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.

******

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!!!!!

******

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.

******

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.

SLOW-fumbling-LIFE

I am sitting at a café, waiting for a dear friend. She will take a while. Mostly I am comfortable being alone but I need to be moving, that way I presume people will not notice that I have nothing to do but wait.

It’s a scary thought, but one that rarely ever crosses my mind. Guess it’s not something any of us dwell upon very often. We have just one life; I will be 24 years old only once, I will be young just once and die some day. This is the kind of thinking that results in a things-to-do list for most people. In my case, there aren’t many things I’d want to do that I would really enjoy and that are practically doable. I mean I do want to make a movie but that’s a long way off. I use this atypical vein of thinking, instead, to make a few rules that I believe should shape my life, or shall I say things I do not want to do.

Today I realised I do not want to be able to predict the course of my life. I don’t want to be exactly aware of where I will be five years from now. If you have ever sat for one of those queer job-interviews, you will know this question. It’s the kind of question the interviewer congratulates himself for having asked, the kind she feels adds a hint of philosophy to her otherwise corporate existence.

So, tell me , where do you see yourself five years from now?

The first time I was asked this question I said, I don’t know, in , at a senior position. Then she went from five to seven, to ten to fifteen and I followed to seniorer, seniorest, seniorestest.

I never did get that job. Guess I should have just told her I don’t want to see where I will be five years from now. Frankly isn’t that a bit boring? I mean then you might as well just ask to be transported in time to the end of the five years. Don’t you need the twists and turns to really stretch out life, to really live?

******

Bihar has seen the worst flooding in fifty years. An entire river has shifted its course by a few hundred kilometres washing away countless villages, and lives. Some are calling it the worst human disaster India has ever witnessed. For two weeks the news channels were full of it, enterprising journalists went to the disaster zone, and brought to our living rooms stories and pictures of the devastation. And then the economy crashed and the stock markets fell by more than twenty percent all across the world. For two weeks now the news channels have been full of it. Enterprising journalists are travelling to the homes of the common man, whose life has been destroyed by the sudden and giant financial mess.

The last census tells us that 3.2 million people lived in the flood affected areas. Even the most generous estimates of those that are in relief camps or have been otherwise rescued peg the figure at 2 million. This means that more than a million human lives are still stranded, without food, water and shelter in the districts of Bihar. Of course their misery is no longer the stuff that moves channel viewership or national sentiment.

I won’t lie, apart from wishing that this hadn’t happened I didn’t really feel even slight inconvenience. I went about my life in a usual manner, hoped that my sales target would be reduced because of the flooding (it did not happen) and arranged for credit recovery from the severely affected areas.

******

I intend to be involved, very soon, with an NGO in a project that would rehabilitate people in the most severely affected districts. This might require me to take a sabbatical from work, or even quit it altogether. It means I will no longer earn the huge amount of money I get paid every month. It means I need to once again, start worrying about the price of the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the trips I take, the alcohol I drink. It also means I might have to give up what would possibly have been a stellar career studded with recognition, money, challenges and consequently satisfaction.

I made this decision over a short conversation at lunch today. The motive is to embrace an erratic course for my life. I want to be in a situation of instability.

More importantly, and more specifically, I want to understand whether or not I have any form of humanity in me. I am not doing this because I feel for those people; I am doing it because I want to, or at least because I want to know whether I am capable of empathizing with them. I’ll be honest; this is not a sudden bout of saintliness or deep concern for human suffering. Mostly it’s just another way of earning respect, achieving things, earning a living, being challenged and consequently satisfied.

******

I wrote that a few days ago. Then it was just lying open on my desktop. Then I spilt some water on the keyboard and the laptop shutdown. I thought I had lost the file, and now it’s been recovered. Only I don’t feel the same way. In fact I am positively scared of change. I don’t even have the energy to read what I wrote. And I haven’t made the call I was supposed to make or sent the cv as I had promised. I want to make a statement now that will define this situation but my thoughts are too hollow.

How is it that something that made complete sense eventually doesn’t?

tALK sHOW hOST

I want to

I want to be someone else or I'll explode

Floating upon this surface for the birds

The birds

The birds

You want me?

Fucking well come and find me

I'll be waiting

With a gun and a pack of sandwiches

And nothing

Nothing Nothing Nothing

You want me?

Well come on and break the door down

You want me?

Fucking come on and break the door down

I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready

Saturday Slowgrind

It’s Saturday, and I am at work. It’s horrible I tell you; the worst bit is that there really isn’t anything to do here.

So, I was done reading the news, searching for universities, and exotic recipes, and then just before I got here, I clicked, like I always do, the blog that was updated this very minute.

Apparently, Heavy Metal is a more nuanced genre of music than many of us would like to believe. It is still about thick and massive sound, extreme machismo, pulsating beats, getting your body pierced in all sorts of places, and volume, really high volume. But do you know that as an art form, this most exquisite variety of sound has evolved and branched out into, Brutal Death Metal, Deathcore, Doom Metal, Epic Gore, Goregrind, Experimental Porngrind, Mathcore (??), Melodic Doom Metal, Neo Thrash, and Symphonic Viking Metal. Of course the creativity doesn’t end here; we have Anal Cunt, a band that is at the cutting edge of modern day Grindcore. Their latest album is, a fifty track magnum opus, I Like It When You Die. It begins with the sombre and inviting, All Our Fans Are Gay, the title song is, You (fill in the blank), and it contains the hugely popular Being a Cobbler is Dumb, Ha Ha Your Wife Left You, I Only Hit You Because You Are Pretty When You Cry, Phantom Pharter and Clottage Cheese.

We should send these people into outer space; I think they would be happier there. It would be funny though, AC floating in space, battering their equipment, yelling, hitting, biting and yet there would be no noise. Neo Hush.

It’s the reason crowded streets look so fascinating from inside a building, because from behind the glass you cannot hear the dust, the heat or the hurry.

******

Every now and then all of us have a day that is absolutely perfect. It needn’t be filled with achievement of any kind, might just be a regular day but a really pleasant one. Sometimes I wish I could be caught in a day like this.

Sometimes I wish we could all be caught in one never ending day, it would begin, and all of us would go through it and then it would end only to repeat itself in exact manner. They should tell us when it’s going to happen, six months in advance, and we could all stock up on love, happiness and everything else.

******

I watched this tragic story of a young woman shot dead while on her way back home. The incident seems quite random and without any motive, the police are clueless and the media has found new fodder for the month.

For some reason I was reminded of school, our Principal would give these really long lectures on Wednesdays. Most of us looked forward to it because it meant a few lost lessons, but I just liked to listen to what he had to say. I didn’t pay it much attention later, but in the chapel I was all ears. I remember very vividly, him telling us about how none of us factored death into our calculations for the future. Really, we don’t, the poor woman would have had her plans and dreams and everything, not just for the next ten years but for that evening. And then suddenly this happens.

Of course no one will ever factor death into their calculations, least of all little children and I don’t know why he was talking to us about that.

Once, he told us how as he ate breakfast that morning and threw some pieces of egg to his dog, he wondered whether the dog would ever share his meal with him if he was dying of hunger.

Being an ardent lover of dogs, I was very worried that day.

******

I discovered this really cool new Google feature. You can now write a post and time it so that it gets published in the future.

Ladies and Gentlemen do not take this lightly; it’s not simply a way of writing your customary birthday post well in advance and timing it for midnight.

We can now have someone speak to us even after they are dead. Imagine, like Van Gogh, a blogger celebrated for his writing after his death. And the suspense! Unlike paintings, which were all there in front of us, the posts would come suddenly and irregularly. Imagine - the cult-following, the betting on when the next post would appear, whether the last one was the last one, whether there will be a last one! Oh, and the enticing possibility of the ‘dead’ blogger actually being alive.

Alternatively, and if you have limited quantities of literary genius, you can just use this feature to speak to your future self.

I am sure Google didn’t think of all this.

Cat's Squirrel

all right, all right, all right

all right, all right, all right

all right, all right, all right

all right, all right, all right

Large banks are collapsing all around us, financial Armageddon they are calling it, everyone is nervous, but I can't help but think – isn’t this the coolest time to be selling detergent. And then almost as soon as I began to take some pride in what I do – here I am, my first all-night at work. It’s come as a terrible shock to me. Something needs to be changed in the software we use to sell our stuff to the market. Everything related to that is changing and it needs to be done over night because we can’t lose a day of sale and I misunderstood and thought it would be ‘okay’ if I did all this by the end of tomorrow. Of course Bombay thought it wouldn’t and I had to make immediate plans to get this done tonight – and in an exemplary display of leadership here I am, spending the night with the IT people here. Of course I am only listening to loud music and writing this while eating Twix.

I tend to switch from one tense to another in a single post. Have you noticed that? In class 9-10 when I had the best English teacher I have ever had in my life, she’d say that I could be a writer if only I learnt how to use when, while and the tenses. Of course I never learnt. When. She also called be Camus’ outsider. For a bit, in college, I thought it was cool. Now I don’t know what to say – it also depends on who is reading this?

I have lost my ability to stay up all night. In school I did it for every stupid test, and in the second year of graduation I stayed up for three consecutive days. Guess I am getting old. Nothing is worse than waking up early, and I was the only one in the hostel who slept early to wake up in the wee hours. I’d do mathematics.

It’s been a crazy week at work – but at the end of it I have found new motivation for it. Guess after a great first year, I was waiting for things to happen and not repeating the behaviour that delivered the goods last year. October should change everything – but so many bloody holidays.

Tiwari lost his parents when he was really young. His uncle sold him to a zamindaar for thirty eight rupees. The zamindaar would beat up Tiwari every night in a drunken state. Tiwari ran away as an eight year old. He then picked garbage at a railway station for many years. There he became a drug addict and nearly died of it. He reformed and went back to the zamindaar who was by then much older and also calmer. Tiwari served him for three years but the zamindaar’s sons kicked out Tiwari after the latter’s death. He then worked as a loader at a godown and married but his wife ran away with a neighbour and friend. Tiwari married again but this time he took to alcohol and the wife left him and took the two kids with her. He lay half frozen on the street when one of the press vehicles found him a few winters ago. He now owns a pan shop. He visits the temple every Tuesday and Saturday and has vowed never to marry or do drugs. Alcohol is fine, but only in moderation.

Gaurav’s brother works for IBM in London. He is as educated as his brother. But he works here in Patna because his father wants the elder son to stay back. There is quiet resentment in his eyes. I tell him to get an MBA degree through correspondence and to work on his English. He could earn much more than now. But he says his father is really stubborn about him staying back at home and looking after the family even if it means sacrificing his career. I give him the instance of my own father who in his later years hated my grandfather for not letting him go to SOAS as a lecturer. Anyway, the conversation brought us together. The next bit of data I requested for arrived in record time. “Agar main try karoon Sir toh mujeh issey achcha job, with better pay milega?”

Sunil, how I hate him, he is a first rate scoundrel. But I have to bear with him. He is exceptionally intelligent. He is really quick but equally evil, in a naughty childlike manner. Sunil’s dad owned a transport company in Jharkhand. Money was never an issue in the household, and this led Sunil astray. He got into bad company so much so that his dad threw him out of his house. He came to this city and studied computers and lived on the railway platform. Now he works here, but realises that with some more education he could be in a much better job. He wants to go back home too, to his mother, but is scared. He married a year ago but his wife is still with her parents. He visits occasionally. “Aap mujeh English sikhayenge Sir?”

Manoj is our oldest employee. He has seen many managers come and go, even two distributors. His problem is alcohol. He can’t sleep unless he has had seven or more rounds of it. Last year his kidneys gave in and his liver has suffered too. Since then he drinks only on weekends. He took to it when his brother gambled some twenty Lakhs of Manoj’s money. He borrowed from some local goons and then defaulted. The louts recovered the amount from Manoj. That ruined his business. He is the observer in the organisation. Doesn’t get into anyone’s way and won’t tolerate it if others get in to his. He has vowed to eventually quit drinking before the winters this year. “Sir, meri ladki ka admission nahin ho raha hai, aap kisi ko jaante hain Don Bosco main?”

ZIGGY STARDUST

What is a good time to write a post? I don’t think I have completely figured that out. But, like with most things, I do have an opinion on it. There was a time when I made up my mind about writing three posts a month, so after a week of writing one I’d browse through my thoughts and my past for another. Then came a time when I relied on sitemeter; whenever traffic reduced to a trickle I’d put something up. Of course some events are inherently post-worthy, dramatic breakups, first few days of a job, encounters with insomnia and so on. And sometimes I relied on the truly bizarre, like my facebook biorhythm application. Days that are announced as truly exceptional on the intellectual front often coincide with a post here.

Currently my intellectual levels are pretty average (Source: FB) but I shall take the risk of going ahead with a post because not only has this site been reduced to receiving visitors only interested in photos of the Great Khali, but also its author has just returned from a very colourful overseas trip.

It was a few years ago that I took my first flight. I was travelling with a girl and was for some strange reason determined to not let her know that this was my maiden voyage. Somehow I figured out the entire process of baggage screening coming before check in followed by a boarding pass leading to security check and finally boarding. I maintained elegant poise throughout; even though internally I had been reduced to what would be the plight of a school teacher trying to sell shares at a stock market. I just couldn’t believe what is happening. Of course I had the girl engaged in beautiful conversation and impressed her with my knowledge of the theatre and of films. Judging by my confidence and how matter of fact I was being with the whole process of getting into an aircraft she would have thought I was born on one.

Of course; my life, being one that is peppered with tiny tragedies; my quota of beginners luck was particularly small. Just as we were moving for security check I held out the tag I was handed by the lovely lady at the check in counter and cried out loud, “What the hell, what did she give me this for?” And then to underline my stupidity I strapped it around my wrist. The girl smiled and swirled not because she found me funny like I first thought but to hint at where my tag should actually go.

“First time??”
“Umm... Yes.”

And just to add insult to injury, I couldn’t even figure out how to strap the damn thing around the bag, she had to do it for me.

Of course now I am an expert at domestic air travel and regularly try to run over slow exasperating first timers with my trolley. At the security check I lift my arms only about thirty degrees and show particular disdain, unlike your animated first timers who will stand like Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. And I don’t look as exceptionally thrilled in the bus to the aircraft as I once did. Although I still haven’t managed containing my excitement during take off, or my panic at the slightest hint of turbulence.

Thankfully I was travelling to Singapore alone and had the luxury of goofing up and floundering at the international airport in private. For example, who arrives at an airport three hours in advance, especially for a morning 8 AM flight? Or who doesn’t realise that the in-flight movies can be paused and you needn’t wait till the end of the film to go to the loo. In my defence I figured this out on my return flight and that too all by myself.

Ah but what a way to travel. Every possible magazine (other than the inappropriate ones) you’d want to read, movies, music, alcohol, exceptionally hot air-hostesses, more alcohol, the view, as much alcohol as you want! The only downside was being told “DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICERS” just before we landed; I thought it was a bit rude. But I was too drunk to really care.

Changi airport is some place, its hard to believe how quiet and clean it is. I think I was the only one making any audible noise there because I had the only creaky trolley at the entire airport. Oh I must make mention of my first meal, I had what an Indian would describe as boiled rice and water and salt with some boiled bits of pork, fish oil and strange slimy vegetables and/or sea food. Also it was just a few degrees cooler than the centre of the earth. I burnt my tongue at least a dozen times eating that strange culinary experiment.

Few things could be better than finding yourself, accidently, in a Mercedes Benz paid for by the company meant for someone else taking you to a five star hotel while realising that like its airport Singapore is as clean as everyone said it would be and quiet (nobody mentioned that.)

I had arrived separately from the rest of my team and by the time I got to the hotel they had already scattered themselves all over Singapore. So I used this bit of brilliant luck to discover the city by myself. And being a tourist not of the traditional variety my first course of action was to walk to the MRT find a 7-11 and buy four bottles of Jim Beam and Cola. Back in my room I ordered I grand lunch, and drank all the Jim Beam, while watching Die Hard 4.0. And then exhausted with all this effort I fell asleep. When I woke I think I had already got as much as I would want from a holiday.

Over the next week I accompanied others to time-honoured destinations like night-safaris, amusement islands, and all night shopping centres, all places I think I could visit only once. I preferred my aimless walks through the city centre, malls and quays. The city was only larger, cleaner, more orderly, and quieter than the ones I had seen back home. Essentially the differences were minimal, which is why I didn’t really feel I was in a foreign land. I also realised I’d love to live in a city like this. But you can’t really be sure of such things until they actually happen. The people were brilliantly and colourfully dressed, the girls had the loveliest legs, nobody, absolutely nobody had a regular hairstyle, the music shops were fantastic, I had my first brush with Starbucks (average, other than the freshly brewed coffee) and Burger King (spectacular), I drank a crate full of Jim Beam and Cola and spent a fortune on some fantastic dark chocolate, I got caught in a sudden downpour and waited under a tree for half an hour before realising that cabs here didn’t stop simply because I was yelling for them, I successfully managed conversations with cab drivers and realised that they think and behave exactly like those back home, I got lost, I discovered Cream, David Bowie and Death Cab for Cutie on my Ipod, and revived my love for Radiohead through I am a Wicked Child, found no such success in the case of Coldplay, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Pink Floyd or read The Metamorphosis which I have now carried in my bag for five months, I ate the widest variety of meat I had eaten and ruined my health. It was a whole lot of fun.

Oh, I was there to be trained on my selling skills. And when the weekend ran out and the College began I quite dreaded it. But it was spectacular to say the least. For the first time I got a sense of the organisation I worked for, how big it was and how people it employed were largely similar even across countries. I met some of the brightest, nicest, and most charming people I have met in the longest time. And it also fulfilled a long time desire of mine, of meeting completely new people. People I had no prior connection to, and it gave me a huge kick to know I could get along very well with them. All through I felt I’d rather be working with them than with my colleagues back home, because of how well I got along with them, but someone ruined it by saying it would all change once I was competing with them. I like to believe it won’t.

Also, there was something to be learnt from them, they were as driven as I was when it came to work but at the same time violently possessive of their own lives and weekends and families. I guess they realise the importance of life outside of work if one has to sustain oneself at one’s job. Guess the day I feel I am here for good it’s one of the things I will have to consciously change about myself, I will have to separate work from my life. Anyway it was a great experience and lot of fun working with those people, and I look forward to being in such an environment for a longer time.

Hmm… And then I was off to Pattaya and Bangkok.

Q: Who goes to a country without a Visa?
A: Two men who realise that this will separate them from all the others (women) at the airport and give them a chance to discover Pattaya all by themselves.

Our plan worked and the on-arrival Visa took us two hours and when we got out of the Suvarnabhumi Airport we were confident of having gotten rid of the girls.

“Heyy Guys! How long we have waited…”

So there we were two guys and five girls in a cab hurtling down the expressway from Bangkok to Pattaya. And then certain hormones that are excreted every time a man wants to avoid shopping to go watch football or get drunk, hormones that help in the construction of elaborate excuses and ploys were released in bountiful quantities in our heads. I pretended to fall asleep (of course I took it too far by actually falling asleep) and my friend directed the cab to where the women were staying in Pattaya. See we had anticipated this situation and as Plan B we simply didn’t book ourselves into any hotel. My friend asked the women to wait in the cab, then went inside and checked them in, came back and informed us that, sadly enough, the hotel had no rooms and that we would be staying in the adjacent property. Then he almost threw out their luggage and we left, I was still sleeping as we travelled to the other side of the town and checked ourselves into ‘Bella Villa Cottage (See Facing)’. We also didn’t have phones by the way, so we met the women only three days later, at the Bangkok Airport.

It was one in the morning. And we did what any good decent Indian man would do at this hour of the day. We headed straight for Walking Street. And all of a sudden all my wishes of being in a foreign land were instantly fulfilled. How can a city exist simply on a foundation of massage parlours, go-go bars, and other exotic aspects of sex tourism? There were European men walking in underwear with three girls under each arm, and women shouting, “Aa yoo seksy maan, yoo bigga maan, wanna boom-boom??”, men with snakes, and women selling squid, and nudity, and young girls who would just appear from nowhere and cling on to you and not leave till you paid, and eunuchs, and alcohol, and karaoke. We walked through the place pretty stunned, and entered bars and almost immediately left the first few times. And at four in the morning we returned to Bella Villa completely disgusted.

Oh Pattaya has this interesting setup of young men who ferry you across the town on their bikes for not much money. The trouble is that their knowledge of English extends to okay and you-okay. So the next day when we woke up around lunch and decided to meet at the a pizza place near the beach we weren’t prepared to be dropped at two completely different pizza places on two ends of the beach. The essential items that one needs to survive on one’s own in a foreign country were carefully divided between the two of us. My friend had the money, the map and the credit cards while I had the hotel keys and the passports. Hmm, it was only three hours later and through a stroke of marvellous luck that we found each other. Not that we were looking, both of us just happened to go to the same place for lunch.

That evening we met John and Chris, two American marines, at Burger King. They invited us to sit and said how they felt that Indians were really smart and spoke great English, and that our economy was booming and that China was a threat to them and that McCain would win the elections, and that Americans are just doing what they can so that no “shit happens” any where in the Middle-East. They were typical nice, god-fearing, bush-loving people. Chris wanted to join college and study architecture while John wanted to serve in the navy. It was strange how they seemed quite aghast with the in-your-face nature of Pattaya; they said Hawaii was a far better place. “The women there are more of a challenge, but then it’s worth it, here we only care for the beer.” They took our email ids and left.

Bangkok has the world’s biggest malls and liars. The hotel we booked said walking distance from city centre; it wasn’t even walking distance from the road. But the two pretty girls at the reception made up for it by being really nice, one of them even walked into our rooms to wake us up. Wake-up calls are taken more seriously in Bangkok it seems. Oh the highlight of the day was the steak place we had lunch at, the best food of the trip.

Singapore Airlines will avoid giving you drinks by serving you food while looking at the ceiling; you have to be shameless to get them to fork out alcohol. And shameless I was, all the way back home.

I got lost once again at the Delhi Airport - went and stood at a line of passengers that I thought were from my flight and were queuing up to exit for baggage claim. As it turned out, they were boarding a flight to Canada. It was a mistake that the airport authorities were not particularly pleased with. And then I was led to the wrong immigration counters and Mr. Gyanesh Prasad Singh mocked my inability to understand the floor plan of the international airport and the fact that I was not carrying a pen.

Hmm, think I will love travelling, maybe that’s a good job opportunity, travel and write about it. But I am not sure how many people would prefer travelling like I do. I have been carefully studying this British Airways ad that offers a return ticket for ten thousand buck. It might lead to something very soon.

Sweet Wine – Cream

Who wants the worry, the hurry of city life.
Money, nothing funny; wasting the best of our life.

Sweet wine, hay making, sunshine day breaking.
We can wait till tomorrow.

Car speed, road calling, bird freed, leaf falling.
We can bide time.

Sweet wine, hay making, sunshine day breaking.
We can wait till tomorrow.

Car speed, road calling, bird freed, leaf falling.
We can bide time.

Who wants the worry, the hurry of city life.
Money, nothing funny; wasting the best of our life.

On the Road

Bixby Canyon Bridge – Death Cab for Cutie

I descended a dusty gravel ridge

Beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge

Until I eventually arrived

At the place where your soul had died

Barefoot in the shallow creek

I grabbed some stones from underneath

And waited for you to speak to me

And the silence, it became so very clear

That you had long ago disappeared

I cursed myself for being surprised

That this didn't play like it did in my mind

All the way from San Francisco

As I chased the end of your road

'cause I've still got miles to go

I want to know my fate if I keep up this way

It's hard to want to stay awake

And everyone you meet they all seem to be asleep

You wonder if you're missing your dream

You can't see your dream

You can't see your dream

You just can't see your dream Dream [x12]

Then it started getting dark

And I trudged back to where the car was parked

No closer to any kind of truth

As I must assume was the case with you