Alpha Beta Gaga

Feeling bummed about things, too, is an illusion. You feel bummed because you want to, but a time comes when you realize, the stupidity of it, the importance and loveliness of your own life, and that frankly being bummed for too long is a bit boring. Plus you end up taking a short trip to New Delhi, enjoying fabulous food, movies, alcohol, other stuff, and most importantly great company. Things fall into place; a little perspective, it seems, really works.

The Great Khali is coming to India; it is a significant development and a matter of immense national importance. Aaj Tak and India TV, till now have given loyal viewers deep insights into the life and mind of the Great Khali, the first Indian to enter the big bad FAKE world of the WWE, (I think I might be stabbed by a kid for this); for example his training schedule consists of three hours of weight training, morning and evening, every day. Maintaining his size requires a strict and intimidating daily dietary regimen: one gallon of milk, five chickens and two dozen eggs, along with chapattis, desi ghee, juice and fruit. His wife looks after him, drives him to the Gym, supervises his training and is jealous of all the female attention her husband gets. Please find attached a photograph of the man, the living legend, and an epitome of tremendous grace, immaculate good manners and breathtaking beauty, no wonder women can’t help but fall for him.

So rest assured that the concerned channels, the beacons of hope in the country and the sources of intelligent and thought provoking journalism are going to provide us with round the clock coverage of the ‘gentle’ giant’s every move, as he returns to the country where he was born and where he smashed stones for a living, before working as a bouncer and then for the police. God, how many kids are going to grow up to become bouncers because of this idiocy? Yes, no one wants to join the police, not even if the Great Khali himself is an ex-policeman. You have to thank years of cinematic slur hurled at the cops for this uninviting status enjoyed by our thullas. So brace yourself for a month of madness as the son of the soil returns home.

Oh, last night though, I sensed some signs of future controversy. Apparently The Great Khali backed out of a bout against The Big Show, when the latter showed him his fist; Aaj Tak lamented, “Mahabali Khali ne Desh ki Naak Kataiyee!!” India TV zoomed into the life of a regular East-Delhi based family caught in the midst of spectacular circumstances (Khali’s cowardice); the kids were completely shattered and found no meaning in life and had all refused dinner to express their remorse. The parents seemed quite proud of their kids. The journalist asked the parents whether they’d let the kids join wrestling; they said that they would be happy but that studies came first. Indian parents, they never change, not even when they are on TV, studies always come first. God save all of them, journalism, kids, parents, Khali, his wife and me.

What is wrong with Bollywood? I had the extreme fortune of watching the directorial debut of one of the greatest actors of the era that spanned the few weeks around which Omkara was released. Ajay Devgan. The movie in question is U, Me aur Hum. The film sheds a sensitive light on the life of three couples. The director wanted to do the right thing, and makes a conscious effort towards avoiding all clichés – one couple is in a bad marriage, the next one can’t keep their hands off each other, and the last and most important one has the wife suffering from Alzheimer. The lady, a waitress is wooed by the hero on a cruise ship. The fact that this happens on the cruise is purely incidental, of course all credit goes to the director for making the effort to select a setting where skin, songs and harsh light did not seem out of place. Most directors wouldn’t have bothered. But I guess everyone is completely thorough with their first work of art, in terms of research and everything.

What is it about Indian movies and light?? Why can’t we imagine any situation without it being flooded by the strongest light?

Well, I turned and twisted and fully enjoyed the whole process of being frisked, and even made Ah Ah sounds so that the security guy was the one blushing, not me, I even figured that filling one’s mouth completely with popcorn without biting them, and then pouring in Pepsi makes them melt into the gooiest yummiest thing. Oh and then I predicted things like the disease before hand, because the director was placing these stupid clues like the actress forgetting the time for an appointment and bringing Tequila shots instead of Vodka. And then I predicted the end too, much to the amazement of BB.

But I wasn’t too amused with my natural flair for understanding the thought behind such films, damn, what kind of movies will I make anyway?

I also watched Juno. And hereby declare my true and complete love for Ellen Philpotts-Page and the character she so beautifully and ably portrayed . I have a feeling she is very similar to the character in real life, it’s written in her voice. Hmm I wish I had found a similar girl while in school, I’d have turned out smarter and cool. But I am pretty certain no such girl was available, and even if by some incredible chance such a girl was available, I’d not be able to do anything. Or maybe over the space of four long years, I’d manage to talk to her once and tell her in the most complicated, nervous, convoluted manner that she should, well, umm, I don’t know… Just… Be… Bye…

Antique White, Silk Glow, White Moon, Pale Ivory, Windsor Cream, Almost Ivory, Ivory Ivory, Ivory, are all shades of White, or so Messrs Asian Paints would want us to believe. They look exactly the same, so do the three hundred other shades of White, I am sure nobody can tell the difference.

You’d need a superhero whose super power is the ability to tell the 81 different varieties of black found in a single strand of hair. We could call him The Palette. Of course, he is not going to have many kids as his fans, plus what is he going to do when the bad guy is dangling the girl from the rooftop? The Palette might be reduced to giving directions to Spiderman, “Eh Spidey, he is right behind the beam, the Ash Grey beam, oh no sorry, the Half-Silver Grey one. Oh? Oh! Oops, sorry…” So our friend might not be movie material, but he is the only person Asian Paints is catering to. Oh well there is another, my Dad. My father though is being pursued by Columbia Tri-Star and David Dhawan for film rights to his life.

Our new flat is receiving its first coat of color, and he has finally lost it. Every morning, he sits with tea, dry fruits and catalogues that have been borrowed from every paint store in the city. Then he worries, and frowns, and exclaims and takes the opinion of my mother, the dog, the maid, the maali, the paper-wallah, and an assortment of the most annoying neighbours. After which he selects colors which none of the above suggested.

Then he sits at the computer and in a virtual room provided by the evil people at Asian Paints, tries different combinations of colors he shortlisted. This process continues forever. He is the only person I know that uses a process of elimination that actually increases the number of shortlisted candidate-colors. So much so that after two days when the site crashed I have sufficient reason to believe that the cause was the immense stress my father put on their virtual resources. My father then proceeded to make a firm call to the Calcutta office of Messrs Asian Paints and registered his protest. Later he told me, looking sufficiently disgusted, that the lady was shocked that a customer actually used the complaint line.

Of course he doesn’t ask me for my opinion, because we always end up fighting like school kids and he wishes I had never come back home, and I yell that I had never wanted to.

My father was a professor, but he is interested in everything else but teaching. Retirement has offered him the time and opportunity to follow his true passions. These include, talking loudly on the phone to everyone in the world, giving expert opinion to experts, like telling the painters how to hold the brush or how much thinner to use, getting the bank passbooks up-to-date every day, worrying about the stock markets, and behaving in a manner that suggests that the market movement is determined by his own portfolio, watching all the Balaji Sitcoms, being more interested in them than my mother, and being excessively happy when any of the evil women get slapped or temporarily murdered, criticizing food, the weather, my job, my brother’s job, any corporate job, world politics, global warming, the younger generation, his father’s generation, his own generation, and generally being a bratty kid.

Okay, so he has decided, in his own words, to be a trend setter and to get the ceilings of our lovely new house painted in dark colors, while the walls receive coats of the lighter shade. So his room has an Oxford Blue ceiling supported by Coral Blue walls. The effect is like walking into a room that has been turned upside down, the ceiling seems too heavy and on the verge of collapsing because the walls appear excessively frail. I saved my room from this monstrosity, but he took evil advantage of my absence over the weekend and I returned only to find the ceiling over the dinning space colored in shimmering Indian Copper. A battle is expected tonight, my father against me, the dog, my mother, the maid and common sense. The outcome will determine the nature of our conversations over meals till the next paint job is required.

Ah, so such is life. Yeh thi khabre Aaj Tak, Intezaar kijiye agle baar tak.

Autumn Leaves

Memories are strange things, I don’t quite remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I remember eighteen years ago as our bus climbed into Naini Tal and my father said, “Look, the lake!!” – I looked up at the mountains.

My uncle, my father’s younger brother was studying to be a doctor in England. His sons, my cousins, went to boarding school. My own brother went to school in Patna; I guess my father felt strange pressure to send me to a hostel, to give me the kind of education my cousins enjoyed, even though he would find it difficult to afford it.

I was five, we had moved in to a flat a year ago, living away from my grandparent’s home. Ma always said it was because her college was too far away from our ancestral house, but recently, I heard my father mention something about him preferring to sell rather than stay in a place he was asked to leave. Mama used to feed me lunch everyday, because my parents would be at college. I had khichdi most of the time, and she told me the same story each afternoon, about the wolf that threatened the old woman to give up her food or else he would wag his big tail.

Anyhow, when we moved in, I remember, my brother was writing a million entrance exams for engineering colleges. Ma would ask me to take life seriously and study like bhaiya, I was only five! I would ignore her, and run around the house like a mad child, hurt myself, play with the gods and goddesses from her tiny temple, throw my milk down the window, also the fruits, bug bhaiya, and so on. Bhaiya always sat in his room, facing the window, a girl sat in the balcony of the house opposite our apartment, facing my brother, I sat in front of the window in the adjacent room and made faces at the girl, Ma claimed and believed that only the girl would stare at bhaiya, and disturb her poor innocent child. Which is probably true; my brother was the purest variety of nerd I have ever seen, complete with a far from trendy (even for the early 90s) moustache and thick enormous spectacles that covered two thirds of his face. Of course now he is all fancy.

Eventually, my brother was going to leave for Surat for a course in computer engineering. I was fascinated by all the attention he was getting, all the clothes that were being bought for him, the bags, the visitors, the love – I couldn’t wait to be sent to boarding school.

It was to be nothing more than an experiment; my parents were convinced that I was an absolute bum - surely I wouldn’t make it through the entrance test. They decided to tie the exam with a holiday to Naini Tal. Plus I already had admission to the school bhaiya studied at, so it really was just a joy trip.

I was quite the sickly child, and even before we got to Barielly, my body lost out to the never-before-experienced levels of cold and I was down with fever. I slept through the remainder of the journey, wrapped in shawls and wearing a stupid monkey cap. So, in my defense, I was quite unwell and sleepy when I stumbled out of the bus into Naini Tal, and can’t be blamed for looking up at the mountains to search for the lake. Plus it was the first time I was seeing a lake. Anyway that evening I was bought a thick jacket to keep me from dying from the cold, allowed to eat as much cotton candy as I wanted and generally pampered and fussed over. My grand plan was already working.

I don’t think I gave the school much thought when I saw it; I was overwhelmed by the sight of so many new people and decided to hold on to Ma and not say a word. The test, hmm, it was in two parts, English and Mathematics. All I remember is that during the test a kid got up and started crying, “Mujeh mummy ki yaad aa rahi hai!” Stupid idiot, he made us all miss our mothers.

It was the 31st of Dec. 1990; I was excited about New Years Eve and everything, quite stupidly so, because I would certainly fall asleep before ten. Around noon, I was having lunch, or my mother was trying to get me to have it, the postman arrived with a brown envelope that contained in it eleven years of boarding school life. My father gave the postman ten rupees; and opened the letter. Ma was already crying; I was happy that she had forgotten about my lunch. Papa congratulated me, and then asked Ma not to cry, “Mere bhi pet main paani bhar gaya hai, but it’s for his future!” I was barely six, but I already had the gift for the inappropriate – “You don’t want to send me, to save your money??” My parents looked at me in disgust and I am sure were glad they were getting rid of me.

Anyway, I was immediately taken to my tutor’s house with a card and sweets to thank her. Now this Bengali lady lived in the block just opposite ours, and if I hadn’t been so young I would have protested against this visit. Her tuitions were absolutely useless; they consisted of her feeding me food, asking me to look at the milk and to yell when it began to boil, while she watered the plants, and converting the same five sentences from present to past to future back to past then to future tense till my head would spin. No, I don’t remember the five sentences. The mathematics was handled by her husband, he would sit and read the newspaper and ask me to write the tables, and then he would get up and ask random things like, “What is thirteen multiplied by six?” and if I took longer than three seconds to say something he would disappear into his room.

Twelve white shirts, vests, underpants and handkerchiefs; four towels, night suits, sheets, pillow cases, two each of black and sports shoes, a pair of slippers, two blazers in the school colors, four house ties, two college ties, four pullovers, three grey woolen trousers, two white and two olive green, six house shirts in yellow, six woolen shorts, six grey game shorts and two in white for special functions, two blankets and a quilt, a trunk with my name, house and Roll No. 35 (3+5 = 8, 2^3 = 8!! FUCK!!!!), keep all this, and a hold-all for the blankets and quilt, plus an air bag. Then there was the stationary and the toiletries. Ah, I was the king of the world – I could do no wrong, I was allowed to eat what I want, play for endless hours, engage Ma’s gods and goddesses in the fiercest of battles over my new trunk, watch TV, drink Pepsi till I was sick, every day someone would visit to say good bye and bring me some gift. I wondered why they would look at me with teary eyes, or why my parents seemed guilty about sending me there. On the final morning at home, I climbed onto my parent’s bed earlier than usual. All three of us spent inordinate time there, in silence. Till I pointed out that we might just miss the train. Great frenzy followed; for my father, catching trains is a huge deal. He plans out everything in immaculate detail, he was saying to Ma, “Remind me to tell the coolie to place the trunk with the latch facing inwards.” Oh yes, the size of the trunk was pre-decided by him so that we could slide it under the berth. In all this, I was walking around the house putting my toys in obscure locations, like I placed my GI Joe with the missing leg and arm on the fridge and told everyone that it must stay there till the next time I was home. And I remember the next time I was home, it was the first thing I looked for, but it wasn’t there. Hmpf…

In the train we met another kid going to join, Rishi – I had a friend even before I got there. There was this old retired Army officer that was travelling along side us, he was very impressed with me going to boarding school, as is the tendency for most army people. He asked me, “What do you play?” So I said I play with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! I have the power!! The poor man’s disappointment was palpable; as for me, I didn’t know it yet, but this was an early sign of the illustrious sporting career that I was never going to have.

I knew where the lake was this time.

There is a photograph of me standing under the arch at the entrance of the school. I have the widest, wickedest smile, then there is another one – this time Ma is there too, except she doesn’t seem very cheerful. Walking to my dormitory, I saw that the entire school was full of crying children. I didn’t understand that, I asked my father and he said it was because they weren’t brave enough. Anyway, I couldn’t wait to get to my dormitory and select my bed and all the other things. It was only after I spent a semester there that I realized why everyone was crying; next time round I would join them with full fervor.

We met a few teachers; they all had fancy, foreign names. Hoffland, Neale, Lee, Samuel, Rozario. My parents asked them to take care of me, I thought their concern was a little fake, but that’s probably because all parents must be asking them to do the same thing. My father always said the worst part about dropping me to school was the walk from its gates down to the town. I guess this first time must have been the worst of all the walks he would take.

As for me, that first night was surprisingly silent, in the dormitory you could hear the tube-lights groan. I don’t know, I was too young to understand why my stomach felt strange, but it was probably because unconsciously I knew that new clothes, people, or a different way of life weren’t sufficient to compensate for what I left behind, plus the fact that it was going to be a long eleven years. I got into bed and noticed that the quilt had been pulled out from the side; I called out to the ‘dai’ asking her to tuck it for me. She said, sweetly enough “Do it yourself, aur mujeh dai nahin aaya didi bulate hain…” My heart sank a bit, I decided to let the quilt be, and fell asleep.

It’s tremendous, how, when you get down it, memories come back in a flood and with great detail. I don’t think I should get into what happened the next day. A blog needs to be fed regular normal sized posts, not one never ending saga of a meal. The following days, weeks, months and years made me the person I am. Life for me was a bit of everything, pain, glory, sadness, joy. Everyone tells you that people who go to boarding schools can manage on their own; I tell you it’s true. But the question to be asked is whether they’d want to or not.

Fnord! A seminal foray into the field of Cognitive Dissonance. Or How to Post Without Saying Anything, and Full of Poorly Hidden Subliminal Messages..

I walked back in time to reach the latest happiest memories I had. I returned to Room No. 204(6), dimly lit in red light, with a cup of terrible instant coffee and a mug filled with stubs, ash, used floss, swatted mosquitoes, dirty sugar cubes, and moistened with the bit of coffee, from the last cup that went too cold to drink. This was done rather ingeniously to prevent the ash from flying out of the mug. Muhahaha. Just being in that cold, comfortable room which smelt of coffee, very few people, and incense gave me the pleasure I talk of. I spent months there, listening to music, watching movies, speaking and laughing to myself, reading, being in bed, thinking, and doing other such simple terrific things.

I have returned to movies, not a day goes by when I don’t give serious thought to films, when I don’t run the few scripts I have in mind through my head. When I don’t imagine what Simmi or Kailash, would do in situations other than those they would come across in my film. If I don’t watch a movie for a few days now, I start getting restless. I need to return to Delhi, and get movies from U. Who in one of those strange coincidences that happen every other day, just appeared online. Why so serious??

I watched this movie recently, Number 23, which isn’t really a remarkable example of filmmaking, for instance, this isn’t the movie we would want to beam into space for the larger universal audience to showcase the creativity of our race. But it gave me something to think about; apparently anything and everything in this world is linked to the number 23. Here The Number 23 And here 23 examples of The 23 Enigma. Well I was born on the 24^th of January, which is 24-1=23 and I watched this movie on the 20^th of March, 20+3=23!!!! And 15^th Feb. 2008 is 15-02+2+0+0+8=23!!!!!! SLOWTUMBLINGLIFE, if you add the letters as numbers you get 194, (1*9)-4=5, and 2+3=5. This then maps to The Law of Fives. The Write for the Remaining Silence is 337, and 3/3+7=8, and 2^3=8, my name is 114, 4*(1+1) = 8, once again, 2^3=8!!!!!! And this is the 24^th year of my first life, 24-1=23!!!! Muhahaha. 9/11/2001 = 9+11+2+0+0+1 = 23!!!!!! It’s a strange mysterious world we live in.

Bhang needs to be banned, really it should be.

Last year this time, I mean at 11:58 AM on a normal Saturday morning, I would be in the library, reading The Economist, or having French toasts and filter coffee, studying different topics in Economic theory, enjoying the weekend reprieve our campus got from the hustle and bustle of DU. Within a few hours, all academic efforts would be shelved, and the scheme for the day would disintegrate into beautiful unplanned games of football or cricket, random conversations on Game Theory or PhD. Vs Job, alcohol, or better still a fabulous movie, watched along with three cups of creamy coffee. I have grown a French beard, in the mornings it’s difficult to recognize myself.

I have recently discovered an inalienable truth, the surest most easy way to get Mothers to stop being angry, get done with shopping instantly, do anything, is to tell them that, you, her child, is hungry. And then you can stop, sit back and watch your mother melt into this lump of goodness with the singular agenda of putting food in your mouth. Everything else ceases to matter for mothers when it comes to this, oh and the theory holds especially true if the child in question is, like me, in the clutches of some sort of mild anorexia.

Ratatouille – I loved the movie for three separate reasons. First, I realized, once again, how much I enjoy animated movies. Really, there is something about animation, in some ways there is more one can tell with animation, especially when it comes to thoughts, and hidden emotions. It’s one of the reasons I love Jeunet, when he gets Amelie to meet the guy at the café, she can’t bear the awkwardness of the moment and escapes by falling on the floor in a splash of water. Then there is Paris; someday I’ll walk its lovely streets, someday soon. And like the tiny mouse, I will sit and be taken aback by its incredible loveliness.

Then there is food. Oh how I love food, how I love making food. Really if it were up to me, I would eat the most lavish dishes, drink the most exquisite wines and nibble on only the finest cheese every day of my life. I guess that too will happen someday. Anybody can cook! How incredible…

Discordianism - today onwards, I shall be its staunch follower, whenever I feel like it. The following will be my vow –

If you want in on the Discordian Society
then declare yourself what you wish
do what you like
and tell us about it
or
if you prefer
don't.

—Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00032

Perfect isn’t it? Do as you like! Not only will this help me explain to myself and to others, actions of mine that society would typically classify as disorder, as against order, but also it will help me come to terms with the actions of others. After all, what we view as reality or order depends on our concept of reality and order, which Discordian Society calls the grid, which changes from person to person and from one culture to another. So what appears as chaos might actually be order if viewed through a different grid. The reality and order that remains unchanged no matter what one’s concept of reality or order is the real TRUTH. This might include things like mothers should always love their children, the dog is man’s preferred best friend in the animal kingdom, friendship is based on trust and lovers must try and remain honest, and so on. Of course certain cultures some from the human race and others outside of it find it sufficiently normal for mothers to be remarkably careless about their kids, others where it is the evil cat that is viewed as man’s comrade of choice, some where one’s friendships are based on who is willing to pay for one’s drinks, and still others like the followers of the flower, who uphold promiscuity as one of the highest virtues, next only toBangkok or someplace after this episode. Oooo. Discordianism is about understanding that no one grid reflects the real TRUTH, as in no one concept of reality or order is better than all others, the grid pertaining to the real TRUTH actually doesn’t exist, it’s a bit like infinity. One can get close to it but never reach it completely; the trick is to use different grids, at different times, at the same time, randomly, quickly, recklessly, to lose oneself to paradigm piracy of such depths till one has no concept of reality or chaos. One does – as one likes. To diverse Gods, do mortals bow, Holy Cow and Wholly Chao. (Chao is singular for Chaos, and is pronounced like Cow)

Of course it will take me a while, to do exactly as I like, and to understand others who behave in a similar manner, which is why I said I shall be a staunch follower of Discordian philosophy, whenever I feel like it, or I am up to it. As I grow familiar with different grids and accustom myself to the concept of order they have to offer; things I found inexplicable and worried about immensely earlier will form a part of what I refer to as the normal, or the orderly. I will, in the process, move from being a Legionnaire Disciple to the High Priest of all this, that is if I feel like making all the effort. being perpetually stoned or drunk. Shit, Roadies 5.0 is coming to an abrupt end, what will become of weekends now? Oh wait, maybe not, they are going to

Fnord.

The Law of Fives states simply that: all phenomena are directly or indirectly related to the number five, and this relationship can always be demonstrated given enough ingenuity on the part of the demonstrator.

The Law of Fives is never wrong. – Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00016

2 +3 = 5.

Bhang = 2 + 7 + 1 + 14 + 8 = 32, which is 23 reversed!!!!!! And 3 + 2 = 2 + 3 = 5!!

Bhang should be banned.

Apparently all this trouble began in 1166 BC, when a certain morbid person who went by the name Greyface, asked mankind to “Look at all the Order around you,” men obliged and took life more seriously than it actually was and have never really been happy ever after. The Curse of Greyface. The White Russian shall be the drink of choice for me as soon as I own a refrigerator that belongs completely to me. Jazz music is what I will listen to, Django Reinhardt if I can, I think the gentlemen offers the definitive acid test for happiness, if you can listen to his music you must be happy. Radiohead on the other hand - There was definitely more I had to say, but somehow I don’t feel like it anymore. Or I don’t remember, which is probably almost the same thing.

Wholly Chao.

Sab Hotch Potch Ho Gaya (Not for Sale)

Each evening my parents invade my room and subject themselves and me to a few hours of the most convoluted, stupid and bizarre creations of evil EieKttaae KKapoor. I must find things to do for those few hours. Most often I just stare blankly and follow the life of Saloni as she moves from being divorced, pregnant, killed, reborn, lost, replaced by a duplicate, killed again, and reborn without memory of previous life and as a five year old. But then sometimes all the stupidity gets to me and I take to reading. Hmm the setting doesn’t allow for any sort of serious literary foray – all I can manage is flipping through recipe books.


Cooking, now that’s something. I can now make a really mean Lal Maas, a decent replica of Mutton Belli Ram, subtly tangy Galouti Kababs, the caramelized rice part of Dhansak and a host of other things. But today I am too tired to do any fancy cooking.

Restlessness, acute boredom and a few other things are causing me physical uneasiness currently. It’s a bit like nausea – like someone is softly pinching my nose. Plus I am tired; the last few days have been spent working the markets like a mad man. I have visited exotic places called Fatwa, Kacchi Dargah, Bakhtiyarpur, and Naxal-infested Masaurhi. Add to this the endless saga of Saloni and the fact that my parents won’t let me turn on the fan and you get a young man on the verge of going completely insane.

I have a theory. If one ensures each day is exactly similar to the previous 24 hour cycle, one might find, beyond a short phase of slow monotony that time actually goes by more quickly. Experiments in this seminal sphere of science are underway and results are eagerly awaited. But one thing is for sure at the end of one such batch of x number of exactly similar days, one might find that the memories of the x days make them look more like a single day.

My days are turning out to be complete repetitions of the same thoughts, actions, feelings etc. It was a little boring to begin with, but now there is cold comfort in the numbness that comes from such an experience.

******

Sir, Society main crimnilty jo hai na, sab kuch hotch potch kar diya hai.

As I spend more time here, among these people I knew nothing of before, their thoughts, actions, aspirations and dreams, I find myself growing increasingly fond of them. I guess its also because I have no option since by and by old pillars I could comfortably lean on have either moved too far away or grown too weak and hollow to support me.

The way they speak is one of the many things I love about them. It makes me crack up like nothing else.

Suniye na! MP main baarh aa gaya hai, ee maal aur kahin nahin milega. Le lijiye na. (Reply – Dhut behanchod, MP main mera sasural hai, wahan koi baarh nahin aaya hai!)

Eh Anil, yeh Deepak kahan ka hai?

Deepak, Sir?? Deepak – oo toh Ara jila ka domicile hai.

LOL. They have strange affection for some really intricate words from the English language.

Kya Gopal Sunday ko kya kiye?

Sunday, Sir?? OO misej ko le gaye teh marketing ke liye.

Marketing is Bihari for shopping.

Sir, ee jo distribution main gappage hai na galti dikha raha hai.

Clear kut baat hai – ekdum.

Theek ba. Hamar baat manva toh theek ba.

Sir, aaj mat boliye kuch, mahaul bahut tensile hai. Tensile, LOL.

Paulitics na Sir, ganda khel hai.

Saharsa main na sir, fooding ka bahut problem hai. Lekin lodging ka A-one vyavastha hai. Really main first class!

Goodastuff.

Sir yeh backet stock kab aayega?

Backet?

Haan Backet..

Backet??!

Sir, oo Bucket mean kar raha hai.

Gems – these guys. Yesterday I was invited to a mutton-party. They cooked for me and bought me Old Monk!! *sniff* It was great – I got foolishly drunk and began to thank them for all their love and support and promised them all sorts of things and spoke to them about more sale and all that. I guess as their boss I should be behaving in a more prudent fashion, but what the hell.

I don’t think I will ever get over the fact that these guys are elder to me, married with kids and all. That I’m Sir to them, such a big deal, someone they fear and respect. When I go to their weddings I am the most pampered after the groom. It’s all a little difficult to digest.

The other day I had to fire someone. He held my feet, cried and begged, it was his sister’s wedding in a few days. But it was something I had to do, to set an example against stealing. I don’t know what I felt most, sympathy for him, disgust at having to make or being able to make such decisions or simply fear that he may send me a death threat.

******

Cookie took her first bath in many months and has now stopped smelling like rotten eggs. She is the biggest beneficiary of my love for cooking and has developed a Rajput’s stomach for fiery Lal Mass curry. Other than that she continues to live a life that consists of aimless wagging of her crooked tail, hiding in obscure corners of the house to avoid drinking milk, throwing herself at me when I return from work and finding some way of sleeping on my pillow at night.

******

Radiohead continue to be a source of solace and save me on the long drives across Bihar. The only trouble is that my version of Talk Show Host ends abruptly. Isn’t it the most beautiful song ever?

******

For more than a week now my life has been taken over by this stupid game on my cell phone. Those of you who ever owned that defining gadget of the Indian 90s – The Little Master video game, that epitome of technology and creativity, will remember the game Tetris. In my phone it is simply called Blocks. I play it first thing in the morning, when I go to the loo, over tea, before taking a bath, after the bath, in between changing clothes, on the way to office, in office, while overseeing the day’s order, through my smoke breaks, after office, at home, while Saloni weeps, before I sleep.

It’s a simple game – blocks of various shapes fall down at some speed, you have to give them direction and twist them around to fall into place. Every time you get a row without any gaps it disappears. The game ends when the no. of incomplete rows rises one on top of the other and covers the full screen.

If you think of it, a pursuit as mundane as this can pose significant challenges. Now the game starts at speed level one and the levels rise for every ten complete rows, that are removed. But the evil game makers have ensured that speed level 7 is unplayable so basically the maximum no. of rows you can remove are sixty. If you take away a single row you get hundred points. If two are blasted you get two hundred and fifty points, and if three are removed you get four hundred and if you take care of four rows in one single ingenious stroke you get six hundred points. So assuming you reach sixty rows all in fours you can make six hundred times fifteen which is nine thousand points. I bet that’s the maximum anyone can make, and I think the people at Nokia feel so too, because the scoring happens only in four digits!

My progress from an amateur only a few days ago to now has been truly remarkable. I have moved from a high score of 4800 on Sunday to 7300, achieved today on the way back home. In the process, I have kept myself from thinking too much, and lost a few million brain cells.

******

Did you know – leopard slugs mate in mid air while hanging from a thread of mucous?

I think Mucouse sounds like a nice palatable dish. Mucouse Pastries. Or Mucouse de zu belah blu blu bleh.

La Lecon

After endless rounds of bitter fighting, I finally got my way. The English one-act play had been saved from the evil, unimaginative hands of Samarth and was now my sole responsibility. It was to be the second production of the year, after we realized that Art (Yasmeena Reza) though a great play simply wouldn’t win us anything. And in those early days, winning an award in the university theatre circuit was on top of our agenda. After all no one took a bunch of SRCC nerds seriously, we were supposed to crack the CAT, not concern ourselves with the theatre of the absurd.

And what a bunch we made, GP, Uma, Tanvi, Sanyal, Madhvi, Kunj, Kalindi, me and a few others. When I look back now, and I am sorry – this is going to sound corny; when you really want something, and we wanted for those two months nothing more than to put up the best play DU had ever seen - the whole world connives to make your dream come true. We suddenly found in each other our best friends and lovers. Nothing made us happier, nobody and nothing else existed but the play and us. For those few months our lives revolved around the costumes, the sets, the lines the competitions, The Lesson.

But it all began with Dattani’s Tara – that was the play of my dreams the one I really wanted to do. I had reworked the dialogues and Uma and GP were excited too. We auditioned and somehow managed a cast of six. But I think even before an hour of line reading I knew this would be a disaster. I could almost hear the LSR girls laugh and boo us off stage already, just like last year (well almost, economists are known to be remarkably thick skinned.) Hmpf.

Responsibility is a scary thing, if I screwed up – damn I could almost hear Samarth laugh too. And then in one of those strange things that happen regularly in life, Sanyal decided to walk by grinning and exposing 80% of his dental ability. After assessing the damage, Sanyal, the eternal optimist decided to blurt –

Why don’t you do The Lesson? You’ll only need three actors, about all you can find here, plus we only performed it twice last year –
(Now, last year The Lesson had been performed by Vishal and Shikha, the deities of SRCC Dramsoc. Nobody, surely none of us could match up to them…)

And who will play the Prof???

You!! I thought you could do it last year itself, but then Vishal made himself available…
(Okay. The deal is I really wanted to play the role since last year, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. Hmm – but Sanyal was showing me the way, it was difficult for me to hide my excitement.)

Well. Erm.. I don’t know… Uma? GP? Guys??

Listen – IP (Indraprastha College for Women, they had a theatre competition) is only about two weeks away… we haven’t much time. I’ll help you guys.

Okay – well if you say so. Do you have a script??

In about fifteen minutes I was taking a bus to New Friends Colony, to meet Shikha and get a copy of the script. In the meantime Uma and GP were to talk to Madhvi and convince her for the role of the student. They had to pull her out of her house; her dad apparently was averse to the idea of her being in the audi till late in the evening. On my return we were to have the first of our line readings. The lines were to be mugged by the next day. Sanyal disappeared for CAT lessons, and from then on was called CATman, and welcomed to the audi with a burst of his own signature music. Tana-nana nana-nana Tana-nana nana-nana Taen Taen. CATman!!! Tanvi (Mummy) was taking care of everyone and everything while Kunj was being aloof, cracking absurd jokes and being vague. Kalindi I think was as usual the only dignified entity amongst all of us. Thus began our production of Eugene Ionesco’s La Lecon.

I went over the lines feverishly on my way back to college. I decided on how I would stammer till the first time I’d get angry with the student, and how I’d slowly grow into a loud, clear and booming voice. I thought of how I’d sit with my ankles twisted inwards (something that I still do), and that I’d grow a beard, and wear suspenders, and scratch myself with my knuckles every now and then, and how I’d be fidgety and nervous. That was some ride back, I was rocking back and forth, shaking my brain and ideas kept falling into my lap, on my script.

But when I got to college and the line reading began, I realized that I didn’t sound any where near what I had in mind. Somehow I didn’t want to do it then, like that, so I asked a visibly irritated Madhvi to go back home and meet me the next morning, really early, alone.

The next day, at the audi steps – I delivered the dialogues and I think it was near what I delivered eventually on stage during competitions. Like I said things were falling into place, and rapidly so. We had our first run through in six days and we knew we had come up with something…

Madhvi – she was by far the most innocent, and nicest of us all. She isn’t someone you’d typically imagine as being perfect to play Ionesco’s student. She called straws, pipes – she pronounced ‘v’ as ‘w’, much to GP’s disgust, and when we asked her to come dressed in a long skirt she came in her younger sister’s frock!! And ‘aai hai’ was her phrase of choice. But she had the look, and bit by bit, with Uma and GP putting in hundreds of painstaking hours into her, taking her through the play line by line, giving her notes, she took the character to a level of her own. By the end of it, I think she gave me significant cause for worry, I mean at the end of a run through they would hug her and tell her she was brilliant, while I’d be left in a corner, knife in hand. Eh eh, psycho, go get some tea. Hehe. I don’t know if any of us could ever imagine anyone pull that role off in the manner she did.

Uma – every morning, you’d see this ball of hair spinning and bouncing towards you. And once the movement stopped, a silly laugh was followed by a sillier joke. Sinha, you, what are you, the rust peeling off from an old unused tap. And I’d reply with these single sharp cries which for some reason all of us found hilarious. After which Uma would arrange tea for everyone, take Madhvi in the corner and give her motivational gyan and protect her from evil GP. Uma managed The Lesson, all of us – everything. She was the one I’d turn to first with a doubt on my face after every performance and she’d shake her head and bounce in approval. And then arrange tea and maggi.

Sanyal – he wore a single maroon jacket and a grin throughout. CATman!!! Where would we be without him - Sanyal understood theatre better than all of us put together. He is the one who always pointed out stupid glaring mistakes in our performances, yeah, he wanted us to tow his line, but being the arrogant bastard that I am, I always had my way. One day it irked Sanyal so greatly that he left the audi for three full hours. But during the evening rehearsal, as I was twisting Madhvi’s arm and making her cry, I saw a small patch of white with a cigarette in it sitting in the final row. And after the performance, the loudest applause came from that patch of white. I don’t think any of us were as selfless about the whole thing as Sanyal; he was there without any agenda other than a love for theatre, Dramsoc and the audi.

GP gave us his car, drove us to competitions, he bought me my lunch and evening snack, he carried the heaviest props, also he brought The Lesson to life with his music! In the beginning, while we would be practicing our lines, he’d sit with his guitar and then his tabla and for hours make random noise that just sounded like he was tuning his instruments. And then suddenly, one fine day, he declared he had the music all figured out. To this day I can’t think of the play and not think of the music. The professor’s nervousness and his intent were both captured by his gloomy guitar playing in a constant loop. The chaos that surrounds the room as the professor drags the dresser to the student -

Okay… We’ll come then… We’ll come… The lesson is almost over now… almost… over… Knifey… say Knifey… say it… K-N-I-F-E-Y!!!

- and kills her. That savage end would not have been half as insane had it not been for GP’s tabla that climbed into its own crescendo of madness. Oh one can also not overlook GP’s contribution to by far the most delicate cog in the entire production. My throat! It was and still is affected by Staphylococcus Aurous, a flesh eating bacteria, most often found to be living harmlessly on human skin, but which somehow had attached itself to my throat. Now I love to talk, even after rehearsals, I love giving directions, making unnecessary repetitions of the same plan, going over the next day, giving useless suggestions, cursing Samarth. Without fail, I’d lose my voice, and this would happen, quite strategically on the eve of a competition. After which, GP would carry me to his house, where he and Pushpa aunty, would put me on a diet of Sualin, Strepsils, Vicks vaporub, hot water, hot chocolate, gargle, Betadine, and absolute silence. We would communicate with our hands. Then I’d be wrapped in a muffler and two blankets and put to sleep. The next morning, I’d wake up to GP putting two Strepsils into my mouth, then making me gargle with Betadine and then just saying – relax, it will be okay. And somehow it always was…

Tanvi – she played the role of Marie, the maid. And it was one thing we never had to worry about. She didn’t even allow us to make a suggestion once. She was perfect right from the beginning. I think once Uma was pissed with her for something else and so she pulled her up for not looking sufficiently suspicious. Uma and her moods!! Tanvi, took care of all of us, I think she was the one who was most attached to what we shared as a group during The Lesson. In fact after it was all over and the rest of us returned to being nerds, she felt slightly strange that things ended so abruptly. But Tanvi, came up with I think the best analysis of a rehearsal, I think she made most sense, most practical sense when she spoke of the play and our performances. She would sit at the edge of the stage and I could see her look at me during the rehearsal, she would hold her head in her hands and squeeze her eyes harder and harder… I don’t know, you could look at Tanvi and during the rehearsal you knew how it was going…

Kunj – he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. But we knew we were incomplete as a unit without him. He did the lights along with Sanyal I think, and also gave the pep talk in the huddle before a competition. Kunj never really gave me a huge compliment but you could gauge from his involvement in the proceedings that he was happy with the way things were shaping up. He sat besides Tanvi during a rehearsal and made obscure faces – hehe. Hmm, I don’t remember much else, other than the fact that he was there, and it mattered. Kalindi – too was there, she was most often the only voice of reason, and by then hadn’t really become completely a part of everything, which was a great thing. She sat there as an outside observer and gave us much needed objectivity in understanding what we were doing with The Lesson. And I remember in LSR, when I went into the wings, she gave me a glass of warm water; my throat was nearly gone as usual.

The sets were bare, a set of chairs, one with a bare back. A knife that Sanyal brought for us lay in a dresser that somehow was part of SRCC property. On the dresser we placed a candle stand, and for a table we used a wooden block. My costumes were more elaborate, I wore a warm vest, then a thick hand knitted sweater, and then a full sleeved warm shirt and I wore suspenders and then a blazer. Most of these were bought on a trip to Daryaganj one Sunday morning before rehearsals. Oh yes, the chowkidars were all smitten by our passion and opened the audi for us at all odd hours and even on holidays. So the point of the multiple layers of clothing was to make me sweat. I don’t know, it somehow got into my head that all the perspiration brought out my character. And I’d torture myself with all the clothing and then get the stage fans turned off and torture everybody else too. But really it made the rehearsal something of an athletic feat, each time at the end as I’d carry the body into the wings I would actually genuinely breathe heavily like the old professor.

Very soon we were to have our first competition – we were going to IP, or so I thought…

Uma and almost all others thought that we weren’t ready yet. And that we shouldn’t go to IP. And we had the first of our historic wars. Me versus Uma plus everyone else minus GP, it was something I tell you. I yelled, and saw only my point of view and threw a royal tantrum and ruined my throat and finally had my way. Deep down I felt we were ready, plus I wanted to know whether others thought as highly of the play as we did. We had been showing it to test audiences, two at a time, but they were always people we liked, people who were too sweet to be objective. The fight cost us one rehearsal but we were okay pretty soon.

And Sinha, what are you, a three month old rotten carrot.

We spent that evening at Irfan’s, the chai-wallah. We had taught him to make sookha-maggi and that used to be our staple diet. We’d also steal his ugly ceramic cups, because in one of the scenes I had decided to crash a cup on the table to scare the pupil. It was very funny, because the first time I did it I didn’t tell anybody, so when it happened they were all shocked. Tanvi I thought would burst into tears. Anyway, that bit of the play was what I think we used to look forward to, at least I used to (yes – the character was seeping into me). And I wanted to really break a cup every time we rehearsed so poor clueless Irfan bhaiya lost two to three of his ugliest cups every day, till Uma decided to buy us two dozen cups of the ugliest variety.

I don’t remember much of IP, it was a strange stage, small and the audience seemed too near and too involved. I remember Kunj and Sanyal did an outstanding job of the lights. We won an award for Best Performance but the important thing was everyone stood up to take notice. Finally we knew we had created something. The judges gave us a lot of ideas, some okay, some outrageous, but we began to think again. We reworked the end; we made it more violent more crazy. I worked once again on the character. Uma and GP invested days of work into Madhvi.

By the time Rajpal came (St. Stephen’s) we knew we stood a great chance of winning – Best Play. We worked hard, made good use of the tech run through and hoped for the best. I remember walking into Stephen’s a day before the performance and this large woman of gothic appearance grunted at me. So another one of those existentialist plays huh? Now, I’ll be frank, apart from Sanyal, none of us had a clue about existentialism, or the theatre of the absurd or the fact that in the actual play the hysteria at the end actually involves the professor raping the pupil. God, if we knew that we’d be scandalized I think and shelved the whole production, haha. It’s crazy and absurd; we did The Lesson without knowing any of these things, and did a great job of it. In a way I think we paid our own tribute to absurdity. I’m sure Ionesco would have approved…

Hmm at Stephen’s we ran out of hair paint, so Uma took evil pleasure in plastering my hair with some sort of normal oil paint. Of course I was wearing my eight layers of sweat inducing clothing. So towards the end, when the sweat flowed down my face it carried with it all of the white paint. It went into my eyes and I couldn’t see for the last ten minutes. I could only vaguely make out where I was by staring into the various lights or by the hazy outline of Madhvi’s red dress.

But it was a great performance and the response we received was tremendous. The IP girls had gone berserk too, but it was difficult to take them seriously. However after Stephen’s we had the approval of the theatre outfits from most other colleges. Plus we won again for Best Performance. Man we were on a high. We went to Friend’s and Uma ate continuously for an hour. And Sanyal grinned throughout and talked about CAT and Beckett. And Kalindi continued to maintain poise. And I couldn’t stop talking and ruining my throat. And Kunj and GP were pulling Madhvi’s leg in the meanest manner, only she thought the joke was on Tanvi. And Tanvi was lapping her tongue, and being most happy and willing to smother anyone who would allow it.

Disgusting things were happening back in SRCC. People were questioning how we gave Tanvi the role without auditioning. And why Uma and GP were the only ones involved. So I did what I am best at – assumed my rabid dog role, took on Samarth plus everyone else in the Dramsoc minus us. Within minutes they knew I was too much of a lunatic to fight with. So they all took their petty issues and disappeared into thin air.

Tarang, LSR - that was the big one. Everybody from DU would be there. We had practiced harder and we were all set except for one thing. My throat! It gave way on the eve of the competition. Immediately, GP put me on the strict regimen I spoke of earlier. We got to LSR early next morning, and I couldn’t say whether my voice would hold or not. Nervously I looked at the stage, memories of the previous year came back to haunt me. The LSR audience was probably the meanest bunch after AIIMS. I sat in one corner wrapped in two mufflers and coated in Vicks Vaporub. Before we had the huddle, I took Uma to the field and tested my voice, it was okay. But there was a heavy chance of it giving way half way through. Anyway we went into the huddle and I prayed to God.

The LSR girls are strange, if they are happy they laugh, if they are sad the laugh, if they are scared or angry or bored or hungry or tired – they laugh. So half way through it was difficult to make out how things were going. But towards the end we knew we had the audience wrapped around our fingers. I remember being most kicked about the fact that the three candles went out one each at the first cut to cut, the second cut to cut and then eventually when I shoved Madhvi’s face into the mirror. It was some kind of a divine approval, as if things were going to be on our side. And when Madhvi fell to the ground, and GP’s tabla stopped, we got a standing ovation. To this day I get goose bumps thinking of that. We had really stepped it up, and the audiences I later discovered had loved it all through. I just wish they had made it more apparent, like Tanvi would.

We were announced to have won the award for Best Performance. And frankly we hardly cared – then the judge said, the play that won today, the best play, had not just the best performances, it had the best sets, the best lighting, the best costumes, the best music (okay he didn’t say this, but GP I swear it couldn’t have been an intentional omission), it was the most creative and the most powerful – The Lesson.

The seven eight of us created enough ruckus to bring down the whole audi. There hadn’t been a happier day in my life till then. We hugged, and jumped and cried and bounced and laughed…

The SRCC competition came in last, and by then we were on auto pilot. It was an emotional experience I think, performing The Lesson for the last time. The huddle was something, guess everyone spoke and all. The performance was sublime; we couldn’t go wrong on home ground. And the best thing was Madhvi, who by now had become perfect – won Best Performance. We won Best Play, again and Best Director as well plus a special commendation!! I really don’t know what we did to celebrate, but it must simply have involved hanging around together. I

******

The Lesson left a lasting impact on me. Apart from the twisted ankles and the mannerisms which I still maintain to some extent – it was crucial in me deciding that I’d want to make movies, that I’d want to direct at some point of time in my life. I guess though, it wasn’t the play, or acting or theatre that I got so attracted to; it was the people I was with. I think all the success gave me confidence in who I was, and also for the first time I had lost myself completely to something, and I enjoyed it. So much so that now, nothing I do makes me happy unless I put in everything into it like I did for the Lesson. I am guessing the others involved too were touched by it in some way. GP is now going to be reading for a PhD. in Economics. Uma is in business school and thrashing everybody and is soon going to be making a few millions. Kunj is working, absconding, travelling to fancy places. Kalindi is in Belgium, working, coming back to India soon. Sanyal is in Bombay, I think, working for Citibank. Tanvi is in MICA – in her first year. Madhvi, last I heard was working in Bangalore. Guess we have all moved on, I think me more than anyone. But there was a time when all of us wanted nothing more than to be at the audi, drinking chai, cracking silly jokes and working on The Lesson.
******

Hmm - quite a long one. I don’t know the exact reasons for writing this. I wanted to revisit happy times in my life, a time when friendship and trust and other things could be depended upon no matter what. I wanted to remember all my friends.

Plus – life's a lot like an Ionesco's play, one character begins with the upper hand and then loses it for no reason to the other one, who was planning it all along. The good thing though is – that Ionesco’s plays come around and repeat themselves in full circle.

******

PS – sorry, I am sure I haven’t captured everything, I did my best. But for those of you who read this and were there in that magical time, I am sure you’ll be reminded of everything?

Happy Birthday!

Most of us send and receive more New Year’s wishes than Birthday ones. In less than three hours I would finish two dozen years of my life. Since I hardly got any New Year’s greetings I expect very few people outside of my family and pet to acknowledge this feat of mine and congratulate me. Not that it’s a huge cause of concern for me, and I am not going to exploit this to vent out some serious angst.

Maybe this is what it means to grow old. I’m hardly excited about tomorrow being the 24th of January at all. There was a time when January itself meant gifts, and cakes, and a party. And in college it involved treats and huge quantities of alcohol. Right now I don’t feel anything about tomorrow, which makes writing this post fairly difficult.

So I’ll just resort to much randomness…

*******

If any of you have been waiting to read about the U-tab, well, I don’t know… Initially I was so kicked about the stories that I considered not putting them up lest the ideas were stolen by devious scouts from major Hollywood studios. I can’t spend the rest of my life suing people. But then I grew lazy, and then even more so. However, when the trickle of traffic that makes it to slowtum-yayaya began to dry completely I sprung into creative action. Only to realize that even though my ideas were fairly interesting, I didn’t know how to put them into words very well. So the project has been postponed. I promise to put the post up soon. In the meantime, an excerpt –

Johnny Depp said that he used the tab on a visit to India. He spent almost a year living in a slum in India as a penniless traveler. Then he returned to his French villa but carried back the person he became while he was there… This helped him remain true to his character in Shantaram during the one year of filming, as he would have long conversations and spend entire days with the lonely wanderer from India captured inside the tab. And much to the delight of RSA the makers of the U-tab, he attributed his Oscar for Shantaram to their invention. Of course psychologists blame Depp’s bizarre use of the tab for his recent depression and anti-social behavior. (He sent his tab and an output docket to collect the Oscar, along with a note that said, Give it to him, he wanted it, I didn’t. So in his Oscar speech Johnny, wearing an Orange cotton kurta and sporting a dirty long beard apologized for not being there in person.)

So that’s that. Hopefully the rest of it will see the light of the day…

*******

Hmm – as I turn 24, I am fighting back certain truths of my life and at the same time maybe getting used to them. It seems more and more unlikely that I will eventually make movies someday. I am growing increasingly comfortable with my job, liking it often. The money is an even bigger comfort and a growing addiction too. Yes there is this great faith in myself that someday I’ll just snap out of this. But that faith is dwindling bit by bit. But that’s fine; it’s not making me unhappy or anything. Oh, also I think I am losing a lot of hair, and that I may not actually be sleeping with 20 women before I am 25 as was the plan mutually agreed upon by us friends at school. Also my body has been sending out dangerously firm suggestions that I might have to start excercising, get further root canal treatments, and use exercise and not hostel grub as a means of avoiding an ugly paunch.

*******

The last month or so has been crazy – it feels like I have been held by my ankles and spun around in the wildest possible manner. Things have come and gone and I have sat through them dazed, reacting appropriately but without much thought. To make matters worse all this happened along with some serious travelling.

Patna – Calcutta – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Lucknow – Calcutta – Mumbai – Cochin – Kumarakom – Cochin – Mumbai – Delhi – Patna

Patna – Calcutta - Patna

The sheer variety of experiences and location makes the last month seem much longer than it actually was. There was much joy, alcohol, meeting up, tension, life altering moments (near), boredom, fear, guilt, gluttony, transit, bitterness, anger, luxury, fighting…

Desperately need things to slow down.

*******

There is a strange skill I have, which I slowly developed into a way of life. For as long as I can remember I have carefully segregated the events of my life, and its acquaintances from one another. I guess everyone indulges in this a bit, but I am certain that the precision and severity with which I compartmentalize my life, the ease with which it comes to me and the extent to which I take this sets me apart. I don’t know why I am talking about it, surely not to sound deep and intelligent. (I swear!) This actually leads to very funny situations. For example I go to great lengths to keep different sets of friends completely exclusive. I lie, I plot and I connive and sometimes it gets all too confusing and then I blame it on being absent minded. I don’t really know why I do it, maybe because I am a different person with each separate group of people, and I like that. For example I am this really dedicated, hard working and enthusiastic actor when I meet some people and with others I am just a regular bum. I am both, actually, sometimes both together, and sometimes neither, but if the two sets of friends were to meet then I’d have to give up one personality of mine. I even noticed I have a different tone with each group of people. Hmm maybe everyone does this, but only I choose to give it so much thought and then mention it on my blog?

*******

Why is it that as an art form, Cinema is most mutilated? I mean most people think (with significant legitimacy) that Cinema is actually a medium for entertainment and not really art. Well that’s not a debate I want to enter – I think it is something that needs to be decided by the director of the film. He needs to decide what the purpose of his movie is and why he is involved in it. I guess the reason most films are closer to entertainment than art is mostly economic. Cinema when compared to photography, writing, painting, sculpture, design etc. is probably on average the most expensive medium. In the sense that on average a decent movie costs more to make than any painting, photograph or a book. I am sure Titanic even in constant money terms was a more expensive venture for Mr. Cameron than any of Picasso’s painting. (Ok I am thoroughly clueless about how much a painting could cost, though I’m certain 5000 rupees is sufficient for a huge canvas of great quality. Yet, my hands are trembling after I made that comparison, art aficionados forgive me if my statement is flawed, plus it is of no consequence to the point I eventually want to make.)

Now, what I mean to say is that not only did Picasso have to buy only a little paint, a few brushes and a canvas and sit in a rented studio or just at home sipping coffee while he painted the Guernica, he didn’t have to care whether his servant or the barber down the street understood the nuances of analytic Cubism or the touches of Symbolist influence in his work. A painter needs one person to understand his work and he gets paid handsomely. He needn’t create a product that is understood and liked by as many people as is possible. For the director of a movie this is a continuous headache.

And therefore Titanic must come with packaged with a love story, and therefore we must live with a continuous stream of trashy senseless cinema.

I don’t know is there an economic solution to this. What if a director were to make a movie and then just release one copy like a painting or maybe only five? Say it’s Wong Kar Wai or the Coen brothers or some other fancier director like Kieselowski – what if they release just one DVD of their movie? Wouldn’t it go for a lot? And then the movie could be played in select theatres just like a painting travels across museums?

Or maybe we needn’t release movies in all theatres. What if movies by top directors were released only in a few theatres where they ran for only a week at very expensively priced tickets? And the director’s toured with their films just like playwrights do?

Hmm I guess this is fanciful, but it’s unfair for just one art form to be subjected to the vagaries of economics in this manner, for only cinema to depend on mass approval. What is most heart breaking is that this is what I would want to do. Why is it not painting or singing that makes me happy?

*******

Cooking is about the most enjoyable thing I do these days. Just made Dhansak; well only the caramelized rice part of it. Hmm it’s about the only thing I do these days which grabs my attention entirely for as long as I do it. Tomorrow there will be time for some Awadhi delights.

*******

Less than two hours now; I will be 24 when I wake up. Not going to proof read this… too tired. Sorry folks. And by the way three people have already wished me – kind of. So I break the trend of more New Years vs birthday wishes..

The U-tab

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Who are you?

Yes - really, who are you?

WHO ARE WE??

Are we what we do for a living? Bankers, Soldiers, Waiters, Student??
Are we just Men or Women? Or are we defined by our Religion?
Ethnicity?
Or how old we are? Kids, Grandfathers, Teenagers?
Maybe we are simply defined by our love lives? Married, Single, Divorced etc.
Millionaire? Billionaire?
Nationality?
Number of Pets?
Gay or Straight?
Smokers/Non-smokers?

We at RSA Inc understand that who we really are is probably a random combination of the answers to all of the previous questions and a million more. So many answers, some obvious and many not so. Answers that continuously evolve, new questions get asked, and old ones become redundant... And with it friends, we change. We begin to become different people.

Oh this is all becoming very absurd.

What we are trying to say friends is that it is our firm belief that we really are a collection of thoughts, ideas, actions, emotions and acquaintances. These set of variables though are continuously changing. Why a successful, married scientist I once knew is now a deranged pothead (his wife left him for another man.) Sad my friends... Really really sad...

Bravo! - you might say... Sarcastically you might exclaim - riveting, Sir, your line of thinking, your opinions. Ugh refreshingly original, you might add.

Well do not be impatient with me friends. I have much to offer.

It is a tough world we live in friends? Right? Not many people we can trust. How would you like to know somebody you once were? Yes my friends, a year ago you were quite possibly a completely different person - how would you like to get in touch with him? Researchers at RSA Inc have scientifically shown that people 'change' on average every 118 days.

Ladies and Gentlemen - behold The U-tab

(Image - Replica of the U-tab, scale of replica to original - 30:1)

What is the U-tab? Well, in technological parlance, it’s fitted with 5 miniature steady cameras and one moving camera, a voice recorder and a computer with an 8000TB hard disk and 1TB of RAM.

The U-Tab is to be attached to you friend, your collar button, or may we suggest the front of your neck? During preliminary tests women and even men have chosen to wear the tab on their necks, foreheads, in the centre of their chests… We are working on the fashion factor friends, soon their will be a curvier U-Tab in red which will glow in the dark…

The U-tab acts as a really really big diary. It sees and hears everything, everyone you meet, talk to, everywhere you go, things you do, your responses, everything. Its tiny but robust computer works on this huge amount of data and collates according to basic categories. Then it begins to form a personality depending on the data you supply. With increasing usage the tab gets more and more information and begins to refine the personality profile. The tab works constantly and notices everything, it puts different packets of data under different personalities – tests have revealed that the tab can sense up to 28 different personalities or ‘people’ at the same time… Of course friends we do not expect you to stretch the tab to such limits.

With time as you surround yourself with different people, ideas, thoughts and actions, the U-tab notices and begins to formulate a new personality and a separate person (assuming there are changes, but as mentioned this does occur, as soon as every 118 days.)

So that’s the theory – what’s the purpose of it all? I can almost hear you say…

Well – after a while you can take the U-tab connect it to an output docket, and have a conversation with it. You can ask questions, throw ideas, curse or abuse and the tab will search its massive database and respond exactly as the personality it has formulated within itself would. To add a touch of realism, it will project a 3D image of the person it contains.

Interesting? Interested? Friends? Got questions? Call 1-910-779-8457 (Toll Free)

It’s a fascinating gadget I assure you friends, imagine the possibilities. You could ask yourself why you were so stupid as to take that job a year ago, and actually get an answer from your own head then. You could be creative friend; long distance relationships could become easier, imagine, if you were going away you could buy your girlfriend a U-tab and let her use it for a while, and then take it with you. It would almost be like living with your girlfriend in a way.

Oh there is one thing, if the tab isn’t used for a while, the personalities within it begin to fade. It’s not a quirk, but actually the outcome of an effort to get the damn thing to work with stability. So if we strap one across Stephen Hawking’s head, he might still solve problems related to astro-physics for a while after his death but not indefinitely…

I READ THIS THE OTHER DAY, FROM A LONG PAMPHLET STUFFED INTO MY POCKET AT THE STATION, I CALLED THE NUMBER. IT COSTS $600 OR $850 (FOR ONE WITH MORE MEMORY). COMPLETELY WORTH IT I THOUGHT. RESEARCH ON MY PART HAS REVEALED SOME INTERESTING ACCOUNTS FROM USERS OF THE tab, WHICH I SHALL SHARE WITH YOU SOON…