A Yell from Outer Space

The Racsoes

2010-03-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

It was Sunday evening, and I was practising the Art of Laziness (yes it is an art to let your posterior drown in the cushion of the sofa, while having a million thoughts rioting for attention).
Lo and behold! The Oscars were live on the tube, with the remarkable red carpet. I wonder if they reuse the same carpet every year. Some dry cleaner in southern California must be minting money brushing it up every year.
Watching the proverbial speeches unroll one after the other, it struck me that if so much is spent on celebrating what is observed to the best of the reel world, why not spare a thought to the best performers in the real world?

So I quickly made some phone calls, and established the Racso awards. The word "RACSO" stands for "Recognition of Achievements and Conquests of the Supreme Order". Contrary to what you may hear, the origin of this word is unrelated to the Oscars.

After 24 hours of intense nominations, sleepless lobbying and tense decisive moments, the Racso Foundation announced these awards:

Best Original Screenplay:Mr. Okabu !Xobile, Chairman - Somali Pirate Association, "The Hostage Drama"
Mr !Xobile from an unspecified location 50 miles from Mogadishu: "I would like to thank my fantastic colleagues who penned every move in our attacks, as well as our gallant hostages who shared our pain all the way. If not for their innocence, my origin as a goatherd would not have allowed me to have ten mansions, fifty cars and a hundred and one wives by now."

Best Visual Effects: Swami Nityananda, scandalised godman from Southern India.
An email received from hailthebaba@swamisrock.com confirms the Swami's feeling: "I am honoured with this award. I never imagined in my wildest beards that a spiritual journey to eroticism would be interpreted by the people in such a creative way. As my fathers used to say - keep the eye shut, and the world will shut its eyes for you. I love you, dads!"

Best Sound Mixing: Hey Man Al-Zawahri, Vice-President of the Oil Qayeeda Group, for his 156th audio tape released to the television channel All Jal Jeera.
"The world beware! My talent stands unparalleled. Like in the Shawshank Redemption, I can escape from anywhere. I go Where Eagles Dare and where Tomorrow Never Dies, so Catch me if You Can."

Best Short Film (Live Action): K. Chandrasekhara Row, Protagonist of the Telengana Hunger Strike that lasted 11 days.
Speaking from his air-conditioned luxury deluxe five-star hospital overlooking the beach, while sipping on a pina colada: "Many thanks to my fans for this award. I am touched that they have recognised my sacrifice for the new state. I wish I can continue to keep my fans happy with more hunger strikes and more states created in this great nation called India!"

Best Music (Original Song): Ex-Would-Have-Been Vice-President Sorry Palindrome, for her new self-recorded track "Empty Vessels".
Gushing with delight, she spoke to our correspondent from beside her fireplace in her Alaskan home, while the sun set over the Russian horizon: "It was a creative stroke of genius! I believe that all Americans, and the whole world, should take empty vessels, or even empty heads - as I did - and let their thoughts run wild. This is a free country and a free world, and as long as we have empty minds, we shall conquer all!"

Best Music (Original Score): Maoist leader Kissing Ji, for his self-composed new National Anthem - "*West or East, India is Maoist" for the India of 2050.
"This is a dream", he spoke from inside the janitor's closet in the Writer's Building in Kolkata, where he lives in disguise as a tea-serving peon, " to see this great country in my fist before I turn 157 in 2050. I am glad that Maoists in Nepal and China as well as my enlightened peace-loving fellow Indians have recognised the true value of this score, 40 years from now, when this will be played in every corner of this country."
Kissing Ji also rubbished claims that he composed the Score by lifting the core tune of a similar-sounding song from the renowned remixer Unknown Malik. "We have standards. We may kill people in the name of ideology, but we shall never kill music."

Best Makeup: Mr. Red Krsna Advani, Leader, the Indian People's Party, for his ability to disguise his shame and humiliation with old topics which everyone has forgotten long back.
Said he from under one of the Opposition benches in the Indian Lower House, as shoes and paper missiles flew over his head towards the Government benches: "Every day it takes me four hours to put this face on. The art of making a face up to show the masses that I still have some credibility left is difficult and tedious. But I am glad I received such an award. I will come by to receive it once I become the Prime Minister in a few years."

Best Foreign Language Film: Ex-President Bill Cling Ton for his audacious day in Pyongyang to rescue two American ladies jailed by North Korea.
Smirked Mr. President with a cigar in his mouth, while Kim Jong Il pulled a rabbit out of his own bushy hair behind him: "Aw, you know what? I like women, cigars and pizza - and ever since the wifey's been peace-mongering those bickering idiots in the middle East, it's been a bit lonely. So I thought I'll drop by and say hi to my old pal Kim. And look what I have landed here," he points to the two relieved women reporters.

Best Film Editing: Mr. Hamid Karzai, President of the Glorious Peaceful Nation of Afghanistan, for his classic doctoring of "Democratic Polls after The Taliban"
Adjusting his loosening turban, Mr Karzai stares into the camera and sends us this message - "In Afghanistan, we have peace and poppy seeds. Who wants more politics? My editing skills have always benefited this nation." In the background, one could hear the snippety-snip of the fractious politicians cutting away at each other.

Best Direction: The Raju Brothers for the gripping real-life crime drama - "Satyam: The Truth Prevails".
From their pest-free, air-conditioned cell in the Hyderabad Prison: "Thank you Mom and Dad. Thank you, thousands of Satyam employees, for trusting us through your doubts and allowing us to lead the firm down this path. But most of all, thank you Chandrababu Naidu - for without your guidance, we would not have been able hit such a jackpot so quickly!"

Best Costume Design: Mr. Nicolas Jacuzzi, President of France, for his exquisite piece - "Law to Ban The Inhuman Burka from French Public Places"
With a beaming smile and hands locked with his beau - the gorgeous Ms Bruno - Mr. Jacuzzi held the Racso in his other hand and said into the camera: "French women are beautiful and I don't get to appreciate the beauty of my country with this cloth blocking the view. I would like to thank all these women for giving me the chance to show the world that we French lead the way when it comes to freedom!"

Best Cinematography: The Dubai Government, for its breath-taking work in "The Assassination of Maha Mood All My Boo"
A report from the Dubai Home Ministry, which received ten Racsos for each of its technicians who maintained the closed circuit cameras, applauded the recognition and thanked Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, for handing such a wonderful opportunity to show the world that Dubai had a better Big-Brother system than the big daddy of them all in the UK.

Best Art Direction: Mr. Suresh Call Maddy, Head of the New Delhi Commonwealth Games Organising Committee
An unusually emotional Mr Call Maddy choked on his own beard and said - "I thank the Racso Foundation for recognising my race against time to transform this slumpolis into a state-of-the-art games city. My special thanks go to the thousands of ad-hoc labourers who chipped in at the last minute to help us finish the stadiums and attach doors to all lavatories in the city."

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Ms. Rachel Uchitel, Honorary Mistress No. 1 of Tiger In the Woods
From the deck of a luxury yacht cruising in the Caribbean, Ms. Uchitel smiled at the camera while a certain famous golfer massaged her back, and spoke about her feelings - "I thank all the other Tigresses, err, I mean Tiger mistresses, for coming out of the closet later, and thus making me the most sought-after of them this winter. Ladies, I share this with you!"

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Ms. Mayawati, Part-time Illusionist and Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, India
Agreeing to speak to us for a moment out of her busy schedule, her hon'ble presence said - "I am thrilled to hold this little statuette in my hand, since all other statues of mine this year have been left incomplete. Here I am planning to erect everlasting symbols for the Dalit community, and look at what the courts are doing to this grand plan! I will not rest though, and I thank the 9000 farmers whose lands have been grabbed during my tenure, for funding this project!"

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Mr. Balls Thackeray, Supremo of the Shove Sena, India, for his stellar performance in "The Royal Snub to the Cricketers from Across the Border"
At first refusing to accept the award because it's not named after a Maratha warrior, Mr Thackeray finally relented. From his mammoth terrace in Mumbai, he spoke to us while sipping on a glass of wine from the Hunter Valley in Australia - "I would like to thank all my Pakistani brothers. I would also like to thank all my North Indian countrymen. But special thanks go to Show Rookie Khan and SuchInnings Tondulkar. As long as I live, I will support Tondulkar's bid for the Bharat Rasna, and Khan's belief in his Khan-ness!"

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Mr. Ajmal Kasab, for his acclaimed performance in "How to Live in Luxury after Killing Innocents on Live Television"
Winning the much-competed category, Mr Kasab spoke through a translator as on this day, neither his English nor his Hindi were by his side - "I would have liked some Mutton Biriyani alongwith this trophy. But I am still delighted to win this trophy. Terrorism is an art, and I strive every day to prove to the world that regardless of religion or nationality, one can survive for so long in this industry. I thank the Indian judiciary for believing in my rights, and letting me eat off the same taxpayers whose families I murdered."

Best Picture: "The Hurt Onlooker", a scathing narrative of how innocent cows get blown to smithereens in bombing drills held by NATO.
In a press release by the esteemed organisation that runs some of the hottest wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc), the producers of the movie accepted this award and said - "We bow our head in humility in front of this great award. Our movie documents the effect of misdirected bombing on innocent people in those countries. Since we could not use real humans in the shooting, we decided to use good old cows. This way we ensured an accurate measurement of the collateral damage, since these cows and those people are not much different anyways for us. Such creative thinking and out-of-the-world vision has been recognised with this award, and we thank the Racso Foundation for this!"

The Racso awards were held remotely this year due to the enormous security threat involved in getting the winners together in the proposed venue in Antarctica, due to unanticipated protests from the natives there - the penguins. But I promise you that I shall lobby harder next year to roll out the red carpet for the nominees and the winners at a venue near to you!

The Brown Man's Burden

2010-03-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

Just before the end of the ninteenth century, Rudyard Kipling penned a poem which is much lesser known than his legendary "If". This poem, originally intended to celebrate 75 years of the Victorian era, is titled "The White Man's Burden". In that insightful piece, Kipling laid bare the natural calling of the white race, to explore the world and to rule the lesser races, at the cost of its own peace and inner sanctum. Most critics of that age and this, rate that piece as a shining example of Kipling's disdain for all other races, even though he was born in dusty India. The legendary author carried that stigma with him even after he had gone back to the dust that he came from.

Ironically, just a little over a hundred years later, there's apparently a little storm raging in the teacup called Mumbai (most storms rage there nowadays). Nay! This storm has not been stirred by any Sena or any Khan, but by the ghost of Mr Kipling himself. The powers that be are toying with the idea of making a musem out of Kipling's infantile residence where he stayed till he was six. Some critics have panned this project, while some are considering it to be the final pardoning of Kipling by our magnanimous country.

But why am I telling you about something that you can read in a newspaper anyway?

The answer to that lies in the very phrase "The White Man's Burden". This phrase was the unspoken, redeeming motto of every imperialist that sailed out of Europe. The Portuguese, The French, the Spaniards, the Dutch and ofcourse, our favourite - the British, carried with them the innate sense of pride in bearing The White Man's Guilt. Thousands of them took on the stormy oceans and unknown worlds over hundreds of years in search of gold and greatness. Many of them had a one-way ticket to faraway lands, dying on the way from scurvy, pirates or mutiny. Many reached safe shores, but perished in battling hostile indigenous people. But those who survived and flourished on alien shores made the world smaller in countless ways. They went with the fear of falling off the face of the flat Earth, and collectively raised the flag of human adventure to a height where the benefits of modernisation and science benefited the rest of mankind. They sincerely believed that since they had the advantage of inventions and clever ideas on their side, it was their moral obligation to rule the savages, at the cost of their freedom and happiness.

No, this is not even an anthem to imperialism.

Today, on India's festival of colours, I would like to pay a tribute to the current tide that flows through each ocean - The Brown Man's Burden.

We, who come from the loins of the Indian landmass, are everywhere. Like unstoppable bullets, we have left the shores of the sub-continent and spread to every nook and cranny of the world. It's true that it started with pseudo-slaves being shipped off to the Caribbean and Africa. But in the twentieth century, it was the teeming mass of ambitious young men and women who went off out of their own volition. In just within a few decades, we have crossed all borders possible and been drenched in the rain from every sky on this planet. A survey last year revealed that there are registered Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) in every inhabited nation in the world, including North Korea and Iceland.

Why is this significant?

There are three loads that have made us the new Atlas of the world, bearing the burden of this era.

The first load in the burden is the fact that we are the only civilisation that has a claim to ancient cultures and development, and which is now at the pinnacle of human advancement. The Incans vanished, the Mayans never got out of the central American jungles, the Egyptians went back to the shores of the Niles, the Romans and the Greeks fought so many wars that they eventually imploded, and the modern-day imperialists shut their shops and sailed back to their homes around the Prime Meridian. This leaves the Chinese, stuck in their stubborn view of Communism as the road to salvation and with a stranglehold on the world economy through a bullish grip on the throat of American consumerism. Inspite of their millions who struggle to make everything from mittens to motors, they will reach a bursting point in our lifetimes where their yoke on the world trade will become a flat curve. On the other hand, inspite of our own inner turmoil, we promote the equilibrium of a scientific temper and the chutzpah of capitalism in everything that we do. Whether I am a businessman in Guyana or a construction worker in Kuala Lumpur, a Nobel candidate in the US or a surgeon amputating limbs in Sierra Leone, this brown brain trains its grey cells to overcome its natural laziness and do better every single day.

Secondly, unlike our colonial predecessors, we are a peace-loving and a patient herd predominantly. Whether it has been inbuilt into our genes through years of being in the most difficult situations, is a theory up for debate. But the truth remains that we possess the capacity to laugh at every ourselves and at every bad card dealt to us. We may get beaten in Melbourne, but we will still continue to treat every Australian in India as an esteemed guest. We carry an unofficial burden of being the ambassador of "anything goes" throughout the world. Many of us cringe when we see our fellow countrymen behaving like idiots, but that still does not diminish the pride within us. What are we so proud of? Our uniquness, or our strangeness? The fact that we are still the flagbearer of mysticism in the world, or the fact that our collective IQ is higher than most races? Or the fact that most of us have infinite love for our parents, even when they are wrong? Or the fact that an India tabla player went to Afghanistan to perform and got blown to bits, when he had no real need to do so? Or the sight of multi-coloured faces on one day in spring every year when all virtual boundaries in life disappear in a country that is itself filled with racists? With a million questions, we doubt our own pride, and hear a hollow sound when we tap it. But it still continues to live, and that conflict is the burden.

The burden is complete with the third load - our own yearning to beat the adventurers at their own game. With millions inadequately fed and clothed, we are engaged in a race with our Chinese neighbours to reach the Moon, now that it's open for all. None of those imperialists achieved that, so there you go! The former USSR is dead, and even if the Americans wiggle their way out of their own problems now to refocus on the Moon, we would be having our fingers dirty in their pie as well. We will not rest in peace until we set foot on that soil.

This burden never let the white man rest in peace, and thus is the same story with us. We may think that we have crossed all limits of human glory, but for every one of us that is a tiny piece in this giant puzzle, the box is not yet quite ticked.

Either we carry this burden to Eternity, or we call it a day and hand it over to someone else. Who could that be?

Who Ate My Head?

2010-01-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

I am a cannibal.

A peace-mongering and relentless cannibal who has eaten himself up in the hunger for something new. Let me explain.

Yesterday I woke up on the wrong side of the bed to find my own bones strewn around. At first, it did not strike me and I frantically searched for a mirror. There was a broken mirror lying on the floor and when I looked into it, I saw a grinning apparition. I instantly knew what had happened. The venom of indulgence had started eating my grey cells slowly but quietly. I yanked off my own head, reached into my brains and set the philandering thoughts to task. They had spent enough time running amok and pretending to be doing something fruitful. Once I set my head back on, it felt queasy at first but the Return of Clarity was much welcome.

I have missed this Island of Contemplation immensely - this little page on the Internet where the sparkling white sands have not been trod on recently. Rid of the mental mutinies, I am back to pitch camp on my island. To my blog.

Update of the day - the USA continues to be The Land Far, Far Away, especially when one returns from the motherland after an unforgettable trip. The time spent with loved ones feels like sand trickling through the fingers. The magic of meeting old friends, hanging out with adorable cousins, a darling nephew, a grand surprise birthday party, unforgettable road trips, Mom's incessant attention, random run-ins into yet older friends, shopping sprees, in-laws' fawning, a riverside picnic, mutton curry, an excruciating tooth extraction, a flight diverted due to fog, a wedding fiesta in Chennai, midnight wine in the cold, watching the PM zip by amidst screaming sirens, more delicious mutton curry, being shooed by cops from a restricted area, overcoming an old fear, corrupting my family by teaching them how to gamble in Poker, smiling endlessly at wedding dinners, gorging on egg chicken rolls with the ever-blissful Thums up, Grandma's smiles, an accident followed by a mid-road altercation, still more mutton curry, beachside languor, and many more myriad components of a month spent in India continue to keep the mind hostage.

Yet I leave it all behind, like many of us, and return to a different rigmarole. What happens to my logic which I take pride in? Are these my thoughts or are these the cannibal's?

The cannibal would not have been born if I had disciplined my wayward thoughts. I would have disciplined my wayward thoughts much earlier had not I been ambushed by the chaotic wonder of my country. In many vacant moments, I question the nomadism which has led to this state of affairs. Hopping from day to day, and year to year, this mind operates like a Time Machine - one that can transport me into any moment in the past and bring it back into life. The same mind can overcome buried fears and break open needlessly shut doors.

The new year started without the realisation of its arrival. I was busy fending off these new symptoms of procrastination and merry-making. Little did I know that these were the tricks of the cannibal, designed to throw one off his guard. Many of you have made resolutions, I am sure. I used to make one every year until I discovered that a new year is simply the same merry-go-round on which we are all seated on little wooden horses. I keep telling myself that "new year's day" is a figment of the collective imagination, merely a reset of a man-made tool called a calendar - a tool that makes us go round and round in cycles. Years come and years go, and we think we grow older. We plan our lives into little boxes of work, holidays and celebrations, hoping that these things will keep us busy enough to overlook the fact that none of us have a clue about where we are headed.

What if there was no calendar?
No media to tell us what's happening in the world?
No rotation of the earth, and thus no day and night?
No dates and deadlines?
No way to plan anything in life?
What if you were stranded on a desert island where the sand was white and there was no ship coming to rescue you?

All resolutions would come to naught.
All plans would be meaningless.
The only choices would be to eat the cannibal or let it eat you.

So let's stop patting each other on the back because a new calendar year starts. For the cannibal is always lurking within. You can see it when you grin.

Weightless

2009-09-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

(or, The Last Day at Work)

The gush of wind, in my face
thru' the jagged glass
Destroyed, like Twoface hath
I wonder which one to pass

Far below, the serpentine streets
With sirens, hissing at me
The flames on me, the panic beats
As my clothes burn in glee

The clock is still, as this world ends
The moans have slept, and the crackle roars
This paper and pen, my parting friends
Huddle with me, in this forsaken place

No anger, no grief, but Starbucks taste
and the parting wave of Jane's smile
Yanked from me in fiery haste
as I crawl off the morbid pile

These are the last words I write
On this memo to hell
Bloody smudges and fading light
Make me laugh, make me yell

Here I am, like a dragonfly
Neither wish nor prayer, no fervent hope
Is gonna make me cry
As I look over the charring ledge

Off you go, you A4 sheet
Some random hands you shall meet
I am right behind you
To meet the devil, 100 stories below my feet

- This could have been the last words written on a piece of paper by one of the people waiting to die at the WTC on Sep 11 2001, before they made the painful choice between burning to death or jumping to it. It could have been me. It could have been you. It is as plain as that.

The Great Indian Hope Trick

2009-06-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

Until about a few weeks back, I was rummaging around within my head, grumbling that yet again I could not cast my vote in an election in India. Here we are, a superlative diaspora that has taken over every nook and cranny of most countries and corporations in the world, and yet we don't have overseas balloting in place. With this angst, I was twiddling my thumbs, half-expecting to watch the mantle of power slip away and fall into the hands of the BJP and its khaki-clad maniacs, who would again set us ten years back.

But lo and behold! Our gregarious voters have thumped Manmohanism on the back yet again, even if their motives might be questionable. Within a month, the fortunes of the stone-aged and rabble-rousing ilk of the bitter Advani and Modi team has spiralled down into the murky depths of the Ganges.

I am a little late in igniting fire-crackers, so I will let that display of triumph pass by. I am sure that thousands of my compatriots have already danced on emptied streets and burst a million crackers in jubilation. However it's hard to not wonder at the fact that this is the first time in the last 50 years that the same Government has returned to consecutive power after an election. None, not even Indira Gandhi or A.B. Vajpayee, had managed this. More impressive is the fact that Congress actually managed to strengthen itself further by having more than 200 seats this time. Call it the result of fractious infighting in other parties, or the dereliction of the fanatic saffron parties by their bruised allies such as BJD, but the truth is that the BJP is failing even more nowadays in achieving its single objective - to fool all the people all the time. I, for one, am really glad to see their fall. I do not hero-worship Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi, but I would prefer them anyday over the dodo-ist, head-in-the-sand Advanis or Modis who still have not been exempted of the alleged massacres that they have led in the past. Opportunistic as they are, they have also somersaulted on their own "dynastic politics" rhetoric they kept shooting at Congress by hosting Maneka Gandhi and her son from their party. An Indian voting for the BJP is like a German voting for the Nazis in 1933, where either sheer blissful ignorance or boiling and misplaced venom can be the only motivations.

What is even more amazing is how Rahul Gandhi has juxtaposed the possible misplaced expectations that the rally-attending masses of our country has from him, with the opportunities that he had while at the helm of the Congress campaign. Focussing on the correct issues and the right amount of media posturing worked solidly for his team, while his embittered cousin distanced swing voters even more with his Hindu rhetoric. Whether Rahul Gandhi and his ilk emerge to be leaders of substance or not, is something that we shall see unfold over the next five years. However this time, it shall be a much more transparent callibration of the Congress mandate, with no ambiguities of policies now that unwanted ingredients such as the Left and the RJD are out of the soup. 417 million voters put in their ballots this year, and the giant jigsaw puzzle that is the Indian map has shaken itself back into political shape again.

If one is a pessimist who never gives up, then this is the moment to rebrand oneself. For every 75 MPs who have active criminal records in the new Parliament, now there is one IIT-IIM alumni in the Lok Sabha (Prem Das Rai from Sikkim). That is some glimmer of hope. Since none of us are ever going to bring an overnight revolution in the country, the only path of furthering the future is to watch the radicals run home one by one.

It's slow and noiseless progress, almost like a glacier. But I welcome it.

The Grey

2009-04-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

My mind hurtled through the highway of my follies, masking each blotch with a better colour. A better colour that eventually turned into blue, regardless of my thrashing around the periphery. Blue is supposed to be the colour of calmness, of the equal sign that sums up all emotions. Sitting there on the tree stump, I huffed and puffed, and let out imaginary rings of smoke into the afternoon air. What was that colour I had seen on the train? Why did it keep dodging me? Why did it refuse to turn into grey? I had no name for that colour. Was it the result of a cosmic joke, or the merger of bitter elements? Was it a constant reminder to me that just around the bend lay nothingness, and that I had no time left? It had dazzled my eyes, and yet had made me place my palms on the window in restless thrill.

I could not have travelled in a time machine, for that fantasy of mine had not been invented yet. Yet the dirt road of time eluded my gaze when I turned round at the top of the hill and looked back as far as I could. The sky beat like the magnified surface of a drum, and the spectrum of some weak rainbows submitted itself to the rule of that colour. It spread out all over me slowly, gobbling every dormant cloud and vanquishing the rays of the distant star that gives this world life. The fingers on my hands. They, which had held so many brushes, giving shape to my imagination and my wildest dreams. Now they were idle, queued up like hungry labourers waiting for a truck to come by and give them back their purpose and will. They had distorted faces of tourists on the streets of Sydney, making their laughter crooked. They had swept across large strokes of thick brushes, catching snapshots of my nightmares in larger-than-life dimensions. They had held the ears of hares as I had pulled them out of my hat in India. They had glistened with excited beads of sweat whenever I had heard applause and cheers of appreciation. All those moments. All those flights across man-made borders, travelling on a shoestring, tasting the water and kissing the soil of each land. All the time, growing wiser by the day and nourishing my obsession with wanderlust.

My dreams had been in sepia, with specks of red thrown into the moments that terrified me. Like the one in which the huge wall of a tsunami raced towards me and I sat on the beach, frozen by my own urge to let myself be swallowed, while desperately screaming at myself to run for my life. The water turned green, then red and loomed over the world like a gigantic spectre of doom. Yet I just sat there, as if I was a part of the earth, my eyes glistening with the tears of forgotten horrors. The yellow blinding torchlight of my future self always woke me up just in the nick of time, saving me from an apocalyptic death, and showing me the indigo around me. That indigo, which like spurts of ink on a new shirt, refused to disappear. They held the memories of the people I have killed and the revolution which I worshipped. Until the Revolution, I had been nothing but a nomad, wandering across the latitudes, earning my bread and butter by putting brush to canvas, and playing second fiddle to Zach, the brilliant conjurer of poor men's fantasies.

Like the spread of oil on water, the colour now beckoned to me from the sky above. Or could I call it a sky anymore? Its eerie shimmer fell across the landscape, as I struggled hard to identify what colour this was. The trees waved in the rising wind, as their shadows also queued up to felicitate this new colour. The Revolution had sprung suddenly on mortal society, led by those who despised the false gods and the enslavement of mankind by the non-existence of free will. All philosophers who died before then, turned in their graves. The revolution made brilliant sense. Remove all borders. Wipe out all religions. Erase all existing currencies and stick to one. The birth of the new world. A world where white, black, red, yellow, green had no role to play apart from returning to the folds of nature, where they came from. Like a microcosm, it spread from mouth to atheist mouth, from idle mind to creative mind, from desperate will to crushing desire. Men and women trooped out of offices, fell out of social orders and disappeared from organised rigour. What led me to it? Was I insane? Or was I just swept up in the promises the Revolution showed? It was not Zach. In fact, poor Zach was simply sleeping in his hotel room, dreaming about his next trick, when I crept up and smothered him to death. I had to do it. His brilliance and my reverence for him was a huge barrier for the Revolution. I had to let myself out from under the shadow of morals. Many revolutions have gone by where the forces, the people who led the mobs, had selflessly fought, waiting for victory in some lifetime or the other. Not for us. We wanted immediate, overnight results.

I am not much of a speaker. But a voice I do have. For those Seven Days of the Awakening, as The Leader had named the Revolution, I bathed in grey every dawn, while the world fought a raging battle around me. I treasure laughter, and mine meant the most to me. I still heard it, as I sat on the tree stump, resounding in my mind like the blaring trumpet of blind ambition. Hundreds of us united in breaking free of the shackles, murdering everyone we saw who was not with us. We swore allegiance to the Leader, who was himself faceless, but always dressed in grey. It was the colour of the new time, and all we saw around was grey. The grey between morals and apathy, the grey between motive and mayhem, and the grey between order and chaos. Day turned into orange dusk, and bloody dusk turned into black rivers of dried up blood. I was on top of the world, just as all the other greys around me were.

Then the Leader showed us a colour I had not expected. He wanted all Creativity dead. He declared the goal of The New Society to be the Uniformity of Will, and the Absence of Idleness. He wanted this to become a perfect world.
The dazzling and overwhelming light of this new colour had hit me then. I realised, standing in the middle of vanquished cities, that I could never paint again. I could never dream of a magic trick again. The grey itself was a nightmare, and was going to be the colour of the tsunami now. And I thought I loved grey.

I had been a fool, but atleast I will not die one.

The dazzling colour, now so eerie, made me forget hunger and thirst. I ran like an enraged madman, over crushed cars and overturned trolleys, through smoke-filled buildings and over moaning bodies, past celebrating comrades and seas of grey.
Each grey I saw reminded me again and again of what I had to do now. I had killed Zach, and now I had to repay.
I ran until I was breathless.

(The shimmer of this colour now was creeping up my own body, as the star sank below the horizon, and the heavens yawned.)
Today is the Eighth Day of the Awakening, and we saw The Leader for the first time. An ocean of grey clapped and cheered. They looked wild, the men and women and children of tomorrow. Did they know what was in store? I then realised that this teeming mass of the new humanity was the tsunami, the one that I always gave into.

As The Leader was about to speak, I shot him. From the top of the tallest building. Straight through the head. A trickle of brilliant red ran down over his grey suit as he collapsed.

Since then, they had been looking for me. I had run into an abandoned train and hurtled it out of the city. I had gotten out of my greys and was now wearing nothing. They were hot on my heels, a furious mob, baying for my blood. I was not concerned about the murder I had just committed. The bigger crime was the killing of colours.

As I sat on the tree stump, I looked up the hill and saw the thousands. They swarmed down the hillsides. I think they have spotted me. They did not look like the ones I had fought with. Maybe it was this colour. I had never seen it before. My eyes flashed with a new fury, and this time they bristled with this new colour. It cracked on my fingers, and glowed on my skin. It made the whole world new.

I start running. Uphill this time. I am laughing loudly. The sky is again throbbing. The mob and its yell is nearer now. I come over the top of the hill, and I stop in my tracks. They are there, panting and waiting for me. All around me, is the madness. The madness I was a part of. I look up at the sky, and scream to the colour. I wonder if they see it.

I won't live long. But I know one thing.

I won't die grey.

The Threshold Dilemmas

2009-03-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Spring's around the corner! That's what I was told a few weeks back, and there is still no sign of it. Not that the cold isn't bitterly entertaining now that we are used to it, but the sunny skies are deceptive every morning.
On such deceptive days, music is a great friend on the commute to work, but since my commute is only a 5-minute train ride, this is what happens nowadays:

One dilemma with being on the threshold of winter and spring is the daily decision each morning as to whether one should wear a sweater or not. Unlike what you may think, a sweater can have different roles to play in life, as shown below:

When you meet someone in the elevator and there is an immediate blank-out of topics to discuss and you realise that the elevator is stopping at every floor, you try the following topics in that order - how the weekend went, how the weather is playing tricks and last but not the least the economy. It seems everyone has mugged what The Economist has to say about the economy. But I think the best way to look at the economy is:

I stole some minutes from work recently and tried to get some alternatives researched on options we have regarding cable TV. I myself do not know why, as the definition of TV in India has morphed into the following in the last few years:

But when no options came up on the TV thing, I resigned ourselves to watching mediocre cable for the time being. The excitement surrounding the upcoming general elections in India will have to be tracked over the ubiquitous news websites at work. These elections will be very interesting, most of all for the BJP, who have been riding high on their own pedestal for the last term. However I think Advani is losing sleep, not something that many would know. Do you want to know why?

It's doomsday for BJP in these times. Perhaps it's my wishful thinking though. However talking of doomsday, "Knowing" is about to be released and even though I am a fan of thriller movies like most of us, what have we learnt from most Hollywood doomsday flicks?

Speaking about Hollywood, Aamir Khan has confirmed in his latest interview that Bollywood movies are still being made with the Indian audience in mind, and that when the day comes when we start targeting the international audience, we won't fare too bad. I am inclined to believe him. In the same interview, Aamir has admitted that he is embarrassed by many of his earlier movies. I am a huge fan of his, but I would have liked him to take pride in all that he has done. Are his roles better now, or are his movies better after 2000? Hard call to make, because if you take his top ten characters and measure them against each other in terms of memorability and impact, the results can be interpreted in various ways. For the sake of reverence, I have not included his all-time classic character of Amar from Andaaz Apna Apna in this comparison. That would have been a crime even Teja would not have committed.

I wish he looked at himself from a fan's eyes and realised that characters like Sanjay Lal, Munna and Siddhu remain as some of his best characters till date. Is he getting deceived by his own perfectionism? Or is he stumbling due to the sheer frequency of having to work amongst mediocrity andf yet having to cross the threshold over into excellence?

Wake up Aamir, spring's round the corner, and so are Three Idiots!

Topsy Turvy

2009-03-13T19:33:00.001-07:00

The words unsaid, and the thoughts unfelt
How strange the earth smelt
The truth, you befuddled being
No, it's not what you are seeing.

Enjoy this short story attached below.

Topsy Turvy

Nothing but the Truth

2009-03-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Quirky Week news bulletin, where we bring you the happenings from around this hot oblate spheroid which we call our world!

Aha! In this week's headlines, we have the age-old sepoy mutiny revived in the great democracy of Bungle-desh. This legendary social breakthrough was pioneered 152 years ago in the heartlands of India, the engineers of which were anonymously hanged or selectively shot to fame. A few had never been caught and they were rumoured to have escaped to the marshy capital of Dhoka, the current capital of Bungledesh. It is suspected that their descendants fired the first shots in the mutiny that shook the sleepy afternoons of Dhoka and allowed the Bungledesh government to get rid of under-performing officers of the border guard force who had not managed to get a single Indian officer lynched in the last couple of years. Investigations are still on and the hunt for the corpses goes on, as speculations mount that the mutiny is back as a social trend in the sub-continent.

In the more melodious land across the border, the hit and raging show "Indian Idle" had its first female winner, after centuries of male domination. The show, started by the great Indian emperor Show Jahan, had always had a swaggering fellow win since the majority of voters were idle female voters using their husbands' cellphones to send multiple votes. But as the global economic crisis deepens and more men lose their jobs, the tide has turned finally and female crooners finally got their votes!

Talking of votes, Gluejarat's chief minister N.S. Muddy churned up the heat in the pre-elections fiasco speeches , calling the ruling party's prince charming Royal Grandy a "new fish", while declaring himself old fish. This provoked riots amongst the divided ranks of the Luck Sabha sentries (another mutiny that got nipped in the bud?). The situation came under control only when the ruling Crowngress retorted saying that yes, Muddy was an old-fish, but a flesh-eating Piranha. This in turn fuelled the anger of PETA who filed a PIL against the Crowngress for "unfair and inhuman use of a gentle form of nature like fish to be compared to a monster such as Muddy".

Another Grandy was also hogging the headlines more than 50 years after his demise when one of his nieces' daughters decided to auction off his sunglasses, a birthday gift from Lord Mountbitten, in New York in order to pay her next credit card bill. This angered the entire Indian diplomatic force which has pledged to do all in its power to stop the auction. It created an embarrassing situation for the Indian ambassador to Antarctica who was planning to be one of the highest bidders in the auction so as to acquire the sunglasses to protect his eyes in the glare of the Antarctic snow. Officials from the Central Bureau of Instigation are looking into the matter and have interrogated a number of penguins as witnesses.

Speaking of interrogation, the Mumbai Police managed to beat the 90-day deadline of filing a charge-sheet against Mohd Ghazab, the lone surviving gunman from the November attacks. They submitted a 10,000-page document citing hundreds of witnesses and details. On close inspection, it was found however that the document had 9,990 pages of the script of Ache-ta Kapoor's next movie "Shooutout at Nariyalwala's", which featured Ghazab's character in a central role. The Mumbai High Court reviewed the script and found too many repetitions in it, which compelled them to issue arrest warrants against Miss Kapoor on the crime of mediocrity. Miss Kapoor, who is currently shooting her next tele-serial "Kissssa Khoon Ka" in South Africa, was not available for Komment, umm, I mean, comment.

Not far from South Africa, a bizarre revenge drama occurred in the West African nation of Guinea-Pissau. The nation, thus named after the creation of its capital city pissed off a lot of guinea pigs who occupied that land, saw its army general allegedly blown to smithereens by a bomb planted below his staircase at the behest of its President. This enraged the army which sent its newest talent to hunt down and riddle the fleeing President with bullets. Thus ended the lives of the nation's embittered leaders. Condemnation followed from the African Union which said in an official statement to AFP - "We condemn the changing of the country's fortunes with only two deaths, whereas our other member nations have lost hundreds of thousands of people in their conflicts. The president and general should have ensured that Africa gets more attention in the world's eyes by having more people killed."

Moving east, the new US Secretary of State, Mrs Hilarious Cleanton is on the verge of commencing her first official trip to the Middle East, promising to be true to her name and "clean" up the mess between Izrail and Palestein, I beg your pardon, Israel and Palestine. Few believe in her ability to do so, since analysts believe that the US should first clean up the giant elephant in its backyard - Gluttonamo Bay - before it tries to stick its pies back into the eternal mudpie nick-named the "Riddle East" (nick-name courtesy of our in-house Jordanian weatherman).

In the increasingly funny world of finance, we all thought the worst was over. But AIG posted the largest quarterly loss ever in corporate history, sending the world stocks spiralling down. Its board of directors was seen standing on Wall Street with placards stating that the world was about to end and convincing passersby why it made sense for their government to eat further into their tax money so that AIG could pay off investors in other countries and allow these people to spend less on their home insurance.

In sports, India's Meander Singh Dhoni's approval ratings fell below 99% for the first time in his glittering career as his team lost two 20-20 matches to Old Zealand. At the time of going to press, Meander was seen biting his nails and speaking on his cellphone (rumours say India's erstwhile captain Sourrub Gangly was on the other line) apparently looking for ways to get his ratings back to 110% while his old warriors Searchin' Tendulkar and Surrender Vehwag batted at the crease in the first one-day international.

Ahem...ladies and gentlemen... I am afraid that we will have to end this bulletin now as another snowstorm hits the US city of New York where we are reporting from. Our electricity is limited, our windows are fragile and our women are more panicky.
All due to the economy!

So until next time - be alert, be safe and give Crime a face-breaking reply!

Good bye.

I Thank My Pet Goat

2009-02-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

Once again, the world patronises India in an age when we don't need that. A. R. Rehman, the Indian music maestro, won not one, but two Oscars in the last thirty minutes! I would have been really pleased had the movie he won the award for been a Delhi 6 or a musical track of that standard!
But no - like most award juries that lose sense and sensibility, the panel at the Academy succumbed to the global hysteria that Slumdog Millionaire has been riding on the back of. A movie that uses a word never heard in India (slumdog???), showcases a British actor Dev Patel with a thick British accent trying to pull off a Mumbai slum teenager, and a screenplay that distorts the captivating and non-linear narrative of the original book. If the movie had been made in India without a British producer or director, then it would have struggled to enter the Oscars in the foreign movies category. Even if it had been made in impeccable English!
And Mr. Rehman? Brilliant Mr. Rehman! He who has given most of us Indians hundreds of enchanting and heart-throbbing tunes in the last decade and more. Yes he deserves an Oscar for many of those melodies! But certainly NOT for "Jai Ho" and similar mediocre matter which he stooped to in this movie.
Should I wave the tricolour because two Indians (Rehman and Resul Pookutty, who won the Oscar for Sound Mixing) have won India's maiden Oscars? I want to! But something stops me, and I think I know what it is. It's a yell inside that NO! They do not deserve it for Slumdog Millionaire. Much greater is the joy when a reward is won fair and deserved, and not when it rides mightily on mass-propelled biases.
I had given up on most award systems in the performing arts because they have suspended all notions of fair play over the years, including India's venerable Filmfare awards. Now the Academy has proved itself no different by glorifying Slumdog Millionaire beyond what it deserves.
Art is a realm of inspiration, as well as a gateway to pretentious abuse.

I crave for a respite, the sort that an engrosser like Delhi-6 provides. I can my distaste for the coronation of Slumdog Millionaire and toss the screaming can into the garbage bin of creativity.

Good night, Oscars!

The Roads Not Taken

2009-02-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

Almost a year ago, I had accompanied some of my bosom buddies on a hiking trip to the magnificent Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, Malaysia. Standing at the summit of Kinabalu for the second time was a joy that surpassed numerous lofty heights reached before. Soon after that, achilles tendonitis had crept in like an uninvited guest at a wedding and plagued my left foot for months. The resolve to overcome that has still not succumbed a year down the line.
I have travelled much since then but have always had an eye on my left leg, making sure it's not put under duress unnecessarily.
That resolve popped up in my mind when Poonam and I travelled with a couple of friends to the picturesque ski resort of Killington, Vermont, last weekend. Many call such trips a "honeymoon" but that word seems shady to me, since this is just the beginning of our travels and will feature again and again. Thus we drove to Vermont, the rarest of the New England states.

Moments slow down when the surroundings overwhelm. As we bend out backwards to reach inside the confines of a far-reaching desire, perspective does a tribal dance and changes shape and colour. I believe that the nomadic and pastoral persona that many of us keep suppressed has slowly convinced itself to be urban. A getaway to the majesty of mountains, for whatever reason, pulls one back from the cliff-edge of self-absorption, where we stand like a fool, wondering whether to jump or to lie down. The snow-capped peaks, the conifer trees, the slow and smooth glide on dewy roads and the occasional gurgle of a nascent river that keeps us company as we drive higher and higher. These provide the canvas for an idyllic journey, one that crystallises my mind and sings lullabies to preoccupations. I learn and re-learn that valuable lesson every time I come under the shadow of towering peaks. The state of Vermont offered countless such moments, and I barely stopped myself from flowing away like an eager young river myself. The company of loved ones makes such a passage even more refreshing. With each passing turn in the road, the slivers of sunlight played hide and seek with us, and bounced off the fragile ice on the accompanying river like a runner at the end of a shuttle leg. The laughter, the music and the jokes joined hands to create a cocoon of calm as we slipped off easily from the slopes of reality into a Narnian snowscape where all that mattered was each other.

Occasional warnings on the road about reckless mooses crossing the road almost made it feel as if the road was an overspill of the mountain woods. That kept us on tenterhooks as we expected a grim-looking moose to jaywalk sometime soon. The clickety-clack of a camera kept breaking my frequent reveries and those drift-offs into the hills yonder. But the biggest reverie that was broken was our illusion that skiing was a matter of whooshing down white powdery slopes with cinematic splendour. The first couple of minutes on gentle and innocuous snow smoked away all such illusions as we opened our eyes to the challenges of basic skiing where gravity lives in a straitjacket and friction is fast asleep. Bumps and collisions, crashes and awkward attempts to salvage grace while getting up decked our next few hours. Fall, amble up, slide, twist, turn, soar for half a second, giggle at the others falling and then fall once again. This was a proper sport which we had misunderstood. The boots played some cruel jokes on us by making us feel like we were on a planet that had a gravity ten times that of Earth.
I wish I had picked up skiing when I was a kid. Dad, why didn't you let us ski in Cuttack? Oh that's right - we were hundreds of miles away from snow, forget slopes!

This was no Venice, but a gondola ride up to the pinnacle of Mount Killington granted us a spectacular view of six states and Canada. I felt the old surge through me - of flapping my imaginary wings and taking off into the sunny blue. So much purity, so much freshness that possesses a majestic mountain, makes me raring and eager to migrate and set up tent under a rock and grow a beard. We found secret paths between the woods that vanished into the snow, and a paradise of a restaurant at the top of the mountain that provided luscious hot chocolate.

The cherry on the cake actually lay in the quaint little European-looking towns of Woodstock, Quechee and Shelburne Falls. Enthralling covered wooden bridges, half-frozen rivers, curving little by-roads that snaked off into the wilderness, and fascinating houses that had thick layers of snow peched on their rooftops. The average speed of people in such towns is probably seven miles per hour. In Woodstock (no, not the legendary one), my eye caught what I had it trained it to catch. No, not a sparrow. Not even a fish. But the sight of a little shop hidden between houses, with a rusted sign hanging outside saying "Rare, old books". The little shop was a world in itself, and included books from half-forgotten authors as well as books from popular ones. Some were yellowing, others were squeezed in tight racks and most had a page or two falling off. But when I saw Tagore's Gitanjali and I heard the shopkeeper say what a wonderful book this was, I realised that I was in the company of a genuine bibliomaniac. Such was the pull of words that he seemed content in his magical shop.

What do book-sellers gain in their profession? They get to know who's who by looking at their choices. They get to explore the vast worlds which lie in their books whenever they feel like. Theirs is a route that is often not taken, akin to the sentiments of Robert Frost the poet, whose poems coincidentally focussed on rural like in New England, of which Vermont is a part.

I flashed upon that moment when I had toyed with the desire to be a book-keeper for a few moments when I was ten years old. But that was in the list of fifty other potential careers which I had fantasised about before entering teenage.

As the icy winds of Vermont met the cheerful sunlight on our drive, the lush expanse of distant hills made me forget that it was the popular weekend of the biggest social scam ever, Valentine's Day. As mass dementia spreads like hay fever to make pomp on one day in the year where love apparently reigns supreme, I question myself and I put the question to Poonam - what makes one day so special, when there are 364 others?

Why should we always follow that road of celebrating one day in the calendar as a day of love? Isn't that supposed to be an omni-pervading feeling?

I see the question stoking fires in her eyes. I also see Robert Frost turning in his grave with another grin.

Of all the roads not taken, that is not one I would return to.

The Whole Seven Yards

2009-02-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

A blitzkrieg of hugs. Swathes of smiling faces. Fire, incense, and the conch. Squeals from kids twirling to the music. Friends, friends and more friends. More hugs. Flowers, disco lights and photo-shoots. Reunions and gossips. Music, moves and grooves. Folded hands, confusion and chaos playing guest appearances. Chiffon and silk engaged in battle. Kurtas and dhotis. Whitewash and blazing colours. Recollections and flashbacks. Brass bands and street rowdies. Succulence and reticence swinging together. The list goes on and on. In-between, was I the protagonist or was I them, the hundreds of eyes watching and revelling in the goings-on?
Seven days of my life flew by in unchecked, unaudited and uncontrolled reverie as I slid into matrimony and came full circle to witness that which I had seen happening to others. Dad's eyes followed me everywhere I went, perhaps remembering the same week thirty-eight years ago when he was himself in the thick of things. Mom was too busy to be nostalgic except when she was smothered with hugs from visiting kith and kin.
No amount of preparation readies one for an Indian wedding. It's a toast to merrymaking, raised by one and all. We don't live in a palatial mansion, and yet the feeling was regal. I kept cautioning myself not to get carried away, for beyond the mirth and the chaos was a new turn in the road. But the cautioning fell on deaf ears as it was easy to let go of the useless inhibitions and jump into the fun.

Joymakers, dance and sway
'tis your playground, so play
Old friends meet and hug
One by one, they pull the plug
as music welcomes the big day

The day before the wedding was a mutiny of laughter where all present had misplaced their anchors. As the beats pumped out, Bollywood moves were flaunted while those who were newcomers to this (read - friends who were first-timers to Cuttack) gaped and drank in the fun. Even aunts who symbolised prosperity causes seismic ripples, which would alarm Richter. Even yours truly wasn't spared.

I had not expected the big day to jump on me with the agility of a four-year-old playing hide-and-seek. Throngs of boisterous faces rent the air hoarse with excited chatter as my grand vehicle bedecked with floral decor (no, wasn't a horse) left home. An hour later, the public in Bhubaneswar witnessed a motley gang of normal people turn the road into a stage when the "Baaraat" wove its way to the tune of rambunctious Oriya songs as well as memorable numbers. I was the subject of a million stares and a thousand whispers in ears. I felt like I was on a ramp or at a movie-shoot. I learnt later that the feeling was the same on her side as well. Like a magnet, the fun on the road pulled me out and made me groove a bit as well, much to the delight of the youngsters and my pals, and to the chagrin of an impatient uncle!

Beautiful, those kohled eyes
These kids, the groom's spies
Lifted with cheers, heave-ho
I gave in, all smiles aglow
while hundreds swam in glee

If I were to take a snapshot of each smile that day and paste it onto a collage, I would run out of space on my walls to paste it on. Young and old, jubilant and senile, bouncy and fragile - everyone who had waited for that day was there. As the fire burnt, and the smoke hazed out the irrelevant chants of the priests, I could not help but lift myself out from there and mingle with the crowd. Sumit's beating of the drum, Gayatri's focus on her photography, Aai's patient observation of every little activity, the constant attention from the scores of women who I had never seen before, the knowing looks of her friends who I didn't know, the tugging of the turban by truant kids, the pouring of ghee into the fire and the full-blown feeling that I was entering a new dimension. All of these things conspired on the spot to make me smile, an unrestrained smile that healed old scars and opened new windows in the mind.
Is this what everyone goes through? Where were my good friends Cynicism and Skepticism? Why did they not attend my wedding?

Shy, the lowered gaze
the noise, the flames, the daze
The give and take
the cowries at stake
With sunset, the seven circles

As we sat the next evening on a glittering stage and playing the perfect hosts, my eyes searched for myself in the faces of those who came to wish me.
"Do you recognise me, Bobby?"
"Yes ofcourse!"
"Really? Who am I?"
"Errr....ummm...."
I quickly jumped back onto the last carriage of Honesty Express and the evening became much better. Smile this way, smile that way, shake hands, kiss the cheeks of a toddler, lift another, pose to the left, pose to the right, open my coat, flick my hands, and turn straight ahead. The burdens of an evening in glamour! But that was all worth the delicious moments. Especially when Ramesh Aja, my grand-uncle aged 92, turned up in a wheelchair. The lights and the ghazals joined hands, with my sister's lovingly arranged orchids doing their part to perfection. It was an evening that could be wished to last forever, especially when the grand photos of the family were snapped.

It was like a steep climb onto the peak of a rollercoaster, which is followed by a sudden tumble that knocks the breath out of you. Even when I saw the amused looks on the faces of Christian, Anita and Laurant, who were in India for the first time, I knew that they were making the most of it. My sincere hope remains that they went back with a much clearer picture of what happens in India. The chaos, the comfort, the compulsions and the cosiness.

Two days later, a gang of us travelled to the western town of Sambalpur, singing and making merry in a chaotic train compartment. The sheer delight on my cousins' faces made the journey flash by in a jiffy. Burla was a world in its own, where the same delights and postures of an evening reception continued. All hell broke loose in the final hour when the dance floor opened up and I was haplessly dragged onstage. The evening turned into a free-for-all dance fiesta where everyone mellowed down and let their hair down.

She smiles, the music slows
A wish to hold her close
The moment goes and comes
like deejaying phantoms
Boom and slick, the party goes on

Anecdotes are many, and memories are infinite. They merge and mix and produce sweetness of an untasted flavour. The tears of a grandmother, the clipped delight of a brooding father, the hearty sounds of enthusiastic laughter, the warmth in hugging friends, the curiosity of new kin, the ecstasy in the dances of Google, Khushi and Sheela. Moments caught on camera and lost in the inner tunnels of the mind. We all wake up every day with traces of a dream.

When the overwhelming continuum of those seven days ended, I looked at the surviving ring on my right hand and browsed through all the moments gone by.

I still could not see Mr Skepticism and Miss Cynicism in those moments.

All I could see were the laughters and those kohled eyes.

Joy. Transient, yet refreshing, joy.

The Run-In Hypothesis

2009-01-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, I dragged my lazier friend out in the blistering cold to whet the artsy thirst in me. How could I not have visited a museum three months after landing in this metropolis?

Thus I found myself in the middle of a thick crowd, talking about the good old times with my friend, who I was meeting after exactly two years. We were on our way to 86th Street station on the Upper East Side to raid the premises of the Guggenheim Museum. The train came to a crunching halt and we let ourselves get pushed out by the crowd. As we were walking out of the cavernous station, a familiar face flashed across the 180 degrees of my vision. It was ABC (name changed), who was a year senior to me in college in good ol' Singapore! Not that we were buddies exactly, but she immediately recognised me even though I was covered from head to toe and resembled an unsuccessful bank robber.
"Hey! It's you!"
"Yes, it's me! And you...I had no idea you were here", I quipped back.
"Are you still working at ... "
"Yeaha, very much there! Very lucky to still be on the payroll! Got a transfer to this city a few months back..."
"Good! Are you on Facebook?"
"Ofcourse!"
"Cool! We shall connect there!"
"Alright! See ya!"

The conversation was shorter than a minute and as we walked out into the sleepy sunshine, I remarked to my sleepier friend - "Wow! What are the chances? Bumping into someone who I last saw a few years back thousands of miles away, in the middle of New York!" Then I could not stop myself from uttering the cliche - "It IS a small world!"

Ten minutes later, we were inside the very elegant Guggenheim building, with tickets in our hand. We had already seen the first floor exhibits, which were a super flim-flam in the name of ground-breaking photography. What amused me more were how most people roamed about without gathering a clue about the photos of empty roads labelled "Vision of a Dream","The Path to the Inner Soul", etc. At the same time, they were furtively casting glances at others around them, attempting to understand if they were the only ones lost while trying to portray a deep look of comprehension at the same time.

While I was entertaining myself watching my now-awake friend pretending to be someone like that, there flashed another familiar face across my eyes. It was XYZ (name changed again, but you have probably guessed that out by now), a colleague from Sydney! Her face lit up on seeing me.

"Hiiiiii!!"
"Hello...", I answered back with what I imagine is a suave smile which makes guest appearances at such moments.
She was with a guy, and they were obviously relieved to find someone who was not bowled over by the flat displays.
"Hey Mike, this is Suryanshu, who works for DB in Singapore", she introduced me to her companion.
"Hiya! Ummm XYZ, I am actually now in New York. Got myself transferred a few months back."
Expressions of surprises followed with a minute's chatter ending with the traditional Apache pledge to meet up for drinks one of these days. Then they carried on with their tour, obviously determined to maximise every penny they had paid.

Twenty minutes later, I had dragged my friend out of the building, utterly let-down by the contents on those walls, with the exception of the floor that had Van Gogh's works and a really beautiful usher.

But what tickled my mind was how I had bumped into ABC and XYZ in a span of thirty minutes, half-way across the globe from where I had seen them last. Quick calculations at Kryptonic speeds led to a rough hypothesis (cannot call it a theorem yet, because it's yet to be proved), which is best expressed as a formula with a few variables. What are the chances of running into known people unexpectedly in a new city?

This formula will give you that. Suppose you are X and the other person is Y.

Then the probability of X running into Y without expecting that is given by Z, where:

Z = (((No. of X's acquaintances * No. of days since X saw Y) + (No. of Y's acquaintances * No. of days since Y saw X) - (Product of their respective no. of days since they both went out)) * (Probability of rain that day)^2 + No. of museums they have both seen in their lives - No. of movies showing on HBO at home that day which hey haven't seen) * Q / ((Sum of X and Y's acquaintances * Least of no. of hours they like to sleep on a Sunday afternoon) - (No. of friends they have visiting them each)^2 + (1/Probability of X feeling like taking the train)(1/Probability of Y buying a new jacket that day which she or he wanted to show off))

Obviously, as your naked eye can see, the formula still has the unknown variable Q.

If you can provide me the value of Q, I could plug it in and confirm the hypothesis. If not, I will have to take strolls on Sunday afternoons to figure that out.

The Day Before Tomorrow

2008-12-31T23:04:00.000-08:00

Celebrations galore have appeared all over the globe today to bring in the new year. Rays of hope have appeared on all horizons. Or reappeared, in most cases.

I wish everyone a fabulous year ahead.

Here's a tiny gift to usher in the new year - a short story written in a span of 3 hours in the afternoon of 31st Dec.

It's an experimental narration. Rein in the criticism with that in mind.

The Day Before Tomorrow

I, Whistler

2008-12-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

I know not where I am born
In yellow leaves, or curtains worn
An eagle’s wings
In predatory flight
Or the flapping gulls
Soaring in delight

A shape I have none
Yet I get twisted and spun
Into the forgotten nooks
O’er the speeding train
Tilting caps on cops ‘n crooks
But letting their wiles remain

I gurgle the river, I whistle into the blue
I awaken the street where you grew
Windows shake and rattle
Howling Me and Yelling Them
As victims of a raging battle
The running tots, the hurrying dame

The mercury’s an easy con
But ye folks fight with brain and brawn
Polka scarves ‘n mafia coats
Flap and flutter
While woeful words and quotes
Beneath your breaths you utter

Your teeth chatter
While I play with matter
A universal clatter
All still I shatter
You curse me, you love me
I make you mad as a hatter

If by now, you’re still in doubt
Even after our feisty bout
Look closer, throw those gloves
Offer me the proverbial doves
For ‘tis me, your good ol’ friend
The wind from around the bend

Great Expectations

2008-12-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up thinking it was yesterday all over again. That feeling lasted for a minute. Deja vu spoils me slowly, especially when the morning milks boils over, recedes and then boils again. But more spoilt am I by the longings and the yearnings packing my mind like festive train passengers on a holiday eve. Here's a peek into them, with the top ten things I am looking forward to in what remains of this year:

A languorous and never-ending Saturday morning.
The scarcity of weekends recently has been a matter of great concern for me. To appease my craving for hopping around places and meeting people, I have run myself short of a perfect Saturday when nothing is planned and the only alarm clock to wake me up is the slant of noontime sunrays falling on my face through the half-open blinds. But well - I look forward to that, whenever that occurs next.

I look forward to the first proper snowfall in the city, after a 30-minute shower of tiny flakes inaugurated my experience with snow two weeks back. For reasons known and unknown, my trips have never been to snowy regions so far and thus I still remain a snowstorm-newbie.

I await the upcoming trips to California and Florida over the next two weeks, the former professional and the latter personal. One plunges me into the world of hedge fund administration (gibberish for a normal human being) knowhow which I hope to enjoy, and the other marks a pledge made with my little sisters two Decembers back to reunite outside Singapore within two years.

I await my new 3G iPhone due this week and my hands are active with a zillion itching cells raring to run amok over its crystal-black surface and prance on its touch-points. My faithful companion for two years, the Sony Walkman phone, shall be elevated to the status of a gift for someone selected through my own lottery system (probabilistically - a local friend, but historically - Mom).

I am waiting for some laywer in India to procure enough courage to fight on behalf of Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive in the Mumbai carnage. Regardless of his dastardly crime, he deserves a lawyer who can atleast tell the court whether he should be hanged or left to suffer for the rest of his life in an Indian jail. The dumb bar associations and right-wing nationalists in India do not realise that without a defence lawyer, his prosecution cannot proceed. Ofcourse, under it lies the simple fact that with such a stance taken, they are opening a new course to the Indian judicial system - punishment without trial - which makes the Indian justice system no different than that held by the Taliban and the tribal chieftains of Pakistan. They cannot even declare him a Prisoner of War (and thus imprison him indefinitely), because there is no official war in progress. Why does self-serving sheer logic bid goodbye to educated civil servants such as lawyers? Did any doctor refuse to treat his wounds when he was captured? Or does a cook refuse to make him food everyday? I am retaining my confidence that some lawyer somewhere will struggle against his/her demons and do what the profession demands.

I await the release of Valkyrie and Ghajini, the former hopefully turning out to be a genuine seat-grabber depicting Nazi Germany, and the latter to be another memorable epic from Aamir Khan.

I am waiting for one friend to finish his MBA applications satisfactorily, another to tide over his ongoing job uncertainty without hiccups, another to dig his way out of his self-derision, one to give me my photographs and another to cook that dinner she had promised me.

I count the days to resuming the fantastic game of poker and spreading its trickery and its contortions into the sober social panorama in which I have displaced myself into, and then sitting back and enjoying it.

I look forward to this twilight zone of the year coming to a close, with the first signs of a fantastic January coming up that marks a BIG milestone for me.

But most importantly, I am waiting for the first morning now when I wake up without the attack of the deja vu, when the gates of the mind swing back from the realm of the illusionary dreamscape into the noise and proximity of the real world, without creaking back into a time-twisted arc of confusion.

And these are just tips of the iceberg of expectations that floats in my mind, the iceberg against which the colonial ship of the "Centre of Cynicism in the Cranium" has collided.

The night sky of the mind is crackling with SOS messages from the ship:
Great expectations found! Rescue needed!

Deadlock in Disturbia

2008-12-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

(Warning - Religion has been discussed in my thoughts below. If you know me and are offended easily by religious discussions, then please ignore this post)

The sound of gunfire is a rarefied phenomenon in real life, occupying its own realm in movies and far-off hellholes like Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. But it kept me glued to the TV last week, watching with cinemascopic horror the Mumbai events. A Thanksgiving holiday break became a painstaking viewing of the anarchy that spread like wildfire through the billion and more psyches that call India their motherland in some way or the other.
The hair on my hands stood up on its toes as I pictured myself locked up in one of the rooms of the Taj hotel, talking to a friend on the phone one minute and ripped apart with bullets from a steely-eyed maniac the next, and left to writhe and die with a grenade stuffed into my mouth. I even dreamed of it at night, picturing myself running down a smoke-filled corridor only to jump out of a burning window and keep falling - a fall that never ended while the clothes on my back burnt off and a thousand sneering faces looked up at me from the ground. Of much agony were some dreams, born and snuffed out in the throes of sleep, only to remain as fragmented memories the next morning.
Here we are again - watching ourselves die on the screen, abusing the politicians and cursing Pakistan in our sleep. While 183 people died live on TV, we were urging our leaders to 'take action'. The hapless leaders in Mumbai and New Delhi ran amok and pulled their political caps in all directions to make sense of the situation and to appear in control. Heads rolled and are still rolling, candles were lighted in cities across India and a collective assertion was done that Pakistan must be punished.
'India is great and we shall prevail', the martyrs who gave up their lives shall be a part of history, and the 'perpetrators shall be brought to justice'.

Hogwash.
Absolute, mind-numbing, fancy-coating, self-assuring, vanity-serving, pseudo-patriotic hogwash.

Nothing's going to change in the long run and more people will be shot and blown apart. It's a mere function of time and circumstances that we are alive unlike those poor people who perished.

It's simple. And I shall put my case forward in three points which cannot be measured in the traditional scales of 'right' and 'wrong'.

Firstly, our favourite scapegoat - "The Goverment". All fingers point immediately towards the Government, which is eternally inept for us. They let security collapse, they let intelligence go to sleep and they are unable to come up with a solution. It's always they who are to blame. That single driving thought fills our consciousness with a self-redeeming righteousness. 'Oh what can a single citizen like me do?' While we are busy pursuing our confused goals and working out the next best deal in life, the burden of governance and defence still remains on the shoulders of old men, harried bureaucrats and struggling middle-class security personnel. As long as they remain the dominant force in India, our country shall remain a third-world country. Forget the miniscule proportion like us who constitute 'Urbania' and vote for 'Progressia'. The swarming and teeming populace will face the same demons again and again. And again. And again. They shall continue to worship the Thackerays, the Modis, the Gandhis and images of themselves on shiny surfaces. While driving each other out of their cities, and mobbing each other to undignified deaths. And one day they shall die in a brilliant but insignificant flash. All this while, harbouring a volcanic hatred for Pakistan. That is the future of the country, which shall not crumble but shall never be at peace either. So it's not the Government, but us. Us, who from the cradle to the grave, rock in lethargy and are hardly awake throughout our lives to the truth that true emancipation comes from individuality and ownership. Not from road-raging, Bollywood-drooling, women-worshipping, backbiting and festive foolishness, but from a true understanding that in order to make a country wholesome, each and every individual must be educated, must be taught how to shoot firearms and must first identify himself or herself as an Indian when asked - where are you from?

Secondly, our bad old unfriendly neighbourhood masked crusaders from across the border, the very basis of whose existence is the crumbling of India - as a country and as an idea. If the ability and the motivation of Pakistan to watch the demise of India is removed, they have no fuel for keeping the collective psyche ticking. The helpless few decent men in their Government (yes I do hold the opinion that those men are well-intending though stupid) are but mere puppets in the hands of the militia which runs the country. It's nothing but a Somalia with a rich history. With the exception of the tiny fragment which thinks globally due to either having lived abroad or being amazingly insulated in their daily lives even while living amongst the hordes, that patch of land between India, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Sea is a giant camp of disillusioned, fearful and often psychotic people which believes it is a nation because it owns a nuclear arsenal, has a seat at the UN and can pay its cricket team to travel abroad to bowl fast and score centuries. I do not fail to sympathise with one who is born as a Pakistani, into a life of history books preaching Indiophobia, anti-Semitism, and childish civics and legalities. If I were in their place, I would probably grow up to be what they are. For most human brains do have the logical nerve centre which makes him or her believe that he or she is right. The Pakistanis need to survive, to see another day. Their society is a bastard offspring of British political lust and the immoral recklessness of Islamic fanaticism. How do we expect them to change? Self-preservation is their right and the only means for them to try to achieve it while maintaining their identity is to continue to do what they are doing. Which is why we see today's blackmail put forth by them to move their troops from the Afghan border where they are fighting the Taliban to the Indian border, thus forcing the West to be shy of supporting Indian aggression. It's a desperate move which is frankly unsurprising. The icing on the cake is the manner in which the Pakistani media is hinting that just like the Americans engineered 9-11, the Indians have engineered 26-11 to turn the world fury onto Pakistan. The lines between truth and propaganda are icy trickles on a hot summer day.

Last but not the least, and turn away, all those who consider my atheistic side to be blasphemous - religion itself. For as long as religion rules in the minds of human beings, Islamic fanaticism shall grow, Christian conservatism shall breed in fear, Hindu self-righteousness shall cling to itself in spearheaded panic and Judaism shall keep its horns sharpened against the others. Each is a devious version of the others and none are worse. Islam has simply put the truth at the fore and is thus at the receiving end of the brickbats in today's world. No religion is free from evil for the basis of religion is fear based on fictitious supremacy of the unknown.

For these reasons, above all others - India shall continue to struggle as a so-called secular, multi-cultural, diverse idea while trying to keep terror at bay. Governments shall come, governments shall have votes of confidence and governments shall go, but the triangular deadlock of our lethargy, Pakistan and religion shall always keep us miles behind where we should be were they not around. We are not an example to the world - for every space satellite which reaches the moon, we have mobs rioting in cities, for every brave commando who dies fighting terrorists, we have an idiot who cheers for a Thackeray, for every dollar earned in revenues of the booming economy, we have a woman raped in some city or village, for every word that we write, we have a growing regret that we wish we had gone through military training and had held the gun that shot a terrorist dead.

For every scene of Disturbia that I see in the media, I hope I don't dream of it when I sleep tonight.

That Wooden Spoon

2008-11-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Stepping out in the morning to go to work, a chilled blast of air attacks me daily nowadays. That moment passes quickly as the body adapts to the winter morning. Equatorial islanders and tropical natives like me brace themselves all over the world when they experience sub-zero winters for the first time. But that is just the beginning every day. The subway and the streets are filled every morning with throngs walking towards their important buildings to sit at important desks wearing important clothes and spinning immaculate yarns to impress the important people on the other side of the table, email or phone. I march amongst them everyday, with my truant left foot which is gradually gaining some normalcy. People bump into each other, apologise, pick up free newspapers, chatter on the phone, cross traffic signals, dash across streets, and push each cell of their beings to get to work as quickly as possible every morning.
I am no different except that I think I carry the Wooden Spoon of the crowds.

In the 19th century, The Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge started a baffling tradition of awarding the Wooden Spoon, an ignominious prize that was given to the student who scored the lowest exam marks. It was an actual wooden spoon (the size of which grew over the years) that the hapless least-scorer had to accept in a crowded ceremony and leave the hall amongst dramatic despair. Over time, the Wooden Spoon became a phrase for bottom-rankers in different fields in numerous universities and organisations across the world.
I enjoy the morning walk to work, the music in my ears and the swarming fast pace of harried folks around me. When a crowd converges at a traffic signal, I find myself giving way to the elderly, the folks with bags, mothers with children, and even blackberry-fighting busybees. That's the moment, when I realise I am going to be the Wooden Spooner of the crowd crossing, i.e. the last person in the crowd to reach the other side, that I snap myself out of my dynamic absentia.

Have we often wondered how many wooden spoons each of us is carrying around? Our weakest points expose us to the elements of uncertainty and the excesses of emotions. As we see a thousand strangers every day, and pass fleeting glances with hundreds, where does the mind stray off? To what forsaken corner of the memory and to what dusty nook of the imagination? Why are there hundreds of brief art movies running in the mind all the time? Why do I sometimes forget to pick up the key but never to smile when I see a wide-eyed kid? Why do I sometimes leave my office pass on the desk, but never forget to say Good morning to the folks sitting near me at work? Perhaps absent-mindedness is selective. Those lapses in time and momentum add up over and over again. I wonder where those moments go. Maybe they gather in a secret meeting behind my back and scheme how to steal more of my moments. The Union of Lost Moments and Vacant Looks. Plotting and planning to swell their ranks by making me more susceptible to the beauty of each day and thus making me the winner of some Wooden Spoon or the other.

I keep thinking of doing something spectacular every moment, but at the same time all those thousands of thoughts need to be kept inside the mind, like a packed train full of commuters, with some plastered against the doors. Derailment is a constant risk, and sometimes a reality. But when the mind is derailed and lies on its side like an elephant toppled in an Indian war epic, there is a constantly flashing light, an alarm to knock me back into the present, to pull me back from jumping into the quicksand of imagination.

That flashing light is nothing but my own voice ricocheting off the walls of my mind and saying - You MUST pass on the Wooden Spoon!

I pull the elephant back up and cross the street in a desperate dash.

Remember, Remember

2008-11-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

This week began with a strange 25-hour day, one of those quirky habits of civilisation to adjust where they sit on the scale of time in order to have the Sun shining by the time they get up. On Nov 3rd, when the clocks struck 3:00 a.m. in this country, time was kidnapped, put into a bag, rolled back an hour and then released. So we lived that hour twice.

Romantics and lofty-eyed philosophers would observe this strange phenomenon through various ways. We all got to sleep an hour longer that night. It did not feel strange on Monday to get up to go to work while the sky was still dark. That bewitching hour must have provided the perfect alibi to sharp criminals for committing the perfect crime. Try proving a crime committed at 2:45 a.m. when the accused was actually sleeping at home at 2:45 a.m. One got even more distant from the eastern hemisphere without having to lift a foot. Through that simple act of turning the clocks back once a year, the grey cells up here have to be realigned like grumpy school-goers on a winter morning.

But the promise of the week was not in that mystical hour, but in the hour that came three days later at the stroke of midnight this morning when Mr. Barack Obama took centre-stage at Grant Park in Chicago and breathed in the colossal collective sigh of relief and ecstasy that millions of people around him and elsewhere in the world were having. That moment marks a point of inflexion in the historical graph of the world order, because from now on the flaky, doubtful trigger of cynicism known as ‘ambition without inhibition’ regains its place amongst the collective psyche of both the developed and the developing worlds that co-exist. Whether Mr. Obama turns out to be the beacon that he promises to be will be something that this novel experiment will unfold over the next four years. But this has given a rudder to the American people, and by association, the majority of the world population, to look up and not down.

This momentous event has sadly eclipsed the grave news of the death of one of science fiction's most foresighted and useful pioneer - Mr. Michael Crichton. He died yesterday at the age of 66 after having waged a valiant battle against cancer which he hid from the public eye. The man who authored Jurassic Park, The Lost World, The Andromeda Strain, Timeline, Sphere, Disclosure, The Great Train Robbery and many other fascinating books that marked my bookshelf over the years, is now no more. It's an irrecoverable loss for the literary world, Hollywood and fiction aficionados like me and many of my friends.

With the arrival of a new world leader and the departure of an icon of imagination, is it strange or a sheer coincidence, that today – Nov 5th – is Guy Fawkes Day - the Day of Treason?

But I cannot resist the tickling temptation to salute both by twisting the timeless rhyme of Guy Fawkes Day to suit the day:

Remember, remember
The Fifth of November
When hope wiped your foggy lenses
And a vision shattered all the fences
The world clapped with whelmed senses
And Change ruled all the tenses

Remember, remember
The Fourth of November
A seer of fantasy heaved his last
Preying on Time with a Jurassic past
On the seas of wonder he raised his mast
Tomorrow being his favourite cast

So Remember, remember
This week of November
The Gunpowder of Reason in History’s Plot
I can think of no reason
Why The Gunpowder of Reason
Should ever be forgot

And yes – now I know why I had an extra blissful hour of sleep on 3rd Nov when the clocks changed. The din of the cheering masses through Manhattan all through the night of 5th Nov made up for it.

Thomas, Richard and Harold

2008-10-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

... or Tom, Dick and Harry as we often call the 'common men', are living in a century remarkably different from the ones before it. Life has gathered incredible speed thanks to the benefits of our modern age. I still remember the moment in my childhood when a telephone was first installed at home, and I got to call someone for the first time. Or the moments when at the age of eight, I used to wonder how people could suddenly shrink in size to get inside a radio and play miniscule instruments from inside that box. During those golden nascent years in the 1980s and 1990s, my generation believed that we had the world at our feet and I even used to ridicule my elders pointing out how they never had a TV or a phone in their youth. Little did I realise that the unequal gifts that time bestows on generations is usually the product of the toil and brilliance of the generations preceding them. But so is the burden of reaping the misfortune of their mistakes and conflicts. Time is a double-edged sword on which we hang precariously.

The children of today can use a cellphone and switch on a computer at the age of two. At five, they can beat you at their favourite video racing game. At twenty, I leave that to the imagination. But at the same time, a young boy in Afghanistan or Somalia will most likely grow out of a tormented and dangerous childhood into a difficult life, for no fault of his, even if he manages to survive until his teens. An aging North Korean will wait agonisingly for the day she can meet her siblings in Seoul, even though that day is probably beyond her lifetime. These are burdens of the part which individuals and generations keep carrying around for years and sometimes lifetimes. Many of them do not comprehend why it has happened to them, before they even got a chance to roll their dices.

So they live on as Tom, Dick and Harry of their own societies, shoved along the raging torrent of newsmaking events, distant wars and peer pressure. The common thread that binds them together is made from the fabric of uncertainty. Take a nation like Pakistan, for example, considered by many to be a failed state. It has young men and women growing up in various directions - some trying hard to break out of the stereotyped pressure of their social norms and turning the rudder of the ship around for a better future, while a few others head off north to vent their dissastisfaction in other misguided pursuits. In burgeoning India, my quaint motherland, many people of my generation are atop a magical flying carpet of globalisation but within them simmers the growing questions about their value to their society. What am I doing? How will I be remembered? Join the Army? Shovel hard into the pit of an engineering education and hope to do something brilliant? Spend 10 years slogging on a medical career to do some good for others? Burn into oblivion in a high-paying Bangalore job while losing all sense of identity? Run for politics and bring a revolution on Day One? Watch cricket all day long? Disappear into the mountains for a month off from everyone? Join the local newspaper as a free reporter? Head off to Tokyo for a sabbatical posting? See through the illusion of a volatile market index and take out all my money and donate it to CRY? Get into a scam? Start a musical band for the 20th time? Run myself into the ground trying for an MBA like many of my friends are doing? Or just sit by the seaside with other friends and brainstorm about how to hijack the next ISRO space capsule and flee to the moon? Questions, ideas, quirks and impromptu debates. That is where the best 20 years of our lives wither away. Or if I turn that thought upside down, they are what make those 20 years the best years.

Take the collective mindset of millions of Toms, Dicks and Harries, and Jills, Betties and Sarahs and what have we got ? The power to ignite history and at the same time, the self-cancelling lethargy to accept what is handed down. The same lethargy that easily makes one a fan of Barack Obama without bothering to find out more about him - simply because he is not Republican and he is not white and he "seems" to have a better approach towards facing the world (forget his taxation whims and that John McCain is NOT George Bush). Distortion finds new ways to influence young minds and makes us more prone to the two fundamental sins (as per Franz Kafka) - impatience and laziness, from where all other sins are derived. This distortion is a product of the clash of billions of thoughts zigzagging their way through newspaper words, entertaining friends, TV soundbites, arguing friends, prancing celebrities, incensed friends, unread novels, lovestruck friends, exaggerated biographies and jilted friends. So how does one expect poor Tom, Dick and Harry (and Jill, Betty and Sarah) to be any different?

Let's stop being Tom, Dick or Harry (or Jill, Betty or Sarah). Let's rise above sea level.

The blind spot

2008-10-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Humour, they say, is the best doctor, and thus laughter is the best medicine. I feed myself ample doses of self-deprecation every day, sometimes absent-mindedly. That self-deprecation was boosted recently when I met an old friend after 10 years and it just opened up the togetherness in follies that we used to share a decade back. (Yes Shake, talking about you) Togetherness becomes a crossroad for individual actions and it leads in many directions. Sometimes it leads a budding acquaintance into a great friendship, while at other times it sends off good friends into hopeless intolerance. So is togetherness a bitter medicine?

Isn't it an irony that we crave a lot for company and yet when it is all around us, we seek solitude?

Today in the train on my way back from work, I saw this man, dressed immaculately with a red tie and a trimmed jacket, and even a carefully-kept thin blade of beard. He was making his way round the half-crowded coach and people were giving way to him. New York trains are not the smooth, easy variety that places like Singapore boast of. Here they are rough, irregular, jerky and have various moods. This man was blind. He finally came to a stop near me and grabbed onto the pole for support. I am still trying to figure out how a blind man walks across in the maddening crowd, goes down stairs (elevators are rare here), gets onto narrow crowded platforms and then manages to board the right train amongst a series of confusingly similar trains that come on the same platform!

What would his view be on memories and togetherness? Would he be missing people and places? How do you miss them when you cannot see? Is it then that the inward eye reigns supreme? Or is it then that you fumble around mentally in the immediate demands of daily life - just to get across the street, getting the shower on without turning the hot water knob, eating without spilling, climbing the stairs without tripping, and even brushing your teeth correctly?

When I think about what he must be going through every moment of every day, it opens up a whole new world where only sound, smell and touch dictate the universe.

But well - this is a state where a blind man is the Governor!

Perhaps the answer lies in the green grass that we stand on, and not the greener grass on the other side of the fence. The inward eye sees all, forgets nothing and yet continues to look for answers to all these questions.

Scraping the sky

2008-10-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

Many of us have lived in, or are living in, cities that boast of skyscrapers. Manhattan, where yours truly is currently inhaling his moments, is an endless chain of such buildings stacked up next to each other, street after street, avenue after avenue, for a whopping 30 miles! Millions of people in their carefully-tressed getup trudge through its shadows, catching yards of sunlight here and there. One can almost imagine Spiderman swinging his way through and coming straight at me as I stand on my balcony and take in the evening chill. The city dominates the view, and also fills up the vacuous presence of time.

It makes you feel like a tourist who should be snapping his camera away, and yet reminds you that this is your new home. It reminds you of the little island in Asia which takes much of its architectural lessons from here and is one of your precious homes.

It makes you feel puny for being a weighable mass of insignificant human flesh and bone with a self-perceived ability to look up at the sky, and yet it makes you proud that without you or the millions like you, it would be a ghost, dark and useless.

It breathes in and out the envy, the thrills and the fears that each of its inhabitants have and makes you laugh at yourself for thinking you are a spectator to something dazzling.

The colours, the shapes and the flickering lights slowly make you feel that these are nothing but reflections of the people who inhabit them.

The minds that designed them, the bare hands that built them brick by brick, rod by rod, sometimes dangling on the edge of a free fall to a slow death, the years and decades of weathering every windchill and every event that coursed through their streets - these skyrises are a testament to our will, our promise to ourselves every day that we shall live to see tomorrow and that too, a better tomorrow.

The reasons why they remind me of ourselves are many, but I shall touch on three striking ones here.

Just like a skyscraper takes years to build with careful grooming of every drop of mortar and the sweat and blood of hundreds of men, so does a human life need the foundation of parents and other loved ones, the pillars of values, the cement of education and the architecture of adventure. With careful combination of these factors, a personality develops that strives to rise beyond its peers, that tries to see as high as possible and that ultimately creates a groove for itself that others find hard to fill. Such is the tenacity of a skyrise, visible even when it's beyond the horizon. Make any of these factors inadequate and you can end up with strange or unsightly buildings, as we often see. Gray and cold buildings that numb the eye, flat and characterless tenements that serve nothing but the purpose of survival, or even sometimes garish constructions that make you wish you had never seen them. Make the combination right and one has an Empire State Building lighting up the horizon, or hundreds of its lesser cousins which still prove a point or two each. Thus forms identity.

Different schools of thought exist as to why man started building skyscrapers. Aren't they more dangerous? Aren't they elitist statements of ego? Aren't they bold assertions of risk? The answer to all three questions is yes. They are, and so is the formation of our characters. The minute grey cells up in our skulls play around with the questions of existence and purpose all the time and we subconsciously look for ways and means to prove why we are what we are. Therein takes birth the urge to create. An urge that dies every day and sometimes after a few moments of being born. But like a modern-day Phoenix, it rises again and again. In all of us. That urge, over the centuries, has needed its repeated satiation without which we would have stooped down to trivial idiosyncracies. The desire to express one's identity by building things that are grand, tall, big and closer to the ultimate infinite - the sky. The desire to showcase the fruits of industry and enterprise by paying homage to the free spirit in a permanent way. That is a skyscraper - and that is a metamorphosis of the ego.

Identity nurses the ego, and the ego is controlled by the human function of personality, which takes many shapes in a single person. What you see outside may just be the peel of the fruit, and as you peel away, you may find different layers - some bitter, a couple sour and some tantalisingly sweet. Such is a skyscraper. When I walk down a street held down by skyrises, the noise of the city and the bustle of daily life strikes me in the face. It turns from every corner in the form of loud ladies, it rushes out through every door with the face of a man speaking into his phone with excitement, it fills my nose and ears with the most distinct smells and sounds that a kebab vendor produces, and it rushes through my blood like the honks and sirens of the thousands of vehicles ploughing on the road. Go up a few stories and sit at a cafe on the eighth floor and you begin to see the relief that surges through the building. The relief to have your own space, and yet the freedom to open the window and still hear the sounds below. Such is the gift of the building which mirrors the state of our minds when we maintain formality with others. Ascend to the 40th floor and you start speaking to the buildings around you, as if they were different people you have never met before. Your ego takes a serious whipping and you immerse yourself into the surroundings and the view of the river in the distance, as if a long-lost friend has met you for a reunion and you are pouring your heart out.

Take the elevator to the 80th floor and come onto the terrace. The city is silent before you, with a slow buzzing hum which reverberates with your heartbeat. I look down and see the streets below far in the distance with cars that make my nephew Google's toy cars looks big. The sun is setting in the distance. My everlasting friend, the irrepressible Mr. Urge To Jump Off From High Places, stands there beside me laughing at me. I ignore him and take in the moment, with the sun setting in the distance and yachts on the water a few miles away. Somewhere, smoke rises in the city. The evening chill is more prominent here and I feel as if all self-worth is fading, just like it does at the top of a mountain. The city is but a mere vision below me, fading into the horizon. My feet starts feeling off the ground and the flicker of a smile appears at the left corner of my mouth.

Just then the door opens and an aged couple come out. They wave at me and kiss each other.

The layers in each of us - they make us weather the worst and enjoy the best. Such is the cushioning of personality.

This lethal partnership between identity, ego and personality causes conflict and stokes heartburn. Yet more often, it creates wonders and takes the human race a step closer to the next milestone in evolution.

I would never want to get off that journey. Would you?

Why?

2008-10-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

This is an experiment and like any experiment, it starts with a desire or an urge to find out something. I want to know how far I can keep myself connected to you.
I once made a pledge to be my own historian. Like most other incredulous goals that keep taking birth now and then, this one has been taking holidays now and then. It's time to stop that and wake up to the new day. There is no better time than when one is oceans away from friends and family. Even for someone for whom this is not new.
We do not realise the speed at which the earth moves beneath our feet because of one of the simple laws of physics. But yet, no matter how fast this mammoth spheroid turns, we are stuck where we are, unless we overcome the whims of friction. What if friction and gravity are relaxed enough for us to slide along easily from step to step, street to street, continent to continent? Wouldn't the world be a far more exciting place then? Meet a friend from Singapore for lunch, then drift back to India for a nap, then loom over the Himalayas for a brilliant sunset and then head off to the Great Barrier Reef. Take a snapshot of a crowded street in Tokyo, watch a couple of whales smashing the waves in the Pacific, stroll along a deserted mountain track on the old Silk Route, feed some gazelles in the Serengeti, laze on the beach in Brazil, dance to some beats in Jamaica, and then pop yourself into an igloo in the Arctic to plot your next move. All at a breakneck speed that laughs at physics without making you jetlagged. Perhaps in a parallel alternate universe, this is happening right now. But what about us? Being a universal jumper is not a reality we can perhaps see in our lifetime - so we plan holidays, we book flights, we call friends and tell them we love them, we dream during lunchtime (and after that too), we pack bags and we head off, and when all these wonderful trips run by like a Ferrari, we return and start dreaming all over again.
I think that's the daily cereal that we need to walk the earth and not be the same as a fish or a lion. Dream. Of good things, as well as things you have no control on. Visions, sounds and thoughts that land you in that parallel universe. Where friends are right besides you, where you don't feel your feet on the ground, where perhaps the setting of the sun is at your whim, where a killer wave rushing at you doesn't kill you, where you see multiple yous flying in the sky without reacting like John Malkovich, and where colours take on a new shade every time.
What does each day of your life tell you about the world? Are you fascinated with the world? Do you understand why people are the way they are? Do the vast ironies in life make you laugh or do they make you cringe? Why do you question the government over every single policy but accept religion as if you have seen 'God' yourself? Why are there contradictions within yourself which make you question those within others? Why do Australia, NZ, HK and Singapore have dollars when they all used to be British territories and not American? Why does the brilliant caricaturist outside the park who drew your face in 15 minutes not find himself with a good jacket in winter? Why does a little kid in Somalia smile everytime he does? Why is Winston Churchill admired by so many Indians when he was racist towards them? Why is the world map not drawn with east as north and west as south? Why is the colour blue always pleasant to the eye unlike the colour red? Why do you think your better half is the best in the world even though you do not know more than 99% people in the world? Why does heartbreak occur even though we know that nothing is permanent? Why do guerillas in Africa and elsewhere keep fighting even though they know there's no victory in their lifetimes? Why do we celebrate festivals instead of every single day? Why? That's the strongest word in the dictionary - "W-H-Y". Love, faith, heavens, fate, destiny, will, soul, survival, luck, karma, and their ilk are manmade and change shape as per your liking. So they cannot be strong.
The questions keep queuing up like children at a free candy store. We either know the answers or the answers elude us, but they can be pursued. Chased down the steppes of curiosity. All this while the world turns beneath our feet.
No sleep, no sigh of relief, no content look is free of a cost. Some, like a good friend of mine, call it the cost of living. If we pay so much for living all the time, what are we taking in return?
Take a moment, and return through the sliding doors of the moments gone into where you were.
Has anything changed?