Tobalotorium G

Not every insult hurled at us ends up hurting our feelings. Most come from severely wonky sources and bounce off, others are so veiled we never realize when they hit us and when they just passed through, still others are so feeble, either in intensity, foundation or in intent, that they turn impotent a fair distance away and just scatter themselves into thin air. But then there is that variety of slur that has not just perfect timing, but also an impeccable trajectory that renders it unavoidable, plus the tendency to target the most vulnerable spot with unforgiving viciousness and remarkable ruthlessness. It's almost like a cosmic miracle, various unrelated factors lining up in perfect symmetry. Such an even occurs rarely, once in a blue moon, often the insulter is unaware of the havoc that she just wrecked upon the life of the poor insultee, often the insult itself is not intended but the devastation is complete and long lasting!!!!!

No, dear reader, I haven't been at the receiving end of an insult as incisive as the one described above, at least not recently. I was only making a point. Things people say have a strange and unpredictable manner of getting to us.

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Moving on - a dear friend returned to this blog after a long time and then called up to say this - " Kya yaar!!! where has the fun in you gone? You are still writing about the same six or so things we would talk about last year! Acha listen I need to go right now, having dinner with girlfriend"

Useless fellow!! What does he know of the predicament of a young man twiddling his thumb at the height of his sexual peak and might I add, good looks, amidst the ghats, taals and traffic jams (more on this subject, later) of Bihar.

Oh well he does know a thing or two, he was here for long enough. And this place gave him amongst other things, suspected arthritis, two years without a single authentic idli or relationship (okay 1.5 years in the latter case), massive hair loss, and weight gain which was disputed by him to the end.

Gulpurtha Pulcharan. We belong together! But first, pay my AMEX bills, you Kul Kalanki, you!!!!!

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Enough! This is a serious blog by an earnest man who aims to change the world using the online medium and the blogged word, as long as he is paid more than handsomely for it.

I am down with this horrible cold, I cough these really dry wobbly coughs that travel from my stomach up to my throat and my body jerks forward while the bones stay put. Yes, I think I'm dying and also that I should stop giving these stupid descriptions. Anyway, my mouth tastes like dried up dal and my eyes hurt and I have been in bed all day. I have taken this time out to worry about our generation. Gen Y or X or whatever is our current classification.

On my trips to Delhi/Mumbai I am stuck by the uniformity of the lives we lead. Most of us do these jobs that we are not completely fond of. We are all on facebook, and don't really know what we would do with either one or all of the following, our iPod, cell phone, laptop. We work through the week and those days are repetitions of the same getting up-getting ready-getting to work-getting bored-getting back-getting sleep(and/or sex) routine.

The weekends, however, are for all sorts of revelry, drinking, partying, smoking, smoking up, hiking, trips to nearby getaways, and so on and so forth, photographs of which duly find their way to Facebook and are carefully commented upon. Now, I am not one to be judgemental or eager to confirm our moral and cultural depravity as a generation. Nor am I jealous that Patna doesn't offer me the opportunity to indulge myself in even one of these pleasurable pursuits or envious that my Facebook profile boasts of a single photograph which is now more than a year old and has recieved no comment. And for the record, I do own an iPod, 30 GB of beautiful music, a laptop covered in a 2 mm thick layer of dust, oil, dandruff and general garbage, and a new N 85 that tragically has a wobbly slider. My points is, what will become of us when we are married to one another and have kids? Look at us, I fear we are going to make the worst parents and couples!

There was a certain beauty and security in the way we were brought up. I don't know - I wish I had the words to elaborate but I guess it's something to think of by ourselves. Maybe I just have a very messed up set of friends. Actually I don't. Messed up friends, that is, not friends in general.

My mother always lamented that the children of these distant relatives of ours in America were happy their parents got divorced and remarried, because, there were now four sets of grandparents to get Christmas gifts from. I think we will tend to that with time.

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Everyone associates the place they inhabit with the time it takes to get around from place to place. Oh, I hate Delhi, everything is just too far. Oh I absolutely hate Mumbai, I am stuck forever in traffic. In Malaysia we covered 400 kms in less than 5 hours. In outer space everything travels at the speed of light and so on and so forth.

In Bihar I covered 170 kms in 12.5 hours!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Really. It was a the kind of experience that made me question the purpose of life and the existence of The Supreme Being, and then seriously contemplate suicide, twice. My eyes almost escaped their bored sockets, my mind lost half a million grey cells, I wanted to just insanely run into the horizon yelling and tearing off my clothes, and my hair. It is the one thing that brings me down completely.

Just thinking of it right now has made me go numb again. This was slowly turning into a post that would permanently alter the life of anyone who read it. Guess you will all have to wait a little longer, till then pray for the improvement of infrastructure in Bihar, and that cows and truck drivers suddenly were endowed with three times their current levels of traffic sense.

Make that four times for the stupid truck driver.