Monday, April 30, 2012

He's just ruined this sketch

Ah, wait a tic... wait a tic...
My first is in Glasgow, but not in Spain.
My second is in steamer, but not in train.
My whole is in the luggage compartment, on the plane.

Since the previous night, I have been reeling with a headache - as if somebody is trying to pry open the two halves of my brain. This, to compound the pain in my left shoulder, worsening; as if some naughty kid wrangled and deformed a puppet - in my case, the forces of Newtonian physics plus the divine presence of M. playing that naughty kid. A trail of unwellness stretching from last night to deep into the day. To push things beyond the threshold, KFC was out of Chocopeanut Krushers this evening. Thanks to it, I'm an image of annoyance right before retiring to bed. Click, click, snap.

The productive fraction of the day saw me skirting the C at D in G. Now that a new chapter begins, I hope the flourish of the code - long forgotten in the high of the other life - comes easier. However, dissatisfaction doesn't escape me even here. But the satisfaction of endless doses of caffeine keeps the charm alive.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Dulhan Maachis - Sabki Apni

दुल्हन माचिस - अपनी दुल्हन सब घिसेंगे
Alt: दुल्हन माचिस - अपनी दुल्हन सबकी


This epic moment of discovery enroute Ranchi Airport from Jamshedpur, at one Panchwati Restaurant on NH33. It fits well my ongoing thought process.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Last Song

मुझे पीने का शौक नहीं
पीता हूँ ग़म भुलाने को


At the time of the accident, this was the song playing on my iPod, that was connected to the car stereo - a minor detail, that will remain in memory. It was almost like my last words, gaadi ke marte dam par... a defense against the volumes of spirits I'd consumed on this night in Jamshedpur(esp that infamous Singapore Sunset).
Under heavy influence of Pearl Jam's Last Kiss ca. 2007, I had kept that reserved for the background track to a high speed crash. But laughably, crashes don't come with a calendar entry in Outlook. And luckily, I wasn't weeding out body parts by the end of the day.

Right before this song, was the chichora track from Raja Babu - "आ आ ई उ उ ओ मेरा दिल ना तोड़ो" - on the playlist. Damn, wouldn't that have been an embarrassment.
I should start maintaining a list of songs that STRICTLY shouldn't be played on wrong occasions, like when handing the steering to a lunatic under the influence of alcohol. Something tells me this was coming.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

latest crash

Just crawled out from this wreckage. Being airborne by all the wrong means.

Sommes-nous les jouets do destin
Souviens-toi des moments divins
Planant, éclatés au matin,
Et maintenant nous sommes tout seuls.


i am fine. the car isn't.
this is jamshedpur... udaan dekhe ho? - bas, woh jidhar subah run ke liye jate hain udhar hi accident hua.

camus also died in a car accident, himself being a passenger, much like me on this occasion. how absurd of me, being 'L’Étranger' in this giant industrial town, and landing in a screwup like this.
April is my special month. Last April, it was a narrow escape in a motorbike accident, on the unknown roads of Bombay-Goa highway. And now this.

note: neither me, nor ashish (friend/carowner/codriver on the roadtrip), were behind the steering.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Why I’m not on Facebook

The convention about something unconventional would be to prove that you’re in the “cool” part of the unconventional - something that sets you apart is the real deal, and that you gotta have a neat philosophy behind it. However I personally share an uncool fact about myself.

I am under-social (as compared to un- or anti- ). The curious case of my missing mumbling head on the social networks has been taken up in questioning a few times, only to see some loose-ended answer(s). It didn’t strike me, that this had a connection with my inner romantic. It is simple once you read the previous line in context. If it isn’t, the connection being: that why I connect less with people is because I connect more with the images of people, some sort set profile in my head. Yes, typical of an introvert. And mind you, not the same as a deranged person, who invents people in his head. This, being a notch away from reality, yet not constructed reality.

So in a way, people become "my people". These "my people" now live a virtual life, inside this giant head of a sim. Talk about a museum, and you could see me a curator. Talk about parenting, and you could see me a parent. So my people are an ongoing process in optimistic thinking - with my belief in reformation, even the black heads get a polish. Sometimes that seems the only way of staying happy around everyone.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

दाल और दुल्हन

"दाल और दुल्हन" (with tagline: "कुछ दीवारें हमेशा के लिए कड़ी रहती हैं") मेरी अगली पिक्चर का शीर्षक होगा, नाम से चाहे भले ही किसी टी.वी. सीरियल का नाम लगता हो |
इसी सोच में एक सोच और जुड़ जाती है की हमारे सिनेमा और टी.वी. डब्बे में इतना फर्क क्यों है - क्या लोग, अपनी जीवन के साधारणता के ध्यान में टी.वी. पर साधारण जीने के बारे में देखना चाहते हैं, और सिनेमा को उसी जीवन से अलग होने के नज़रिए से देखते हैं?

दोबारा सोचा जाए, तो: "दूध, दाल, दही, और दुल्हन" ज्यादा बढ़िया शीर्षक है|

deep end

The deep end always hurts. Perhaps its some malicious feature of the nature of the deep. The deep that presently presents to me itself in a tilted bowl of dal, which has a cold shallow end and a hot (palette-charring hot) deep end. The deep that I have been tackling, otherwise - aside from my 'deep'ression over getting good at getting nowhere - has been the swimming hole - yes, real water - in the school-next-door, where I only go so deep as my perimeters of survival define, since I suck at swimming. And it is only this art that eludes me for so long - I have been chasing it since my school pool days, yet sinking each time, as if I had been tied rocks on my feet.

And the deep end of love also does...hurt, to mention while we are here. Always does. Goes there is like an invitation to something beyond giant squids at the bottom of the ocean. It is worse to find yourself stuck there, for you know that the oxygen in your tank is running out. Every day, I see a little of that oxygen escaping my reservoir of lungs, yet me stuck in a dense suspension, struggling. Some eyes never close on you, even starting to keep a voyeuristic presence, and you find yourself being watched, being as base to offend someone that is the seer. Then reach two arms for your body, and maintain an intimacy for a long time, and then it all ends well.

loving gajjack

what will you choose - granoola bars or gajjack bars. i know my preference. and i say some sweet maker better come up with the idea. gajjack bars, combined with lots of dry fruits, sold in chocolate bar packaging sounds enticing, doesn't it? pretty nifty for my treks - though i could find myself lost in figuring out the composition of 'the great suspension' on pit stops.
what these gajjack bars of a less sophisticated variety are doing right now is dotting the cave of my roof in a layer of 'crazy sweet'. it would need a bulldozer to scrape it off by the end of the day... these gajjack bars were to have a quiet peaceful day, as usual, until i decided to show up early from the office in the lingering frustration associated with the workplace, and started surveying the contents of the refrigerator. the 4 varieties of gajjack found themselves traveling through air, onto the thick embroidered bedsheet. and thereon a constituent of me.

were i a dictator, i'd have made this illegal, but here i was being led by my sweet tooth. i had returned for a craving for something else than this, but as is obvious, one craving to substitute another. i wish the original craving would stay, but meteors - no matter how brilliant - dont stay around forever. i have, so foolishly, associated my act to a much greater cosmic dimension, but i'm sure it might take me there someday.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Vibhu ftw


"At Vibhu Montessori,we focus only on the child and her/his needs and not what parents want her/his to be. With the state-of-art imported Montessori and highly trained staff,your child is assured that s/he will get the best education money could buy."

cant.believe.my.name.is.being.abused.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Concept behind arranged marriages



sandstorm hands on

Rich sand deposits - in my ears and under the eyes - to inconvenience me for rest of the day until I could find a wash, which, being homeless, is not as easy as it comes to you, reader. If the 'homeless'-ness got your attention, then you will be disappointed, for that is not where this paragraph leads to, and you might as well stop reading...
...
...good, I knew you could manage without it; a keen reader must learn to handle loose ends. Let me, now, lead you instead to a rooftop of a 6-storied building, where I stood a few minutes back, admiring the blackness that briefly enveloped my skyline. A growing smile occupied my face with the growing cloud of doom that approached.

A new velocity signaled its approach - velocity is something I do not generally associate with the calm air about me, but now I could, as I felt an invisible force move me in random directions. Wind, not air, this time. [often I'd find myself tipping over the edge when the wind would suddenly alter its direction, but that, luckily, never got too exciting] Under the gaze, six floors down, across the expanse of the marketplace, the existing commotion on streets turns into something uglier for a brief moment, then dies. Dupattas and pallus flag briefly, then are brought under restraint. The suits don't make their masters any Supermans, and are equally abused in that brief.

The whole of marketplace, as visible from this rooftop, reverberating with tin. Tin sheets like Shuriken move through the air, slicing things in its path, smacking people random. [was later confirmed of at least two heads being split open in this inanimate-object attack]

Sunday, April 08, 2012

mixing the two

woke up sleeping next to a guy
injecting bananas into the bloodstream for a sustained high
riding out to home
like bees on a pollen, the people crowd around the dark knights
the ghosts of yesterday engaged in a bloodbath on the road
more flowers, more pollen, more bees
bees that buzz endlessly, and that claim omnipresence
bees that force out gossip of some chieftain's glowing aspirations
sweet core of a red fruit to congest the viscera
selfish intentions rising to the core
the kid who gets duped
the clowning caught on videotape
awaiting surprises
ending up in a hotel room
staring at a bare shaved crack - inviting a lick
going up to the angry birds
and moms in discussion
no direction home
sit and dream
death by a horse
awaiting one final hit

what a sad horse

What a little tease this subconscious of mine is. Its almost tragic to be living when the best I could do is bring myself somewhere to the fringes of the dreamworld that I find myself visiting almost daily; nothing beats it, as an impromptu survey on my daytime obsession finds me piecing together the facts, and (mostly) a deeper fuss into the conscious input behind the digestive after-effects of the subconscious.

It gets annoying. Googling for the meanings is futile. Either someone is trying to make a business out of our dreams, or trying to push their own moral code behind our visual imagery, or just quoting Freud-types who generalized deductive logic, or just trying to copy (needless, crappy) content to their pages.
A horse symbolizes freedom, power, and sexual energy. Very well. But what when the horse is spraying me with bullets from his Colt, or trying to kill a dog that I just rescued, or in collusion with a mutt who would devour me once I'm hit by the pheromone capsule that the horse keeps for alternate ammunition? [in the end i cleverly trick the horse into aiming the capsule at himself - now the mutt’s unleashed on its own master]

It is, however, entertaining trying to work it out with friends, much like a puzzle. Their unsatisfactory take and your unsatisfactory take combine into great ridiculous mutations. Slapping Freud and Jung around. [wish the army would rather be into this than their excess drinking on weekends] I remember a (single) friendship taking seed from this engaging activity, but then I also see that my persistence in my active group would, conversely, lead to loss of many.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

coded karmic brief

I begin to reminisce the time
I'd sit by the shores of Sattal,
wondering where next the course of life and
adventure takes me to. Little in my
imagination did I foresee a return to my HHG
in this avatar, like some Russian fairy tale.
I guess this is where the karma kicks in,
same karma that directs the gaze of lady Godiva to me.

Monday, April 02, 2012

day 2/10, her 10/10

The beauty of life is seeing how misfortunes weave themselves so congruously, yet to silently, into life. I am disappointed over the matters of the day. Things were only so good as the morning breakfast, and the preprandial nap of 3 hours. For, upon my entry from a restless dreamworld, back into a calm-at-the-surface real world, I learnt of the disturbances on my phone in the meantime - there was Shiv up with something (that something most often relates to some financial calling), and then Yogi remembering me, probably for some envious fact to share, which could range from a noteworthy feat in the kitchen to a trip abroad doing one better than hippies to stop the N-bomb. And then 'jeet with a missed call, probably giving a green flag after having overcome the last hurdle of noncommmittal buswallahs for our Good Friday weekend's adventure. And then 'jeet again with a text msg. A msg to share of some health issues in the family necessitating him to change his travel directions - from our adventure in the hills, to his hometown in Varanasi. So, the FAIL begins.

Having the extended weekend back in hand meant I could revisit old threads/commitments. Sadly, Ethereon was located already stationed in Manali, him doing a solo array of treks in the region, after my straight refusal for this indulgent plan just a coupla' days back. I had imagined wrapping up the bike trip a day early, and doing a day hike with Ethereon on the last day, and thereafter returning together.
Sadly (to repeat), Yogi had also committed to Ranikhet plans to see his folks. Despite all my disappointment, he didn't miss on reminding me to get him the cookies, though.

Then a much-anticipated arrival of my cousin from a 7-hour 380km Hld-Lko drive in an Innova [a quick affair by any standards, one which might slowly wipe the opinional frown about the state of our highways and turn it into a smile; even Lko-Del stretch is pretty much tits now, as I myself had verified behind the steering of a Nano with O'Toole on the Holi weekend] But what evoked a greater emotion (Note: negative, personally) was a yellow envelope, whose contents kicked up the elderly at home (i.e. everybody) into a transitory frenzy. DB had been the carrier of this doomsday device, herself assigned the responsibility through her old folks, who in turn were helping out their friends (who are 'almost family').

The cool graphic on a white sheet slowly released itself from the papyrus, and the ink strands took me into a chokehold. 'कुंडली' - do you know what it means? I still don't, but at that moment I was being sermonised on this obscure astrological porn, and alongside being asked to evaluate this flower of a girl on glossy finish Kodak paper - which if I'd done approvingly, would've necessitated a complex-yet-common social process of what they call 'arranged marriage' (or rather "arraigned" marriage).

I am not escaping some reality. In my defense, this is not my reality. How did we get here?

prosaic third sleeper again

A silly rabbit might be horsing in my LKO-bound Lucknow Mail's headlights, but that doesn't distract me. I, thankfully, found myself distracted only a few minutes short of missing this train (that, as its reputation, rolled out from NDLS on time). Had I dallied about anymore - which was very possible seeing the last-minute first-time conversation with Arun about the Kangra trip, or how I was reliant on the slow grind of a rickshaw until a coincidental bump into the singer next door leaving out on his bike and volunteering to drop me to the Metro - I would've shamed myself, and then frantically explored the option of alt. travel i.e. sitting on the floor adjacent to the latrines on some Kanpur-bound train - a remarkable misadventure that I didn't want to repeat with a repeat quantity of the additional baggage.
Anyways, now all is well, and I can channel my worries into other directions; we all just sit and worry most the time, the only difference in lives being the issues we pick to worry about.

The Mail halts at GZB now. The "temporaries" have alighted - guys with tiny briefcases or daypacks, who try keeping inconspicuous, and stare back with tired, antagonistic eyes, and rush into a quick sleep for the short journey before you could even share a word with them. Mute, writing songs in their heads that they'll never share, conveying a sad emotion that openly conveys the nature of the unremarkable journey they undertake each day. In these minutes of company of these tired mechanical instruments, even the ones onboard (the train) for more significant reasons enter a strange suspended state of rumination. No words shared, inconspicuous stares, inconspicuous body motions.

The confirmed-reservation guys dot the landscape now. Soon, we'll find everybody sleepy. Soon the lights would be out - a hard tick of the old lever switches that have stood the test of time. The fat laptop (Keane) guy has turned his laptop off and now munches on biscuits before his nap. A group of 3 in the same car as mine try making a conversation, until interrupted by a tired middle-aged middle-berth guy to sentence everybody to sleep.
"इसको अन्दर कर दो, चप्पल को" would be his last words in case the train crashes somewhere on this night. This falls into the same FAIL set as "I just... blued myself". Even a demure "Goodnight" or "Paachhay hatt jaa" would've done better.
I wonder what my last words were... I haven't spoken at all since climbing aboard, only a call back home to update on my boarding status, which, too, lacked any gems of inspiration. Nothing unintentionally noteworthy to go down history; I could wait to see another day.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Earth Hour LOL

Was updated on the "Earth Hour" three hours too late by Yogi, who cursed the damn fad that held his inbox hostage at his workplace (in the "light" of which - pun intended - he returned back home annoyed). But, if I remember, during that hour I was hopping on wooden planks that make the railway tracks, crossing which safely in the pitch dark made for my intermediate target, the final one being my dentist's chair. And I was well glad my dentist didn't celebrate the Earth Hour, or I'd returned with some exotic feature - one to be televised on that show, "When Dentists Want Blood". In cities where streetlights are either stolen, or deliberately left unused for cost-cutting measures (thanks, corruption) the concept of Earth Hour will gain little traction. The guilt of being complete assholes in our lives cannot be cut short by a short (power)cut.

In other news, I am in another coordinates again. In more news, my day was rather featureless, as be the norm. Out for now.