Bad Bad T, no donuts for you

When Santa Uncle visited us this Christmas, T did not get any gifts. Rather, he got a rap on his knuckles. For he was being an ass.

A month of procrastination, sprinkled with many fervent reminders, riddled with false promises of completion. Sigh. Will the young boy ever learn?

I even helped him come up with a post! Imagine. The jackass even had the content. All he had to do was to wake up before 10am one of these beautiful days and pen the post. But nooo, that was too much for him. Sigh. Will the young one ever learn?

The post was a humourous one. One that was sure to make you laugh. It was centered around wood. Isn't that funny already? And it had various characters involved. A scientist and an author to start with. It reminds me of the all-time rib-tickler of a joke, dubbed the 'Tree joke'. This is it:
Me: Ask me whether I am a tree
You: Are you a tree?
Me: No.

I know that was funny. But the latest story is definitely as, if not, much funnier. So stay put and stay tuned and hope to God (and anyone else), that T gets off the excessives of his posterior and puts finger to keyboard. Sigh. Will the young kid ever learn?

Hoping against hope,
H

Golden Mean

I was walking up the 3 floors of our apartment building. It was a lazy saturday morning. It had just rained. The scintillating smell of the wet earth still lingered on. "T, I'm home! What's for breakfast?", I asked, bringing in fresh supplies of bread and milk. T was still in bed, or so I thought.

"H, meet S...", started T, as he was laying down on the mattress in the main hall, in front of the television, flipping channels. S was a young man, dressed in a saintly orange T-shirt and a light blue jeans. "Greetings H", S saluted with folded arms.

"Hi... I have a feeling I've met you somewhere before, S", I continued. "Anyways, good to meet you. And T, did you think about what I had asked you? About science and religion?"

"No. I was watching the Bold and the Beautiful. Couldn't concentrate.", explained T, nonchalantly.

"You wanted to know the relevance of science and religion in an ideal world?", asked S. "You want to understand."

I nodded, rather confused. I wasn't sure when S had heard this. Or had T told him.

"Science helps Man. Science reduces time, reduces pain, increases productivity, increases comfort..."

"But war..."

"Well, that is inevitable. Because of the over-dependence on science. We find too much pleasure in losing ourselves in technology. Too much is as dangerous as too less, young man."

"Wait, you, you, remind me of ... ", I smiled. "You are the founder of one of the religions of the New World. He who preaches the golden mean. With the smiling face and the non-violent religion."

S opened his lips, sorry, His lips but only to be interrupted.

"Then I'm more curious to know the role of religion in the ideal world. An ideal world with happiness for all. Peace and prosperity. Where the significance of religion as a source of inspiration and support for those without happiness is superfluous. Where science will be but for the intellectual masturbation of the elite. Where everyone is born happy, lives happy and dies happy."

His open lips gracefully transformed into a beauteous and benevolent smile. "Yes. But I have two caveats. One, your ideal world is like the theoretical Carnot engine. It exists but in the mind of the unignorant. Two, every human being has the fundamental right to unhappiness. It is with that unhappiness that one gets to appreciate happiness. You can't quite judge that something is hot until you have touched something that is cold."

"Well, yes. But..."

"It's time for me to go. My flight is an hour's time and God knows (smiling), the traffic between here and the Bombay airport at this time of hour."

He came forward and touched my forehead with His palm, but it felt as though a warm breeze was blowing snugly on the temple of my face. I closed my eyes.

"Your colour is blue, child. You have much to learn. And T, that woman dies in the next episode."

"What!?!", shrieked T, spilling his popcorn and drink.

"Yes, and you are red. You are like me. You two have much to do in this world... things to do, people to see and miles to go before you sleep..."

H

What comes before...

Here I am again, sitting at the Café Ankh. The smell of beer permeates the atmosphere like the morning mist over the canal by the side. Beer so bitter and black that Guiness looked like white wine. I was thinking again; the Café Ankh always brings out the best in my thinking, the raucous crowd hollering along the latest about what the lady wished to do to her man, the buxom waitresses hinting at darker secrets, the mysterious, cowled patrons sitting off to a side by themselves and the harsh liquor squatting on my table in front of me, all contribute to the deadening of my brain enough to actually start thinking.

What comes before. What comes before. What comes before determines what comes after. I wonder if it’s that simple. To determine how a person would react to anything that you do or say, do we just need to understand the circumstances that come before? I was reading a book by a very good author, named Scott Bakker, and he seems to think so. The beer goes flat and I gulp it down to the chorus of `My mother was a farmer’s daughter’. Excellent stuff. The song. Not the singer. Not the beer. This is the Ankh, after all.

What I’ve also come to learn is that there are different types of people and that those types determine what they do. What comes before. Ah! very insightful stuff indeed. There are different people. And they do different things. Quite. There’s a brawl starting in front of the stage; looks like two of the sailors in here want to know more about the farmer’s grand-daughter. So, as I was saying, there are different types and if one wishes, one could provide a more grandiose name to it and call them arch-types and each of these arch-types has a core need to that they ache for with their very soul. There is a void that they wish to fill up, as it were and it determines every move they make. Freedom, Duty, Power or Knowledge and Self.

Who’s this I see? It’s the Hermit coming to sit at my table. Young, of marriageable age and, to my knowledge, seeking knowledge, the Hermit has fascinated many of the regulars of our little coffee shop. He drinks more than he can pee, he talks more than he can breathe and he thinks more than he can sleep. It doesn’t make sense to me either. As he drinks his beer down, I think about this latest trend he’s showing. Memory, sorrow and thorn. Clinging on, like Klingons, to the past. Is it to see what comes before? Is there some answer that this miserable creature in front of me sees in his ravings for the past? Or is he trying to clutch onto it instead.

I know not. He drinks on without lifting his head. The piano has begun playing in the background. The music is clear and lilting. This is the part most of us come for. After the beer has sunk has pirates, after the ruffians have been rounded down, after, for what comes after. The chords play slowly out reminding one happy times, of hopes and fears and of my sassy girl. The Hermit looks up and looks out of the window. He sees something in the distance and his eyes light up once again. The music soothes the storms in our souls and places them in tea cups. This is not profound any longer. I am jaded.

ADaSK

Blast from the past

I remember one Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin receives a letter from his past - warning him of impending doom (or school, I forget). I felt like that recently when I was mailed a copy of a note I had to write during my BAT (Business Analyst Training - glorified name for week of fun in Singapore). The note, which is supposed to carry my key takeaways (I am beginning to abhor all these jargons... grrr) from my training, was highly confidential and for my eyes alone. Guess what it said?

I must be smart. And oh-so-profound. For it flirted with some gibberish about feedback (no, you don't need to know). And it had two wonderful - nay, beautiful - pearls of wisdom.
1. Be yourself - You are you and I am I.
2. Always remember about happiness and slowness.

Sounds silly, but when I read thus, I was amused. Amused that this was so important to me then that I had to write myself a note - from the past - to remind myself of its import. Having reflected on this, I have decided to mail this back to myself of the future yet again - how do I do this though?

Which reminds me - einmal ist keinmal. Once is nonce. Rummaging through the multitude of abandoned books at home, I chanced upon a sepia-tinged version of The Unbearable Lightnes of Being. Probably my mom's, from the 80's or even earlier. Feeling victorious at striking gold in a coal mine, I read a few pages of Kundera's masterpiece. And then tried explaining the beauty of those three words to my grandmother. Either she was impressed by its meaning or the way she likened it to 2 vernacular names, she seemed to like it a lot. Oh, the everyday impact I have on people.

"Why don't we seem to enjoy the simpler things in life? Why are we so connected that Mush calling Emergency somewhere far far away should seem to affect us?" asked L. "No no, I am very much still enjoying the smaller things in life." I replied. Like crosswords and poker. The glorified past haunts us time and again. If there is one true obsession for every human, irrespective of caste, creed, language, country, religion, sex and age, it has to be our unified love for that repainted version of our past - the best days of our lives - that which is over.

There's nothing wrong in keeping memories snug in your mind. Or slightly colouring it a happy hue. But you must remember - einmal ist keinmal - and move on.

Recently one of my wiser friends (or so I consider him), compared me to Will Hunting from Good Will Hunting. I felt great. Will Hunting (and a few others from more obscure movies like Dazed and Confused) are truly legendary characters in my life - inspirations. They are kindred souls of a life that was not to be - or perhaps was, in a different dimension. They are the closest I can get to defeating Nietsche and Kundera at their irrepeatability of the human life. They are my closest parallels to immortality.

That reminds me - T, give me that book man.

Happy Diwali folks - and children, play safe but play. You'll want these memories later on...

Cracker,
H

Abusage

The more I learn the English language, the less I know of it. It is, apart from German, the most worthless of wanton languages that I've seen. And I've seen many, I just don't know any of them. While it waxes eloquent about its rules and structure, about how and 'i' always comes after an 'e', it drops an exception in - ("except after 'c'" you've heard in class, I'm sure, from the nerdy looking guy sitting on the first bench - that would be me, yes) and, promptly, makes it the rule.

Let's take a for example, the word usage. I have no idea what its usage is. That is exactly the point, the previous sentence is grammatically wrong. It is supposed to be, and I quote (as someone I know used to say, I never could figure out why he quoted so much, did he not have anything original on his mind, eh?) "I have no idea what its use is". My English teacher told me that. So where exactly is usage used? No clue. It is, I'm sure, a much abused word. Ah yes, there's another for you, how exactly does one abuse another word, or a substance for that matter? One may misuse it, of course, but abuse? I can just about hear an Atkinsonian voice hollering, "What a *#$%@$ %&@$%& of a word! Why if I had the chance, I'd %&^*&@# you."
My teacher would also rap me on my knuckles, or mark in red ink on my answer scripts every time I wrote "due to" instead of owing to. Go figure.

On a final note, this clockwise-anti-clockwise thing is very strange. I stared and stared at the girl (I know what you're thinking, oh you of vulgar mind) and found that I could not, for the life of me, change the direction from clock-wise to anti. And once, all of a sudden (what a phrase), I look at it in the evening and suddenly find that it is anti clockwise and find myself unable to turn it the other way around this time. What worsht! So what? I think your natural side gets tired as you work and the other lobe begins to take over, which explains why you don't feel like yourself when you're tired. Aha!

New suggestion: we should ask each other very difficult questions, the answer of which, the other should provide in the next post. So H, what is the purpose of meaning?

Falsely,
T

Wise - clock or anti-clock

It's been a long time since we wrote something fun. Lets see now - what constitutes fun. This could be a good start - http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

Now, what do you see? Clockwise or anti-clockwise? I, for one, can see nothing but clockwise. It's a bummer especially since the article says that you would normally see anti-clockwise. No matter, some elitist ego boosting. Moving on, it says one can concentrate and change directions. I concentrated. I can't change it. There were two of us who couldn't change and so we decided to use a mirror to explain to our brains the difference between clockwise and anti-clockwise. He found it useful. My brain can see only clockwise. Even in the mirror image!

The article says that those who see clockwise use their left brain more than their right. As L said, I, who cannot see any anti-clockwise action, must have a dysfunctional right brain. No math and science abilities! Makes sense. The corporate world has killed the scientist inside me.

Anyways that was a good laugh. Atleast for all of us. Some distraction from the otherwise real world. Or as T would put it, an escape from the realities of the mundane world. And what we need is such distractions - the simple distractions.

Do tell me if there are other ways - crosswords? I don't know what else.

But till then, please concentrate and prove that your brain works much better than mine - stupid big picture, fantasy-focussed, present-future emphasising brain of mine (ahhh, rationalization - that sounds good).

Smiles,
H

Most boring post of the year

H's and my posts have increasingly become about ways and means to find happiness. Starting from my age old adage that happiness is a hammock to Her assertions that happiness is a goal that is too difficult to reach, our thoughts have turned more and more to the future and to the darkness shrouding it.

And with the future, comes the difficult question surrounding what one "really" wants from life. Does one follow the path of profit and become a private equity professional, continue in consulting because it is nice and comfortable or even find a new interest in the social sector?

How is this connected to happiness and meaning in life? Well, the two are deeply entangled with no hope in sight to cut through the knots; because deciding the path to take finally boils down to choosing between happiness and purpose, and if one fails to find happiness even after choosing it, because it chooses another, then settle for contentment.

H has often said that he wishes to screw all of this and become his own man, to be father to his own initiative that he can nurture, can see grow from the smallest seed to a full grown oak. However, the problem is one of choice – not between issues that one wishes to solve, or more succinctly, between careers, but between lifestyles – an entrepreneur forever strives to see his business grow, his every though surrounds the fact that his business is encumbered by this or that issue, that his workers have gone on strike, that a client has refused to pay and his cash is being strapped – there is no holiday – and one doesn’t remain one’s master even then. While on the other hand, when one is an employee, one has holidays, atleast officially declared and one can go back to the confines of one’s castle and feel secure in the fact that it might be business as usual in the morning – but one is still not one’s own master eh?

I don’t do this well, I think. I should stop writing about our choices and futures and stick to fiction – so much nicer, to use writing to escape the mundane world, rather than use it as a tool to force your thinking. However, my point is this – whatever one chooses, one first chooses the way one wishes to live – the rules are defined there before going into subtleties of choice of career and the like. All that becomes clear (I hope) once one decides what one wants out of life. That is where one decides between happiness and purpose, or atleast, contentment and purpose. But for all of the choice one can make for peace, for harmony in our own world and for congruency (like in triangles), (now that I’ve got bored writing the post), the dark side shrouds everything.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion,
Through passion, I gain strength,
Through strength, I gain power,
Through power, I gain victory,
Through victory, my chains will be broken,
The force will set me free

Remember, remember, the 2nd of october?

T writes good epilogues, doesn't he? Now that's a specialization. Kudos. Reminds me of the movie Closer and hence, the Blower's daughter. Also reminds me of an epitaph - 4th wing, 2003-2007. Later replaced by 4th wing, forever. The senti bastard D.

R,T and I were having lunch - a rather extended session at that. Multiple desserts and new-fangled pastas. At the end of it, at the rather uncomfortable moment of tipping, that too apart from being taxed 12% for some value addition which resembles the value allusion of consultants, we were left with a 50, 20 and 10 as change to the cash tendered. I reach for the 50 and the 10 as T looks at me, squinting one eye, with a capitalist look on his face (no no, don't ask), and says, "H, that 50 looks old. Don't take it. Just take the 20, that looks reasonably new. " And I accede. (Later on, the 20 is lost as another dessert's tips - the life of an unwanted currency note must be fascinating...)

Magic for beginners and Endless night. Put fundaes. Rather difficult to crack. Perhaps a clue. Where T would be like a young child with a sweet-tooth in a candy shop. Nothing sensational. J hasn't changed much from college. Still looks unkempt. He talked of almost being stabbed as he left office on his bike the previous week. Stabbed. Certain events in another's life can help bring perspective to yours. Unconnected as you were to those events. A young man and a life lost early. Human beings are not meant to survive, merely to exist.

"Its not about happiness silly... its about contentment. Atleast that's what I think. If you try to solve for such an optimistic target, you will neither be happy nor content." Makes sense. I suppose. Later, green peppermint. Fancy-shmancy. "You can't change yourself and it's not worth it." Fair enough. There is magic in the world. She's proof enough.

Mahatma Gandhi lived a long and fruitful life. Filled with myriad colourful incidents. All of which are now talked of in a legendary sense. And positive light. To rise above mediocrity. I pity the soul. Souls. Mediocrity is bathed in such negative hues. Much like ignorance and indolence. Yes, misconceptions. All of them. Mediocrity, by choice, is snug comfort, ignorance, when premeditated, is bliss and indolence, without denying one's responsibilities, is nonpareil delight. And yes, I know.

Most national holidays are dry days, the concept of which baffles me no end. There exists our wonderful democracy which believes that alcohol corrupts the gullible individual and hence celebrates days of patriotic importance in ostensible sobreity but is otherwise lax and even prodigal (no no no, nothing to do with prodigies - sheesh) in disbursing spirited consumables on all other days. Why?

Sometimes I wonder very meaningless things. Like why are there 7 days in a week? No no, I'm not asking you for the random trivia like Augustus Caesar's favourite number was 7. I mean, what if there were more days in the week - would that be better or worse? What if the weekday:weekend ratio was different? What if the weekday:weekend distribution was 2,1,3,1 instead of 5,2. Just meaningless what ifs which might one day fuel my big idea. My big idea with which I would earn lots of money and not need to work any more. Atleast the latter. Like early retirement. Pearls of young childish wisdom.

October 2 was interesting.

Connect,

H

Weeping for Manetheren

James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (October 17, 1948 - September 16, 2007)







This past week has been one of terrible sadness. It is with great grief that I inform my small world, albeit late, that Robert Jordan, that writer of writers, that raconteur of raconteurs, has passed away.

Robert Jordan, as most of you must know wrote the Wheel of Time series. It is one of the most marvelous series that I have ever read. I began reading the Wheel of Time in the 8^th standard, 10 years ago. It has probably shaped my life and the approach to it more than any other book I’ve read. I’ve written about this before and I fear that I’m going to write a post that is exactly the same. I am the same person, however, and though water has flown under tons of bridges and has gone on to the sea, the river remains the same, the man remains the same, the book remains the same.

RJ showed me the grandeur of his mind and, through it, the grandeur of the world. The world was brighter owing to him and my dreams turned to colour when sleeping after reading WOT. My cycle turned into a stallion on my way to school, sticks turned to quarterstaff, plastic to burnished gold. Rainbows inevitably appeared when the rain storm ended. But, it was all much more than this, wasn’t it? RJ showed me what it meant to be a knight –that duty was often heavier than mountains, that death was lighter than feathers. That dreams have meaning beyond measure.

And who can forget his characters – persons who became my brothers, sisters, lovers. Who went to sleep with me at night and woke in the morning. Characters that shared with me their deepest sorrow, their profound happiness, their hopes, their fears, their love. Goodbye, Mat, Goodbye Min. You whom I once loved. Goodbye, Thom, Moridin, Demandred. And Rand… and Moiraine. Goodbye.

Thank you, RJ and Goodbye. May you shelter in the palm of the Creator's hand, and may the last embrace of the mother welcome you home. God bless Harriet, Brother Wilson and the rest of the family. May the Light protect all of us.

…and the raven said, “Strew a handful of seed around the stones so that there will be life here again.”

Past it on

He talked about yesteryears, about a time long ago. When the air was cleaner, the sky was bluer and the birds chirped louder and more melodiously. I remember that time too. As do most other people.

Every weekend I fly and fly back. And the fly back is an amazing two and a half hours for introspection. Especially with a good food for thought. I get incredibly energized during that time, with a rapid train of ideas flashing through my hyperactive brain. I decide to gym, decide to write a book, decide to open a restaurant chain, decide to quit, decide never to quit, decide this and that. Great ideas, often intertwined with long hours of sleep. So I lose most of these ideas.

One such idea was my listing-of-friends idea. I had thought it was absolutely the most fantastic idea I had ever come up with. It involved an excel sheet and 4 columns, 2 of which were name and last contacted. I will let your young infertile minds conjure the remaining part of that sorry excuse for the human condition.

Friends are a window to your memories. They are the only way to get to relive a past that will never be. Never of a present of a future you never saw and a future which for some strange reason seems like a past you had once had. Like the river. (T, that's your cue to smile). Friends, apparently, serve the only purpose of lighting the embers of recollection. Or rather, primarily. Hogwash. Kundera can get it wrong too. A minuscule amount of the time.

How obsessed we are with the past. A constant urge to think and talk about it. To reminisce. We actually signify its importance with a verb. Do parallels exist with the present and future?

Detachment is nirvana. Detachment of everything. Detachment of the past, present and future. The past is difficult to withdraw from, unless. Unless. Unless you get hit by love. Because love is the insatiable glorification of the present, so much so that you lose the concept of the past. The now conquers all. Swallows the future and vanquishes the past. Every other day, especially when we are young, the specter of our beautiful pasts comes a-knocking. Knock, knock, here I am, your life idyll.

Not to worry, T. That's for mortals. Those with a constant need to prove and worry. The insecure and the dissatisfied. Not us. For we know the truth. We know of that and more.

But you know what, we'll always have Bombay. And Modigliani.

Passe,
H

Let us write letters

I was reading one of M’s usual group e-mails the other day and was absolutely amazed with the fact that I was delighted to receive it. It’s become a pleasant part of a fortnightly routine to read of her adventures (or mis-adventures, as it were) in college. Much more, it is delightful to read the sheer wonder and awe in her mind for her everyday (mundane, some would call it) life. There is, she writes, something grand and larger than life in sitting in a quiet, moldy, sinister library, working on plotting charts (because she doesn’t know Excel) or making half an hour presentations on some weird rural economics or some such (I doubt she knows Economics). I also learnt, recently enough on Facebook, that M’s name is actually A! How quaint.

However, the real reason for my pleasure in reading M’s mails is more of nostalgia than anything else. There was a time in the past, the deep past, more the Jurassic period of T’s life, when a close friend of mine, S, and his family (including his brother T/V, also a close friend), shifted to Mumbai from Bangalore. S used to call me Ruby, incidentally, don’t ask, won’t tell. S, bless his heart, is now in Stanford, doing some rather random research on God-knows-what. Well, S used to write me letters and I used to reply to them. I still have some saved up in my drawer at home and read them in those periods of sharp existential angst and those others, of quiet, unadulterated bliss. I usually go through all the things I’ve stocked up in my drawers during those times, probably trying to piece together my whole life, looking back at it like a slide reel, picking up moments that defined it. What patterns emerge, I wonder, by gazing at a marble collection of Milkys, Dooms, Semi-Dooms, Brandys, Chunts, Appys and the like; or the broken brake guards on my first cycle – a red Street Cat (Boom boom shaka laka Boom Boom shak, street cat’s going to knock you back); or the books that I won as prizes for excellent academic performance (!! All of you can get up and give up now) when I was in Nursery and Prep – which consist of a book on X and Y’s birthday party, another on a Billy goat’s birthday party and a Secret Seven (Kindergarten teachers are fascinated by birthday parties).

So, as I was saying before interrupting myself so rudely, S used to write me letters. He used to fill them up with anecdotes from his life, just as M does now; in addition, he would fill me in on how much he had progressed in the first adventure game we played – Skullduggery. (Time for another diversion). Skullduggery was a lovely text adventure game (or is) about a guy who goes to an ancient estate of a long lost family to find (three guesses), buried treasure. In the process, he encounters ghosts, uncovers skeletons in multiple closets (literally! You actually enter a closet to find a secret passage, with the usual skeleton) and visits hell and speaks to the Grim Reaper. We finally finished Skullduggery when S returned to Bangalore, in the meantime playing other great adventure games like King’s Quest (started with part 6 and eventually played most of the others) and the hilarious Monkey Island (I’m Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate!)

S’ letters, focus. S would also include a riddle or two in his letters and once put in a whole puzzle about a man on an island looking for (2 guesses) buried treasure. One of the answers was Vibgyor, I remember.

So there, thanks M, you’ve brought back welcome memories. Do keep writing. There is something in your mails that still reminds me of the smell of ink and paper and makes me think of flowers pressed between pages of old notebooks and sheafs of old letters tied up in violet ribbons.

In other news, to end the post on a high note, my demon lover has finally left me. He’s just told me some rather exciting news about his life and left me wailing within the walls of misty Xanadu. For more details, contact the enigmatic one yourself.

Oh yes, on his post, I find his projections of the future interesting, albeit flawed; though the interpretation of the past is bang on. I doubt we will remain the same. I doubt things ever remain the same – someday, I’ll be the magician and he’ll turn into a knight or a rogue. Who knows.

C'est la vie, (to quote him)
T

Then, now and later

14 year old T and H meet.

T is wearing a green cape and a greener cap. Otherwise he is dressed in a staid grey mail with a funky belt. He looks menacing, albeit young, with his silver ruby-encrusted sword, dazzling with the moon beams of the elvish magic shops. He claims to be a knight, the elvish knight, Azrael, of the First Order, come to rid our world of the black one. The black dragon named Brexon. H smiles. His usual, with jam and butter. He introduces himself as Sandalf the purple. He wears dull clothes of a dark blue hue which seems to overwhelm him enveloping all parts of his body except his left hand, which holds a wooden staff purchased for a grand from the peddlers gnomes in the Olde Forest. He looks funny. So does T. They take the Eurodean Oath of Allies and are on their way. One to free the beast and the other to kill the beast.

22 year old T and H meet.

T is wearing a pink banker's shirt. The one with the white collar and french cuffs. He checks his mail from his blackberry, and with his right hand takes a sip of deliciously insipid coffee. He talks of inner peace, of karma, of nirvana, of happiness and of purpose. H sits beside him, typing something on his laptop. A mail. He joins in the conversation every couple of minutes expressing his humble points of view. H is wearing an extremely boring blue shirt and black trousers, like always. They live reality. Yearning to escape. Yearning for freedom. Yearning for excitement. But the time's not right. The time's never right. It once was. It once was always right. But now it's never right.

30 year old T and H meet.

T is wearing red. Bright red. H is wearing yellow. Yucky yellow. They looked loud together. But as superheroes they didn't have time to really bitch about their outfits. They had time for doughnuts now and then, but T had to watch it - he was on a diet. Y was always giving him active feedback which weighed heavily on his mind. H was beyond such worldly things. He was too experienced for this to matter. He thought so. Poor soul. The world was waiting, feverishly, for T and H. The global problem of boredom was spirally out of control every day. Television was made illegal 5 years ago. Sports was restricted to golf and belching. T and H were the only ones who could help. Blog, dammit, blog.

We're back,
H

PS: Get well soon T!

Of Dalliances and Dally

H and T walked into the common area wondering why they weren’t being served. It had become a habit to expect a fawning drooling manservant appear at the drop of a hat. Was it just the other day, T thought, that I was thinking about Linda Lee and Cage? Was Cage really in love with her, I wonder. Who would actually know that, eh? Would Cage? Would Wintermute? Why form stars in the shape of a face, if it wasn’t reading the face out of the love that Cage felt? T had a bad habit of thinking of books the whole time. He would also think about thoughts and conjecture about the futility of a thought having a thought.

“X is actually quite fascinating.” T began to tell H, “He was talking to Y the other day and telling him about markets. I almost thought the whole story was coming alive in my head. Imagine a market as a living breathing structure – The market is the heart of the land, the road is its body, and the people are its blood. Markets grow and expand. Markets die and are buried. Sometimes, people dig them up and look at their bare bones and try to recreate the animal that once existed there. This isn’t what he told me or Y, by the way. This all something I dreamed up from his conversation as he stood there talking about markets.”

Ever the dreamer and great problem solver, H said “Shut up.” Oblivious to the pain that was supposed to be inflicted on him, T continued, “It reminds me of this story I once read…” and paused while the others entered the room. They were a motley bunch of people, dressed all in penguin attire while their minds were as different from each other as snowflakes in springtime (this would seem to indicate that snowflakes in winter are very similar to each other; however, that’s not the point the author wishes to make, which is to bring to the fertile mind of the reader a picture of snow melting in springtime, signaling not just the birth of a new season but the death of the old).

The conversation turned to the mundane – rooted in the world of brick and mortar, of which winners have actually quit and quitters who’ve seemingly won, of power politics and the correct time to launch a counter offensive in a game of tower desktop defense. Before long, T had sniffed a few glasses of an intoxicating red and began to think of his world of books again after the fumes had entered his nose. “I’ve often wondered whether we choose the books we read or whether the book chooses us. It is often said that the author had exactly you or me in mind when he/she wrote the book. Let me take this a step further, eh? What if he actually had you or me in mind at this particular point in time, endowing his book with power to reach out to you with ectoplasmic fingers to make you bury your head in its pages?”

H interrupted, “T, that’s why you’re s_____.”

This is that point in every H & T post, (do look back at the previous ones, I’m sure you’ve missed them all), when the blessed author forgets why in God’s name he was writing the post in the first place. (It’s true, in my case, that H has a whip by his side which he uses to, primarily, ensure that I blog on time and, secondarily, for his own pleasures (or is it the other way around?)) () (Those brackets were put in there to show you that I can) () ((((and will))))

To cut a long story short, Delhi, or Dally, as you will, is a wonderful place. Great place to meet people, the mojo is always rising and all that. Love’s labour no lost in the concrete jungles erected by DLF – no pun intended. More on books and the inherent wealth in them and why there is a book meant for you, later. The only point I would like you to ruminate on is how books might have shaped your life, owing to which, even the most mundane book, at the right time, seems the most “beautiful”. “Words fail me in expressing why I like this book and its not owing to my vocabulary,” you’ve probably said, a number of times. It’s because you needed the book. Just like people enter your lives just when you need them. There’s apparently a quote in the Bhagvad Gita, or some such, which talks about a guru entering people’s lives when they are ready. Believe me, sir/ma’am , it happens all the time. The world is conspiring to make your life more meaningful/ adventurous/ lazy/ happy or whatever it is you wish it to be. Zip-a-dee-doo-daa and all that.

“She said yada, yada, yada. He said blah-blah-blah.”
-HOMM III

Story of my life, I would hope. H, that’s why I’m not.

Toodle-doo,
T

Enough is enough is not enough

My dear procrastinating friend T,

You have brought numerous counts of shame and disrespect upon this beautiful blog by not blogging for as many days as you have thought fit. In spite of many a request from the so-called taskmaster mouthpiece of yours truly. May you find comfortable requests in diurnal work and other irksome obligations. May you be happy and prosperous. May your conscience be clear. Dio volontà.

I don't want y'all to go away thinking this is a post of infightin', for I believe in the true making of Tagore's perfect world - "Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls". So let us add some educated content to these embittered words.

Lately I have been reading a lot of books which on retrospect fall under the general realm of philosophy. Good philosophy. Milan Kundera, Herman Hesse, Mitch Album. Reminded of the profound animes like Ghost in the Shell and Arjuna.

So just to fill up some empty space, here goes some of the better quotes -

Each of us suffers (more or less) from the baseness of his too commonplace life and yearns to escape it and rise to a higher level.
All of us have known the illusion (more or less strong) that we are worthy of that higher level, that we are predestined and chosen for it.
- Milan Kundera, Unbearable lightness of being

For love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love.
If a woman tells you: I love you because you’re intelligent, because you’re decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don’t chase women, because you do the dishes, then you should be disappionted;
such love seems a rather self-interested business.
How much finer it is to hear: I’m crazy about you even though you’re neither intelligent nor decent, even though you’re a liar, an egotist, a bastard.
- Milan Kundera, Slowness

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it.
- Mitch Album, Tuesdays with Morrie

When someone is seeking...it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything...because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. …Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well
- Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Innocence (Ghost in the Shell 2)


Most of my better friends have heard these quotes from me some time or the other. But that's fine. Hear it again. You never get enough.

The Enlightened One and the Punctual One,

H

Just don't do it, just feel it

T, C and I are having tea at the local tea shop. It's one of those bustling places were strangers stand side-by-side at the cold metal counters and indulge in snacks and tea. And some of the lesser enlightened ones have coffee. (One of Buddha's quotes, though not that well know, is aham only satyam vadami, only ahimsa karami and only tea drinkami) So we're standing there, drinking our small quantities when T suddenly starts reminiscing about his first study and how he changed because of that. Though not as expressive in his first few minutes, he turns raconteur, gesticulating wildly as he describes how the 'funness' was sapped out of him. One of the scenes he mono-acted involved him standing over himself, arms akimbo, and then whipping his victim for having too much fun left over. C and I watched amused, silently laughing, but trying simultaneously to sympathize with our emotionally scarred friend. T ends his story with the line, 'I am a penguin'.

Happiness and purpose are the only two reasons one can lead his life. For some time I was of the opinion that the two are mutually exclusive. But now I have reason to believe that two of my assumptions were wrong. One connected to our current conversation and another, not quite. One, Happiness is a flexible and redefinable rabbit. On the other hand, Purpose, to a large extent, is not such an adjusting pet. So though your initial expectations of purpose and happiness are often contradictory, you have to rationalize the two in order to retain your sanity, and Happiness often ends up being the peace-maker. Two, human beings waste too much time thinking. About anything and everything. About life. About death. About lunch and dinner. About friends and family. About cars and cell phones. About what the spectacled middle-aged woman in the yellow saree is thinking about me sitting here with her in this cinema theatre. About whether that man in black shades, who looks so much like my paternal uncle, has seen me driving around Chennai with all my friends at this time in the night. About abouts. So remember, when all Hope is lost and you sit down to think about life, ask not whether you're happy, ask not whether you have purpose, but ask yourself what's on TV?

So the three of us were walking back to the office. T was still mumbling something about how cold penguins feel during summer, C was trying to perfect his left-arm bowling action with live commentary and I was musing aloud about a good common friend who is to move to our city soon. As we reached the doors of the office, still in the babel of our mutually disinterested ramblings, T stepped back and said, "After you" to C. C replies, dead-pan-faced, "After me what?". T is a good sport, forever the butt of our jokes. In an instant, he turns from chivalrous to irked to serene. I smiled and complete his nascent word, "Siddhartha". He nods with closed eyes and goes into a penance.

Readers, if you've noticed, and I'm sure you have because if you have enough time on your hands to be reading this bullfunky, then you have enough time to have noticed, this blog has some new sections. One, and this one is to attract the (really cool) star wars geeks, is the jedi or sith that T and I resemble the most. And two, this is also for T (*winks*), is a section on chat conversations we have because often the funniest things in life are best rehearsed. Or is that unrehearsed. One of the two.

And, if you've noticed another thing, and I'm sure you must have by the same logic as the last time I was sure, I am trying hard to be unstructured. Because I think there exists some correlation between structure and seriousness and we all know which side of the cuckoo's nest this blog is. Thus this is yet another milestone post in my quest to become completely unstructured. It's hard for chaos to reign in the world of order, but as Nike doesn't say and the Star Wars geeks do - 'Just don't do it, just feel it'.

Like a farmer in a 'feel'd,
H

The River flows

There are times in life when the world seems to stop and hold its breath, the time when you are the centre of a typhoon, the time when you looked out of your window in Kansas, like Dorothy, hearing your radio crooning Someone told me long ago, there's a calm before the storm. These are times when you look up at the sky and see the sun hidden behind a small cloud, with golden beams of light poking out from behind the fluffy pillow reminding you of old, decrepit houses and motes of dust exhibiting brownian motion; these are times, when you halt in your tracks and tell yourself you will remember it as one of those moments in your life that have contributed to the warp and woof of the pattern you were trying to weave out of your existence.

H and I were talking about these moments, once. He said that he had had only three of them in his life, I don't remember which though; I, on the other hand, have had many, times I've looked back upon like wayside inns are looked upon by a traveller on a lonely road. I've just remembered an old poem on the same topic, but I forget the name; a poem from another time, a time of the definition of man and the birth of duty, rebellion and all the many ideas that lie dormant in man's brain to be woken up like a ritual spell, man (or woman's) schooling, the time of second birth.

It is during times like this when one learns what life is for, if ever it was meant for anything. Not to get caught up in our mundane lives to the extent that we, to use an old lovely cliché, miss the woods for the trees (the cliché itself evokes lovely images of a country side awakening from a cold winter or drinking a huge draught of rain water in the Monsoons) but to realise that life is a river flowing with the beginning, current time (a great pun, if I do say so myself) and the end, etc etc existing together. You get the drift (another brilliant use of the English language, or is that usage?). For more details refer Siddhartha by Herman hesse.

In other news, our blog has been criticised for not being silly enough. It would appear that from being a stream of consciousness blog, though we would have preferred unconscious, we've tried to become gyaan gurus. This is, apparently not a good thing. One doesn't go to the circus to see the Harlequin quote Shakespeare. Though there would be nothing wrong with the Whiteface doing a nice Puck, if you ask me. On the one side, we've got this bunch of rowdy readers giving me grief and on the other we've got this quantity focussed taskmaster, H, who believes that we must be putting out the latest and best, hour on hour not realising the temendous pressure it is putting on his best writer. Anyway, such is life. So, yes, we'll go back to being silly for a time and forget all the order we've been trying to bring to the place.

"And the earth parted and the flames of hell surrounded him;
And the clouds wept and the fires of heaven rained down upon him;
And T screamed, I don't have a quote!"

T

Circle of Life

Bombay. Saturday afternoon. There's a lingering smell of wetness in the air. T and I are back for what could be our last visit for the next 5 months (not exactly but exaggeration is good for health). We're walking down the road to the colony and our apartment. Correction - erstwhile apartment. The young ones are kicking the football around and swinging on the swings in the damp playground. For any lucky individual with no allegiance to time, without a calendar or a watch, this could have been 6 months ago. Same old streets. Same old taxi drivers smoking their beedis. Same old decrepit security guards. Same old us.

There is a comfort in the belief that life repeats itself. What happened yesterday, happens today and will happen all over again in the future. Its the sort of comfort which you get from sleeping under the stars, solving the crossword on a lazy weekend, the simple pleasures in life. But if history indeed repeats itself and the expected always happens, how stupid man must be to never learn from his experiences. Such relief in the intellectual capacities of the human race.

It's the Circle of Life,
And it moves us all,
Through despair and hope,
Through faith and love,
Till we find our place,
On the path unwinding,
In the Circle,
The Circle of Life.
- Elton John, The Circle of Life


Don't be attached to places, T tells me. The first place outside home and insti that we have ever lived in. Now looking mould-infected and squalid partly due to it's personal ineptitude in handling the monsoon rains and partly because we abandoned it for a major portion of the last 3 months. As I went through all the clothes and random paraphernalia, I relived most of the awesome year that had just passed. Enough of that nostalgic rant. But if there was one thing I was most glad to find, it was my dress from the retreat. The blue-green one. Famous one. A less sexy version of a halter top. Yes, you read that right. Ah the joy.

The circle of life has taken over. The next generation has arrived. They go through training. They go through another training. And yet another. And the parties. And from young confused individuals fresh out of college, loving the inherent procrastination of their lives, they mostly turn into heartless money-minded capitalist freaks. Mostly. Else they end up like us. Which in hindsight, is not so bad. Lucky bastards!

Egoism takes over. I... have... to... shut... up... now... else... the... world... cannot... handle... it...

Unstructuredly (I take feedback seriously; --> <--- this seriously)

H

A Statement of Style

Dear R,

When last H wrote to all of you, the two of us (that is to say, H and I) were competing to reach old Mumbai, I was a flight up in the air, while H had touched ground, back in Bangalore instead of our prior destination. The long and short of it is that H finally went to Chennai; I, on the other hand, went to Ahmedabad, stayed on the plane for a full four hours (and I won’t even comment on the smell coming from a few seats behind me owing to someone’s stomach regurgitating all the food he/she gobbled on the flight) and then, after taking off for Mumbai again, reached at 6 pm. That, on a flight that was supposed to take off at 9 am and reach Mumbai at 1030 am. It would appear that the rain gods were bent on testing my patience. In any case, I win. So there.

I was wondering over the last few days of the effect that style, or is it Style, has on our everyday lives. Some call it individualism, character and a number of other nyms, but what is this enigmatic abstraction? What, in essence, determines the outer facing nature of a person or object, the way it interacts with the world and, truly speaking, are we that different from each other?

Let me give you a “for example”. For example, a couple of years ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine, B, who, at that time, was running the college magazine. Like two experienced dabblers in the fine art of writing, we began to debate the latest article that he had inserted in the afore mentioned article. I happened to remark that I liked his style as compared to on of the other editors (or was it the other way around?). He asked me what I meant to which I explained that I liked the way he waxed eloquent at times, the way he wander off the main trail and explain bits of trivia to the weary traveler, rest awhile under the eaves of a Bodhi tree and talk of the uncertainties of life before he plodded once more towards the conclusion of the essay. Hearing this, he asked me to point out those parts of the editorial that he had written and the parts that I thought were penned by his co-editors. To my utmost shame, (after my long and winding speech), I couldn’t. It would appear that all three of them had a habit of strolling down the banks of the river to pick the daffodils. (I wandered lonely as a cloud…) Did all of them have the same style, I then asked, or is that just the way people write? But surely, there are different styles of writing, you must be shouting. Perhaps, if you are wiser, you aren’t. There are, of course, different ways that an author may pen her thoughts. She may write in the first or third person, may write fantasy or on absurdism and all that jazz. But if two proficient authors were to sit next to each other and write on the same topic, would you be able to distinguish the style? Perhaps. There is a difference between too flowery a writing, perhaps, and the minimalism many others opt for. What about an excessive use of commas? I don’t know. Mayhap, you do.

To point to another, more recent case, let us examine the difference between H’s and my writing? Would you, gentle reader, be able to differentiate between the two if we switched names the next time we wrote? Are you sure that we haven’t been doing so the last couple of times? What if told you that we have? Have you noticed that H has been quoting rather excessively the last few times? Hmmm. (He’s also stolen a quote from me. How dare he?)

Finally, I had bordered on writing a rather maudlin and mawkish article on women. Thought better of it finally. Would have dragged in too many memories, I suppose. Too much projection isn’t good for health. However, I throw to the audience the thought of the effect of style on the ability to woo women. This, atleast, is an area where I would admit there is a huge variation on output, as it were, with the individual styles of the various performing artists. (I would also offer salutations at this point to one Style, an author of a book – may he live in peace).

Isn’t style, it would be better to call it personality at this point, such a huge factor while choosing your woman? (Forgive the crassness). Isn’t it an obvious hurdle in getting her to like you? (I admit that my style seems to hamper me rather than the cliché – hampering my style). It’s a sad tale isn’t it, dear Reader? If it is, weep, else, laugh your way to bed. Good night, I entreat you to dream on this, perhaps it will open ways for all of us. Now sleep, sleep well and wake.

H, that is why I’m s_____.

And that is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
-La Belle Dame sans Merci, Elliot?

Pip pip,
T

A tale of four cities

So T made a mockery of the three word rule. And he blogs as often as a constipated orangutan does its business. And he is random. No matter. He shall be forgiven. For his name is nobody. (Another’s name is red though personally feel that it is not interesting enough to be read). And he is s____. God bless his soul. God or rather the Quintessential Personification of Hope, QPH, my God.

Gurgaon is a wonderful city. Village. Urban village. As I stood with M on the balcony of his guesthouse room on my last day there, gazing at the menagerie of malls and men and all things concrete, I felt strangely comfortable in this confused fusion of rapid commercial development, teeming immigrant professionals and the indigenous population trying hard to cope up with the numerous immigrants accompanying the furious expansion. I think it was something to do with the comfortable speed of life. Comfortably slow. Uneventful for most parts, but with its share of fascinating days as well. Fantastic days. As a thin stream of smoke escaped the balcony in search of some unattainable destination creating a hazy veil over a distant show of fireworks heralding some lucky couple’s entry into holy matrimony, M expressed his mild dislike of this place – its coldness in the midst of the contrived warmth of crowds. I let a noticeably loud silence express my mixed emotions to his harsh opinion.

Bangalore has been kind enough to welcome me back. When I was younger, this was the garden city where people sought a moment of peace and solace to console their hectic stressed lives. Or so was my perception. But now it is yet another unenviable and inevitable victim of the timeless human desire for continued success and prosperity. But tell us about the weather, won’t you kind H? Of course. Pleasant and snug with an eternal hint of rain, constantly providing entertainment through an unending game of hide-and-seek with the sun. Rainbows, clear as you would ever see, brightening up your day merely by their presence. Making up for all the irksome traffic of men and vehicles, loud, continuous and rude traffic, all of whom are rushing around for some activity which has the proverbial urgency and patience of time and tide.

In our world, indolence has turned into having nothing to do, which is a completely different thing; a person with nothing to do is frustrated, bored, is constantly searching for the activity he lacks. – Milan Kundera, Slowness

Off to Bombay for the weekend. Apparently our apartment contract is ending and our landlord has decided he has had enough of us. So P, T and I are homeless. Homeless in the beautiful city of brilliant lights and inviting sea faces. T and I think we like the situation. Nomadic we shall be.

Sitting in the airport with T, waiting for the boarding announcement, bombarded by constant messages of delayed flights and sincere regrets by ladies paid to be apologetic. We are in a race to reach our base city, having chosen two different airlines. Our flights play along with us not being able to decide which one should be the first to leave. T talks of a character he has met who had introduced himself as a hybrid and one who used both sides of his brain. He who has infused a new sense of fashion in our style-challenged lives. T makes remarks, both rude and insightful, about the appropriateness of colour and elegance of clothes on the many passengers biding their time away. Our boarding happens simultaneously. We stand up and walk away in silent smirking, alluding to fake wishes of good luck.

Normally a flight from Bangalore to Bombay takes an hour and a half. Its been 6 hours since we parted ways. Neither the winner. T could still potentially win. Lets hope for his sake he doesn’t. Inclement weather in Bombay caused my flight to return by which time I had lost all enthusiasm to try again. T’s flight is still stuck. In the capital of the abstinent land, with an uncertain future. Poor T. He is not as fortunate as I, who on diagnosis of the situation as a warning from QPH, have decided to fly to my real base city. Chennai.

Just to make the title a little more appropriate, I have decided to add this last section which may sound unconnected. But I have to.

It was the best of times, it was the best of times.

Thanks, QPH. Thanks for listening.

Smiles,

H

My name is Nobody

First things first – dream, thyme and asparagus. Now, I can actually start writing what I want rather than follow the diktats of a tyrant (I could have said diktats of a dictator for the sake of alliteration and all that, but haven’t done so to display the self control in the writing).

There is this old Bud Spencer and Terenzel (hope I got the spelling right) called ‘My name is Nobody’. It’s about gun-slinging cowboys and the Wild west. However, unlike most other Westerns, it’s a lovely comedy like most of Bud’s movies. I won’t talk much about it, though – this post isn’t on the evolving dynamics of Western talkies nor is it about the effects of Bud on making America wiser (Sorry, couldn’t help that one).

So what am I going to talk about then, that would interest you, my gentle reader, and, more importantly, interest me? Well, for one, I’m going to speak about myself – Nobody. Am I going to ask the fundamental question surrounding the makings of me or question the ambiguity and sophistry surrounding things like I think, therefore I am? Not quite. I’d much rather stick to saying Mojito ergo sum, like my old friend, T and have my friends bear me with a smile.

So, coming to the heart of the matter, I primarily wanted to talk about the things I find interesting. Strangely enough, this has become people and books. The latter isn’t strange, in itself, but coupled with the former, I have begun to observe a whole new side of me. One that was never exposed to the sun, but left to die of lead rot owing to our society’s penchant for tempering our mettle in barrels of engineering rather than in economics, psychology or the arts. (Remember relatives of yours looking with abject scorn at anyone who said he had done his B.A.). However, H has just spoken of people rather recently, so I’m going to talk about books. Again.

I was reading a rather queer book yesterday called the Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. It was lent to me to read just the other day by H and knowing how rarely he reads books, I was sure that it wouldn’t disappoint. Well, it didn’t and then it did. I won’t reveal any of the book for you save that it first spiraled me out on a rather interesting journey of thought, through other books that I have read (I do this often) and then brought me back, rather dishearteningly to a mundane Earth. My fly by night was stemmed (at the root, as it were) by a mere boy writing in blank verse. However, let me digress a bit to mention that I also thought of the curious, and then the words queer, quaint and so on and how the words themselves have become curious, or quaint or queer. Look at the word attic, for example, do you think loft or do you think greek?

I was talking about my fly by night. The author, very early in the book, begins talking about Sherlock Holmes and the way he solved the story of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Not surprising in itself – authors often mention other books they love, it is the way they bring a bit of themselves into their books – what was strange was that my dad, on hearing the name of the book, immediately said “There is this Holmes quote I recently read – There was something curious about the incident of the dog. It didn’t bark. Yes, that was curious” (I promise I haven’t spoiled the book for you). Let me throw in another example before I explain what I’m trying to get at – mid way into the book, I began to read a letter to the protagonist. Apart from my feelings of disgust and voyeurism on reading someone else’s letter, I began to recall a similar style of writing – that of the Fobishier (or is it Frobishier) in Cloud Atlas and how much of oneself is revealed in one’s writings to others – that letters hold memories as much as the mind itself does. I wonder if what they say in the movie AI is true, that space and time are able to hold the very essence of the world around us to the extent that we are able to synthesise it ourselves by reading old memory. God destroyed dinosaurs. God created man. Man destroyed God. Man created dinosaurs. Dinosaurs ate man. Woman takes over…

And, once more, we get to the heart of the matter. The matter of how words, nay, not just words – but words, actions, scenes enacted, smells can evoke memories of all we have seen, heard, touched, tasted and, yes, loved, (for, have I not loved before, my gentle reader?) It is passing strange that people try to forget their past, while yet others cling onto it for dear life, as if that is the only straw keeping them attached to an unreal world. However, it is rather different for me; I cling onto the books I have read to escape from an all too harsh reality. Even now, memories are woken, creating a chain reaction from book to book, scene to scene, person to person and memory to memory. I met a girl as fair as summer… May I give a few words of advice in a rather tiring, cryptic manner? Happiness is a hammock. More on this in another post.

And so let me leave you here, brave soul, to go forth and forget your own past, to forget all the words you have read, to start afresh, to treat every moment as if it were your first, or last, to be eternally surprised by the world because it is create anew each moment and this one was not the same as the previous; or mayhap I should entreat you not to forget – to remember and forgive old quarrels, to renew old friendships because they shaped your lives, to miss old flames and give them a ring because they loved and cared for you and more importantly, you cared for them. Go…

And so it is, that a nobody might do something – to realize that his whole life is a beautiful thread to be lived to create a grand pattern. Because Bud Spencer did not mind people saying – “He was beaten by nobody.”

And for H, that is why I’m s_____

T

Why me?

I sat there, in the cafe, tapping my fingers against the table. There was a gentle breeze that swept my hair back and for a moment, there was an eerie silence permeating all around me. I close my eyes, dramatically, as I soaked in that singular moment of serenity. Somewhere a radio was softly singing Simon & Garfunkel; a different time, a different age.

"I am a rock, I am an island...", I whispered, subjecting myself to the tunes that brought me up. I remembered my father and the day he showed me that CD for the very first time.

A hand placed itself gently on my left shoulder as I let nostalgia overcome me. I jerked my eyes open and turned around, around to that wonderous sight for sore eyes. Relapsing to my adolescent ways, I stood up clumsily with an uneasy grin trying to mask my discomfort. I mumbled, "Hi".

She smiled, an omnicognizant look, one that reminded you of God and candy and home and all that is supposed to be good about the world. Like then. Like always. She replied, "How have you been?". I didn't reply but just motioned for her to sit down. And we sat.

I looked at her. That first time, the distant face in the crowd. A moment of insanity as I asked her out with that ostensibly suave line, "Will you marry me? Now?". That was so far in the past, it seemed unreal. And then, for some reason, all I remember is her leaving me. Just like that, out of the blue.

"I hear you are doing well?", she laboured on with an unresponsive me. I woke up from the daze to answer, "Yes, yes. Finishing my PhD. Almost engaged... and you?" "I'm doing well too. I got married last year..." The rest of the words faded as I was seeing her but unable to comprehend what exactly she was still saying. I had to know. Now.

"So why? Why did you go? Was it me or not? Where did you go? Why didn't you tell me anything? Did I do anything wrong?". Those were the questions on my mind. Swarming around, teeming insects in my cerebral cage. But all the words which escaped and manifested themselves were, "Why me?".

She remained quiet. She was probably expecting this. Remained a stoic picture of apathy. I assume she was rehearsing her lines. Her script for this very real movie.

"Don't try to pick holes in the past. What happened then was true in that time and context. It wasn't you. It wasn't me either. It was just as it was. Do you wish for me to continue?"

I was being the silent statue now. I nodded. No.

She stood up. "Think of me as your poison. You were able to withstand me then. I was your reality check. I did really like you once upon a time. But circumstances and well..." She quiesced. She mustered up courage as she strove on, "All the best for the future. I hope we can..."

"No."I abruptly interrupted. "I wish you all the best in your life as well. Que sera sera." I stood up as well and bade farewell. We parted ways once again.


----


For friction acts in the direction opposite to the direction of motion.

And T, dream, thyme and asparagus.

Fiction,
H

We want you...

I have been observing my co-author for the last few months. He has become a creature of turmoil and chaos, with all nature leaving him groping for the a meal made of the fruits of order or the dove of peace like Tantalus in Hades. What has caused this profound sea change in my old compadre, I asked myself one dark night, tossing and turning on my bed. What has left him with thoughts that flit and flot, fleetly flee and fly, leaving him not with a moment of respite. Then it came to me - Has a certain thrush, one of the darker hues, left a mark on him? Could it be that a certain babe, with a penchant for bad repartee, made a remark that has left him brooding? I look out of my window - day dreaming of the calm sea and Red wood groves, of bears searching for honey and wolves hunting little pigs, and find that good ol' Yankee ingenuity (here's to macaroni) saves the day yet again.

And so, dear reader, I ask you on behalf of that proud man, unwilling to bend, that, as you sit on to tea today, eating cupcakes and biscuits, you think kindly of us and the tales that we tell, of raconteurs and racoons, of tricksters and pixies, of caraway seeds and faraway trees and while you do so, you brighten our days as we hope we have done yours.

Brighten our days, I say, by clicking on a little button and writing a word, maybe two, through compliments or abuses, through a little word of wisdom, of the latests gossip, or a little story perhaps, of Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf and how they came to love each other. Show us your mind as we have shown you ours.

Speaking of tales and tea and Marie biscuits, I am reminded of the days when we were young, reading our Enid Blytons and their magnificent tea spreads - cakes of every kind, hot scones, home-made butter, fresh cream, litres and litres of tea and orange marmelade. Every weekend, I would wake around 730 and lie awake on my bed till about 900 reading the many adventures of Fatty and the Five Find outers, George and the Famous Five or Jupiter Jones and Hitchcock's merry trio. I had my fair share of the Hardy Boys too, but never found them as interesting as the Nancy Drews. I always found that Nancy Drew did a lot more thinking and legwork (she had the legs for it, I suppose); however, I never read the Case files - they were too girly for my liking - all mushy stuff with La Femme Drew entrapped more by her latest crush than the villainous fiend in the stories.

Sunday afternoons remain lazy though and the ritual too, has not changed by much, though the books have, the authors have, the Carolyn Keenes have become Rex Stouts, the Enid Blytons have become Mervyn Peakes, but the tales are the same. And with that, come memories of a boy - a boy with a little girl called Wendy, a boy who could fight, who could fly and who could Cock-A-Doodle Doo!! I can see me.

And so, gentle reader, allow me to ask again that you cure my friend of his melancholy - if you love our posts, tell your friends to read us, else, tell your enemies.

So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

-Puck, Robin Goodfellow,
A Midsummer Night's Dream

And H, poison, rock and home.

Oink,
T

Don't hate the player

We meet such interesting people in our lives. I have always been fascinated by the fact that there are 8 billion people on this Earth. 8,000,000,000. That's like a nauseatingly large number. In my more misanthropic moments, I am known to prophesise a systemic global genocide of 7 billion of our wonderful brothers and sisters and restart civilization all over again with a more manageable number. But that's just me being elitist I suppose.

One such character is from the city where I am supposedly based, and I say supposedly because I haven't seen my roommate in nearly two weeks and don't think I will for another two. We were just moving into the city when we went out to search for a mattress maker in the alien metropolitan with bustling streets. We found one such shop, a small one mind you, but the young guy in charge was a talkative one. And he talked of the time he was flown to this wonderful island and asked to make mattreses for a king. How there were a team of nearly 15 mattress makers sweating it out in the playgrounds to create masterpieces for the nearly 500 rooms of the king's palace. In retrospect, I suppose the young garrulous craftsman probably mistook some hotel for a palace but I like the fantasy he wove for that half an hour of my otherwise insipid and very real life.

Another time, I was yet another stereotypical tourist visiting the foreign city of Singapore and being taken on a tour of the city by this rather enterprising guide. His name was Oriental with many onomatopoeic words but the nick name he used to introduce himself was Go. And every half an hour, he would announce his name with much gusto and repeat it multiple times and pump his fists into the air. A funny character. I looked at him and wondered about the life he lead. How many times he would go to same places. Say the same things. Crack the same jokes. Do the same things. He never seemed bored though. And he certainly wasn't boring. Go Go Go Go .... And I was particularly impressed that he wasn't even perturbed when a matriach of a certain Indian family travelling along with us kept refering to him only as Gopal. She was quite a character though by the way.

Recently I was off on my office retreat which was in exotic Phuket. Being in the organizing committee, I arrived a couple of days early. The first person I met at the airport was a man handling a part of the gigantic transportation. His name was again quite complicated to pronounce but he relieved me when he asked me to call him by what I assume is a necessity for the foreigners, a nick name. His name was YoYo. And YoYo was in his early thirties, unused to the concept of shaving, unkempt hair and smoked Marlbaro lights, like the rest of Thailand. And he was quite the cool customer for apart from this transportation operations, he also owned what he described to me as a beer bar. Where I assume, and this is a hypothesis, that one gets beer. Actually he later clarified that it was a small restaurant and he even invited me to come there and try the local fish. I quickly declined the offer stating I was a pure vegetarian. He sighed in disappointment and offered to treat me to chicken then. I explained to him that from where we come, chicken was very much a non-vegetarian dish. He was shocked and asked me how I lived and what I ate. I replied abashedly vegetables, animal products and eggs. He laughed.

There is this eccentric person who is sort of heading the project I'm in currently. He is eccentric for a multitude of reasons. For one, he is this Italian who looks huge. Looks huge. Looks like a person who used to play sports but lost such fantastic pleasures when he sold his soul to the corporate world. He sleeps for 2 hours a day. On a good day. He is extremely flirtatious and hits on anything that moves, can move and might move. And the hypothesis on the sports would be extremely well-founded because he has been a footballer, a professional swimmer, a judo, and karate expert and a national ski jumper. He joined B-school with a scholarship and a handsome stipend only to come out with a hundred thousand debt - he blames it on trips to Moscow and Lima. He was also in the army and has driven a tank. He enjoys cigars but most unfortunately, he is probably the only Italian who is allergic to alcohol. Alas. He's getting married soon enough to his Chinese girlfriend in St. Lucia. La vita bella.

One day, I will be interesting too. I will be someone who was a new-age pirate in the Mediterranean who fought sharks with his bare hands. Or a standup comedian in the dark suburbs of Morocco making money on the side by being a spy for the Umbrella Corporation. Or a wizard who befriends a manticore using his hypnotize spell and using it against its master, a warlock. A psychiatrist. A hitman. A football coach. A magician. A levitator.

Who am I kidding. I am never going to be anything more than an engineer who beame a consultant and a mangament consultant and then this entrepeneur who started a novel hardware company called "Fish and" with his long time friend and partner-in-crime which then becomes a multi-trillion dollar empire and then buys this country and names it...

Sheesh.

And T, biscuit, peace and parakeet.

Game on,
H

The Rationing of God

It’s 8 o’clock in the evening after a lovely Sunday in Delhi. The lark is on the wing, the snail is on the thorn, the Delhi sun has just set and SR and I are waiting at the airport, being a little the worse for wear (or however that phrase goes) after the conf in the morning and the 500ml of Strong that we drank, and what do we see but the TV, at the airport, blasting away about the antics of Abhi-ash.

It would appear that the celebrity couple, after their grand wedding, have risen in the eyes of God, and who deserves to dole out these visions of the Lord God, but our trusted Tirumala-Tirupati temple authorities, or TTT or something.

The whole thing disgusted us plenty and gave us considerable food for thought. I thought of the Thai statues we saw of the churning of the sea and remembered PJ.

Anyway, thoughts for the day are Texans shooting them Injuns and Pilots or should I say, Bhilots, of communication and paintings on walls which are held by four pillars.

It might also be prudent to remember the best way to get a recharge card for Tata sky is to run out on a Sunday in your best vest and underwear, shouting out “Who is the Tata sky operator? Who is the Tata sky operator?” Atleast, this is the advice you get from the call centre. Do you know that contact is an acronym? Just like CBD.

That was called a Helmetism. It consists of obscure references to insider jokes that only two or three people would understand. If you’re one of them and you read the post, you’re supposed to feel proud of yourself and make subtle references to the same. Makes the others feel like pariahs. Hmpf, low lives and all. Lets look down at them with our Italian noses. I can see H saying, “Sour grapes! Make some wine.”

H says we should start putting in words in our posts for our co-blogger to write about -thought starters, as such; I've decided that we should make it 3 every post; so here goes - manticore, shaving, playgrounds. H, do include these words in the labels section; gives our loyal readership something to search for in their days of indolence.

Pip pip,

T

Hakuna Matata

Thailand was like a mini-Saarang. Fun, tiring and totally worth it. Like a good job. No pun intended. I wish. But seriously, late nights, early mornings, hanging out with the people you like, beautiful beaches and of course, shiny Tesco balls. What else would one need. Want.

As much as Patong beach and the Bengali road and the pool basketball and the motorboat drive were amazing, (for the former two, T has brilliant stories I hear...pray share a few, brother - notice the colour of his face as V would say) I think the following week which I took off in Chennai was proverbial ignorance. (I have to make myself sound crass and contrived now and then - its a disease, genetic actually). Sorry, make that is(be) which was in past tense as was to is(be) in present as is. Rainy romantic raunchy risque. :)

So I met a prof, the hostel cat, the neighbour's daughter, some friends and some friend's friend. Day before I also got to enjoy another hostel night but I suddenly got vaccuumed in the gut. (now that's a cliche that's never going to stick)... I realized that I could not do this next year. Never again. I was now a dinosaur in the hostel which brought me up from a hapless fledgling to a not-as-hapless fledgling. And there was no turning back. Lame. Obvious and lame. But difficult to digest. Friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on to. Keep telling yourself that my children and if you're lucky like me, you'll find them early on in life. And for T, here goes, C'est la vie.

I've decided to be funny for the rest of this post and write about something funny. Like telephones. Ummm, no, like cats. Or cats with telephones. Or cats with telephones making prank calls to other cats with telephones. Something like:
Cat#1: Hello
Cat#2: Meow
Cat#1: Is your fridge running?
Cat#2: No
Cat#1: Oh, what about your fan?
Cat#2: No, I don't have a fan
Cat#1: Then what is running in your house?
Cat#2: A mouse
Cat#1: Why don't you go and catch it then?
Cat#2: Because I am full.
...
Something like that. Intended to be funny and after all, it's the thought that counts.

Digression is the better part of a blogger. That said, I urge all of you to take swimming lessons from a trained professional who will give you interesting pieces of information like "the rate at which you stroke your hands must be 1/8th as fast as the rate at which you beat your feet". And you can contact me for an exceptional swimmer who will be available during the month of July.

I think I've done my part in destroying the credibility of this blog. I was the last standing bastion of hope, the lone ranger in the corrupt Wild Wild West, the solitary ray of enlightenment meandering its way through the dilapidated streets of reason. Into that heaven my father led my country to sleep.

Amen,
H

What is life?

Whoa, been quite a while hasn't it? I just realised that the last post that H put was way back when we were learning about the power of pausing and how Mozart declared to the world that silence was better than all the music in the world. Knowing Mozart, (and there are few who know Mozart as badly as I do) he must have, umm... lost my train of thought.

As things stand, a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then and all that. H & I, in the meantime, have learnt how to chase happiness. It is apparently a little butterfly that flies about in front of your face every time you close your eyes. But seriously, loved the movie. Ten minutes of silence.

Post that, we beat the retreat. Or rather, we were beaten up by the retreat. Went to jolly old Thailand, where, of all places, the best area to hang out is some bengali road. Crazy, the kind of reach good old Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has. They call him Buddha there, as well. The best part of the whole matter is that a sign at the Thai airport reads - Taking out images of Buddha or any part thereof, from Thailand, is strictly prohibited. Or some such. I mean, I know they like Bengali babus and all that, but this is ridiculous. Heard that Cal is beautiful this time of year. Or rather, heard it has beautiful people. Thank god, no one but H reads this bullshit.

Was sitting quietly at my desk today, when I started going down these trips I usually take in my mind. A lame quizzer would call it a connect trip, or some such nonsense. However, it was a rather melancholic, nostalgic memory of some of the books I have read and how I've come to associate so many memories with them. It started off with me listening to some Floyd on the laptop - more specifically, listening to Obscured by clouds, when I heard this line - the memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of the man in his prime. And while I listened to this, I thought to myself, "How much more obvious than that can one get?"

However, it got me thinking. I remembered this short story I read, called Creation by Jeffrey Ford. Beautiful stuff, about how one can have too much love. One should read it to figure out why I am feeling so sentimental about it. This guy Ford, also wrote this other great short story about a pixie - the annals of someone. Another very beautiful, "How great is life?" piece. One should read it, as well.

From there, I went along dreaming about Jordan and what a profound influence it has probably had in my thinking and the way I shape my world. Then a trip down Arnold Layne and dragonmount.com. Remember Kate and a night connecting Eco to Azeleas. Back to Thailand for no apparent reason and a dream of dancing.

All in all, a good day. And a good night. By the way, for S and H, it would appear that the Bingo Little phenomenon continues. H, now is the time you say that you're impressed. V, I don't know whether you would be impressed or not, though I doubt you would read this. As H say, C'est la vie. Me? I would rather say, C'est la fille (hope that came out right).

Au revoir, eh?
T

PoP : Power of Pause - a series of fortunate trainings

Today was day one of three days of intense training. Training that is not only mental but also physical. Much like Ogden Nash's torture at the dentist. Training that is going to change my destiny. Change the way the Moirae, the Three Fates are looking at my life. At me. Today, and for the next two days, we undergo the hallowed Communications Skills and Interpersonal Skills Workshop. How to communicate and personalize (?) better. And today, we learnt how to peep. PEEP. Which is fine by itself. But most importantly, today we learnt something specific. We learnt how to pause.

[Pause]

See wasn't that wonderful? Didn't you feel much better? I just gave you so much more time to digest all that information. And, hear this, I, me, mois, get more time to structure what I want to tell you. So thats the double power of pause. By the power of grayskull. I am Sshh-Man.

[Pause]

Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone. But the other thing I learnt today was even more interesting. Smile and the world smiles with you, snore and you sleep alone. That was true value add. Nay, value change. My life truly feels blessed.

T gave an inspiring speech about 300 today. About the misinterpretation of history through Hollywood. Like poor Cleopatra. And Elizabeth Taylor. And how Lizzie has a thin nose unlike Cleo who has a roman pug nose. And Alexander. And Indian savages. And Persians and Asyrian beards. It was quite an exciting trip. Especially when the video was fast forwarded. Dancing he was. Lithe ballerina he could be. If he rolls off.

The other key takeaway for me with my blue sky thinking, as I pushed the envelope of creativity and imagination, was that when the rubber hits the road, I could be in the same page as the other low lying fruit as far as the Bombay Duck is concerned. No, that was not supposed to make any sense, except for the Duck which by the way is a fish akin to the Black Isle Clipper. The indigenous version if you wish. I really learnt so much today.

[Pause]

Pausing is a powerful tool. As is effective eye contact. However not in all cultures. Because where I come from, effective eye contact could be misconstrued as a devious debauchee in action. Which is very wrong according to me. But thats just me.

Moral police-like,
H

300, more or less

Today, H & I learnt how the Spartans held their own at Thermopylae. It wasn’t owing to great graphics, by the way, or owing to the great nudity scenes (as H tells me) that are present in the movie adaptation of the actual event. It is, as my own analysis would tell you, owing to sheer incompetence on the part of the forces of the Persians.

Firstly, they didn’t have a great process manager. Everyone wanted to get to the front line as quickly as possible. This caused a great pressure build up in the stomachs of the Persians that ended up with pushing those very same stomachs onto the tips of the Greeks spears. To the right, is an example of an over-anxious Persian trying to die.

Secondly, was the absolutely great strategy of the Greeks. They, like the Pakistani cricket team, told everyone that their best players were going to be on the bench. That meant that the whole world thought that they had only 300 Spartans playing the field on the fateful day. In actuality, hidden behind these Spartans were, atleaset another, 5000 Athenians, Thebans (if they are Greeks) and others of the Mediterranean version. This brought down the odds from a fantastic 1000 to 1 to a rather mundane 150 to 1. Hmpf. Cheats.

Lastly, was the rather interesting implementation technique of the Spartans. Hold spear in front of you. Hold shield with defensive hand. Block with shield. Jump. Strike with spear. Repeat process. Note an over aggressive and happy Leonidas skewering Persians like sows at a buffet over to your right.

Ah yes, in maintaining the sanctity of this blog, allow me to comment on H’s post and other random happenings in the world. Oh yeah, La Vita Bella. Strange, with all of H’s wishes to be Italian and all that, I’m actually the person who met Italians for real and talked in Italian. Ino a veryo realo fashiono. Theo languageo is quite easyo. Not very hard to be a good actor once you start waving your hands above your head.

For the rest of H’s ramblings, I’ll let you figure it out yourself. Sunday, the 11^th of March. We’re having a nice time with Strong. Britney’s on the TV and before that, we got a good dose of Rachel’s ruminations. No idea how 300 came about.

Cheers, (for real)
T

Addendum: This post was written really long, back. A week ago to be honest, but wasn’t uploaded, owing to T’s camera not being connected to the comp to upload the requisite pics. Oh well...

By the way, we saw the movie on Friday. Absolutely fantastic, albeit a little over the top. A must see, folks. Enjoy. I was absolutely right about the strategies, incidentally.

T

Hoo-hah

Shakira coming to town isn’t very exciting for me. Sure, I don’t mind her songs. Or more so her videos. And for sure, her hips don’t lie. When she gyrates them with that ferocious velocity, she means well for each and every one of us. The darling. I wonder how she got her name. Sounds like the name of an evil witchdoctor or rather a shaman. Shakira the shaman, with the power to summon tornados (as a tribute to all that gyration). And with her talented latino voice to match. Then, her coming to town would be very exciting for me. Cyclonic event even.

Scent of a woman. What a classic. People sometimes downplay Al Pacino’s thespian skills by claiming that all his roles are the young angry man routine. Bah humbug. Stupid critics. Italiano magnifico. Especially in the Godfather. I almost ran away from home and joined the mafia because of him. The Italian mafiaso in specific. Then, I heard its hard work clearing the entrance exam (what with the horse’s head and sleeping with the fishes) and as it was I had enough of such tests, so I decided to postpone my entry into the underworld for another time and place. (I’m thinking that if I ever do a banking study, then that would be a good time)

When I was watching the movie, I remembered that I haven’t met my old school teachers in a very long time. Or rather school teachers who will now be old. I haven’t met my school friends in a long time either. The doctor, the roadside romeo, the gin boy and the automan especially. Atleast I’m in touch and in reasonable knowledge of their whereabouts. Will be good to meet them and relive the good times. Like the imshi imshi with the English teacher in tenth. And the first time we saw Titanic in one of our houses. And how, much to the personal angst of the host, we rewound and revisited particular scenes. Ah, permissible immature adolescence, how I miss thee…

Only one more month for the retreat. For Thailand. For Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. For everything that we have planned, we are planning and we haven’t planned. Excitement. I could also be doing Croatia before that. Double excitement. Life’s good.

Que sera sera,

H