Left,Right and "Centre"

Change room

2009-04-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

The pair of them walk into the men's change room. The father looks about 33-35 years old and the daughter looks about six. They step into the change room dripping after their swim. The father helps his daughter out of her wet suits and wraps a towel around her. He then takes out another towel and strips off and starts wiping himself clean. He stands there wiping himself in front of his daughter who looks around nonchalantly. She is completely oblivious to her father standing nude in front of her. Another man walks in- he looks to be in his late-twenties. She allows her gaze to follow the new-comer who walks upto a bench, places his bag and strips down. She looks at his naked back with a smile- she continues to stare at his crack and lets out a little giggle only in time to look around to see if anyone noticed it.

Glimpses and glances

2008-10-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

Its the sudden fatigue that he notices first- there was no sign of it as he was flying down the hill but as he looks to traverse this 500m incline, he begins to slow down half-way. He slows down and starts walking after a while- he keeps telling himself that he just wants a glimpse. Its been so long since he visited, there was a time when he would go at least once a week. He walks by the rows of seedy stores and reaches a row of apartments and wonders if he is lost and just as he is thinking that, he sees it. The expanding blue fogged up in the distance. He involuntarily breaks into a smile. He can walk quicker now. He finds a spot next to a rock on the beach and looks at the surfers on their boards in the water riding the waves and wonders about why we want to conquer everything we come across- waves, the space, the people. He digs in the sand distracted only to find a 20cent coin. His fingers twirl the coin as he walks absent-mindedly away from the water.

The boy steps into the bus- he is about 5 foot 4 inches. His face is pockmarked with pimples that are typical of his age. A virgin moustache completes his adolescent look. The middle-aged couple sitting in front of the bus stare at his skull-cap. Its an appraising stare that seems to indicate their disapproval with his expression of faith. The boy looks around casually at the back of the bus only to drag his eyes towards the middle where four teenage girls sit. There is a casual locking of glances with one of the girls and he looks back in the front. Suddenly his phone rings and the ring-tone sounds like a group of protesters- the girls break out in giggles and he stiffens up knowing he has their attention. The couple stare at the scene with a bemused expression imagining their good-old days.

Reminiscing and strumming

2008-09-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

They are so glad he came to visit- it took him 14 hours to get there to see them and he lies in bed exhausted. He wakes up to a warm heated floor with the tea boiling away and breakfast laid out. He tucks in with gusto while discussing everything from the diving share markets to news from back home. They look the same from what he remembers from last time- he has the same protruding stomach, sunken eyes and a hope of what lies ahead. Its good to eat home-cooked food again and be the kid again. They decide to go out for dinner and he watches his uncle pull out the car to clean it. As he starts to clean the car, his uncle starts talking about the life he built in a country town, about leaving his country and the road ahead. After a while it seems like his uncle stops talking to him and is actually carrying on a conversation with himself. He seems to be convincing himself of the decisions taken and of the sacrifices made. He suddenly stops and looks at the line of same-looking houses around him and carries on.

He has got a song on his head- it’s the one where the hat-clad male singer is on a jaunt and lazily strums away while the rest of the world swims by in a lazy stupor. He looks at the video and smiles to himself while peeling away at the mandarin. He gets his running gear and steps out into a sunny spring morning- he passes by the Saturday markets and backtracks suddenly to find an exhibition of photographs. He tells himself he will come and take a look at it after his run. He walks by the Army base and peers inside curiously to look at the sign Safe Base Bravo and wonders about the kind of life the defence personnel lead. No one in his family has ever served and he has always been curious about what it would be like. He walks by the liquor shop called “Lick-her” and shakes his head only to come across another store called “Shag” with an assortment of bawdy clothing. Wonders about the connection and finds none. The song is still in his head and he smiles and looks up to find a man dressed in a hat walking in the opposite direction who reaches out, pats him and walk by.

Update: Just found the song playing in my head- here it is

21 kms- 131 minutes

2008-05-25T02:14:00.001-07:00

Its a cold morning. He can hear the howling of the wind through the bathroom windows. He stands looking at himself in the mirror and notices the first wisps of white in his mop of hair. He grins toothily and completes his ablutions. He puts on his singlet and tapes his number to his singlet. Suddenly he realises that it might be hard to put the timing chip on his shoelaces. He struggles with it a bit before managing to fix it to his shoe. He puts on his hooded sweatshirt and heads out. Its dark and yet there is a sharpness in the air that instantly wakes him up. Its like a blast of cold water. The bus-ride to the starting point is uneventful. By 7:15am, there are about 6000 runners lined up. He looks around to see people of different shapes, sizes and fitness levels and realises how unprepared he is. He hopes he doesn't injure himself over the 21.1 km distance and can complete the race.

7:30 am and the race kicks off. He knows he is running faster than he should be and yet the momentum of the runners carries him for the first 10 kms which he completes in 58 minutes. He passes by the Harbour bridge and looks at the Sydney Theatre Company and momentarily thinks of a past life. The sun is just coming up over the Sydney harbour and he knows that the first lap will be the easy one. Lap one done he walks for a couple of minutes before kicking into the next 10kms. Its at the 15km mark that the first twinge sets in. His knees have never known this kind of distance. He asks himself why 7000 completely sane people decide to get up on a cold Sunday morning and decide to run 21 kms. Its the last 3 kms and he is struggling and suddenly its the last stretch. Its amazing what cheering people on the sidelines of the road do to a sore knee and ankles. He sprints towards the end and finishes in 131 minutes.

He stands there in pain and exhaustion- slightly disappointed that he did not achieve the time he had hoped for and yet ecstatic that he had stepped up a notch in his attempt at long-distance running. His legs are screaming and his thighs are chaffed and yet he runs his fingers along the medal feeling lighter and happier. He realises the answer to his question of why 7000 people would want to do this- fighting an opponent is easy as is done in other sports however running has probably more fighting oneself than any other sport. Its that battle that he wants to win and today- he did!

What a day!

2008-03-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

The elderly gentleman is about 70 years old. He is dressed in a white T-shirt and white shorts with a white hat. A pair of glasses complete the picture for Mr. A. He lumbers around on the tennis court as he plays Mixed doubles with his daughter. The game over they walk out having been trounced 6-0 by the opposite side. He is not expecting too much and is out to have an outing on a beautiful sunny day. He looks onto the courts and sighs looking at some of the younger players hitting winners and coming up with some brilliant volleys. He has the next game with the latest youngster on the team. They introduce themselves to each other- their backgrounds are vastly diverse as they head onto the court.

Their opponents are a couple of 20 year-olds. The game starts and its a game of one set. In no time, Mr. A and the newbie find themselves down 4-0. Mr. A thinks its going to be like just another game of all the games he has been a part of. He moves slowly across the court and is now unable to cover his side of the court. The fifth game starts and the newbie serves at deuce and the deuce goes on to 9-8 before the he closes it out with an ace. They exchange a pleasantry and suddenly there is a different dynamic on the court. They win the next two games and suddenly they find themselves at 4-4. They look at each other with incredulity which defines the situation. Suddenly its like Mr. A feeds off the newbie's energy and keeps the ball in play. The newbie covers the courts from length-to-length protecting Mr. A's domain and eventually they are up 5-4 and looking to close the set out.

Their opponents are stunned by the turn the game takes and are now struggling to stay alive. The opponent commits a double-fault and suddenly its over. They win 6 games in a row and there is a child-like joy in the two. They shake hands and suddenly Mr. A has a smile that stretches a mile. The newbie walks out amazed at what happens when you refuse to give up.

Images from Vietnam

2007-12-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

The boat ride

I like the name Saigon even though the city has been renamed to Ho Chi Minh City. Its like with Ho Chi Minh City some of the romanticism and mysticism of the city is lost. So all further references to the city will be Saigon. The traffic here needs to be seen to be believed. For a long time, I thought that the order in chaos concept was an Indian specialty until I came to Saigon. For a city of 8 million people, there are 3 million two-wheelers. We set off for a dinner-cum-boat cruise on the Saigon river. We are shown to our tables by waiters dressed in their navy best. We settle down and place our orders.

The boat sets off at 8:30pm for the cruise and we look around to see a scraggy coastline with cranes and loading docks. We look up to see a smog filled sky and one would be hard-pressed to find a starry sky. Suddenly there is an unusually loud rendition of Jingle bells which leaves half the crowd clapping and singing along with the other half bored out of their skins. On completion, they hurriedly clear the stage and a woman steps up. Her wardrobe did not leave too much to the imagination although I did think she was unusually well-endowed before my friend pointed out that they did not look real. I shrugged my shoulders thinking they look real enough to me and suddenly the sound-track of the first song started and I jumped out of my skin. All of a sudden, in Saigon, on a river boat cruise, to listen to the title song of Har dil jo pyaar karega. We were all thrown violently and burst out laughing. It was almost shocking to hear a bollywood song on a boat in Vietnam with an exotic dancer gyrating and thrusting to it. Life I tell you!

The bawdy cabbie

We hail the first cab we see at Tan Son Nhat International airport. We ask the cab driver as to how much will it cost us to Elios Hotel and he says- "Each person USD 3". We tell him that that is expensive and he conjures up a fake solemn face and says he is very poor and bursts into a chuckle. We decide on a price and set out for the hotel. He seems to be in an unusually chirpy mood and asks me if I am there on my honeymoon. I look at my traveling companions behind me and say sarcastically that yes I am on my honeymoon with two other women and as to how tiring this trip is going to be. He retorts as to how lucky I am and the ladies behind roll their eyes with a "You wish" expression. I decide to put a stop to this line of discussion when we start discussing basic Vietnamese words and I ask him as to what is it for I want to buy and he translates it into "I want to buy a woman" and guffaws loudly. It seems like a business model he has executed before and was hoping to replicate. All throught the trip references of buying and costs involved tapered into conversations that ended in bed. He points to a small girl and grins toothily saying "Poor people". Feels a little weird for 3 Indians to be shown poverty like it is some sort of novelty. We reach the hotel and he says to me that he might be interested in some 4-way action and I say thanks for the ride and Tam-be-eet!

Tam-be-eet- Vietnamese for Goodbye!

Time to take off

2007-12-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

I am off on my first substantial jaunt tomorrow. Over the next 17 days, I will be going to

Singapore -> Ho Chi Minh City -> Hanoi -> Singapore -> Chennai -> Singapore -> Sydney

Lets hope this is the start of many more such journeys. Next post about the travel!

Man!!

2007-12-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

He walks down the road. There are about 6-7 of them walking in his direction. He sees them walk with a swagger that is characteristic of their age these days. They harass another couple in front of him and startle them. He reaches them with an air of nonchalance and one of them makes a gesture to startle him. He looks at him as if he was observing an animal at the zoo- with a curiosity and steady gaze. He continues walking when they taunt him saying-"what you looking at?" He does not deem to respond to the taunts of a bunch of 15-17 year olds however he is also mindful of the fact that he is heavily outnumbered. So he continues walking.

One of the boys follows him with his football. He keeps walking with a quickening of his pulse, he wants to turn around and take the punk out but he knows that if he went down, with 6-7 of them it would be ugly. So it made sense to avoid this and suddenly he sees the foot ball fly by a few inches from him. It falls down at his feet. He stops and looks at the ball and then looks up to face the boy. In a different life, he would have loved to get into a real fight but this was not going to go that way. The boy picks the ball up, he gives the boy a look-over and turns around and walks. The boy follows him for a while before turning around and joins his group.

He feels a despairing fatigue come over him. There is a helpless feeling and yet it also feels so good to have that violent feeling. Now if only he could vent it!

Simple pleasures

2007-08-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

She climbs out of bed. Its 7 in the morning. She looks at her husband sleeping peacefully. She tells herself that they should reduce their irritable outbursts at each other, especially after last night's surprise. She finishes her ablutions and is heading downstairs when she stops. She sees his room door closed. She hesitates and then walks upto the door. She opens it carefully to avoid waking him up. She seems him lying there, almost cherubic in appearance and she chuckles to herself wondering what a contrast it is to his normal rebel like disposition. She pulls the chair, sits down and swings her legs on the bed. He is back on a surprise visit just for her birthday. She looks at him and tries to understand the machinations that made him tick. She stares at him and feels fuller and more complete than she had felt in years, just seeing her son lie there. She gets up, ruffles his hair and steps out, with a faint smile.

He wakes up. Its such a great feeling to be back home. He missed his room and opens the bay window looking out from his room. He looks at his books and feels a sudden affinity towards them. He goes down and walks upto the steps leading to the garden. He steps on the top marble step and a faint breeze brushes past him. The sun blazes down on the garden. The heat is increasing with a steady regularity but he does not feel it. He gets up quite pleased with himself and goes into the kitchen. The tea is steaming and the first set of cookies are brought out. He looks at her. She looks like she can do with some rest. The dark circles under her eyes seem to belie the twinkle in them. He sits up on the granite platform and looks at her. She stands there with her back towards him and he slowly creeps up on her and blows lightly on her neck and she freaks out.

She and He...

2007-08-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

She lies there silent. He can hear the heavy breathing of her heart through her deep sighs. He tries to imagine her face in the dark and can see the faint outline of her black hair which is about shoulder length. He leans forward and kisses her again. She seems surprised but manages to kiss back with a strange ferocity. She is surprised by this sudden bolt of energy that causes her to respond with such intensity. She pulls herself back. He looks at her and smiles inwardly.There is a sense of confusion within her. Its almost as if she has stepped out of her body and is observing herself in a completely new light. She is not sure if she likes what she is seeing but for some reason the wrong does not feel so wrong. What was happening to her. She consoles herself by saying that its probably a result of a deep-rooted desire that has suddenly attained fulfillment and yet there still seems to be a strange sense of loss within her- like she has just lost a part of her that seems to have mutated into something she never knew.

He looks back at his first year of moving to this country. The money has run out in three weeks time. He looks at the account slip and wonders that he has just started university, has a sizable bank loan back home and is in a country where he knows no one. It does not help that his race and colour causes more hurdles than anything else, everywhere he goes. His first job involves unloading 40 kg beef slices. For a vegetarian whose religion venerates the cow, he is covered with meat chunks and traces of blood all over. He trudges back home despondent and with an almost punctured soul. He goes back the next day and the day after that. In no time, its six months at the job. He is ready to move on and finds a job as a pizza guy. Then one job to another over a period of two years and here he is today. He looks back and remembers the times he was abused, discriminated against and yet none of these made him feel as bad as he felt when so often he was almost considered invisible. It was like people around him failed to acknowledge his existence. Almost as if he was never there.

Why? How? Damn!

2007-06-15T23:22:00.000-07:00

She walks in from the reception towards the waiting room. There is a man seated there. They make eye contact and acknowledge each other's presence with a nod of the head. She sits and looks around. There are leaflets all over the waiting room- "Avoid domestic violence", "Use condoms", "Get yourself tested for STI's today". She sits and wonders how she got here. Happily married at 27 to who she thought was the right guy, two kids and 8 years later, going through a divorce. She snaps out of her reverie to look at the Mx magazine with the subject being men on men and she consoles herself by looking at some gorgeous gay men. She looks at some pictures and stares up at the ceiling. How did this happen? How did she get here? One night of casual sex (as great as it was) and here she sat wondering what would happen next. She was scared- what with the legal battles looming up for the house and the kids, this was the last thing she wanted to worry about. Funny how life ran away from 21 and here she was at 35 with not much to show for all these years. A pap test a few minutes away and if her husband found out about her visit to the clinic, god knows what legal spin he will put on that. She sits there crossing her legs nervously and pulls her jackets closer as the questions and fears in her head cause a sudden chill within her.

Sketches revisited

2007-04-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

He sits at the table and looks at the food on his plate. He looks up at the people around the table and breaks into a smile. They ask him as to why he is smiling but he is not able to come up with an answer. The family he always tried so hard to run away from was sitting around the table, eating good food, with all the family dynamics flowing just under the surface and yet an appearance of normalcy hung around the table. Every conversation that takes place- between the son and the mother, the father and son and the grandfather and the grandson seems to be almost normal and yet each of those conversations seems to be laced with an almost tangible tension that you can reach out and slice through. All in a normal happy family.

He runs through the country-side. Its not the typical countryside- the one that makes you conjure up images of breathtaking views and smell the fresh flowers. Instead its lined with construction sites, with big farms that don't have a patch of grass and dogs that bark their heads off as they seen him running. Cars rushing by the highways at 110 km/hr wondering who this weirdo is to run by the highways with the night falling and miles of countryside around and nowhere really to go and yet he finds a kind of solace in this running by paths he has not taken before. Suddenly he stops, looks around and starts to hum- "Chod aaye hum woh galiyaan"

Sail, drink and eat

2007-03-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

There is a strange sense of motion while sailing on a beautiful summer evening with the sun on you, a brisk breeze that keeps changing its direction at whim because of the geographical contours of the surroundings and on a 6 foot boat with people you have met for the first time. Suddenly the skipper shouts alright we are tacking in 3...2...1...and the people start working the ropes winding it around and then winching it to get the head sail properly positioned. It takes some effort especially when the strong wind keels the boat almost at a 40 degree angle and you need to winch with all your strength to keep the boat going. You take a breather only to hear the skipper call out in 5 minutes that we are getting ready for another tack and it is time to unwind the rope on your end. You can see both, the abstract and the logic if you look around and consider the sailing of the boat. Its almost like a meeting point of the believer and the infidel.

Its an isolated telephone booth. There is a sharp chill in the air as he enters the telephone booth. The phone rings and gayathri mantra blares out of the other line. He chuckles to himself and wonders again what made his dad put that as the dial tone. His mother answers the phone and as they are talking he cannot help but wonder sometimes at the inanities his mother spouts so often. As he listens, he hears a loud set of voices and sees a group of 4 girls walking down the road noisily towards the telephone booth. They are heavily intoxicated and suddenly he sees them all around the telephone booth starting to bang against the glass for no particular reason. They start beating against the glass in a rhythm and he looks at them with an almost bored look. One of the girls screams "Gaawwd!! I am so f$#%ing horny" and they burst into a cackle of laughter, split up and walk away.

What is it about pleasant surprises? They are like the sudden cool breeze on a hot and humid day. He gets up one morning and leaves for work just as everyday. The train journey is uneventful, he gets into work and wishes his colleagues the morning pleasantries and suddenly finds himself at his desk with an aluminum foil with a note by its side. He picks the note up and reads it- "Something for you to eat!!" He opens the foil to find a paratha in it. He looks at it, walks upto her desk and bursts out laughing.

One morning...

2007-03-03T04:34:00.000-08:00

Its an unusually warm day. He has been up late the previous night watching a murder thriller but manages to drag himself out of bed and makes his way to the tennis courts. As the sun beats down on the players, he feels good to be able to get back to playing tennis after a 4 week hiatus caused by an injury. He finishes his coaching session and starts to walk back home. About 300 metres in his journey and he hears someone call him. He turns around to see an old man in his fifties hailing him 'good morning' and strikes a conversation with him. The old man asks him if he works here and he replies in the affirmative. Then the old man asks him if he is looking for an apartment as he has a place to let and he replies in the negative saying that if someone he knows wants it, he would direct him to the old man. The old man then asks him if he is Indian and when he says yes, the old man says Indian boys are very nice. They continue walking. The old man then asks him if he stays with someone and he says that he stays alone and the old man says that he stays alone too.

The old man suddenly stops and asks him if he wanted to go to his place and have a drink with him with a smile on his face bordering on the leering. The young man is taken aback for a moment because the old man's face has suddenly changed into something he had not seen before, he politely declines and walks away.

Saturday mornings...

2007-02-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

A cloudy Saturday morning, the sun peeking out from time-to-time, people getting their groceries done, the momentum of walking down a slope towards the jogging trail, the kid brother at a local store holding his older sister from behind egging her to carry him around, the older sister looks up sheepishly at passers-by, the first stretch of the legs as the jog starts, the river water streaming by next to the jogging track, the couple watching their dogs play around in the water, the fact that one can hear the thudding of ones footsteps in the constant beating of the heart, the little kid staring at you as you jog by wondering what's up with him, the ritualistic game of kiddies Saturday cricket and the amazing dive at short cover to dismiss the batsman, the end of the run, the speed with which then blood rushes to the brain as one bends over to relax, the sun, the shade and the slightly disorienting feeling as it feels like the the world is spinning a little faster than it should causing us to lose our balance by just a bit.

Wrong turn...

2007-01-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

Its a funny thing about wrong turns or rather unexpected turns taken on a whim which defy all reasons except that there is just a strange inclination to take one path against another. It has no rhyme or reason and holds itself to no particular logical explanation and yet just leads you down a path never taken before and the funniest bit is that it so often leads to such unexpected pleasures that it leaves you in an awe that what if I had not made that turn.

He took one such turn today and reached the beginning of a huge sports ground. He walked through it urged by a strange curiosity and on the other side found some people sitting alongside a slope. As he walked closer he smelt it. Was it what he thought it was? He walked over to see a river meandering its way through. He continued walking along the river bank and discovered a bike path. A bike path surrounded with lush vegetation and he continued walking to come to a clearing which would have made the perfect spot for a romantic dinner. As he wistfully looked at the clearing and the water, wondering who he would like to share this latest discovery of his with, he realized maybe this was just a discovery he would like to keep for himself. Like a patented discovery, he sat there and marveled in the serenity of the surroundings and just felt...lucky!!!

Movie time

2006-12-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

Saturday night was time for a movie- so I picked up Good night and good luck! Good movie rather short I must say but then its one of those movies of the perfect length which just left me asking for a little more. It’s about a team of reporters at CBS which decides to take up cudgels against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his tactics at maligning anyone he wanted to, a communist.

Completely enjoyed the movie and the concepts of freedom it discusses. Its set in the time when the reign of fear launched by McCarthy was at its peak. Senator McCarthy had made an accusation that 200 card carrying communists had infiltrated the US government and were working towards destabilising the country and its value system. He had been appointed to a committee that was in charge of identifying these communists and exposing them. In the process of doing so, he destroyed the lives of many loyal American citizens by false accusations and relying on hearsay and rumour. Most people were too wary to voice dissent against his ways lest they be denounced communists too.

Ed Murrow at the CBS along with his team of journalists decided that it was time to call a spade a spade and went about systematically informing the American citizens about the deviousness of the ways employed by the Senator from Wisconsin. The highlight of the movie is the broadcast by Ed Murrow where he launches a frontal attack on the Senator. He talks about a lot of things- the Senator’s tendency to terrorize, threaten, cajole and coerce people. He talks about the need to consider our freedom as a responsibility and to voice our opinions no matter which side of the spectrum they fall upon. What I find particularly interesting is how most of us take our freedoms such as the right to express opinions and to exercise our options, complacently. Yet if we had ever had this freedom threatened that is when we would recognize and acknowledge its importance. It’s no wonder that people who have lived behind the Iron curtain consider freedom that the western world sometimes so easily refers to, as hallowed.

In the end in response to a quote from Shakespeare by the Senator, Ed Murrow quotes Cassius- “The funny thing is Brutus, the fault lies not with our stars but within ourselves.”

Good night and good luck!

Coincidences

2006-12-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

An interesting set of coincidences- 19th December I rent a movie called Glory Road at the nearby video store. The movie is about a high school basketball coach, Don Haskins who scouts around the country for the best college basketball team and comes up with a team of 7 black players. This during the mid 60's when desegregation seemed like a punishment for the white folks and bussing was a demeaning exercise as far as these folks were concerned. It was during this time that Don Haskins put together a team of such prodigious black players at Texas Western College that they swept the NCAA championship that year. However the road to the championship was one filled with racial slurs, attacks and insults. But Don Haskins stood by them and told them to forget everything else and just go out there to play basketball, that's all. Interesting movie but horribly made, there were too many cliched performances and a lot of the material could have been dealth with much better.

20th December 2006- I am on my way home and take a bus at Newtown station. As I board the bus there is a Chinese man in front of me and when he tries to sit next to an Australian middle-aged man, the Aussie man vociferously protests and tells him to get lost and sit somewhere else and to not lay his coloured hands on him. He had finished saying that when I stepped onto the bus and suddenly everyone in the bus fell silent in anticipation of what would happen next. I just grabbed a seat elsewhere and got to reading my book. At the next stop the Aussie gentleman was getting off and as he stepped out, a black woman stepped upto him and said-"You are disgusting" for which he turned back stepped onto the bus and screamed-"You all get out of my country" to which my neighbour showed him his middle finger.

As the bus left, it felt funny to think about how much the times have changed and yet there are things that happen which make you wonder, have they really changed so much. The bus was almost full and there was hardly any protest from anybody else. It could be apathy or just plain indifference and yet weren't these that caused all the problems in the first place. It felt like a disconnect of sorts and I walked back home thinking - so this is what it feels like. Hmm...

Funny really...

2006-12-19T23:32:00.000-08:00

Its funny how it happens to him. Almost always catches him off-guard and more often than not on a metro underground station. Life today alternates between work and home and dinner and a movie or a book and work and weekend and cleaning and laundry and cooking and calling home but there he is standing at the station and suddenly someone passes by and the faintest whiff of a perfume brings back a whole life that's lost. Brings back all her peculiarities, the strange habits that can take a life time to identify and the moments of absolute joy. Yet for some reason he feels no pain, it just seems like a rush of images zipping by, like one of those collages of images that an actor sees just before he dies, like the blitz of activity that National Geographic shows when it covers Bombay.

Funny really...

More musings...

2006-11-21T01:41:00.000-08:00

Some things that I noticed lately...

1. Its a crazy phenomenon I noticed in Melbourne- on a normal day when you are walking around in the sun, you notice that after a while the sun starts burning you and so you rush for some shade and you notice that as you sit in the shade, the wind makes you really cold so you really do not know where on earth to go...the shade...the sun...hell...heaven...and you are like chuck it...let's just get home.

2. I love taking the metro underground rails and my favorite part of taking this train is just 1.5 minutes before the train pulls in- if you have ever taken one, you would have noticed that just around the time I mention there is this cool breeze that starts blowing. For all those who have a condescending look on your face, I know it is just the train compressing the air as a result of which the temperature reduces and the air gets pushed in but it still makes me smile. No idea why!

3. I come back home and get into the bathroom to freshen up and there I am standing taking a leak when suddenly for some reason a year 9 biology question pops up in my head- how does urinating help the body? and I remember quite distinctly that the teacher gave us about six- seven reasons and yet the only one I remember is that urinating helps to regulate body temperature. So why do I remember only this one and none of the others. Why does my mind want to connect urinating to body temperature? Is it the simple analogy of water putting out fire? Why?

Onwards to Sydney...

2006-11-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Arrived in Melbourne- 9th October 2006

Moving to Sydney- 19th November 2006

My learnings-

1. There is no such thing as a given- when you start thinking that, that is when you get a reality check.

2. Nothing and nothing is as bad as it seems.

3. Rediscovery of oneself is what living is all about- to continually push those limits.

4. I can't act to save my life.

5. Mum and dad are the best friends I have.

Off to Sydney then...Next post from the Darling Harbour

Stage 1

2006-10-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

Falling asleep is easy, however its the middle of the night when he goes from the alpha to the beta stages of sleep, where he wakes up for a bit, that is the most difficult part to deal with. There takes place a churning of such proportions that leaves him gasping on that cold bed of his by the window. Its almost as if his insides have been taken out and there is just this cold wind blowing within which causes an uncontrollable shiver. It takes all his will to stop it and he forces himself to look outside the window and wonder at the city sprawled out in front of him. Yes he did make mistakes and yes he was difficult but yes he did offer the olive branch time-and-again and yet somehow the question that continues to torment him starts its taandav again- will things ever be the same again? He has been reading lately in a novel where the author says that things are never as bad as they seem and yet for some reason based on all the conversations they have had, he has a bad feeling about this one. He has always backed his gut and this time it tells him that there are still some answers missing which brings on the next wave of churning. So he does the only thing possible in these circumstances- he curls himself up trying his hardest to shut those thoughts within him hoping that they would get lost somewhere inside his abyss of a mind. But they just keep coming back again and again and again.

Week 2 - Job...job...job...

2006-10-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

I have never consciously gone about looking for a job however the last week has been one of continuous applications. In some ways, I guess I just never had to. First job in college almost came on a platter with me being completely unprepared for an interview as I had gone to college that day in my floaters. I stayed with my first job for 2 years and the second job that I got in India also did not require much except for an application on monster.com with a call from the consultant, a first round of interview at the company's location and the next two telephonic interview rounds and I had my next job. But I eventually gave that up and here I am in Melbourne looking for my first job ever online, in the newspapers, on posters and anywhere else I can find any.

I start my first casual job here on Monday where I will be selling some stuff to small businesses. Its what we call in India, derogatorily, a salesman's job and what they call euphemistically here, an Independent Contractor. Its a tough job, out in the sun all day, knocking on people's doors and eventually knowing that if I don't sell I do not get paid. Why am I doing this? I don't really know actually. While trying to decide if I wanted to do this, it seemed like I have already changed so much about my life so lets just go ahead and do something I have never done before along with looking for other better permanent positions. So Monday will find me all dressed up nattily with a suit and tie, knocking on people's doors and trying to make sales, sales and more sales.

Week one in Melbourne

2006-10-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

Day 6 completed in Melbourne. I have been swamped with questions about how I am doing and for some reason I have been strangely ambivalent about it. Its a beautiful city from both a purist and a yupee's point of view. If the State Victoria Library and the National Gallery of Victoria will cause a purist immense satisfaction, Chappel street and Lygon Street are the yuppies' manna. I think I have been caught somewhere between this. As I took a half hour walk from St. Kilda Road to my apartment on Swanston street, the weather turned unexpectedly cold and yet the biting wind did wonders to my spirits. Reached the bridge across the Yarra river to find drunk 18 years olds sliding along an architectural sculpture placed on the side. It seemed like the entire Swanston street was drunk and after a while I think even I reveled in their drunken state. It was infectious of sorts.

So there I am huffing and puffing on my way up Swanston and four drunk women are walking in my direction. Suddenly one of them takes a scarf and the other one holds it across and I am supposed to walk my way below it the way belly dancers do. Amusing they found it, only if they knew about my hernia.

I am home now; not knowing what tomorrow will bring and not sure if I want to think of today. So I am going to do the best thing possible in these circumstances. Sleep!

Time to go...

2006-10-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

How does one pack away 23 years of possessions into two or three suitcases with a Damocles sword of 57kg hanging above? I sift through the old letters exchanged with school-mates who I now stay in touch with on Orkut and marvel at the effort we actually put in to stay a part of each other's lives. I come across a letter I once wrote to Bill Clinton, filled with idealistic fervor and I read it now and laugh at myself and yet I can't get myself to throw it away. I look at all the old photographs, me with my virgin mustache, old friends, women I once desired, family and so much more.How does one decide between a Calvin and a Rushdie- I do not want to leave either behind. Infact I do not want to leave any of my books behind because there is a story behind each one- whether it is the Art of Innovation which Sampy asked us to read which made us realise the tremendous potential of design or whether it is the Collected Plays of Neil Simon which will remind me forever of my time at evam. But I know as I caress them one last time, that they will have to be left behind.I know I will miss my king-sized bathroom and the times I have spent ruminating there. I pull out a dusty and worn away book which I recognize to be my choir book in school and tell myself that this I will take with me.

All these are just the material possessions I will miss. I do not want to get started with the people.How does one pack away 23 years of possessions into two or three suitcases? How?

Lage Raho...(Carry on...!!!)

2006-09-06T04:23:00.000-07:00

Aao bacho tumhe dikaaye jhaanki Hindustan ki
Is mitti se tilak karo yeh dharti hain balidaan ki
Vande Matarammmm...vande mataram

With an added stanza on the Mahatama to this song, the credits began to roll. Lage raho Munnabhai is not a ground-breaking movie nor is there any novelty in the philosophy that it advocates but there is a freshness in the way the movie-makers have gone about doing this. With shortening attention spans of most people today, the best way to sell a weighty idea such as non-violence and non-cooperation was Lage raho. Mr. Hirani has got it spot on with the dialogues inspite of the anachronistic Gandhi and the more-or-less-same Sanju baba. Vidya Balan is like the sea breeze(in a nice way I mean), Mr. Boman Irani great fun to watch and personally circuit a.k.a Mr. Arshad Warsi deserves a lot more mention than is actually made.

All in all a fun movie to watch and I believe it gives just a little something for everyone to take back home from it. I did.

Breaking News: Abhishek Bachan says that he does not believe in "guest" appearances and every role plays its part in the movie even if it just says "boo". Ok I made up that boo bit but I agree Mr. Bachan Jr, completely agree.

Latest reads...

2006-09-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

Have been reading with a vengeance lately compared to my past pattern and a glimpse of the stuff I have finished-

Midnight All Day- Hanif Kureishi

A collection of short stories mostly touching upon issues of infidelity and distressed marriages. Nice in its portrayals but the endings were abrupt and left a lot to be desired.

Neil Simon Comedies

His work of broadway comedies is timesless stuff. Read some of his other plays like "The last of the Red- Hot Lovers" and "Plaza Suite". Inspite of his outrightly funny lines, Neil Simon has a way of sustaining the undertones of the required mood on all occasions.

Family Matters- Rohinton Mistry

After reading his book, "A Fine Balance" this was a book I was looking forward to read. Its simplistic in its portrayal of a Parsi family and the struggles of the elderly Nariman Vakeel and his struggle with Parkisons disease. The best part about the book was his younger grandson Jehangir and the places where Jehangir became the narrator. It is interesting to see how hate can be cultivated and its embers stoked for years to keep its fire burning in the end destroying themselves.

Now reading, President Nixon: Alone in the White House - Richard Reeves

I am half-way through the 600 page book and am looking forward to get done with it by the end of the week. Two reviews of the book available on the link provided, which more or less describes what its all about.

Next on hand, Love in the Time of Cholera and need to pick up One Hundred Years of Solitude where I left off.

The time that was...

2006-08-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

Mr. C is 84 years old. His is a life that has been lived the text-book middle class way in the sense that he was a life-time government servant, brought up four sons, got them married to nice homely girls, who further went on to bear him 10 grandchildren in all. But its the younger years that he craves for today. He was a man of such temper as is the wont of most marwari young men and it was customary for him to scream his head off at his wife for her slightest infraction. He worked hard, worked honestly and brought up four boisterous young men. Two of his eldest sons wanted to join the army and airforce respectively but their mother who for all the screaming and shouting that she endured was always a master tactician. She persuaded the sons to go to different parts of the country inorder to apprentice under other businessmen hoping that this would help them sharpen their own. This is exactly what happened and today Mr. C's two sons have a business enterprise with a turnover of a crore per annum and his other son is a Chartered Accountant of very high repute. Yet he seems lost today more than anything else.

It is almost as if time moved on and he remained back there. Everything seems alien to him- the mobile phones, computers, fast cars and most of all, this lonliness of his. There are times when he is sitting in a gathering of his grandchildren and during discussions he drifts off without a warning until he is suddenly jolted back into the proceedings by someone. He sits for hours looking into nothingness and his thoughts keep ranging across the time gone by. The happiness at the oldest son's birth, his grief when his only daughter died a premature death at the age of 5, the pleasurable times at his oldest grand-daughter's wedding and the subsequent heart-wrenching sorrow because of the death of his second son in a gruesome car accident. This and many other images continue to flash in his head and he feels like a man lost in a time warp of his own creation. His wife, Mrs. B on the other hand has been a survivor. A matriarch to the fullest, she brought up her kids with a discipline that would make a drill sergeant at West Point proud. She has not changed in the least. She still gives orders and expects them to be obeyed and the funny thing is they get obeyed. Having shared all of her husband's tribulations strengthend her while they drained Mr. C. So it is she who runs his days, asking him to take his medicines, complete his chores and eventually rest and Mr. C, meekly goes about doing all this with a submission that is an antithesis to his earlier days.

Today Mr. C has the option to stay with one of his sons and spend his time leisurely and yet the only thing on his mind is that I need to get back to Rajasthan so I can get my pension renewed. A pension of Rs. 7000-8000. His sons ask him not to worry about it but its the hugely self-respecting side of him that appeals to them that he needs to get his pension renewed as he does not want to ask anyone for money nor be a burden on anybody. They(his sons) don't understand. He will not back off. Mrs. B does not want to go until he is completely recovered(from his mild paralytic attack and extreme tooth pain and high sugar) Mr. C and Mrs. B have both been through the same storms and yet today its Mrs. B who is the captain of the ship while Mr. C has been relegated to the position of a deck-hand. Its strange to see two people who went through so much together today turned out so differently. There he stands again Mr. C, next to the window in his white vest and white pajamas, his white hair shining, looking into nothingness, probably reminiscing about the time that was.

Change reloaded...

2006-08-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

Its been 8 months since I have been in Bombay and its again time for me to start packing my bags to move to a new place to start afresh. Of all the things that Bombay has to offer the millions of migrants that throng the city, my favorite is the boat ride at the Gateway. So here I was on a Saturday evening at the gateway. The sea was choppy and the sky studded with ominous greying clouds, courtesy Bombay's 4 month monsoon. They charge Rs. 50 for the boat ride and another Rs. 5 if you want to go to the upper deck(ridiculous I tell you!!) Nevertheless I pay up and settle myself close to the bow of the boat. Its a fairly sturdy boat and once I have parked myself, I scan my co-passengers. Families, couples, friends and me. The boat pulls away and we set out at a speed of 2-3 knots. The pace is unhurried and I am in no hurry to get back on land. The silent bobbing lulls one into a lazy stupor as you watch the land slip away. There is nothing particularly spectacular about the coastline but the very fact that you can see it in its entirety makes you watch it for a little longer. I turn my head now towards the open sea and am met with the start of another drizzle, this time slightly stronger. So I pull out my one faithful companion, my umbrella and huddle up with my umbrella as my sheshnaag. I think about what happens if the boat sinks now, I am sure I can save myself but what would I want to save first in my bag. My passport, money, papers...and I realise nothing.

Going back seems scary because of the way life is going to change when I get back. So I sit hoping that this tryst with the sea gets elongated and suddenly I feel the boat turning back towards land and this time we are going across the direction of the waves and the boat starts to ride crests and falls into troughs periodically. As we move closer to land, its the sea that tells me that its unchanging on the surface and yet continuously changing within. That change will have to be dealt with and that life will continue to twist and turn and change. I touch solid ground, reach Churchgate station, sit in the train and hmm...the crowds, the anonymity and the change again.

Change...

2006-08-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

Then...

and then...

and now...

Hmm...times they are a changing... but I am loving it.

Weird

2006-07-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

I take a train from Vashi station to Wadala. I am dressed in complete rain gear. As I look around for a seat, I find one in the adjoining compartment and I hurry to take the seat. Unknowingly, I sit on the hand of the man who is sitting next to me. He is a middle-aged man who seems to looks a lot older than he actually is. I profusely apologise to him. He does not say anything. He puts his hand forward. I stare at it not sure what to do and he asks me for my hand. I put my hand forward with trepidation. He looks at my hand, holds it up and then kisses it. Its a normal kiss, not wet, not too long and not too short with the right amount of pressure.

Strange??

Books

2006-07-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Its been a good week this one and I managed to complete 2 books. One is Janardhan Thakur's All the Prime Minister's Men(for some reason I can't seem to find this book online) The book cover says-

A devastating work of investigative reporting, the book contains revealing portraits of Indira's fawning courtiers. It unravels their psychologies, and, in the process, lays bare virtually the whole range of human inadequacies and frailities.

Interesting book. It talks about the debauchery of Indira's coterie and how that lead to a continual debasement of the Indian polity. It did throw up some suprises like Ambika Soni and Pranab Mukherjee(our Honorable Defence Minister) and their role in the tumultous 70's. Its a decent read with no real surprises and chronicles the machinations of people like V.C. Shukla, Bansi Lal, D.K. Barooah and Rukhsana Sultana and Dhirendra Brahmachari.

Just finished reading- An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. Nice book though complicated in many parts especially with all the erudite terms like first contrapunctus, the Carpaccia, vibrato and Sonatas and yet there is something to be said about how the music in the book keeps the story alive and not the other way around(thankfully!) You can feel the elation when they play Bach's Art of Fugue during an encore performance and the reason for the fraternity that Michael shares with his tononi. Good read.

Books, books, books, babaloobala books. Its raining books here, those of you on the scout and don't mind searching for that rare e-book, here is your Mecca.

http://worldebookfair.com/Collections.htm

Two sketches

2006-06-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

He is at work. His mobile phone rings. Its her.They talk about many things, how he is doing, what she is doing, the weather and in between all this she punctutates her sentences with lines like "I am bored" and "Come back soon" and yet it feels like she is holding something back. Its almost as if there is something more she wants to say but is not sure if she should make herself seem so vulnerable. Its probably more so because of how he is than her own nature. He is the kind who has always looked down upon outbursts of emotions which made you look weak in anybody's eyes and that means anybody's. So here they are, making small talk and suddenly she says "I miss you". He becomes quiet, a half-smile spreads across his face as he bows his shaking head and says, "Mom, mom, mom!"

He is an old man dressed in white pajama-kurta, most probably a Bohra Muslim from the cap he wearing. He has a long silvery beard and a garrulous disposition. The young man takes his place opposite him in the train from Wadala to Andheri on the harbour line. The young man takes out his newspaper and after a while of reading finds somebody tapping his hand. He looks over the paper to find the old man asking for the Mumbai Mirror if he was not reading it. After handing it over and going back to reading the paper, the young man again finds himself being accosted. He puts his paper down to find the old man pointing his finger at something in the paper. He looks
at what the old man is pointing to to find a picture of Gurdeep Kohli, a TV serial actress in a figure hugging salwar-kameez. The old man says- "Hamare mulk ki auratein bhi aaj kal Los Angeles ki aruaton ka mukabala kar rahi hain"(The women of our country are also competing with the women in Los Angeles) clearly pointing at the breasts of the TV actress. The young man goggles at his words and before he says anything the old man creates an illustrations of her
bust in the air and lets out a guffaw. The train pulls into the Andheri station.

To forgive or not to forgive...

2006-06-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

How do we deal with issues of forgiveness? How simple is the question of weighing the act committed vis-a-vis deciding if the act committed deserves to be forgiven or to be punished? I have struggled with this question for some time now without too much luck. I am going to try and steer clear of a debate on conservatism vs liberalism but there is a possibility this might slink in at some stage.

Over a conversation with a person very dear to me, I was told that forgiveness at some level depends on the person we are dealing with and what they mean to us. So as a concept if my mother and my best friend committed the same mistake, I would deal with it differently. That's understood because we are always prejudiced to some extent when it comes to our parents. But what about the rest of the world. I was also told that forgiveness depends on the past history of the person involved. By that she meant that forgiveness would depend on how much good the other person has done to her vs how much bad the other person has done to her. Assuming we go by this criteria of judgement, this would not leave any room for a repitive offender to be given a chance to rehabilitate and on the same note it would give a one-time offender a chance to commit another mistake tomorrow. That might seem like an over-simplification of the issue but its something I can't help thinking.

I have for a long time believed that in any situation we face, there is always a way to go about doing the right thing-call it my sheer naivete if you like but I still believe this.But the argument that was thrown on my face was that the right thing could differ from one person to another. I was told that maybe one of the parties involved might not think of what it did or was doing as wrong. In that case how do you fix resposibility. For example let us consider a person with an impeccable driving record all his life. However the person has a habit of talking on the mobile phone while driving. Its just how he has been driving all these years. He one day accidentally runs over a boy and the boy dies. Nobody knows that the man was using the phone while driving and in the eyes of the judge and most people involved, it was an accident and yet what does one tell the mother of the boy? When something wrong happens to us, we always try and fix responsibility. What should the mother do? The same person I mentioned before told me once that what you don't know cannot harm you. What if the mother knew that the man was using his mobile phone when the accident occurred but has no proof to corroborate that claim.

How does one deal with cheating? I am restricting myself to cheating on your partner lest this spirals out of scope.Going by my friend's logic would one go by making a balance sheet by paring off the virtues of a partner against the vices and then wait to see if it all tallies or if there is a deficit on either end? What about that image that has now been seared into your head when you saw him/her with that someone else? Even if relations get reconciled, does an image in your head ever go away? I guess this would also bring in familiar concerns about the fact that maybe something was amiss with the relationship as a result of which the cheating happened which brings me back to my underlying principle that no matter what situation there is always a right thing to do.

If only there was a way by which there could be a definitive right and wrong? If only there was a way by which one knew while forgiving that if you forgave it would never happen again. But I guess since I am going idealistic anyway, if only none of these things happened in the first place but they happen and then the dilemma to forgive or to forgo happens and all these questions that come along with it also happen.

Two firsts- Update

2006-05-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Update

Here is the truth about what actually happened that day. Ok I think I should tune this down a bit because it was really silly. For those of you who were expecting something scandalous I am sorry to disappoint you...on second thoughts...what the hell... I am not sorry. They have a ridiculous rule in the gym wherein you have to wear one pair of footwear when you come to the gym and then come and change into your sneakers. The reason they give me is that as people do floor exercises(they have mats don't they!!) and the bacteria that my shoes carry when I come from outside affects the patrons of the gym. I wanted to laugh at their faces and tell them that I could smear my shoes with E. coli O157:H7 or might even bring in a strain of Hanta or Ebola and you idiots would never know.

Another aspect to this was that I could wear my sneakers all day outside and just before coming to the gym what if I took them off and slipped into my sandals. They would never know what bacteria, virus or protozoa hit them then would they? But they refused to budge and sent me back packing. When I told my cousin this, he was not surprised and said this is a rule in a number of gyms in Bombay and I was like what sh*t!!

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Two firsts that have happened to me during my stay in Bombay.

1. I missed work for the first time in my life because of riots. Yes that is riots alright... Nobody till today knows the exact reason why those riots started however of all the reasons that have been proposed the most interesting one is that a girl from the a particular community in Ghansoli was teased during Holi which lead to a crazy bloodbath which left almost 30 people injured and I am not sure if there were any fatal incidents.

2. I got thrown out of the gym yesterday. I had joined the gym last week and got thrown out yesterday. I am not going to divulge the reason, atleast not yet. Lets see if you can come up with why I got thrown out of the gym. Special mention for the best answer(sorry but that is the best I can give!!)

Bom-bahia...

2006-04-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

I decided that after a long bout of laziness, I should get myself up and about and sweat it out. So I set out from my apartment which is in Sanpada, New Bombay and jog upto Nerul which is the next station in line. Took me about half hour alternating between brisk walking and jogging. The stretch between these stations on the Palm Beach Road is the kind of stretch I yearn for in Main Bombay. It is wild green on both sides of the road with palms planted on the divider between the road and open spaces and hardly anybody around. As I run, the sun slowly sets and there is a cool westerly breeze blowing which pushes me forward. I see the onset of the Sahyadri mountain ranges that dot the western ghats of India.

Bombay is one of the few cities in India that underwent a drastic carving, cutting up, pasting and reclaiming over the centuries before reaching its present avatar and from what I see around me, they are not finished with it yet. It is a most interesting city to study its geographical evolution and in my attempt to understand this city better I have decided to tackle this particular aspect of the city. For the next two months, I will from time-to-time post details about Bombay that I found interesting and that appeal to me.

As a part of this venture, I will start from the southern most tip of Bombay and go northwards. The present Bombay originally was actually 7 islands- Colaba, Old Woman's Island, Bombay, Mazagaon, Worli, Parel and Mahim and this is the order in which I will explore Bombay. More in the next post...

Train to Jodhpur

2006-04-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

On the train to Jodhpur, we are about 12 people traveling together. Of these 12, I know about 3.5 well(the 0.5 being a nephew who is 4) In all there are 4 children below the age of 10 and its amazing the decibels such a small larynx can produce. There was a constant clattering of things, at any point one of them was wailing because the other kid was mean to him. Their constant demands for water, food and other such sundry items drove us all mad. So here is a new amendment for Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav, the honourable Minister for Railways- a new containment chamber for all kids(especially boys) below the age of 10. The kids are to be sedated and will be kept in the containment chamber for the entire length of the journey(I guess I will have to look out for the zealots of human rights after having proposed this) What the hell-bring them on!!

There is a lady traveling with us in the train with a 6 year old son. She is a lecturer in a management institute. A nephew of her's boards the train from Baroda. With all the noise that was being created by those brats I mentioned above, we were all sick and the lady gave me the "Don't get married" gyaan if you want to avoid this. I inturn said that that is a good idea as I am sure I can enjoy all those benefits which come with a marriage without actually getting married and this lady just went berserk. She said I should be thrown off the train and subjected to 440V of AC(ok now that was a bit of an exaggeration-she might have said 440V of DC) She asked me if my family knew my views and I said they did not. She threatened me that she would tell them and I said go ahead. Suddenly she screamed and said- "what do you want of me??" and I was like EXCUSE ME??

On reaching Jodhour station, I helped the above mentioned lady with her luggage and she thanked me and told me to enjoy my bachelor life and I looked right at her and said-"Trust me...I will!!"

Such fun!!

Wedding time

2006-04-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

I am set to leave for Jodhpur, Rajasthan tomorrow. Its a wedding in the family-its been some time since the last one. Its going to be a long-drawn and colourful affair and I will be back by tuesday. Next post after that.

Mumbai...

2006-03-26T06:11:00.000-08:00

I don't get it...I have now stayed in Mumbai for almost 3 months, 2 months during October and November and now for the last one month. Every person I have met here tells me that once somebody comes to Bombay they never leave the city. What does this city hold that seems to make thousands of people gravitate from different parts of the country to Bombay. It hits you, mauls you and then turns you into a zombie and yet people continue staying in this seething cauldron that is Bombay. I had gone to a Bengali friend's place and while having dinner her husband was telling me about how he came to Bombay after having worked with IBM in Calcutta and that he would not leave Bombay because 'once you get the taste of Bombay life" , you just can't leave this place- these were his exact words.

Yet I am perturbed more so by the vehemence with which people don't stop advocating Bombay to me. On my way to distribute wedding cards for my cousin's wedding, I travel across the Bombay suburbs. The housing is cramped, there is no sign of ventilation and the lighting is non-existent in some places. When I ask people as to what do they like about Bombay, a friend tells me that he loves the fast paced life. He says he gets extremely restless when he goes for a holiday and on one occasion on a holiday to Goa, he came back in 6 days as he got tired of not having to do anything. This city and its distances are a pain beyond endurance. The crowds, the heat and the dust...I am still struggling with it. Still trying to find my place here. Now what I would like to see is if the adage that I have been hearing with a never-ending regularity holds true for me too- Once you come to Bombay, you don't leave this city again.

But why??

2006-03-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

She is always ready with a smile when I speak to her. She loves to eat, to go out, the movies and all the small and simple things such as these and yet today she is teetering towards the edge of hope and has no idea what she has done to have acquired such a fate.

She loved him and they knew that 'it' would be difficult to say the least with the amount of distance between them to carry a relationship forward and yet she trusted him implicitly. This relationship lasted 5 years and they were to get married. The marriage was to take place in India. Both sides had started preparations and she was going to be as beautiful a bride as they come. Suddenly a few days before the wedding the groom confessed that he did not love her anymore. He did not give her any reason; she did not ask him for any. Maybe he was in love with somebody else or maybe he had just fallen out of love with her. It did not matter to her anymore. All that pain and suffering and sacrifices made, seemed to have come to naught. It hurt maybe more because she did not know what she did wrong. There were the associated rumblings in the society. She left home, moved to a new town and started a new life doing what she liked doing best-teach.

Time passed on and she got married to another 'him'. They met through an ad she had placed on a matrimony website. The courtship period had all the elements of a healthy romance. They eventually got married. She was happy. Again. It felt good to have someone atlast to depend on and to share one's life with. On the seventh day of the marriage he hit her. It was to be the first of many such incidents. He was whimsical to the extent of being crazy. He would not tolerate differences of opinion on simple topics such as the city of Bombay. He would hit her when she tried to wake him up in the morning. He would taunt her everyday as to how miserable she had made his life. He would hit her if the rice was hot when served to eat. She did her best to accommodate all his whims and fancies. She suffered through all of this only because she wanted to do her best to make the marriage work. But the torture continued with her having to spend some nights at the neighbor's because he hit her and threw her out. Then one day she walked out of that house and today she is living with some relatives. Yet even today she is always ready with a smile when I speak to her. She loves to eat, to go out, the movies and all the small and simple things such as these. What happens next nobody knows because the problem is nobody knows why it ever happened in the first place.

What the f***???

2006-03-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

I just don't get it, I am reading about it all over the web, every girl I meet has a story to say about it and yet it does not stop the sense of outrage and disgust that wells in me. The blog world is celebrating Blank Noise Project and its maddening sometimes to read what has been put up, to just imagine that women have more or less come to terms with harassment of various sorts and yet there are some beacons of hope like hemangini. Some of her story has elements of this story I wrote a long time back here.

For the women, a lot has been said and there is nothing I can say except it does not stop the feeling of shame that comes when I hear these incidents and to the men...GROW UP FOR GOD'S SAKE!!

PS: You have got to read the take Shiv Sena has on some of these issues- it takes the cake and eats it too. Sorry bad one!

Yogender!!

2006-03-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

Yogender is a happy-go-lucky guy. He is about 5ft 5 inches, a mop of hair and a moustache. My first memory of his is the nonchalance and joy with which he meets everyone who comes to stay at the guest house. I have on a number of occasions sat with him and listened to his monologues. He studied till his 10th in a Hindi medium school in Jaipur. After this he decided to learn cooking and today he is an accomplished cook and can cook different kinds of cuisines. He reminisces today that he wishes that he had gone on to graduate and made something out of himself and yet he is happy with everyday of his life. To see him whistling and cooking and dancing to the tune of the TV while cutting vegetables in the kitchen is a sight to watch.

Its his wish to go the US and work as a cook there as he has an uncle who runs a restaurant of some sort there. He has also started learning to read some English as he feels his prospects would be better if he knew the language. He is a nice likeable guy and its the care he takes of his guests that I find most impressive. He insists daily that we eat only hot chappathis and that every wish of ours is met as best as he can. He is getting married in April and he has now
been quite eagerly looking forward to it. He leads a very normal and routine life and yet he is happy and on so many occasions people who do so much more or who think they are doing so much more seem to remain unsatisfied. Good for you, Yogender! Good for you!

Last year...

2005-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Its the 30th of December and last year this time as the entire world was overwhelmed by the disaster that was called tsunami, I was on my way to some of the badly hit areas, with a team of people from AID-India. I am not sure if I went because I had an overwhelming urge to help but I went because I wanted to prove it to myself that I can do anything I want to do at anytime-irrespective of the work I am doing or the situation I am in. I am not sure how much of it makes sense but then there are so many times when we just want to walk away and not have to answer as to why we walked away. That in some ways was my reason when I set out.

For 3 days, we were on the road visiting places and seeing death and destruction all along. As I slept on 31st December 2004, I could not immediately fall asleep. My eyes were burning because of having witnessed pyres burning and my feet were tired because of wading through god knows what not! There was so much that I was not sure of before I set out for this trip. The people in my life, what I would want to do next and whether the ones in my life then would continue to be in it or not and yet when I thought about it that night, it felt so petty when compared to the magnitude of what had happened. In some ways such disasters help you look at things more objectively.

Note: The organization AID-India is doing brilliant work in rehabilitating the affected and they also work across the world- be it the tsunami or hurricane Katrina. Please visit their website if you are interested and would like to do your bit.

I rode a horse

2005-12-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

Its been three weeks now in Chicago and today were the most eventful few hours since I have been here. I met a girl in the apartment where I stay and we got talking and out of this conversation came out the fact that she owns a horse and that she goes horse-riding every weekend. I asked her if I could accompany her on one such weekend and we agreed on this weekend.

So here I was, got up this morning all charged up and called her and we decided that we would meet in the lobby. I was in the shower and she calls back telling me that she has been in an accident and that she would take a little longer to get there. In a while she called back and I walked upto her car and we drove up a long way to the stables where she keeps her horse. So there I was, helping her with the saddle and suddenly I am inside a stable for the first time in my life and the first thing that you notice is the smell. I have read so many books and novels which had references to the horsy smell but never really understood what they meant until today. We walked around and kept the stuff and suddenly she opens one of the barn doors and there steps out a huge horse. You know what they don't look as big in the movies as they are in reality . It also takes away the romanticism from a horse when you suddenly have this huge creature ambling towards you and bucking once in a while. She gave me some sweet horse feed and asked me to feed him inorder to take the first step towards riding it. I took the sweet feed and held it out and a huge wet tongue licked it all from my hand-my first reaction was ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww but eventually I got the hang of it and Bandit(that was the horse's name) had a good snack.

Step 2 was to get on top on the horse which I did with an ease which belied my underlying anxiety. The last I rode a horse in my life was about 11 years back and with a professional trainer. Here I was sitting on top of this huge animal and would very soon be expected to take charge of him. We took the trail behind the stables and decided that I would ride and she would walk alongside(I know it was not very chivalrous but then what the hell!!) So she walked and the horse walked and I continued sitting on it. It was a beautiful setting with snow all around, bare trees waiting for better times and a light drizzle soaking us. Then we decided it was time for a trot and so there I was bumping up and down as the horse trotted. God my butt seemed to be undergoing an experience like never before. The biggest issue while riding was how much pressure to put on the reins and how much to loosen it and that was where I met my nemesis.

Pretty soon I was making him trot and stop at will and was quite happy with my achievement. Then on our way back, we reached a nice long stretch where Bandit normaly likes to run and we decided that I would try another trot. So I set off with Bandit and till halfway it was a perfect trot and suddenly he broke off into a canter(trust me its much faster) As I tried to stop him towards the end of the stretch, I realised that my hands were frozen because of the cold and I was not gripping the reins properly. He reached the end and turned right and started bucking. It was an instant of sheer terror in which I thought, of all the places I don't want to die in a foreign land. Could not help but think that as I was trying desperately to cling onto him. Suddenly he bucked and I found my feet out of the stirrups and flying through the air and hit the ground hard on my back and the horse walked away.

I lay there for a while a little dazed with what had happened and then got up to check if I had broken something. After ensuring that all was well, I got up and Darrina rushed up to me to see if I was ok. I told her I was. In the end we decided that I will ride the horse again. Horses are funny animals. They are very headstrong and love to test a new rider to see how much he can take and how far can he be pushed. That is also a reason why one should never let a horse walk away after he has thrown you off because he will always remember that he can get away with behaving this way. So I rode him again and this time I made him walk back perfectly without any issues inspite of his attempts at breaking free. I put him back in his stable and fed him the sweetfeed and there was no animosity between us. It was like he had tested me and I fought back after going down and we both respected each other for it. As the godfather said- 'Its just business,nothing personal'.

Plan

2005-12-10T15:45:00.000-08:00

Ok here I am. Week one in Chicago slowly but steadily coming to an end. I am sitting in my apartment at the dining table, pecking away, watching Save the Last Dance with a bottle of Seagram's whiskey in front of me(I am not drinking!) and seeing the city get slowly engulfed with snow. I have been at home all day today trying hard to scrub off some greasy vessels and have almost completed cleaning up the kitchen.

I am thinking about things I have never had to think about. Like what am I going to do for dinner tonight, that I need to finish my laundry tomorrow, that I need to pick up groceries, that I need to apply for a Social Security Card, that I have no idea where I want to be tomorrow. Before leaving for Chicago, I had a chat with an Uncle and he asked me what plan I had for life and I thought about it for a moment just to reflect on the question and thought I have lots of things happening in the background but no... I had no plan for life as I am not sure what I want to do-I dont know where I want to be and what I want to achieve. Nothing and I told him that and he was astounded and I was subjected to a half hour's session on life, responsibilities and stuff. But really is it so bad if one does not have a plan for tomorrow?

All through my training when I joined work, with sessions on ambition and motivation and we were asked questions on where we see ourselves five years hence, and it seemed like the only answer that was expected was to be a team leader in 3 years and a project manager in 5 years and it drove me nuts. I did not want to say those answers because I did not know what the hell I wanted to be the next instant.

I still don't have the answers!!Bah!!

Where am I?

2005-12-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

An update to the last mail-
As I type this email, I am in Chicago. I was told on wednesday morning at work, that I am to fly to Chicago on Sunday. It was four days of madness but managed to get my paperwork done and my passport reached Mumbai on time from Chennai and after a horrible 22 hour flight in which I could not sleep a wink, I touched down at Chicago into -10 degrees. Burr!!! Is it cold or what???

I am scheduled to stay here for the next two months after which I have no idea where I will be. Will post my whereabouts and next post about me in Chicago.

Here is my number if you want to call me-
Apartment Number- 312-902-2496
Work Number- 312-444-3625

Glimpses revisited...

2005-11-29T10:51:00.000-08:00

Since October 1st, 2005, I have been to the following places(in the order of visiting them)
Mumbai
Ahmedabad
Jodhpur
Ajmer
Chennai
Delhi
Pune

Going to Bangalore this weekend. I have not spent too much time at any of these places but have managed to collect and collate some snippets from these journeys

I am going to Mumbai Central to take a train to Jodhpur and I notice a couple standing diagonally opposite to me. Seemed like a newly married couple with the woman wearing the sindoor and the works. At first glance there was nothing conspicuous about them. They both stood there with their arms folded. However, after a while I noticed a furtive movement in their direction. When I looked it seemed like nothing had happened. This time I decided to watch and I saw the man under the guise of folded hands trying to feel his wife up from the side. Immediately she rebuked him inorder to end his lascivious intentions. However the man did not seem to be in a mood to listen and tried it again after a while and she reacted similarly and suddenly she looked up and our eyes locked for a second. I do not know who was more embarrassed-she or me.

I am back from Delhi and now waiting at the Vile Parle station, sitting on a bench for a train headed in the direction of Mumbai CST when a man slips beside me. Here is the translation of entire conversation we had-
"Hello sir! I am Maninder. You don't mind if I speak to you for some time. I shook my head to say fine, go on. Bad times these are, aren't they? I am a Sikh from Amritsar. Do you know where Amritsar is? Its in Punjab. Sir my life has been very tragic. You see I was to get married to this girl-everybody told me she is very nice and beautiful but after I got married to her, I realized that she is addled in the head and has some mental problems( the exact words he used were- Dimaag se paidal hain!) However I did not give up on her. Our public gurudwara has a very good doctor and I took her there and I spent lakhs of money on her treatment. After a prolonged period she became better. Now her parents have come and taken her away-after I spent so much on her. They say that the only way they will send her back is if I transfer all my assets in her name. I am very distressed by this. I don't mind doing this but I am not able to make up my mind. Can you please help me out by suggesting what I should do?"

My train pulls in to the station and I tell him that I will have to go. He seemed like a fair guy except that his breath was reeking of alcohol.

Just read...

2005-11-28T11:34:00.000-08:00

Finished reading Fury by Salman Rushdie, The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi and The Kennedy Men by Laurence Leamer.

The first one was a delight to read for the sheer force with which the protagonist's fears are portrayed and dealt with. The second one was an interesting read especially in the parts where the author talks about the baser instincts of man and our need to be desired. The last one was...hard to say...boring in parts but then in the end gave an illuminating insight into the most speculated-about family of America and into a family that has dominated American polity like none other.

Currently reading- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and I like what I have read so far.

Some glimpses...

2005-11-02T01:38:00.000-08:00

Two weeks and I have been to two states, Gujarat and Rajasthan-despite the fact that I have been in each of these cities for exactly 2 days each. But its been fun nevertheless and here are some things I saw and was in no little measure, amused by.

I am at Mumbai Central and I have been walking for half hour looking for a place to surf the internet. I have been walking around looking for a place to browse or surf but I was met with indifferent stares and grouchy mumbles when I ask people around me and suddenly in the distance I saw a sign board-"ComComputer One; your search ends here" and I felt relieved that at last some place where I could, if not browse, atleast ask them about the nearest browsing centre and won't be cast away like flotsam. So I walk in with a triumphant air and ask the person in-charge- "Is there a browsing centre nearby?" and he quipped back-"Bole to?" I gave a sardonic smile and walked away.

There is an old couple walking towards me, the first thing I notice about them is the frown on their faces. They seem like a South Indian couple and aged approximately 55-60 years. They are looking in separate directions with a distinct huff on their faces that would indicate to any person who cares to see that they have just had a tiff. As I walk towards them thinking what they must have fought about, I notice it in the end as we cross each other. They were holding hands and walking. Could not help but smile.

I decide to have dinner before I go back to the station to catch my train and so I begin to look out for restaurants. There were a number of restaurants around but I don't stop until I see the perfect place to try. I step into the hotel purely intrigued by its name- Punjabi Ghasitaram Halwai Karachiwala. I am thinking what made its owners give it that name-could it be that the name had a historical slant to it and did the Punjabi in the name refer to the one in India or in Pakistan. I finish eating and go to wash and see a cockroach scurry away from under one of the plates kept for cleaning. Raised eyebrows.

Footpaths are a horrible invention of mankind, I mean I have just finished eating and I walk up the footpath and then down and then up and then down. I get sick of this and my stomach is tired of this exercise. I would rather walk on the road even if there is the added danger involved. Then I notice the name of a bus stop- Dr. Bhaydarkar Naka Marg and I think this seems like the perfect name for a scary bed time story for your 5 year old. Just opposite to that is Hotel Park Shilton. I cringe.

I am 5 minutes away from the station and I decide on a whim that I would like a paan because its been so long since I had one. So I ask the paan vendor for one sweet paan and he laboriously prepares it-adding all the ingredients and I stand there waiting restlessly until I see that its almost the size of a burger and he says just pop it in. I push the paan in slowly and for about a minute struggle with it in my mouth. There are 4 people around me who are smiling at my predicament but I stick to it and in 5 minutes, its gone. I walk away.

I am off...again!!

2005-10-28T01:15:00.000-07:00

I am off to Ajmer this weekend...I seem to be on the road perenially but then I am enjoying every moment of it. So no sweat!!

Amdavad!!!

2005-10-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

Well I am back to Mumbai from a whirlwind trip to Ahemdabad where we performed Art at MICA and Natrani. It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip, especially the glimpse into life at a b-school. Now I am back here in the office putting in a 12 hour day and numbed and yet pecking away.

But then the hope lives on...there are more trips coming up. Yayayay!!!

SHIT...

2005-10-14T01:09:00.000-07:00

I have to catch a flight at 5 am to Mumbai for which I have to be at the airport by 4 am which means I have to leave for the airport by 3:30am. So I get up by 2:45 am and stumble into the bathroom. Before I go on, my bathroom is about 10 ft by 6 ft and by any bathroom standards, its luxuriously big. I brush my teeth and then I settle down on the commode to finish my ablutions. There I am sitting without a worry in my head, with an ever expanding noise of the silence around me which is punctured every now and then by an intermittent plip-plop which highlights the contrast of the situation. During this intensely private and serene moment I suddenly see a cockroach scurrying out from the wash basin making its way towards me. I look around and I see another cockroach emerge from under my pile of clothes that need to be washed. Now I am frantically looking around and I see one last cockroach emerging from under the sink below the shower.

Invariably my heart rate goes up as I am constantly looking around me to see the roaches marching on relentlessly and my present state does not give me the option to get up. So there I am sitting on the commode mimicking the physiology of a barn owl and having to keep a constant lookout. Suddenly all three decide to advance towards me and I fill a mug with water and splash it around me drawing a lakshman rekha of sorts. This helps to stop the onslaught, albeit briefly. Now the roaches step back to reorganize their forces and decide that the best way to attack me would be to use guerilla warfare and so one marches towards me and when my attention is on that one, the others move a few inches closer. As soon as I realized their strategy, I am like- "Shit" and I titter at the appropriateness of that exclamation. However I was extremely agitated at these roaches for having enc'roached' this sancrosanct space of mine and having desecrated it. So I got up with my shorts around my ankles and declare a a full scale war in which I douse them with water to send them scurrying for cover.

I quickly step into the shower and my complete attention is on the roaches, so much so that the soap slips out of my hands and falls towards one of THEM. So there I am, walking with trepidation towards the cockroach, half my body soaped and dripping water. In this intense moment, I could not help but look at myself in the mirror and laugh at my predicament. I finished with the shower and step out and see the time and I go- SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!!!

Week one done

2005-10-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

My first week in Mumbai is done and its been an eventful week to say the least and it was capped off with a huge party last night with the people at work.

I just came home(which is Malad as I have family in Mumbai) and this is the route I took.

Left from the company guest house and toook a rickshaw to Vashi station. Cost- Rs 20
Took a ticket to Goregaon. Cost- Rs. 12
Train left Vashi station and covered the following stations
Mankhurd
Govandi
Chembur
Tilak Nagar
Kurla
Chunna Bhatti
Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar
Wadala Road

Got down at Wadala station and crossed the over-bridge and took the Bandra slow train. Crossed the following stations
King's Circle
Mahim
Bandra

Got down at Bandra station, again crossed the overbridge and took the Borivali slow train to Goregaon. Crossed the following stations

Khar road
Santa Cruz
Vile Parle
Andheri
Jogeshwari
Goregaon

Got down at Goregaon station and took a rickshaw home. Cost- Rs.15
Pooh!!No wonder I am tired...
Note: I am available at this number for the next three months-9819897943

I am off

2005-10-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

Well I am off to Mumbai for what promises to be an interesting 3 month stint at my company's Mumbai Office, though its a different thing that I have no idea what is expected of me there. So I guess I will just pack my bags and be off...Next post from Mumbai.

Currently humming: I am leaving on a jet plane

What is it about her...???

2005-09-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

I see her through our kitchen window- she is there everyday, unchanging, doing the same things she does everyday, going about her work-oblivious of the world around her. As I peer out again, I see her standing in a violet saree and a yellow blouse. As she crouches her saree moves a few notches up her slim legs. She brushes away a lock of hair that falls across her face and carries on like everyday.

It is then that I see more carefully and see that beneath that wrinkled skin and the poker face is a strange and almost mystical sadness. Sometimes as she is engrossed in her chores, she senses somebody’s gaze on her and she looks up sharply and for a brief instant we lock eyes-enough to make me recoil feeling guilty and mortified. Her withered body speaks of times of hardship. She lives in the house opposite, with the owners and does the work around the house. She must be about 65-70 years old and I have seen mom talk to her.

What draws me to her is that it seems as if she has almost come to terms with her loneliness and inexplicably, that scares me and yet paradoxically, also entices me.

Ouch! Just burnt my hand on the non-stick pan. Damn!!!

Thought for the day..

2005-09-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

Clay, of which God, who didn't exist, made man who did. Such was the paradox of human life: its creator was fictional but life itself was a fact.

- The Fury, Salman Rusdie

What’s their story??

2005-09-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

Have you ever walked on the road and suddenly stopped to look around yourself. We see a multitude of people, different colours, odours, shapes and sizes. Ever stopped and wondered- “What is their story?”

Why is the boy of four sitting forlornly? Is he thinking about why his parent’s attention suddenly seems to be focused on his new born sibling or is he thinking about how he is going to tell his mother about the new pencil box that he lost.

What is the dutiful house-wife thinking about? Maybe she is thinking about the callousness with which her husband dismissed her wish to furnish her kitchen last night and regretting that if she had studied further and made something more out of her life, she would not have had to ask her husband today.

What is the old lady sitting on a charpoy in front of her house thinking about? Is she thinking about how bold the women of today have become or is she thinking about an era by-gone and a beauty that she once was.

What is that young girl gazing into the horizon, thinking about? Is she pining for a loved one or is she looking towards the future with hope-filled eyes or maybe she is worried that her parents will get her married before she finishes studying or maybe she is just sighing contentedly that everything has worked out the way it should have

What is the middle-aged software engineer thinking about? Maybe he is thinking about how the absence of a B. E degree seems to have become a roadblock in his career and how his experience of 6 years counts for only so much and it leads to frustration that leads him nowhere.

Every one has a story and however similar it may sound or seem, each one is distinct and unique and that is what makes one ask-"What is your story?".

Pics...

2005-09-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here they are...just a small peek into Biloxi Blues.
There are three more shows this weekend

Venue: Sivagami Petachi Auditorium, Alwarpet
Date: 17th,18th september
Time: 7:15 pm on 11th and a 2 pm and 7:15 pm show on 17th.

For more pics, click here.

Biloxi Blues

2005-09-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well here we go...its the start of a new run of shows of the Biloxi Blues- a play about so many things, about growing up and about identifying yourself. So if you are in town and are reading this, do drop in and watch the show.

Venue: Sivagami Petachi Auditorium, Alwarpet
Date: 10th,11th,17th,18th,24th,25th september
Time: 7:15 pm on 10th and 17th and a 2 pm and 7:15 pm show on 11th and 17th at Sivagami and 7:15 pm on 24th and 25th september at Chinmaya Heritage Centre, Harrington Road

Have a nice time.

Oh forgot to mention, I am in it too...

Sticky issue

2005-09-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

An observation that I have always made or should I say, I didn’t have a choice but to make is that every time I eat rajma, a piece of the jacket of the rajma always sticks itself to my upper right second molar. It’s strange because it happens every time I eat it. Again, it so happens that rajma is my favorite dish and so I eat it often enough to understand that this is not a one-off incident. After having observed this phenomenon for the last six months which is when I started noticing it, its left me flummoxed. There are two very specific things that are of interest to me-

1.Its always one piece of the jacket of a rajma that gets stuck. In one sitting I probably eat about 100 pieces of rajma. So why not two pieces or thirty or sixty-seven for that matter. Why is it always one?

2. Another is that it is always the upper right second molar. You are probably asking yourself-second molar if you count from the inside or the outside. Hmm…after having carefully explored the interiors of my mouth with my finger, it seems like the upper right second molar when you count from the inside.

This phenomenon has also lead me to a very interesting problem on probability which I could conceive but did not attempt to solve it (for obvious reasons!!)

Now what is the probability that a person (in this case me) eating 100 rajmas a day has 1 rajma stuck in his upper right second molar when counted from the inside.

It is also imperative that I give you some miscellaneous information, which would be vital to solve this problem.

1.Lets assume that I have been eating rajma for the last 17 years and over this period, say I ate rajma twice a week.

2. I have 28 teeth as my wisdom teeth have a ‘mind’ of their own and seem to operate on their own whims and fancies and so I have banished them from the premises.

Just looking at this problem makes me feel I would be better off sticking to the simple dal-roti.

Two pictures

2005-08-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

Two stories appeared in The Hindu dated 18th August, 2005 accompanied by tw0 pictures-One was a forlorn looking mother standing and the other was an overjoyed mother kissing her son. Now what connected the two mothers. I could not help but notice that both stories had a strong connection with war.

The forlorn looking mother was one Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of Casey Sheehan who was killed when his unit was attacked by militants in Baghdad in April 2004. She has decided to camp in front of President Bush's ranch and has requested an audience with him. However President Bush seems to have come to the conclusion that he is inordinately busy and cannot spare the time for her inspite of going down in record books as being the President who has spent the most amount of his presidency away from the White House. For the entire story read here.

The other picture was of a mother kissing her son who had just completed his passing out parade and had become an enlisted officer in the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry Unit. Every emotion of hers in that picture showed a sense of pride in her son.

Both these pictures made me think about the legitimacy of war-be it anywhere in the world. Are any of these emotions wrong or misplaced. What is right and what is wrong and whose perspective matters in the end??

Theatre fest

2005-08-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the plays being featured at The Metro plus Madras Theatre Festival.

For full length reviews of the plays,click here and here.

Metro Plus theatre Festival

2005-08-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Madras is hosting the MetroPlus theatre festival which kicks off from tomorrow. Nine theatre groups from around the country will be participating in it and one can be rest assured of some great theatre for the next ten days.

For information on itinerary of the plays, click here

Gtex

2005-08-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

I saw him just as I had seen him for the last 15 years of my life-stooped over his table, a pencil tucked in the gap between his ears, he would suddenly stop and look into his books to check a particular figure and then use the customary blue-colored soap to make his markings on the cloth. I met Ganesh when I was 7 years old. It was time for schools to start and after having purchased the cloth for my uniform, my dad took me to Gtex-the name of the establishment run by Ganesh. As long as I have known the shop, I have never seen anybody else in it. He ran his tailoring business with consummate ease. He had a bald head with little patches of hair on either side, a swarthy complexion and a clear skin. I was always fascinated by his ears and the way he balanced the pencil between them.

The first time we met, he looked up as we walked in, greeted my dad as they knew each other and then pushed up his glasses and peered at me and said "School uniform for the baba" and my dad nodded. In a jiffy he was unfolding his measuring tape and measuring and making copious notes in his book. I was very curious as to what he was writing and tried my best to take a peek. He just continued writing numbers and I was amazed and a little bewildered as to how he would remember, which part of the body did a particular measurement refer to. Before I knew, he had taken my measurements and it was time to go. We went back a week later and the uniform fit me perfectly. After that every year, I regularly used to go to Ganesh to stich my uniforms and some formal trousers. We would stand there and make small talk and yet there was something unchanging about him that I liked. It was like year-after-year I continued to change and he seemed to have come to a standstill. I don't go there anymore.

As I cross the road to go home, I see that he has renovated his store and the bar under the name Gtex outside has started drooping and yet Ganesh remains the same, unchanging and unyielding.

Marriage

2005-07-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

On my trip to Mumbai I made a trip to visit a friend of mine who got married recently. For certain specific reasons, I will withhold her name. It was good to see her after almost 1.5 years. She was also very happy that I took the time to come visit her as I was not able to attend her wedding. As we sat there talking, I noticed a strange sense of satisfaction in her. We were looking at her wedding album and as she launched herself into explaining who was who and what was happening, I could not help but notice that she had so much to say about so many things. We spoke about the events that lead upto her wedding, the wedding itself and her last six months of married life. She spoke about so many things that day, about her husband, his career, what she wants to do with hers(she is a teacher), about the flat they are living in, how they went about furnishing it, about what she expects from her marriage, about the pleasures she has experienced, about the disappointments she faced and about her fears regarding the future.

As I took the train back home from Vashi that day after meeting her, don't know why but I felt terrified.

Reading and traveling

2005-07-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

and

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

The former was in some ways a disappointment of sorts what with the way its been written and yet could not help but feel a little anxious for Harry at the end of the book. I will wait for the last book just to see how many other people will have to be sacrificed before the pot of evil boils over and "You-know-who" meets the fate Rowling has destined for him. As of now she just wants to spend some time with her baby(courtesy the Economic Times)

The latter was a well written book more so because of the fact that the book seemed to start slowly, picked up pace in between and again slowed down towards the end. It talks about the life of one Mr. Biswas living in Port of Spain(you will know where that is if you know your cricket well!) , the number of places he had to call home, his travails in bringing up a family and in the end buying a house. It sure made for some good reading.

I am off to Bangalore tomorrow night as we are performing a show at Rangashankara on sunday. I will be back on monday morning and resume with some regular blogging.

A beautiful vignette

2005-07-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

As we sat at the Prithvi cafe, we heard a lilting music emanating from a distance. Did not give it too much attention, however after a little while when the melody persisted, I got up and followed the source. The man had a long white flowing beard that reached down to his stomach, a bald head and a smile that completely animated his face. He was dressed in black pajama-kurta and held in his hand a hindustani flute. It was the first time I had seen such a big flute. As the man continued playing, it was a very quaint setting, with the man playing jana gana mana and instructing his student about some of the intricacies of playing a particular note, somebody walking with incense to keep away mosquitoes. Yet what was most striking was the fact that as some of us sat and listened to it and basked in the beauty of what he was creating, there were a couple of teenagers on the next table talking loudly about something as inconsequential as watching "Dus" and how hot Abhishek Bachan looked.

Don't know why but it irritated the hell out of me.

Government Hospital, Mumbai

2005-07-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

My cousin is currently interning at a government hospital in Mumbai. While talking to him about his experiences as a part of the medical community, he gave me an insight into the happenings in those corridors. Some extracts from our conversation

Ajay was a 25 year old man who was admitted for stomach pain at 6am. When he was brought into the hospital, the CMO(Chief Medical Officer) took a cursory glance at him and decided to send him up to be admitted inspite of it being standard procedure for a patient to be sent to the ER to get his x-ray and other required reports to diagnose his ailment. At 12 pm, Ajay was still in the ward waiting to be taken for the x-rays. Once his x-ray reports came in by 5pm, the hospital authorities realised that their consultants had left for the day and so he was made to wait through the night. Ajay was operated on the next morning at 11pm and he died at 12noon.

Some of the worst wounds are burns where the injury can vary from some simple burns to third degree burns. All wound burns have to be cleaned thoroughly inorder to avoid pus and infection.
Neha was brought in with severe burns and her wounds were cleaned regularly. However it becomes imperative on the part of the patients to participate in maintaining the hygiene regime prescribed to them. However, Neha continued to procrastinate and her dressings could be found in different places of the ward thereby throwing all matters of cleanliness out of the window. In a matter of 2 weeks, five patients of the ward died because of infection.

What do to-be-doctors learn from such experiences, I am not sure? As a rookie when one sees a CMO dismissing a case that later turns out to be fatal and the CMO gets away with it, what could he possibly make out of such a situation?

Mumbai meri jaan!!!

2005-07-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

Well I am off for a sabattical to Mumbai(strange place for a sabattical I must say!) tomorrow morning.Its going to be a 9 day trip in which I also plan to make a fly-by visit to Pune. I am hoping to catch up with a lot of people(mostly family) and some very good friends and in the meanwhile we are performing evam Indrajit at Prithvi. Also the weatherman has forecasted a rainy week ahead for Mumbai.

Aaahh!!I love it when everything falls in place.Bliss.

Update: I love political satire and could not help linking to this , that I found on Amit's blog.Nice.

Recap

2005-07-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine(Dilip D'souza) is currently at Akkrapettai, Nagapatinam, the place that was ravaged by the Tsunami on December 26th, 2004. It was exactly six months and six days back that the three of us(Dilip, Amit and me) trudged through an incredible stretch of slime, slush, shit and carcasses to meet Dr....aah got it from Dilip's blog, Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan We had decided that we would make the same journey six months later to see what had changed. For reasons that are not important, Dilip is doing that journey alone. He just called me a few minutes back and said simply."Saraansh I am here at Akkrapettai", and I knew that for an instant that we were both thinking of what we witnessed six months back. Its been six months but its amazing that I remember every detail of that day.

We looked and looked and then realised that the only way to reach the Doctor would be walk through almost 2 kilometers of the mix that I described above. So we ultimately decided to ignore the slush slowly oozing into our shoes, and finding a way through the pores of our socks and after a while all I could feel was a squish-squish with every step I took. It was strange that inspite of walking through this we found small things to joke about to lift each other's spirits. We were about 100 metres from the doctor when we noticed a yellow carton and five small toes of a six-year old poking out. That was how we welcomed The New Year 2005.

Read a full account of that day here and here.

Dilip wrote this on his trip to Akkrapettai.

Summary

2005-06-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

Its been very interesting for me to write about my experiences during the summer of 2003 mostly because I have never attempted writing like this before. I also realised that a lot of things that I never thought about then, occurred to me when I decided to write about them; almost like an afterthought. For those of you who have not read them yet, here they are, listed in the order of creation.

1. Colonel Rai
2. Ahmedabad
3. Dr. Ramesh

Dr. Ramesh

2005-06-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

This will be the last of my Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar series of posts.

Nase rog harai sab peera
Japat nirantar Hanumant beera

Jo yah padhe Hanuman Chalisa
Hoye siddhi sakhi Gaureesa

All diseases, pain and suffering disappear on reciting regularly Shri Hanuman's holy name.

All those who recite Hanuman Chalisa (The forty Chaupais) regularly are sure to be benedicted. Such is the evidence of no less a witness as Bhagwan Sankar.

Argggghhhhhhh...I would roll over and check the time by my watch...6:15 am.Damn I would curse and roll over and try and cover my ears with the pillow but then suddenly a loud jarring bell would blast my senses and yank me out of sleep. I would look up in despair and I would find Dr. Ramesh performing his early morning rites in an earnest fervor. Dressed in a dirty green lungi and a vest, Dr. Ramesh would then carry on his Hanuman Chalisa to invoke the blessings of the revered bachelor-God. I was at the hostel in Gandhinagar and Dr. Ramesh was the only other person staying at the hostel other than the warden, his wife, Rajesh the gardener and me. Suddenly he stopped his chanting and I thanked the lord to have given me another hour's sleep.

Dr. Ramesh was a practicing surgeon in Patna, Bihar. He was fat, sloppy, sluggish and yet there was an earthiness about him that is quintessential of a Bihari. I met him and we quickly became friends of sorts(not that we had a choice as we were the only people staying there) He used to tell me about his family back in Patna. He had a son who was about 8, a big house with two cows which he would milk every day(for some reason he stressed on that piece of information), elderly parents and a thriving clinic.He used to earn about Rs. 40,000 a month but after deducting the money that had to be given to the local goons for protection he had precious little left. It was strange listening to him about things that I had only seen in movies-about paying local gangs, money as "protection" , about his life in Patna and about the callousness that had pervaded every fabric of Bihar because of which a murdered man on the street evoked not more than a passing curiosity in the passers-by.

Dr. Ramesh had decided to give up constantly living under threat and had decided to find work as a doctor in a government hospital in Gujarat. He would leave the hostel by 9 and visit the various hospitals around the city and then trudge back tired and dejected.He would come back and tell me as to how he was ignored and a fresher was chosen only because he was a Gujarati. The worry in his eyes was evident as to when he would find a job and be in a position to send some money back home. It was when I saw him during those times that I wondered as to how much I had taken for granted. Then he would attack the food with such gusto that I would be left marveling at his gastric abilities. He would eat about 8 chappathis, a plateful of rice, two helpings of dal and whatever vegetable that was made and a bowl of curd. This was interspersed with salad and papad. Then he would give out a few loud belches and go out for a walk in the hostel grounds and release air at random intervals.

I thought about what I would have done if we were to switch roles. He had problems and yet instead of giving into the demands of the goons he decided to build a new life elsewhere. However there will be others who would argue that he was running away and not fighting back. But sometimes fighting back is just not an option. He had his wife, his kids to look after and yet I know that deep down he would have yearned to stay back and fight but it was just not possible.
For Dr. Ramesh, life would be a constant struggle, from Patna to Gandhinagar, from blatant terrorism to subtle discrimination...

Ahmedabad

2005-06-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

During my trip to Ahmedabad which I wrote about in the last post, I initially stayed with a distant uncle of mine and for ease of reference we will call him KB .If my memory serves me right, KB's mother is my mother's father's sister. The plan was for me to stay with them for a day or two and then move into the fated hostel. They own a huge house in one of the better localities of Ahmedabad. As I entered the house I was met with a stunned silence and not a single person was to be found. I went inside and met KB's mother and father and after the customary feet touching and their remarking how much older I looked and arguing about whether I took after my mum or dad, I was allowed to go upstairs to my room. I took a refreshing shower and came down for dinner and half-way through my meal, I heard two cars pull into the driveway.

As the door opened and I looked up, I saw a mass of people(it was not really a mass but at that moment it seemed like one) enter. Here I was in a house with about sixteen people out of which I knew two people and yet everybody seemed to know who I was. There was a lot of discussion on my family, ancestrage, past incidents in my family which I had not witnessed and lots of "Do you know" kinda questions which I really did not know the answer to. When they found out that I hardly knew any of them, they made me sit with a marriage album of their son and then started my crash course in "Know Your Family". At the end of it, it seemed like this part of my family just never seemed to end and so I excused myself and with a swimming head I stumbled to bed.

I moved into the hostel the next day and used to come to KB Uncle's house on the weekends and could not help notice how different our families were inspite of being related. Here was an extreme patriarchical system where the men went to work, came back, expected hot food on their plates and then left the plates to be cleared by someone. On the same thread, were the women who spent close to 8-10 hours in the kitchen with the favorite topic of discussion being-"What do we cook for the next meal?" But they all seemed happy, the men, the women and the children. The entire family went to the temple every day(not together!!) and I was invited to go with them once. I have never felt comfortable in a temple and so I politely declined for which I was asked tauntingly if I had ever seen God. My first reaction was to say that if he/she resides in the temple then no,I haven't, but I maintained a studied silence.

It was on my third weekend that I started feeling comfortable with the people. I used to spend time in the kitchen with my aunts and sisters-in-law listening to the daily chatter however trivial and seeing them contented and happy. I used to play badminton with the kids and watch them fool around and yet be blissfully unaware of all this. It was an interesting experience where I realised that so many things that would be dissatisfying to me, gave them their greatest happiness. I had a good time and returned to Chennai a wee bit wiser and 5 kilograms heavier(they were mutually exclusive events)

Colonel Rai

2005-06-21T04:14:00.000-07:00

Clad in his spotless white pajama kurta, Colonel Rai walked along the edge of the garden tending to the flowers, giving instructions to Ramesh, the gardener to clear a patch of weeds and all this while smoking his customary cigarette. That along with many other images make up the collage of my memories of Col. Rai.

It was the year 2003 when I went to Ahmedabad for an engineering internship at Viral Controls Private Ltd. In my search for accommodation in Gandhinagar, I came across a National Youth Hostel. It was an imposing structure and I walked in with a trace of trepidation. I met the warden's wife as the warden was not in and she gave me all the instructions about rent and meals.I returned the next day with my luggage and met the warden, Col. Rai. He must have been 65-68, neatly trimmed white mustache, glasses, a skin that had faced the vagaries of nature and yet seemed ready to take on more and a lean frame.He asked me a lot of questions about what I did and why I was there and also gave me all the instructions regarding the stay in the hostel.It was off-season then and so the hostel was empty.I was the lone occupant along with the Colonel, his wife and Ramesh.

I hired a cycle to take care of my transport issues and started my internship the next day. As the internship progressed I realised that I was beginning to learn more from my stay at the hostel than on the factory work floor.Every evening I would return to the hostel and take a nap for an hour.I would wake up and go take a stroll in the vast gardens that surrounded the hostel and I would see the Colonel performing the same chores I recounted in the begining.He would then ask me to come over and we would walk around talking about a lot of things. As a matter of fact, he did most of the talking.

He would talk about his days in the army, the people he met, the relationships he built.I was fascinated to hear him recounting his experiences of the 1971 Indo-Pak war and his memories of the days of emergency. He would talk about the lawlessness in his state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. While narrating some of these stories it felt like he wished that these states were also run like the Army; with discipline,dignity and honour.He was a BHU graduate who had decided to join the Short Service Commission during the '71 war. After the war, he took up a permanent commission and then spent 20 years in the army. He believed that it was the army that made one into perfect model citizens and that the army had so much to offer to the youth.

Our walks turned into a melting pot of discussions; be it civilian life or the impotence of our ministers or the spread of drugs in educational institutions.He had been the warden of a famous Indian education institute and had on many occasions caught students with dope on them.As I approached the end of my internship, I realised that the world had so much to offer and how much more there was for me to experience.We bid each other farewell and I am sure that today if I went back I would find the Colonel clad in his spotless white pajama kurta, walking along the edge of the garden tending to the flowers,giving instructions to Ramesh, the gardener to clear a patch of weeds and all this while smoking his customary cigarette and shaking his head at the way the world was run.

My jaunt

2005-06-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

After an eventful weekend, I am back at my desk preparing for the next certification exam I am supposed to take at work.I am now a MCAD(Microsoft Certified Application Developer) and also finished the first exam on my way to becoming an OCA(Oracle Certified Associate).

It was a fun weekend during which I made a trip to Pondicherry for 2 days with some good friends. We drove to Pondicherry on 17th June and reached there by 8pm.We checked into a guest house and were quite pleasantly surprised to see the place.The best part about the place was that it was quiet and peaceful.We did the customary Auroville and Matrimandir and then sat through the nights talking and dancing.It was a most pleasant getaway and the best part about the trip was that for two days I did not think about the next week and things to do at work and the exams to prepare for,no newspapers in the morning and no emails;I holidayed in perfect style.

Current mood :Satisfied

Batman Began!!!

2005-06-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Caught up with Batman Begins on Thursday and in my opinion-I liked it.There were a number of places where the movie faltered but I believe that as a whole it was good.The movie starts of with Bruce Wayne experiencing another of his bat-infested nightmares.He finds himself in a cell in some god-forsaken country. The movie then goes onto recount how his father and mother died. It is interesting in the aspect that the batman movies that I have seen till today have never captured and illustrated the Wayne parents as much as this one did. I knew from what I have read and seen that the Wayne family was very well-known and very famous for their philanthropy.However it was interesting to see how they dealt with Sr. Wayne and his interactions with Bruce.It gave a brief but interesting insight into the father's heart.

It was also one of the darkest Batman movies I have seen in a long time.What we don't realise is that all the other super heroes had other motivating factors like Superman had a child-like delight when he discovered his powers while Spiderman was driven by the guilt of his uncle's death.Batman is the only super hero to have been driven by fear and used his fear and converted it into his most potent weapon.As Bruce Wayne sets about building an alternate identity, I did wonder as to how this will be dealt with, but credit has to be given to the director where he has again dwelt for a considerable bit on the research Bruce does and at the end of the movie there is no spanking Bat cave but just a make-shift foundation on which the real Bat cave will be built in the sequel.

The fight sequences could have been better orchestrated, the girl friend plays hardly any role but Michael Caine was the quintessential English butler-wise and cynical;just the way I like them.Morgan Freeman was wasted as an actor and the villain was average.

It was certainly interesting to see the internal conflicts within Bruce Wayne and his intensity showed well.At some level Batman is the superhero who is closest to being human and easiest to relate to because he is one super hero who made his weakness his strength.Lesson learnt.

Went for the movie with another blogger, Manoj.Read his review here.

WHY?

2005-06-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

I have never thought about the concept of playing for "fun" as a lot of people like to say.Here is the situation-"10 friends decide to meet up and spend some time together.So they decide to go bowling."When asked as to why they want to go bowling, they nonchalantly reply that they want to go bowling to have fun. As the game of bowling progresses some of them do well while some others do not. Now some of them who do not do well, might be more competitive than some of the others who do not do well and therefore some of them who do not do well and are more competitive do not feel happy about not doing well(phew!!!Now that was a difficult sentence to come up with)Immediately they get tagged as being whiners and bad losers.Now this is a concept that is beyond me.

This is because the concept of going bowling to have fun is alright but when I am at it, I bowl to win. Why would anyone want to bowl to get a score of 0?Now that is so beyond logic that we won't even consider it.So as the main idea is to get a score as high as possible,why would I be happy if the ball lands up in the gutter(drain) on either side of the bowling alley.Why am I expected to shrug my shoulders and smile and act as if nothing happened.Why am I expected to continue smiling and being all gay and happy when I am thinking about what went wrong and how I should correct it the next time on.

End result -Whiner or Bad Loser
Bah!!!

Production done!!

2005-06-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Atlast the June production of evam Indrajit is finished. Its been interesting to do evam Indrajit after the kind of plays we have done before with Neil Simon comedies of The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park,Python Hysteria, Art, Love letters and Death. There have been some important discoveries about how we are perceived today by a Chennai audience and the expectations with which they come to watch us. These are also times of change at evam with some people from the old guard leaving and new faces being inducted. For me the last 10 months at evam have been a most interesting experience not just in the kind of work I have done but also with the people I have met and the things I have learnt.

Some things that I have learnt at evam-

1. There is no such problem which does not have a solution.If there is a problem we will find a solution and its been a revelation to see some of the things people come up with however small and simple.

2. No job is small enough to be looked down upon.If something needs to be done it needs to be done.No two ways about it.

3. Its ok to let your hair down once in a while and party hard into the night even if you wake up on a grass lawn with a throbbing headache and wonder where on heaven's name are you.

4. Never take oneself too seriously(it is not worth it).

5. Always take your job seriously;sometimes its difficult to distinguish between the two but it can be done.

6. At evam, we are all entertainers, the audience has given us 2 hours of theirs and its our duty to tell them a good story.

In the end we are story tellers and that is what we do(that sounds like a perfect case of over-simplification)

What the Hindu said...

2005-06-10T22:40:00.000-07:00

The Hindu came out with its review of evam Indrajit on friday evening and here are excerpts from their review

`Evam Indrajit' is a projection of the attitudes, fears and frustrations of the educated urban middle class of the 1960s. The sombre existentialism draws attention to the crisis of the individual. It is pessimistic and holds out little hope for those who value ideas, dreams and poetry.

The play asks questions to which there are no answers. Is the individual redundant? Is everyone only a copy of a copy? Should we conform? What is our reality? What is our truth? Badal Sircar puts a playwright in conversation with his audience. Together we look at the uneventful life of Amal, Vimal and Kamal. Indrajit alone puts up a feeble fight before he too conforms.

Presented by Evam, the play went on the boards at Sivagami Pethachi Auditorium. The group freed the script to the extent possible from the trappings of the 1960s by rewriting the lines in a more familiar lingo. That was a nice touch. The production, in Evam style was meticulously executed with an eye for detail and had two brilliant performances from Sunil as the writer and Asim Sharma as Indrajit.

Iswar, Vidyuth and Vivek as Amal, Vimal and Kamal also turned in good performances in spite of the script, which didn't give them much scope to make contact with the audience. The semi circular set, designed by Michael Muthu closed in the acting area.

The issues the play raised were non-issues to some of the youth. They were unhappy that there was no storyline and two hours was too long a time to discuss unfounded frustration.
However everyone agreed (some grudgingly) that Indrajit was once again a well-done play from Evam.

Above all they have helped assess the extent to which Chennai's youth have evolved in three decades. The pressure points have shifted. '

For a full read of the writeup, click here

Read more individual reviews of evam Indrajit here,
Kanishka
Sriram
Deba
Priya & Balaji
Chenthil

Update: I have not been able to find the Indian Express review online and so have not been able to provide that link.

evam in the news

2005-06-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Hindu ran an interesting piece on evam on Monday with insights into how the theatre scene is being redefined in Chennai by evam. It talks about how evam does not just offer "theatre" but whole entertainment with a professional touch.

Here are some excerpts from the articles-

Says Sunil from evam-"Today, we are attracting a lot of new people who haven't been to plays before. Our target group is 18-35 and the proposition we have for them is not theatre but entertainment. We drew 1,500 people for the five shows of our first production. On our last play, we did ten shows and reached 5,000 people. The numbers are increasing. Chennai has at least 15,000 to 20,000 people who want live English entertainment".

"Next month, we will have three things on our hands. `Evam Indrajit' will go to Prithvi, Mumbai and Rangashankara, Bangalore. `Barefoot in the Park' is going to Hyderabad, Pune and Colombo. In the same month, we will be rehearsing for Biloxi Blues, which will premiere at the Madras Theatre Festival, which we are managing," says the actor.

"We are not competing with any other theatre group. I sell myself not as a event management company but as a medium. I have 5000 people and we reach them six times a year. We do activities in Landmark, we have an email database of our audience. So it's easy to convince a sponsor to be associated with us."

The next four-six months are going to be very exciting for all of us at evam.To read the entire article, click here.

First set of shows-evam Indrajit

2005-06-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

Well the first showing of evam Indrajit just finished last weekend and I am back at my desk, pecking away on my keyboard trying to capture the happenings of the last two days. We started with a complete tech rehearsal which included a complete run-through of the play along with the sound and lights on Friday. Specific sequences were repeated to get timings right. There was screaming, sweat and fatigue by the end of Friday. Next morning, the tech team sat in on a meeting to review all the cues while the front end team worked tirelessly in their marketing efforts.After another tech on Saturday afternoon, the actors and tech team took a break while the crew continued in its efforts to ensure that the audience will have nothing to complain about. The show started-I don't intend to write a review of the performance because I believe it will be done best by someone not attached to the production. However, one thing that took us by surprise was the laughs the play elicited from the audience. During our readings of the play with Bhagyam, we tried to delve deep into the play, its seriousness, the undertone of the play but we were taken aback by the laughs that the play generated.

I believe it was a lesson learnt-the distance between a script and a performance is what we make out of it.

evam Indrajit

2005-05-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

What is evam Indrajit about?

Its a story of discontent, of unanswered questions, of repressed emotions and above all, its the story of the youth. The play discusses a number of issues that we face as a part of growing up. It raises questions such as Who are We?What are We? and Why are We? Questions that can seem so pertinent to a 22 year old looking for answers while looking equally senseless to his mother who seems to forget that there was a time when similar questions perturbed her. Its a play about Amal, Vimal, Kamal, Indrajit, Manasi and Aunty- it tracks their lives from carefree college-goers to anxious job searching professionals to the baggage of family life and through all this the Writer takes us through the rigmaroles of Indrajit's mind, his fears, apprehensions, his romance and his heart-break. The play captures the different ways in which life evolves from say a happily married couple who can't keep their hands of each other to a gruff husband who considers the newspaper to be the most important item in his "things-to-do". What happens to Indrajit?Does he find answers or does he get crushed under the weight of his questions?
For further information, please visit http://evam.in/newproductions.htm
To know more, please come and watch the play!

In the present

2005-05-27T00:11:00.000-07:00

Went out for dinner last night with my uncle and his family. He has three daughters, my first cousins, and the eldest daughter has two kids-Nipun Bhat and Naman Bhat. They are aged 4 and 3. After a sumptuous meal at Eden, Harrington Road, we decided to stop for an ice cream. We picked up our ice cream; Nipun with a strawberry, Naman with a cornetto and me with vanilla. The three of us sat down outside the store on the steps while the rest of them went inside. So there we sat, eating our ice creams. It was a quite moment, there were cars whizzing by, with a cut tree lying a few yards away and there we sat oblivious to the machinations of the planet, just concentrating on the given task at hand. I looked at my two nephews and they looked at me and smiled and I could not help but smile back. It was an unspoken sharing of the uncorrupted pleasure of the experience and I realized that just for that one moment, I had stopped thinking about what was going to happen tomorrow, what I wanted to do with life, what is my purpose and just for that one moment I lived in the present. I felt strong and vulnerable at the same time.

My nephews never stop amazing me, every time I see them. The things they notice, pick up and how they use this knowledge and suddenly in another instant they are back to being 4 and 3, running all around me senselessly and making me dizzy. Another instant, one hangs from my back while the other clings to me from the front and then they expect me to stomp around the place. God I miss the trivialities of childhood!!!

New play in the city

2005-05-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

ASAP Production is coming out with Four Short-Plays, directed by AmitSingh and produced by Siddhartha on 24th, 25th and 26th May, 2005 at the Alliance Francaise, Backyard, at 7.30pm. The Four Short-Plays have been adapted from four plays of Anton Chekhov. Tickets are priced atRs.75 and are available at Landmark (Nungambakkam and Spencer's Plaza)and Amethyst or call 9841117773 / 9840757702
Enjoy.

Oleanna

2005-05-17T00:02:00.000-07:00

Caught the play Oleanna this weekend. A brief synopsis of the play as stated in the leaflet given to us as we stepped in-

"Oleanna is a story of the correctness and incorrectness of sexual and power politics; of gender war and intellectual vandalism in college campus; of academic power-play between a pedantic professor who wants to change the way of the educational system and a girl from 'the deprived class' who demands equal opportunity to education. When the girl-Carol- flunks her lessons and goes to the professor-John- for what appears to be a routine clarification session, the roller-coaster exorcism of the professor begins."

The play threw up some interesting ideas as we sat watching it. One of them was related to the main character of the play called John who is a professor and who wants to change the way education is imparted. He deals with a multitude of internal conflicts in trying to deal with his student Carol who has flunked her lessons and has come to him for help. John says in one of his many musings that

"Education is prolonged and systematic hazing"

It was his way of saying that such a system in which a person is not tested for what he knows but rather what he does not know is a farce. Listening to him Carol seems to get extremely distressed as she has, in her journey to graduate school, faced innumerable challenges and prejudices and here atlast when she had 'arrived', so to say, there was this professor who seemed to rubbish the entire concept and methodology of education. She lets out her anguish and frustration with a strong and forceful intensity.

This got me thinking that in my college days too, there were some of us who blamed the "system" and the fact that this methodology is all wrong and purposeless while there were others who had struggled to get to an engineering school and valued what they had and worked hard at it.However what I felt puzzled about was the fact that I who had complained about the whole "system" and its "machinations" was among the first to land a job when employers came on campus and the people who had valued the "system" and worked hard at it, found the going very difficult. It seemed to manifest the unfairness of the whole situation. I guess in the end, its just how things are and will remain.

Desperation...

2005-05-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"

I heard these lines when I was watching the movie- "Shall We Dance?" Its a movie about a successful lawyer who has a beautiful wife, great kids and a happy family and yet finds himself wanting for something else. One day he sees a woman standing in the window of a dance school and he begins to look for her everyday. He joins the dance school and later in the movie tells the woman in the window that when he saw her standing there in the window, she looked on the outside what he was feeling on the inside.

Don't know why but I have been repeating these lines to myself for the last few days, its as if somebody gave words to what I have felt for a long time now. We have a nice family, great friends, a good job and people who love us and yet there is a need for something more, something that will thrill us every morning, something that will leave us exhilarated and yet when I try explaining this to my mom she thinks that I am unhappy with her which I am not. I guess these are some of those mysteries of life that one has to figure out for oneself.

In the end, the lawyer understands that if he had only shared what he felt with his wife and family, things would have been so much easier. Hmphh...

The Bible

2005-05-12T05:09:00.000-07:00

Michael Muthu is back with his play
THE BIBLE;THE COMPLETE WORD OF GOD [ABRIDGED]
Written By: Adam Long, Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor
The Performers: Faheem Moosa, Hariharan and Rohit Bhatt
Directed by: Michael Muthu

See here for more details.

Basta*ds...

2005-05-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day. Some background info on her- she is a married woman and a mother. She got married to the man she loved and bore his children. This is probably why, what she said stunned me. She said that she was sick of the way she was living and that married life was so frustrating and to top it all, that "All men are Bastards". I can assure you that her husband is not a woman-beater or has ever been disloyal to her. As I goggled with surprise to hear what she said, I said,"Ahem!ahem!I believe you are talking to one(not a bastard, a man)" and she continued to ignore that aspect and carried on with her diatribe against all men.

As I sat and thought about the conversation we had, I realized a very strange coincidence. It was so simple a self-discovery that I chuckled and asked myself, why hadn't I thought of this before. It was that most women I have known, have called either all men or some particular man a bastard at some stage in their life. It was a strange statistic that cut across women of all cross-sections, caste, creed, economic strata yada yada yada. Of all the words in the English language that can be used an expletive, why do women use the word Bastard so often. Why question an individual's parentage just because your husband has not exactly been as loyal as you would want him to be or because somebody in the state transport bus just felt you up. It is akin to say that a person born out of a legal wedlock would not do the same thing. Actually by doing this, the blame is transferred from the person involved to his mother. It reminds me of a phrase in Hindi that goes like-
"Aurat hi aurat ki sabse badi dushman hoti hain"
which when translated means-
"A woman is a woman's worst enemy"

Imagine this, a man born out of a legal wedlock, feels up a woman and she calls him a bastard. Now she is not exactly abusing the person involved but is actually questioning the moral integrity of his mother. Now why do women around the world want to do that.

Strange, hmm...

Just read..

2005-04-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

Finished reading,
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

Are we ready?

2005-04-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

Will we ever be ready for death? I have been thinking about it for a week now and I still have not been able to figure out if we can ever be ready for death.Actually what does it mean to be ready for death?Bhagyam(the director of our next play) passed away last week when she was reading on stage. There have been a number of people who said that she went away doing what she did best and what she liked doing best. But was she ready when she went?Will we ever be ready to die?By ready, could it mean that she had achieved all that she had set out for. Or could it mean that she had conveyed exactly how she felt to all the people who mattered to her. Or could it just mean that she was content with life.I don't know...

Bhagyam for me was an unending quest, an eternal question, probing, searching...Our readings with her were a revelation. We would be discussing a contentious issue and I would shake my head listening to somebody and she would smile, seeing me dissenting and say,"Yes, Saraansh, go on." and yet was she ready when she went??? She wanted to make evam Indrajit as relevant today as she could and she went about doing this with a fervor I have not seen till date and that's why I ask, Was she ready??Will we ever be ready??

Bhagyam

2005-04-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

Bhagyam, we miss you.

Way of life

2005-04-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a close acquaintaince of mine and at some point in the conversation, she used the phrase "Way of life". She was actually telling me about her weekend routine in Melbourne where she went shopping and invariably ended up buying more than she set out for and she said its almost become a "way of life". I'm sure she meant the whole thing in a lighter vein but could not help think about what a "way of life" actually meant.

There was the colonial way of life in which men were given their due on the grounds of colour and nationality. Just the colour of your skin could mean a "different way of life"(not necessarily for the better) On the same thread was the Gandhian way of life in which every being was considered equal and in the whole "means to an end" scenario, the "means " acquired greater importance. There was the Communist way of life in which everything belonged to the state and our existence as individuals counted for nothing. These days there are two subsets of the above mentioned- one followed by Wen Jiaboa, the esteemed Premier of China and the one practised by our dear Prakash Karat of the Communist Party of India and inspite of being in the same subset, there are more differences that similarities in the above mentioned way of life. There is the American way of life where the legend has grown of migrants coming with zilch in their pockets but with their hearts on their sleeves and today have turned into millionaires. There was the Hitler's way of life which reminded one more of the whole Harry Potter scene where the pure bloods had more rights than the other "mud bloods" and where the extermination of the impure races seemed a perfect solution to cleanse society of this scourge and diametrically opposite was Mother Teresa's way of life where beauty existed in everything and in every being and where giving was the greatest joy. Today there's the city yuppie's way of life who has all comforts and belongs to the "I, me myself" generation and then there is the soldier's way of life who does not know when he will be home again.

All this from an innocuous phrase such as "way of life".Hmm...mine??I am still trying to figure that out.

Mime

2005-04-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

In the last month or so, I have a attended a variety of theatre workshops ranging from body movement to voice training to several readings of the play, evam Indrajit. However, I think the most interesting of these has been the mime exercises. Its a simple enough concept when you think about it, however the execution was not as easy as I thought it would be. The first mime exercise we did was when we were asked to carry out a sequence of activities that we did at home that day, in mime. What this meant was that I was supposed to be oblivious to the presence of the 15 people watching me and walk through some daily activity of mine. It could be as simple as brushing my teeth or taking a shower. I realized as to how difficult it was to shake away the idea in my head that there are people around me, watching. It was interesting also in the sense that when there were people who performed this exercise in complete isolation of their audience, it became a pleasure to watch them, even if it was as banal as them getting up and choosing what to wear.

The next exercise was one in which we were divided into sets of 4-5 and one person from a set came up and was asked to mime something written on a paper, in the sense that they were supposed to show the activity and not the words on the paper. It made me realize that how a simple act of somebody stopping his cycle, getting off and throwing something made my mind correlate it to a newspaper boy. It was an excellent exercise in exploring the patterns that our brain forms over a period of time. How a simple action can make us see the activity in its entirety.

Next was an exercise in which each person was given an activity and as he/she performs that activity, the others in his set, look and identify what he is doing and then join him in the activity. It was a brilliant exercise of team cognition in which, lets say a person got volley ball, then as he showed a player serving, the others in his set rose and took position as other players, the net and the referee.

Its been a very interesting last month attending these workshops because its made me realize what attention to detail can do to an absolutely trivial situation and the metamorphosis has to be seen to be believed.

Kleptomaniacs

2005-03-30T04:13:00.000-08:00

Kleptomania, for the uninitiated, is the "mania of stealing things". Its a term we have all used with such casual ease that it has lost its seriousness to a large extent. On a number of occasions I have heard people referring to each other as a klepto, albeit jokingly.However, we don't realize the gravity of this phenomenon or disorder if it can be called that. Imagine a family member of yours, somebody you have loved and grown up with, somebody whom you have respected all your life, suddenly turns out to be a "Klepto". First reaction-DISBELIEF. It would be nothing less than a shock to anybody with our first reaction being, what with all the trust, love and faith one placed in the person, this is how one was repaid. The feeling of being betrayed would fill one with intense loathing. Instantaneously, a million things fall into place. The necklace that went missing during a cousin's marriage, the money that was lost during the house-warming ceremony and sundry other things.

Yet is ostracizing the person, the solution to this problem?Not talking to the person ever again is not going to make anything better. Also we will be punishing the near and dear ones of that person, say his/her spouse and children for no fault of theirs.So what is the solution to this problem? Is there a solution to this problem? Should one forget about what happened? Is it possible to forget what happened? Can things ever be the same again?

What happened...?

2005-03-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

Me: I am bored of this job ma and I guess I will quit pretty soon.
Ma:If you quit then what will you do?
Me: I don't know!

Immediately mom goes into a state of hypertension and starts a long sermon on knowing one's responsibilities and that with time these "responsibilities" would also increase and how I need to figure out a career for myself and try and stick to it. I listen to this entire lecture with a half-smile on my face which she construes to be a smirk and continues with her lecture thinking that it did not have any effect on me.

At that moment, I ask myself, "What did I want to become when I was 10?". I think hard and I remember that I always wanted to join the Navy as far as I can think. Their sparkling white uniforms, the captain at the stern of the ship looking dreamily at the horizons in front of him, the wake that the ship leaves behind and the mighty ocean -this is what I wanted to be a part of when I was growing up. Then what happened?What went wrong?How many ten year olds want to become an Equity Analyst or a Public relations Officer or a Chartered Accountant.From my last count, that number adds upto zero. What then happens to our dreams as we grow up?

Its as if we condition our dreams, dilute them and mould them with the world around us. Where is the adventure in becoming an investment banker when compared to an astronaut?This is not to cast aspersions on any of the above mentioned professions however, how did someone who wanted to join the Navy end up as a software engineer. This question has troubled me a lot of times and when I look around, I see people happy doing what they are doing and I ask myself, "Is this what they wanted to become when they were 10?". Professions which so appealed to our young 10 year old conscience such as being a doctor, nurse, teacher or police officer have hardly any role in our mind space today.What happened then?All I have is questions with answers so vague and misleading that I am better off without an answer.

What happened to me?What happened to my dream...?

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

2005-03-16T22:57:00.000-08:00

I am teaching my mom how to use the computer these days. My sister is at the University of Melbourne, studying architecture, and I thought that teaching mom how to use the comp would be a good idea now, so she can communicate with my sister without my assistance.First, some background info on mum-she is quite the quintessential, sentimental mom, loves to stuff me with food till I am on the verge of bursting and then a little more. I think that should suffice for now.

She had her first lesson on Monday. I asked her to start with switching on the machine. She sat there with a pen and paper in her hand, writing down everything I said starting from switching on the machine to connect to internet by clicking on AccessRunnerDSL. Then click twice on Internet Explorer. One of her biggest doubts is where should she click once and where should she do a double click.

On a separate thread, it got me thinking as to how I went about learning to use the computer. I guess it must have been in school, when I was about 10 or 12, in the computer lab, with four of us sharing a single machine and jostling with each other trying our best to get our hands on the Holy Grail- the mouse. Somebody would make a mistake and the other three would instantly scamper towards the computer teacher and complain vociferously about the injustice of it all. At that age, definitions of justice were so much easier to form, rivalries had a very short shelf life and Dean Jones was GOD.

Back to the topic of my mom learning the comp, despite her repeated attempts at pulling the plunger on the right of the page down in order to scroll down, she was unable to do it and suddenly I screamed in frustration. I don't know why but instantly I felt a sickening feeling within me. What if she had done the same thing when I was growing up, trying to findmy way around things, failing a number of times and succeeding sometimes. But she was always patient, always encouraging and whenever I fell and looked up at her, I was greeted with that cherubic smile. So I started again and she sent her first mail yesterday, the excitement within her was palpable and I just stood there smiling at her.

Mummenschanz Next

2005-03-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

The silent kiss of the fluffy balls

The man-woman conundrum

Its a nice feeling to just sit in an auditorium to watch a performance without a single expectation. As we sat there waiting for Mummenschanz Next to start, we knew that it was mime theatre, but nothing prepared us for what followed next. In simple terms- it was a brilliant show. It was brilliant in all its parts and it was brilliant as a whole.

It started with a thin stream of light going round and round in circles on its own; just a streak of light making a thousand revolutions and suddenly there were an array of objects coming on stage and going away. There was a box that suddenly came to life and started acting bossy with the other "live" boxes. There were two snakes involved in an elaborate, prehistoric yet pleasant courtship and suddenly the snakes consummate, and their detachable eyes start whirring around. There was a huge monolithic mossy mass that crawled around the stage and sometimes perilously on the edge, to the horror of people in the first row and to the delight of the others. There was a squid that seemed to glide on its own with a school of fish swimming around it.

It was an act beyond comparison. The exceptional use of lights to bring out those subtle expressions on the faces of balls made of various materials and to hide the people behind these objects was exceptional. Every aspect of the lights was neatly and meticulously executed. The act itself was innovative and left the audience gasping and thinking that such things are also possible, that theatre does not necessarily have to be throwing one's voice and clarity of speech; it can just as well be silence and expressions, all with a little innovation.

It was an evening well spent and the applause was thunderous when the four performers, John Murphy, Raffaella Mattioli, Bernie Schürch and Floriana Frassetto appeared on stage. Mummenschanz next- can't wait to see you again.

Pune Highway-the Play

2005-03-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

Bugs and Rehan Engineer

Rajit Kapur and Yamini Namjoshi in Pune Highway

Andheri Raaton mein, sunsaan rahon mein

Pune Highway came to Chennai and in keeping with Rahul da Cunha's earlier production, Class of 84', promised to entertain. The setting- a drab and seedy hotel room with Bugs sprawled on the bed and Vish(Rehan Engineer) sitting on a stool. The hotel is located on the Pune Highway and at regular intervals one can hear the rush of a speeding vehicle. Enter- Promode(Rajit Kapur) and the play gets underway. Three friends together, Promode the married philanderer, Vish, the executive yuppie and Bugs, the insecure one with his st..tt...t...amer. These friends are holed up in a hotel because a friend of their's, Babu, has just been murdered and they have had to find a place to stay for the night and get their car repaired so as to make it back to Bombay. As they are holed up there, the tension of their friend's murder begins to crack them slowly and they react to this stress differently. It was a pleasure to watch Bugs with his stammer have a go at Promode. As they sit there and reconstruct the sequence of events that led to their friend's death, enters, a hotel employee alias Shankar Sachdev who was an amazing act. The sheer nonchalance with which he appraised these three people in the room and walked about dealing with them was a delight to watch and what with his entry-exit song humming such as the one I have mentioned in the start, was refreshing, to say the least.

Babu had borrowed money from some people and was not in a position to return the money and so the lenders track down Promode and make him bring Babu to the Pune Highway saying that all they wanted to do was "teach him a lesson" and consequently kill him. While this is happening, Promode is in the back of the car, having sex with a female friend of his, who also happens to be the daughter of an MLA. Her role in the play seemed more like an attachment that was put there for its own sake than for the sake of necessity. Her tantrums bordered on the irritating to the boring with the whole "Pramy" sequence, but Bugs' take on the whole Pramy thing was extremely enjoyable.

The play started off with the usual element of sarcastic humor puntuated with a number of choice words both in Hindi and English which gave it a more casual sound to it and it was also funny in places.However towards the later stages of the play, it became disengaging and continued that way till the end. There was no real suspense created about Babu's death and the ending was a disappointment. That... was Pune Highway.

The weaker sex

2005-03-10T04:22:00.000-08:00

Quote for the day-
The weaker sex is the stronger because of the weakness of the stronger sex for the weaker sex.

Nice one...found it here

Currently reading

2005-03-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera