Ran Out

Somewhere in the icy cold mountains of Kashmir, a soldier woke up this morning. He brushed his teeth, took a freezing bath, and dried himself with his night clothes. The soldier then wore his uniform, put on his belt and gave himself a short glance in the small table mirror beside his bed. He finally put on his army boots, and marched out of his room looking like a man on a mission.

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Somewhere in the boiling hot plains of Delhi, Amir woke up this morning. He brushed his teeth, took a nominal bath, and dried himself unnecessarily with a towel. Amir then wore his kurta and jeans, put on his belt and gave himself a rather self-conscious, prolonged stare in the large mirror opposite his bed. He finally put on his floaters, and marched out of his room trying very hard to look like a man on a mission.

Yummy

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Khana Khazana! I’m your host Bery Vored and today I’ve got something really special for you people. It’s called the LSA.

Ha ha, don’t be afraid! It’s not what you’re thinking, just a simple, clean, easy-to-make, easily-made dish, and one that’ll leave you wondering what it really tasted like!

Getting to the recipe, start with a Day Without Anything To Do. Boil it over a Morning Spent In Bed for a minimum of three hours, maximum - as much as you like, and leave it in the Hot Summer Sun for about half an hour.

Pretty easy, isn’t it? And you know what? Half the work is already done!

Now take the pan and put some Indigestible Paranthas to it. If the mixture burns and lets out violent, pungent fumes, you know you’re on track! Take the above and if you so wish, put a pinch of Movies Played And Stopped In Between. To add further spice to your very own LSA, you can even add a little of Newspapers Flipped Through And Closed.

You’re now almost done. To add colour to the thing, you can add two teaspoons of Cigarettes Smoked To The Filter. This is sure to give the mixture a tinge of bright, effusive yellow. If you’re the dreamy type, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to add a handful of Absurd Plans For The Evening as well. Just for fun, I mean.

Last but not the least, be sure to put in some Tongues Clicked And Sighs Sighed. This is perhaps the most crucial part of the recipe, giving all the previous actions meaning and form. In a way, summing them up!

All this done, go ahead and have a bite at the yellow, placid looking solid in front of you. What you have got, ladies and gentlemen, is your very own Lazy Summer Afternoon!

I hope you liked what I had on offer today. Your host Bery Vored promises to be back at the same place, same time next week. Till then, its goodbye!

The Temple

Overnight Rain. Mud. Temple. Outside. Corner. Amir. Standing.

Question: Why is Amir standing in front of the temple?
Options:

A) Amir loves standing in the mud.

B) Amir regards this as the garden spot of the city. He is just drinking in the view.

C) Amir is a sleepwalker. He doesn’t know. He is just sleeping. He is just walking.

D) Amir is bored.

Correct Answer: D

Amir is bored. Why? Because there is nothing to do. Nothing to do! He is waiting for the aarti to begin. And finish. There is quite some time left before it did, and his parents, intensely devout that they are, are determined not to leave the temple without having witnessed it.

So, escaping the repeated insistence of his father to sit with them inside, he came out for a walk.

Question: Then why is he standing?
Answer: He soon found that the stroll wasn’t quite a good idea – the monsoons were on, the road was muddy, with puddles aplenty. So finally, without any options left to consider, he decided to stand at a corner and look.

But look at what?

Question: Describe the scene in front of Amir.
Answer: The place outside the temple is crowded. It is evening; time for the aarti, and therefore people are flocking in, smelling of their undiminishing, unshakeable faith in religion. There is the smell of incense too, coming from the shops on his right and left, selling just about everything you might associate with worship – coconuts (for prasad), cloth (for the Gods to wear), specially perfumed agarbattis to simply take away, etc etc etc.

And yes, they are also selling what might be called religious memorabilia – small artefacts, paintings of Krishna and Radha, even watches with Krishna playing his beloved flute on the dial - which devoted followers can buy to remind themselves of their devotion, and foreigners can take away to show off to their folk back home.

“Hey Barney, what do you have there?!”

“Oh I got that from Indyeah. It’s a Krishnay-Radder painting, one of the Hindu gods, quite a character. And that’s his wife… no no… mistress… na… girlfriend… well, something of that sort.”

“Fuckin’ Beautiful Man!”

“Yeah. Exotic! Heh heh.”

There are many foreigners to be seen here, not in the clothes Amir would associate with them, but in saffron, with brown beads worn in a mala, dressed just like sadhus, the sort he’d seen in the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna – long blonde hair, one chilam in the mouth, one in hand, doped to the bone, singing bhajans as if they really meant it.

Harry-Om-Harry! Harry-Om-Harry!

Face white white. Clothes saffron. So that if you gave them a green turban, they would look like the tiranga ulta. The tri-colour inverted. Ha ha!

There are some which are in their usual attire – tourists – looking like something out of a Woodland advertisement. Bottle green jackets, khakis, brown mountaineer shoes. There are a couple standing in front of the shops, enraptured by the sight of an infant eating bread crumbs, picking them up from the ground itself.

“Rick, look at that!”

“Yeah…got it”, says Rick, clicking on his state-of-the-art camera (Canon EOS1. 10 megapixels. 10X Zoom. Wow.), with a triumphant look on his face, glad to have his Indyeah! - and her blood-sister Poverty - on film.

The crowds slowly thicken. Twenty minutes pass. Amir can hear the bells ringing from the temple. The aarti has begun. He heads back.

Question: How does Amir feel?
Options:

A) Amir is relieved. The wait is over.

B) Amir is angry with himself; he missed the start of the aarti!

C) Amir is sad. It was fascinating looking at the crowd around him.

D) We can’t say. We don’t know. Amir is a sleepwalker.

Denver Paaji !

I walked into Music Station, a place selling music and film CD’s and DVD’s. I was there to return the Bhool Bhulaiyya CD I had rented the day before. There were two people already at the counter, and I waited for my turn, looking at the various shelves having a host of movie discs on show.

On the other side of the shop, standing aside the pair of headphones and the couple of music CD’s you can listen to for trial, were two typical Haryanvi Jats – tall, burly and with an air of unmistakable menace around them. One of them had the headphones to his ears, while the other was going through the adjoining shelf.

“Paaji! Aap yeh gaana suno….paagal ho jayoge aap!”, cried the first one, suddenly.

“Achha ji? Lao!”, replied the other, and took over the headphones.

A few moments later, he handed them back.

“Denver hai na yeh?”

“Haan ji…aapne suna hoga yeh gaana pehle…”

“Haan suna hai….teri gaadi mein hi kaafi baar”

“Magical voice hai ji, is bande ki….”

“Hmmm.”

The man on the headphones now went on to listen to the song with sheer delight on his face, almost dancing along with the tune. He was singing as well, and his voice was as horrible as horrible could be, but I got enough words from them to recognise the song –

“Country roaaaaaaaaaaaadddds, take me hommmmmmmmmme
To the plaaaaaaaaace, I beloooooooooooong
West virginiaaaaaaaaaa, mountain mommmmmmmaaaaaaaa
Take me hommmmmmmmmme, country roaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadddds !”

“What a voice, yaar, what a voice!”, he finally concluded, putting the headphones down.

It was amazing, to see two of these so-typical desi Haryanvis, whom I had seen previously only as local kirana shop owners, traffic policeman or bus drivers (and found it hard to associate them with anything else), to be discussing John Denver at a posh music store.

And then when I thought about it, I discovered that this is exactly what Gurgaon has to offer, which is different from all other places in India.

Here, you have desi Jats enjoying Denver and other western artists, big, over-sized aunties going about in fashionable, obscene-looking, designer trousers, and teenagers, ‘cool dudes and dudettes’, all dressed to kill, enjoying their evening out at expensive coffee parlours.

It is fascinating, when not slightly irritating.

Stream Kya Hai ?

He was a heavily moustached, heavily built man of medium height. We shared the same coupe on the Ashram Express from Ahmedabad to Delhi. It was seven in the morning, there were at least three hours before the train reached its destination, and it was out of boredom, and boredom alone, that this man had started asking me questions of no or little significance to him.

I had been sitting on the lower berth since 4 A.M., numbly looking at passing stations, unable to withstand the blast of the air-conditioner while trying to sleep on the top berth. The cooling system had been strengthened especially after Jaipur, to leave the coach feeling like Simla, and even three blankets, one stacked over the other, weren’t enough to help me forget that fact.

The man had joined me at around six thirty, and sat down, looking out with a stoned expression on his face. Then, after some time, getting out of his trance, he took out two packets of manufactured bhujia from his handbag. He offered them to me, and when I refused (because I wasn’t keen on taking my hands out from my jacket pocket, more than any other reason), he insisted, and did so repeatedly, until a vocal, assertive “No, no” from me silenced him finally.

After about two minutes of silence, he then asked me if I was a student. When I said I was, he stared casually at me for a while, munching away, as if trying to decipher the meaning of the encrypted piece of information I had just communicated to him.

“Ahmedabad mein?”

“Haan.”

“Kaun sa college?”

“DA-IICT. Dhirubhai Ambani……”

“Engineer?”

“Haan. Engineering”

“ Wo to Reliance ka hai na? Aapki naukri to wahi lagti hogi?”

And for the 572^nd time since I’d been an engineering student at DA-IICT, I explained that there were other companies that came for placements, that the people absorbed by Reliance formed a very small percentage.

He seemed slow at taking in this answer as well, and there was another pause of about two minutes.

“Stream kya hai?”

And as on countless train journeys and family meetings before, I had to explain to him that I was doing a B.Tech. in ICT, what it meant and what exactly the course structure was like.

He listened attentively, nodding quite vigorously in between, trying to show that he understood. After having taken the almost mandatory few minutes’ silence again, he began to speak, now about his family. His way of pausing between questions had an unsettling effect on me – every time he became quiet, I felt glad at being left alone finally, only to have him start another line of conversation a few moments later.

“Mera bhatija…wo bhi engineering kar raha hai…wo jo college hai na…err…err…Nirma.”

“Oh Nirma…”

“Nirma.”

(A shorter spell of silence this time, of about 20 seconds)

“Uske board mein achhe number aaye the….”

“Haan?”

“Mera bhatija…10^th mein 90-95 percent laaya tha….12^th mein 80-82 aaye the…”

I nodded. Solemnly.

He went on to tell me about his entire range of bhatijas and bhatijis then, how much they had scored in the various examinations they had given, how talented they were, and what they were doing with their lives as of now.

After a little time, about half an hour, I realised that seeing me listening to him attentively, he felt encouraged to tell me more, to carry on with his discourse on where his family stood professionally.

It was rather weird; to see this man whom I’d known for just a couple of hours, when we hadn’t even exchanged names, to talk to me about his entire family, about their goals and aspirations, about what he thought about them, it confused me, it made me feel uncomfortable, and I wanted to end it. Yet courtesy allowed nothing else.

But with conscious effort, I tried to look less attentive - nodded less, looked out of the window more, fiddled around with my handbag. He was initially slow at taking in this clue as well, but he finally did, and then gradually assumed silence. I was relieved; the rest of the trip passed without any further dialogue.

Simple Things

Sid dear had been very kind to tag me in his last post. And as I’ve nothing better to write on right now (going through a dearth of ideas, as the sophisticated novelist would put it), I choose to elaborate on his crappy topic. I choose to make it even crappier.

Be sure to refer to his piece before you have a look at mine.

http://sleepingtablets.blogspot.com/2007/10/you-got-tagged.html

If you don’t do so, you might end up taking me for a bored, sadistic idiot, something that I might actually be but something I would rather not confide to you.

So here it is!

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At the age of 21, you are neither a kid nor a man. You are somewhere in between those two states, unsure about yourself, about what you must retain and what you must change. Self-obsessively lost in your endeavour to make this transition peaceful and coherent, you forget the little things that you used to do earlier, things that gave you great joy in the past and those which you might be embarrassed to execute now. Now, that you are unsure.

Well ‘Keep It Simple’, as the old clichéd saying goes. In an attempt to do the same, I shall now make a list of small things that you might have loved doing in the past and which you must try doing from here on -

1) Fight with your kid sister – Ah! Remember the last time your sister and you tried pulling each other’s hair out, and having been frustrated doubly by your eventual inability to do so, satisfied your desire to inflict pain with a big thump or two on the back? Deeply satisfying, wasn’t it? You’d never realise how much so it was, but once you start doing it again, you’ll relive the same boundless joy you felt the first time. After all, this was your personal home version of the Fight Club!

By the way, you can fight with your kid brother as well, if you don’t have a sister. The joytitude would be almost the same, I presume.

2) The Knock-knock bluff – This is something I used to do a lot as a kid. On days when we friends didn’t get the bat and ball to play with, to pass time, we rang the bell of any house in our locality and then disappeared into some nook or corner waiting for the response of the person who opened the door. More often than not, the flat chosen was of the Uncle or Aunty who was the most khadoos (the ones who scolded us before giving the ball back when a sixer reached their terrace) and it was immensely satisfying watching him/her annoyed at finding no one at the door. Also, if the person was someone who had actually never returned a ball that had reached his/her terrace, we rang the bell multiple times till each one of us was convinced that that particular ball-eater had been given ample punishment.

3) Mixing colours in the water tanker – This is something you can attempt during Holi. After four or five hours of mutual decoration, when the people in your apartment have retired to their bathrooms to wash their vividly colourful selves, you and your friend can go to the terrace and pour colours into the water tanker. People dying to get the much needed bath would be aghast to find red, blue and green coming out of the taps. I’m sure that would annoy the Uncles and Aunties no limit, which is again something that is sure to give you stupendous joy and satisfaction.

That’s just three. The Dearth of Ideas Syndrome again. Well anyway, you can add an idea or two of your own here. The rule is simple and easy to remember: Anything that gives others agony will give you joy! Do such simple things and you would find yourself becoming a child again, happier and less caught-up.

My Own Little Museum

My room is a museum of sorts. Only a very dirty, disorganised one. This is how it looked about a month ago and I daresay it still looks the same, if not worse.

And as I’ve always wanted to give the place an ‘exotic’ look, there is a lot of stuff borrowed, or shall I say incorporated, from outside too. Like –

1) KJ’s red-and-black Bridgestone bag – That worked its way into my life about a year back and to its credit, has been able to find itself a nice permanent spot in here, next to the almirah, on the floor. K had been kind enough to give it to me for a Diwali trip back home and for no apparent reason, she never got it back.

2) KJ’s white socks – I really feel no shame at all in telling you folks that I borrowed a pair of grey-white socks from a girl. It happened on a cold November evening last year, when K seeing me shivering rather violently in my Bata slippers, took pity and gifted me the pair with warmth-filled tears in her eyes.(Though she later claimed that she merely lent it, didn’t gift it, but you know whom to believe, don’t you?)

3) GA’s Walkman – The thing is a bit scary. It looks like something straight out of Star Wars, with a shiny blue body and silver outlines. Very techno, if you know what I mean.

And that’s not the only reason it’s scary. Once I pushed the PLAY button and I heard a man speaking, as if for an interview. There was a lot of disturbance on the tape but I was attentive enough to catch some words like – communist, sweat, toil, revolution, affected districts etc. I jumped on the STOP button then and there and have never touched the thing again. It has been lying undisturbed on my room-mate’s table for almost two weeks now.

4) GA’s jug – That is another one of those things my ex-room-mate left behind as part of his legacy. This is a brown-coloured water jug made up of brass which looks like something the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan would have loved to keep in his living room.

5) Someone’s headphones – Now this is slightly weird. Believers might take this as an act of God. Atheists, on the other hand, might shrug their shoulders and say that I need to pull my brain socks up and stop thinking too much.

Whatever you wish to take it as, here’s the story. I found this pair of Frontech headphones on my table last April. I have absolutely no idea how it got there. When I first saw them, I thought I was still half-asleep and seeing things. So I went off to brush my teeth and when I came back, they were still there. I left my room to bathe, came back, and they were there, as before. I stayed out all day, busy with lectures and labs, and in the evening, when I came back to my room, they hadn’t budged from their position even the wee bit.

Now all I want to say is that I never believed these headphones had supernatural power and would fly off suddenly, while I was away. But I thought that somebody might have left them on my table the previous night and would, sooner or later, come and claim it back. No one actually did; I call them my own now.

6) GSN’s slippers – That’s the latest import. A very simple pair, blue in colour, of Bata, made in India. It’s a very long story of how this ended up here and I’m too tired to write about it now. Maybe, I’ll put up another post with the details later. For the time being, let’s put it all down to Divine Will.

Well, that’s just six of them. There are countless other articles, some visible, some hidden which previously belonged to some other human being. As I've said before, I just brought them over here to add spice to the place, to my little museum.

The End Is Not Near

When I was about 5-6 years old, one of my Mamaji’s friends seeing me with a pen in my hand, trying to solve a sum, had remarked – “Mat pakdo beta…mat pakdo…ek baar is cheez ko pakad liye to phir kabhi peechha nahi chodegi.”

Words of wisdom, if there ever were any.

When I was in primary school, I was promised that mathematical tables and crappy essay assignments were only part of the learning curve; this would pass eventually and +2 is all about bunking classes, going to the theatres, having fun.

When I was in +2, I was promised that the Board exams were only a meaningless hurdle which had to be passed and passed gracefully nonetheless, that the nerve-shattering entrance examinations were that price I would have to pay for a comfortable life afterwards, that college comprises the best years of a person’s life, I was only to wait.

When I’m in college, I am promised that all I need to do is to work hard for good grades and get myself a nice job. A fat salary, nice start to my corporate career - everything’s going to be an easy ride after that. Life begins at 40, isn’t that how the famous saying goes?

I have this gut feeling that when I’m 40, I will be promised to slog it out for another decade or so; after all, I’ll have a family to take care of, the children’s education, big, never-ending loans to pay off and whatnot.

By the time I’m 60, thanks to Classic Regular, I guess lung cancer would surely have had its final say.

So tell me, my dear reader, when I’m dying, ready for the final goodbye, with the pen no more in my tired hands, will the priest at my deathbed promise me a happy, hassle-free afterlife? And more importantly, how credible would that last promise be?