The Women We Never See

When I used to be live in Pune, my roomie and I used to have our dinner at a small canteen run by a Gujarati family. I'd already lived with Gujju folks for a number of years so I've picked up a fair share of their language along the way. This was the first time my roommate had left his hometown in Madhya Pradesh, and barely spoke in any Indian language other than Hindi. So whenever we used to go there he used to ask me to translate bits of Gujrati from the people who ran the canteen. Mostly cause he fancied the owner's daughter. She was still in college, and spent some nights every week helping her elder brother in managing the place and her mother in her cooking. We usually saw her handing out the plates and cups during those nights. And my thirsty creep of a roommate used to give her the eye and made every excuse to get close to her, even though she was like five years younger to him and wasn't the least bit interested.

When has that ever made any difference to guys.

Anyways. It had been nearly three months of me coming to eat at that place. As was usual for me, I'd made a decent rapport with the regulars there and the people who ran it. My roommate's work timings changed so he'd stopped coming to the canteen. I had gotten into a routine of this place so I guess I stuck with it just for familiarity's sake.

One day while I was leaving the hotel after my meal, the elder brother stopped me near the exit. He was running the place that night in his father's absence. He told me that the canteen would be closed for the next three weeks or so. Apparently, the whole family was going over to their hometown in Gujarat. The daughter was to be married by the month's end. The same daughter who was just a sophomore in college was getting married in a couple of weeks. I'd just barely gotten my act together, and kids around me are already getting hitched. Some folks, are in too much of a hurry these days.

I congratulate him on the happy news and ask about the wedding. The brother informed me that the wedding would be in their own ancestral home and that the groom owned a garment store in their hometown. Thinking back now I should have just stopped there. But nah, I just had to ask the next random question that propped up in my head.

"What about her college?"

To which the brother replied, "Nah she is a girl, her place is now in her husband's home."

Then I ask, "Okay, so she would be able to complete her degree from a college close your hometown?"

He said, "I don't even think there are any colleges in our hometown where you'll find a lot of girls studying."

"So you're saying she will not study further and just be a housewife now?"

"I guess."

That was where I felt that weird pang. You see, I am the sort of guy that expects people to be naturally good at heart. And this was his younger sister after all. But the by the nonchalant way he'd submit his only sister to a life of mediocre alerted some sort of radar in me. I piqued up and dug in with more questions. Why didn't I just leave!

© K.L.Kamat/Kamat's Potpourri

I looked past all the tables and chair where people were having their meal, over to the little door at the end of the hall. There was a lady sitting just within that door on the floor making chapatis. She wore a heavy saree and had the hem of it over her head covering it. you could hardly see any of her face. This wasn't anything rare. In many of the North Indian cultures, the women-folk hide their faces with a veil of some sort. But now, I actually noticed it on this woman. Then I looked over to the counter where they hand out the steel plates, spoons and such. There sat the soon to be married daughter, reading a magazine that was spread open on her lap. She was wearing a tight white top, and faded jeans. She wore a bit of makeup by the looks of it. Truthfully, she was really rather good looking, in a nubile college girl sort of way. I tried to make myself imagine a future for her in the form of her mother present. It seemed too drastic a change from her life right now. And by what her brother was saying this future would be exactly what is in store for her.

The brother was looking at me carefully while I was looking towards his mother and sister. I turned back to him and asked, "You should at least have waited till she completes her education."

He straightens up at that, and replies haughtily, "What is the point of her going through college when all she was going to do when she is getting married was taking care of her husband. That is her place."

I had never yet met anyone of his kind. I have always been around people who had more liberal sensibilities like mine. This measure of orthodoxy was new to me.

"So what was the point of sending her to college at all?"

"She would have only gotten better grooms if she was well-educated."

More like half-educated.

"Is the groom well-educated then?"

"He has passed 10th grade, I think. But that is normal where we come from. Most women in our hometown are more educated that their men. My mother was a state topper in her BA college."

I looked over to the woman sitting on the dirty kitchen floor, covered from head to toe, sweating by the heat of the stove cooking chapatis.

"That woman there? She is a gold medalist? She has a degree in Bachelor of Arts?"

"Yes, in english."

I went silent at that and looked over to her again. I had never really thought of her in all the time I'd been coming to this place. Her making chapatis was constant sight whenever I came to eat here. I'd seen her sitting there on the floor so often now, she'd almost become invisible to me. Like the many furniture here.

I looked over to the daughter again. She was lazily turning the pages of her magazine now. She really was good looking, and seemed to be a smart girl. But then I guess so was her mother. She was smart enough to be the top student in college. Now though, she is married to a guy who runs a small daily-meals hotel in a small street corner of Pune. She didn't exactly make it big in life. By the looks of it, neither will her daughter.

I looked back to the brother, he was now busy counting the wads money in his father's till. I found that to be very repulsive for some reason. Suddenly, the whole canteen seemed like a vile place.

I looked over to the unfortunate women. Sometimes you empathize with somebody so much that you begin to feel the pain that they themselves had long forgotten or had grown blind to.

Walking away from the hotel and into the street, I soon realized this was the last time I'd ever step foot in that place.

Queen of Spades and the Faint of Hearts

“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.” 

- Dennis Lehane

"Phileas. Mr. Phileas Rodriguez? Can you hear me, sir?"

He woke up with a start. Looked around the room like it was the first time he was seeing it. He was not. He had been visiting Dr. Sharma for the past four years now, ever since his first blackout. Though now he was just plain asleep and not blacked out. He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes and face to wake them up. He had a week’s beard on his face, peppered with white here and there. It did give him a sophisticated look, but itched like a flea-ridden mutt’s crotch.

Blackouts were nothing new to him; he knew very well what it felt like. They started a couple of years ago. It was very scary in the beginning. He checked himself into a clinic at his third incident and did all the tests they had there. No one actually came to any conclusion as what was wrong with him. They all wrote it off as a prodrome to something else and just decided to wait and see. So he waited, until a few weeks from his first incident he blacked out behind the wheel while driving back from work. Luckily no was hurt, but it sure did put the fear for his life into him and he started looking out for every possible avenues for help.

A friend suggested he try yoga, didn't help except his back never felt so good thanks to all the stretching. Another suggested him to drink a lot of liquids, that didn't help much either except that he had to get up from his desk more often to visit the restroom earning him a lot of catcalls from his coworkers. Then his younger sister, a physical therapist, suggested maybe his ailment wasn’t anything physical at all. Maybe it was all in his mind. That's how he had ended up in this place where he was presently sprawled on a sofa in the lobby of the shrink’s office.

"I'm sorry. Was working late last night, didn't get enough sleep", he replied to the receptionist who was looking over his computer screen to him smoothing over his flannel shirt and plaid pants. She never understood why this guy had to wear so proper all the time. It's been years she’s been watching him now, and she had never seen him in casual Tees and denims. He was very tall and lanky, would look great in jeans. Anyways, she kept her thoughts to herself and returned back to the social network site she was surfing on while pretending to work on her boss’s letters.

He walked past the receptionist's desk and opened the door to the good doctor's cabin. And as always, he was hit with the strong scent of roses. The room seemed to brimmed with it, there were pictures of rose gardens on the back wall, there were two pots filled with roses near the window, and there was always vase with a few more rose stems on the doctor's desk. His guess was she even doused herself in rose perfume before she leaves for work.

Right now, Dr. Sharma was seated behind her desk writing hurriedly in her diary. She kept one for every patient. She looked up and gave the very slightest of smile and signaled him to take a seat.

Phileas took his usual seat at the corner of the couch, closest to the doctor's chair. He was soft on her, and she knew it. Obviously she did, a woman didn't need a double degree in psychiatry to know if a guy is into her or not. But she was not one to break a doctor-patient relationship. And he was not her type anyway.

She was soon done with her notes, pushed the diary away and stretched while seated in her chair. Sitting all day in a chair all day listening to people’s problems takes its toll on a person’s vertebrae.

She turned to the stack of hardbound diaries kept at one end of his desk and shuffled through them to get to her patient's notes. Now she asked, "So Phileas, how are we doing today?"

"I am well, Ms. Sharma. This has been a good week. The trip to the capital was a much needed break from all the stress." He could never bring himself to call her Dr. Sharma. She looked so young to be called that.

"That's nice. Yes, I remember, you were going to attend an ex colleague’s wedding in Noida. How was function? Was there a lot of people present?" she asked, mildly bringing up Phileas's fear of crowds.

Phileas didn't take the bait, "No no, it was actually a small affair. Got to meet with a few old friends from my time in Amazon and also there was a band and a trip around old Delhi. It was really quite exciting."

"That sounds good. Hope you did not stress yourself out too much, sometimes a rush of old memories and emotions might become too heavy on one's psyche."

"No it really was nothing like that. I actually had a good time...”

Phileas started to fidget in his seat. The doctor could see that he was not saying the whole thing; he was hiding something from her. The fidgeting was his tell; he would be very lousy at poker.  She looked at him for a moment and spoke softly looking down at her dairy writing something, "Take your time, Phileas. There is no hurry."

"I don't think I have been completely honest with you, Ms. Sharma. About my reason, my incessant need to attend this wedding even though I hate public transport... I, um, the bride... Well, we used to be very close for a while. I mean. Uh. We were in love." He shifted his eyes from her and started looking at anywhere but in her direction. The doctor didn't seem to notice the change. She just waited there bowed down to her book pretending to read, waiting for him to continue.

He took a moment of quite, and continued.

"We met in an office party. She was a HR person dealing with recruitment. She was the one who had assisted me during my induction process when I joined the company. I'd never met her since in my nine months of working in the there, until that New Year's Eve bash. I still remember her wearing the beige pantsuit, with a tiny chain made of silver hanging around her neck. She looked beautiful. She was also the biggest klutz, you’ll see. So she was always tumbling over something or shoving to somebody else while passing. Still I liked her all the same, she was cute." Phileas was by now looking absently out the window behind the doctor's chair. His gaze was looking towards a different place a different time. He was opening up far more than he had ever done in the four years he had been her patient, Dr. Sharma was beginning to sense they were at the verge of a breakthrough.

"Somehow when dinner was announced we ended up at the same table; call it what you may, destiny or sub-conscious plotting by my side. But I've never had a better first time conversation with any woman ever. We sat there and spoke for hours, she told me about her life, her aspirations, about her work with a local NGO, and I shared my dreams and troubles with my sister. It was great. Soon it was past midnight and the party was dying. People were starting to leave with their spouses or friends. We both didn't have any so we decided to leave together and share a cab.

“Well one thing led to another, we kissed on the ride back to her place. I was 23, and that was the first kiss I've ever had. I was a very sickly kid when I was younger you see, no girl would come close to me by a ten meter radius. And it showed I think, because soon she was taking the lead in the whole activity. I was naive, and even I could sense that this wasn't her first time snogging in the back of a cab. But I was not complaining anyway, it felt too good to be true as it was."

Them Half-Baked Social Workers

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

- Adam Smith

Okay lets see. Today was a fairly normal day.

I was being the usual guy who sits in front of the mapping designer all day dragging objects and coding this and that. You know usual nerd IT stuff. Then this mail comes around lunch time from a colleague. It seemed to be one of those forwards that you get in your inbox from people who themselves got from somebody else, but it being of a huge size (this one was 3MB) you forward it to everyone else you know an rid your inbox of its burden soon after to avoid the out-of-space debacle.

The subject of this specific one was "And we say that we are working hard!!!”

Well well, feeling a tad too sarcastic today aren’t we.

So I opened it, and behold a big picture of a dirty bony kid stood there staring back at me with soiled hands and booger pouring out of his nose. Eww right?

I had figured out the topic of this mail by now. This was going to be another mopey whiny one about malnutrition, orphans or something. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing but love for them, but heck looking at some of the relatives/family one ends up with sometimes makes me feel envious of those buggers.

Anyways, I scroll down to next picture - another shirtless kid (surprised?) with some sort of white dust all over him, maybe concrete.

Unimpressed, I scroll down to the next image - a greasy kid pushing some sort of lathe drill into metal and such

Aha now I see where this is going, lo and behold the next image - a really dark girl smiling and holding a handful of flowers to a car window at a traffic signal.

This was a mail about child labor. I keep scrolling down with back to back images of kids not yet into their teens doing minimum wage work like waiting on tables, cleaning dishes  at a restaurant, picking recyclable plastic garbage at the junkyard etc. There was this one picture of a kid working at a construction site lifting like 5 concrete bricks, each almost as big as his limbs. That I found oddly impressive.

       

Well jokes aside, the pictures were a sad affair and I was especially moved by the one with the little kid picking garbage in the huge almost-mountain of a landfill junkyard. I could only imagine the repulsive odor and disgusting gunk in that place. That child definitely harped on the empathy cord I sadly am born with. 

Each Time You Fall In Love

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.

 Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."

- James A. Baldwin

Each time you fall in love,

You surrender a part of your soul to the other person.. 

And she gives herself to you!

Each time you fall in love, 

You give up on your vain dreams to make both of your dreams come true.. 

And she does the same for you!

Each time you fall in love, 

You see the beauty of your being in the way her body trembles at your touch,

and the way you can make her heart beat slow when you kiss.. 

And she measures her beauty by the hunger in your eyes,

and the way her shy smile takes your breath away!

Each time you fall in love, 

You strive to become a better person because she deserves it.

And she is already the best, cause you ain't met nobody that makes you feel so special the way she does!

And she is precious for-evermore cause you know you will never meet someone like her ever again!!

----

Please like my FB page to stay updated on upcoming posts:

https://www.facebook.com/An.Irony.Called.Life

Say What You Need To Say

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

-    Stephen King

     'Different Seasons'

Mrinal was having a yucky day. And cleaning bedpans the old age home where he worked was not helping brightening his day by any measure.

It's been almost a year of him working here, and it still baffled him how the whole place constantly reeked of urine no matter how many people were hired cleaning and scrubbing the place all day. Every nook and corner of the place stank, even the dinning hall. People were only expected to eat there for pete's sake! He and eight other orderlies were by their job description responsible for keeping the 'inmates' comfortable, how were they supposed to that if they themselves didn't know how to be so. Dr. Gupta had banished that word being used within the compound (so let's just keep this as our secret for Mrinal's sake, shall we?)

Why shouldn't these people be called by their real title anyway? Is this place any better than Tihar jail or Sing Sing? Sure this place is more colorful and has lots of comfy sofas and beds, lush landscaped lawns, people hanging around you all day to keep you in prompt accordance of your medication and all. You don't need to worry about a thing. Well, that's what they'd want you to think anyway.

In many ways this place is much worse than either of those establishments. In that place at least you'd know why you are there. Rape, murder, armed robbery, arson, burglary, jay-walking, anything. You do something, the courts sentence you to a period of time, you go to prison, spend your time in your cell with your cellmates who very well could be like the overly friendly T-Bag in Prison Break. But you knew your cause and its effect, and more importantly you knew that all of this had a deadline, either the one the courts sentenced you for or the one till your master plan to jump the prison walls gets materialized.

In an old age home, you don't have that option. There is a deadline yes, but when you reach it there's is no loved ones or fellow gang-members standing there on the other side of the gate to take you home. Once you reach the deadline to get out of here, well, that means you are dead. Any sane, and most of the insane ones also probably, would want to avoid that by any means possible. Even if that means you have to spend those last years of your life on this planet confined to a wheel chair or a bed, and you need other people to do your basic human functions for you, or that you need someone to remember where your things are and when you are to take your next diabetes pills, even if you don't recall the name of your great-granddaughter when she comes to visit you once an year on your birthday.

The life here could be tough on anyone. Both kaidis/retirees and their guards/caretakers equally. Mrinal knew what he was getting into when he started here; at least he thought he did. This was to be a temporary thing till his scriptwriting gig kicks off, which is yet to happen and by the look of things may very well never happen at all. When you look at Mumbai from outside in, it looks so fast, happening and brimming with possibilities especially when you look at all those big name studios and you dream of being on their payroll for doing something that you like doing the most in life, writing. But this past year has been an eye-opener; Mumbai had lost all its charm that it held in the eyes of an innocent recent English graduate from Gujarat. This city is tough, unkind and too-fast-for-its-own-good. This place once might've been really quite something, but now it is anything but that.

In the past one year here, he had met some really wonderful people in this compound though. Some of these old-timers have lived, by that we mean really lived. Not the kind of nine-to-five existence that most of us do now. There is a circus manager, ex-army vet, ex-politician, ex-IAS, ex-tech guru. There is a whole bunch of ex-some bodies here. Each with their own histories. Each with their own treasure chests brimming with memories of the bygone golden era. They all have done something that they have proud of. They have all seen some really exciting time. Mrinal was part of the Hazare fuss too; he thought that was going to be 'the happening time' of his generation, he is not now too confident about that either.

The new generation has missed out on lot things. Maybe the most that he thinks we've lost is our capability to empathize. And this place really drives that emotion home. Especially on that day in July where it rained all day...

What is love?

"Love isn't about succumbing to every wish of the other person, fearing the outcome if you dont - break up..

Love shouldn't be something that comes to you at gunpoint, the things that you do for love should be done cause it brings you joy, cause it means something to you!

Love should be something that you do for yourself just as much as you do for the other person!!"

via An Irony Called Life (facebook)

----

Please like my FB page to stay updated on upcoming posts:

https://www.facebook.com/An.Irony.Called.Life

First Anniversary, at First Job!

“A true balance between work and life comes with knowing that your life and activities are integrated, not separated.”
- Michael Sunnarborg

July the 23^rd, 2013 - exactly a year since I’ve started at the first real grown-up job of my life.

And as stereotyped as it seems to be when it comes to Indians, I actually do work in IT. Still it hasn’t really turned out to be as torturous as they make it out to be.

Maybe that comes later. I don’t know ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Anyway. This past one year has been a helluva roller coaster ride; loads of twist and turns, sudden ups and drastic downs. But nonetheless a very exciting time indeed.

Met a lot of wonderful people (AG, KR, PV, RG, TS etc.)

Learnt a lot about the Lone Wolf guidelines (the importance of having a healthy supply of paper soap with you at all times, how to go from full-wallet-rich-as-shit to puny-arse-broke-as-hell in less than a week!)

Had some really great experiences (nomadic solo trips all around the city, rediscovering friendships, and shedding off a few way-past-expiry-date ones...)

As for the things that go on within the office walls. Man, each day is a revelation!

Things seem so different this side of college.

My workplace is in the IT compound of a Special Economic Zone. The best thing about working in SEZs and Tech Parks, where almost always half a dozen big companies set up shop in the same neighborhood, is that you get to meet people from many other IT companies and interact with them. So I kind of have observed some peculiarities and similarities in almost every big MNC I have come across. We are not all that different, you and I. Everybody is just as stuck/fortunate as everybody else.

Yes, I agree I have been away from home since college. So you could say I already know the basics of shacking it out on your own. But college was different. In school you know you are going to have to spend the rest of your time there with the people around you. So you find the most compatible ones and choose to have them around you at all times.

In a corporate, you don’t have that option. You don’t get to choose. You have to make do with what you get because you will have at some point or the other get something done by or for them. Most people won't be so hard to handle or like. As always it depends on your luck, and how much they know the good parts of you (if at all there exists one) and how much you get to know them.

I’ve seen the sense of putting in an effort or time to actually get to know someone is absent here, may be that used to be there a couple of decades earlier in our father/grandfather’s offices; when people that you work with, somehow ended up becoming your best of mates and your child’s god parents. It sure isn’t happening these days!

A Long Time Coming

"I am using the truth, Master Wayne. Maybe it's time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day. I'm sorry."

- Alfred Pennyworth

  'The Dark Knight Rises'

Truth.

Such a fearsome idea, isn't it. A gigantic magnificent elephant in the room; that we all know about but never come out in the open and acknowledge. We see it, sense it, register it inside our brains, and even decipher the outcome of it all. But we never really seem capable to accept it as a fact of life and take in the guts, by sheer sportsmanship.

Not all men are born sporty. Not all men can live with their true faces out in the open for everyone to see.

We all are born capable of knowing and analyzing things that happen in our lives. If anyone says that they didn't see it coming. Pal, they are lying blatantly. Maybe they themselves not realizing that they are.

The Depressing One

“So in the end you try to think of someone else you're mad at, and the unavoidable answer pops into your little warped brain: everyone.”

- Ellen Hopkins

I used to have this friend (you will soon realize why the 'used to' usage here) who thought ill of almost everyone.

 

Except himself that is, obviously. He was always put himself in high regard and always thought he was right in doing so.

 

He was the most cynical, pessimistic, illogical soul probably in all of the worlds that all of the faiths that mankind has been yet been able to invent. You show him the picture of that firefighter who leapt into a burning building and saved a 10 year old girl, and he will point out how and where the guy's hands are in the poor semi-unconscious child's body and call him a pervert. You show him the story of a rich billionaire who has just started out another multi-million dollar campaign to eradicate polio in Africa; he will show you another article where this same techie billionaire had syphoned off billions from unsuspecting customers by forcing them to buy his products. You tell him about the 10th standard girl next door whose study room light was on all night, he will tell you about the time that he saw her riding on the backseat of a bike with some guy who looked to be of her own age.

 

You tell him just about anything that had for some extend a flimsy bit of positivity in it. This prick could come up with something to bring you back down and rub something completely different onto your sunny-eyed face proving to you that the world is simply not worth a single sliver of silver lining no matter what.

 

Well. That was until he happened to fall in love.

Learning To Love My Troubles

“I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me.”

- J.K. Rowling

  ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’

 

In life, there always comes a time when it seems the only thing that we seem to be doing lately is whine and crib about how life is being a bitch. How everything is going wrong for you. How everyone around us is having a ball and we are stuck with that dead end job, or a relationship that seems to be going nowhere except dragging us deeper into depression.

Now pal, no matter how much you try to reject the idea you do have random burst of happiness and good times in life. Yes, it might come very rarely, at long intervals and for seemingly very short time. Might seem like sometimes you do not get your fair share of it, but trust me pal you do get enough of it. We got to be honest to ourselves here; we do have a blessed life in some way or the other. There is probably some poor soul out there in the crowd of eight-billion odd people on this planet who is probably dreaming of having your life, with and parcel of all your worries. For him, your's is the "good life".

 

Well, shit happens. It’s not your fault that it does. It is a normal course of things when you look at it, refer to own food consumption-excrement paradigm.

You live a good day, there is probably a bad one just around the corner.

Granted, that is a depressing way to look at life. But that is the truth. You can NEVER avoid the bad things in life. It is high time we take that for granted.

There is no possible way for you to live life carefree. It is a myth. If someone comes to you trying to sell this myth, slam the door on their face. Better yet, shower some very creative (well deserved) profanity at them too, might give you a hell lot satisfaction. I surely would love to.

The Doomsday can still come! The world, as we know it, can still come to an END!!

"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us. And the Prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."

- Heinreich Heine,

  "Lutetia; or, Paris" Augsberg Gazette, 1842

I did not know who Heine was at that time, nor did I know why he said that. But in light of recent events I am not sure if anything else would be more appropriate here.

There are times when pop culture, with all of its cliches and overdramatic urban legends, comes out with something so logically convincing and outright bizarrer that the whole world mankind unwillingly (or willingly as an escape from reality) ends up believing it.

21, December, 2012 was one such legend.

People were falling prey to it everywhere. Dozens for documentaries were made, hundreds of websites and forums created to bring together people of this cult to prepare for the "end of time" conflicts, thousands of bunkers and strongholds built in basements and high hills where people shut themselves up for most of the second half of the year. Millions spend on a high budget ($200mto be precise) Roland Emmerich movie on it, which also incidentally earned its maker millions ($770m!)

So clearly, this was a big deal. Or so everyone thought until the day actually came.

It came and it went. Nothing of grave importance occured. It was just another day for most of the planet.

World did not end. Buildings did not crumble like sand castles. Cities did not slid into the ocean. Hot lava did not pour out of the mound in the park.

All that happened was that I missed the bus to work.

Nothing new there even.

We are back where we are. Right?

12.12.12.

"Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creative insanity!"

- Bo Bennett

This should be interesting right.

Always thought it would be wicked to witness something extraordinary happening on a date like this. One can’t help but think so, look at what all the pop culture has got us into believing, thanks to the Mayan calendar and the Occult and whatnots.

But each darn time, they disappoint me. These dates just don’t seem to offer anything out of the ordinary. Nothing ever happens! (dates as in the measure-of-time kind, not the other one!)

To add to the burn. Even today I was so close to missing the company bus!

Today could’ve been different, at least in this small thing. It is not demanding too much is it?

Well.. Anyways, there is still the rest of the day left ahead of us. Enough time for us to spice things up a bit. So find time go out with your mates today and do something different yourself, for yourself.

I’m done expecting these symmetrical dates on the calendar to bring something exciting to me, let’s just go ahead and create some excitement for ourselves! (‘Aaj kuch toofani karte hai’ mode)

Hope you all have an exciting 12.12.12 ahead! Stay awesome!

And happy wishful thinking!! :-P :-) :-)

----

Please like my FB page to stay updated on upcoming posts:

https://www.facebook.com/An.Irony.Called.Life

The Insanely Awesome Life of E. A. Poe

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there; wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."
- Edgar Allan Poe

There are times in most human beings life when they come across something very beautifully awesome that it hurts them why they lived for so long only to discover this gem only now. He starts wondering how amazing his life would have been if he had know about the existence of this beauty much earlier.
Well in my life there has been quite a few of these shocks like Beatles, Led Zep, 'Its a wonderful life', 'Patch Adams', 'Life is beautifull', Harry Potter, Ayn Rand, fried chicken.

And now, E. A. Poe.

I am not really a big fan of poetry, let alone the dark kind. I appreciate songs with poetic sensibilities (one Mr.Paul Simon; Mr.Art Garfunkel can attest to that). But I never really got to like poetry too much. It seemed way to quirky for my taste (coming from a guy who thinks eating icecream with a fork is normal). But E.A. is something totally different. I tried gettting into other famous poet's work, Whitman, Frost etc. But nothing compares to this guy's insane outlook towards the world.

In Indian literature there was a writer Premchand 'Munshi', he wrote in hindi as far as I've read. Mostly short stories based on day-to-day lives of ordinary people of his time. He was an ultimate cynic and had the most realistic outlook towards life. Imagine that, and go atleast a hundred times vicious. Then maybe you would get somewhere close to Poe's domain.

E. A.'s work is probably the most controversial of American literature in his time. Born Edgar Poe on January 19, 1809 he is more known for his tales of mystery and the dark than his more "normal" ones and generally considered "the inventor of the short story". But just how awesome it is, is for you to discover.

There was this one article I stumbled upon that introduced me to him. I was reading about Stephen King's Carrie, it mentioned that this King numero uno in some or the other manner resembled Poe's writing. And well I was of the solid belief that Carrietta White as insanely vicious dark character as can be possibly written. So, I was wondering what this guy who died in 1849 could have done to have inspired this inhumanely carzy girl.

Like they say, ignorance is bliss.

The Catalyst For Change

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

- Anatole France

When I was about to leave home for the first time for college, most people around me were of the view that something of huge importance is about to happen in my life. Somehow this single act of getting out of ‘the nest’ is about to change me, my way of thinking, likes and dislikes, even way of doing things. They said, up until then my life was within the very safe protection of my family. Where I didn’t have to ever worry about being alone, uncared for, nor getting my laundry done and neatly ironed. At that time, it all seemed like every other long lecture that the wise elders used to give; some of these used to go longer and more boring than those that began with ‘when I was of your age’. I never could understand the compulsion for adults to give these repetitive telecasts of the same subject again and again, on an uncomfortably frequent basis. I never will until I reach their age, comes their immediately reply if I were to foolishly present this question to them. Never expect a straight answer from them, you’d never ever get it.

The thing is, even after months and months of getting into this college I couldn’t figure out what would be this mysterious catalyst within these four walls of the campus that was going to change me so drastically. Yes, I was alone and had to do everything by myself. Mother wasn’t here to tend to my needs and to provide me with her delicious food. I had to make do with whatever we could find here and try to survive on the stuff they called food and expected us to swallow. Yes, this was all new to me and so where the people here. But I was always able to make friends wherever I went and soon there was a huge mob of people that knew me and that I knew. So there really weren’t really many places around the campus town where I’d ever find myself lone for the remaining four years of college yet to come.

The college I went to was 400 kilometers far from my hometown Mumbai. So it was a one night of travel to go to and from there to home, so usually it was sometimes weeks or even more that I go to eat mum’s food. And throughout my time away from home, and even now, that’s probably thing that I miss the most. The food wasn’t that bad in the hostel, but as most things in life the monotony of it killed its novelty in time. Fortunately, the roomies that I got were all also a bunch of indolent, bamboozled, languid buffoons like me. And darn did I have a helluva time with all of them. We were a group of solid 16 idiots, give or take a few at any point of time. The best thing about it was that we met during the first weeks of college itself and we stayed together through most of it. Had millions of fights and gazillions of arguments, but as I’ve seen in most guys. None of these squabbles lasted more than a week, after the initial violent outburst. Guy friendships are simpler and less maintenance than with the female specie.

The Past

"We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice."

 - Stephen Covey

Waking up in the morning can be a really grueling thing to do sometimes. You open your eyes at almost the same time as you do every day; its a routine to you now after doing it since the day you were born. Plus you have this mysterious biological clock inside you that all these womens magazine keeps talking about in their every other article. Your whole body feels heavy after the nice rest it has had all night, and now is gearing up for another busy day ahead. Some days you wake up abruptly from a nice dream and you try hard to recall what the whole thing was about, but you find it hard to do. Some days you wake up thinking about the same things you were thinking of when you went off to sleep, mostly some romantic tryst with someone special to you. People might spend their whole day gossiping and throwing hatred at everybody around them, but they always end up thinking of loved ones before dozing off. Somebody from both past or present, or even someone they wish to have in their lives in the near future. 

Reminiscing in such thoughts is such a wonderful feeling in the first few waking minutes. Not always though. Some days you wake up to something not so pleasant. You have a lousy dream. Or even someone around you talking to somebody else and tidbits of their conversation leads you to recall some part of your past that you really are trying very hard to block out and keep trying desperately not think of. But now after listening to these conversations it is inside your head, and there is no escaping it. You end up thinking about these unpleasant moments in your life of which you’re too proud of, your utmost low point. Now you have no choice but to spend those first few glorious lazy minutes of the day stuck in your not-so-glorious past. That is so not the way anybody wants to start off their day. 

Human beings are the most blessed, and probably the most cursed, one of nature’s children. And the reason for both is the same, the strength of our minds or rather more specifically our ability to remember and feel. A stray dog might not recognize the kind old lady that had given it some bread to eat when it was hungry last winter and will run away from her when she comes to pet it a few months later, but it will always remember to pee in the self same spots without fail like clockwork to mark his territory. Thats mostly due to its brain is hard-wired to sticking to a routine, than to remembering any seemingly non-consequential data about some withered old member of another species. Sometimes I feel they are so lucky. They do not have to remember anything from the past or deal with the emotions created as a consequence of remembering them. They don’t have to feel guilt, shame, anger, frustration, angst or sorrow. All they really need to worry about in life are the three basics for their existence – food to exist, shelter their hide from the harsh weathers and sniffing each others’s butts. 

We on the other hand are not that fortunate. We remember. Each of our actions, reactions, feelings etc is all locked away in the seemingly endless recesses of memory space inside our head. And our memories are capable of bringing out a wide array emotions like joy, sorrow, content, angst, anger, peace, guilt or just the plain old dreadful nagging feeling called regret. All these feelings can be dealt with; once you’ve spent it all out of your system, it is over and done. You just need someone to blame it all on. The people around you, the cat, the dog, and the stupid lazy lady down the street, or the all time favorite, the government. Most of them just need a little venting off, and time. Then poof, it’s gone. 

The Night Of The Wrestler, The Rich Kid And The Crazy Bitch

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

He never thought he would find himself in such a predicament. He always thought that he was above such petty casualties of life. And most around him believed it too. He always seemed so casual, so at ease with himself and the world around him. He was the centre of all the action, was always a fun guy to be around. He had the way about him like he ruled the earth he was walking on; people somehow had started to think so too. People loved him, and always found reason to be around him. He was a man’s man. Some envied him, most wanted to be him. Women loved him, he loved them back. Each and every single one of them, he never distinguished one from the other. Always spread his love and attention around. But then something happened. Someone happened.

All through his school and college life, he had been conscious of the effect he had on the people around him, especially those of the opposite sex. He was tall, not bad looking but his real trump card was his wit and smile. From as far as he can remember, everyone told him he was going to break some hearts when he was grows old. He took that seriously I guess, always found himself to be living in a bit too many hearts at once, making guest appearances in one too many poor adolescent and some not so young women’s nightly fantasies, each a bit sinister than the last one, each getting weirder and even more paranoid as he progressed along the in years.

Somehow he managed to keep his wits about him and not get too carried away by all this. He kept doing well at school; got all the grades required to get him into a well-reputed architecture school in the capital city. In college too, in spite of all the girls in his class going gaga over his shoulder long hair, which was a craze back then, he still stuck to being his self. He never was lonesome, had the company of the best of people around him wherever he went. The geeks, when he wanted some homework done. The queen bees, when he needed something else done, which they got done using their jock boyfriends. Sometimes a lonely spinster, or even some married, female teacher of the college had a weak spot for this boy and he had his way no matter what.

He had his merry way throughout the first and half way through second year of college. The Christmas holidays were close. He wasn’t going to be able to go home this time, not that he cared too much. But he really hoped to extort some money from his dad to buy him a new car, the old one was getting out of fashion. He was still having a brainstorming session, devising a strategy for this mission, in the dorm lobby when he heard a loud yell from the floor above. He ran upstairs, and found a girl running into toilet at the end of the hallway, sobbing. He also heard noises of footsteps rushing upstairs to the floors above and the slamming of a door.

He spent quite some time outside the toilet, pondering whether he should go in or not. He never before in his life has been at this spot, where he had to choose something for himself. He was always told what was good for him, decisions where always taken for him. And wherever this wasn’t possible he always went along with the crowd and did what they did. He never really thought for himself. And at this moment, he had to. He can either, go back downstairs to his sofa and think of ways to get a brand new car bought from his rich father’s money. Or, he can open this door and find out what really happened here a few minutes ago. Luckily for him, this time again the decision was made for him.

The door suddenly opened, and out came the craziest looking woman he had ever seen. She was almost as tall as he was, but stick thin, had funny eye glasses on which made her eyes look huge. This wasn’t one bit funny because the look in those eyes right then was murderous and that scared the living crap out of him. This was the first time he had looked anyone so angry. He was always used to people being hunky dory around him, de had never known a lousy day in his life and if were there any such day his dad’s riches were always at his disposal to make him feel happy happy again. The girl stormed out of the doorway, right past him hardly noticing him or the slightly perturbed look on his face. A part of him was glad that she was gone, but a part of him was offended by the fact that she was the first female ever in his life who had totally ignored him so offhandedly. And the curiosity got the better of him and he followed this clearly insane character up the stairs to the floor above.

The Remembrance Quotient

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

- Chuck Palahniuk

I was in high school when I first read the Bible. There in the first few chapters, after creation, it was said that God hadn’t really put death into people’s lives as we see these days. Man could live on for centuries. There were people who were 300, 400 years old. Then when He noticed that the planet is getting too populated, as we procreated at a much faster rate than we died. He introduced death by illness, old age etc. This way the Bible said that, God could be closer to His favorite child sooner. That death was just another strange way of God showing His love for us. Pretty much the same was written in Gita, Koran and all the other religious books. That life is a test and that at death those who have lived righteously and are worthy will go to heaven. That life and death is just a cycle, an infinite loop that keeps repeating itself forever. Science while having no definition for life, it always mysteriously proved incapable of defining the good things, defines death as the state reached by a life form after its gradual but inevitable erosion of health and immunity. No matter how much they romanticize or rationalize death, I am still very much scared of it.

I am not really scared of the actual thing itself, not completely. But what it represents. It represents the end of the known and a sudden plunge into the unknown. There are many religious texts and romanticized fiction desperately trying to make sense of this unknown part of our existence. Because thats what it really is, part of our existence. It is very much a part of our time on this planet. We are born, and then we die. Its a rule. The trouble is that we have been programmed by our culture and civilization, the books and the media, to be mortally afraid of death. There is something really odd in the way that we are ready to accept everything that nature has given gratefully but when it comes to death we are so disgusted. We never actually are ready to accept it, even when deep in our hearts we know it cannot be put off; even we somehow expect to die sooner or later, when it actually happens we are shell shocked.

I read this article on the random Wiki News links the other day. A guy has a heart attack while on the metro. He dies right there, on his seat and stays unnoticed for two complete round trips. People, all around him, boarded and left the metro. Some sat on the seats beside him and didn’t even notice that they have a dead guy amongst them until some guy prodded him for getting that seat for his pregnant wife. Imagine the shock they and the rest of the cabin were in when the guy’s body slumped on the floor, eyes wide open and tongue out. The lady probably did not sleep well for many months to come. Probably still lies on the couch at her shrink’s office and recalls that event with a cold sweat running through her body. It was enough to give anybody the chills.

When I showed this article to the guys they all were fixated on the lack of humanity in the city dwellers, the lack of metro personnel to oversee the trains, one even started to comment on the effects of such an incident on the health of the baby in the woman’s womb. While they were busy with that, my mind was still stuck on the dead guy. He probably had a family, a bunch of office friends he went to the bars with, a whole lot of friends from school and college who were probably planning for a reunion, a wife who was back at home waiting for him to come home with the groceries from the supermarket. He had a life, which now has come abruptly to an end, in a busy, crowded, noisy metro train. And he lies there unnoticed, forgotten, neglected for nearly an hour!

I am, maybe more scared of the chance of being forgotten, unnoticed. People oddly have a grading scheme for this process, probably unconsciously built-in by their own mind to keep itself from breaking to pieces at every recurring loss of  another loved one in their lives. The grading scheme goes from the closer circle of spouse, children, parents, friends, their families, relatives etc. The circle moves outwards and the farther you are placed in somebody’s circle the more sooner you are likely to be forgotten by that person. And being forgotten might hurt anyone, dead or alive. People have a very short memory when it comes to remembering the ones that had passed away, especially the ones that you aren’t too close to. Soon you become that guy who died of leukemia. Somehow, sometimes they seem at loss to put a name to that guy. Then they soon forget that person completely except in family functions or college reunions when somebody who has no idea of his passing away comes up to you and asks whatever happened to that guy from Mumbai? This probably is for the best at times. It helps to ease the pain for the ones left behind and it helps them to move on with their lives.

The best thing we can do in our time here on this planet, is not earn a billion bucks and buy an exotic island, we don’t remember half of them after they are gone. What we really need to be doing is win a million hearts. Do things that might change people’s life for the better. People might forget the hand with the heavy wallet after sometime, but they will always remember the hand that helped them up. That’s any human being’s real wealth. Your remembrance quotient. Any guy that you have a warm memory of has more chances to be remembered than anyone else. To have that, you need to get to the inner circle of people’s life. Their lives must be incomplete without your presence in it. You must be there in each of their happier moments in life, more often as the reason for it. You should be so valuable to them, that they must always be compelled to keep you close to their hearts. And the people who reach there are never forgotten, they live on for all eternity. The rest most definitely will be. Out of sight, out of mind.

----

Please like my FB page to stay updated on upcoming posts:

https://www.facebook.com/An.Irony.Called.Life

The Invisible Man In The Sky

“Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should've spent that day on compassion.”

- Patch Adams (1998)

Show me one human being who doesn’t have problems in his life. Show me one person who doesn’t have issues. Show me one person who doesn’t have some skeleton in his closet that he/she trying desperately to forget. Everybody has their own reason to be pissed at the Creator for the way things are going on in their life and around them. We all have scores to settle with Him. We all have questions that we hope to ask Him when we reach the pearly gates up top. Why should we just blindly trust in Him when He was the same guy who created the all this pain and suffering in the first place?

Recently I had this pack of relatives visiting us, the whole array of quintessential variety of familial bliss. The whole house was filled with their bags and clothes and jabber. This guy became the VP of so-and-so company. This guy’s kid got employed in so-and-so MNC. This guy’s experimental procedure worked and his tumor got removed. This guy celebrated his 93 birthday on a beach. This guy died and left that woman a huge fortune. This guy divorced his wife for his neighbor. That family had to move to another city because of debt. That couple had to move to another state because of an alleged affair of the guy with the neighbor’s wife. That woman’s children are fighting for the family estate while she is on her death bed. And on and on went on their “this-just-in” news telecast of our huge far-reaching family tree for our own private pleasure - Familial bliss.

Then suddenly some genius brought up the topic of going Shirdi, to a temple there. I was not averse to that trip, I had gone there a couple time before and liked the place. I said I’d come along too, regretted it the very next instant. The whole woman folk of our household were the only ready to go the trip and they being true their species got into a navigational frenzy and put a gazillion places on the list that we could visit cause it comes “on our way”. Most of these places were temples which I thought went with our trip to the Shirdi. But I still till today don’t understand the reason of three malls and five shopping centers and God-only-knows-how-many roadside shops that we stopped that seem to pop up “on our way”.

I don’t say that I hate going to temples or anything. But too much of anything makes me weirdly grouchy. We visited nearly eight crowded, noisy temples til it was time for lunch. And that definitely put me on the edge. I started to pick up fights with my sister for the lamest of things (read shotgun). I even created a huge ruckus with one shopkeeper over the price of a leather wallet (I still think that Rs. 2500 is too much to pay for a wallet!). To add to the wonderful mood I was in, I was in a car with women all jabbering away about the most inane things, and on the wonderful roads that we have here in our country, filled with as many holes in it as people practically living on the roads. The crowds, the noise and the pollution, the jabbering and exhaustion, what more do need to get pissed off!

By six in the evening, I had somehow completed most of the temple-hopping for the day. We would start for Shirdi on the next day. Only the one last stop of the day was left, the grand finale of sorts, the ISKCON Radhe Krishna Temple. I was looking forward to this one the whole day long. Not cause I wanted to visit this place so bad, but cause I really wanted to get this day done with. Even the anger in me had succumbed to desperate tiredness in my bones now. When we finally reached the place, I could barely lift my behind from the bucket seat of the car. I dragged myself through the bag check, the metal detector frisking (all the more reason to pissed off at Kasab and his lot), took off my footwear, washed my hands and feet. And then I entered Heaven.

Or maybe it was just a good replica of it. The whole temple was made of white marble-like stone. The dome was gold, the pedestal was gold, the idols themselves of pure while were clad in silk and doused in gold jewels. The place was filled “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna” chants, that seemed to come from the walls (probably from the hidden speakers). In an odd state of mind I joined the line moving towards the idol. Followed it as if in a trance and did the whole ritual myself, the washing of the palms, collecting the diya, all the while moving towards the idol. When I reached the mob myself, it was surreal. The whole mob was moving as one with the chants, some chanting themselves. I reached the first pedestal, the first pair of idols, then the next, then the next. They were for some reason very distracting. When you see one, you have these feeling that its seeing you alone and none other from the mob around you (probably sounds nuts, but I swear that Radhaji’s smiled at me! ). Then the line kept moving forward and I was suddenly out of the mob. I put the diya in front of another idol and came onto the courtyard. That’s where I saw the most memorable part of the night, that lady in white.

She was a foreigner, probably 60. There were lots of foreigners here, and like most foreigners who come here, was wearing a sari. But she was wearing the plain white ones that widows wear, that’s what that caught my eye, and the expression in her face. She probably was a widow, probably still in mourning. Here, in India, to escape all the sad faces back home, trying to get back her lost self. In this temple to get some answers from God. She probably came here with a lot of anger, anguish and pain. She came here with a heart filled with sorrows that she could not say to people around for fear of making them sad too like her. But you could never say any of that by the expression on her face. It was content, peace maybe. She was smiling with tears in her eyes, the oddest of expressions on the human face, the rarest one. She did not have any more grudges with God. She got what she came for.

Maybe that’s just exactly why we have religions and beliefs. All this unflagging faith that we have in this invisible man in the sky, is probably to be just able to have this one person who you can trust to have all the answers for your questions. To be able to talk to, when there’s no one around that would understand the things that you want to say. To talk to when there aren’t enough words to express what you want to say. God is probably just another you, the better you, who knows you better than you know yourself. The one who can make sense of everything that’s happening or has happened to you and around you. He knows. And you live trusting that He knows, and find solace in that. And when you die you go to His open arms, greet Him like old friends..

----

Please like my FB page to stay updated on upcoming posts:

https://www.facebook.com/An.Irony.Called.Life