big lie and it meant that he really was what I had thought of him the night before. Anyways, no words passed between us. I gave him a knowing smile, the kind of smile that says, ‘I got everything figured about you baby. I even know what the tattoo on the ass of the man who gave you the tattoo on your ass says. It says, ‘I own you smartass.’’ So I gave him that kind of a knowing smile. I was able to give him that kind of a smile because truth was on my side or atleast i thought so. He usherered his wife into the STD cabin adjacent to mine and then, I saw the streak of fear on his face and the drop of sweat that ran down his worried face, sliding down his temple and along his cheek. I concluded that he must be terribly worried to see me to sweat like that in my favorite, perfectly cooled STD shop. I said love you to mama and then kept the receiver down. By that time he had walked out of the shop. I stepped out of the shop with the ‘I own you buddy’. smile on my face and then what happened will make sense only when I tell you what had happen on the evening of May 04, 06.

This is what happened on the evening of May 04, 06. I woke up feeling weak and called in sick at the Express. But it was not the kind of weakness which brought with it the contemplative streak. It was the ‘restless’ kind which make me conclude that feeling contemplative is independent of feeling weak which beats my previous hypotheses. But anyway, I was feeling weak and so I spent the day sleeping and daydreaming until the evening when the adventurer in me urged me to take a walk and explore the surroundings within a clean radius of a kilometer. I listened to the adventurer in me and got down to fulfilling its urge which by now had become my urge too and it was a combined urge now. And so I jumped into my jeans, hedged the cash in my wallet to a level where it wont hurt in case I got mugged, jumped into the elevator, secured my balls, the operator pressed the button and I landed on ground zero. After having my dinner I was returning to Ship when out of nowhere…no let me reframe…it was actually from behind a parked three ton army truck that he appeared. I saw him. My mind registered the first impression of him and it said, ‘Hunky-dory. Safe.’ He was a harmless looking middle-aged man, wearing a bottle-green kurta, probably silk, with an astoundingly neatly trimmed mustache which looked like a wider than normal black Johnson’s Band-Aid ultra neatly stuck above his upper lip. He was speaking English the way many middle class men speak, with a streak of unfamiliarity with the language in their tone. But I guess…no I know for sure why he chose English despite being uncomfortable with it. It’s because it is one language which is not as harsh as Hindi. To quote an example, it is nearly impossible to ejaculate our frustration by saying ‘Shit!’ in Hindi, at least in public.
This is what he had to say to open the conversation with the stranger that was me, ‘How far is Gateway of India from here?’
Because I happen to be a frequent hiker from VT to Gateway of India, I told him, ‘If you take a bus it would take 5 minutes or if you are feeling adventurous enough you could walk down to the Gateway of India which would take you about 20 minutes but the walk is worth all the sweat.’ And the fact remains that it is indeed one of the most beautiful serenades I have come across. It is almost as beautiful as the The Mall in Jalandhar Cantt, where I used to serenade when I was either extraordinarily pissed or exceptionally happy, generally, or even with someone particular. These two, together are two of the most therapeutic stretches I have had the pleasure of serenading. Anyway, he was not interested in what I was saying. As I would figure out later, he had to stick to the script, his script to be more precise, and I am the kinds who can make a mockery of his kind of a script. So he hurriedly came back to talking about Gateway of India which seemed to be one of the key words of the script on which a lot depends, and said, ‘Don’t mind I am only speaking to you as a friend. I had a bad experience when I first went to Gateway of India.’
‘Don’t tell me you got mugged…’ I interrupted him much to his irritation because I was doing to his script what I would like to do to the elevator in my hotel- screwing it. I got ready to narrate what had happened with me. He made an irritated expression and stopped me with a hand gesture.
He continued, ‘I was very young at that time, and don’t mind me saying this, I am only speaking to you as a friend, I was quite healthy at that time and I had boobs’, he said pointing to his chest. I am sure I lifted an eyebrow when he mentioned boobs because I had not expected this kind of slang language form this seemingly antiquated life form from some small town in India. And I did not try to think what would have happened, if we were talking in Hindi, how would the sentence that he just said would sound.
He didn’t stop there, he went on, ‘And there was this guy at the Gateway of India who started rubbing them and started tickling my nipples’. This was accompanied by a gesture which looked like he was tying to a drive in a screw but he was short of a screw driver so he was using his thumb and the pointer finger instead. ‘And that got me really…EXCITED.’, he said. Boy was he well rehearsed. The psychological implication to be observed here is how he had reacted positively to the pervert’s advances, by getting excited (and not offended, a reaction one might expect from a straight person, or even gay person for that matter), in his Gateway of India instance. Talk about stinking, subtle communication.
Then he asked me, ‘Where are you living?’
I said, ‘Ship Hotel.’ And then he gave a knowing smile which was badly rehearsed and had many flaws in it.
After he had smiled the flawed knowing smile, he said, ‘So when you guys watch blue films in Ship, is it true that guys start feeling each-other up.’ I noticed how he said ‘blue-films’ and not ‘porn’ or ‘porn films’ instead which proves that he was a blast from the past and was quite inactive now compared to his younger days when such (now considered antiquated vocabulary) was in vogue. I did not raise an eyebrow this time. I was so calm that I thought I would freak-out the bastard with it. I was acting on the principal that people get freaked out when they things don’t go according to plan. Acting contrary to expectations is the best thing to do in those times. I merely said without being too offending because I was weaving my web and couldn’t afford to scare him away, ‘Nothing like that happens in Ship, your imagination is too wild.’ And he laughed like a hyena. This is the kind of laugh that suited him perfectly. This was his original laugh. The knowing smile had looked such a sham.
His script looked over and it couldn’t look more bombed so I assumed that it was my turn now. So to freak him out further, I started asking him a flurry of questions, which ranged from where he was from, what he did for a living, whether he was married, where was he living in Mumbai about most of which he lied. I know he lied because when he was going by the script he was looking straight into my eyes but when I introduced my own little impromptu script which involved unexpected questions, he started looking away, his mind trying hard to detach itself from his Gateway of India fantasies and thinking up false, credible seeming information. The biggest lie being that he was staying in Trombay and had come to town for ‘business’. And then I enquired about ‘business’ he said that he was into plastic tank business. I had been sure that his man was a phony for a long time now but now I really wanted to kick his butt at his own game. The only difference was that his communication was scripted. Mine wasn’t, so I had to be very careful of what I spoke. I suddenly had an idea which I thought would trap him. I had noticed how he had looked away when he was mentioning his profession. I presumed that he had lied about it. I thought I would trap him by asking him a closed ended question framed in an open-ended way (to use the terms in a slightly different way, you know what I mean). The framing of the question was tricky. I could ask the question in two ways,

1. ‘So you only trade in plastic tanks or you also make them?’
2. ‘So you only make tanks or sell them too?’

I figured that in order to avoid answering more questions about the same, if I asked the first question, he would answer, ‘I only trade in plastic tanks’. He would do that to avoid responsibility of knowing about the know-how of manufacturing plastic tanks.
So I took the second option. And falling in with expectations, he said, ‘No, I only make them.’
I had got him. The logical thing to do was to ask him a whole lot of technical questions about plastic tank manufacturing. For instance, where they get the plastic, what was the formula of the plastic used, who designs the moulds, what was the capacity, where was the factory located. By the time I was through my script, he was sweating profusely and I suspect that his mind was now far removed from Gateway of India type fantasies.
And then after I had asked the questions, I gave him my knowing smile, which was a proper knowing smile and then nervously he said, ‘You asked me so many questions. Like a lawyer, like a lawyer. It wasn’t without a purpose. You asked them just like a lawyer.’ He seemed quite awed by lawyers. I told him. ‘I am studying to be an MBA.’ And I said it in a tone which conveyed, ‘I don’t have to be a lawyer to teach you a lesson bastard.’ This made him even more nervous. And them I guessed that he had no more water left in his body to convert to sweat, so it was time to say good-bye but not before he said almost with awe, ‘What a handsome man!’ Yes that was meant for me. And though it reeked of flattery, I lapped it up because you know how flattery works. Though you know it’s flattery, it does affect you on a subconscious level. But what is important is not that you are being affected by it, what is important is that you should know that you are being affected. He stuck out his hand to shake mine. But it hardly culminated into a successful handshake as his hand was hanging like a damp squid and I did not intend to hold a damp squid on a day on which I had gotten up feeling weak and restless. So I just plain left, and he went his way. I walked away knowing that he knew that I knew what he was and what he had just tried with me.

Now that you know what had happened on the 4th of May, I can tell you what happened on the evening of 5th of May and make sense too. After I stepped out of the STD, though I had the knowing smile on my face, I had planned to leave him and his ghosts alone but his ghosts had vomited much venom in his mind by now, and so he blocked my way and stopped me. I could smell all the alcohol that he had consumed that evening. He grabbed my T- shirt with his damp squid and warned me in his drunken voice, ‘You don’t say a word about me to anyone.’ I wanted to hit him. But I thought again. And I thought about his wife who was still in the STD cabin, his non-existent kid, and then I simply slapped the damp squid away, freeing myself in the process and simply walked off as if we had never met before and he was some random drunkard who had accosted me.

As I was walking to Ship the episode kept playing in my head over and over again and I had this huge urge of sharing the episode with someone so that tomorrow if the bastard harms me in anyway, they would know who to look for- a middle aged man named Ashish, traveling with his wife, and who had stayed in one of the hotels in the area near Ship. I knew that it was his own name because of the way he had said it. And I also knew that he did not have a kid because he had got terribly confused when I had asked him the question about kids. First he had said no and then after considering his age, and his married status, he said yes. And moreover I did not see a kid when I saw him with his wife. Why would caring parents not bring the kids along? I know I am making a lot of assumptions here but that is how irrational I was on that evening. So I thought that I would call Swati. I called her up from one of the get-lost-if-you-don’t-have-a-coin local phones, but then when I heard the engaged tone on her phone, I thought why should Swati have to put up with all the crap that happens to me. I should learn to handle the crap on my own, just like old times, and I also figured that the unexpectedly violent behavior of the bastard had induced me to think unreasonable crap. I finally decided that this particular incident does not need to be told to Swati at 11 in the night-time. With this thought in my head I walked up to Ship, stepped into the elevator, found the operator absent, secured my balls, tinkered with the button, screwed the elevator, took the staircase, went to my bed, and collapsed on it.