The Death of Familiarity

“Why don’t we ever learn that all changes of place are for the worse? It’s not love for the place; it’s the familiarity, like old winter clothes.”

- English, August
Upamanyu Chatterjee

How does he start?

It was like being in the presence of an old lover, there was familiarity but also the knowledge that he didn’t belong here anymore, that it belonged or was going to belong to someone else very soon. Yet, everything was there as he had left it, books and papers strewn on the table, the almirah wide open with some leftover clothes, some leftover books and CDs. Even the graffiti on the wall, and the little Mao Zedong mask, hanging rather precariously.

He had only a few hours to himself. His last few hours as the owner of this hostel room, one that he had inhabited for four long years, his territory. He had to check if anything worth of value was still left to be taken away, throw out the remaining garbage and pass on the room possession to the supervisor.

The place almost felt eerie, naked and abandoned. To think that not so long back, this place had been full with conversation, laughter, Floyd and Morrison, was unimaginable. He felt heavy with feeling, something that was hard to explain, even to himself.

How does he start?

He looked into his drawer. It was quite a melange, from everything like newspaper contacts to received rakhis on display. There were also a broken nail-cutter, some shampoo pouches , fee receipts as old as four years and keys for which he had now lost the locks.

He picked up the rakhis; they could not be thrown away like that. The shampoo pouches – they could still be used. And what about the newspaper contacts? Couldn’t they be of use later?

Suddenly, he felt tired, physically and mentally. He closed the drawer and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Was it possible for him to take away everything? Was it even desirable? Was it correct wanting to create an exact replica of this room, with its drawers, racks and closets, wherever he was headed next? Is it right to carry memory as baggage and not leave behind things knowing that they didn’t belong to you anymore, and indeed weren’t even needed?

With some effort, he got up again and headed for the almirah. It had been wide open for the last couple of years, in the exact position as it was now, owing to his lethargy and near aversion to cleanliness. There were cobwebs and dust all around, and retrieving things felt like digging up stuff from debris. There was not much to take really; the few t-shirts, socks and handkerchiefs littered weren’t fit for public consumption anymore, and he let them remain where they were. There were a few assorted CDs too, perhaps the only thing worth taking away, and he pulled them up.

He felt rather exhausted. There was dust on his hands and his whole body was soaked in sweat. Why, he thought to himself. What’s all this for?

It was over. Whatever remained would be thrown away. He walked to the door and looked at the room one last time. He tried to sum everything up – the room and him, but his thoughts failed him, or his intelligence did. Irritated, he switched off the power, walked out and locked the room.

Ready to walk away, all of a sudden, he felt the urge to see the place once more, now for the last, last time. He opened the door again, switched on the lights and had another look. Unanticipated, a wild surge of emotion ran through him.

Why, why does he even have to leave this place? Why can’t he live here forever? Why do we ever move away? Why do we ever leave our homes?

He felt angry, repulsed – whether by himself or the room, it was hard for him to say. He walked out finally, locked the door and walked away, without looking back, with as much confidence as he could possibly fake.

Loss

Amir woke up today morning to find his Self missing. The realization came to him quite suddenly; he first felt the void in his head, then he sensed it going down his neck, his spine and then travel to every single part of his body. It wasn’t something ordinary that happened every other day. That much was pretty clear. For the void, rather than giving him a feeling of space, made him feel strangely heavy. A vacant heaviness or a heavy vacant-ness - both meaning the same.

He got up from the bed and the void travelled with him. He didn’t know what to do with it, or even what to do at all. On an ordinary day, he would have brushed his teeth, prepared for himself a cup of tea, and then sat down on the balcony with the morning newspaper. But all this seemed senseless at that moment. Inconsequential. Not that these tasks had overwhelming significance in his everyday life anyway, but the futility of it all struck him to the core today.

Therefore, leaving everything, he went and lay down on his bed.

Where could it have gone? Suddenly, without warning. He had felt quite alright last night, nothing had happened to make him uncomfortable. They had had a drink session at Ari’s place, and after hours of dancing and singing, he had returned home in the late hours of the morning, exhausted and happy. Where had the feeling gone? It was replaced by this weird dullness, this inexplicable sensation of loss.

Looking at the parking lot overlooking his house, where a bunch of car-washers were getting on with their job, Amir tried to think of a possible solution. What could he do to make the situation better? Where to look for the darn thing?

Where would he find his own Self?

It wasn’t just a thing, not his wallet or the lighter. It was him. He couldn’t just jump out and try to look for it beneath the bed sheets, or check whether it had, by mistake, slipped underneath the bed, or remove the junk off his study table, thinking that maybe that was what hid it. He could not even tell anyone about it, simply because no one would believe him. They would laugh it off, blaming it on the hangover. This was something so huge, something so personal, that he couldn’t even hope to regain it by talking it over with a friend, or by holding a loved one’s hand, or by looking into someone else’s eyes. This was, and he knew it already, much beyond that.

With much mental effort, he walked over to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Suddenly, his own face seemed alien to him, the eyebrows, the curve of his cheeks, the mouth, the chin – everything seemed new and cold, as if it belonged to a different person. Who was he, Amir found himself asking. Was he living inside another person? Did this assortment of organs even belong to him? He looked at his hands, his legs, and he felt he wasn’t even real, just playing a character in some video game, using someone else’s body, who controlled everything but had no claim to ownership.

The feeling of emptiness, the loss of Self, was overbearing. He couldn’t stand it and found his legs shaking rather alarmingly. Somehow, he pulled his body, which felt now like a rented piece, to the bedroom. He lay down on the bed again, staring at the ceiling, contemplating sleep. Maybe that would freshen up his memory a bit. In any case, Amir simply didn’t know what else to do with himself.

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What he also didn’t know was that the realization that had dawned upon him today was the end result of something that had been going on for many years now. He had lost his Self long ago, misplaced it somewhere and hadn’t even given a damn at the time. Time had passed, and though sometimes he did feel lonely and vacant, such moments were pretty short-lived, overcome by spells of prolonged activity, or lost in the laughter and nonsense of everyday conversation. All this while, he had never felt a desperate need to question himself, to look within and see how he had changed and was changing. The Self had left him a long time ago, just that its realization, which had remained hidden from him until this day, had finally made its presence felt.

And Amir didn’t know what to do.

Bridge Chalein?

All the characters and events in this piece are entirely fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

From the flashlights of the motorcycle, it was pretty clear to all of them that what stood ahead, just about fifty metres away was nothing but a police jeep.

Their little plan had all it takes to get into the deepest possible shit. It was past one in the night, they, Abbas, Muahid and Tayseer were on someone else’s bike, in a relatively unknown city, without anywhere specific to go, but sure in their minds that they had to go somewhere. After all, they were happy. That’s the least they could do. Go somewhere.

So, having taken a packet of wafers and two Thums Ups for their little picnic from one of the very few places that were open so late, they decided to go to the famous bridge, a broken one, about two to three kilometres into the wilderness. On their way there, the talk was of murders, encounters and cover-ups, and many other possibilities their lives could meet at the bridge, depending on which they might accidentally meet there, the police or some scoundrels. None of them suspected that weren’t after all building castles in the air. The first sight of the jeep was just the preamble for what was to follow.

‘Abey koi hai wahaan pe…truck ya jeep…’, said Tayseer, as if this was a fact that needed mentioning.

‘Jeep hi hai…police ki hai kya?’, added Abbas, fearing the worst.

‘Haan police ki hi hai…’, replied Muahid, and after letting the realization sink in, ‘Waapis chalna hai kya?’

This was a crucial question, the sort which one would rather like to pose than answer. There was a brief silence, not more than a few seconds, as the question needed to be answered quickly, the three of them getting closer to the jeep with every passing moment.

‘Abey chalte hain….faltu mein panga na ho jaaye’, Tayseer, chicken heart, finally uttered. This was all the other two chicken hearts needed, and without wasting further time, Muahid, who was driving, took a U-turn and headed back.

The danger dealt with, the three breathed easy again. Ripples of nervous laughter were complemented by remarks such as ‘Bach gaye yaar!’, ‘Kya kismet hai!’ and ‘Ab kahaan jaaye!’. But this hadn’t gone on for long, before Abbas interjected.

‘Abey waise problem kya hai?...na humare paas daru hai, na kuchh aur…bas 3 dost hai, chips aur cold-drink peene aaye hai…unko isse kya problem ho sakti hai?’

This was another good question, again one which was really difficult to answer. It is hard to say what transpired next, but within moments, chicken hearts turned into brave hearts, the bike headed back towards the jeep, all three infused suddenly with a new-found confidence in the innocence of their little outing.

They parked the bike just a little beyond the jeep, and though it was pitch dark, each searched for the others’ eyes, for a mirror to their apprehensions, waiting for someone to break the uneasy silence. It was broken, but it wasn’t they who had spoken.

From the back of the jeep, came out a moving a torch, and a voice beckoning them. None of them were really taken aback, they were expecting it, almost waiting for it.

As they approached the back of the jeep, it turned out that there were no less than four policeman present at the spot, three at the back with one asleep, and one in the front, who as they would later discover, was their boss. One of the two awake sub-ordinates, whom we would hereafter refer to as Good Cop, was the first to speak.

‘Kahaan se aaye ho tum log? Kya kar rahe ho yahaan?’

‘Kuchh nahi uncle…woh aise hi…’, replied Abbas, leaving Tayseer a little surprised as to how quickly he had moved on to buttering the policeman, calling him ‘uncle’.

‘Raat ko dhai baje tum yahaan aise hi aaye the! Woh kya hai haath mein?’, Good Cop retorted, his tone a bit harsher this time, pointing to the chips and soft drinks in our hands.

‘Kuchh nahi uncle…woh chips hai….aur…’, Tayseer replied, thinking at the same time whether ‘sir’ would have sounded better.

‘Bas yahi laaye ho?....’, Bad Cop finally spoke up, sounding rather disappointed. He sounded drunk, and excited, this little incident perhaps being the only diversion in his otherwise long and uneventful night vigil. ‘Yahin khade raho.’, said the Good Cop now, and both of them walked towards the motorcycle.

What they were looking for was liquor, and had it been found, it would have been the perfect excuse to have the youngsters jailed for the night and extract some nice cash out of them in the morning. But as they found nothing, even after an elaborate search, they returned silently, almost not knowing what to do now.

Having won a point in their favour, Abbas, Muahid and Tayseer now started to ask the cops for forgiveness, saying that they would never come here again, that they were just a bunch of stupid, innocent teenagers wanting a good time, that they had absolutely no idea that a small picnic on a deserted piece of land in the wilderness at two in the morning wasn’t the safest thing to do.

When they had no more excuses left, all three fell silent and there was a rather uncomfortable silence for a second or two. Bad Cop now took over the proceedings.

‘Thane le chalo sabko! Saale chutiye…subah tak inko wahi rakhna hai…tab samajh mein aayega inke…jab newspaper mein photo niklegi na….’, and then, as if struck with a sudden amazing idea, ‘woh India Today walo ko bulaon….haan wahi jo poore din idhar udhar ghoomte rehte hain’

Good Cop had gone on staring at the hapless three all this time, while they looked ready to shit in their pants. They started on their pleadings again, to which Good Cop said he understood but they had to talk to their boss once before anything could be done.

The boss sat in the front seat. He was asleep, probably on two or three bottles of desi liquor. When Good Cop explained the situation to him, he suddenly got up on his seat, as if awakened by a call of duty and scowled at the three.

‘Band karo inko!...madarchod kya karne aaye the yahaan?...bhodsi ke!’, and then as if exhausted by this sudden surge of activity, he dropped back into sleep again.

Bad Cop, now encouraged once more, added that the three must be thieves, as only thieves come out at such hours. To this unbeatable piece of logic, none of the three had an answer.

‘Kahaan ke rehne walo ho tum log?’, he now asked.

‘Dilli ke, sir’, Tayseer replied.

‘Kabhi dilli mein 8 baje ke baad nikalte ho?’

Another stupid taunt. Tayseer wanted to laugh at the policeman, but kept quiet, knowing that this wasn’t what he was looking for.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed in this fashion. The three of them kept pleading, calling the policemen ‘sir’ and ‘uncle’ alternately, the Bad Cop pouring taunts and threats, one after one. Good Cop now started to talk calmly to the three. He explained how there was a suicide by some Maharashtrian youngster in this area just a few days ago, and how much trouble they had to endure for it, and how unsuitable this place was, therefore, for a midnight picnic.

Slowly and steadily, as Good Cop talked to the three, they started to feel that there was still a way out of this, that there could be a negotiation. And no doubt, Good Cop finally offered to let them go, only if they pay the fine for their little adventure.

Tayseer didn’t even have his wallet with him, Muahid had all of forty or fifty rupees, and Abbas a few hundred. They informed Good Cop of this fact straight on his face; he was disappointed, but did well to maintain his composure.

‘Kitne hain tumhare paas?’, he asked, getting down to the bottom of it all.

‘Mere paas to kuchh bhi nahi’, Tayseer apologetically replied, ‘Iske paas 40-50 honge’, looking at Muahid, ‘aur tumhare paas?’, turning to Abbas.

Abbas dig into his purse and said ‘300…350….’

Muahid, who wasn’t really keen on paying the policeman more than a hundred in any case, who even in such dire circumstances was keen to hold on to his money, now reproached Abbas by hitting him on the arm. Good Cop noticed that, and when Muahid tried to speak again, he asked him to shut up and learn some tameez first.

Tayseer now did all the talking, intentionally sounding soft, trying to make Good Cop feel that he could start crying any moment. Good Cop finally gave in, showering elderly advice on the three, telling them again and again how difficult the job of a policeman was, how they had to cover up so much, how the world would break into pieces if they didn’t do their thing. He sounded like a depressed Atlas, on whose shoulder all the burden of the world rested.

Having exhausted (or bored) himself ultimately, he asked Muahid to fetch the motorcycle, and continued talking to the other two.

‘Ye ladka theek nahi hai…chutiya kahin ka!...poori tarah bigad chuka hai yeh’, said he for Muahid, perhaps remembering the earlier fine negotiation, and then for no apparent reason, added, looking at Abbas – ‘Tum bhi aadhe bigad chuke ho…’. Abbas might have wanted to ask him why, but stayed shut for good.

The three got on to the motorcycle, and after saying ‘Dhanyavad’ and ‘Shukriya’ about 5-10 times, sped off. Their little adventure was over, they had come out unscathed, without even parting with a single rupee (the three had repeatedly informed Good Cop that they were 'student log' and could therefore may kindly please be exempted from the fine), and though their nerves hadn’t quite calmed yet, they laughed loudly, maybe at themselves, maybe at each other, maybe at the hour just gone by.

Then, Muahid, the courageous asked – ‘Ab kahaan chalna hai?’

Thamah

What would you do if you suddenly found your house on fire one night? What if everything you had of value, everything you priced more than your own life, whatever you were prepared to give it for, whatever you loved and adored was suddenly ablaze, you denied even one last look at it because of the cruel, enormous fire that’s around?

One. You could jump from your bed, run around frantic, or look for the nearest source of water, or shout out for your neighbours, or dial 101, or try to find a piece of cloth to douse your dearest belongings with. Or something else.

Two. You could sit on your bed calmly, or maybe replace yourself to safety, and then, without panicking, without losing yourself, watch all that was yours burn in front of your eyes, watch it happening, accept it, come to terms with it, do nothing.

Sometimes, when the world around you is on fire, preserving your peace of mind and not losing yourself in the whole trick is the best you can do. And in the longer run, perhaps that alone matters more than anything else ever will.

I

Marvin, IC tagged me again. And though he didn’t expect me to complete this one, I found it quite interesting to do so. Ah, how I love these tags! Not the substitute for the real good stuff I should be coming up with, but who cares.

I am for whom the bell tolls. At least, that’s what I like to believe.

I think alarmingly more than one should think.

I know a lot many sad PJs.

I want roses in my garden when I do have one to call my own.

I have something really special in me. What it is exactly, that I’m still trying to ascertain.

I wish I had ideas to write on and not just be completing such tags for time pass.

I hate the man without a purpose.

I miss my old grandparents’ house where I used to spend my summer vacations as a kid.

I smell good most of the time. People can’t normally tell even when I haven’t bathed for a week.

I crave for the simple rice and dal meal I used to have at home.

I search myself in everyone I see, and eventually end up disappointed every time.

I wonder if God exists, and if yes, whether he has a conscience.

I love my grandmother. She is the strongest and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

I care a lot for my brother and sister. But I can never tell them that. I hope it shows.

I ache for rain all year, only to have it for a little time.

I am not many things that people think I am.

I believe in the principle ‘Live and help live’.

I dance only when I’m feeling silly. And only when I’m alone.

I sing quite well, but not many, like my mother, agree with me.

I cry “Pushpa, I hate tears. They are nothing but saline water.”

I don’t always mean to be rude but often am.

I write pulp fiction.

I win in almost all that I attempt. Because I often only attempt things in which I know I’ll win. And I know it’s wrong to be that way.

I lose my ‘usually dependable reasoning powers when I’m romantically trapped’.

I always end up confused. (Had to copy Marvin on this one)

I listen to Dire Straits when happy, The Doors when sad and Floyd when just myself.

I can usually be found on the bed, idling away effortlessly…na…effortFULLY.

I am happy when watching a Satyajit Ray movie.

I imagine myself as something incredibly grandiose in the distant future. Not that I’m going to tell you.

I tag Calvin and Jezuz yet again, though they haven’t still completed the last one I sent them.

Water

The rain comes. Uninvited but welcome, as always. The sun is down now, its almost night. The already darkening sky becomes even more so due to the cloud cover above. Everything’s hazy. Everything’s beautiful. Everything painted a dull white.

The rain has come and it’s washed everything with its colour. All white – the sky, the trees, the roads. The world suddenly looks cleaner – all the dirt washed away suddenly. It’s as if it needed the rain once in a while to purify itself.

You remove your glasses. They are the last thing you need right now. You lift your head to the white sky and close your eyes. The rain falls on your face, and for a moment, just for a moment, you feel that it has cleaned you too.

In the background, Gilmour sings –

The rain fell slow, down on all the roofs of uncertainty
I thought of you and the years of all the sadness fell away from me

The words don’t fit at all and fit just right at the same time. Combined with the rain, they produce a weird sensation, something like a cross between the most irrepressible ecstasy and the dullest ache.

And you wonder, you just wonder - could there be anything more complete than this?

Nai Dilli

Let me start by saying that when Marvin, IC tagged me some time ago, I wasn’t very keen on penning down a flashback on my home of many years - New Delhi. For the simple reason that it’s close to impossible trying to write about something you have been so closely related to, and for such a long time. At least not without letting your emotions get the better of you. But as I’ve been suffering from the Dearth of Ideas syndrome again of late, I thought I might as well give this a try. If nothing else, it would make the old man happy.

Hmmm.

When I first set foot in the capital, I was about 4-5 years old. I was then staying in a little town called Sindri in Bihar and had come on a visit to my grandparents’ place in Saket. Within a few hours, I urged my maid to take me to the park opposite the house. Slides are meant for sliding, one might slip and things might happen. The recollection of what happened in the park then is only a blur in my memory. All I do remember is that there was quite a lot of blood, a few stitches and a little boy crying, shouting, cursing the city, saying repeatedly – ‘Ab dilli kabhi nahi aayenge!’. Later, when my grandmother had moved back to Patna and I to Delhi, and I wouldn’t get to see her often, she would tease me and say – ‘Look. You said you’ll never go there. And now you have become a permanent Dilliwala!’

Around two years after the incident, my father left the job he had in Sindri and as was the trend then for all ambitious, moved to Delhi. After a one-year stint in a particular flat in Vasant Kunj, a place of which I have no real fond memories, we then moved to another a little distance away. This was to be the place where I would spend the next five years of my life.

One of the first things I remember noticing about the place was that the flat was on the 3^rd floor, the steps were steep, and so everyday, coming back from school, with the big heavy bag on my shoulders, I had a taste of how Edmund Hillary would have felt trying to climb the Everest. That was perhaps the only disagreeable thing about the place, as the rest was perfect – a balcony with a view of the entire colony from it and a huge park just opposite our flat with swings, skating rinks and a whole lot of empty space to play cricket on.

My first introduction to how Delhi was different came through the neighbourhood. In Patna and in Sindri, every flat had the same sort of people, all like you, middle-class, friendly, always full with unnecessary smiles when they saw each other. Delhi was different. It was the proverbial big city – hustling-bustling, busy, always in a hurry, smiles - yes but twisted, the sort which never encouraged you to start on a conversation. Unlike Sindri, not many uncles or aunties came to your house, not many asked you which school you were studying in, whether you could recite a poem or sing a song for them.

The difference was also in the variety of people. Before, I had only encountered people from Bihar in my life. Delhi, on the other hand, was a zoo of different-looking people. In the flats below us lived two Bengali families (loud and unclean), and in the ones opposite lived a family from Punjab (financially better placed than us, I remember thinking), one old South Indian lady, who looked rather lonely, and therefore friendly, and a Nepalese couple on the ground floor (they scared me every time I saw them. Even to my little mind at that time, they looked the sort of people who would be making explosives and stuff, a belief strengthened when they later covered their windows with black chart paper). Our apartment was a mini-India in itself, I still remember thinking.

The routine all throughout my stay there was rather fixed. School till two, lunch on the floor consisting of rice, dal and mashed potatoes, a brief study period, getting milk from Mother Dairy using coupons (which fascinated me no limit at first), off to the park for a two-hour cricket session, returning home like a weathered soldier, another brief dash at homework, dinner and sleep. All this may sound mundane to the reader but there are thousands of memories intertwined in this daily drudgery – like playing cricket from six in the morning to one in the afternoon on Sundays till our bodies ached and heads reeled from the heat, fighting ferociously with one of my best friends over a controversial run-out till I tore off his T-shirt resulting in he giving up and running back home crying, being mistaken by the man at Mother Dairy for a servant, shitting in my pants at school and being slapped by my mother when she discovered so at the bus-stop, being hit by a gunda called Shakal (what a suitable name, I thought!), kicking him back impulsively in return and running away, waiting for Shri Krishna on Doordarshan desperately on Sunday mornings, thereby watching the whole of Krishi Darshan also in the process, and the best of them all - mixing water colours in the terrace tanker on Holi with my partner-in-crime.

Then, when I went to Class 6^th, we moved to Chandigarh. But Delhi was what we would eventually return to, and so we did in a couple of years, again taking shelter in Vasant Kunj. That was the start of another six years in the capital. But I wasn’t a kid anymore, rather a boy trying to act like a man. Reading and writing overtook cricket, surfing the net overtook the mythological serials, listening to George Michael and Queen, to an extent, overtook idling away with friends.

Love also entered thoughts somewhere. Falling in love with someone and then falling out in a month was the usual trend. It is amazing to think now how I got myself deeply infatuated with every second girl in sight, and ruminated over her for hours continuously, and then due to mental exhaustion, in the end, forgot her entirely. It was almost as if January to December, there was someone new every time, like the Flavour of the Month at an ice-cream shop.

With time also came an increased emphasis on studies. And the final three years of my school life were absorbed in wanting 80 when I got 70, 90 when I got 80 and so forth. First there were the 10^th board exams, then coaching to get into ‘THE IIT’, and then the 12^th board exams again. Being the reluctant science student that I always have been, the coaching proved to be futile with me failing miserably in all competitive exams. Result – while my friends got busy with their first year at college, I had to stay at home and drop a year.

I would be deceiving myself if I say that the last year of my stay in Delhi wasn’t the worst of my life thus far. Coaching continued, and also my awareness of the futility of it all. In January, helpless, I moved to a flat in a place called Jia Sarai, which I fondly refer to as The Shithole. The move was supposed to help me concentrate better, away from home and between fellow students. But it hardly helped; the four months stay there was slightly better in terms of studies, but was accompanied by long late-night walks to Hauz Khas or Munirka to keep my sanity intact. The desire to leave Delhi, the city where I had grown and the city which I had loved, was overwhelming and it was no little relief when I did so finally in August 2005, putting an end to the eleven years that I had lived in the capital.

Three years have passed since then. The family has moved to Gurgaon now, a place so self-sufficient that Delhi seems like a part of the past. Trips to my old home are made only to meet up with friends at CP or to the railway station to catch the train to Gandhinagar. Delhi is always so near but always so distant, not just in terms of distance but also in terms of years, and in terms of memories - some good, some bad - but as a whole package, strangely warm.

I am not an expert on Delhi and Delhi life, nor do I claim to be. My association with the city has almost entirely been with only its southern and central parts, and there is a lot, as some have pointed out, that remains to be seen. But this was how I knew the city, and the city knew me. Maybe someday I’ll return and see the capital in its entirety. Maybe. Someday.

To carry on the string of tales, I tag Jezuz and Calvin.

P.S. - And now that Zinque is with us, I invite her as well to tell her story. After all, small, insignificant places deserve a mention too ;)

Tag, aur kya?

As I simply have nothing better to do, (exams might be around the corner, but that doesn’t count), I have been tempted into accepting the tag by Marvin, IC. Here it is. Mast bak hai!

Last Movie Seen in Theatre Jodha Akbar. I had been waiting for it for a long, long time. And though it disappointed most people, I found it an entertaining watch.

Too long? Don’t care.

Historically incorrect? Don’t care.

Book Being Read None right now. Exams coming up. Plan to start with Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude soon after that.

Favourite Board Game Has to be Ludo! I’ve played Monopoly and Carrom as a kid, but nothing beats the sheer unpredictability and senselessness of Ludo. Ready for a game anytime!

Favourite Magazine Imagine a cricket-crazy kid who can tell you with unbelievable precision how many runs Dravid scored in the post-tea session in the 2nd test between India and Australia in 2001….that was me till around five years back. Thanks to Cricket Samrat and Cricket World and Wisden Cricket and the rest.

Then one day, I found myself looking at Alfred in the mirror, pulling my front teeth out and saying “What, me worry?” and its all been pure MADness since then.

Favourite Smells Nothing like wet earth. Without the shadow of a doubt.

And yes, the ‘smell’ of idle summer afternoons.

Favourite Sounds The rhythmic sound of drums and bells played together at Durga Puja. I wait for DP every year so that I can just close my eyes and for a moment at least, forget everything but that one sound.

And one more. OK. It’s a very ordinary, commonplace sound, I know. But I’ve always been in love with the sound of ceiling fans. Might have to do with my fascination with summers again.

If I think about it, those big, noisy coolers sound nice too.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up? Simple. How can I get back to bed?

Worst feeling in the world Many of course. Hard to pin-point one. But being ill and alone at the same time has to be somewhere at the top.

Favourite Fast Food Place McDonalds. McVeggie Burger with cheese. Affordable and fulfilling.

Future Child’s Name You know what? I’ve been silly enough to actually decide on one. Not that I’m going to tell you.

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…” be confused about what to do with it.

Do you drive fast? Sometimes. Rarely, in fact.

Ek baar bahut zor ki potty lagi thi, tab kasam se bahut tez gaadi bhagayi thi!

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? No. Of course not. Happ!

Storms - Cool or Scary? Dumb Question.

Do you eat the stems on broccoli? Zara hindi mein samjhayyega.

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice? Black. So that it amounts to not dyeing my hair at all.

All towns/cities you have lived in Patna, NewDelhi, Patna, Sindri, Patna, NewDelhi, Chandigarh, NewDelhi, Gurgaon, Gadhinagar. I wish Bombay is next.

Favourite sports to watch Cricket. Nothing like spending the whole day on bed, watching a test match day from morning to evening.

Football and Tennis are a good watch, but only if there are big names involved.

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you Dumb Question.

What’s under your bed? Two brooms, a discarded pair of floaters, countless number of thrown biscuits and chocolate wrappers, and a whole lot of dirt and dust.

Would you like to be born as yourself again? Yes. Weighing this against that, yes.

Morning person or night owl? Morning, for me, is the most dreadful time of the day. I think you have your answer.

Over easy or sunny side up? Ya Ya…

Favourite Place to Relax My grandparents’ house in Patna, with time suspended.

Favourite Pie Yaar main to ek hi pie jaanta hoon. Chocolate Pie. Wahi favourite hoga.

Favourite Ice Cream Anything with chocolate. Like Vanilla and Strawberry too. Free mein mil raha ho to koi bhi chalega.

And now, because most of the people I could tag have already been tagged, I invite only Calvin and Alien to carry on with the crap.

Also, now that Jezuz has shown signs that he is still alive on Blogger, I tag him too ;)

CG Road

I sit down beside a chai-wala, on the pavement, the evening traffic rushing by in front of my eyes. I am tired, I have walked miles around the market in search of the shop Maa asked me to go to, and get this thing she so sorely wanted.

I feel like I’m half dead, the legs hurt and it takes considerable effort to keep my back straight. So I sit down on the pavement, without any thought for decency, place the tea cup on my side and light a cigarette.

Everything feels unreal, as if from a half-dream. The mind feels numb, the noise of the cars and their horns hardly proving to be disturbance.

There is an auto rickshaw at a few feet from me, and having convinced myself that I can’t possibly find the shop alive, I decide that I’ll take this promise of relief and go back to Income Tax, and then to the college. There are not many such promises to be seen around where I’ve sit, and I hope this one stays glued to the spot till I’ve finished my short break.

A few minutes pass by, and a dark man walks up to me. He is carrying several figures of clay, mostly of gods and goddesses, all for sale. This is the last thing that I need right now, and I try not to look the man in the eye, wishing that it puts him off and he goes away. But he doesn’t, he shows me a face sculpture of Ganesh, and asks me whether I would like to take it.

I try to get rid of him without any more conversation and not be rude at the same time, something that always requires a lot of effort. I say that it’s nice but I don’t have any money. He of course doesn’t listen to it, my clothes and demeanour betray me. He persists, saying that he could give me a handsome discount if I like the thing so much. I stop listening and concentrate once more on the traffic, the mind going numb again.

I give the rickshaw another look, the driver sits on the front seat, relaxed, doesn’t seem to be in any hurry. But I know I am stretching my luck, and its time I get going. The dark man meanwhile stops speaking, and instead just stares at me with almost accusing eyes. I look at him straight for the first time, pull both my front pockets out, showing that they don’t have any money, hoping that he would finally take pity on me and leave.

The tea is finished, and so is the cigarette. The auto-wala sits on his seat as before. The dark man stares at me as before. The cars rush by me as before. I get up, with some effort, planning to take the rickshaw.

But as if in a dream, a real dream this time, as soon as I rise to my feet, the dark man and the auto rickshaw leave, almost together, as if this was a joke they had planned on me beforehand.

The tea is finished, and so is the cigarette. The work is not done. The auto rickshaw has left, and so has the dark man. I am tired, and I now have to walk to the next red light almost a kilometre away, just to get a ride.

Have you ever felt that the whole world is against you in some dark, unbelievable conspiracy? I have.

P & P

We’ll talk about lovers tonight.

We’ll talk about a couple, but not about Laila-Majnu, not Soni-Mahiwal, not Heer-Ranjha, not Chirkut Lady-Kekda Man, but about a pair whose relationship has transcended the concept of time, a love that can actually boast of being truly, singularly eternal.

We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose.

Yes, we’ll talk about P & P, two entities who differ as matter of principle, by the way of definition, who are said to be two opposite sides of the coin, but who, as a matter of truth, are linked to each other as two inseparable souls, their destinies so intricately intertwined, that, at times, it takes an effort to recognise who’s who, both working for the same purpose, the same end, but through varied means.

Maybe as they are, after all, when one thinks about it, two opposite sides of the same coin.

And why should we talk about them tonight?

Because reality, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Reality, as the name itself declares, is real, and when the real gets into its own, the two lovers cease to exist as two different entities, they cease to exist as two opposites, they combine and mix into each other to an extent that its impossible to determine what is Poetry and what is Prose, everything taking the shape of Poetic Prose or, alternatively, Prosaic Poetry. Call it PP, the order of occurrence of the lovers’ names depending on the observer’s choice.

Because when reality hits you, it hits you in the form of PP, not as the demarcations of Poetry & Prose, which are just, when one thinks about it, products of man’s passion of convenience.

Hmmm. Done. We’ll talk about Poetry & Prose tonight.

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?

The Hard Way

“Not that way, moron!”, he says after about a minute of loud, non-stop laughter. I lie on the cement, feeling my bums, trying to smile, see the humour of it all.

This is my first try at skating. My friend had bought a pair of skates just the other day and he asked me if I would like to learn. He is pretty good at it, he has done it before.

I decide to give it a try. There are two round skating rings in the park opposite our apartment, each around seven or eight metres in diameter, with the floors made of cement, and boundaries lined with netted grills, probably to prevent novices like me from crashing out.

“The secret to skating and skating well is to keep year head slightly forward, ahead of your body, so that your entire weight is taking you in the direction you wish to go. You know, that way your Centre of Gravity…”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just keep your head slightly forward. You can’t possibly fall on your back that way, and nobody falls forward really, unless he's stupid.”

“OK.”

I do exactly that. And as he had said, I don’t fall.

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But he was wrong. I found that out this morning, on my way back from the galla. It had rained severely last night. With my Bata sandals so slippery that I might as well have been walking on two banana skins, it was hard trying to stay on my feet.

Then, I remembered what my friend had told me that day.

I jutted my head out in front, bending above the waist just that little bit. The little bit slowly became a little more, and more.

Result: I slipped on my toes, the Centre of Gravity got too far ahead, I think, forcing me down.

Lesson: When it rains and your footwear doesn’t have a good grip, you can fall either way, forwards or backwards.

"About A Night"

A straight question: What’s the most uncomfortable you have ever felt in your life?

Was it when you were sitting at the dentist last month, with your mouth embarrassingly wide open? Or when your father punished you for something once, when you were seven years old, asking you to stay watching the wall for ten eternal minutes? Or is it when you went to a get-together and the best friend you were depending on for company failed to show up, leaving you with a group of strangers, without anything to talk about? Or maybe when you waited with a container in your hand at Mother Dairy, waiting to get the coupon for the milk?

No. For me, it isn’t any of these. It is something more common, which happens too often to get used to it (no irony intended). It is when you lie awake in bed, sleepless. It is when your body is tired, you would love to get some sleep and wake up early, but your mind, restless as ever doesn’t let you free.

Like, for example…

It’s raining. You can hear the rain falling on the trees outside. It is cool, the fan’s running slowly, humming away, as it was meant to be a lullaby. You have the blanket over you, blocking the swing, making you feel all cosy, ready for some nice slumber.

But no, it won’t come that easily. What did you think? Twenty minutes go by. So you get up, switch the lights on, put on your t-shirt and go out to get some coffee. There is nothing else you can think of at that moment.

You come back after the little break but you find out, to your dismay that the coffee hasn’t helped at all. It has made matters even worse. Thanks to Nescafe, now you don’t feel like sleeping at all. But still you give it a chance. You lie down and it’s the same story again – rain, tip-tip, fan, blanket, cosy, no sleep. This time you accept the helplessness easily, you get up with the air of a man on a mission, who has just realised what he was sent down for. Fuck it, I shall not wait for sleep, shall try to pass time better, it’ll come when it has to.

You switch on the computer. Check your scraps on Orkut, there are no new ones. A new mail maybe, even if it’s a Sardarji joke, but no, nothing new there as well. You feel the sudden pinch of utter helplessness again. What am I doing, I should be trying to sleep. Wasting time waiting for people to mail me. Who’ll mail you at 2 A.M., fucker? After all, you checked your mail just an hour ago, didn’t you?

So things are back to square one again. Rain, tip-tip, fan, blanket, cosy, and of course no sleep. Stray thoughts enter your head now – the assignment to be submitted on Friday (god I don’t have a clue!), the school friend you didn’t even bother to call when you were at home last (what will I say if he asks me why?), the little nap you took in the afternoon (maybe that’s what's keeping me awake). These don’t help, they don’t induce sleep, only make time pass quicker.

Hell! I have spent almost an hour and a half in bed now. And things look no prettier. The bones are still heavy, the body aching, but crucially, the mind and eyes are as fresh as ever.

I wish I was like Papa. He falls asleep within five minutes of going to bed, irrespective of whether the TV is on at full volume or whether I’m playing Led Zeppelin in the adjoining room. Soon, you can hear him snoring away in bliss, oblivious to everything around. How does he do that?

Frustration slowly seeps in. There can’t be a worse feeling. It’s almost three already. There is a lecture at half past eight. But what can you do? You’re helpless, and you know it. That adds on to the frustration – being aware of the helplessness.

You close your eyes again. I can’t possibly fall asleep if I keep them open. So let me at least pretend that I’m preparing to sleep. Maybe I’ll fool Father Wakefulness by doing so, maybe he’ll think that I’ve already dozed off, and he’ll stop trying to pull me out of it.

My life’s a mess, it is. What is a man if he has no control over his own sleep? What good is winning the world, when you can’t even win such a small battle, over yourself, with only sleep as your adversary?

What good is anything?

P.S. – And then it comes, you don’t realise that final moment, you least expect it. Yes, it finally comes and you’re asleep. Your conscious calls it a day. Call it night.

Girl at Andheri

She stood at the side of the road outside the Andheri railway station. I, with my cousin, had just got down from the auto to catch a local to Bombay Central.

She wore a short-sleeved top and a pant, the colours of each being hard to guess. They might have been white originally, maybe light pink or maybe even blue. All they looked to me now in the limited visibility the street lights provided was dirty brown, at some places dark and at some places light, in patches all over the cloth. Her hair looked brown too, but the yellow light above gave it a somewhat orangish touch. Her face was beautiful - innocence written all over. From her two eyes came out two thick drops of water, both heading down but vanishing before they reached her mouth. On the face still were the dried remains of many such drops her eyes had shed during the day. And of course, she had nothing beneath her feet.

She was thin and small. Not more than 7-8 years old – I’d have thought.

She held her hand out shyly. She was asking me for money.

Kudo Thakur

His name was Kudo Thakur. A barber by caste, he had been so all his life. From age 15 to age 70. In his own words - “From when my hands learnt the trade to the time when the same hands started shaking when I picked up the scissors.”

But he was a very old man now. He said he thought he was something like 80, but he looked more like 120 to me. Most of his teeth were gone. And it seemed that the ones which were still there were so only out of goodwill and respect for the man. All of them jutted out, irrespective of whether he was smiling or frowning. All that was left of the face were those sagging wrinkles. If there was a competition for the World’s Most Wrinkled Man, Kudo Thakur would have bagged the first prize for sure. The hands and legs were as thin as thin can be, you could easily circle his legs with your palm, and make your thumb and index finger meet, like they do with their hands at the pillar near Qutab Minar.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t bald. Not by a long way. Specks of white on his head shone in the sun and I think I even spotted some which were still black. This for a man who had almost lived the entire last century ! He carried a stick with him, a piece of wood really, pieces peeling off the surface all over. I couldn’t help noticing that his stick was as thick as his two legs, so that if you saw his silhouette, you might just be deceived into thinking that he had three of them, three legs or three sticks to stand on.

Everyday, while I was there in the village, he would come early morning and evening, and sit there on the bench in the veranda, gazing at everything around him. I found his stare somewhat uncomfortable at times, his head always positioned slightly forward, aggressively, as if he was a teacher, asking you why the homework for the weekend wasn’t complete. He had a constant expression on his face, what I would regard now as a cross between a jovial smile and a disgusted frown. I remember thinking to myself that if Kudo Thakur had to laugh or cry at something, the expression on his face would remain exactly the same. One face for all emotions. One expression to express all expressions.

“I have shaved your Nanaji’s head too, once, when he was even younger than you are”, he told me one day. I gave him an as-if-I-believe-you look. For me, small that I was, the image of Kudo Thakur shaving my Nanaji’s head, with a pair of scissors in his hand and the mirror in front, was not that easy to imagine. He was the oldest man in the village, one person who had watched everyone else grow and many perish before him. He was conscious of this fact, he seemed proud of it.

I took his presence in the village home as granted. So when, a few years back, I hadn’t seen him since I had arrived in the village, I asked my grandfather where he was.

He was dead. No one knows whether he completed the century, or just failed to do so by a year or two. Even Kudo Thakur himself wouldn’t have known, I imagine.

Dark Man

I climb up the stairs and step into the medical store. Its name is 98.4 degrees, one of the many such private outlets that have risen around Delhi in the last few years. The tagline, just below the company logo of a hand holding a flame, says Your Chemists For Life.

I walk to the counter. There are two men, one sitting on a stool and the other standing up, both in white coats, as if they were doctors at a hospital (Lets call them White Coat 1 and White Coat 2 respectively, for convenience). White Coat 2 takes the prescription from my hand, studies it briefly and then goes over to the racks at the corner of the room.

Meanwhile, a little, dark man, (And we shall call him Dark Man) in a white shirt and navy blue trousers enters through the glass door. He then pauses, gives everyone present a glance, looking conscious of the fact that everyone’s eyes are on him too. Dark Man is short in height; he looks ragged, sweat dripping from his forehead, visible on his eyebrows. His overall demeanour doesn’t betray the first impression that he is at maximum, only a peon or chapraasi. He walks quietly towards the two White Coats, taking position alongside me. After pausing again for a second or two, he takes a piece of white paper out of his breast pocket and murmurs something to White Coat 1. He hardly seems to take notice, not even looking up from his register, in which he seems to be making some sort of entry. Dark Man doesn’t look hurt, gives me a slightly embarrassed glance and stares back at White Coat 1, still holding the piece of paper.

White Coat 2 now comes back with what I asked for. He shows them to White Coat 1, who then looks at them and proceeds to make the receipt. White Coat 2 then puts the two strips of medicine into a white envelope and hands it over to me. My turn over, I expect him now to listen to what Dark Man wants. He doesn’t and Dark Man, still as courteous as he was initially, murmurs something again.

Just then, a tall, burly man (Let’s call him exactly that, the Tall Burly Man) enters through the door. Nonchalantly, he walks over to the counter and hands over the doctor’s prescription to White Coat 2. As with me, White Coat 2 gives him an affirmative nod and leaves to get the medicine.

White Coat 1 finally has everything ready for me. He gives me the receipt, I say “Thank You” and turn towards the door.

As I’m about to get into the car, I can’t stop myself from giving the shop one last look. I see Dark Man standing there, leaning over the table, still looking humbly at White Coat 1 the way he was earlier. Tall Burly Man, meanwhile, gets his receipt made.

On Second Thought

You look at the dustbin, it's more than just full. The garbage is spilling out, the fan above helping the chocolate wrappers, empty strips of the tablet you took in the morning, the paper you regarded unnecessary and tore away, everything that you threw into that little basket gently glide to different parts of your room. It annoys you, the room needs to be clean. So you pick the bin with one hand, walk out of the door to your backyard and with both hands now, you throw over the filth to the space just behind your house. But all of it doesn't go really. Pieces of paper break away from the heap in mid-air, and float back gently to the backyard. You click your tongue, pick up that paper and just as you are about to throw it over too, you give it a glance.

And what do you see ? What do you think ? Perhaps, I should keep it with me. This isn't garbage. Might be of some use. For some time. For a day or a week, maybe a month, a year ? Maybe not that long. But I shall keep it. So you wipe off the dust that’s settled on the paper, take it inside, and keep it on the table.

Months pass. More such filtered garbage finds a place in your room. Some old ones are eventually thrown away but many more manage to find the way back. You have a folder now, where you keep them all together.

You call it your blog.