Uncorked

It was the summer of 99, with overcast skies and whirlwind memories of the first two years of our marriage. We had broken beds and kitchen tables, shattered glasses and got new ones. Blue, this time. Casement memories blocking the sun in brilliant hues of gold and blue, too. Yes, from newspapers blocking glass windows, we had moved to full-length curtains that gingerly kissed the floor. And a giant air cooler where we kept our pet mosquitoes, floating, dead. It was the right time to uncork a bottle of wine, we thought. Never having bought wine before, the only parameter was affordability; so a long, green bottle of Riviera found its way home one evening as we rubbed our hands in anticipation of a celebration like never before. 

Blue glasses from Good Earth, gifted by Punita​. A green bottle. Yes the white wine served at British Council was superb, we agreed, as it made us forget which passage Sashi Tharoor read out from, or the wisdom about love and longing Vikram Chandra shared. It was good, so white it is, although a cheaper version. OPEN IT ALREADY, wilya! 

Open? The bottle presented us with quite a tough challenge, with a smug little cork on top that seemed intent upon sitting there for good. How do you uncork a wine bottle, by the way? The bottle openers were of no help, and we had never heard of a corkscrew. Not to be deterred by this challenge (and having the dubious distinction of having sawed the legs off the hostel warden's bed), we brought out the hammer and a screwdriver. What was a mere cork in the face of a couple of devious minds from Banaras with clear intent? It gradually disintegrated and started going down the neck of the bottle, deeper and deeper, until we heard a pop! The night was young, a battle was won, and although we had to strain the residual pieces of the resilient cork from the wine, the white did taste good after all.


This is in memory of the cork which we preserved for a long time after that, and finally let go along with the chipped blue glasses after about 16 years. Also in memory of the bed, the bamboo table, and the air cooler, which we sold to the ironing guy for five hundred. The brilliant hues of the casement that faded, the Indian wine that got pushed over by French and South African, the hammers and screwdrivers that were forgotten with an abundance of corkscrews, and the evenings that became rarer as the books gathered dust. So, let's make an evening of it soon, and raise a toast to the brave cork that posed a tough challenge to our ignorance.

"Nice one, but aren't you forgetting something?"
"Umm, what exactly do you mean? It was really the summer of 2000, and not 99, but Summer of 2000 doesn't sound so nice as a Facebook post, does it?"
"I mean the savior in the form of Tropicana black grape juice?"
"Are you sure I should mention it? Isn't it a tragic end to an otherwise nice story? The fact that we couldn't have the strained wine without mixing it with grape juice?"
"Let's just be honest about it."

As you say, then. I'll go gather some firewood and you rustle up something for us.

Lagaa, Chunar-i mein Daag

 If it's already 2.00 in the morning, let's not go off to sleep. Let's just laze around Lanka for some more time till it's around 5.00 and then catch the sunrise on the Ganges. Maybe can take a cutter on hire and row upstream as much as we can, have tea at Assi and come back to our rooms? Parking our bicycles can be an issue that early, can’t it? Have to take a chance, I think, and who’s gonna steal these old cycles after all! Have you been towards DLW ever? No? How about trying that road? And jilipis for breakfast! You have money? Maybe around Rs 50, which is a lot. I have around ten bucks myself. 

So we slowly kept riding our bicycles on a road previously not taken. It was a moonlit night and the streets were deserted. The road led us out of Varanasi, through the Diesel Locomotive Colony and then on to some rice fields and sleepy villages, with the trees resembling humongous lizards standing guard like sentries. He was a couple of years older and obviously at the age of 22, someone who is 24 or 25 is respected for those extra summers. And anyway he is god to me. Has given me refuge in his room, plays the esraaj at 3 in the morning, can cook sooji with milk, sing Manna De’s songs more soulfully than I had heard before, and is an excellent shoplifter. Our shoplifting was limited to cooking oil and milk, and mostly for the adventure of it all rather than a real need. The girls, though, preferred stealing only greeting cards from the nearest Archies Gallery. We didn’t like the owner so nobody really cared much.

As we rode on, on this unknown road, we started discussing the favorite topic of most guys that age: women. We had both fallen in love many times by then, and although I had never succeeded in holding on to any relationship, he had achieved something that I could only dream of. He had had sex. That was the singularly most fascinating thing in my eyes then, and I had a secret feeling that if I was seen hanging around with him, it might work as a lucky charm for me.

‘Rhima is bold and pretty direct. She swept aside my indirect hints, looked me straight in the eyes and asked “so, do you wanna sleep with me?”’

I listened in absolute rapture and could see Rhima very clearly that night. Maybe the full moon helped.

There was not a single other person on the road and our raucous laughter must have traveled over the shining paddy into the sleep-laden houses and messed with some everyday dreams.

And then he told me about Menon’da (a Malayalee from West Bengal, hence the appendage hanging from his surname) and how he brought in L.Subramaniam to his life. And about Dr N. Rajam, who heads the Music Dept at BHU. I was surprised to know that she is a Hindustani classical violinist.

‘I was in love with her daughter once,’ he added nonchalantly. On meekly asking if she too faced the same fate as Rhima, he merely let out a mirthless laughter. What an enigma he was!

Suddenly there were headlights in the distance. They were almost a mile away and didn’t seem to be approaching us. As we were getting curious about what they belonged to, the headlights vanished. Must be a bus that stopped somewhere. We will soon find out. They appeared again, now closer, and disappeared. What could it be? It happened several times and each time the lights seemed closer than before. Suddenly I felt, all these years of stoically denying spooky was about to change. It was clearly not human and the creatures of the night were ganging up against us in a sinister plot about to culminate in something horrid.

The dinosaurs started moving and looked more menacing than ever.

When finally we realized it was a sand truck tackling the dunes and gradually trying to reach the road, we looked at each other and laughed, but our faces were ashen. We picked up our parked bikes from the side of the road and started off again. When had we stopped? We didn’t seem to remember.

 And then there was a milestone that read “Chunar, 10 kms”. Chunar??? Looking back today, it seems the joy we felt then was almost like the joy of having found lost treasure while looking for ruins. Chunar Fort was a day trip from Varanasi, about 35 kms away, so the prospect of making it on bicycles was too tempting to resist. We were always told it was built by Sher Shah Suri in the 1500s, but wikipedia says it was built long back by King Vikramaditya. By the time we reached the western bank of the Ganges, it was still dark and the fort on the other side of the river loomed large, looking unassailable, reminiscent of all the battles, as two weary plotters sat panting on the sand bank, planning a siege, waiting for the sunrise and the morning ferry service to start. Probably due to our exhaustion, we ruled out the idea of swimming across and using monitor lizards to climb up the straight walls rising right up from the river.

We took the first boat across, and it seemed a normal custom to be ferrying your cycles on boats. 

The mossy stones of the fort, if you place your palms on them, tell you a lot of stories from over the years, of love, battles, defeats, and deceit. Some were desecrated by tourists who wanted to etch their love in stone. Through one such stone we got to know that a certain Dinesh of Mirzapur loved Mala in 1978. I wonder if they ever had a chance to unite.
The huge white structure at the top of the fort had a beautiful view of the river and a cold marble floor that served as a welcome bed to us. It was probably built by the East India Company in the 1800s.

By the time we started on our way back, it was about 12.30 in the afternoon and we were weary from staying up for more than a day. The idea was to take the GT Road this time because it wouldn’t be potholed and deserted. The prospect of riding 35 kms didn’t look very attractive. Carrying water while riding was an unheard-of concept because plastic bottles weren’t still in vogue and we didn’t want to be caught dead carrying water bottles like those school kids. All the water we had was from the taps at the fort and some at the dhaba serving thalis for lunch. And under a harsh sun, with hardly any respite from foliage unlike the other road, we were soon out of breath and things started looking pretty dry after we crossed Kailahat and Sahasapura. Near Narayanpura, we spotted this huge irrigation canal that had a lot of water gushing through, tumbling eastward in a tearing hurry. Should we? Within minutes we stripped to our briefs and jumped into the water, and now that I look back, thinking how we dived in, I wish there was a third-person camera held on our lives all along. Not quite like Truman, though. Wouldn’t it be nice to rewind and replay the beautiful moments and fast forward all the rest? If given a chance, I would bypass the part in which we were dog tired. My memory serves the same purpose today, wiping away reels of tape that makes no sense archiving.
Holding on to the rods on the concrete embankment, we allowed the water to make us young again. The current tugged violently at our outstretched legs and I almost wished this water went downstream towards Assi, carrying us like playful banana trunks throwing caution to the wind.

Although we had walked around naked in the hostel corridors, especially in the Rajneesh wing of Gurtu Hostel where Soumitro started the trend, being naked in broad daylight on the road was a first. We took off our sodden briefs in full public view as a busload of passengers cheered on. It was for a very brief moment, but a huge life-changing milestone, almost instrumental in my choice of a career many years later.

We came back to some chicken and rice cooked by his classmate, who was upset with us for having gone without informing. And then it was time to catch up on some sleep and we didn’t need to be reminded. 

Today, when I gyrate to the music and slowly take off my clothes at bachelorette parties, I still draw courage from that first day that I had bared myself to an unsuspecting audience of Mirzapuris. If the mustachioed men could take it, these Mumbai girls wouldn’t flinch at all. And somehow, I can’t seem to recollect the first time I made love any more. Women have been generous with their love and money, but I could not find a Rhima like he did. Her vivid face from that night still comes to me, looking deep into my eyes and asking, boldly, “do you want to sleep with me?”

I wish I knew how she looked like in real, but I somehow already seem to know.

(pic courtesy: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/North_view_of_the_fort_of_Chunargarh_on_the_Ganges_from_across_the_river..jpg)

"Coming Back to Life"

Crouching with my head between my knees, all I can feel is you aren't my friend any more. You have not come to me in three years, not allowed me to come pour out to you. You are not any more my confidante. And I don't know your gender although I would like to think you are a woman. I generally connect with women better although there are some that I can't understand or connect with at all. And there are some men who listen. Some men who have always shown the right path while numerous others told me I was wrong.

It is something I cannot put in words. It isn't suicidal, really, although I must admit to having brought a gun to my head many times and thought of jumping off from a higher floor onto the wilderness behind, punctuated with abandoned iron rods, now bent with years of neglect. From the third floor, my instincts and agility wouldn't let me die. I will manage to catch one of those rods or maybe a branch of a tree to break the fall. If I could climb a wall 30-ft high, I can arrest my fall too from that height. So that's ruled out and every time I think of jumping off, it seems improbable. So I abandon it, but like I said, it isn't completely suicidal. It is like a sense of giving up, hugging myself and burying my head deep into my knees, looking for a painkiller. And then the cursor starts acting up, moving from one word to another, inserting stuff where they are least intended, pretty much with a mind of its own, making the blank page almost resemble my life, which has started involuntarily responding to external stimuli that are beyond me.

I have sought directions, cursed myself for not being able to attribute any real therapeutic powers to spirituality, found a counselor who has been able to show me the right path at times, but even she couldn't manage to hold me together for long because I wasn't really interested in finding the lost marbles. But was I losing it, am I? I don't think so. It is more to do with something irreconcilable I have done. And it can't be undone.

What are your pursuits? Why do we live? What is the purpose, going forward? Is it to sit and watch the gradual degeneration of everything around me? Read about how the white female tourist in India is masturbated at and watch my son gradually quitting everything he had taken up as a challenge? Like someone asked me, "where did I go wrong?" I want to ask the same. But to whom, I have no clue.
Where did I go wrong? You, my dear, had no clue what you were dealing with. A maniacal brain at best. Someone who has no control over his own actions. Isn't he getting enough sex? Maybe he is, but he wants to believe he isn't finding enough. That keeps him going and justifying whatever he does. He has many faces, some that are unknown to him, some that he forgets about altogether when burying his head into his knees and working up a fury. A furious defense, almost plausible, almost empathizable in its plea.

So is this. A coming back to you. You have listened, not been critical, been patiently waiting. I was wrong in accusing you of not coming to me. I hadn't come to you all these years. And am happy to be home.

Birth of the Consumerist

I clearly remember the year although I can't tell you when it happened. My Australian uncle came visiting us with his family. It was a 200-km journey to Durgapur from Calcutta, so they came in an air-conditioned Hindustan Ambassador, hired from The Grand Hotel, where they had put up like they did as an annual ritual.
It was a white car, shining, with a chauffeur in a white uniform. They came with Japanese toys, as always, and that year it was a racing track with two remote-controlled cars, one white one red. It took time for us to set it all up. Batteries were hard to come by, and I think I had to run to the nearby grocery store to buy some AA batteries. Expensive toy to maintain, and like all the other battery-operated toys, even this one would remain mostly packed, I could foresee.

Once the novelty of the toy wore off, although the novelty of it never really wore off for the next ten years, I came out and stared at the white Ambassador with a lot of wonder. I was 8, and I could see the neighbors across my street standing in their balconies to see who had come to our house in a car. It was a huge thing that I could boast about for many months to come. I often used to pretend to my neighbors that I was born in Australia and that I can go whenever I wanted for high school. Deep inside I knew I would have to continue going to my local school in a cycle-rickshaw, but then I was a kid with lofty dreams and the neighborhood kids were equally gullible. I stared at the Ambassador and the chauffeur was kind enough to open the door and let me in for a dekko. It was a great moment for me. The red leather seats were plush and yielded under my weight like only a feather bed from the Arabian Nights would have in my dreams. These kind of days were rare in my otherwise routine life, and they were so memorable, I still remember the colors of the Lacoste t-shirts my cousins wore that day. They wore Adidas sneakers, something I had never seen before. But the car, just a little smaller than our living room in dimensions, got the lion's share of my attention. I was fascinated by it, not so much for the bragging rights it would give me later as much as for its sheer presence.

When it was time for them to leave, probably around 3.00 in the afternoon, I complimented my uncle on the softness of the car seat. "It is so soft!" is all I could manage in real earnest. Everybody smiled and they even offered to take me to Calcutta in it. Of course I couldn't go. I was eight, and it being a Sunday, I would have to go to school the next day. But they offered, which I politely declined. Moreover, the trauma of having to converse in Australian with three cousins was too much for me. I was shy and my English was limited to probably something like "This book was not available in the market." That was when I was six, standing up for myself for the first time, trying to explain why I didn't carry a particular book to school. In the two years that followed, I hadn't picked up anything more formidable than that life-changing sentence I had spoken once and remembered forever. So, armed with that English, the prospect of spending time with my cousins made me really shaky. But speak I did. The car seat was indeed soft, and I let them know what I felt.

Strangely enough, although I felt the "It is so soft" sentence, complete with an exclamation mark thrown in for good measure, is going to earn me some brownie points at home, my dad was rather upset with it. He saw the ugly head of consumerism surfacing in me through that comment. Although completely innocent as a remark, it shocked him out of his wits and put him in grave doubts about how he was raising me. In the company of classical musicians, listening to Tagore's songs, in the midst of socialists, watching and discussing movies by Ray and Sen, how did his son find a mere cushioned car seat more fascinating? Couldn't he have recited BirPurush instead?

For a long time after that I felt rather ashamed of what I had done, although I placated myself by saying it was inadvertent. But the fact that I couldn't understand the gravity of my mistake made it even worse. I couldn't see the point. What was he upset about?

I can see the point very clearly today though. My dad never forgot this incident and never allowed me to forget either. He said he felt insulted. What in him was insulted by my comment if not for his own sense of incapability? If he had not been a consumerist deep inside himself, why would he be hurt at all? All that glitz of my uncle must have hurt his pride, although they were really down-to-earth people and made us feel very comfortable indeed. And when I praised the car seat, the fact that he cannot buy a car for himself or for me must have pricked him real hard.

I wish I could hug him today and tell him that it was okay to not have owned a car ever. If I had the luxury of roaming around in cars as a child, the excitement of buying my first car, a really battered pre-owned Suzuki, wouldn't have been as much. And that humans are basically consumerist by nature. Having isn't opposed to intellect in any way like it has been preached to the have nots. It isn't a bad thing to crave to do better in life as long as you don't lose touch with your humane side. Poetry doesn't have to be borne out of rags.

Worries

am i worried when

your skin from this close sets the focal length off?
or the clove burns your tongue?
when people see,
look back,
think, cast aspersions,
gossip?
when the tint in the glass is not enough
to hide my desperation
in cheap thrills,
a slight touch?

am i worried when

strong wishes of floods--
sweeping us off like a nine-year-old cleaning a bored chessboard---
come crowd my mind and dreams?

am i worried the world will end?
of the world order and bored colleagues?

or critics who rant, having achieved nothing?

is my soul covered if Citylights again
swells me up in sobs?

Indian car buyers: a smarter generation

If you are an automobile manufacturer and want to launch a model in India, you albeit have to do a lot of market analysis. And the huge market in India provides a sea of data to base your analysis on. How many Mahindra Scorpios were sold versus how many Tata Safaris? What is the preference of any particular geography? Did more Safaris get sold in the Northern parts of India? If yes, why so? Does it have to do with the cultural preferences of a particular race? According to a market research agency, although a Mahindra Scorpio is more reliable and the service experience is infinitely better than at a Tata outlet, North Indians have shown the Safari preference over a Scorpio solely on the basis of aesthetics. Do Indians go by hearsay or do they make their own decisions? Is www.team-bhp.com a place where potential customers gather their information from? How does it influence their final buying decision?

You can understand if a foreign manufacturer like Nissan or Renault have not had the chance to do a lot of research before coming into the market and hence some of their solo products are not even taking off. Nissan, for example, have sold only a handful of their Teana, which is a premium luxury sedan. On the other hand, Skoda could manage to sell a lot of their Superb in the same price bracket. The number has nothing to do with the quality of a premium product like that but with a customer's buying behavior. Now let's look at what influences an Indian customer's choice between Renault Fluence or Chevrolet Cruze. The Cruze is better marketed both in print and television ads, there are many Chevrolet outlets in your city, and a test drive can easily be arranged. Because there are other Cruze owners around, one can ask around about any quirks that their cars have shown. So, even if there are persistent clutch problems and climate control issues reported in a Cruze, a customer can be seen preferring it over a Fluence. If the customer, however, prefers elegant European designs over flashy American ones, she might think between the Fluence and the Skoda Laura and opt for the latter. "Let Renault sell some more cars without the help of Mahindra, let them set up a few more dealerships in my area/city, and I can think about it."

Chevrolet themselves couldn't get it right initially. They were launching petrol models one after another, and all of them tanked at the box office. The much publicized Aveo lost out to Ford Fiesta, which had a diesel variant coupled with aggressive sales. The U-VA was launched a few years ahead of its time when the Indian mindset was to buy hatchbacks priced only below Rs 4 lakhs or so. Their diesel Tavera did sell as a people mover, allowing them to stay afloat, but it was the launch of the Optra Magnum diesel that changed the game for them and brought them back to contention.

The only manufacturer that staunchly held on to its "only gasoline" cars was Honda. And in the current scenario, they have also been forced to slash the prices of their models drastically. When you get a Fluidic Verna crdi or a Ford Fiesta Kinetic TDCi for a similar price, why would you buy a petrol Honda? The Jazz, a premium hatchback, was frugal in terms of fuel efficiency (the 1.2 liter mill being a really efficient one), but the initial pricing was a huge mindblock for an Indian customer. "If I pay 8 lakhs, why should I go for a hatchback?" So the price cut on the Honda Jazz is the biggest we saw in recent times.

Did the Indian manufacturers have it easy? Take the case of Tata Aria, premium 4wd UV with 17" wheels and unlimited features. The people who did the market research for Tata got it all wrong. They launched a product at such a premium pricing that nobody who could afford to shell out that kind of money would want to settle for a Tata product. They could easily go for a Ford Endeavour, a Chevy Captiva, or more importantly, a Toyota Fortuner. More reliable, better plastics and interiors, better service. Why Aria? I will leave out the discussion about its design because it is just a little more inspiring to look at than the Innova, and the front grille looks straight out of an Indica. At least borrow the Safari's grille? But that's my personal opinion and nobody has to subscribe to it. So, after all this didn't warm up the Indian customer, they had to go back to the drawing board, take off a lot of the features, take away the 4wd transmission case, and relaunch it at a much lower price point. Within days of this rethinking, one could see many Arias on the road.

The Skoda Yeti 1.4 is coming, did you know? Another relaunch, another story of having read the Indian customer wrong. The price will be around 11 lakhs. The one available abroad delivers a peppy 122 ps so one can expect this 2wd beauty of a car to get a fresh lease of life on Indian shores. Surely the Indian car buyer can't be fooled no more. And there are some morons still building the Morris Oxford and trying to sell it to us.

Where to?

You ask me where to, and I don't have an answer really. Where to is a question that can be answered by people who have a specific destination. Like they would say, to the horizon, to the edge, to see the sun going down. I can't say that. I would laugh as I say that because knowledge lends a certain humor to things that are impossible. But then, sometimes you want to say things that don't make sense in general but make a lot of sense to you. For example, if I start writing about one of my experiences without any context, you wouldn't understand, but that would be writing for myself, without thinking of you. You, the reader, would cease to exist. Is that how one should ideally write, without any cognizance of there being a reader or a bunch of them later? The wine on an empty stomach burnt its way down and I felt I should have first had some butter at least for it to not affect me adversely. It fucked me up for a while, made me high-strung, temporarily. I am not high-strung. Is it hyphenated as a noun? Maybe not, but right now I can't check. The wine and then the acceptance speech for my Oscar. Yes, thanks guys for recognizing my talent. You have a lot more coming. Those wrinkles can't be hidden, but somehow they aren't hindering normal life. Did you know that? That despite wrinkles people like you and get attracted to you? That you don't have to listen to all that crap about ageing because ageing is natural and doesn't really mean ceasing to live? I didn't. I always thought I had to look good and then I couldn't live up to that expectation. I would look into the mirror and get a shock. And then gradually I stopped looking, stopped bothering about the crumpled shirt or that obstinate strand of hair. Stopped bothering about my body being not perfect, about the head being too big, about the nose being crooked (and now short after the surgery), about the love handles and the paunch, about the spindly legs. I realized I can still love myself with the flaws and the people who love me are not really bothered. They love me for other reasons and the flaws are just human in their eyes. For long, you know (yes, you are right...am still writing for you and not just for myself), I was not high-strung. I never grew up knowing that it is okay to want. I was always told it is not okay to want something. So every time I wanted something, I told myself it was wrong to want. And somehow it became a habit to do what others wanted me to do. It is good to please others. Who said this, initially, for me to believe in it so strongly? Is it part of our culture to grow up to please others? So, along with doing things for people and conforming to their image of me, I also stopped believing in feelings. It is not right to feel. You are coldblooded, you can't feel. You can't feel love. If someone gives you love, love him back. Don't love by yourself. Loving means pain, and pain makes you high-strung. I quite like the hyphen by now.

But then the wine and the acceptance speech and a movie that makes you cry were together working toward opening me up. And I opened up. Only two drops? Is that all you can afford to cry? Isn't it okay to cry when you should? Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead, remember?

Like the other day when you left me alone and slammed the door behind you. That day when I could hear the click of your heels fading away into the distance. That day, I stayed back behind the closed door and thought if it has moved me. You took my hand and wrapped it around your waist. "See? Nothing happened, see?"

Well, perhaps nothing happened. Perhaps a lot happened. Perhaps the setting wasn't right for us because if I were at your place, I wouldn't have stopped there or taken my hand away. You worry about me being in love, but here I am telling you that I have been taught never to fall in love. I haven't even come close to falling. Women have come and gone, using me as I customized myself for them. Funnily, I was never paid. Right now, a striptease is in order. Just take away that mirror from this room because I don't like to see me again.

When you wait

When you are infinitely waiting, time loses its significance.

"When I was fifteen and you thirty, and your toes ran up my shin, you could control my heartbeat. You could make it go faster, and my mind race through smooth, reflecting corridors at breakneck speeds. You controlled me. You controlled the rush of blood to various points, you controlled how frequently I had to go relieve myself of my bursting-at-the-seams libido. That particular act by you, running your toes up my leg under the table (something they casually refer to as a footsie today) was enough to make me want to marry you, proclaim my lifelong love for you, and make love to your utterly white legs in the bright neon light. To your legs because then I probably didn't know what lay between them. I mustered up the courage and ran my hand up your legs one day after bath. You seemed to enjoy the journey as my palm caressed its way up to a crucial point and then suddenly held my hand. It was like holding up the red flag to an already delayed train. It was lust, you were convinced despite my all-out attempts to make you believe otherwise. To me it was love and I had already waited long enough."

At fifteen

…

Life brought your toes up my shin

Like the message in a bottle came to the shore

When I ran myself up your lane, though

Was it time for you to reason or run?

"And then, the permutations of age brought me to twenty-six and you became twenty-three or so. It was still you though, this time thrown in together with me at a crucial juncture of our lives. Traveling salesmen don't have it easy, and as we rode my scooter from one client to another in the summer, it was just us clutching on to each other for comfort. If my sales dwindled one month, you covered up for me, and I did the same for you. You were way smarter, just like you were ten years back and I happily became your sidekick. We traded clients, covered up for each other but nobody minded as long as the sales figures didn't go down. I knew I couldn't live without you but couldn't tell you so. You told me ten years later. Ten years too late, don't you think? And why? Your black Peshawar eyes still dance my blues away."

A button-less shirt that can hardly cover a bust, I wanted so you don't see the tears

Your voice through electricity, comes crackling,

I miss you, so do I, but what can I say?

Today definitely is not our day.

"I silently listened to your stories. The age gap had somehow been moving like an undecided scale. Now you were perhaps ten years younger, or more. I felt older, wiser. Wisdom can get you there, you know? If you weren't a teenager with a perpetual blood rush, you could still get it. The attention, I mean, and there you were, longing in your eyes, coming straight at me, making me feel heady, young, ready to hit the treadmill. You needed my advice, counseling you to cope with your trauma, holding my hand and keeping it on your chest to listen to your heartbeat. It had gone slow, with pain. I felt pain with you, silently listened to your stories. Coffee, ice-cream, known and unknown streets, your hand in mine, my grip on life silently slipping away.

It was my turn to talk one day. You kept your phone away."

I was here, promised to be

For a longish period of time,

But then giving has its day.

The road takes a U-turn, eventually

"But the map said another way?"

Maps have given way to GPS, dude, maps have given way to GPS long back only you didn't know about it. How will you? Stuck in your love stories, unfinished, you hardly had the time to catch up.

"And today, your hand on my lap is warm and inviting. It has a language of its own. You like reading me, you say, but then I hardly write. You like the way my mind works, but the only inlet you have is this blog, so that's hardly representative. It is trash, didn't I say? Your hand finds its way to my heart. It hasn't stopped yet. It has raced with you, slowed down with your pain, sobbed uncontrollably with your departure, and has slowed down for me now. Keep it there for a while as I pick up my pieces from the virtual world. Scattered also has a pattern, someone said."

As I walk in a trance,

a million pieces of light dance on the floor

would have called it a disco

had they not been showing me the way

around my life.

Of Gemini Minds

Who is that man in the red tee? He isn't particularly handsome, but has this really infectious smile. It is such a clean and disarming smile, you can't really not smile back at him. His eyes would get smaller, the crows feet would get prominently stretched, and his uneven teeth would peep out of his otherwise thin lips. He has very average features, but altogether they make an attractive picture. I caught myself not just smiling, but thinking about him even after he had gone.

Will he ask me my name? Will we meet again next week at Dr. Sushma Rao's clinic? Why does that man need therapy? He might be a single parent, but seems to be in control of himself. So why? Has he come to pick up a date? A psycho therapy workshop for single parents who're not being able to cope with things is a good place to pick up a date, isn't it? He hasn't done too badly for himself either, on the first day. He spoke about the trauma he went through when his wife died in a freak accident. And I could see two other ladies giving him the looks. I remember his account very vividly and kept wondering if I had come here to pick up a date as well? Haven't I? I am being able to cope pretty well with my single status because my mother has volunteered to step in and look after my Trisha, who's only two, but why did I want to come here? Poornima suggested Dr Rao. She felt I was going into depression and suggested I come for therapy. It is a workshop and the first day we took turns in talking about how we became single in the first place. We were not supposed to show any sympathy towards the person talking, the light would be focused only on him or her, and they would be made to talk to the darkness, pretending nobody was around. Weird, I thought. How true will the accounts be? Will they all be truthful? I, for myself, didn't talk about the absolute truth. I didn't tell them the real reason why Shobhan left me. I made up a nice story and put the blame subtly on him. I know it wasn't his fault at all. I was tired of him. I perpetually want to move on and I made things so impossible for him that he had to leave. He didn't want to go, but then, how long is love? For me, it has never lasted very long. Have I ever fallen in love ever? Do geminis fall? What is the name of this guy in the red tee? How will it be to make love to him? He has strong arms. Strong arms.

I woke up from my stupor with a shudder. What was I thinking? I didn't even know his name for god's sake! He is Three in the workshop. I am Four to him and to the others. I was impatient for the next session. Next Friday.

P.S. One spent his entire time today staring at me. A very handsome man with a hoarse voice. What was his problem? Why can't I remember?

The next Friday came and we had to put ourselves in each others' situations. Strange situations, really because how could I, for example, think that I am a man and my wife has left me? I was put in One's shoes and I had to play-act his part. After a while it started feeling good as the gender divides were broken and I started feeling very much like a man who's been spurned by his wife. One doesn't have a kid, so it is easy, but it was difficult to cope with the hurt. Today we were asked questions, and when Three (in a blue tee today) asked me questions aimed at One, it was a strange experience:

Three: So, how did you feel when your wife left you?

Me: I felt bad. I was in love with her and had absolutely NO clue that it wasn't working for her. What hurt most was how abrupt it was.

Three: Did it ever occur to you that you perhaps brought some arrogance into the relationship with your good looks? (he stared deep into my eyes now...is he complimenting me? is he referring to One being handsome?)

Me (this was difficult to answer, posing as a handsome man!): I can't help being handsome and, by the way, where did you notice the arrogance? I was just doing my job as a husband. I used to buy her flowers, I took her out regularly, and even went with her to her concerts.

(We were given a lot of details about the characters we would have to pose as, and I did my bit of homework. One's wife plays the violin and often had these concerts at various places in India and abroad. She has even worked with Dr L. Subramaniam and Jean Luc Ponty, so I could see where the breach must have come from. One wasn't possibly as intellectually inclined or capable as her and probably couldn't provide her any stimulation or useful company. But being in his shoes, I had to defend him.)

Me: We married knowing our vastly different backgrounds because there was love. I can't appreciate Carnatic Classical music and she knew my limitations. But then she doesn't know about software either. I am one of the best programmers at Oracle and even have five patents in the US for my work on the Oracle 8 database. So the basic premise was love. If it had worn out for her so soon, she could have told me, given me a hint at least? You can't just walk out on someone just like that? I still can't believe it."

This entire exercise was very emotionally draining. We all had to shelve our own problems, read up about the other person, enact his/her role ignoring the fact that the person being discussed is present in that room, in the darkness, probably fuming. There were many gasps and grunts, and at one point when Three was enacting me, I protested. He had read me all wrong. He kept talking about how I pushed Shobhan away. I didn't want to agree with that, but Dr Rao asked me to sit quietly. Was this therapy? What shit was this? How could Three read into my mind so well? How the hell does he know that I was the one who drove Shobhan up the wall? Oh my god!

I hated him for this. I wanted to hit him on the head. I kept thinking about Three the entire evening and late into the night. Who is he? Why was he so cocksure? And as my tablets started taking effect the hatred turned into reluctant lust. I noticed his thighs today. And when he stared deep into my eyes, I could feel something stirring in my tummy. My friend Sohini says her tummy hurts when she's aroused. I was not thinking of him, I wasn't aroused. You just notice these things but then you don't really act on them, do you? One asked me if I really found him handsome, to which I said he should actually ask Three about it because it was him who brought it up. How irritating. No wonder his wife left him and is perhaps composing music in Luc Ponty's studio, sitting naked with him. Serves you right, you prick.

The classes were going on fine for many months and we were even given our real identities after that exercise on Trust. We were made to fall backward trusting the person behind us to break the fall. It takes a hell lot to let go. I waited for my turn to be held by Three and when I fell backward, he held me firmly from behind, making my knees buckle. He is Pranjal, an Assamese. He told me about the accident but wasn't very curious about my husband. I asked her why he assumed I was the one who drove Shobhan mad and he said he was just playacting and that unless he added some color, it would have got really boring. Should I tell him the truth? Never.

He has asked me out next week. We will go to CCD Jayanagar, perhaps. He says he will come over in his jeep and pick me up sometime in the morning. He wants to drive around aimlessly and also mentioned that he might "abduct" me, which I didn't understand quite. This wait, this anticipation is so exciting, I end up shaking my leg a lot. I do that when am excited. Don't you? I can't show him my excitement. Was I too hasty in saying yes? What will he make of it? What have I said yes to anyway? Nothing. He says he wants to abduct me. Does he mean keep me for good? Gotta wait and find out.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ding dong.
"Hi, you're late."
"Yeah darling, what to do...the same bullshit routine...how did your Friday yoga classes go?"
"Oh those, Shobhan? Boring, as usual. Sushma is like good, but not brilliant."
"Hmm...why go then?"
"Just need to do something on Friday evenings, don't I? Did you get the veggies I asked you to?"
"Yeah, but I couldn't find those fat aubergines...what are those called? BT Brinjals?"

"Daddyyyyyyyyyy" a little girl runs into the room and straight into his lap.

"Oh Trisha baby, my woogly baby...lemme rinse me hands first?"

(conversation fades)

The Yellow Manila (a repost)

It was a lazy morning and all I could think of doing was to sift through stuff gathered over the last couple of years. And out came the yellow manila that I'd almost forgotten about. There was a picture of her draped in an orange sari and many other paper memories. Photos of some missions in California, some even looking like an old South Indian temple. Especially that of the Mission San Antonio De Padua, the third of California's 21 missions.

She'd scribbled descriptions of all the articles on post-its behind the postcards and photographs. There was one paper napkin she'd saved from our visit to Lori's Diner. Neatly folded and as white even after being mothballed in the yellow manila for more than two years now. That evening at Lori's Diner we ordered one banana split, which, when it arrived, had us gasping.

It was a very big banana.

And then there were these unused BART tickets that she never used. Just so I could save them as memories. All this prompted me to shoot off an e-mail to her. As I waited for a reply, I thought about the last evening we spent sitting on abandoned railroad tracks facing a lake.

"Why didn't I meet you in school?"

"Yeah, that would have been nice. You'd have been this tall girl two classes my senior, on whom I'd have had a crush. And we could have gone biking in abandoned wastelands."

"Why abandoned? Why not on streets with cars? Or people?"

"Then I wouldn't have to share you with anybody else's gaze. I could watch you in peace."

"Oks, let it be abandoned wastelands then."

We didn't speak for a long time after that. She was dropping me to the airport that night and I still hadn't packed.

**********

I didn't get a reply to my e-mail the next day. The message came back saying there were permanent, fatal errors with the address.

Bovine Confidence

When I dated her, I swore that I will make her drive a truck one day. It was almost like a mission I had taken up with a lot of conviction in the dictum "anyone can do anything." In my case, this anyone was someone who had forgotten to ride a bicycle, so you can guess the gradient of this uphill task. Cycling and swimming are things you never forget, and this anyone in question had forgotten the former and never learnt the latter even after two floral costumes and gallons of chlorinated water in her system. To make her drive a truck? Hopeless. Some literature students also mentioned that I will be left hapless, a word am yet to find the meaning of.

The first car came and went after four years. She never tried it. The second one was a relatively new jeep, which she tried driving a couple of times. She managed pretty well given the jeep's steering sends you zero feedback about the road and the brakes lend you no confidence at all. I was getting hopeful that one day from the jeep she will graduate to a truck. I was proving people wrong and would take videos of her at the helm, with the jeep doing most of the driving. Driving this jeep is like taking your St Bernard out to walk and letting him take control of you, so sometimes I wondered if she was driving at all or just sitting there, pretending to.

But she was the driver indeed, as all her four licenses (from four different Indian states) stated with authority. It is criminal to have more than one license in this country, but you can have as many as you like. This probably explains why she makes a U-turn every time there's a cop on the road. Once at this junction the traffic lights weren't working and the cop was managing the traffic. When he gestured towards us, she made a sudden U-turn, pushed the smallish car in the right lane onto the median, and sped back towards home. I realized most of our weekend outings would go waste if all we did was to go a certain distance and turn back because there were cops on the road. I took over. And she went to the passenger side.

Our child, who watches most of his classmates being ferried from home by their driving moms, was waiting to show off a jeep-driving mom, but that was not to be. Using the cops as an excuse, she gradually forgot to drive, like she forgot how to ride a bicycle. Unbelievable, but true. I tried reasoning that we should keep only the local license in the jeep and put the rest in the locker, but her fear of cops probably has something to do with her being a criminal in her past life, as her mother poignantly observed from the rear seat.

Meanwhile, people from the past, who had pitied me for having taken up such an impossible task, started showing up on various social networks. Some were fat, some were beautiful, some divorced, some married multiple times, and they were all suddenly curious (after having found me in the virtual world), how I was doing as far as buying a truck was concerned. I argued for a while that a jeep can also be called a truck, but that was what we had initially settled for years back when a truck meant a lorry.

I was generally burnt out with all this drivery I had to do and one fine day just dragged her to a car showroom and made her buy a car. The smallest available because she had forgotten how to handle the breadth of the jeep and wanted to start with a small car. Easy on the pocket in the long run, frugal, and peppy, so we were generally happy. Although it was a step backward (jeep > truck being the logical progression), I welcomed it with open arms. Finally someone is going to share some of the burden of driving and she can soon move from the small one to the jeep to eventually a truck. And then I will show my Facebook friends what a gentleman's promise really means. And she started driving.

First with a lot of trepidation, seat pulled to the front, eyes glued to the road, one foot on the clutch, one hand on the gearknob, one husband by her side. The husband in turn had one hand on the handbrake and the other held outside the window to warn all the other vehicles of a potential disaster. But gradually the husband learnt to relax and even breathe at times. One hand came in and the other one came off the handbrake. She moved from one gear to another, and settled for an optimal third, which can take you everywhere inside Bangalore pretty quickly.

All this while the little one was watching this progress from the rear seat. And yesterday when she did a 30 km stretch through relatively crowded roads from the south to the north of Bangalore, he decided to make a suggestion about how to handle the impatient, honking drivers behind you.

"You have to have the confidence of a cow, mamma."

"A cow?" I could almost see her eyebrows taking on this weird shape at this bovine hint. "What do you mean?"

"A cow, simply. What else? Haven't you seen how they don't budge from the road even if you honk? That's confidence. You should also ignore those guys honking behind you. Just like a cow."

Sugar?

"Sugar?" he exclaimed, quite taken aback by my suggestion of mixing some in my vodka. He doesn't like vodka because the Russian engineers at MAMC made him sample some crude Russian stuff, hardly distilled, mixed with nothing but water. No wonder he hates vodka and treats male vodka drinkers with a certain kind of alarm...as if they may suddenly either turn queer or strip to their pink panties. And when the first of his daughters got married to one such male, he went into depression for quite some time. I can understand his feelings, can almost empathize, one can say. Almost like how I would feel if Aaron gets into a romantic liaison with a vegetarian Tambram. Wouldn't I be affected if something that monumentally catastrophic happens to my son? Wouldn't we all be? On top of that, this fellow is mixing some lime cordial and sugar into his vodka. Lime? Which respectable drinker worth his whiskey ever heard of mixing anything citric in his drink? Doesn't that entirely defeat the initial purpose? Of getting drunk?

Despite all these conflicts in his mind, and probably because he doesn't really have a choice when he's at my place, my pa-in-law has gradually started accepting this drinking aberration in me. Almost forgiven, after all these years. He quietly sits with his whiskey and watches me turn my drink into a sherbet. He can't help let out snorts from time to time, snorts of utter disdain at my absolute lack of drinking taste. But the snorts aren't audible perhaps burdened by the knowledge that I put up with his daughter in the first place.

"Hrrmmph...brave guy, after all. Hrrmmmph."

Tonight was one such night. He misses the husband of his second daughter, a man with impeccable taste in Scotch and Bourbon alike, a man who can really be called a man at last. Armed with the knowledge that his second daughter made the right choice and resigned to the fact that fifty percent success is not a bad score in life's intricate math after all, he appears mostly happy these days. Happy with his sudoku, crossword, and his grandson, who is showing all the right signs of growing up to be a whiskey drinker.

This happiness lasted many years, seven to be precise, when suddenly it was dealt another blow. The whiskey drinker son-in-law decided to move to London and move he did. And how. Every day over the internet voice chat wafts out stories of how the whiskey-drinker son-in-law is enjoying the various beautiful things the Scots have manufactured, packed in glass bottles of various shapes and sizes. He sounds so near over Skype, you can almost smell it all in the room. And that smell in your mind stirs memories. And memories can make you touched in the head at times.

So tonight. Yes, let me come to tonight finally. Tonight as I was frying a newly discovered fish in the kitchen and the atmosphere was thick with the smoke and smell of heavenly dinner, he let out one fairly audible snort. "Hrrmm...smells good...what's the point in having fish fry if not with something?" Before his words could fully come out, the whiskey and vodka bottles were out along with two glasses at speed that would have been jaw-dropping for Speedy Gonzales himself. Onions were finely chopped, the steaming fish (crisp and freshly fried) brought to the table, the rich sound of pouring liquid filled our senses, and the lights were dimmed. I could think of only "smooth" to describe the entire ambiance when suddenly there was a jarring note. My bad:

"Lemme mix some sugar in this."

"Sugar? Hrrmmmph."

But over the years his hrrmmphs have mellowed, have softened, have almost acquired this warm and caring tone. All the hrrmmmphs that followed tonight were of the same nature:

"So I will buy a Harley this year."

"Hrrmmmph."

"I want sex. The new SX-4 diesel."

"Hrrmmmph."

"Kids should be spanked by default every morning and evening."

"Hrrmmph."

"Am divorcing your daughter."

"Hrrmmph."

"Am pouring sugar into my vodka."

"Sugar? Ha ha. Pour me another one, wilya?"

Alto K10: A Dhantenan Road Trip (log of days 2 and 3)

On Dec 25 we woke up at 4 in the morning, feeling like young gorillas. The Disprin had worked wonders with the fatigue and all the three of us were rearing to go. Aaron didn't have Disprins, but he too was excited to make up for the lost time the previous day. His sole aim was to reach Calcutta early, ring the doorbell, wait for his granny to open the door, and pounce on her. And for that to be achieved on time, we had to cover up a long distance on day 2.

Leaving Hotel Garuda Residency and finding NH-5 was pretty easy. We tanked up the car and set off. By the time we left the town, it was nearing 6.00 in the morning. My wife kept paying the toll along the way and saved the receipts. I will make a list of those as well. The road was fantastic like we found it between Naidupeta and Ongole. (On day 1 we found that between Ongole and Vijaywada, the road is being broadened, so you can expect the average speeds to come down a bit.)

After Vijaywada, the road in entire Andhra Pradesh is just amazing till the Orissa border, at Ichhapuram. We reached Ichhapuram around 3.00 in the afternoon. Before that we faced some stiff peak day traffic while crossing Vizag, but that wasn't much of a bother because Vizag is a beautiful town. It has the distinct smell of the sea from the right and the sight of the hills to the left. We could see boards pointing to the port and planned to visit it on our way back. Last time we did Vizag in 2007 Jan, we did a trip to Araku, but missed visiting the port.

Vizag is 386 km from Vijaywada and we reached around 11.30, clocking real good time. But it took us about 45 minutes to cross the town. We reached this distance in 25 liters of petrol. I was happy with the FE overall. Sayantani sounded pretty optimistic about doing Bhubaneswar, which is 429 km from Vizag. But memories of our last trip loomed large in our minds. Last time, in 2006 December, we suffered for about an hour at Ichhapuram, and to do Bhubaneswar, you have to cross Ichhapuram again. It was a chance we had to take.

As expected, at Ichhapuram, trucks entering Orissa had lined up and blocked the left side of the road. We had to move to the other side and keep going. Very soon we realized that even the other side is blocked by ongoing traffic. I really didn't understand how the oncoming traffic managed with their road being blocked as well, but for me, trying not to be sandwiched between those huge trucks was the primary concern. Luckily for us, this impasse lasted only ten minutes as the idle truckers doubled up as traffic cops and helped clear the traffic. All this without the help of the administration. The few policemen at the checkpost were busy getting their palms greased.

So we entered Orissa without much ado after all. What next? According to the map of the GQ http://nhai.org/gqmain_english.htm, only 37 km of the entire stretch is under construction and the rest is done. But if you cross Berhampore, you are suddenly taken off the road into a village that leads to another village. The condition of NH5 in Orissa is so pathetic, you wouldn't know where you are going. There are long traffic jams on narrow roads. There aren't any milestones to tell you where you are. The villages of Rambha, Balugaon, and Ganjam have three railway crossings between them, and getting stuck at any one of these can make life very miserable for you. By the time we crossed Ganjam, about 100 km from Berhampore, we realized that the NHAI map is seriously misleading. Bhubaneswar was still about 90 kms when we came back on the golden quad, but by then it was already 7.00 and very dark. We finally reached Bhubaneswar at 8.30 that night.

We should have listened to Arnab of IndiaHighways and checked in to Ridge Residency on the highway. The room they showed us was pretty rundown and we thought of finding a proper hotel inside the city and went in. Unfortunately, we missed out on the last room at Arya Residency, a decent hotel in downtown Bhubaneswar. What we eventually settled for was so pathetic, we ended up rather grumpy. The room was small, the toilet unusable, and the bedspread kinda creepy. The food came at 11.00 in the night and by the time we slept off, we had already started fighting with each other.

Day 3, Dec 26

The Disprins we had downed the previous night freshened us up the next day. We left early to avoid any more fights and the moment we hit the road again at 7.30 that morning, we felt very excited. According to our calculations, we had another 400 km to go. But hey, what does the milestone say? It says Calcutta is 493 km! How come? And then came many confusing milestones, one after the other, saying very contradictory things. The next one said 421, another 491, and yet another 405. Because all were pointing towards Calcutta, we kept going. And then the milestones got uniform.

We knew that the Orissa-Bengal border is also going to be a painful experience at Jaleshwar, but this time Jaleshwar was a breeze. The roads all the way from Bhubaneswar to Jaleshwar are being constructed, so do NOT believe the NHAI map at all. All you get is a single lane, with the other one being used by the local farmers to display their harvest.

After Jaleshwar, as we entered West Bengal, the roads were fantastic once more. But there was something strange that I noticed in this state. All the way from Andhra to Orissa, at all the toll gates, there are smiling, nice people collecting the fees. They wish you happy journey, smile generously when you say thanks, and make the next leg of the journey that much more pleasant for you. In West Bengal, somehow, NONE of the toll collectors had a smile on their face. They didn't make eye contact, they didn't respond to my "thank you sir" even once, and they had no helper standing outside to collect the toll and make the entire process more efficient. Poor Bengalis don't love the jobs they are doing because all of them perhaps think they are cut out for superior, intellectual things. Everyone is grumpy and full of some strange attitude, and the experience of an outsider is nothing short of entering a city infested by rude Parisians.

We reached Calcutta by 4.00 in the afternoon after a lazy day's drive. The Alto, as I mentioned in my first log, behaved superbly. It is a fill-it, shut-it, forget-it car, and responds to the throttle pretty quickly. For 3.93 lakhs on road in Bangalore, it is a real value-for-money, go-anywhere car. Now it has to take us back to where we really belong: Bangalore.

Alto K10: A Dhantenan Road Trip (log of day 1)

The last-minute change of vehicle meant drastic changes to our entire plans. The Alto K10 is new, faster than the jeep, but can we take it from Bangalore to Kolkata? And what will happen to all that luggage we packed for a road trip to South Africa? This is one of the smallest hatchbacks in India and the luggage is meant for a Bolero. My wife (who was about to pack for a one-year-long road trip) was very dejected at the proposal, but I was secretly excited for two reasons:

• she will learn to pack lean
• I will get to drive the young and peppy Alto K10, which forever wants to fly

I quickly took the Alto to the nearest accessories shop and got sun films for the windows, a local stereo, and an entry-level roof rack that I didn't intend to keep after this trip. We were supposed to start very early on December 24, but I spent a long time at the accessories shop at Tilaknagar and came home really tired. When I reached, I was shocked to see that the first bullet point hadn't been addressed at all.

"What man? I thought you were packing everything into one bag?"

She had an evil grin on her face: "But then you got a roof rack, didn't you? Don't worry, I unpacked your three pairs of shoes and offloaded all your trousers. You have to survive with only two pairs of jeans for 21 days."

"But why still four bags?"

She had no explanation. She had packed things from one bag into another and when she finished, the number of bags was still the same and so was the bulk. We went off to sleep really late with a lot of apprehension about the size of the car...will it go?

Dec 24: Our journey started at 5.30 instead of at 4.00, and by then the fog was setting in. We had decided to give Old Madras Road the skip and took Hosur Road instead. The drive till Dharmapuri was slow because of the fog, but after a bio-break, we reached Vellore around 9.00 in the morning. Our target was to go from Vellore to Chittoor, and then touch Naidupeta at least by 11.00 in the morning. That seemed absurd right now, but so far, the Alto K10 seemed to be doing faster speeds than the Bolero. It is very easy to maneuver and if you are negotiating a zigzag overtake of two vehicles, it manages it with elan. I would never even dream of doing such maneuvers in the Bolero given its high CG. After a quick breakfast at Vellore, we hit Ranipetta and took a left turn towards Chittoor. That little distance of 43 km between Ranipetta and Chittoor was beautiful and quick. Beautiful because of the landscape all around and the winding road. Quick because there was hardly any traffic. Before Chittoor, we took a right turn toward the Tirupati road (also known as Chittoor bypass). We finally reached Naidupeta at 1.00 (350 km from Bangalore), way behind our original schedule. Rajmundhry seemed impossible that day, but Vijaywada, another 386 from Naidupeta, was within reach.

We reached Vijaywada at around 6.00 and entered the town. That is an average of 77 km per hour, quite a bit more than we could achieve during our last trip to Calcutta in the Bolero GLX. By 6.30, we had checked in to Hotel Garuda Residency, which is bang opposite the star-rated Gateway Hotel. We had carried lunch on the first day, so the stops were mostly under trees. I gradually started appreciating the packing by then. Everything was neatly arranged and planned, from the route map, the food, to the medicines (we Bengalis frequently need digestive pills...some say even after a yawnful of oxygen intake) and back at the hotel the clothes to wear and slippers. The Alto K10 behaved pretty well during the journey and hit 100 kph at 3000 rpm very easily. Despite the load, it touched 120 kph at 3500 rpm, but then there are many toll booths on the entire stretch to not let you be very adventurous. The fuel economy was pretty decent at 16.49 kmpl, and given the frequent third-gear chases, I feel it is very, very frugal indeed.

The Alto K10 has an amazing third gear. The manual says you shouldn't go beyond 119 kmph in third gear. Keeping that in mind, I made it zoom till 100 kph in third gear, much to the shame of many SUVs on the road, who are all mostly aggressive drivers to say the least (I, for a change, am a "nice" SUV driver...I never am aggressive...I never nudge cars off the road...I never swerve towards other cars trying to overtake just to make them scrape the median and topple to the other side only to be thrown into the air by a truck...I never switch on all my six lights while driving on the wrong side, blinding oncoming traffic...chhheeeee!!). Opposed to that, if I gradually try to speed from 80 to 120 in fifth gear, it takes a few seconds longer. Such decent behavior will obviously return more than 20 km per liter of petrol. But for me, the thrill of the sudden lunging forward in the third gear is too tempting to resist.

The food that night was awesome: kalmi kebabs, butter naan, and daal, followed by a couple of usual digestive golis and a couple of Disprins. I will talk about the effect of the Disprins later. Now for some sleep.

SIMULTANEOUS LIVES of a SAINTLY MAN

“although I don't know if I should send an email to this account of yours, here I am, sitting in front of this email window, composing an email, a letter, or whatever nomenclature we attach to it now. some people hyphenate e-mail, even we used to a couple of years back, until the American Heritage Dictionary said it's okay to use it without one. do I care?”

she: hey

me: hey

she: nothing, emni

me: I am in the middle of an email

she: writing? reading?

me: nobody writes to me. you know. I'm the one who writes to people. you saved all my emails in a CD once.

she: yes I did. nobody wrote such beautiful emails to me ever. so i saved them. and now you don't write.

me: I do.

she: but not for me.

me: brb

"I really don't know if I do. I don't know my preferences like I don't know my mind. Do I like the Congress or the BJP? Do I hate both? Do I like the Communists? Or do I like a socialist ideology? Am I a capitalist? A consumerist? I never have a stand. I squirm at the thought that I have to belong somewhere, in some group of likeminded people who flock together, drawing courage from the fact that I'm not alone. What are you, a conformist? You too, like me, seem so confused. Not about your gods perhaps, because you are clear in your belief. That's one thing I'm clear about as well, only we don't see eye to eye. But when you look me in the eye and say "go away" while am still trying to unbutton you, I don't understand you. I feel you don't mean it. And you ask me if that is all I wanted of you when you very well know that it isn't a destination by itself. That is a physical manifestation of what I feel for you always. What do I feel? A strong urge to be near you. And we have achieved that."

me: hey

she: yes?

me: what would be the noun form of unnecessary?

she: isn't it an adjective? like unwanted?

me: yeah, for example, I want to say Am sure about the unnecessariness of gods in my life. what do I use?

she: LOL

me: what?

she: you made gods sound like unwanted appendages.

me: to me, yes, but to others they are necessary for various reasons.

she: is a tail an appendage?

me: no, it is necessary. Huko Mukho Hyangla had two tails, but was continually perplexed about which one to use to swat the fly.

she: for him then?

me: for him, yes...one can be called an appendage.

"We have been together, read together, bought music together, had coffee, spent nights in each others' company. Okay perhaps not the last one, but because I've always been with you even when alone, that thin line between what has happened and what hasn't has dissolved.

right now, the picture of you standing there in your black skirt with your back to the wall is vivid in my mind. The image is so real, you are moving in it, asking me to stare at your ripe little breasts from a distance. "No, don't come near," you are pushing me away with your forefinger, "look at me from a distance." And as you are trying to gauge my reaction, watching me devour your beautiful body with my eyes, I keep looking at the watch because time is running out. Our time always runs out before it starts. When will our time start? And then it has to end one day, but why can't it start? I have already made a fool of myself inside you last time, so all I wanted was a kiss. A proper kiss without you moving your head away. Don't, don't, hold it still for a second and let your lips part. Am parched. There you go, nodding your head and swinging your hair, which lashes me on my face like long, thin whips, leaving invisible marks that will never go."

she: but then, can you swat a fly with your tail?

me: huh?

she: you said Huko swatted flies.

me: I said he didn't. He didn't know which one to use. Gimme a minute.

she: hmm

"I miss you. I miss being with you right now. I miss lying still on your lap and looking up into the leaves and the stars beyond. Where was it that we sat like that, under a tree? I could see the Pole star very clearly that night, giving me a feeling I was somewhere really up north.

me: hey, where's the Pole star located?

she: how do I know? Whom are you trying to impress? Nobody's that gullible anymore, am sure.

me: hmm

"But do you get to see the Pole star from the north? In my imagination, that is precisely the case. I miss you when you stay incommunicado, perhaps looking for your answers, perhaps looking into your daughter's eyes and wondering if this thing we share is worth it. See? In my imagination you already have a daughter. You already are married. You already are behind that spotless, impregnable sheet of Saint Gobain glass, so near yet beyond the reach of my fingers. But all I want to see now is you walking through my door, which is left ajar in anticipation. I know you will come, perhaps without knocking. You never need to knock because all I have is yours anyway."

she: hey, he wants a Jeep Nukizer.

me: what is that?

she: oh, the ultimate off-roading machine now that the Hummer's decommissioned.

me: really? lemme check.

me: WOW, it looks awesome. so he is buying one?

she: I said wants.

me: I will be all alone tonight, do you wanna come?

she: WHAT? are you out of your mind? We are over all that, so please don't be weird.

me: but I love you!

she: how fucking lame can you get?

me: brb

"It isn't worth a Jeep Nukizer, but then you never needed a jeep. You probably need a quiet study. Let me go build that now, it takes a few seconds..."

she: you get me worried at times. why don't you buy some sex? I can't sleep with a man who isn't ready to take it further. I was a fool once, but not any more. I thought we understood each other. You make me feel sick at times.

me: hold on, hold on...someone's ringing the bell...brb

Road Tripping

I know you will go awww when you hear that it is again a road trip to Calcutta, but after my dad's passing away, we have left a lot of things unattended there. He left some farewell notes that he had been writing since March, but to us it seemed like he died in a hurry. There were things to be discussed, stories to be heard, history lessons from the subaltern's point of view, of how Haji Mastan was killed, of how the Japs bombed Calcutta during WWII because the Americans set up a base there, of how jazz came with them, and nightclubs sprung up. It would seem to you that he timed his death in a manner that had a finality to it. He just finished his last manuscript a couple of days before he passed away. Like full stop, am done, here I go.

So the road trip this time is to go again in search of his vast mind, stored in the form of newspaper clippings from way back in the fifties and sixties, books purchased and collected over a period of sixty years, old and yellow letters exchanged with his friends (some of whom are not there any more), some new books that I brought him during my Penguin and OUP days, my old books, the books that I flicked from the university library (which he never reprimanded me for), books of history, music, and poetry, of Latin American music and culture, of Italian short stories, Picasso, and a humongous collection of Russian literature. It will take time to reach 2000 kms by road, but even more time to sift through all the material in the little time that I have.

The jeep is ready. At 99000 km, the Mahindra Bolero GLX (with the XD3P Peugeot engine) still is strong as a war horse, quietly going about its duties. I don't hear a creak so far, but I can pat myself on the back for having treated it well. I got it new shoes at 47000 kms, rotated the tyres at every 5000 kms, got the suspension overhauled from time to time, kept changing the belts (there are four under this bonnet) and the various pipes at regular intervals. The nicks and cuts were tended to, it got regular touch-ups done, and now it has some new stickers too, and nice fog lamps. The upholstery is new and so are the alloys, so the overall experience is not that of driving a relatively old jeep.
This time the route will be almost the same as the last time, apart from a slight change on the first day. Instead of going via Old Madras Road, we will take the NICE corridor> Hosur Road> Krishnagiri> Vellore> Chittoor route. It will take us to Naidupeta via Tirupati and will be a tad longer than going via Kolar and Palamner, but because the Old Madras Road is being made now, we would like to stick to the Golden Quadrilateral as much as we can. We want to do Rajmundry (more than 800 kms) the first day (anticipating about 14 hours of driving), failing which we can stop even earlier at Eluru or Vijaywada. Photos and updates on Facebook will be done en route. There's a Belkin car adapter to power everything from a laptop to a mosquito repellent, so we even plan to have mobile tea, courtesy Sayantani, my navigator. She's been busy looking up the maps and surfing for hotels online, and has also managed to pack enough stuff for a journey all the way to South Africa. "You never know," says this lady who can be described in short as never-a-backpacker-when-you-can-carry-fourteen-pairs-of-shoes. How we will manage to put everything inside the jeep is another issue, and worse comes to worst we might even have to get a roof rack this week. A friend in Hyderabad has even been kind enough to offer his trailer to save my marriage.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. The luggage is well under control than it was last time. (For all you know, she might be reading this.)

The second day we would again like to cover a distance of about 750 kms, all the way to Bhubaneswar. Arnab Ganguly of IndiaHighways recently did this route and has posted some details of hotels and other resorts on the way, so am gonna keep his list handy. I have already passed on all the details to Sayantani. I received some good pointers about the first day's route from Raja Sekhar Kommu and Sriram Subramaniam of IndiaHighways, so those emails are being treated with more care than the Eicher atlas. Yes, we don't have a GPS device yet and probably will never need one in India. But then, we never wanted a cellphone either at one point!

So far so good. If we do Bhubaneswar on the second day, the third day's journey to Calcutta can be done in less than eight hours, giving us enough time to reach before sundown. Even if the first two days are a stretch, nothing can beat the beauty of the St Paul's Cathedral spire or the Victoria Memorial's dome catching the last orange rays of twilight. It will be sad to enter the vacant apartment my dad had so nicely maintained, but am sure he will be present in every particle of dust to have settled on the bookshelves.
Pics courtesy:

www.bl.uk for St Paul's Cathedral

rovinglight's photostream on Flickr for Victoria Memorial