Freakishly Faithful : CHAPTER 3 – RCPNE MUNA

From this point on, things have begun to get tricky. The original Chapter 3 went straight into another phase of Karan and my lives, but it bypassed a lot of events that happened in between. Karan messaged me today about how these little recollections of mine are catching on in terms of reader-base. I was even surprised to see a comment from one of the incidental characters in my post which was Part 2 of Chapter 2 (thanks Yudi!!). Karan wants me to go into a lot more detail about several more events than I had originally planned. That might be an interesting thought. Also, these writings might be incomplete without a somewhat greater tribute to MUNA. So, here goes nothing…

PART 1

By February 2005, my life had taken a thorough turn-around. I was going to play the guitar on stage for the first time ever at Aarambh, and I was about to participate in what had to be the biggest debating event in Pune, the Rotary Club of Pune North East’s Model United Nations Assembly. What was interesting was that I now had trouble with adjusting my schedule. Hold on, now I actually had a schedule!

The concept of Aarambh, as it then was, was that it was to happen on two days. The whole programme would happen on one day for a portion of the Arts & Commerce Colleges, and would be repeated for the remaining students on another day. The Vishwabhavan auditorium wasn’t big enough to accommodate all faculties, which was just as well. I remember that Aarambh day 1 was to happen on 5th February, 2005, and Day 2 was on 7th February. Unfortunately, MUNA was happening on the weekend of 5-6th February. So the issue was that Karan and I would be missing day 1 of Aarambh. We weren’t too kicked about that, but I was pretty excited about MUNA.

On a moderately frigid Saturday morning on the 5th of February, KS Nikhil Kumar, Abhishek Ray and I, Team North Korea, reached the Pizza Hut opposite Balgandharva on J.M. Road for the 6.30 a.m. pickup. As the sun began to creep over the buildings and peep at us in between the leaves of the trees, the rays glistened off my well gelled spiked hair, the fruits of a then relatively expensive haircut at a fancy-ish men’s saloon (by 2005 generic Pune standards) on the previous evening. Karan had gotten a hair cut there too, and a shave that gave him an interesting upmarket Waziristan look. Dressed in his cream coloured pathani salwar jhabba suit this morning with his half-smoked Classic regular in hand, Karan, the delegate of Pakistan, was ready to go.

The venue: AIT College of Engineering. The time: 9.30 a.m. The mission: Stay awake through the Chief Guest’s speech. The ammunition: Pretty women and a comparative analysis of Karan’s and my tastes thereof. In costumes no less! Fortunately, the sights were pleasing enough, and our Secretary General, the venerable (soon to be reverend) Merin Mathew Zacchariah (spell-check requested) gave an inspirational speech and opened the MUNA. The seating arrangement revealed that Pakistan was to be seated right behind North Korea, which was good since Karan and I were to be in the same Council. Felt good to have some backup of sorts.

The debating was fantastic and well worth the effort Nikhil, Ray and I had put in into our preparation for the event. But a lot of interesting things happened outside the Councils as well. The participants, or delegates, were all charged up in their roles as diplomats and would almost continually discuss issues, resolutions, operative clauses, treaties, and each other. A truly inspired Press Corps kept publishing some hilarious Bulletins which were as amusing as the deep discussions on foreign policy by delegates at the urinals. The tension levels were high, and every recess in between the sessions found several of the delegates at the designated pantry area negotiating with the coffee and chai machine. Unfortunately, the Nescafe dispenser seemed to have its own agenda and revolted against the representatives of the comity of nations by spewing cup after cup of coloured semi-heated water in the name of tea. Several of the delegates lost their role-playing composure and adopted the uniquely Indian solution of banging the machine into submission, to no avail, however. There wasn’t much left for it, and after watching his third cup of muddy water fill to the brim, Karan rendered the final verdict on the machinations of the infidel West by declaring Jihad on the coffee machine! May the vengeance of a thousand screeching PMS-ridden wenches rain down upon that bilious beverage brewer!!
Despite his usual garrulous nature, Karan had been rather silent throughout the event. His most vocal responses had been limited to his outburst at the coffee machine, and a fitting censure of the Chairpersons in our Council because they had dared to read a message chit sent by him to Lenold, the Chairperson of another Council. His frequent threats of Holy War had earned him the (till date lasting) nickname of ‘the Jihadi’, and his enthusiasm on the dance floor in the social evening on day 1 had in all probability attracted some female attention. But it was the bus journey from AIT to Null Stop which saw Karan in his true talkative element. And the catalyst of his renewed enthusiasm was a girl named Sadia Bahidi (name changed to a badly masqueraded alternative), of Welham Girls, Dehradun.

Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 2: Aarambh - The Beginning

PART 2

I’d seen Rono around on campus before. He was completely nondescript at the time. I’d even confused him to be someone else the first time I spoke to him (Sorry Rono, but you and Ronnie John almost looked the same to me at one time). The only thing I’d noticed about the guy is that he was into drums. I’d seen him one day in the Symbi Cyber Café, glaring at high res pictures of elaborate drum-kits. If one thinks that might be an uncommon preoccupation, one might have found it even more out of place since Rono was sandwiched between two bloodthirsty Counterstrike enthusiasts at the time (No Rono, not even the hint of a pun intended). I’d never given him a second thought until he walked upto me one day and asked about all the drumming coming out of the Vishwabhavan parking lot in college. He knew that I was part of whatever was going on and, as I was to later find out, the sharp chatter of a snare, the subtle thunder of a bass drum, a lightening roll on the toms and a shimmering crash on the cymbals did wonders for his confidence (right Rono, didn’t mention the hi-hats); enough for him to walk up to me and speak to me practically for the first time.

By this time, practice and moved out of the AV Hall and had moved into the acoustically promising Vishwabhavan parking area. I told Rono about the band, actually the ‘orchestra’ performance that was to happen at ‘Aarambh’, the Symbi Arts and Commerce Annual gathering programme. He begged me for a shot at the drums, and so I asked him to hang around for practice and I’d see what I could do. By now I was no longer the ‘band consultant’, I was actually gonna play the guitar in Aarambh!

Shounak was pretty worried about the drums department. The only college drummer he knew of seemed to have mastered the loud and unflattering beat one may hear in a marriage band, and in the process the latter had possibly sacrificed any desire to actually play the drums with any versatility. At one point a guy from BBA had come into the scene and had given a rather powerful demonstration of his skill with the sticks. He was admittedly impressive, and leagues ahead of the earlier guy. Shaunak was about to as the BBA guy to play for Aarambh, when Rono came upto me and asked if he could have a whack at those drums. Shaunak was cool with it, as he generally was with everything else. Rono took his place behind the drums, picked up the sticks, and brought the goddamned place down in the next 5 minutes!! Holy Mother of Christ, this kid was good!! No one in the vicinity had even the slightest doubt of the obvious fact – Ronojoy Basu had arrived.

And somewhere at the back of my mind, while jamming to Maeri, me on the electric guitar, Karan, Sam and Jeetu on vocals, Rono on the drums, and yes, Ruksana on the keyboard, an idea began to tear away the cobwebs from the deepest recesses of my memory and dimly began to take shape. It was idealistic, somewhat seemingly impractical, yet beautiful nonetheless. And it seemed that I wasn’t the lone dreamer. After a successful show at ‘Aarambh’, Shaunak proposed that we form a proper band. He could’ve been reading my mind!

As Karan was to later put it, one man’s dream became everyone’s obsession.

Freakshly Faithful - Chapter 2: Aarambh - The Beginning

PART 1

Karan jumped off just as I parked my bike in the parking lot of a building behind Kamla Nehru Park. He told me that we were going to the apartment of this guy named Shaunak who stayed in the building, and that the band would be practicing in the apartment. Shaunak answered the doorbell. He was a tall-ish, bespectacled guy with a long face and a pleasant smile, and a curious tendency to drag his words somewhat. He welcomed us both in and saw no problem in my watching practice.

Shaunak’s bedroom wasn’t exactly cramped, but it sure was packed. There were a bunch people sitting on the two beds that were set adjacent to one another, and another three or four more on a mattress on the ground. As we entered, I noticed three guitars reclining in a corner, one big black matka and a small study table cluttered with tapes, a player and random stationary. The ‘band’ seemed more interested in idle gossip, and practice didn’t seem to be on the agenda. I could tell that Karan found the setting and the people almost as new as I did, and that was a comfort for me. I was quite the introvert back then, and I’d already run the gauntlet of meeting Karan that day. It wasn’t easy for me to take in my surroundings so suddenly, but Karan’s presence and the sight of a guitar at arm’s length was reassuring.

It wasn’t long before I realised that there wasn’t going to be any practice happening after all. Shaunak was trying to prepare a song-list, and people were suggesting a bunch of Hindi songs. Karan quipped in with one or two; a song called ‘Creep’ by an artist I can’t remember. My ears perked up when someone mentioned ‘Maeri’ by Euphoria. I wasn’t much of a guitarist back then, but I’d shredded a few picks before then trying to play Maeri. I turned to a guy named Jeetendra, or Jeetu for short, and asked him if anyone knew the chords of Maeri. Jeetu turned to Shaunak, who said no. Here was a chance as good as any to be of some use, so I said, with more confidence than I felt, “I can play Maeri on the guitar.” “Really,” asked Shaunak, “can you show it to us?”

He handed a guitar to me with a pick while everyone turned expectantly towards this new development. There’s something to be said about being the centre of attention. One may not be too proficient at something, but once in the limelight, one often begins to speak like the thing’s second nature for him. “I usually play this song with a capo on the 7th,” I said, “otherwise the scale’s too high for me.” The look on Shaunak’s face indicated with sublime clarity that he didn’t have a goddamned clue as to what I was talking about. Having achieved the desired effect, I went ahead and sang the song.

5 minutes and some vocal chord – wrenching later, the spotlight was completely on me. Shaunak made me dictate the lyrics of Maeri to Jeetu and I wrote down the chords for him. The guitar stayed in my hands now as everyone started turning to me, asking me what other songs from the playlist I knew. Unfortunately, at the time my knowledge of songs on the guitar was only slightly better than my French, which isn’t saying much. Before long, everyone more or less returned to their chatter, and I continued my dictation to Jeetu.

After a while, a guy named Sameer, or Sam for short, picked up the matka and began slapping it with some serious enthusiasm and good rhythm. Something about that rhythm registered in my head, and I looked towards the matka for the first time with a tingling sense of possibility. A little concentration on the rhythm, and I had it. Yes… it could be done!

I asked Sam to maintain the rhythm, held a G major chord on the guitar and without preamble began strumming the intro chord rhythm patter of the song Wonderwall by Oasis. The strumming merged beautifully with the sharp taps on the matka, and Karan joined me in an enthusiastic rendition of the song. Therafter, Karan took off into one hell of a classical aalaap, and I was stunned at his voice. It was one of the best I’d ever heard, and for the first time in my life, I appreciated an aalaap. The near magical strains of his voice had everyone mesmerised, and when it was over I realised that Karan, Sam and I had just created a fusion version of Wonderwall, and it had sounded fantastic! Shaunak, who was in the other room when we’d started the song, and who’d walked in midway, added the song to the list as soon as we’d ended. He also called it a day as far as practice was concerned, and invited me as a special ‘consultant’ to all future practices of the band. They were to begin the next day in the AV hall of the Arts college. The practice timings clashed with my lectures in law college, but who gave a flying fuck about classes anyway? A band was asking for my help, I couldn’t possibly say no. Karan, who was obviously pleased to have found me, put his arm on my shoulder and said the words that I have heard so often ever since, “Let’s have a smoke.”

Freakishly Faithful - Chapter 1

For new readers, there is a prologue that comes before this chapter. for continuity's sake, please read that first and then read this post. also, i'd like to start an interactive exchange with my readers. if you feel that any particular part of these posts can be better expressed otherwise, please give me your suggestions in your comments. the suggestions have to fit into the subject matter seamlessly. if i don't accept your suggestion, it's only cuz i feel that it may not be appropriate or not in tune with my way of writing. but if i like it, i'll put it in and credit you. i'd love it if you can be a part of his endeavour, by giving me your comments, and recording them on this blog instead of giving me your feedback over a chat or email...

“I smoke to kill time; and because I’ve met a lot of interesting people over a cigarette.”
- An oft repeated line of mine

Fest ‘O Comm 2004 was over. I’d had a decent run in it. I’d won ‘Best Speaker – Against’ in the purely moronic excuse for a parliamentary debate that was one of the events in the fest. I daresay I made a fan or two in that competition. Specifically, there was Neha, from Symbi Arts & Commerce. She informed me about the Model United Nations Assembly, or MUNA for short. Training sessions for MUNA were on from December. I went for my first session on a Saturday in January. It was fun, and totally different from what I’d grown used to in terms of debates. I even met Ruksana (name changed to protect identity) there. It was the most I’d seen of her in four years. She’ll figure in the scheme of things later in these writings. But for now, I’d like to talk about what happened in my second training session.

On a cold Sunday morning, I once again rode to the BMCC College, the venue of the training sessions, for another round of frenetic debating, wada pav and chai. Any thought of the seasonal chill thoroughly dissipated in the heat of the arguments, and finally, four hours later, we were done. While the place was clearing out, I overheard a guy speaking to Neha. He was talking about getting a smoke. I was eager to make some new friends in MUNA, so I worked up my courage and did something completely uncharacteristic of me – I spoke to someone I did not know, without being spoken to first.

“Hey man,” I said, “you smoke?” “Yeah,” he replied. “Great, I could use one myself.” “Arre great! There’s a tapir outside campus. Bye Neha!”

I started walking alongside my new companion, feeling pretty good about myself at the fruitful negotiation of interests, so to speak. Turning around to wave goodbye, I almost didn’t notice the slight look of disapproval in Neha’s eyes. I barely knew her, but a woman’s instinct is a powerful thing. It was impossible to tell whether it was the thought of smoking that she disapproved of, or my companion. With not a few misgivings over my hasty attempt at being affable, I sighed inwardly, looked to my new companion and said, “By the way, I’m Bikram.” “Karan Singh,” came the reply. We shook hands, and there it began.

Within the next two hours, I knew all about Karan’s past drug problems, rehab, Akruti (name changed to protect my hide), the works. He in turn came to know of my recent break-up with Maya (name changed to what I wish it would have been), and the old chestnut about Ruksana back in school. We found ourselves in quite a comfort zone, two strangers confiding in each other, finding unity in the sorrows of our miserable pasts. A connection, often loosely termed as male-bonding, was formed, and I could sense that this conversation was a prelude to much more. So when he got a call at around 3:30 p.m., asking him to go for band practice, I didn’t hesitate to ask if I could watch. “Yeah, sure dude,” came the reply, and off we rode into a new phase of my life.

Freakishly Faithful - Prologue

Who is a friend? What is a friend? Take a step further, what is a good friend? One may have come across posters or forwarded e-mails or even refrigerator magnets saying a friend is this and a friend is that. But does one keep such criteria in mind when making new friends? Do the words on some laminated piece of cardboard hanging in Archies spring to mind when a friend does something for you, or a supposed friend stabs you in the back?

I can’t think for others, it’s hard enough to think for myself. But for me, friendship is a feeling. All those sweet quotations about who or what is a friend are better left in the Hallmark one might give his pal on the latter’s birthday because he’s too lazy or too late to think of something original. And I suppose we’ve all been there, at the giving and receiving end.

So, who is a good friend? Heck, I don’t know, somebody who makes a difference in your life, perhaps? Or maybe it’s someone you’re hitting on, but you want to show her that you’re ‘good friend’ material, that you can be trusted, that you want to take things slow, keep her comfortable. Dammit, loving someone often involves such a load of pretentious horseshit!

But not with friends, really. Why pretend with a friend? What’s the point? Keep the bullshit to a minimum, make allowances for the occasional eccentricity that he might throw at you, and chill with one another. Straight and easy; no games, no hassles. That’s one way to tell a good friendship.

There are certain people who come into your life, people who suddenly take up a position of significance, if not downright prominence. It could arise out of necessity or sheer chance; whatever be the reason, all of a sudden one friend stands out from the rest. The one guy you want to hang out with, regardless of whether it’s to the exclusion of all others. Someone who opens new avenues for you, shows you a world you never knew existed, or were too afraid to be a part of. Someone who sticks by you, however temporarily, and changes your life. It is hard to come across someone like that very often, damn near impossible to find more than a few like that around in a lifetime, I’d say.

Karan Singh is one such guy.

Freakishly Faithful

Dear all, 

I revisited this page after quite a while, and although my page at daunplugged.wordpress.com is somewhat stylised with all kinds of neats gadgets, I could not escape the charm of the simplicity of the good old blogger standard black page. I have decided to start a new strain of posts on this blog. Once upon a time, I had started writing a little book about one of my best friends who has effectively changed my life in several ways. I didn't get very far, stopped midway in chapter 3 I believe, and never got back to it. I did, however, receive a very flattering response when I read what I'd written to my friends, including the guy for whom it was being written, along with earnest requests to complete it (I'm prepared to believe that although I read it out to them in Apache while we were having beer, and there was a lot of loud music playing, they all heard it right). The requests, of course, were not echoed for very long, yet my desire to continue the book lingered on. I do not hold any illusions of the book being published in any manner on a commercial scale. It is simply a record of my recollections of various incidents involving my friend, various others and me. Hence, with the wonderful opportunities presented by the internet, those recollections may find themselves expressed in my humble blog. I will be surprised if I can write as much as I want to of the book, but it is my hope that the attempt will be worth it. It is my earnest hope that when I begin this ambitious (and hopefully not abortive)  project, I will have your support and feedback, and primarily your interest in my journey.   

Da

New Look, New Feel

Dear all. thanx for all your support, feedback, comments, idle viewing, and on occasion, flattering references to my blog on your own blogs, or as inspirations to start blogging yourselves. This is not a goodbye or anything, but a mere detour. I shall now be blogging on http://daunplugged.wordpress.com from hereon end. It's got a new but old-school feel to it, plus I get to use a bunch of cool features there that haven't crept into blogger yet. Do visit me on my new blog and keep me interesting in doing this blogging thing! This current page will continue to exist for sentimental reasons. Or maybe I'll start on a whole different line on this blog, start writing about some other stuff that I didn't feel would be appropriate on this blog in light of the earlier posts. Or maybe I'll do that stuff on the other blog. hehe... Let's see.. do I look like the kinda guy who has a plan?
Da

the un in the usual...

from the earlier post, it may have occured to some that i seem to be in a nostalgic mood these days. i realised that while writing this one... this one deals with something i'm finding difficult to think of these days.. guess it's always best the first time around...

a daily ritual, observed religiously for years and years, seemed unfamiliar today.the usual precursors to the ritual were present well enough: the strange, contradictory combination of a monotonous, yet crest and trough like speech of the science teacher (who, in this particular case, only ever sounded fun while describing vectors, cuz she'd always say in her south Indian accent, "Vector Oh Yay" indicating vector OA), the weary sighs of my co-sufferers, the ocassional, yet
increasingly frequent yawns and the equally ocassional, yet equally increasingly frequent churns of empty stomachs. the glances at my wristwatch were reflexive, intuitive even. over a decade of expectation unfailingly made an imagined dopplerised bell ring in my head, even before the actual one echoed through the air, a clarion call of salvation for the hungry and bored. lunch recess was here, as it had been all these years, again. but what was wrong? what was the dampener of the joyous gasp at freedom?
i saw it as the others began walking out of the class. what was this? who were these people? what the hell were they wearing? don't they look at themselves in the mirror in those, those hideous shades??? how can they bear to... my thoughts trailed off as i looked down at myself... peach shirt, ugly brown trousers, the letters VB embroidered onto the breast pocket, brown socks, tan shoes!! not leather, but plastic, all-fucking-weather!!! where was my white shirt, the white trousers, the white socks, the black shoes?? the navy blue tie with the Marian insignia pinned thereon?? what happened to the paint on the walls?? shit, what happened to the walls??!!
oh yeah, right... this isn't my school... no, wait a minute, this is my school, it just isn't my.. no, no, no... right, i got it! this is my school, now! it's not these people or the walls that are strange.. here, i'm the stranger..
that's what it was, wasn't it? it was yet another lunch break, but it wasn't a familiar lunch break. i wasn't gonna charge down the marble staircase into the senior assembly hall, and start munching on the usual rolls from my tiffin box while chatting with manik and adnan, or showing my face to drumeel so that i could be in one of the teams for the usual lunch-time football match. nope, today i was gonna climb down a narrow flight of stairs onto what is known as a 'quadrangle' and walk onto a playground with two goal-posts and a most detestable, incredulity inspiring, enthusiasm rogering, scorn raising, and, to put it in plain english, completely fucked up "no playing in the lunch break" rule!!!!! yup, this was my unknown, unfamiliar reality. no wonder it didn't feel right.
new school, new guy, day 2. it was the first time i'd put on the school uniform, and the sight of all the brown clothing (and red hair bands on the chicks.. goddamit, chicks!!!! [i was in a non-co-ed school before this. this is not an exclamation of joy, but one of agony {feels freaky to be stared at but so many unknown women cuz you're the new guy}]) made me feel weird as hell! having been in one school for the better part of my academic life had made me thoroughly institutionalised. i wasn't quite used to being stared and pointed at like a circus freak!! but it was a position i'd resigned myself to accept. i mean what the heck, makes it easier to get to know people when they're curious enough to come to you as if you were a musueam piece or something. although it gets a lil fucked up when they talk to you like you're dyslexic.
i grabbed my tiffin box and walked down the stairs after most of my class-mates had already gone. i did what i usually did when i had to eat lunch without manik and adnan around, by walking on the 'play'ground, munching on the rolls. once again, in my mind, i cursed my present situation. what the fuck kinda school banned playing on the playground??? who the hell were these weird kids eating their lunches, sitting on the playground!!!!!! from post to post, sitting on mats in circles of various sizes, groups of students eating lunch, chatting away like they were in a goddamned banquet hall. bloody hell, this was a football ground for Christ's sake!!
and then it happened... it was the single, most inexplicable thing... it was a voice, i know it was a voice... but there was something ethereal to it, like nothing i'd heard before... if you can imagine yourself to be an emaciated skeleton with your skin clinging onto the bones, and dehydrated to the point where your liver and kidneys begin to push against your body, and in that state you hear the gentle gush of a waterfall into a brook marking the entrance to shangri la, you might understand what i felt in the few moments that it took me to turn around and face the source of the sound. the vision was blinding.. no, actually that's not what it was. there was an implosion of light, 120 degrees of visible area suddenly contracted into one concentrated space, and in that space there was only her... nothing else existed, nothing else got through.. it was only that space, only her, her eyes, her face, her smile, and her voice... a voice that made every part of me quiver (perhaps, i fear, too visibly), yet one that numbed me to a point where the sound seemed distant, hauntingly enchanting, like the strains of the siren's lute. her smile was a constant through her speech, and her pearly white teeth flashed at me every now and then, teasing me like some infernal will-o'-the-wisp. "Hi, I'm _______. you must be the new boy..." that and the rest of her words flowed out of her lips like the most symmetrically tantalising poetry! there was no question of resistance, no time to put up a guard.. the cherub with the bow flitted around me, laughing joyfully as he shot arrow after arrow at me, piercing into my heart as incessantly and determinedly as a deranged battering ram.
for once, for the first time, and unquestionably at the first sight, i was in love...

Realisation

i really don't think i have done justice to this one... simply because it means so much to me, but i am in a state of serious writer's block.. still, i wanted to put something down, and took a while to write this... so what the heck...

the alarm of the phone went off, and as always my eyes opened with the sound of the
phone's vibration that immediately precedes the ringtone. i picked up the phone and
looked at the time, blinking at me as if the phone was playing peek-a-boo.7:00 a.m.
time to get up. goddamit!! an early morning after a late night is one hellava
bitch!! but i had to get up today... i wanted to get up today... i had to put
yesterday behind me, forget the gargantuan fuck-up, prove to myself that we're so
much better than that... today, i, we, had to redeem ourselves..
a familiar pain in my eyes, the one i usually get on my late night-early morning
routine began to magically dull as the adrenaline started pumping, the same
adrenaline that made me keep checking the clock on the phone almost all night, the
same stuff that made me wonder why it's taking so long for the damn alarm to ring!!
i got out of bed and put the kettle to boil, and then checked my suit of armour for
the day... the cuirass lay on the bed in the other room, black as night, and next
to it my greaves blue as the ocean (clarification: my black kurta and blue jeans).
I opened the front door and picked up the newpaper, but my eyes refused to focus on
the words. a myriad of sounds were clashing in my head, hundreds of shining eyes
flashing down on me like a deluge of flaming arrows, stabbing at me with
relentless, remorseless glee, peeling away flesh from bone, mutilating me to a
point where anger, frustration, even shame meant nothing. the jeers, the sneers,
and our vain attempts at taking the battle to those eyes, all echoed in my head
like a ghastly symphony that would make sweeny todd cringe.
the whistle of the boiling kettle managed to break into my macabre reverie. i
prepared two cups of tea, grateful for the distraction, grateful to get away from
those eyes, those noises. i was aware that there would be many more eyes today. was
i ready? were we?
i took the tea to where karan was sleeping. he had suffered the ravages as i had
yesterday, and his sleep looked anything but peaceful. i woke him up, kidding him
that i was benevolent enough to wake him only after i'd made tea. but our moods
were far from cheery, as the thoughts of the next few hours continued to churn in
our minds.
Timecheck: 8:00 a.m.
we'd told the others we'd meet them at base-camp (read: ncc) by 8.30. it was time
to move, head out of the safety zone, consort with our brothers-in-arms. The cool
wind swept past us as we rode towards the ncc, stinging my eyes and causing a few
tears to bleed out and fade into oblivion. there was a comfort in listening to the hum of the engine, a constant that served to dull out some of the noise in my head. we did not speak, though karan stopped to pick up his morning smoke. we reached the ncc and found the others brooding, the swirls of the cigarrete smoke playing around over their heads like wraiths. i could feel the strange sensation, called butterflies in the stomach i believe, while wave after wave of anticipation coursed through me sending shivers down my spine and quickening my pulse. 8.50 a.m., and it was time to head to the war zone. head held high, weapons in hand, we walked towards it, karan, jeetu, sam, rono, niki n i.
the battleground lay more or less as we left it, except that today there were some
people putting a few more machines into the picture. we tested our weapons, our
hopes once again pinned on the people we could not control, the ones infusing life
into our weapons, the ones who had let us down yesterday, forcing us to suffer a
humiliating defeat. for now, we were satisfied, things seemed to be in order. ahead
of us lay a wall, behind which lay the eyes. but there was still time...
9:30 a.m.
sounds... growing louder... they are arriving, the eyes, behind the wall... but
something strange began to happen to me. i looked around at the others, seeing the
trepidation in their movements, but somehow, i suddenly felt no need to feel
nervous... i think karan understood.. we needed to get the jitters out of
everybody's systems, fast! we did our best. niki and jeetu were sneaking peeks at
the gathering hordes on the other side of the wall. "there are so many more than
yesterday," said niki, as i took her in my arms and promised her that yesterday
would not happen today. we took up our positions, bracing ourselves for the
impending assault... each of us counted the seconds, hearts pounding loud enough to
almost block out the noise on the other side, which was nearing a crescendo... an
observer from the sidelines gestured that the time had come.. we took one last look
at each other, taking in each other's appearances before the ravages begin... but
something was there in our eyes... i swear i saw it... the dilation of the pupils
receding into a contracted mass of fierce determination.. our breathing no longer
erratic, but measured, in unison, rhythmic... jaws no longer clenched, palms no
longer sweaty, the butterflies dissapearing as if incinerated in one scathing wash
of resolve... as we began to realised the true power of our combined energies,
there were no longer any thoughts of failure, no furtive glances at the nearest
exit. the curtains opened and we were blinded momentarily by the lights that made
us such easy targets. but today, we were ready to rock that audience outta their
seats.
As Tyler would say, carpe diem, baby.
Long live Ehsaas...

You flip, I'll call...

They say life is full of choices, ones we have to consciously make... they never warn us of the impasses now, do they? but they do come our way, the impasses... and then you ask yourself, whatcha gonna do when they come for you... i get the feeling this one'll not go down easy... for some, anyway...

Heads or tails? This or that.. black or white... door no. 1 or 2? the options are usually simple enough, in all probability one option is favourable. then again, if neither option presents a sunny side up, then atleast one will be the lesser of two evils. but the deal with a coin flip is that one option is favourable to both/all parties concerned. i win, you don't.. you win, I don't... a series of transient spins, trasforming a simple coin into the flapping wings of some intangible butterfly, with a dopplerised ping, accompanied by the collective gasps of those whose future course of action, or for all we know, whose fates hang in the balance. then of course, seeing as the stakes are so high (even if/when they're not), there are ground rules to the coin flip. it can't touch anything on the way down.. if you catch it in your palm, you can't flip it over onto your other palm, cuz then "you've seen it" (i get the feeling stevie wonder might get away with this, soon as he masters catching the damn coin in the first place. the piano doesn't fly). So a 'safe' coin flip predicates atleast 2 parties, who stand to lose/gain in respect of some third party/subject/object based on the result of the flip.
but what if the guy flipping the coin is also the guy making the call, cuz there is no one else to make a call? the guy's got two options, and naturally either both are bad, or both are good (otherwise he wouldn't have to flip for it). but both can't be had, for whatever reasons. maybe cuz he's a good guy, or maybe cuz he can't handle the pressure of juggling both options. you take your pick. if he's honest, he probably won't be able to deny his internal struggle between his haloed effeminate angel and his horny, curvy-tailed devil. i'm sure what probably pisses him off the most is that the two work in tandem! for the most part, the angel keeps him from rambling, but now and then (and the ocassions may be few and far between, but still) ye ol devil injects a quart-full of aphrodisiacal ideas into the guy's head (both of them), and viola! he finds himself in situations where the angel and devil are having a scream-match, the one going, "what in God's name are you doing??" and the other going, "Why in fuck's name aren't you doing it??" I'm guessing that, in the neck of such situations, when the screams are at their loudest, the guy is somewhat engaged in the party/subject/object causing the screams, carrying on the 'nefarious' activity that has lead to such a debate. so basically, at such a time, he cannot exactly pull back and say, "time, please. i gotta flip a coin!" or maybe he should pull back, and just walk away. the hell with the coin, just do what's 'right'. yeah, i'm sure, and the guy'll just have bought his ticket to his cozy lil' castle in heaven, first class all the way. he can almost see it now, a golden boarding pass, no luggage (or maybe i should say 'baggage'), radiant smiles all the way, and all of a sudden, there's an announcement, "Attention passengers, this is an urgent message for the loser about to board the Heavenly Express. YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, DICKHEAD!!! signed, your devil." and pop! the guy comes out of his 'morality'-based reverie, looks at the party/subject/object in front of him, and the screams continue.

Then again, there's option B, the other party/subject/object. the coin if flipped, might be for the reason of his picking one of them. but god, how he misses the simplicity of no supply (and then he thinks, "um... not really!"). when both options are good, you just know that picking either one is bad! but then thinking on these lines is selfish (and then the devil within asks, "SO??!"). selfless or selfish, now there we have flippable options! but what about green grass on both sides? nah, i don't think that's a good enough analogy. how about playstation on one side and x-box on the other (fine, it's childish.. i'm a guy!!!)? goddamn man!!! what the hell kinda options are these???
maybe the guy should just flip to decide whether to flip for it.
short straw, anybody?

Rono spoke...

when i used to read the words 'with a heavy heart' i never really got it. but on ocassion, i have had to do things which made me sad, and a strange, continual heaviness in the pith of my stomach accompanied such doings. i guess that comes close enough. this post was one of those times...

it's that time again. it keeps coming every now and then, and it hurts like hell. one of those times when you have to bid farewell to a close friend. but what if you had never really given a thought to ever saying goodbye. you knew it would happen sooner or later, you just never thought about it. and all of a sudden you realise that the light will turn green, the whistle will blow and the train will take rono away for good. another one.. gone.

first it was the babu. i'll never forget that evening when he chose to lose control. babu was more than my senior. he was one of the people i could always count on to be there whenever i wanted him. there was a whole stretch when i was hanging only with babu in college. him n me, all the time, everyday. over endless cups of chai and smokes, breaking our heads creating connection quizzes, or lyrics to our rap songs (hehehehe), or bitching about the world, or me taking his case. whatever it was, it made life worth living. i couldn't imagine college life without him, and if it weren't for the guys, i'd probably have just crouched into a shell after the babu left. but whether anybody liked it or not, he left. and as the train pulled away, a part of me left with it.

then came (or went) the freak. the reason for such a big change in the lives of most of us. truly, if i hadn't met the freak, none of us would probably have really met at all. it all started with the freak n i. his drunken goodbye in his farewell party remains vivid in my memory. "Da, don't let Ehsaas die..." (followed by an unnecessarily wet one on one cheek, followed by an even more unnecessarily hard slap on the other. clarification: i'm referring to the cheeks on my face.). for once, someone saw me off, so to speak. the freak and jeetu came to see us off at the station as we were leaving for kashmir. i faked a loud teary goodbye on the platform.. hehe, it was funny, i was loudly howling on the freak's chest, and from the corner of my eye i could tell that everyone was staring at us!! one of our friends even came to us, crying herself, and tried to console me!!!! hehehehe... but the tears did come.. the next morning on the train, early on when everyone was sleeping, and no one was around. Oh, the tears did come...

and then jeetu. it's strange, i can't really remember when he left. it's like he went home after his exams, and just didn't come back. our universal 'phone laga' guy would now have to be called and spoked to when he had the time. one of his many lovely statements: "saalon, tum log har wakt kehte the 'jeetu, phone laga'. ab bhenchod main phone ka dukaan hi khol baitha!!!" after babu, jeetu's the one rarely seen nowadays.

and now, it's rono's turn to wave goodbye. goddammit!!! if babu finds it so difficult to come here from delhi, how much fuckin harder will it be to see rono again. he's off to bongland!!! and though he says he's thinking of trying out working in bombay in a couple of years, i doubt he'll be able to just pack up and leave home like that on impulse. the 7 have dwindled to 4, and the 4th one if gone in 3 days!!!!! sam, mayukhda n i remain...

the pain is slowly sinking in. as i come to realise that those people who have been my life in the past 5 years are slowly but surely fading away, i feel a lonliness that i had forgotten years back. i know they're there, they'll always be there. but we all know it's not the same. the question is, will it ever be the same again? will we ever be who we are now? will rono be the same insane fuck when i next see him? will i be whatever i am to him when he next sees me?

I guess another one of jeetu's gems would have to suffice here. he sms-ed this one to me when i was leaving pune, after i sent a senti msg to a bunch of people:

"Dude, are you gonna die? bitch, i agree life's changed a lil. but has it affected you so badly? chill man. we're where we were, just that we aren't together. all da best"

Take me Home, Alfred...

it's been a while since my last post. so much has happened since the last time i posted anything... suffice it to say that i'm in a happy state of mind right now. that's probably why i haven't posted anything for so long. but due to some recent prodding by one or two people, i've put this one up. it's kinda self-pitying, which pisses me off. but it's all that came out after a considerable attempt at making myself write something. i still haven't recovered fully from the mumbai experience, so i guess it'll be a while before i can write again as of old. but for now, guess we'll just have to make do with this...

It has been 3 months since the virus hastened my retreat from the city they call the land of dreams. The irony is amusing as always; dreams are born and lost perpetually in the city that never sleeps. Like so many others, I too walked along its heathen shores and gazed at the Queen’s necklace, as I had never done as a child growing up in that city, feeling back then that I belonged, that it was my home. Ten years after I bid goodbye to Mumbai, I realized that it was never mine, that I was nothing more than one of the drones in a mammoth ant hill. Life was a grind, one interminable, mechanical cycle. It was such that even when I had to meet the Faithless Freak, I would inevitably find myself doing a full sprint behind a BEST bus for the better part of a kilometer, just so that I could save some cash for the mandatory coffee, smokes and chicken masala fry with roti, the only escape from the mundane routine. Working for human rights isn’t lucrative for the little guy. And Dad has done enough for me, gotta start living off my own living sometime right?

Thus I spent over 6 blurry months of my miniscule, irrelevant existence in Mumbai. Or perhaps it wasn’t all that irrelevant. At least a handful of people were somewhat gratified that I had come into their lives, however briefly. Of course, most of them were in jail at the time, and most anyone on the outside proffering aid might seem like a messiah to them. Beyond that, the only other people for whom my presence in the city meant anything at all were my Brother and Bhabi, my landlord (well, naturally) and the Freak.

And then, I had to leave. My first foray into ‘independence’ had gone horribly wrong. A proverbial job from hell, a city on a perpetual adrenaline overdrive, and finally a hospital bill that I would have to spend some three years repaying had I continued being the pseudo-activist lawyer. Perhaps it is fortunate that I fell as ill as I did. At the risk of exaggeration, I guess the only way I could get my life back on track was if I nearly lost it. So it was back to Pune, to the city that most certainly does sleep. Amidst the goodbyes from Dada and Bhabi, and the echo of the Freak’s voice singing “Goodbye my friend, this is the end” over and over, I left Mumbai.

The effects of coming home were damn near immediate and quite miraculous. Within no time at all, my smile became genuine again, Euphoria’s “Sone de Maa” no longer made me want to break down and cry, and the fog finally began to clear in my head. I started hanging out with the guys again, MUNA happened, my job in Pune took off on a great note. Life’s good today.

But I am mindful of the fact that I have lost the first battle. This is the first time I have slunk away in defeat, the first time I have cowered under the protective hood of the familiar. And naturally, in a way, I feel like crap. When I was leaving Mumbai, I spoke to Dada, expressing my anguish and shame at running away. His curt reply was instructive, “Yes, you are running away. Come back and fight again when you’re stronger.” In his own way, Dada was expressing his hope that I should not forget who I am and where I come from (as he has said on numerous occasions before), but that I should realize that the fight has only just begun, that it was never gonna be easy, and that any modicum of superiority that I might have enjoyed in the past over any of my peers is passé. Sticking to any notions that at this point I am no more than an inexperienced idiot would be an utter exhibition of naiveté. He wanted me to remember that I must always be ready for the fight, and that I must never give up in the long run. And, in his own way, he let me know that he is waiting for my return.
It seems he is not alone. In a moving comment to an earlier post in these writings, the Freak has expressed his desire to see me come back. To join him again in the war to claim our destiny, whatever the hell that means. I am gratified to know that even the faithless has faith in me. I do not intend to disappoint.

But I need time… I need time…

Guess I should start dreaming again…

Raging Tide

The faithless freak and i have quite a few things in common. one of them, which is becoming increasingly apparent, is that we're both losing our minds. him faster than me, it seems. this city has gotten to us, and there's no wasy we can deny it. we continue of course to fight against the tide, the rage, the insults, the stabs. we refuse to give in, and in each others company, and i'm certain privately as well, we frequently renew our pledges to effectively shape our destinies, conquer the ocassional nudges of hopelessness. for we both know that to turn back now, to leave these heathen shores, and return to the land of the familiar, the lazy and the comfortable, would be defeat. And defeat we cannot face. We cannot stand the idea.

What's interesting is that others find themselves confused about us. in their estimation, we are 2 of the brightest stars in their horizon. they have led us to believe, and we led oursleves to believe so as well, that we are superior, elite and esoteric. yet we must of course maintain a grounded humility, it doesn't look good to have our noses in the sky. yet of course, those who have hailed us as the next conquerors have done so within their limited horizon. and we have been naive enough to believe that the journey will be smooth. it turned out to be a cattle track which we have to navigate during a perpetual earthquake. peace of mind is a distant dream, or is it an illusion? pieces of mind, body and soul seem the more likely outcome every now and then. and so we meet, and promise yet again that we will be strong.

But our despair finds other outlets. the faithless freak has chosen to document the chaos in his mind for the world to see. and he further chooses to advertise it by notifying all others of his rantings. i can't say i blame him, for we could certainly use a sympathetic ear, or a sufficiently alarmed response as our minds metamorphose into putty. and then the freak and i meet up again and laugh as we fight off the darkness.

the horizon won't come to us. we'll either learn how to swim, or drown trying. and we promise to be strong.

Driftwood

I don't know, it is strange. It has been some 78 days since i have left home. and for most of that time, there has been one feeling that has dominated my conciousness - numbness. i am strangely, inexplicably, somewhat frighteningly numb, emotionally that is. nowadays i get the feeling sometimes that the numbness is fading. but that is no comfort, for i am afraid of what promises to emerge from behind the shadow my mind seems to have cast over my feelings.

78 days away from home. away from mom and dad. away from my room, my messy, light-yellow walled room. away from my computer, my music, my recording equipment. my familiar bathroom. my brother's bedroom with the hi-fi music sytem, the view of the hills, the cool winds. away from the safety and comfort of home, from mom's vegetarian mondays, from dad's habit of turning the ceiling fan in my room off at 4 in the morning, from my bike (oh, my bike!), from the now hardly used basketball court that i worked so hard to maintain, from the tv, from watching dad's head bounce off the wall as he would nod off while watching tv sitting on the sofa, from frowning with disgust at the ridiculous soaps my parents suddenly seemed so addicted to. away from standing in the varanda at dusk, and listening to dad lecturing me about how i need to start taking my life seriously, or about how to deal with women (yeah, he's the DUDE!! his takes on women are hilarious, it makes me smile to think of his 'advice'; it makes me smile through the numbness). from the stars in the nightsky. from the telephone.

78 days. 78 days since the final confirmation that my college life is over. 78 days since the time i could look forward to a lazy afternoon in the ncc. since the time i could think about jamming in the college canteen.

78 days away from jeetu, sam, rono, mayukhda. 78 days away from discussions on performances past, and dreams of performances in the future. of the feeling we get when on stage, with guitar/mic/drumsticks in hand, stagelights on our faces, the sound of our combined energies finding fruition in the amplifiers, the speakers, the monitors, the waves of cheering from the crowds, now soft, now rising, now on a crescendo! 78 days away from Ehsaas (the irony of this is amusing. i, who started 'Ehsaas', am now numb!)

78 days away from knowing that Goddammit! when it came to debating, i was the No. 1 in pune. Atleast! hell, i don't wanna be modest about it here, god knows i play it down everywhere else. but why should i not say it to myself? i'm not feathering my own ass. 5 years worth of competition has proved this statement to be true, dammit! but who knows it now? who will want to remember? 78 days since anyone cared.

today, i am in a new place, in a new world. one in which my talents are unknown, and have not yet found any way of being discovered. one in which i am no more than a wet behind the ears, bespectled idiot, whose sole objective is to learn while being pushed around. one in which i fend for myself, and am surrounded by strangers, each of whom have the same curt reply to seekers of sympathy, "Yeh mumbai hai." 78 days since i was more than just a dot on a crowded, confused and hardly artistic tapestry.

thank god karan is here. but his being around tends to have a somewhat scary effect. he might not be aware of my numbness, but his company serves to remove some of the fog. and behind it there seems to be emptiness, a vacuum, one that threatens to make its presence overwhelming. and if it does come forth, i am not sure if i can take the resultant gloom. i haven't been away from the comfort of the familiar for this long before. but the unknown is the only path i can take.

78 days since i knew who i was. a lifetime ahead to find that out again...

Konkan-E-Kashmir

wrote this one for a bulletin of a club i was part of last year. the rotaract club, to be precise. it's a neat concept, the rotaract. but ya gotta have the right ppl in the club or running the club, otherwise, it might just be a waste of time. i'm done marketing the club. the article follows...


The problem in Kashmir rages on. Terrorist camps, bombings, shootings, atrocities by the army, civilian casualties, and recently the earthquake; everything in the papers make Kashmir out to be quite an unfriendly place to live. But I do not wish to join the mass of people who rue opon the problems in the valley. Let others talk of politics, of terrorism, of religion; these do not inspire me at this point of time. I would much prefer to write about my limited but fruitful contact with the valley, and this occurred right here in Maharashtra, when the Rotaract Club of Pune Ganeshkhind hosted 10 Kashmiri students and took them to Shrivardhan in the Ratnagiri district for the Rotaract Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) organised by the Rotarians there.

To be very honest, the prospect of hosting students who were likely to be to members of quake-affected families was not very encouraging. I was concerned that the students may have been psychologically dented after that massive calamity, and I was apprehensive of whether I could handle them in the correct manner, without being too emotional, excessively sympathetic, nor too distant. It’s hard to know what to do before a guy who’s literally seen his world come crashing down. But the students we met were mostly shy, yet capable of having a good time and quite co-operative and enthusiastic. Of course, with a club President like ours, most men would trip over each other trying to gain her favour, and so it was relatively easy to make them see the ‘brighter’ side of life.

The RYLA was organised by the Rotary Club of Shriwardhan in November 2005. It was the first ever ‘Coastal RYLA’, meaning that it took place in a coastal area and was concerned with a lot of things connected with the sea, like pearl culture, prawn farming, etc. At this point I must commend our club President for her idea to take the Kashmiris to this RYLA. One of the most gratifying things that one of them told me is that this was the first time they had seen the sea. Well, we not only showed them the sea, we also took them into it; first to bathe, then for a speed boat ride where they even managed to see dolphins! Quite an unforgettable experience for anybody, what say?

Ups and downs are the way of life and that’s what Azhar Bhai, one of the Kashmiris, discovered when he decided to join a bunch of us in a tanga ride on the beach. The horse which was pulling the tanga must have been pretty perturbed by all the “Chal Dhanno” cracks we were throwing at it. But I guess it was the last straw for it when we began singing the tune in ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and rotating our hands over our heads cowboy-style. It suddenly accelerated its stride and the whole tanga broke! Azhar Bhai experienced a momentary feeling of weightlessness before he crash-landed flat on his backside, being reminded just why the firma is in term ‘terra firma’. I was sitting right next to him when it happened, and I too remembered my reasons for not taking up the job of stuntmen in films when the otherwise soft but wet sand made its mark on my rear quarters. Too bad no one caught that one on film!

Another highpoint of the trip was the campfire song-and-dance session which we had on the beach. As usual, the Rotaract Club of Pune Ganeshkhind rocked the crowd with some cool numbers played on the guitar and sung. Hey, what do you expect when the President, Director for Club service and Director for Professional Development are all members of a band? Anyhow, everybody was impressed and were grooving to the tunes, but none more so than the Kashmiris. One of them, Bilal bhai, finally broke out of his skin and began singing some really cool Hindi and Kashmiri numbers in his sweet pahadi voice. Of course, he had the ladies swooning over him, and it seemed for a while that finally atleast one of the Kashmiris had found favour with our President (poor Azhar bhai had been trying the hardest. He even began calling Amruta, our President, by the name of Ruksana, because he liked that name more).

It’s been a constant complaint of mine that nobody looks at the guitarist (of course, when ‘Ruksana’ is singing, who cares about the guitarist?!). But there was at least one of the guys, Manzoor bhai, who found my guitaring more interesting than the members of the opposite sex (now that’s a compliment, considering that we had some rather breathtaking specimens of the opposite sex in our contingent!). For a while he made it his mission to click a photograph of me playing the guitar, but somehow the time just didn’t permit us to do so towards the end.

After an exhausting 2-day RYLA, it was finally time to head home to Pune, and I am proud to say that our effort in taking the Kashmiris to Shriwardhan certainly wasn’t wasted. Along the pathway of life, one often meets friends who walk along with you some distance before parting ways. But even then, it is not necessary that such companionship will be meaningful. But given the right circumstances, even the shortest journey with a companion can produce the most remarkable of and enriching experiences. The Kashmiris were really sad that they had to leave, and Azhar bhai was confident that they would not have the same amount of fun and enjoyment at any other place in the India tour which the organisation ‘Sarhad” was taking them on (after all, ‘Ruksana’ won’t be around for the rest of the time!). We all embraced, and Bilal bhai sang us a last farewell number before we saw them chugging away in autorickshaws into the night.

A short story is never that. It is a prelude to a bigger one, a saga or an odyssey perhaps. In May, our Club has plans to join ‘Sarhad’ for a trip to Kashmir where we will help in the counselling and rehabilitation of quake victims. All the guys who came to Pune are as eagerly waiting for us to go to Kashmir as we are. It will certainly be some reunion.

Manzoor bhai, I’m coming to Kashmir in May.

And I’ll bring my guitar.

Gandhi Who?

i wrote this article for a magazine that a club i was once a part of used to publish. it didn't make it to the magazine, cuz our club president thought that there was sufficiently enough inflammatory language to mislead our readers. just to clarify in advance, this is not an anti-gandhi article. read it till the end before pasing judgement. this article was written way before munnabhai 2, and at the risk of sounding boastful, i claim that i used the reference of gandhi on money for the first time, way before it became fashionable to do so. also, i'm no gandhian, so this article is no indication of my ideological inclinations. it's just something i wrote, and wanted to be able to read once in a while...

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The Father of our Nation. The Naked Fakir. Freedom fighter. Champion of Non-Violence. Deliverer of Freedom. A Mahatma.

Which Indian hasn’t heard of the Mahatma? His ideology and the stories of his epic struggle for Indian Independence have spread all over the world. So far is his reach that his name even appears to be familiar to the most uninitiated of NRIs and POIs (People of Indian Origin), who may not know too much more about him, apart from the facts that he led India to her freedom, and that he did not believe in dressing up. Indeed, in a country where titles have been abolished by our Constitution, one would normally not mention the name of Gandhi, without prefixing it with ‘Mahatma’.

But today, the Mahatma’s popularity seems to have diminished among the youth. The thin, bald man, with the round glasses and langoti no longer holds the iconic stature he once enjoyed, almost to the extent of monopoly, with the youth. It is not uncommon to come across a group of 20-somethings criticising the Mahatma in most uncharitable words. And of course, there are those who are ready to swear that had Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose been given a free rein, we may have achieved independence far earlier than we actually did. “Gandhi,” remarked an ‘intellectual’ friend once, “was a selfish fool, and a tyrant. When Netaji was fighting the British troops for our country, Gandhi goes on a hunger strike in protest! A messiah of peace, huh? He wanted all the credit for himself!”

Whether or not Gandhi’s methodology was the wisest is not an issue that I would care to debate over. That is the province of the major political parties, who depend on it and so many other irrelevant controversies for their bread and butter. If it weren’t for such matters to keep our politicians preoccupied, they might have to turn their attentions to the more insignificant and ancillary aspects of their job, like fostering communal harmony, or reforming the judicial system, or else, God forbid, good governance!

But as far as the yuppie Indian youth of today are concerned, Gandhi’s relevance is confined to his portrait on currency notes. The reality is that for the youth, Gandhi is an outdated hero, who just doesn’t fit the Superman profile. Many youngsters would rather read ‘Mein Kampf’ than ‘My Experiments with Truth’. We speak of him unkindly, when in truth most of us just don’t know. But what is sad, perhaps even disgraceful, is that most of us don’t want to know, because most of us don’t really care.

But there are those who have taken the trouble to look into the Mahatma’s life a lot more closely than the rest of us. Many youngsters have devoted a lot of time to discover that Truth that Gandhi spent part of his life searching, and the remaining part, preaching. The greatness of the Mahatma is not only locked in history texts, but is still echoed in the spirit of a portion of the youth, sadly constituting only a minority.

Perhaps, when the rest of us learn to expand our horizons beyond the boundaries of ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘myself’, and learn to tune in to the national conscience, the spirit of the Mahatma will inspire us again. The mark left on our nation by the teachings of Gandhi is indelible, and sooner or later they will regain their prominence. Then, perhaps, the memory of Mahatma Gandhi will occupy it rightful place in the heart of every Indian, instead of being relegated to two or three National Holidays.

Just Flinging It

for those who may have been following my blog for a while, you might remember a post which read "I'm in unlove". in that post i was rather uncharitable to the person on whom it was written. i realised a while back that my unnecessary outburst in my blog reflected a certain amount of immaturity. so i removed that post. yet, as these writings are the only , though unsystematic, record of some happenings in my life, i felt it necessary to lay down my thoughts on the subject again.

a few months ago, i started seeing someone. it just happened all of a sudden. in fact, it was kinda strange. i met this gal on the christmas eve of 2006, and we sat over coffee and a sandwich, generally chatting up on a bunch of things. it is my experience, and i'm sure many will agree, that when a guy and a gal talk to each other for an extended period of time, the conversation invariably veers towards relationships. past flames, likes, dislikes, what you look for in a guy/gal, stuff like that. and this time was no exception. it was a few months before my finals. i was about to leave college life behind, and i didn't know where i'd be after that, but i knew i wouldn't be in pune. an era in my life was ending, and important era, one which is meant to be THE time in my young life. so far, i had had a great college life, although the really good stuff only started from 3rd year. there was one thing that i'd always wanted to try, but never did go for. and that was, the iconic, the legendary, the elusive, amorous, no-strings-attached fling. it was about time 'ol Da got his 'hands dirty' and played the game for the heck of it. i was at a point when love was an overrated concept and a thorough waste of time. and besides, i don't believe in long distance relationships, so it was illogical to fall for someone and then quite possibly leave her behind while i go in search of the rest of my life.

i realise i've digressed a little. back to the coffee, the sandwich and the gal. so we got talking on relationships, and interestingly, i quite categorically told her that i'm looking for a gal who'll be able to let go when i'm leaving town. nothing thereafter. i was to have my space even when we're seeing each other, and there was to be no clinging, and definitely no nakra (can't stand that crap!!!). what's really interesting, and even amusing, is that she said that i would have a hard time finding a gal who'd be ok with such an arrangement. and i told her that i'm not desperate for a relationship, but if it were to happen, it'd be on these terms.

we somehow ended up spending the night talking to each other. during the course of the night, i more than once felt that there were some vibes flowing between us, that maybe she was attracted to me. but i didn't think about it. i know it seems unbelievable, but i actually spent an 'innocent' night with her, which means that i had no ulterior motives, so to speak. i hadn't even thought of dating her.

We actually got around to seeing each other after new years eve. in the interim, i had ample reason to believe that i was getting the green signal from her. from my conversation with her on that Christmas Eve, i had learned that apparently she too was looking for a no-strings-attached, just for fun relationship. the night i proposed that we start seeing each other, i actually reminded her of my terms, and she agreed. it looked like i was en route to an uncomplicated good time. but fate, it seems, had other ideas.

within a very short time i began to realise that our lil' fling had the makings of an emerging 'serious' relationship. i had hardly started seeing her when one day she called me, asking if i had had a thing for so-n-so girl. it seems some chick in her evening class 'revealed' that i had had a major thing for her as early as a month previously. that came as quite a surprise to me, not simply cuz i didn't even know who the chick was, but cuz i'd never been involved in such a controversy before, where my girlfriend is getting reports from random females that i was 'involved' with them. it had a certain novelty to it, and the first time i had to comfort my gal that there was nothing between me and that other chick, it felt kinda good. but that feeling dissipated when my gal called me up later, all happy like, saying that she 'now' believed me cuz she had read this blog, and since i have previously posted stuff about all the females i've ever felt for, she knew that i had not fooled around with that chick. from this i simply realised 2 things - a. that my gal didn't trust me, b. that if my blog has saved me once, it might save me again, so i gotta keep it updated (hence this post). as for her not trusting me, i could hardly blame her, cuz she barely knew me. still, it didn't feel good to be doubted after giving reassurances.

i can make no bones about it; i wanted to get physical with this gal, of course, only on the condition that she wanted to do the same with me. it started off 'encouragingly', and i felt that in time things would take their due course. but it rapidly became clear that she would make this sort of committment only on one condition; that we should get 'serious'. i admit that this is an inference on my part, but our talks pointed only in this direction. she was falling for me in a big way, and i was still not ready for it. with due respect to her charms and personality, she just wasn't my type, which is why it hadn't been difficult for me to have a 'fling' with her in the first place. i was sure that as she wasn't my type, there was no danger of me falling for her, and so when the time came, it wouldn't be too difficult to let go. but i guess she began to view things differently. she had already begun contemplating the continuation of our relationship after i had begun my work, and was overjoyed to discover that i'd been placed in bombay. she was looking forward to visit me after i shifted to bombay, or that i would come home to pune to see her n stuff. the situation began to take a stifling turn for me.

there were 2 alternative courses of action that needed to be taken; 1. either i could be a horny bastard (read ' the common perception of your average guy'), lie to her that i liked her, and have my way with her, or; 2. break up with her before the situation got out of hand. i chose the latter course (and received a lot of criticism from a lotta guys :). i simply could not bring myself to lie for sex. i guess that's just not my thing. there are better ways to get some :) . so, after having been her boyfriend for around 10 days, i broke up with her.

she called me up the day after that, saying that everything that had happened between us now "feels like a lie". i confess that pissed me off, cuz in my book, i'd been about as open as i could from the beginning regarding our 'relationship'. but hey break-ups are hard, and since she had started liking me, it had to be tough on her. before i realised this, i posted 'i'm in unlove' on this blog. it was immature on my part, and the mere fact that i don't like being called a liar is no ground for me venting my ire like i did.

my 'fling' was a good learning experience, as i believe all relationships before the final one are. it showed me the kinda guy i am, and what i seem to be (in)capable of. in several ways, it made me feel pretty darn good about myself. i hope that the gal learned a thing or 2 as well.

Ramblings of Frustration

I don't even remember when i wrote this one. i just found the page of the notebook on which I'd put this stuff down. from the tone, i'd say i wrote it sometime in my fourth year, quite possibly a lil' before some exams. it's quite snively and pathetic, and by no means indicative of my current state of mind, but i put it up so as to remind me that there are times when the shit seems perilously close to hitting the fan, but those times are quite trivial when looked at in hindsight...

It’s there somewhere. I can’t figure it out. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Somewhere among the confused thoughts in my head, it’s there. Playing with me, mocking my inability to discover it. Confusions, distractions, voices, clouds. I cannot reach it. It wants to get out, but it can’t. What is it that I want to write? What do I want to let out?

Wasted. Every opportunity wasted. There is no forward, no backward. Everything is suspended, pushing my paranoia to the inevitable conclusion. A dream of greatness. Unformulated, unarticulated, unplanned. Wishful thinking. I cannot live on thoughts forever. But there is no action. Every moment is one that is wasted. I am going nowhere. I don’t even know where I want to go. I almost look for the pit in which I fall. I do not avoid it, I practically seek it. Self-destructive, pointless. My ‘potential’ remains undiscovered, unused. How can I expect others to understand, when I don’t myself? The noises grow louder. Music, voices, the rain, all of it serves to cloud out reason, purpose. All around me are testaments to time wasted. Time better employed elsewhere. A life better lived otherwise. The words, the laughter of my neighbour serves only to frighten me more. The smoke blown into my face only reminds me of the time flying by, of the countdown inevitably leading to the end. Misery and pointlessness are my constant companions. A hope that God will bail me out springs up now and then. Sometimes strong, Sometimes laughable. If God helps those who help themselves, then it seems my doom is inevitable.

When will I wake up?

Why Move On?

What do people mean when they say “I’ve moved on”? What does it mean, really? Does it mean that I was crushed because it didn’t work out, but now I’ve put it past me? Or maybe it means I no longer think of her, she’s history, and I always flunked history. Or for some, it’s more like “I’ve kicked the bitch right outta my mind, she’s no longer clogging up the system!”

Hell, I dunno. I’ve rarely had occasion to say that I’ve moved on from anything. But for some reason, whenever such occasion did arise, I could never consciously say those three words. Sometimes I wondered why. What was keeping me from putting a hurtful thought, an unfortunate failure behind me? I realised that I could never ‘move on’ when it came to my relationships (those successful, and those not quite), you know, the guy-girl thing. In every other case I could move on, be it bad grades, bad personal experiences, family hassles; anything but the chick bit. And I guess there’s only one reason for it.

Why in the name of the Holy Lord above would I wanna forget anything that made me happy, if only momentarily? Ok, you got me. Yes, broken relationships are hard. Fine, failed relationships are hurtful. I’ll give it to you, when you’re in a relationship where your partner’s taking advantage of you, or you’re not even in a relationship and your intended partner is already taking advantage of you, you’re just a pathetic dweeb! But hey, you cannot deny (don’t you dare lie, you just can’t deny) the fact that at least you were happy for a while. And even if you knew that your partner’s wrapped you round her twinky, you were still glad you did it for her. Yeah, you’d be a jackass, but a happy one at that. For a while anyway.

Yes, I’ve been in love with one girl for the better part of a decade. Yes she’s often acted in a manner that might be conceived as taking obvious advantage of that fact. And yes, I’ve been irritated, pissed, infuriated, and even at times disgusted at her for it. But hell, I’ve been happy as well. It’s a crappy song, but Britney did have a point when she crooned in her broken voice, “I’m a slave for you!” And though I cannot imagine breaking through the barrier of my ego to match the degree of servility necessary to be a slave to her (my sweetheart, not Britney you idiot!!), I cannot also deny the unfortunate fact that love is the antidote to good sense and dignity, among other things. That may not be the case for all, but I’ll wager that it is the case for enough.

Bottom line, I’ve never been happier than when I would make her smile out of anything I may have done for her. And this is just one of the women in my life (though obviously the more prominent). I’ve only had the one girlfriend so far, and I spent seven of the most amazing months of my life going around with her. I use the phrase ‘going around’ for the sake of convenience, to signify that we had a thing going on during that period. We didn’t really ‘go around’ anywhere to speak of. Anyhow, that ended in the new year of 2005. Sure I was sad, I was disappointed, shocked, bewildered, confused, broken, all of that crap. But I don’t hate her for it. I don’t even resent it. Because hey, I did have the greatest time while we were together. And in the end, if she felt that it’s not working out, then that’s ok. I had to respect her for her decision. If she were unhappy in the relationship, how long would it take for things to take a really bitter turn?

I’ve had two crushes that I can write home about, so to speak. The first one was in my second year, and as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m glad that led to nowhere in retrospect. But I wrote two songs on that chick before I realised that God was truly helping me out by keeping her outta my perimeter. So I’ve never been sorry that I liked her. And yes, I was happy when I was around her as well.

My second crush is far more recent, and luckily, I handled this the smart way; I told her that I had a crush on her before my feelings developed into something huge. That’s a new thing for me, earlier I’d wait too long before spilling the beans, and by then I’d be so far into the gal that a rejection would be crushing. But not this time. Except that the feelings haven’t wholly subsided yet. Heck, these things take time. When I told her how I felt about her, I mentioned that I owed it to myself as well as her to let her know, because in my case such feelings are rare (my criteria for choosing women are quite unconventional, kinda like myself). What’s the point of keeping something like that to myself? And of course, if I do something for her now, it makes me happy.

No, I haven’t moved on. Not from the memories of my happiness when it came to any of these women. Not from the power of emotions stirred by thoughts of them. Not from the feeling of longing to hold them in my arms and tell them how amazing they are (however short-lived that feeling might have been, and in some cases, it hasn’t as yet died). And why should I move on? I have learnt from my mistakes, and I’ve had fun while making them. So why should I just forget all about the good stuff by blotting it out with the bad. When you’re riding a wave, you’re gonna go up and down, and the one inevitably follows the other interminably on. You can choose to get off the boat, and you can choose to forget the ride. But why forget the awesome feeling of momentary weightlessness that you experienced while riding the waves, just because a while later you found yourself puking your guts out over the side?

I Know a Pretty Girl

I suddenly remembered today that i'd once written a song for the girl i had a crush on in my 2nd year, the pain in the ass chick. i wrote it after the song 'hey lil girl', and for a while, it was considered my best song. of course, that was ages ago, but it's still not a bad song really :) i dunno if i have any written record of that song, so i thought i'd put it up here...

I Know a Pretty Girl

I saw her one day
At band practice at half past five,
I looked into those big brown eyes
And saw the rest of my life.

But i didn't say nothing,
I kept all my words inside,
Oh why, oh why,
Did my feelings i hide?

But then one day
I told her how i felt,
She said, "I'm sorry boy,
But there's somebody else."

Is there nothing that can be done?
La belle dame sans merci
She said you're too late boy,
You should've told me

And then with a weak smile,
And without giving me a chance,
She turned and walked away,
Without a second glance.

And i stood there for a while
Knowing there's nothing that can be said,
Couldn't stop the tears rushing to my eyes,
Couldn't stop the words rushing to my head.

I know a pretty girl,
Everytime i think of her,
She makes my head swirl.

Yeah, I know a pretty girl,
Everytime i think of her,
She makes my head swirl.

Everytime i see her face,
I know what the earth must feel
To be kissed by the rain.

She's radiant as the sun
Gentle as the moon
Born with the first raindrop
In the month of June

She smiles and looks at me with those eyes
She's an angel in disguise
I don't care for the rest of the world
She's all i ask for in a girl.

She says she's got a man
She also says she doesn't know
Where that's headed.

I just can't understand
Why she hangs on so tight
To a thing that's jaded!

But i know one thing for sure
I'll never let her feel alone
For as long as i live

Cuz i feel that she's the one
The one who can be the sun
In the tundra of my life.

Yeah, I know a pretty girl,
Everytime i think of her,
She makes my head swirl.