It's Over

Hey,

It's over between us. I do not need your unconditional love. Want some freedom of choice instead. I want to have the right to smoke some hash or go out with my friends. I don't want your love. It stifles me. I want to meet her too. Not because I love her any more than I love you. But because you forbade me to. We will just down a couple of drinks maybe. Or maybe walk up to her apartment. You hated her from college, didn't you?

And marriage? I am not marrying you. So what if you were by me when I had nothing to hold on to. I am not getting married at all.

Lemme keep it short and simple: don't try to get in touch with me.


I read the letter once again and tried to make out if it were too harsh. But when you sever ties, you have to use a knife. This was the only way I could say goodbye. And I wasn't even saying goodbye. After reading it a couple of times I decided to sit on it for a while and went out for a smoke.

I don't usually smoke, you see, it's only when I'm alone or don't have anything better to do. After smoking half of the Wills Flake cigarette (this is the cheapest and surprisingly the smoothest brand) I threw it into a bin. When I have a child, if I ever have one, I will teach her to be a responsible citizen, I thought. I was trying to push away questions posed at my own sense of responsibility. Did I do the right thing? Am I doing the right thing by calling it quits? But I want to. I don't want to be with a woman who'd forbid me to drink at a party, for god's sake.

I walked towards the lake. In Calcutta one would usually say, "I walked towards Lake." meaning the only lake in Ballygunge, with a capital L. I don't know, just assuming. At the corner of Menoka theater I looked up at Raja and Parna's apartment. Didn't they get married very young, I was thinking when I bumped into someone. The girl cursed and bent down to pick up her purse. It was Parna!

"Hey, I was just thinking about you guys! How strange!"

"Kunal!!" Parna shrieked, "what the fuck are you doing here? Come up, come up" she almost pulled me into the stairs leading to their apartment on the first floor. The stairs were dark but clean. "Edike ki? Haven't seen you in ages, man."

I was a little shy with Parna. When we all went to Digha in 2004, Parna walked into our bathroom with a camera and clicked Raja (her hubby now), Supriyo, and me in the nude. I was never comfortable being nude in front of girls, although that was perhaps the only time. Maybe we didn't make too much of it because she was more of a tomboy. Is that a non-pc term these days? What do they call tomboys now? Maybe she still has the picture!

Parna was her usual self like I knew her a couple of years back. How's Raja? He is settling down in his business. His parents have accepted their marriage. They are not planning to have a child in the near future...I was filled in with their details. And then it was her turn to ask.

"How's Ananya? Are you guys still together? I heard you got a job with The Telegraph? Congrats."

"Thanks."

She didn't get an answer to her first question and guessed what might have happened. Although nothing had happened till then. Ananya probably didn't even know that I was gonna dump her any of these days. When I got up to leave, Parna gave me a long hug and asked me to take care.
For a change she didn't offer any advice. Maybe she has changed too, who knows.

I ran down the stairs and suddenly didn't remember where I was headed. Wanted to be with mom. Maybe I should speak to her tonight.

*****

Dad and Mom were away that night. They went for Uncle Mukherjee's birthday party at the Taj. Have they ever thought of gifting a book instead of a bottle?

(may be continued, dunno really...this is a new attempt at ladlit at somebody's request)

Rituporno's Films

I watched a couple of Rituporno's movies last weekend. Chokher Bali and Utsav. Just fell in love with Aishwarya Rai after watching Utsav. Dunno who to thank for that: Tagore, Rituporno, or Aishwarya. Certainly not her because she has never impressed in any of her movies before this.

Maybe partly Sreela, who dubbed for her.

Two bloopers stood out though: Bihari mentions that Prof JC Bose discovered plants have life. Come on!! He discovered that plants have feelings, not life. There was nothing to be discovered about plants having life! I half expected Binodini to correct him, but this was a BIG miss.

Another was a small one: a memorial being called a memento. But pardonable.

Utsav was so perfect. And so real. Cousins do fall in love. All over the world. And what a mature way to handle something so sensitive! And what does this guy do to his characters, can you tell me? Why do you want to know more about them even after the movie is over? Why do you want to go back in time to a Banaras of 1908 and search for Binodini? Why do you want to know what happens to Shishir after you're done watching Utsav?

The rest of the weekend was spent thinking about the movies and going back to the scenes in my mind over and over again. Watched Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King too, but do I want to write about it? No way. My personal opinion, so don't take offence guys: Bengali filmmakers have been able to dish out far more mature and far more entertaining stuff than a Tolkien rendition on celluloid can even imagine to. Thanks, but no, thanks.

I have Mondo Meyer Upakhyan and Titli lined up after this. Next weekend.

Too much knowledge: Case Study 1

This is not a learned observation, but just presenting three case studies of people who have always pursued knowledge and what happened to them. Also about how they are perceived by the rest of their worlds.

Case study no. 1:

A person born into a lower middle class household in 1930s Calcutta, could not buy books in school. His desire to study, to gain knowledge (still undefined), multiplied and reached its threshold and kept waiting there, ready to pounce at the first given opportunity. He borrowed books to start with. Attended school with hand-me-downs of every kind, starting from his uniform to his sandals. He didn't have shoes.

His lust for books of any kind led him to the study library and information sciences and eventually he ended up as a librarian at the National Library in Calcutta. And he read. Kept reading until he could define his area of knowledge: history and politics of the world. So he read history and politics in two languages: English and Bengali. As happened with everybody who was found reading in the fifties and the sixties, he was swept away in the huge gust of communist ideology and landed in a room full of books by Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Engels, Dze Dong: politics, and interesting. Can they save the world after all?

Then came disillusionment with the downfall of communism all over the world. They strangle you, he said. They do not allow free speech, so how can a communist regime be called anything different from Hitler's? Dze Dong started the concept of wall posters in China, so that people can come out with their greivances. They could not speak otherwise. There were many Tiananmens that went unreported many years before Tiananmen. He knew. He told us. And then he went back to reading history. When I gave him the full set of Hobsbaum, he was ecstatic. The same things, but in a different light. Hobsbaum. Why did you have to leave Penguin at all? At least I could get some books.

And his collection grew. The rooms started getting smaller. The storage in his mind bigger. I could not imagine someone with such a scalable head. Keeps getting larger and larger, keeps upgrading its RAM.

All this storage needs some outlet, and he has his tongue. And can he speak now. Speaking became his habit and later an addiction. He started speaking even when alone and his eyes sparkled at the sight of another individual. Soon, the milkman stopped knocking every morning. He stealthily came up to the door and left the packets of milk before it. He did not want any more of Tagore's ideas of nationalism. His son started roaming around with headphones, and his wife went absolutely mum. The neighbors kept their doors firmly shut and in that whole neighborhood people developed an apathy for books. There comes!

There were some others who liked to listen to him. So they called him over and would listen to him speak incessantly. Some would even sit with him every evening, reading something new and taking notes. His wife passed away silently, except for her songs which were captured in tapes. His son looked for an absolutely quiet father-in-law.

He is still speaking. Into the phone, on the stairs, at the marketplace, in letters...

• Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration: courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. ( H.L. Mencken)
  
• The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. (G.B. Shaw)

I guess these two quotes represent my thoughts like nothing I will write can. Tomorrow I will write about an atheist social reformer from Bengal, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, one man with his eyes open in an ocean full of blind fools from 19th century Bengal. Point is, that bloke managed to survive. How, we will see tomorrow.

Bombay

When I came to, I felt something heavy on me. It turned out to be Mala aunty. Her body. She wasn't moving so I pushed her over to the other side of the seat and tried to get up myself. I couldn't. A terrible pain shot through my shoulder straight to my head.

And that's all I remembered. Later at the hospital people told me that our driver was the only one who died in the crash. Everybody else survived, including me with a broken shoulder. Bombay was under waist-deep water, as the TV newscaster kept updating me every hour and I was happy to be in this private cabin with a TV in it. There were no visitors apart from Sucharita, who happened to be in the second car that Saturday. But Sucharita had her family, her job, and Bombay was flooded.

I tried but couldn't remember the face of our driver. He was in a white uniform that day and it was a rented car. Who was he, what was his name? Did he have a family? I couldn't push away these thoughts from my mind and there wasn't anybody to answer them anyways. The nurse was kinda nonchalant with a saccharine smile and had a stock "I Don't Know" answer to any question. She had very white teeth that shone like diamonds on her face.

Sucharita informed me that my dad was trying to come over to Bombay but could not because of the floods and disrupted air services. Apparently all the flights to and from Bombay were either being cancelled or postponed indefinitely. What a fuck-all city, I thought. But then this was the city that accepted me in its folds and gave me a life. I got a plush job right after coming here. I met Sucharita, possibly the most warm person I've ever met. I found an identity for myself, so how can I possibly blame Bombay?

My doc had a few assistants whom she brought along on her visits every morning. One of them was this really handsome Marathi resident doc with Dr Bahutuley printed on his name tag. I almost wished he would come alone one day, but that was probably not to be. Maybe my bandaged face doesn't appeal to him at all, who knows.

"Hello baba, did you manage to get a ticket?"

"Yes darling, I got one for day after . . . just hang on my brave girl, I'll be right there with you. Just hang on...am sure the flights will resume by then..." my dad always sounded hopeful. Man, he is my hero, my entire reserve of positive energy comes from him. Don't I love him!

The nurse took me to the OT to get my stitches removed one morning. And guess what, like in a fairytale story, Dr Bahutuley was there. I just mustered all my courage and asked his name. Rohan, he smiled. And during the entire exercise (which was rather painful now that I think of it) we made light conversation and I even managed to ask him to come visit me sometime.

And he kept his promise. He came over one evening when he was off his duty...just before he had to catch his train home. He came with a bunch of white flowers. Maybe from the florist's right in front of my window?

"I'll be going away for a while," I told him, "for about four months, precisely."

"What about your job?"

"Oh, I will join the Calcutta office after about a couple of months and work from there for another couple of months."... "Will you call?" I blurted, suddenly not very shy anymore. Baba was arriving that night. His rather wan smile made me cringe and suddenly I felt like kicking my butt. Shit, why did I have to do this? Didn't I see the scar on my cheek? I look pathetic, oh shit...

Back in Calcutta things were different. Ma cried for almost an hour from the airport till we reached home. We must thank god you survived the car crash, why did you have to go out on the weekend at all? I must go to Kalighat and offer my prayers...and I hugged her with my left arm and cried too. Just felt so good to be back home, with my folks who probably were the only ones who loved me with all they had. The cosmetic surgeon said it was possible to cure the scar on my cheek that ran down till my neck. But it had to heal first.

A couple of days later there were these serial blasts in Bombay. In the local trains. In a train in front of the hospital where I was admitted. We were all shell-shocked, numbed by the reports on TV. I went mum for the entire evening. Ma held me as I wiped my tears. These were the places where I used to go to. And now there were body parts strewn all over. It could have been me. Ma kept saying "don't you worry, you don't have to go back to Bombay any more. Stay with us, baby...you'll get a job here..." when I got a call on my cell.

"Hello?"

"Hey, just wanted to tell you that I'm fine." It was Dr Rohan. Rohan.

And that moment I knew I had to go back to Bombay soon. It was where I belonged.

of blazers and apples

First Shikha got married. And then Dilreen. I went to Shikha's wedding with a lot a trepidation. In a wedding full of mercs and huge pajeros, where will I park my puny 100 cc mobike? Will they allow me entry? Will my borrowed jacket look out of place? Will someone be able to tell it is borrowed?

In Delhi, a place where your clothes decide the kind of respect you'd be able to elicit from its denizens, these worries are rather commonplace. And I am an ordinary man with the natural fears that come with being an ordinary man. I've even seen people renting dummy cellphones just to flaunt at a wedding, and Shikha had to get married at a time when I couldn't even afford a proper dinner jacket. Even a blazer, for that matter. Couldn't she have waited?

But there are these large-hearted souls who are almost godsent one can say. Even in a cutthroat, ruthless city like Delhi where oneupmanship rules, there was one kind soul Nischal. Nischal was a size smaller than me, but he wore bigger jackets. And he allowed me to wear his for the big night. Shikha's big night, that is.

So I parked my mobike a couple of hundred meters away and walked to where the celebrations were. My poor wife, who must have been pretty ashamed of her husband's humble existence, was with me. Ritu was there with her husband. Atanu and Shantanu, wearing kurtas. Dilreen was as usual her resplendent self, looking brighter than the bride. She just had to be the cynosure of all eyes. Maybe she's a Leo, will ask and find out today. Soma came ahead and gave me a bear hug. Thank god for people like Soma who can make you feel comfortable even when you have a 50p coin in your pocket, wearing an expensive jacket that's not yours. (I must write an e-mail to her today.) Wifey dear was a little floored by all the lights and action. Both of us looked at the celebrations and must have thought about how much money these people have and what a colossal waste it is to marry like this.

Ritu spotted me and came forward...
"Hey, you're looking so handsome..." she announced, making all the heads turn. I almost cringed in embarrassment but would have recovered if she didn't come up with a killer "whose jacket are you wearing today?" right after that.

"Oh, this is Nischal's. I also had Anirban's jacket as a backup." I offered pretty boldly, flashing the best possible smile I could muster. Someone patted my back. I turned around but couldn't see anybody.

Her joke wasted, Ritu laughed, along with the others who noticed the incident. And then we forgot all about it.

Until it was turn for Dilreen to get married. I just could not go this time.

Still haven't been able to buy that blazer, or suit, or whatever. Every time I thought I should buy one or even a couple, I always ended up at the next jeans store. As for weddings, most of our peers are either already married or divorced and not thinking of marrying again. Thank god again.

Another POV

I've always wanted to pick up the Oakland accent, grow huge muscles and roam around in a red Dodge Ram, with hip-hop blaring from the dozen speakers on the bull bar . . . now that's living kingsize, if you ask me. The losers who pretend to be intellectually superior, could never become boxers, so try to make up by reading a lot.

I've always wanted tattoos on my biceps, wear wrist bands, ride huge harleys, and have flowing blonde hair. That's like making a statement. The losers who pretend to be world tourers on BMWs are just that . . . losers. They end up writing books that never sell.

Sometimes I've wanted to be an ace shooter, ready to kill for a price and shooting sitting pumpkins from my window.

And right now, I have someone's head in mind. Is anybody ready to pay me?

Deconstructing Bengali Gods

Now out of the 3,300,000 gods that populate the night sky (the Hindu gods alone), the Bengalis have fancied only a handful. This article will be about those gods and what they mean to a quintessential Bengali. And also why they were handpicked out of those billions out there.

The bidhatas, or the almighty (almighties, because we love every kind of plural), are only three: the trinity, or Brohma, Bishnu, and Moheswor. If you think these spellings are a little offbeat, these are how we Bengalis love to pronounce their names. Brohma is the creator, so we don't disturb him much. He has created every conceivable thing and is perhaps happily floating in weightless space. He has conquered the dimension of time, and that involves a lot of hypothetical physics, which I'm no master of. So, like most Bengalis have done, I will leave Brohma alone. I hope he knows how to avoid being sucked into a black hole.

Bishnu, again, I don't know much about. I heard he had mastered the art of cloning himself and sent many of his clones to earth to save it from imminent disasters, and he may also have met Noah at some point of time. I won't be surprised if they exchanged notes over a cup of coffee sometime. I cannot really say he has succeeded in saving the earth much. All his clones went back leaving behind stories and myths surrounding their heroics.

Moheswor is actually Sib (or Shiva). The story starts getting interesting from here. Sib, as we all know and as many of the babas are trying to figure up there in the Himalayas, knew the perfect way to salvation. Leave home, forego your family and material pleasures, and go up to the Himalayas in search of good hash. If it's wet, burn it a little and dry it up. Stuff it into a cigarette and puff once. Puff twice...and you know where he has reached. Stretch your arms and try to fly away to him. Sib has attracted the fancy of men and women alike. Women even have a special prayer called Siboratri, during which they pray for husbands like Sib. If it is for his phallus, which is almost a legend by itself and is his sole symbol on earth, then it probably makes some sense. Indian men are not known to have phalluses like Africans as rumor has it. And if one Indian lady (whom I don't want to name here) can swear that Africans have bigger ones, we cannot possibly blame Indian women for their prayers. May their heartfelt prayers be answered.

After the bidhatas, come the mere gods. And here things get a little chaotic. At this level, the gods can be seen clamouring for space. Space in the mind of a Bengali, because that's where salvation lies for a god, doesn't it? And at this level you get a clear picture of the class divide that is so prevalent up there. There are the elite gods who are out of bounds for the lower castes of Bengalis. Then there is a snake goddess, and many others. Let me come to them one by one.

Durga is perhaps the most beautiful lady who comes visiting us once every year. She has a dudhey aalta complexion, the typical Israeli or even Punjabi complexion you get to see. Flawless. You dare not tell her that she has a slightly oily skin, she can get very touchy about such issues. Durga comes as the goddess of good harvest, as the savior, as the love of every Bengali heart. The fervour with which we wait for her homecoming is perhaps comparable to Europe waiting for Christmas. (Not so much the Americans because they're mostly spent after waiting in front of the discount stores during Thanksgiving. They probably sleep during Christmas, but like I don't know much about Bishnu, I don't know much about the Americans either.) And to wait for the idols being painted and dressed at Kumartuli is another beauty altogether. You sit there with a bowl of jaggery and puffed rice, watching the master sculptors bringing life to the numerous idols.

And finally when she is on earth, we try every possible trick up our sleeves to make those four days longer. We stay up till 6 in the morning, roaming around the streets, visiting the pandals, walking like we never walked all through the year in this Mardi Gras, and still don't fall sick. We eat from the roadside stalls, and still our usually weak gastronomies are not challenged. We survive Durga Puja and are left wiping our tears. If you ever experience a live bishorjon (immersion of the idol on the fourth day), you're bound to find your eyes full. Can seem inexplicable, but it's so universally true. So true!

The French Bengalis, who reside in Chandernagore and speak only Bengali and French, have a French Durga in place, who is lovingly called Jagadhaatri (or, the one who's held the world in her womb). Everything about Jagadhaatri is similar to Durga, only in a smaller scale, and restricted only to Chandernagore. I cannot imagine experiencing similar emotions during Jagadhaatri Puja, but would love to visit Chandernagore to see the lights. Someday.

Some of our Bengali gods are even more pricey. They come once in four years wearing the yellow jersey of Brazil. The chaos that ensues in Bengal during the football puja is best not written about. I owe allegiance to the gods above and if I show an iota of extra love for our Brazilian gods, I may invoke the wrath of god knows who.

Back to the gods, some are really not so lucky. The average upper-class hilsa loving Bengali does not worship Manasa, the snake goddess. She is worshipped mostly in the suburbs and remote villages where the snakes pose a threat. Even Santoshi Ma, who is about 150 years old and is mostly considered from the neighboring state of Bihar, is not worshipped in Calcutta households. This not-so-subtle discrimination among gods has gone unnoticed all these years, but nobody's complaining. And even if they do, Indra, the king of the gods, wouldn't probably have the time to listen.

Indra is another colorful character. When he does have time from watching those endless strip-tease and pole dancing shows, he's known to be thinking of some bollywood sirens. I don't want to elaborate, but not a single Bengali worships Indra.

They do worship some of Indra's qualities though. Indra is a connoisseur of good liquor, and Bengalis are no exception. And their favorite watering hole is Someplace Else at the basement of The Park on Park Street. However, there's a huge debate about whether Bengalis visit Someplace Else for its drinks or the couple of gods who perform there. If you hear one speaking about Nandanda or Kochuda, you know about the two new gods in town. They are reincarnations of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Mark Knopfler, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, JJ Cale, you name it . . . oh, how could I forget John Lennon, Bob Dylan, or even Dave Gilmour? The Bengali is very touchy about the god named Robert Zimmerman, although one may argue whether he had any sense of music in his peanut-sized head. If you like Tambourine Man, the Bengali will buy you a large drink.

So, let's raise a toast to some of our gods here. Here's to you, all you up there and deep in our collective Bengali psyche. You guys sure rock.

How are you?

When I asked you how you are, I wanted to know how you've been and not that you've been to Tasmania lecturing on animal husbandry. I did not ask about your new Mitsubishi Pajero, just about how you are. For old times' sake.

Nonetheless, you featured in my fantasy last night. And as I lay there, creating and perfecting the imagery in my mind, I knew I had to be a little careful with you in my dreams. You are kinda point blank. You, despite being a girl, straightaway want action. While I, despite being a man, believe in foreplay and something before that as well. Do not undress in a second. Can you hold on for a bit? The tease? The gradual removal of each piece of cloth too has a charm of its own. I do like to see those little pink flowers, but I'm in no hurry, this is just a dream and I have a lot of time.

I went behind you and touched your long hair . . . it is still as lustrous as they advertise in those shampoo ads. Or do you use some brunette hair thickener? I planted a slight kiss on your neck and saw your eyes close. Did they close in pleasure or in reminiscence of what happened last time? As I was about to turn you around for a fuller kiss, you moved away, and before I could even say 'no,' you were naked, sitting there like a huge ameobic lump of white flesh on the hotel bed, your dress flung toward the door. The pink flowers were magenta now and the hair on your crotch still brown...but they faded soon.

I turned around and went off to sleep.

Some more

"I know how to change a tire, how come you don't?"

"We're talking about motorcycles here, June."

"But I thought a motorcycle has a spare tire?"

And then fleeting memories of the Czech classic Jawa with a spare tire tied to the side came to all of us. We came out of the pantry like zombies. The Jawa kaleidoscope went on . . .

*******************

"Do you have a 50p coin?" she's been asking almost everybody for about a week.
Finally Shantanu found a 50p coin and gave it to her.

"Yippeeeeeeeee!"

"What?"

" He he, now I have Rs 10 worth of coins!"

********************

Lean out your window, golden hair...

Aaron's first ride

That's him, lifting the visor to give the photographer in the jeep a better view.

We rode to the forests of Mudumalai, 250 kms from Bangalore . . .

all the curves

all the fucking curves are sinusoidal
so, buy a recliner and wait for the peaks . . .
throw in a little football, a Thai woman on your lap
and blast away. . .

there was this video, i tell you
and when i saw what she did to him
i bought a ticket to Thailand in my next dream

if i buy a waterbed and some hot charcoal
you'll know i've found my Thai woman
holed up in a hole
now that was bad rhyming, but i don't wanna rhyme
all i want is to tell u a story of when things are blue
relax . . .
this will pass too . . .

When do we turn cowards?

Ten years ago if he asked me to lift a chair and bang it on someone's head, I would happily have done it. For him. Only he did not ask me to. He taught me the virtues of being righteous. Of being able to face myself in the mirror.

Yes, yesterday I lifted a liter of sunflower oil from the grocer's.
I was wrong.
I won't repeat it.

If you cannot manage with your monthly allowance, check where you are overspending. You smoke. Quit smoking. I quit smoking and could save a considerable amount. Did not need to go back to shoplifting. Even for fun. The girls continued to lift cards though. They were richer than us. Spoilt. And we have no choice but to eventually marry one of them. If only they looked like Winona Ryder.

He introduced us to jazz. And Hindustani classical. Some raga-based Bengali music too. He cooked for us. Spent on us. We were street urchins. Students. He was the only one with a job. A decent job. I also remember him buying music for us.

And then there were the clueless among us. Clueless about where to go from here. After college.
They all came to him. Some of them found some focus in life. Some even had their future careers moulded by him. His mason hands . . . how many dreams did they build and realize? Countless, I guess. We were parasites. Only he didn't think so. He chose to be a mentor to an entire generation of students in Banaras.

When I met him last Saturday being produced to court, handcuffed like a hardened criminal, I did not know how to react. His wife committed suicide last year and she was a proven schizophrenic. We avoided her for various reasons. She had managed to steal the perpetual smile from his face in the four years she was married to him. And then she chose to nail him for life by taking her own life, leaving a one-year old kid in the other room.

I would have said good riddance, only she did not let him go. Her family filed a murder case against him. And a "harrassment for dowry" case, which is absolutely ridiculous. I know the truth, so do the plaintiffs. Everybody does, probably even the honorable judge.

And his brother has run out of money running from one lawyer to another, being conned at every step in an alien land. The current lawyer is competent, he can probably get him out of this mess, but has quoted an absurd amount.

Dunno really where this is headed. I am now trying to gather some money for the hapless brother, Chhoton. He was silently wiping his tears sitting on a bench the other day. And I was like an apparition, standing there almost invisible, doing nothing to comfort him. Being held back by my cowardice. By strange voices in my head which ask me to stay away.

Where is the other me? Will he emerge soon? He doesn't have much time, though. The next hearing is on July 17. And where will he get all that money from?

I guess its back to being clueless again. Somehow, this time, it is more bleak than ever.

the last month

the bitch died last week. i saw her lying in the drain for many days. my windows were rolled up. even after they took her away.
someone asked me to start writing a story, only i didn't have a story.
missed someone all through the month...am quite surprised too...wondering why.
the girl with curly locks came to my dreams and made love to me. after we'd danced.
just last night in one dream i had to hide in someone's bathroom.
starched all my bedsheets. am sleeping on the mattress now.
watched A Prelude to a Kiss but did not like it. I guess I am out of mush.
i ran her washing machine while she was lying in a pool of puke. two days, two nights. no rehab for her.
i'm flying to Tampa in my next dream. gottu give her a scrub. and then make love to her in a tub full of soap water.

The Mystery of the Faded Brown Panties

The sun had traveled quite some distance into the sky when i realized that i am wearing a pair of faded brown panties. In the morning when i dressed, i mistook them to be my magenta pair of briefs and happily wore them, only feeling a tad more comfortable and snug. . . what the hell, it must be because it's shrunk, i thought, and came to the office.

Once in the loo, I got this almost Mr Beanish shock, chasing a couple of men away who must have had mistaken it to be a bout of schizophrenia. I rushed home soon after.

Once home, a detailed scrutiny revealed that they did not belong to my wife, and as far as I could remember, i had not been divesting women of any faded brown panties in the recent past . . . so the mystery deepened.

Searching for possible causes and clues, i worked back to where i picked these panties up from. They were in my backpack, which had recently traveled to Kerala with me, and to Calcutta before that. i remember having emptied the contents after the Calcutta trip, and . . . well . . . things got fuzzy after this much of thinking and i gave up. Made myself a strong vodka, removed the panties, folded them and kept them under my pillow. And went off to sleep.

In my dream i took them out from under the pillow and sniffed at them once, but i strongly insist that it was just in the dream. They smelt kind of nice, faintly of some talcum powder and Surf excel, I think. Smells from a dream are not very trustworthy, you know.

The next morning they were still there, under my pillow, probably smirking at my bewilderment. The only person i can go to when I am bewildered is my wife. She was not around, but despite knowing that this is a sensitive issue, I could not help calling her up. So i called up my wife and told her about the mystery, and after some heated discussion for about half an hour (oh my STD bills!!), finally convinced her that i was not to be held responsible for the sudden appearance of this thing in my life. The solution, she said, was to get some sniffer dogs do the job for me, and as going to the police would mess up things a bit, we decided that i should contact a private detective.

Now sleuths, no matter how charismatic and intelligent they appear in those stories and films, can be rather painful in real life, as I discovered to my utter chagrin when i went the next day to "black label detective agency (we trace the owner of those panties in your husband's pocket)". The uncanny statement within parentheses made me wriggle a little in those panties (oh shit, i was wearing them again almost by inertia), and a shiver went through my spine.

Finding out the place itself thoroughly tested my garbled sense of local geography, and after having met the fat, bald, suited, sweaty-palmed private investigator VD ("as in the disease" he insisted) Gupta, my hopes of this mystery being solved were dashed forever. But wife's instructions were not to be ignored, so i accepted the seat he offered, and stared blankly at VD's yellow teeth for a while, before i finally started speaking.

"Interesting, umm, very intriguing indeed" said VD after I finished. And slipped into what seemed like a deep thought for about ten minutes, at the end of which he said "can I see the object?"

"What object?" i was definitely puzzled, not familiar with detective jargon, only to realize that he was talking about the "object" in question. I explained that there was a technical problem, as I was wearing them at that moment. He promptly sorted out the problem by suggesting that I remove them in the toilet and hand them over to him. So done, VD scrutinized the object at length, which also involved a bout of sniffing (with knotted eyebrows) and asked me to leave the object with him. I came home, thinking I should have asked him about his fees.

*****

Back in the office, I saw Aniket waiting for me. Aniket is this fat, black moustache with a man attached to it.

"Umm, err...can you give me the keys to your place?" he asked, looking rather sheepish.

"Why, sure! You wanna spend tonight at my place again? No problem. But why now? Can't we go together after office?"

"I ... well ... umm ... but, can you gimme the keys? I left some of my stuff in your backpack last night."

After that incident, Aniket never came to my place to watch football. And I discovered that panties are costlier than men’s briefs. But I don’t mind spending that extra buck.

Hanuman

For some Indians, the langur is a revered monkey god. Mostly for North Indians. They worship Hanuman, a symbol of devotion and strength.

For Bengalis, though, the word Hanuman is an invective. If somebody is monkeying around, you can call him/her a hanuman. So here's a picture of two hanumans from my neighborhood, one of whom happens to be my son, Aaron.

A male polecat always rapes a female polecat. I saw this happening on Discovery.
And then some lions managed to kill a baby elephant. Some crazy guys were in a Land Rover shooting everything from within a few meters.

I like the harmonica in Sting's Something the Boy Said. I've been listening to a lot of stuff by Sting of late. And I kept an eye on that bitch I thought would die from its wounds.

She is healing. I saw her yesterday looking much better. Even she appeared to have been brutally raped.

And this morning I admired my motorcycle for a good 30 minutes. It will take my son on his first long ride to the Bandipur National Forest. Infested with elephants. One of those elephants chased me on my 33rd birthday, did I tell you? Chased us. Because I was leaning out of the van with my handycam, trying to capture her at close quarters.

She too had a baby elephant following her. Maybe she was raped too by an Indian bull.

By the way, my motorcycle is a bullet, fondly called a bull.

grey uniform

sometimes, walking in a long corridor you feel rather lonely. there are glass doors on both sides and then miles of plyboard walls. and neon lights on top that kinda blur after a while. if you shake your head and try to clear your vision, you will see people in grey uniform, almost invisible, cleaning the carpet, wiping the walls. you don't feel so lonely again. once i tried looking at one of these uniformed species and tried a smile. the uniform smiled back.

although i couldn't recognize him the next day, i made it a point to smile at most of the grey uniforms that looked at me. and then one day i spoke to one of them. he asked me if i'd had breakfast. a funny question and he has nothing to do with it, but i guess that is considered a courteous question. to ask if one has had breakfast or lunch or dinner according to the time of the day or night you meet. usually, the neons blur when the mp3 player is playing Golden Hair, but by the time it comes to Sting, they brighten up. all in the mind, i tell you. what if i tell him i haven't had breakfast? what will he do?

so another day i smiled at one of the uniforms (by now i could distinguish one from another). he smiled back and asked if i'd had breakfast. i told him i haven't and that i am rather hungry. he asked me if i had a coupon to buy breakfast from the cafetaria. i said i didn't have one. the uniform promptly took out one booklet of coupons and offered me one. we don't need these coupons, they do. i don't have food upstairs at the cafetaria. i can go out and have crabs or fish. the uniform has to have it here because he probably cannot afford to. but his generosity in offering a coupon was unfathomable to me. didn't he just sacrifice one meal?

i took the coupon and walked up. the song had changed to Fields of Gold by then and the sun shone brilliantly through the glass roof.

the next day it wasn't lonely in the corridor any more. there were real people there, some cleaning the floor, some wiping the walls . . . real people with real smiles. and no need for an mp3 player.

deaths

long time, mate. when death came rushing to my head, i wondered why they came once every two years. since 98. why it sat quietly in one corner for 23 years.

and if i didn't want my mom to die, why let her die? if she had unfulfilled dreams, so do i, of taking her to the himalayas again. till she died. but she died much before.

if you are sitting in front of a little boy who's dying of cancer, how many toys will his heaven have? count the number of videogames, soccer balls, chocolate trees before you go to sleep today. if tomorrow you are sitting in front of him, and he knows he's dying, tell him the biggest lie. and let him die smiling.

hey, you can hold on to a soul if you don't wanna let it go. i tried doing it. works for me even after six years of my mother's death. i was never a mama's boy. never knew her much. but now i do. she's reading Desh even as i write this, the glasses thick and heavy on her nose.

God Saved My Soul

This morning just after I dropped Aaron's bags at the day care and started the car, I realized I just had to crap. You know, it was like this sudden, immediate necessity that couldn't be ignored.

Just had to crap.

I could feel the blood draining from my face. I was about to brace myself for the worst. How many times did I insist on getting a WC installed in the boot? My mind was faltering and despite all my concentration being used up in trying to hold, I could see defeat staring me in the eye.

In my desperation I must have mentioned the urge aloud. And god heard me.

"There's a public toilet just around the corner, daddy," I heard him say . . .

Without trying to find out how he gottu know about it, I drove like an automatic pilot, following my son's directions . . . and there was salvation in sight, my mecca, my savior . . . a white building with a halo around it . . .

**********************

When I came back to the parked car, Aaron was smiling. "Who's gonna clean?"
"There's an uncle who's been hired to," I answered, relieved.

God was in my car.

Uglyrama

Last night we had a phone meeting with colleagues in the U.S. By the time I could go to bed, it was already 11.00 and usually our neighborhood is wrapped in thick, dark silence after 9.00 in the night. I could consciously feel myself slipping into a dream when suddenly there was this horribly loud sound of drums from somewhere. Accompanied with some weird South Indian wind instrument that can wake up a sleeping Kumbhkarna. Rumor has it that this instrument (called Nadeswara) was made solely for that purpose in the island nation of Lanka (now Sri Lanka): to wake up the huge ogre Kumbhkarna who plundered and destroyed for six months and then took an equally long nap.

When Rama attacked Lanka to rescue his wife Sita, he had only monkeys as soldiers. But he also had one Bibhishana who had defected from Ravana's camp (despite being Ravana's brother) and joined an otherwise gullible Rama as the minister of espionage and military strategy. Some people draw parallels between Rama and our slain prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Rajiv was a deft pilot, but not a politician. Poor guy had to become the Prime Minister because the medieval people of India wanted to remain in Ramarajya (read "being led by someone of the Nehru/Gandhi clan"). Rajiv eventually died a dog's death. Rama, likewise, was good at archery, but that was all he was good at. By virtue of being King Dasarath's eldest son, he too had to take up the king's post. He didn't die a dog's death though. He had wily jackals around him.

Now Rama, with the help of his military advisors, was making inroads into Lanka, and Ravana's army was about to face defeat. Being a human being (and thus handicapped against the ogres) Rama was privileged enough to have the support of all the gods that you can think of. Now who doesn't know that a weak man needs support. You cannot blame the gods either. They saw this as a good opportunity to use a human being to destroy some of the ogres while they enjoyed strip-tease parties in heaven . . . more about those in another story.

Kumbhkarna happened to be the only hope of the ogres. He was huge, a little bigger than King Kong, and had a huge appetite as I already mentioned. He had gone to sleep a few months back and it was absolutely necessary to wake him up before the six-month quota got over. The ogres were badly losing. One wise ogre (with a white beard) figured that the only way to wake him was to create a noise that would pierce its way into his subconscious and jolt him out of his sleep. He got a black pipe and called the scariest sounds of the world and bundled them in the pipe. And where the drums and cymbals had failed, the nadeswara succeeded. Kumbhkarna jumped out of his sleep and started eating the monkey soldiers as if on trance.

That was how the nadeswara was born. Much later the ogres and the monkies of the subcontinent started using nadeswara as a musical instrument. An instrument that will shake you out of your slumber and make you stand straight . . . ready to attend to your duties, transfixed.

When I was woken up last night by this sound at the unearthly hour, I too woke up. Stood straight, as if in a trance. Went to the box of firecrackers that I saved from Diwali. Picked up a jumbo rocket. Dipped its head in petrol. Aimed it at the house where the celebrations were on. And fired.

****************

Deccan Herald, Feb 03, 2006

Bangalore

Last night there was a huge fire at a house in South Bangalore. It is reported that 72 people died in the fire. The local residents and the firefighters could manage to pull out only the charred remains of the bodies. Not a single person is reported to have survived the fire. The cause of the fire could not be established as everything is burnt beyond recognition. The police, however, recovered a nadeswara which had survived the wrath of the fire. Some local residents claimed it was the first nadeswara with which Kumbhkarna was woken from his sleep.

wish i were black

how i wish i were born a black man. a big, fat, puffy black man. and i could sit in the corner shop and play the blues harp. bend the notes, make them wail and get little Manzareks rushing to find where the notes were coming from.

i got A, D, E, and G now. i play boring, unchallenging hindi numbers. and some country. but someday when i am black, i will play the blues too. problem is, i cannot sit and listen to little walter for long. i would listen to keith jarrett instead. i guess the blues have to get into your bloodstream first. the steady rhythm versus the wantonness of the extempores. blow away, bend the notes, and shed a couple of tears too if they come out right.

but i will try. james here is encouraging me. pappa pappa pappa pap . . . someday i will turn a black man. hold the puny thing in my fat fingers and belt out the most beautiful notes you've heard. malleable, metallic notes . . . just wish me luck.

Showered

when, out in the front porch
i look up and it's raining flowers
petals softly kissing and vanishing into the fog
that envelops my feet. . .

when, in a dark room
your letters spill out of my inbox
and my glasses are missing . . .

when you call and i listen (fades)

***********

but you never called, i did, once

your letters i read twice over,
i never needed glasses in a dark room
to save your photos to my desktop

it has never rained flowers
but only dry leaves in autumn
and the fog's never around my ankles . . .
. . . only inside my glasses, if you didn't know

If the night has to fall

The city with you was a dream
two days when the sun didn’t set
you don’t set on me now,
resist the night

Delirious night has nothing to offer

Wander around the graveyard?
And then to The Park,
same Someplace Else?
You know their numbers by heart, come on now,
Let the guitars be thrown
Let them walk out the door,

Not you,

Treacherous night has nothing to offer you

Crow’s feet don’t show, you say
potholes neither,
your anomalied day shrouded in velvet, looks long and promising
for me, in the night,
there’s La Martiniere somehow
and a picture of me with a violin
a delectable boy with his brown beard and French accent
talking about Bach

I didn’t like his fumbling fingers
and yours are strumming a dark tune
with nobody humming in the background

You are alone, so strum me someday, play a never-ending song

What’s there for you in the death of night anyway?

Watching the stars? I’ll watch with you
If you find a place,

Can you find one for me too?

He just called (a sequel to So, Finally, September 05)

He just called. Said he was in love.
In love, he says. “So did you tell her?”
“No, it is too early I think.”
“Why? But she called, didn’t she?”

“She called and we talked about her poetry.”
“I know, she is really good.”
Writes like Sylvia Plath at times. I remember discussing some of her poems with him. I never read anything by Sylvia Plath. I read poems written for her. Oh, and I read the only novel by her too. Only a few pages into it.

“Tina read it. Twice,” I remembered aloud.
“What? Her poems?”
“No, The Bell Jar.”

But then she’s a girl. She wouldn’t have read Ted Hughes or shed tears when we all shed tears. When we listened to Wish You Were Here for the nth time together. And also Imagine. And sometimes Jim Morrisson too. I like Ray Manzarek’s writing more than his piano.
So do I, I am no fan of the Doors. But his poems? Yes, Jim. In our memories, right next to Syd Barrett.

“Women are perhaps strong. Stronger, that is. Or thick?”
“No, sometimes too sensitive.”
But still you are madly in love with her. (and she is a woman and you thank god for that) “So tell her.”
“What?”

That you want to keep your eyes closed and enjoy this free fall. Or should you? Ask her. If she called today, tell her you read into it. Tell her you read into all her little actions and brood. And then call me up. Your brother.

And the diamond ring that I asked you to buy? Keep it ready, bro, it may come handy any day. What diamond ring? Women like it sprung at the right moment, mostly with the sea in the background.

“But I prefer the mountains. Always have. I always want the mountains in the foreground and Radiohead in the background.” How can mountains be in the foreground . . . but why not, I am not clicking a photograph . . . they won’t block my view . . . we laughed.

“Is it in G Augmented?”
“U-huh…augmented is not a depressing chord, it is probably in G minor. They have to make a song dark and depressing, it must be in minor.” You know, bro, and I will always listen to you.

“Aren’t you calling for rather too long? You could probably have spent this money calling her up,” I tried him.
“Huh,” came his reply.

I love it when he connects.

After the call I went back to some old photographs. Tori Amos kept singing just for me that night.
It was another thing he could hear her too.

Critique

I've been Catherine's critic for some time now. She writes fullbloodedly and sometimes reminds me of Neruda's translated poems. Catherine has promise, and someday you'll all read her.

But recently, Catherine's oneliners have suddenly changed their hue. She was quoting Anne Sexton and sometimes writing better than her, and believe me she can write a lot of good stuff if she wants to. But yesterday she came up with this absolutely unoriginal line:

"Fine, take your patience and stick it up your ass."

Now Northrop Frye would have none of this. He would definitely argue, and understandably so, that sticking something up one's ass is an archetype lodged in one's mind, that probably doesn't have anything to do with really being sodomized. It is that picture in your mind of the proverbial middle finger being raised in defiance, in contempt, in denial, the world over. (I don't know if the Chinese have some other meaning for it.) Only virgin minds of children and some adults like that of Mr Bean are perhaps unaware of the strength of the finger, of actually being able to tell your opponent to shove it.
So, even when you think you are writing something original and witty, you are essentially borrowing from that archetype which urges you, "go ahead, ask him to stick it."

No, I won't accept it as an original line at all.
Next time, think of some other orifice.

Faith

People are talking about their faiths. Moving posts that shake you out of your slumber. Was reading Pottinger's article on why he left a coveted job of a journalist and joined the Marines in Iraq. If the world is getting bi-polar, with Muslims on one side and Christians on the other, which side do the Jews take?

Or is it the USA against the Muslims of the world? Which side do I take? What happens to my dear friend Khalid, my mechanic Assad, if I join the other side? Do we stop having beer together?

What about the communists and antigods? Should I join them? Yes, I am without a religion, but I don't mind when Srinivasa stops for a few minutes to say his prayers at the temple on the way to office. Should I be antigod, or just remain godless?

If there has to be bi-polarity, then the rest of the world has to join the Americans when they plunder a Muslim country to control their oil reserves. And if all the Muslims of the world unite, how are the Shiites and Sunnis gonna eat from the same plate? How will the converted Muslims be treated, the mujahirs in Pakistan who are bombed every week? Will they be taken into the same fold and given the same status of warrior for the sake of this war? What about the nonradical Muslims who don't want to join but write the best Urdu poetry in the world? Will they be killed before the war starts? What about the Muslims who have married Christians, or Jews, or Hindus? Will they start the war by killing their spouses?

And us, the Hindus. The millions of confused Hindus with a million different rituals and cultures. Which camp do they join? I, being a strict meat eater cannot tolerate the vegetarian Hindus. Will I let them join me? What will the Tamil Hindus want? Which land are they going to grab after Sri Lanka...Singapore?

Tell me something, where do the Cubans go? Without the former USSR, where do they go? Why is the US selling food to them now? I thought you guys had an embargo against Cuba? And are you pissed with Cuba because they are Communists and antigod and because you are predominantly Catholic?

I am very confused. Just today. Tomorrow when I drive my jeep through some abandoned wastelands, I may forget about you all. But today I cannot say Shalom Aleicheim or Salaam Aleikyum...there is no peace that I can wish for you.

If the world is getting bi-polar, let us go to the moon.

The Last Weakness

the last weakness, linger on
hover around mindspace, my yellow filter
hold me back when with a violent shrug
I wake up and look around
for a green today

yellow filter's here to stay

while the strength i tasted is saved within,
for a black tomorrow
day without the sun

Spilled to Bloodlessness is the culprit

Every time I feel I have something to write, I think of writing in the other blog. Reason being the readership. At least some people will read me, I think. Cannot tell you how immensely satisfying it is to have somebody read anything you've written. I do that quite often. Thrust my stuff at people and expect them to comment.

Some of them really puked. What mush, they blurted. Someone else gushed, how real. Because I value most of the opinions, I am left thinking what to make of my writing. Is it absolute trash? How come it made her cry then?

But since yesterday I've been finding it difficult to write. Started with the topic of an amblyopic mind, when your mind is gradually going off to sleep, when it refuses to mentally strip for you the girl in the next cubicle. And you feel let down. My mind goes lazy like that at times and I catch myself trying to bribe it. Usually with music.

Was not sure it would make a good topic for a public blog, but that was where I wanted to write. For its readership, again. How vain! Have overcome that today. If I have to blurt out, let me do it here. If I have something separately crafted for Spilled to Bloodlessness, let me post it there.

Because this is where you can goof up and laugh at yourself. But that is like a stage where once you fumble, you trip and fall. Fall where? In others' eyes? How do you care? Who are they? How do they matter? But they are readers, people for whom you write. Yes, sometimes you do write for them, don't you?
Most of the time?
Always?

This is a big one.
"Whatever I write is for them."
Them with the unknown faces and the most beautiful names.

Cut

I watched a violent movie last night. And believe me, I sat through it because although it appeared very realistic, there was hope that it'll turn happy later. Hope of revenge being exacted.

It borrowed from various other movies, and the theme was cliched too. There's this merciless village landlord in the lawless state of Bihar. He is above law and his lumpen sons enjoy something like a diplomatic immunity in that village. They end up raping a nine-year-old girl and throw her into a ditch. Her dad, played by Indian hero Sanjay Dutt, manages to buy a gun and shoots the rapists at the court. Till this time it reminds you of A Time to Kill, and although there are tears et al, the class of a Samuel L. Jackson is missing.

Well, my point is, what should the family have done (the dad, his wife, and three children) after having avenged the rape? According to their original plan, they were all to die together by consuming poison at a secluded garage. The landlord's hired killers would have finished them anyway.

If they died at this point, the film would have been a realistic portrayal of what happens in most of rural India. I would have gone off to sleep thinking there was some kind of justice after all.
However, they do not die. Bollywood sentiments take charge of the film from that point on and it turns into a fantasy. The melancholy music that you hardly noticed earlier becomes bold and I'm sure I won't spend any time talking about it here.

There are many films like this that could have been better with a little bit of editing here and there. You should know exactly where to cut.

Like apparitions in the middle of the road that you can sometimes pass through, I can feel the dreams failing me. Sometimes flying away like some used newspaper from my car on the highway. Yes, I do litter our Indian roads. Only paper and biodegradables though. Am a philistine but not philistine enough to throw plastic out the window on a highway.

Not as a habit, only in an emergency.
And the dreams are flying away like tissues used in emergency, landing on the thorny bushes of Maharashtra and getting stuck there. I look back and they become white specks in a matter of seconds. Why is this car moving so fast, I wonder. Not fast, but a speed that makes it very unstable and wobbly. But I cannot stop to check the wheel alignment.

I don't have brakes and this highway ends only there. Yes, where I will perhaps mix you the best drink ever.
But these memories are fading and how. Memories in the form of people whom I've failed, people I've touched and felt and wanted for keeps. Flee with me to another country? Wish you met me in school? Is that a poem for me? Believe me, I just couldn't stop the car and step down even for a smoke.

There were cigars and joints. There were baths in the Suketi river. There were photos taken which too faded over time. There was the dream of watching Saurav win the World Cup for India. There were beautiful sunsets knowing the sun won't rise.

I have a bar in the car
I have a bar in this car
Loosen the seat belt and think
This isn't my last fucking drink
If you have to go, you have to go
I have to go where I have to go
See you there when I see you there
This isn't my last bloody drink
Let my nursery rhyme stink
Of Baileys, Bacardi and pink
Dreamless sleep’s coming
“Trade off, turn a fink”

Who wants to be a martyr,
Lemme have my last bloody drink.

"Where do we go?"

"Are we out of Oreen's dream?"

VG looks back. All he could see were Oreen's closed eyes. But that can mean he is still dreaming and has kept them trapped in it. In his dream that takes its own course.

"A dream is much like life, don't you think?" asked EoR.

"Because it is beyond control?"

"Because it springs surprises. Because I never knew whether I will ever get to meet you until tonight." No matter how much I wanted to all these days, thought EoR.

"I haven't poured any whisky on your head. I've saved some champagne for your red locks. The whisky was for Stella."

"VG! You have to try and come out of the dream, we have to find a way out and not get lost in its digressions. Concentrate." Who's Stella though?

And then the conversation loses its meaning. What is conversation for anyway? Is it always used as a means to an end? What end did these two have in mind? None, if you ask me . . . they were brought together in somebody else's dream. The conversation remained highly stimulating though. Stimulating being a relative term. They didn't know that my dream had faded and that I'd woken up. I was busy brushing my teeth as they continued.

"How did you come?"

"Oh, in an airplane, of course, although it was faster in the dream."

"How was the flight?" VG somehow was lost for words. All his words were there in his blog. And he didn't have the password.

"There was this Finnish guy trying to charm a Cuban woman all the way from Frankfurt to Paris. With his knowledge of Oriental art."

"You were in Philadelphia, and now you've come to New Delhi. How come Frankfurt to Paris?"

"Am I? But i distinctly remember the German stewardess. But aren't we in a dream? Or is it New Delhi where we met? Where was the party?"

"In his mind, and he has lost the key to his mind I read once. Which means..."

"...Which means we are actually nowhere!" exclaimed EoR. "Nowhere is where I wanted to be all my life. At least for once."

"Where do we go from here?" VG sounded a little disturbed. He was missing his Toyota and also the old merc he was about to pick up next month. Missing a car? In a dream where there aren't any roads?

"We can walk. Or wait for a short story."

"It is wonderful being lost with you," he smiled back. "Oreen once lost his way coming to Belmont from San Jose. He wanted to stay lost and not step out. At least we don't need to find our way back home."

"Look, there's an apple tree!"

The Party

When I have nightmares of all my frnds having come together for a party, I break into cold sweat. It goes somewhat like this:

Strunk&White is Jewish but doesn't remind you of Woody Allen from Anything Else or Ben Stiller from Keeping the Faith. He is a nice gentleman with some wacky remarks up his sleeve. He can keep an entertaining conversation going without any Christian bashing. Strunk comes in and picks up a glass of orange juice.

As I introduce him to my Buddhist friend AnandaDasa Bhikkhu and the two of them exchange smiles and more, in comes the neo-nazi in his DM boots. Yes, none other than VG with his head shaved.

I start sweating from that point. A nice Jewish guy and a neo-nazi in the same room. While Bhikkhu is more detached from the real world, dwelling in higher plains, his alter ego Puzzled Private walks in every time Bhikkhu walks out. And Puzzled has bought this idea that Zionists are behind 9/11. Some theory, and like all theories, sounds very buyable (oks, viable) despite being full of shit. Don't tell Private I told you that.

By now people have gone ahead and opened my bar, which was replenished just the night before the dream. And in my dream, the bar is big.

VG, surprisingly, does not proclaim his Naziness to the world as he does his baldness and very soon I see Strunk and him engaged in a conversation about Sufi music. They both turn out to be Nusrat fans. Eddie Vedder isn't mentioned.

AnandaDasa walks in. Puzzled went out for a smoke. They still go out for a smoke in my dreams because Aaron's still very young. AnandaDasa tries talking about gods and strength to Aaron, although I have sanitized my house against gods. I even have a multi-insect killer spray for anytime a god peeps in. Marmaladeskies is reading out an Oscar Wilde text to Spider Girl.

So far, so good. My sweat has dried and things are going rather smooth. Religions and beliefs have been shelved for the sake of this evening celebrating music. In the background is Peter Gabriel's score from The Last Temptation of Christ. They all come together as human beings, celebrating life.

Enemy of the Republic walks in. VG stands up, dazed. They walk out together, and the dream fades.

No more enchanted days.

What makes an Indian proud

Yes, a little bit more about our very own Indian cultural heritage. Before I start, let me leave aside a handful of men and women who have managed to evolve into human beings, while the rest of the 1.2 billion remain Indians.

Flashback to 1994: A Japanese girl in a 5 star hotel gets raped in Varanasi, our oldest city, reeking of uncleared culture.

Today: A senior police officer becomes a transvestite and starts dancing around trees claiming he is Krishna's wife. And the media (in any form) laps it up. Nobody takes him to a shrink though. No, I cannot be politically correct today. So what if I too wear a bra at times?

Today: Senior members of parliament caught taking bribe on video.

Flashback to 2001: Tehelka reveals people at all levels (ministers to army heads) taking bribes. Result? The ruling party makes sure the portal is closed and that these investigative journos have criminal cases against THEM! Thankfully they were strong human beings (as opposed to Indians) and could come boldly out of that crisis.

India is the rape capital of the world. Indore, Delhi fight for the top spot.

Nobody has killed Bal Thackerey, Deve Gowda, Narendra Modi, VP Singh, Chandrashekhar (he takes one virgin boy every night), so far.

The seers of a temple are accused of murder. There seems to be ample evidence to prove that. Indians still want to lie at their feet and worship them.

There are conmen and magicians who claim to be reincarnations of earlier sadhus and manage to con people. We see our prime ministers coming to touch their feet. Sadly enough, these peddlers of spirituality (or ism) find a lot of white takers. Next time you see a white guy come to India trading his money for spirituality, tell him the truth.

A goverment tries to talk about controlling population and gets toppled . . .

What is our culture? That of hospitality. Of humility. Of fabulous dance and art forms. Of music the world has borrowed from. Of history and famous historians. Of literature in the various languages. Of mature customs stemming from reason. Of being a good samaritan.

Focus on that. Focus on what can make you proud. Focus on the future. Build roads, send electricity to all the corners of India. Ensure proper irrigation. In your beloved India thousands of farmers commit suicide every year. A tribal woman's hands were chopped off because she refused to withdraw a rape accusation. Female foetuses are aborted in millions. Dowry amounts in Andhra Pradesh range from 50 lakhs to many many crores. Where is the emancipated Indian woman? Buying dildoes and watching strip tease while her dad spends his entire life's income paying for her groom? Oh yes I know where they are: they are all in Delhi, wearing huge bindis and khadi and talking about communist ideals. In the most impeccable English. Now that I mention communists, some bloody Prakash Karat says there should be labor laws in IT and ITES companies. Bugger off with your ideals. Here your people at least have jobs and you want to send the investors back to their countries? Like you closed Dunlop and Bata in West Bengal? What do you do with the retrenched people who have to end up begging or work as gardeners or maidservants? What have you done with the numerous suicides? You couldn't even buy body bags for them, you shithead.

And in the midst of all this crisis somebody from the middle of nowhere comes up with a new name for Bangalore! Boss, there are many things to take care of in your culturally rich nation.
If you really care, open your eyes.

A change of name is the last thing we need.

Bengaluru and kukumbaar

Now that they are changing the name from Bangalore to Bengaluru for the sake of holding on to their "culture" (man, some word that!), I guess it is time for us to move on. It seems they will now teach English through Kannada. Exactly the reason I cried on the first day at Banaras Hindu University. A professor was teaching English essays in Hindi. What is happening to India?

What the fuck is happening to Indians? Or were they always like this "only"? First the Bengalis decide we don't need English till class VI. The result? All the engineers who first learned English at the age of 11 were missing from the interviews and group discussions of the world. Potential employers stopped coming to Jadavpur Univ (a prestigious name in Calcutta) because the guys who would otherwise fare well in the written tests, would not appear for the interviews. They were shy. They fumbled. Tongue-tied while other students (maybe not so bright) were taking away all the jobs. They could speak better English after all.

What is the problem you guys have with English? Why do we have to call Bangalore Bengaluru or Oracle Orakulu? What would Larry Ellison say? Why does cucumber have to be pronounced kukumbaar? Haven't you realized that had it not been for the English, you would probably be a medieval nation where women would have to cover their heads and stay home? Haven't you realized that had it not been for English some cities would not have existed on the Indian map? People would not have held jobs, or you wouldn't be riding a cushy merc at the expense of the taxpayers today? You, the bloody ministers, the upholders of "culture"?

Hold on to your culture, while I get some gravel to fill the potholes on the roads.

The English Teacher

Apex Information Services were closing down their offices in New Delhi, and all of us "abstract writers" were about to be out on the streets of Delhi. We were mostly scavengers and hangers on, moving from one city to another looking for some work. Most of us had come out of Calcutta, because Calcutta was dying. For us, New Delhi offered many dreams.
We were all busy looking out when one day I got a call from a government school in Taki, on the border of Bangladesh, to teach English. A government job! A job where you can actually get paid for not working all your life. What else could I ask for?

Back to Calcutta. In a bus to Taki.

If Taki Government School is famous for churning out the highest scoring students every year, it cannot be very far from Calcutta, I thought. My interview was at the Taki Ramakrishna Mission School, which I thought would be equally good. Such pleasant dreams should always come with a good day's sleep and I happily dozed off in the bus. When I woke up, the road had become narrower and there was this huge river I could get glimpses of through the trees. Taki turned out to be a village after all. Very green, with lotus ponds and a view of Bangladesh across the river that made me yearn for home. That is where home was.

As I walked toward the school through the rice fields, I thought how it would feel to work here, in this small village with tricycle vans and bullock carts being the only modes of transport. A stark contrast after the Mercs and Land Cruisers in Delhi, but what the hell, I don't drive one of those!

The wall around the school had a lot of political graffiti on it, but that is nothing new for any Calcuttan. The communists believe in voicing their opinions through political graffiti on walls, something that apparently started with Mao Tse Tung in China. He wanted an otherwise silenced generation to come out with their grievances on the walls. Bengalis being a very loud race incessantly voicing their unwarranted opinions at tea stalls and in buses, I could not see the reason behind writing on walls, but they were there anyway. Loudly announcing their obscene presence.

There were many candidates who had come for the same interview. Despite my English having a thick Bengali accent, I realized I was the only one who could speak any English! That boosted my confidence a few degrees. I will have a good time, I thought. Soon it was my turn and I had to enter a room where I first got a glimpse of my interviewers. One swamiji in saffron seemed to be the principal, and there were others here and there, watching me. That is when I realized I was the only candidate without a moustache too. And then came the questions.

"Can you tell me the difference between subjectivity and objectivity? With examples?"

This was a fat man with fat, black glasses. I pretended not to have seen him holding a chit of paper under the table from which he was reading out the questions. After each question he had this contented look, aah, one-question-well-put kinds.

"Tumi toe shohorer chheley, tumi ki thakbe ekhaney?" (You are from the city, will you at all stay here?)

I tried to convince them that I was fed up of life in the cities and that I wanted to settle down in a beautiful village like theirs. I guess I was even ready to worship their goddess Kali for the job, complete with her blood and gore and necklace of skulls.

When I came out, I knew I would never hear from them. I even had to teach a class of 30 odd students, for whom I had to translate each sentence I read out from an Oscar Wilde text. I had a good mind to tell them about Mr Wilde's sexual orientations, but controlled my devilish urges for the sake of my life.

Waiting for my bus back to Calcutta, I met this young lady who too had come for the interview. Probably a little late.

"Do you think you'll make it?"

"Don't think I want to," she smiled back.

The romantic dream of life in a laidback Bengali village was gone. I was busy looking for a ticket back to New Delhi, my city of my kinda dreams.

LOR

A pub in Koramangala was the last thing I expected. That explains the skepticism on my eyebrows as I entered Legends of Rock. On a Monday evening.

Already having downed a couple of pitchers of beer at Pecos, we were here to check out the ambience, the sound (BOSE), and the huge plasma TVs . . . we found some guitars signed by Satriani, Mark Knopfler, Sting, and some other gods of guitar. And there was Eric Clapton on the screen in his half pants, singing with BB King, who was enjoying himself to the hilt. Could not recognize the other two men (one white and one black) who were playing with their eyes closed. Now that is when you are praying, I think. Praying to the goddess of music, eyes closed, playing with your soul. It wasn't soul though, it was pure blues.

One guy with us was singing along. Bad Co., Sting, you name it, he knew all the songs by heart. He was singing along as we ordered some vodka and a Cuban cigar. The cigar was passed on from one pair of lips to the other . . . and i still don't know who to attribute the sweetness as I smacked my lips . . . the lipstick, or the tobacco?

There were guitars everywhere, as I said, and there was this huge relief of a guitar on the cieling. You see it everytime you look up to blow out the thick blue cigar smoke.

Apparently there's live music too. Lemme chk them out and let you know abt it. But till then, it was a welcome change from the crowded pubs on MG Road. As I walked out, the frown had given way to a contented smile.

Deep Orange

Is not a nice color on the screen. Curtains or bedspreads can be orange, I don't mind, but the new crazy orange when you sign in to blogger is rather jarring. Especially when you feel the onset of another barren phase. Times when irritants like Martina Hingis are coming back and you are getting relegated to the background. Of what? Of your own mind. Just about when you thought you got a grip on yourself . . . you slip away.

This pit is crazy. You carry it with you but still cannot reach inside and pull yourself out. It's like a nightmare from a sci-fi, you lost the code to your mind. And it remains inaccesible.

And then you sit befuddled, resting your chin on a table top. In all imaginary broodings, there's always a table and a window next to it. Not only mine, pick up any painting of a lost mind and there's a table and a window next to it. It's kinda reassuring to have those next to you. The table for resting the chin and the window to step out lest you need to. You can, but you still won't. You'll stay back and brood, because that makes you feel special. You stay in because you eventually intend to key it all in.

And then there are times when you stop wrestling and go out and stretch yourself in the sun. A good, long stretching of every bloody nerve and sinew. Look back into the room and focus on the poem framed on the wall behind the table. Can you read it from here? Can you read Rudyard Kipling's If through the clear glass?

Believe me, sometimes the room appears dark if you're standing in the sun.

Borrowed stuff

Again, I'm finding it hard to write anything. So here's from a borrowed e-mail someone forwarded:

One phrase every Bengali worth his sweater has grown up with is thanda lege jabey.
It is the ultimate warning of impending doom, an unadulterated form of existentialist advice. Thanda lege jabey.
Thou shalt 'catch the cold'.
'Catching the cold' comes easy to Bengalis. It's a skill that's acquired almost immediately after birth.
Watch a Bengali baby and you would know. Wrapped in layers of warm clothing even if the sun is boiling the mercury,
the baby learns quickly that his chances of survival in a Bengali household depend on how tightly he can wrap himself
in cotton, linen and wool.
Bengalis have almost romanticised warm clothing, so much so that Bengali art has found eloquent expression in
a form of quilt-stitchwork called kantha. I'm sure wool-shearers even in faraway Australia say a silent prayer
to Bengalis before the shearing season (if there's any such season).
I'm also sure the very thought of Bengalis sends a chill down the spine of many a sheep.
In winter, the quintessential Bengali's outfit puts the polar bear to shame. Packaged in at least seven layers
of clothing and the head snugly packed inside the queerest headgear, the monkey cap, he takes the chill head on.
Easy lies the head that wears the monkey cap. With a pom-pom at the top, it's not just a fashion statement;
it's a complete fashion paragraph.
I remember strolling down the Walk of Fame in Hollywood on a pleasant May evening.
My eyes scanned the glittering stars on the asphalt - each an ode to a Hollywood heavyweight.
Suddenly, my ears caught the unmistakable Doomsday warning - 'thanda lege jabey'. I stood transfixed.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is probably the last place one would like to get caught 'catching the cold'.
I turned around. There was this Bengali family braving the American chill. The young brat of the family was adamant
that he didn't want any more clothing but mom wouldn't have any of it - "sweater porey nao, thanda lege jabey."
I need not translate that. Mom won, and the family - sweaters et al - posed for a photograph.
For a race that is perpetually running scared of cold weather, Bengalis have a surprising affinity for hill stations.
Probably, warmth of heart is best preserved in shawls, pullovers and cardigans. In an age when you are judged by how
cool or uncool you are, the warmth that the kakus, jethus and mashimas exude can melt icebergs.
I wouldn't trade that warmth for any amount of cool. However, the monkeycap may look cool without the pom-pom.

This email is confidential. If you are not the addressee tell the sender immediately that you are not a Bengali and destroy your monkey cap.

When

When you change machines, you have to copy all your stuff from the earlier one to the new one. And that is when you start sifting through memories. Did some of that and found the poems that I posted below . . .

It was strange to trash all the memories that I held very dear even a couple of years back. No wonder my hair's grown . . .

One Year Has Passed

When memory evolves,
The dark green of your door becomes moss
And the yellow walls, orange
The sun that set behind us a year back
Is setting out there in the distance today, behind the hills

East, did you say?

Let it be in the east,
Defying all that we think natural,
When memory evolves,
Your silhouetted face facing east
Is lit up by the setting sun.

March 3, 2004

(for the friend who wrote all the paper memories)

Of Preferences in Vain

in my getaway with you, i even dream of rain . . .
although i myself prefer a sunny day
but prefer you over the sun
even sunny california
or fornicating in a bath tub
tumbling down a snowy slope
or mud-slinging, bitching sessions,
over beer,
girls, mobikes, magazines,
and guns . . .
rain over sun
if only you came . . .

will you at all come?

August 24, 2003

All the paper memories

What I have left of you now
notations I made in my book
of arrival and departure
an itinerary of activities
some forced, some fanciful
others imaginary

The schedule was always
subject to change
and the documents accumulated
in and out the door

Here and there I captured
your handwriting somehow
an address that you left for me
a note in the margins

Paper traces have their beauty
a register of style
only two-dimensional
a challenge to your absence
which manifests like a house of cards

These days I see you in my mind
and hear you by electricity

These beautiful communiqués of words
and blocks of sentences
on almost paper

in white bright empty spaces

April 8, 2003

(by a friend who doesn't want to feature here)

Not Moderated

And there are those farts called moderators for e-groups on the net.

The first crush (part 2: The Missing K)

So, my algebra was always weak. Except for the concept of the constant "K." I understood that very well because I experienced one constant through all my evolving dreams. As Kakali (also a K!) gave way to secret fantasies about newer girls and my constant endeavor for growing a moustache, I was also exposed to other necessary things that one should be exposed to as part of growing up proper. I changed schools and moved to this government school for boys when I was in standard eight. My concept of being "bad"was thoroughly jolted. The guys there had taken perversion to an art form. I later heard some of them went on to join the Indian Army and some others were making bombs for the local councillor. At least they don't pelt bombs at unsuspecting young girls any more.

I still used to meet Kakali at the tutorials sometimes. She liked biology (she too seemed to have missed out on algebra) like I did. It was the only option if maths was too much for you. All I could ever mumble was a Hi and she returned it with a polite smile. By then the world knew about my continuing crush for her (it was already five years by then), and probably even she had an inkling. What the others didn't know was that in the meanwhile I had had quite a few other crushes parallely.

Frankly, these were purely platonic in nature. We still had our sexual fantasies about the "white woman" but these girls, our dear classmates, were never subjected to any such desires. We loved to think about their moms instead. The "we" stands for me and all my peers, because our dreams were always shared.

Much later—having lost my virginity one sunny afternoon and after having spent many years indulging in frenetic promiscuity, when I was almost certain that the K on my mind was this pathological urge to slam dunk just about anywhere—I suddenly felt it slipping first from my loins and then from my brain.

I panicked, looking for something to hold on to. Hey, that is me, all I'm about. But it was gone before I even realized.

Now I have a jeep and a Royal Enfield motorbike and tell you that these are the two balls of a man. If only you knew that I'd lost mine trying to learn algebra.



P.S.: The day she got married, Kakali confessed to a common friend that she shared a crush for me too, only wanted me to speak first.

The first crush

Lemme start from Jan 15, 1981, the day I first realized what a schoolboy crush was. It hit me, almost like a huge cricket bat across my face, and I was in love. Kakali, the object of my crush (and as I later discovered, of so many others in my class), was rather blanched, almost like a Caucasian. And that made her stand apart. She was sweet, no doubt, but not really good looking. There were other little girls who were far prettier than Kakali, but she had the "right" complexion to tilt all the pre-adolescent attention to her side of things. We were only ten years old. All of us.

Now we had seen white women in pictures. Mostly pictures in the magazines from Soviet Russia (they used to translate their magazines into ALL Indian languages!!). And also in the National Geographic magazines my dad used to get from his office library. But the latter usually carried photos of African and Latin American tribes, and also of chimpanzees and gorillas. Of Indian shepherds too, at times. So, we had to devour the pictures of the bovine, buxom, Russian women, but white nonetheless. As text never meant anything to me in those days, I just remember the pictures. And now as I try to reconstruct the articles that came with them, they were probably about workplace environment, pollution control, gymnastics and huge ugly trucks (with the white lady in the driver's seat).

But there were women in them. Women who we mentally disrobed everyday (tough, they mostly wore dungarees), experiencing a funny throbbing sensation somewhere deep inside. We were growing up together. Into this entire generation of hungry perverts.

And Kakali walked in. With her red hair and pink lips and light-brown freckles.

The initial silence gave way to utter chaos. It was nothing but a sudden need for seating rearrangement, if I may call it that. There were the shy guys too who quietly looked away. I was one of them. And soon Kakali was sitting between the strongest of the monsters, Subbu and Kumar. A few rows behind me, although I could feel her presence with every hair on my body.

After all these years can I blame her for my not learning algebra?

Ticket to Ride

And then one day there was very little time for all that I had on hand. I was holding the tickets and there was your e-mail out of the blue, after two years!

What kind of a hibernation was that, through all seasons, twice over?

It was a long e-mail, but I could only skim through it.

I will come back and read it. Today, I am holding tickets to somewhere else.

The Koln Concert and some other gods

If you have heard it, and gone back to it time and again . . . thank me for not writing about Keith Jarrett.

My current god, and seems like will remain my god for a long time to come . . .

My other gods: Dr L. Subramanium, Ian Anderson (for Divinities) and some others lent to me by velvetgunther. He has this huge collection of gods at home . . .

he he, Thom Yorke too . . . don't cringe . . .

Fecundity

Comes and hits you. You are then suddenly left with many children . . . awaiting another long, barren hiatus.

What do you do with those children in those barren days? Toy with them, toss them around, shove them under your bed and forget about them for days on end. I don't have an answer, why do you ask me? I myself have thrown some of my children out the window when I came back to them. Nopes, not all children can be called mine. They were born unwanted in a fecund phase. So go.

And what do they do? They grow, some hibernate, some turn yellow. Some rot, like only mangoes can. "Rotten mangoes" is a very Indian expression, ain't it? (We don't say rotten apples, because we don't let them rot. I think I can even count the number of apples I had in the last 34 years.)

And being an Indian, fecundity is something you cannot avoid, be it in anything. When you talk, you talk more than necessary. When you write, you digress and talk about ten other things. When you reproduce, you resemble a protozoan. At the workplace, you do every thing other than work.

I'm not here Indian bashing. Just keying in the incessant monologue happening in my mind. Otherwise I might have been caught talking to myself. That is a nonbailable offence I hear. Must be true . . . it's our dear beloved country after all.

Fecund for no reason, didn't I say?

Just waiting to drive his newly acquired Toyota. Left-hand driven, so it should be quite something trying to drive it on Indian roads. He? My self-proclaimed Nazi frnd . . . who I'm very fond of.

No, we spent nights in the same room, even on the same bed at times, but no, not him.

And there is AnandaDasa, another dear brother of mine. Somebody who is very very proud of being an Indian. He made the new British Airways ad "for India, the world is waiting." Drove his car too.

And then one sunny afternoon I carried her luggage across the road. This she?
No, not now.

Is this a suicide note? Why can't I just stop? Is this fecundity as you know it? My pen needs a condom too.

The liberal

The liberal says I don't agree but I agree that you have a right to disagree. Let all the different paths float around and not collide.

And the same liberal looks away when a witch is burnt in today's West Bengal. Communist state? Hah!
When thousands of female foetuses are aborted everyday in India.
When a court issues a nonbailable warrant against a woman who says men shouldn't expect their wives to be virgins. Ha ha ha . . .

Why aren't the Brits coming back with their whips, guns, and constitution? But then again, they are busy taming the weapons of mass destruction. Give me a race to look up to, will you? Or an entire army.

No, I can do without your god, thank you, we have 330 million of them already!

Facing Fear, Alone?

The Himalayas

Just a line about why people go to the Himalayas for all the answers.
Because the mountains make you realize you don't need the answers after all. That life is much beyond seeking answers to petty everyday questions.

It is the essential Hindu spiritual quest. One place that makes you realize how puny you are after all. How futile your entire life is. And for those who are at awe of the Himalayas, nothing else matters.

My salutations to you, Alison Hargreaves, for having found salvation in your death, whatever your faith.

Wish we all could die like you. Heroes, and having overcome all fears. Let me kiss your feet.

Overhead projectors

Yes, AnandaDasa, I can sympathize with your angst but cannot empathize yet. Agnostic was a term probably invented in the 1860s after Darwin shook the dark world of the white Christians. I don't want to reach out to the Merriam-Webster lying nearby to even check. Who cares? An agnostic is someone who questions the existence of god. Someone tells me Aaron questioned the magical powers of some god, so is he the first agnostic from our myths? I could never finish reading the Old Testament. Or the New one.

(The Charvakas, or the materialists were there before the times of Buddha, trying to spread the cause of reason as opposed to blind faith, which is always the easy way out. Like the dead sea scrolls, even their literature was destroyed by the Hindu Brahmins, who never wanted the poor, ignorant populace to see light. I have older atheists to choose from if I want to. More than five thousand years old, in fact.)

So, agnostic is not a fit term in my dictionary of things to describe someone who questions the very necessity of creating a god in the first place. Today, when my little Aaron watches the clouds come down and pick up huge cows in this videographic rendition of a tornado in the movie called Twister, he feels the first signs of fear seep in. Okay, so if there's a tornado, even my all-powerful daddy won't be able to stop us from being picked up and thrown around like in a circus.

Or videos of that quake, or why not the bomb blasts all over the war-torn world? Today, if you pray to your god, pray to him/her to stop the next bomb from being blasted in a crowded marketplace. Jordan, New Delhi, London, wherever.

If fear gives birth to the desire for something powerful that can keep you and your loved ones safe, it can be mathematically put as: Fear = birth of gods, everywhere in the world. Almost at the same time, perhaps, but for that I got to consult some encyclopedias of evolution, compiled by mostly believers anyway.

Why not learn to accept the fear as part of our lives? A short life, some fears, big or small, and nobody to protect you. How do you like such a world? Sans gods?

Sadly, that's not going to be. Today even newspapers have columns on astrology, horoscopes and psuedosciences. It sells, buddy. Our stars and our gods know hot business. And there will be news clippings of a Pope claiming the Universe was an intelligent creation. Yes, all the light fell on Rome. So much so that they were blinded enough to choose a ruler who allegedly subscribed to Hitler's anti-semitic view of a world ruled by white Aryans . . . have you seen his eyes, AnandaDasa? What do they tell you? That the world should listen to him? And what do you say when one such god apparently comes to Prof Bush's dreams and asks him to go plunder at his own free will? So gods support personal vendettas these days?

If little Aaron has a fear, I'd want to teach him to analyze it to a point where he cannot find any solution. The next step shouldn't be to give in to external influences that egg him on to start believing in something abstract, controlling
everything from up there. Yes, give up and accept that it is humanly impossible to fight this fear. And there's nothing beyond the human brain either. Nothing called superhuman. In stories, yes, because stories are always nice to read. In stories of the Asura being slayed by Ma Durga. In projections of our fears out there in the sky, like some new age laser show, projecting gods . . . in their dhotis and robes. I wonder who sold them clothes, though.

Come down for once. Open your eyes. In times when all around you have chosen to close theirs. Accept the fears, live with them, and walk proudly to your grave.

No prayer can save us from the inevitable "scheme" of things.



p.s. I use "scheme" because it is a nice word, not because it suggests some intelligence controlling everything.