Phoren Se

Attrition – Corporate Scourge

2012-01-08T10:57:00.002Z

Mention it in any sphere of corporate life and reactions are usually strong and possibly adverse. Most people face this word in everyday life and yet never realise what they are facing. Quite a shame, to be honest.

Attrition devolves from the Medieval Latin word, attricioun or attritio which originally meant sorrow for one’s sins that arises from a motive other than love of God. This definition also included the meaning of the act of wearing down or grinding down by friction and further the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse of attack – also known as a war of attrition.

In modern usage and connotation, the word indicates the reduction of staff and employees in an organization through normal or abnormal means, such as retirements or resignations. Attrition could also mean the gradual reduction of a workforce by employee’s leaving and not being replaced rather than by their being laid off.

Under any circumstances, within the harsh strictures of corporate terminology, growth indicating success is an undeniable fact. Any organization losing people or “assets” is considered to be in trouble and hence the strong reactions to this word.

Regardless of the size, dimension or even profile of the company, in today’s world, it is becoming harder each day to retain the top performers – the best and the brightest for the duration of their productive lives. This is never more in sharper clarity than on the corporate battlefields of modern-day India. As a microsm of global business, the Indian corporate scenario makes some rather pertinent points, which should be considered by global market leaders or any entrepreneur worth their salt.

In recent business news, top IT companies like Yahoo, Microsoft etc expressed publicly the issues faced by them in relation to on-going attrition of their top resources. This phenomenon is not sustained or only faced by IT domain companies, but also larger conglomerates like GE, LG and Reliance.

Flat prices of stock post-recession (or is it still on?), vested options for top talent or even aggressive start-ups who are willing to take chances and push compensation market rates higher than actual valuations are causing much heart-burn, acidity and even the odd heart-attacks due to issues of retention.

There are a variety of plans, policies and ideas afoot to counteract such alarming market trends – but attrition has been around since roman times, or should that be Vedic times. We forget this to our disadvantage and complain bitterly about treacherous or un-loyal resources.

Are we a victim to our own plans, policies and ideas?

I believe we are… and here are my reasons;

Inane Rules & Regulations

One of the top issues of frustrated employees of any level or experience are inane rules & regulations. In theory or on fat reports, certain rules sound sensible and possibly even progressive. During day to day activities of a 10 hr average corporate working day, no one has time for inane rules, which don’t contribute to their specific tasks/activities or aid/assist them in fulfilment of the same. When the talent (whether management, marketing, operations, development or whatever teams) starts “complaining” or in worse case scenario’s, “simply following orders” – the organization is in trouble. Talent/resources/assets who do not question or raise voices in processes are hard workers, not smart workers – the smart workers are already packing their bags.

Motivation in Action

Motivation is a big word and another greatly misused word. Motivation does not come from merely sweet talk or pats on the shoulder. Motivation works in deeds not speech. By definition, corporates are organic bodies and having specific articulatory parts. Most of the best and brightest of an organization are never asked if they’re really interested in what they’re doing – everyone is on a deadline and there are too many deliverables. Top talent is never driven by money and power completely – the compensation is important but not a priority. But the greatest motivation is genuine interest & passion in what they do on an everyday basis. It’s the chance to be a part of something BIG, something that would possibly change the world (in whatever small way) or even something that they, the top talent, would feel proud about. It’s not enough to just say, “well done” but needs to be followed up with more chances to showcase skills, learn more and contribute positively.

Cursory Performance Reviews

Ineffective performance reviews, which are rushed and/or vague, usually due to pressing deliverables & deadlines leave impressions that the company just doesn’t care in long term futures with the organization. This leads to issues of the next point…

Career Development & Priorities

90% of employees have no long term career goals or even mid-term goals, leave aside personal development or even specific time-bound priorities. This case is especially so in India where once a student gets a job, the battle is half over. Less than 2% of junior employees and under 5% of middle ranking staff could give you a detailed plan for what they want to do in the next 5-10 years. But, everyone wants to know how much their salaries will increase in the same period! Some of the best people to work with undertake an annual review of focus for both employer and employee, which ensures that there is a cohesive and comprehensive discussion on succession planning and career development. In essence, if your people know that there is a path ahead of them, they are more likely to stick around and see what’s at the end of the suggested road.

Accountability & Responsibility

Delegation is a vast task and an extremely sensitive issue. To delegate work to someone would mean an engendering of trust, reliance upon another at cost to self. If the task is not done properly or not done at all, it’s your neck on the line hence most good resources/assets try to do everything themselves. What they need to be taught is not fear of missing deliverables and unbearable deadlines, but the freedom to mentor and monitor juniors, coordinate with colleagues for successful delegation. In this context, specific accountability and responsibility allotment are key – this is a rock solid answer to fears and a future anchor to successful retention of top assets/resources as they don’t feel over-worked and respect the trust of the organization in them. Avoid trying to tell them how to do their jobs once the expectations are explained.

Peer Equality

A top worker or field man or developer will want to work with someone who is at least of their calibre if not someone who is better than themselves so that they can learn and add to their knowledge/skill base. Top talent are always smart workers and deliver best when competing with others of the same ilk. There is no sense in hiring and retaining people who don’t benefit others as well as themselves. Replacements for top assets should also be with top assets or else, a previously vigorous and effective team would lose momentum and morale. To keep our best & brightest, we need better and brighter people.

Openness and Vision

The smart workers always have ideas for improvement– and a desperate need to have them listened to! However, the majority of their ideas might go against the established corporate vision/strategy. This creates a lot of frustration and feelings of alienation for all such employees regardless of rank, designation etc. If the smart workers feel alienated at every turn and meeting, the organization will be left with a staff of Yes Men who agree to whatever is stated without any personal inputs of worth. There is a need to acknowledge the fact that others can have good ideas and incorporate the best parts of said innovations into over-all strategy. Sometimes the “boss” is not always right although they may be usually right.

Strategic Priorities

New endeavours and approaches should be appreciated as long as they mesh with over-all company goals and targets, regardless of provenance. The challenge in setting up such “incubation schemes” is not in approving the same for the sake of superficial movement but specific commitment till results yield proof of failure. Cursory attempts towards new approaches and a clamped down authoritarian style results in bad situations – space/opportunity should always be afforded, with prudence & caution to try new ideas. If not anything, 1 failed idea with good support would ensure 20 official directives issued without any hassles. And if the idea works, everyone benefits.

It’s never a one-way street in the corporate world. If the employer pays a salary, the employee works for the organization. But, paying a salary is not the same as slavery or family relations – there is a symbiotic relationship at work here with trust, dependence, delegation and belief to be extended in either direction. Top resources/assets naturally have to assume a lot of responsibility for deliveries and deadlines on behalf of the employers – if this equation is not on an even keel, the situation will never be beneficial for either party. However, with the scarcity of “top talent” – which is bound to substantially decrease in relation to demand – the organization, which understands these reasons for attrition would stand a better chance of having people come to them, instead of going to the people.

Processes, Projections and Proactive-ness

2012-01-08T10:54:00.001Z

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Indian corporates are possibly the single most powerful engine of growth in our burgeoning economic advance and it’s a machine of frightful efficiency. Guess our mantra? We can deliver anything and with chutney on the side!

In an economy that is still shaking itself out of the shackles of Nehruvian economics and socialistic import substitution policies, our current generations picked themselves up in the wake of liberalization and globalization. We embraced technology, refused to be seduced by plastic credit and stayed liquid through the worst financial crisis of the decade.

We are brash, talk trash but have ready cash….

India is finding itself, or perhaps Indians are. We are a bunch of self-congratulatory, aggressive and very-much-full-of-ourselves people. We love to say “told ya so!!” and then charge to process a solution. Not much wonder why our corporates are hated, feared and possibly considered alien in structure, thought and processes.

As an expat, an 8 hour working day was laughably easy and overtime was silliness – but then who’s complaining? A boss who is abusive cannot be tolerated and deadlines are set after collective deliberation? This was not heaven, we told each other – it’s a holiday from the real world, OUR world. A world where 12 hour days without overtime are the basic norm and words like employee exploitation are matter of fact, amongst many other “things” that are par for the course.

Like many things that we have learnt from the fabled West, we have learnt how to ensure our profit margins stay healthy. Maximise profits, minimise costs, utilize resources optimally and do all this on a set time-frame, usually condensed and compromised by human frailty and faults – we don’t merely expect the impossible, we take it for granted.

And what of attrition, employee fall-outs and segmentation – for anyone unhappy with their job, there are 20 or even 200 others who would happily take that job. Pay 100 employees marginal wages and pay a manager top dollar to sustain the product is a very western concept that is losing prevalence in the country of its origin.

“Get off your chair, this is not the bloody governmental bureaucracy that you have inherited and get on with your job” We talk in lacs and crores and refuse refusals – nothing is impossible and haven’t you heard the cliché – I (a)M Possible??!

It is surprisingly easy to say that things have changed in our lives here in India. Much too easy but perhaps easy is as easy does for the possibilities are endless; the requirements still stay the same – the wish for security, substance and respect of labour. And despite everything that has happened in the past 100 years, a majority of our people, educated or not, employed or not, are still struggling for the very same even today.

Success is a state of mind, achievement is merely perspective. Shift your focus, I tell my students and often as not, to myself. The hardest test is the one you don’t know you’re being graded upon – and as I write these lines, I realize that we Indians refuse to grade ourselves. We refuse refusals and in the process refuse to acknowledge ownership. Sometimes it’s the lowly menial who refuses to accept ownership for his area of endeavours and sometimes the proprietor who would rather overlook ownership of his endeavours towards his employees – in both cases, out of baser instincts usually.

We have inherited responsibility from the bitter teachings of a restricted economy; accountability was imposed on our untrammelled spirits to ensure delivery and standards, but we are yet to embrace ownership. Ownership for actions and consequences of the same – especially when we do business or invoke the holy triumvirate of corporate policy, development and growth.

And in this process, how do we take ownership for our ideals and principles? Or do we give them a quick polish when it suits our needs or wants. Do we trot out our mission values and statements only when we showcase our code of business conduct paperwork for the next foreign contract or tender? Do we realize that our capitalistic excesses in making hay while the sun shines is self-destructive towards creating institutions rather than quick profits to retire upon?

But then, do we really BUILD for the future today or is that merely a hoary old phrase? Do we actually expect something to outlast our lifetimes and reach out to touch people we are yet to know or might never know. This internet age states that we can access information at the click or a keystroke – how much of it do we actually value and re-use?

A person’s life is similar to the growth cycle of a company – not merely envisaging the ups and downs of the market and the shifting vagaries of demand & supply economics. Building a company is similar to building a life, a sensible stage by stage progression of choices, none of which are wrong. And no theory ever devised by the ingenuous minds of facile imagination can ever comprehend fully the rich diversity of actuality or its causality. Except that of the person building the damned foundations for a structure to call their own and he/she definitely takes all the risks and definitely deserves a bigger slice of the cake. But, exactly HOW big a slice are we talking about here?

To blog is to basically stand on a soapbox and explain to yourself how elevated your thoughts are to the rest of humanity. It is perhaps a vain effort to stretch out to oneself in the ravaging clamour of an uncaring world, too busy blogging itself or variations thereof. My blog is to question how we find the balance between the raging inferno of our ambitions and the consequences of our actions. I apologize if I am unable to state more clearly or categorically as I am lost between the two.

*This piece was selected as a Winning Entry for the ‘Viewspaper Express Yourself Writing Competition’*

Tech Support ASAP

2011-10-20T19:05:00.001Z

A friend texted me the other day – if you wish to trouble someone, sue him. Both of you will get what you deserve!!!

The conduct of a lawsuit is called litigation – in essence, it means that you bring in legal processes against someone or vice-versa or as the case may be. Lawyers love defining terms and drawing inferences and interpretations, so I will stop right here and get on with this article.

Basically, getting involved in any part of a legal process could be (mis)construed as “litigation” – in India, this is a synonym for “unbelievably cruel torture”, “waste of time” and even worse. I do realise that I am possibly slandering and causing grounds for libel, but I guess that’s the better part of living in a democracy. I get to say what I want….or at least till I am not arrested. Akhil Gogoi and his histrionics give me precedent, in case I AM arrested.

It’s been over 60 odd years and the higher up courts have got all the plaudits for “judicial activism” and TV cameras, while down in the gutters, it is still might is right or rather, money and cunning is all that (legally) matters. The heart cries out for a vigilante leaping off the short roofs of Guwahati town, righting wrongs and basically looking really good in tights….guys like me can only hope for such writer’s wet dreams.

There are over 3 crore (governmental figures, don’t believe them) cases currently pending in various courts in India. In most cases, citizens stand next to nothing chances of actually getting a decree in their lifetimes, much less justice. Did I hear someone mean-mouthing our honourable court processes and declare YET another hunger strike?!!!

I went and voted today. There was an ear-splitting screech from the machine as I pressed down on technology in the voting machine which has made ballot rigging a much harder exercise. As I type this on my laptop, I am able to delete most of the text which would probably land me in jail. As most of you read this, you yourselves will possibly understand that it’s not hunger strikes which have caused this present day miracle of an angry voice unheard in the backwaters of India ranting forth on the idiocy of a technologically savvy society from not seeing what is in front of their eyes.

India has more than 791.38 MILLION mobile phone users (as on February 2011) and I just needed to type in “number of cell phone users in India” to get the Wikipedia estimate. Each cell phone is registered and one must provide due papers for accessing the mobile telephony services. No doubt there are loopholes in this process which people have exploited, but by and large, it is still an amazing process where we have managed to map the hitherto innumerable Indian masses.

Technology, in essence, says “eat dust, suckers”…..

As a card-holding member of that particular Indian group – the armchair politicians and sofa do-gooders, the TV remote is the ultimate device for assuaging whatever scrap of social conscience we have. We’d rather have aggressive news anchors sell the “public voice” tabloid style and ask “hard questions” while the “nation watches”. And then we have dinner, discuss how the country is going to the dogs and go to sleep.

The ordinary citizen can barely make it to the polling station and avoids the courts like the plague – is it any wonder that hunger strikes of octogenarians sell TRP’s ?

As the Indian colossus staggers on, riding on the heroic shoulders of a few hundred thousand technology-oriented citizens, it seems there could be answer to many of our so-called “issues” at the feet of technology I am usually accused of ranting; therefore, allow me the indulgence of a providing a case study. The Indian Judicial Services should do well as the sacrificial goat, with due reverence to our ancient customs – none intended for the IJS, just to make my point clear.

Most Indians know how to access Facebook; in fact, the DWS website informs us that as on 27th of July 2010, Facebook registered over 12 million FB users. That figure contains several magistrates and judges of the trial courts in the State of Assam, as per my personal experience and knowledge. The judicial services see fit to install computers in all lower courts at quite an expense and furthermore, the magistrates are given laptops for day to day usage. Playing solitaire during boring legal arguments must have figured mainly during this decision to invest in such infrastructure.

Our legal system has been given a car with very nice upholstery and no engine to speak of. I would not know what kind of software that said judges and magistrates are utilizing, but obviously there is no intra-net in place to any form of data mining or even run basic trend regressions. There is a point system in place; I have been informed by my legal brethren on the bench, but what formulation thereof? If the judicial system has been optimized and brought up to IT speed, why are these figures not published? What is being hidden?

My main question is – why is this data, i.e. the number of trials under processes, under-trials, pre-trials not summarized or mapped? And published!!!

My supplementary questions are – why is this data not available to the general public? Why is judicial activism only visible in the High Courts and that too as the discretion of the said High Court judges? Why are the processes not subject to review by external audit bodies?

Have you not heard of data mining or MIS (management of information systems)?

Allow me to quote Wikipedia (ever heard of it, you fossils warming those hallowed benches?) –

“Data mining (also known as Knowledge Discovery in Data, or KDD), field of computer science, is the process of extracting patterns from large data sets by combining methods from statistics and artificial intelligence with database management. With recent tremendous technical advances in processing power, storage capacity, and inter-connectivity of computer technology, data mining is seen as an increasingly important tool by modern business to transform unprecedented quantities of digital data into business intelligence giving an in a wide range of profiling practices, such as marketing, surveillance, fraud detection, and scientific discovery. The growing consensus that data mining can bring real value has led to an explosion in demand for novel data mining technologies”

Again –

“A management information system (MIS) is a system that provides information needed to manage organizations effectively. Management information systems involve three primary resources: technology, information, and people. It's important to recognize that while all three resources are key components when studying management information systems ... the most important resource is people. Management information systems are regarded to be a subset of the overall internal controls procedures in a business, which cover the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures used by management accountants to solve business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. Management information systems are distinct from regular information systems in that they are used to analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information systems”

We are discussing technology which has been around for quite a bit of time – and guess what, Indian companies lead the way in delivering the same to clients such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, USAID, Havard Med School and many more. But the gods forbid that the Indian citizen’s hard earned taxes should be spent in such frivolous expenditure. I mean, seriously, we would depriving the families of all those tout’s posing as lawyers, the clerks in the records branches and many, many more of their livelihood now, wouldn’t we?

And what if the said data WERE to be mined or the information so available is checked against census records, or even records from the telecom sectors? Would it be really possible that there would be a massive culling out of people who are dead, cases which are already time barred or worse, release prisoners who have been detained illegally?

Every VILLAGE in India now has cyber café’s – why does the average Indian litigant have to bribe the court master (peshkar) to know the next date or even submit a petition for absence? Would it be so hard to explain to our dearly beloved judicial services that it might be possible to run a basic website informing litigants of the status of their cases?

But wait, I hear people (highly placed people who sneer for a living – worse than the armchair brigade) scream about the cost. Of course there is cost – when was the last time any of you fat cats being driven in fancy white sedans with air-conditioning last understand the cost of a litigant who gives up a day’s wage to travel to the city, waits the entire day for his case to be heard and be finally informed that due to some issue (the magistrate’s grand-daughter’s birthday or the public prosecutor’s hangover) the case was deferred to the next leap year’s February the 29th.

Cost is subjective, cost is perspective – ask a man running around the courts for the last 10 years just to get a decree, much less justice, what cost really is. But in reality, hyperbole aside, the car’s been bought already, the infrastructure is in place – an engine or the right software would cost a few lacs. Certainly cheaper than the fleet of new white sedans I see every time I pass the High Court of our glorious State.

Of course – we could NEVER implement such radical processes, it would show up so many people, processes and so much else in bad light and no one really wants that.

And technology, in essence, is told “eat dust, sucker”…..

Someone get my bail money.

What Women Want….

2010-06-01T13:36:00.002Z

Allow me to start by quoting from a dictionary…..I love doing this as it irritates people to no end!!!

Chauvinist: Believing that the group one belongs to, be it of sex, creed, or color, is automatically superior to another's. Sexism is a prime example of chauvinistic ideology. (Quote Urban Dictionary)

Chivalry: Origin Old French "chevalerie", from Latin "caballarius" 'horseman'. Derivatives Chivalric (adjective). Also, the medieval knightly system with its religious, moral and social code. Again, the combination of qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honour, courtesy, justice, and a readyness to help the weak. Finally, courteous behaviour, especially that of a man towards women. For eg. Chivalry was an expected quality of an knight during the medieval period. (Quote Urban Dictionary)

If you open the door, hold the seat, be courteous i.e. whatever makes life easier for women today, you are chivalrous. However, if that same spirit extends to not being conducive to women, you’re chauvinistic – I can open my OWN door, pay for my own coffee/drink…..THANK YOU (I hate the way they say Thank You – feels like a call to arms!!)

As life gets easier, things get complicated – or so we think. Each generation feels that the other generations had it easy. The questions that each generation throws up are obviously different, but in essence quite the same. The way we deal with them is also quite the same in essence – we keep on moving ahead and over time, the questions become someone else’s headache and we cant be bothered…..or so my dad says J

This is a note, NOT in answer, but a Note to understand….a note for elucidation & elaboration for myself. No doubt it has been inspired by other near and dear ones, but the questions that are raised need answers. I don’t think I have all the answers but the years of observation allow me draw my own conclusions – conclusions I believe in though they are subject to change. I would be no better than many if I was to consider that standing my ground actually counts as being steadfast, courageous or whatever.

Virtues are a form of social conditioning and we learn them at home due to their prevalence in society and as accepted norms of behaviour. The story of the fox and the grapes is absurd if we were to think of it now, but we take the lesson from it, ONLY because we’re taught only one way to think or perceive or even reason. Take a minute to consider the story – run through it in your mind….spot the absurdity….if you don’t get it, message me J

Women of this generation are a confused lot and the men are worse – merely because our thought processes are vicarious. We are who the women in our life were or are. And before you call me an ardent feminist, read on….

Our grandparents or forebears had it better – there was a clear demarcation of roles and hence there was compromise. You got married without consent and you moved on with it. In short, lack of options made the process palatable.

This is my first issue – we have far too many options today…..confusion begins with too many options.

Who are a male and a female? Does anatomy actually demarcate gender or is it a state of mind? A girl who has to fight for her everyday bread and fight ruthlessly in an uncaring world is “masculine” in getting what she needs to survive. A boy who is cosseted and mollycoddled, unable to decide what his priorities are, is considered “effeminate” and therefore ridiculed. Are these concepts or biases? Who set up these definitions? Do they apply today……do they need to?

My second issue – definition is imperative……confusion ensues when you cant define something or someone into its correct square peg.

You disagree? Its possible to be a round hole in a square peg – also known as the chaos theory, yes?

So, what do women want? What do men want? What is it that makes us hunt endlessly over and over to attain the nirvana of happiness? In fact, what is happiness? When did you last see it? Who was responsible for it?

The taste of an ice-cream on a hot summer’s day is happiness……YOU cause it by eating the ice-cream. The happiness is therefore related to YOUR satisfaction. If it’s a beer that quenches your thirst, would water do as well? If your heart wishes for something then does a substitute actually do the job?

If you’re gay and society demands you’re straight, would that work for you? If it does not, what happens? You are either gay or happy or you’re straight and unhappy……life’s pretty much specific and the one thing it teaches is that happiness is purely a matter of perspective.

My third issue – where do we draw the line? What do we accept and work with…..and what happens when we don’t or cant accept and negotiate?

Coming to the topic at hand, why cant women – capable, smart women get the men they want? Yes, this is the main question. We men often get the women we want because we’re okay with settling for whatever works for us. But women, after generations of brutal fighting, are never satisfied till they have EXACTLY what they want. Be it 200 shops for just the RIGHT dress or climbing 6 floors of successively better men to get to that BEST IDEAL MAN till they come to an empty terrace with a sign saying “hi, you’re the 364847262826725 woman to arrive here. Just goes to show that you women can NEVER be satisfied” !!!!

Yes, that was a stupid joke, but a brilliant understanding of women. Men are accused of wanting arm candy and trophy wives – what gives women of TODAY the right NOT to have the same? ALSO, alongwith that right comes the duty of being castigated the same as us men!!!

Welcome to the world…its not a male world, its not a female world. Its YOUR world and it treats you the way you BEHAVE. You fight like mad to get to where you are, you’re successful, capable etc etc – CONGRATULATIONS….WELL DONE…..you’ve proven you have balls – now deal with it!!!

Women who are successful are no different from men who are successful. You have got the same opportunities as us and in fact sometimes more in intangible terms. And now, you don’t get men, you lot whine??!!!

Here’s a secret - men who are successful look for companions who get along with them, not someone who start’s a pissing contest with them. We’ve had a few millennia to figure out what we need and who symbolizes that for us. Its quite rare to find two equally successful people marrying and sustaining that marriage. Success is a hard cored wheel that rubs sparks off its own ilk….we get that and therefore choose companions who get along with our state of mind, rather than give us headaches.

My fourth issue - Women who are successful want even more successful men to look up to….something that’s just not going to happen J

You’ve worked your entire lives beating the odds to be PAMPERED and LOOKED AFTER??? NOW you realize that you want to be TAKEN CARE OF?? A little late, don’t you think…..

Men on the other hand are clear – they’re happy to be exactly what they are, all life long….hence less issues and we settle down fine. Women get cantankerous and ugly inside and become bitter and cynical and blame the world……but when was that a new story? Women would rather blame the world and claim they were “victimized”…..they would rather say, “its taken me SOOOOOO long to become who I am, so love me or leave me….I cant change!!!”…..Damn right we leave….we’re simple people…..we know what we want….and if you cant deliver, we’ll go elsewhere …. And you know what, it’s a damn shame.

My conclusion – make your peace with who you want to be and find contextual satisfaction……if you want everything, you’ll remain confused, upset, bitter and get uglier inside with each year till you can’t bear your own skin….

You say no? Then why even bother looking for a man? Be happy with who you are, be self-contained, isolated and comprehensively happy with the deal – why vitiate matters by bringing in other factors into the equation?

Its like my granny said – you can have one or the other…..try to be a juggler and realize that it becomes a show that’s time-bound….at some point, the balls WILL drop and the more balls you have in the air, the louder the crash, the more devastating the aftermath……

OR you can figure out what you want and more importantly, NEED and strike a sensible deal……

Like the heroine in a recent movie said, “I’m really glad and happy for all that your generation has done for mine, but I basically don’t want to be alone. I choose a home rather than a career and I’m okay with my choice. It’s a good deal for me…”

Go get that arm candy, get those trophy hubbie girls……you might have to look down on them, but you’ll still get love and care and be looked after…..or stay single and sneer at the world…….

And I’ll get some cheese if you still wanna whine!!!

Indian-preneurship – An Indian's Insight into social entrepreneurship

2010-05-17T07:12:00.001Z

For an Indian born after Independence, there has always been a relative who has bucked the trend and struck out on his own (quite gender discriminatory, our childhood memories!) and made good – the BIZZNISSMAN.

THAT uncle and his flashy life, if not his easy money have always been an interesting memory of our childhood days. For many, if not all, such childhood memories often trigger the drive towards emulation. Despite the cautionary tales and advice from most seniors (often in secure government jobs), the BIZNISSMAN’s image always sticks to your mind – unless you are the child of the said uncle, in which case this article is not for you. And as life goes on, the memory fades as the harsh realities of life make themselves aware and familial pressure, if not our own mind compromises safety with a reliable income as compared to the flashy lifestyle and the inherent risks involved.

We look at businessmen, most of us and see only the flashy lifestyle at worst or the disposable income at best and heave a sigh. Most of us envy that ability to be your own boss and not have to answer to anyone. We, often as not, work for those very businessmen, one way or the other. This is true of a vast majority, even today.

The one thing that just cannot be denied is that starting a business and even more so, sustaining one is a tremendous task. An uphill task, constantly at odds with the dominant systems and prevailing situations in the country. Going out, striking out, making a bid - by yourself and none else is a case study in courage. No reliable cheque coming in every month, no compartmentalization of work hours, constant self-doubt if not society’s questions. Often as not, familial nagging, disbelief, and pessimism are part and parcel of the initial years and continue till quite a long time. If you’re the insecure sort, it can become a beast on your back that refuses to let go. Scared yet?

And we still have the BIZNISSMAN – from the corner store owner to the industrialist, everyone wants to be one and sees themselves with the rose-tinted glasses of childhood memories. The businessman is written about, fantasized about, talked about – hell, he simply sells by being in existence!!

In America, “land of the brave”, the businessman is the acme of individual ability and enterprise, valued far above that of anyone else. You are defined by the chances you take to make yourself better. Possibly, a left over strain of frontier-bred imperialistic genes, this wish to make your destiny, to rule, to be the path-breaker into uncharted territory. You build the ballpark and run it as you see fit – you’re society’s role model for having made IT. You make it and everyone envies your car, your gadgets, your mansion and the peripherals. If you can contribute to the marginalized sections, well, you’ve just attained god-head in your lifetime.

And the truth? The endless hours fighting the inner demons and fighting off the world to achieve the next target, the next client, the lack of a social life – are these considered? It’s a brilliant film when those brutal years of building are compressed into a few screenshots over in seconds, with the dramatic turns of vaulting ambition and achievement crackling with impossibly elegant and dynamic dialogues. You clap and wish you were the guy on the screen. But its not usually that easy – you know it. Which is why YOU wisely don’t consider the idea of BIZNISS and the risks involved.

But its not so….or at least does not have to be so. It does not have to be the image of the dusty streets you trudge through, carrying your products to sell and find a customer base. It does NOT have to be you stuck in your room and computer, working without end without even having the foreknowledge of success or failure.

It does NOT need to be a gamble…

Edward De Bono once very wisely categorized vertical and lateral thinking and this became such a prevalent term that the 90’s resounded to the slogans of “lateral thinking”, “out of the box thinking” and so on so forth. Whatever we claim or say, our hierarchy’s DID become flatter and horizontal over the years. Business activity in the same way has also changed definition. Risk factors have changed as much as valuation systems and achievement ends.

Before we go forward, we – you and I, should take a minute to consider the massive efforts of those people who have changed the very concepts of business activity and development to come to this stage where we can actually talk of enterprise without risk, without fear, with hope of achievement and yet retaining security and structure. It IS possible to create positions within an existing structure and lead, have vision and become a corporate entity. Maybe even that latest model S-class merc convertible (not that we can pull down the roof considering our weather) – but it is possible.

Yes, we are not necessarily BIZNISSMEN, but we can become the Indian-preneur.

India is no longer a call sign, much less its earlier image (whatever that was!!) but is more a call to arms today. It has outstripped economic expectations with its massive and surging growth model and yet, we are still a land of family run enterprises. From the local kirana store to quite a large section of the major Indian brands, India is still the land of family enterprises. Most of them, started by BIZNISSMEN with hardly much formal education or structured learning. Funnily enough, the country that India most wishes to emulate observed a similar form of growth structure in its initial decades with educational institutes being considered useful for “clerks & priests”. A man ran the business, in the west, like a private fiefdom or country and the bean-counters, the pen-pushers were lackeys who would jump to his bidding because he had the raw courage to take the risk and they did not, despite their education.

Coming back to the present, the generation we live in is as much opposed to risk as our forefathers. Education, the mantra Indian parents mutter whether awake or asleep, has become expensive. It’s a simple equation – the cost of education needs stability of assured income at one point or the other. To take a risk on such a balance is not foolhardy on the face of it, but suicidal for most families. And Indians still don’t decide for themselves usually, it’s a family decision where the votes have it for the reliable pay cheque every month with no contest.

Introduce into this already troubled equation, the idea of social accounting or even philanthropy of sorts through business and the parents, usually egged on by relatives, rue the day they had children!!! Being well off is a perspective and social entrepreneurship dies a death before it even takes its first breath.

Security comes in many forms, the most prevalent one being the MNC tag that a child acquires. No Indian mother wants to say, “My son is a social activist or (god forbid) a social worker”. She would rather say, “My son is a lawyer/engineer/MBA working with XYZ Co. for their India offices” This is a basic truth of our existence today.

Where and how do we find an answer to such a conundrum? They tell us, in order not to make mistakes, we must have experience and in order to have experience, we must make mistakes. So, how do we progress as a people, considering human development, without sacrificing the primary needs that assail us from every direction?

This inconsistency, this instability creates the brilliant paradox of a nation sitting atop a gold mine and starving still for food. We have half a billion resources that have no linkage with growth. We have education without direction and intense frustration of intellectual and bodily desire stuck upon the cross-roads of inactivity and lack of direction.

Sun T’zu, in his famous treatise, The Art of War, counsels that problems do not exist on a singular plane and the wise general considers various approaches through various eyes, before actually committing themselves to any one route. We cannot ALL be businessmen, that much is brutal reality. At least not in the condition that India is in, at present – but our sons might be able to.

I believe in sustainable structures – of men as much as of entities, or organizations and of cultures even. As I consider this issue, over and over again, from a variety of minds and eyes, I find the answer reflected in our own selves, in our specific Indian-ness. The answer HAS to lie within our structures of profit and loss. The solution has to be one that assuages not merely bank balances but also hungry minds and bellies.

The most common BIZNISSMAN we have all observed has been the contractor, the developer – real estate, roads, construction et al. Granny used to say, “Invest in land, the earth’s not getting bigger, but the families on it are”. These men, to my mind had tapped an essential reality - infrastructure.

I see with a defiant wick glowing in my heart that a few have understood that lesson and taken it to the next dimension. I see those same smart BIZNISSMEN turning their eyes towards the people and their needs and aggressively pushing the envelope. Progress beckons and so does Laxmi !!!

TATA Motors launched the Nano for the cheaper segments and made it a success and then TATA Chemicals took on the issue of affordable drinking water!!! Was there a relation – YES, there was. The oldest, family owned businessmen were finally turning towards the basic requirements for development of a society – with a bill attached, to be sure, but it IS development no doubt. It’s not social entrepreneurship – its INDIAN-preneurship !!!

And are we still looking inwards? Then consider Nokia and its Life Tools Programme - up-to-date local information on agriculture, education, and so much more. A Finnish company helping India move upwards and onwards – talk about the benefits of liberalization, even the foreigners are getting into Indian-preneurship!

If we are to consider these few examples, these baby steps which lead into giant strides, why can our mothers not say with pride, “My son is an Indian-preneur”?

Why can we not forge the future of BIZNISS and give it the new twist of development?

Will we be able to look our families in the eye and more importantly, our own selves and decide where we are headed?

Conquest

2010-04-14T14:59:00.003Z

It had been a long war. The stench of the dead, the cries of the carrion birds and the earth reddened with blood was commonplace now. There was no more wailing from the tents for those bereaved and death was a factor to be efficiently managed. Even the skies have been awed and struck dumb by the carnage unfolded on this field now known in infamy as Kurushetra – “the killing ground of the Kuru’s”.

The chariot was a simple affair of two fast horses moving in tandem, yoked to board and three rope bound poles on the running board for the riders to hold on to. Later poets and ministrels would wax eloquent of the dazzling array of THE CHARIOT which broke the ranks of the kaurava’s wherever its wheels turned. They would sing of golden harnesses and silver caparisoned might, arrayed for children and for adults with children’s dreams for victory and glory. They would sing of its god-like charioteer and mighty warrior bestriding behind ravaging whoever was arrayed against them, regardless whether human, demon or god.

The real chariot which turned armies into jelly, warriors into corpses by its mere presence had never existed. It had been merely another fiction of the charioteer’s agile mind which had honed war craft and strategy into something almost akin to supernatural power. Such a chariot would never have been able to breach the cordons to Jayadrath’s inner circle or fight great Drona into a standstill, much less dodge mighty Karna’s arrow showers. Such a gaudy chariot would never ensure surprise, that most important element of victory.

Such a chariot is fit only in dreams and stories, not in battle, thought the dark-skinned charioteer as he clicked his tongue to the high strung horses trotting amongst corpses and battle debris dotting the fields for miles in every direction. The clicking tongue, equally effective with restive cattle in the far reaches of Vrindavan, calmed the horses on the killing grounds as they slowed down towards a broken barricade.

The moon was full and no insects cried or birdsong broke the eerie calm of the night as the horses swung by the barricade and the charioteer leant out and touched them.

“Sleep well, invincible one, your son will rule as I promised you and I will have my revenge” the charioteer intoned silently, as he touched the broken wooden barricades still stained brown with the blood of his only nephew, his dearest sisters son.

A boy he had loved more than his own lost son and trained under his own hand, killed by eight warriors. A mere boy, defying them to the last and leaving his mark on each of the great ones before spilling his heart blood on the wooden barricades of Drona’s Chakravyuhu. A true hero, of great Karna’s ilk, equally cursed by blood and fortune, to be remembered only for his mad dog glory.

One of the only deaths he had grudged in this war and beyond. It was needed and he had fulfilled his duty and more when he led his friend, the father, away, knowing that the cowardly advisors he had planted would ensure that his eldest paternal uncle would gamble, as always and lose, as usual. But it suited his needs and so he had made his peace and sworn his vow to his dead nephew’s bloodline.

The charioteer was lost in his thoughts when another voice broke the silence from beyond the broken hulks,

“The moon holds sway in the night….”

The voice was instantly recognizable for its earthy nasal twang of Mathura’s dialect and resonance instead of the high speech of Sanskrit, but years of training and living a double life could not be set aside easily,

“…..only when the sun has set and the dark is nigh.”

Completing the first line of the code exchange, the charioteer swung down from the running board. As he swung down, he adjusted his plain dhoti and palmed the first of his throwing knives smoothly as he turned towards the speaker who had arisen behind the barricades.

“The years with the high-born’s have not robbed you of your gokul training, cousin” said the man arising from his defensive crouch, his sword also openly bared but hanging loosely at his side.

The charioteer relaxed slightly as the second coded exchange went smoothly, but his nape still tingled and he did not cache away his knife and scanned the surrounding environs silently till his eyes found a bump on the ground that did not meld with the usual churned up earth of the killing fields. And then he waited looking around for more discrepancies till the first man coughed and the hump moved to show an armed wiry man flattened on the ground underneath a dust-coloured cloth liberally smeared with the red earth. Bowing to both men, the wiry man crept off into the dark.

“You couldn’t really expect me to come alone into THE killing grounds where the only thing constant is Yamraj on the sidelines reaping souls like its harvesting season, cousin”, stated the first man, still holding on to the sword lazily like it was an extension of his body, “especially after you hacked off Sishupala’s head with that accursed discus of yours to show solidarity with those damned five, earlier”

“We needed to provoke Jarasandh and take him out of the equation or this war would have been for naught – I have explained this to you cousin, earlier” stated the charioteer easily, still scanning the landscape for anything that did not fit in, anything that tingled his senses.

“so you have, so you have…..in fact, I was one of the last to accept that the great deception started so many years ago is finally coming to fruition and you have managed to deliver each and every one of your targets as promised to King Ugrasen as payment for killing Kansa the Just. In fact, people believe that you killed an evil monster now, less than 30 years later – I have trouble accepting that you ensured even regicide would be forgotten – that too regicide of a popular and good king.”

“Gokul was a good training ground, cousin and Kansa WAS a monster to my mother, regardless of how good he was as a king to the populace. My father was promised the throne and Kansa had no right on it. The Kuru’s are merely a continuation of my revenge since they aided him then. My promise to King Ugrasen was nothing that I did not wish to achieve myself.” said the charioteer, pacing around the chariot now, looking for something that still tingled his scalp and screamed danger in seven dialects.

“So Vasudeva, are you satisfied now? Has your blood thirst been appeased with the vermillion & blood of so many including that of your only nephew being part of the red rivers you have caused to run on these killing grounds?” asked the first man, squatting on his haunches, sword held protectively before him nonchalantly.

The charioteer noted the sword position and smiled inwardly at the respect given to a seemingly unarmed and single man. True respect that was tinged with awe at the enormity of the battlefield, all caused directly or indirectly by him alone. He was surrounded by corpses of men now dead due to him and the very earth owed its colour and name to his efforts.

He continued checking the chariot and then the horses, softly singing to them, always more comfortable with animals than with humans. Even that sea serpent that mistakenly came up the Yamuna on a tidal wave had been easy enough to befriend and control with fish and offal. Something that added to his legend, but its death too was necessary like his nephew’s and he had dried his tears inwardly at both times.

So much death caused, so few regretted or even considered, how else could, people not consider him alien and at times god-like for the ability to twist events to his purposes. He had been requested to stay away from Yadav lands after King Ugrasen had ascended the throne and the court advisors had seen to it that he did not return for any significant amount of time.

He had been dispatched to build island fortresses, to overthrow challengers to the yadav clans, to win away foolish princesses whose alliances could be dangerous and more and finally to the culmination of his great efforts into this battlefield of bones, picked clean by carrion.

Was he bloodthirsty or satisfied?

The charioteer stopped grooming the off-side horse and looked at the man on the ground directly for the first time. They had studied together, played together and they had worked together for many years – but now, the man on the ground was in awe of him and his actions.

“I, Krishna Vasudev, born to the moon dynasty, sworn to action and deed, thought and belief to the night that succors us. Sworn by birth to the wishes of the Yadav clan wishes, for which I exist and for nothing else.” He softly intoned in the sacred oath of the clan. Nothing could be more profane or sacred on the killing grounds.

The first man who had swung up at the first syllable of the clan oath, grounded his sword and bowed on bended knee and said,

“I see and bow to you, great divider, narrator of war, greatest of friends, most bitter of enemies who has urged the dogs of war to the very brink of destruction and beyond. Order me, my lord, what else is left for us to do”

The charioteer looked at his old playmate, who was bowing to him and replied softly,

“The house of Kuru is extinct and the only heir is my grandnephew who is of our bloodline and therefore sacrosanct. We have created strife where none existed, brought about intercine rivalry of the worst kind. Brought to throne illegitimate offspring who have no claim, set against each other the famed chariot wheels of the clan kuru which had drank of the blood of every house and clan which have opposed them.”

Aye, we Yadavs, have broken the armour of invincible might of the scions of the sun dynasty and brought about the great schism between warring cousins leading to this great war which decimated the great house of Kuru, Paurava’s, Shantanu, thought the dark-skinned charioteer.

“We are done here, old friend. Its time for us to go home.”

Still on bended knee, his old playmate remained silent, only a slight tremble and flutter of the fine Kamchatka steel grounded on the earth giving answer. The Yadu clans would not have him back even when he had removed the only obstacle to their being the foremost clan and the greatest in the land without spilling a drop of precious yadav blood. He was still the regicide who could not be allowed peace and settlement in his own lands and amongst his own people.

At best, he was the ultimate weapon for them.

At best he could retire to his island fortress and endure the termagant Rukmini

Never return to his childhood lands of Gokul, Mathura, Vrindavan.

Never marry his beloved Radha as it was incestuous to marry his aunt.

Never to belong, only to be feared, famed and called upon in their hour of need.

The clan Kuru, famed and feared as the invincible clan of warriors who had dominated Bharat for ages tied by blood and forged through the chain mail of their allies was no more but there was no exultation, no happiness at the completion of the task – only a barren mind and heart. He had repaid friendship and warmth in blood. No wonder his elder brother had warned him of this and refused to take part of any of this, despite being ordered by the Yadu clans. But he had hoped to win his way back by gifting them that which they wanted most.

He had given his all to this end but as he looked upon his cousin, his kinsman, his earliest playmate, before him on bended knee sword grounded, the charioteer stood considering the bitter truth of his exile. He now understood the danger signs – his senses were warning him of this itself, not of temporal danger. He advanced upon his oldest playmate who had stood by him all these years, been his conduit to the yadu clans and embraced him.

“Go with God, Sudama. I will walk into Hell… alone” said the charioteer as he slammed the hidden knife into his playmate’s neck and ripped on, stepping aside only when the blood fountained out.

The yadu spies later reported the single chariot leaving and the decapitated body to the clan chiefs and received word which read as follows.

No man is greater than the clan. Send for the poisoned archers and await your chance.

Here comes the rain …. again

2010-03-31T10:18:00.000Z

I had forgotten the rains at home.

The big, fat glistening droplets that slam into the ground that it’s like they have a battle with the dry asphalt and earth adorning the dusty streets of my home town. I had forgotten the smell of freshening winds as the grey, dusky clouds over ran the plains coming all the way down off the hills.

I had lost in my travels, the almost electrical feel that accompanies the peak of a hot and dry spring in waiting. The thousand towns had robbed me of memories complete joy of a summer’s day washed clean by chilly drops of rain and even hail. Rain and hail, which produced a weird symphonic cacophony as they rang off hard tops of cars, tin roofs and even on the concrete streets. This rain drowning in me in memories had character and attitude; it sang to me, welcoming me back home in its sheer & beautiful ferocity.

I was standing on the roof of the college where I teach as I first smelt the freshening wind and noted the dusky clouds obliterate the setting sun. It has become a habit of mine to bid adieu to the sun with nicotine & caffeine on the rooftop, a weakness of watching the ever-changing landscape of my town and world in the last rays of a never-changing sun.

As I drove home, I could feel the sudden temperature dropping and living in a humid climate, it meant a sudden sharp relief from the scorching heat that generated so much chlorophyll. Waking up in the middle of the night, I could hear the steady drip on the old timbers and galvanized tin roof and was sung to sleep with its sweet lullaby with promises of a new world tomorrow.

A promise that was kept as I drove to work, over washed streets and glistening green peeping at me, fighting against the relentless tide of the concrete jungle that tries to overwhelm nature. I could see it in the high pitched shouts of young blood that was set tingling with wetness and evidenced in the fabrics stuck to skin despite efforts to the contrary….or not.

The rains kept their promise in the flickering voltages and the drenched terrace that rippled with the droplets. By evening, it was balmy and no one had thoughts of working and concentration itself went for a walk on the wild side……in the rains probably.

The ride back home was slow with headlights almost invisible in the crowded swathes of falling water and everyone paying more attention than usual to the slick roads. Tires churned up splashes of muddy water at potholes and depressions in the abused streets. The sidewalks were empty except for hurrying figures but small bunches could be seen huddling under awnings and overhanging eaves of buildings. But for all the wetness, all the issues of water-logging, of all concerns of everyday life, there was a giddy happiness in the city today.

The city was alight with reflections off the water and the joy of the river people reveling in their element.

I have come home….to the rains, again.

Savory Experience

2010-03-25T10:11:00.000Z

The rotis in front of me, were large and THICK…..we used to call them “labourer’s rotis” back in my lawschool hostel days. In those days, we were usually ALWAYS hungry and the mess owners knew their clientele. It’s been a while since I had passed out of lawschool or had the chance to feel hungry enough to eat alligators, scale, teeth and all.

“Everything all right saaar?” asked mine host. A large, swarthy man with a face pocked with scars and wearing shabby and well worn clothes, concern & turmeric writ large on his features. The establishment was small and dingy, with 2 ceiling fans barely moving and the doors & windows open to the road. Its usual clients were the everyday people of the streets, an assorted mix of servicemen, trades people and others I and my “class” would refer to as “hazira” or daily wage earners. Plumbers, telephone linemen, even two women who looked like receptionists. People who would work for us and with whom we would rarely fraternize, much less share a meal with, in short. Yes, I belong and grew up in a classist society, where caste might not be mentioned in public, but categorization exists in the front of the mind in every sphere.

It was all my fault….the other professors and institute people would have their food delivered upstairs and eat amongst their own…our own!!! I wanted to come down and “try the experience” since I was the maverick from abroad !!! :P

No way out, so I grinned at the owner of the shanty and proceeded to tear the roti in front of me…..it WAS thick.

As I scooped up some of the sabji and started chewing, I realized that I had come a far way indeed. From being accustomed to quiet consumption in air conditioned restaurents with proper cutlery, silverware and china, it was down to steel thali’s and extreme mastication with gusto & pleasure!!! Did I mention the open-jawed burping??!!!

The man across me was a stringy and wiry individual putting away rice like there was no tomorrow. As I watched, rather stared with admiration at his messy but effective style, he was least concerned with anything else other than his food. As I watched more closely, I realized that the man was not messy at all, but there was an economy in his movements and he did not spill even a grain of the precious meal. By the time, he was done, after a prodigious 4 helpings of rice and vegetables and lentils, his plate was spic & span and there was not a single dab of spillage anywhere in his eating area. There was no wastage of food and his heartfelt burp expressed a happiness that was almost lost on me. Accustomed as I was to wastage of excess food, of meals for the sake of mealtimes and comprehensively conditioned to table manners, this man licking his fingers with slow satisfaction was the epitome of everything that I had missed out on the other side of the fence.

As I continued with my meal, I found the food nothing to write home about, but the hospitality of the owner in feeding HIS people was so evident in every movement and gesture that I quite forgot what I was eating. After all, eating was something we do not just for the hunger in the belly but sometimes also for the gaps in the soul. I was observing an elan and a honest happiness in feeding people food, that the supercilious maitre’d of many fine dining restaurents & hotel would never be able to understand, much less emulate. The roti’s seemed to appear magically and even if they were not soft or even tasty, they were piping hot and served with aplomb by the 11 yr old son of the owner with an equally happy grin on his face.

As I finished, I realized that I had polished off 5 whole rotis without even thinking about it, in a shanty restaurant I would never have noticed much less imagined even entering in a previous life. I wouldn’t dream of inviting friends to have a meal in this place, but I was hungry and I had “experienced” something today…..something I believe was important. Something, that is not easily defined and perhaps should not be wrapped in inadequate words to be put aside on paper or a screen and forgotten. It’s is perhaps an experience that is to be relished and treasured, in the recesses of the mind and heart which makes callous comparisons and categorizations.

We live in an unforgiving society where the price of success is measured in values and costs, where our only endeavour is to move up and ahead. In such times, no one is to blame……but it might serve us well to stop and walk a different path and even take the chance to do something we haven’t done.

I’ve come home……

Journey’s End ??!!!

2010-02-22T06:32:00.001Z

I am uncomplicated. Finally.

Probably not much of a statement, but there it is. That is exactly what I finally am or perhaps, I have finally managed to sort out my shit, and see things for what they are.

All throughout my life, I was always figured I was the tortured, complex sort with the massive chip on my shoulder. The amount of things I have done, some good, mostly bad to really understand what or who I am is truly staggering. At least, by my count or so I think...

It’s not been a simple thing to really reach this conclusion, but it’s not a conclusion I have reached through by mere supposition or even hypothesis. Each step of the way, I have tested and checked and there have been more dead ends than you could believe.

However, as I look back – it becomes clearer to understand the controlling factors, the variables and the constant’s of my life, as it is. And perhaps, the very conclusive evidence of my understanding lies in the fact that I am finally ready to settle down.

I used to be petrified of marrying someone and staying with that person for the rest of my life. Totally terrified of being stuck with a person who would bore me to tears once I have had sex with her, or worse. Thoroughly scared of everything and anything that COULD happen, especially of history repeating itself as I always envisaged when I would see my parent’s bloodless strife for the past 33 years that still continues.

However, as I finally start getting closure and clarity on my life, I realize that instead of all that I have aspired to be, have been, or might even become, the first and hardest step I have taken was to accept who I was and what I have been.

I have accepted I am the fat and screwed up kid who had to learn how to game the hard way because it was either that or die. That I had the willingness to have no morals, no ethics, no ideals simply because I could not afford them if I wanted to be in the rat race or even stay ahead. That, the countless hook ups, even my qualifications and education, not to mention so much else were all merely strategy to stay in the game we all play throughout our lives. The projection of a larger-than-life self with the long list of “achievements” to support and sustain and other wise succor a desperate case of low self-esteem, overlook a scarred childhood etc. The saddest part was that, for my world, for my friends, for my family and my life as it stands today, it is a successful image that generates awe, envy and sometimes even hatred….for a given value of “success”.

And it’s harder still to accept that I will continue to perhaps play the game on many other levels, but at least I will do so now, in full knowledge of the fact that I am indeed “playing” the game and not merely assuaging my guilt, frustrations or whatever.

So, for all my faults, all my follies and all my silly and possibly pointless existence, I finally realize that I am uncomplicated.

All I want is someone to love and who cares for me, gets my silly jokes and earn enough to manage a decent life. Ambitions, wants and everything else, when viewed from this perspective become so much clearer and more importantly, easier to deal with.

The doctorate, the fancy car, the penthouse apartment and even the innumerable countless bimbo’s I always fancied as the ideal trophy wife would be like just another certificate in my CV folder. Another goal accomplished with no sense of victory, except the relentless need to score again, to do better, to accomplish more.

All I got, from this desperate need to fulfill my ego or even that of a vicarious parent’s desires was a case of low-level alcoholism and a bad taste in the mouth every morning. And all it took was a simple girl who had perhaps no qualifications that can be “counted” in my world, no expensive certificates, no career path, no posh accent or even tastes and definitely no looks per se. It took one simple girl with lots of patience to let me ramble and rummage in my own heart and mind.

She doesn’t make me laugh with her wit as someone else did, earlier. She doesn’t look like million dollars glinting like a trophy on my arm, as someone else did earlier. She definitely does not do much but she perhaps does much more that I can figure out.

I am not in love with her, because I don’t know what love really is. But I am hoping she can teach me, someday.

This one is for you, sweetheart. Marry me.

One of us is going to regret this for sure, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to take the blame later on by being the decision taker!!!

S-elections 2009

2009-05-14T13:52:00.003Z

What does India need? What does the world need?

Might as well as the second question rather than the first…

The favourite question of all people when they want to hear their own views rather than that of others….and also the most fanciful if not the most facile of all conversation starters….well, mostly for Indians, but I have known a lot of non-indian's to get started as well….

This is a question that can cause most Indian's to at least jump in on the band wagon and expound on their pet peeves….especially for people who don't live in India…

And yet, no one has answers to the question…all merely have views…

I do as well…

India is nearly 60 years old and in terms of world history, is merely a toddler learning to walk….some would say, in terms of children's ages, it's the terrible two's and three's, that's the age when kids are at their worst…and most in need of guidance and control.

As students of law, politics, economics, or for that matter any discipline, we had all argued rather fiercely and adamantly for our belief's….usually half drunk on the poison of our choice…and usually the generalization would be Indian politics and Indian cricket, in specific…

After nearly 13 years of hotly contested debate on Indian Politics, I have come up with the following issues that could be considered. These views are perhaps regressive and conservative, but it's an opinion, just like freedom was an opinion as well -

1. Make India a bi-party system – the multiparty system is causing so much havoc and regionalism that the Union of India has been under siege from its inhabitants and its members. A two party system would at least ensure cohesive planning and policies and reduce much of the biased and chaotic state of the economy as much as of the political camps, horse-trading and worse. It would also strengthen the central apparatus and that's what we need so urgently now.

2. Lift up the age of the average voter and put in the criteria of education and employment – Anyone wishing to vote will need to show that he's a graduate or employed and 25 years of age. Cut out vote banks and put in the system of electoral colleges. Stop the illiterate masses voting for the promise of a 100 rupee note and a screwed –up future in the hands of illiterate representatives who can incite regionalism for a chance at abusing and misusing power and its privileges.

3. Create a stronger central government and enforce it via autonomous monitoring bodies and evaluation teams…of citizens picked randomly and changed every 2 years. Impose a jury system for checking public utility of their representatives as much as of their procedures.

4. Enforce an age limit on parliamentarians – 55 years and that's it. After that age, they can be consultants, lobbyists or whatever, but not leaders or even representatives. Politics is a young men's game, let those with the energy and vision play it.

5. All elected representatives to hand over all interests or shares or seats or positions in all profit making or non-profit-making organisations and to be closeted within the Assembly hostels. And also to live within the salaries and the houses provided and nothing more with any breaks or disruptions penalized and criminally liable. If you want to rule and make policy, then do so at the cost of your personal life and profit. All representatives should submit themselves for periodic and infrequent department as well as personal checks by judicial evaluation bodies. Also, cut out the security details, they are representatives of the people; let the people be able to access them at their wish. This will ensure accountability and responsibility. Give security only in cases of dire need and necessity. If they cant take flak or terrorist threats or whatever, dont take on the job. Our freedom fighters knew the dangers before they became fighters....

6. Make Kashmir neutral territory – Break up the provinces and let it be ruled by its inhabitants like the Swiss Canton's and no more land purchases within Kashmir as well. Put in non-taxable and treaty-based banking systems viable with Pakistan as well with high levels of security and confidentiality with the borders defensible by a joint guard system of both India & Pakistan . Also let MNC's handle the tourism with strict eco-controls and upgradation and get the bloody army off it. The defence budget is cut in half and the state will pay for itself within 3 years with all the grey money of the sub-continent as much as the hassle frees tourism industry from all over the world.

7. Every able bodied man within India to be forced to undergo two years military training and the standing army to be posted, lent out to any nation in need of military forces. The young men see the world and get over regionalism, communalism and issues thereof. Any man wishing not to join must prove a handicap or be willing to pay a pre-determined sum to the treasury. Being a citizen of the India will mean something to them and they wont expect a free lunch as well.

8. Start a subsidy-less culture – Apply Darwin's theory of evolution and Adam Smith's corollary of a free market system, but charge every MNC that comes in for business and create a fund for free schooling of every child in India through that fund. Enforce sanctions and penal provisions against the parents of every child not in a school till the age of 15.

9. Privatise every public service utility service on a time share basis and create a system of transparency of budget allocations by making available all records of monies so spent on allocations online.

10. Make the judiciary autonomous of the government – let there be rule of law, at all costs and create stricter penal laws which are also applicable to the members of the judiciary as well, without need of sanctions. Any citizen may file suit against any member upon sufficient evidence and if proved false, be penalized instead,

Perhaps, my views are stupid, idiotic, immature, impossible, moronic, or even perhaps impractical…..

Do you have any which are practical? Care to spend 5 minutes to write them down and mail them to me? Are there any issues you wish to contend with?

My email id is – goswami.debashish@gmail.com

Forward this to the people on your mailing list, please….

Problems & Solutions

2008-12-27T05:03:00.003Z

The world lacks solutions…..simple, effective, enduring solutions…..

Its complicated, its not that simple, things are not what they seem….that’s what they all say……

I hate reading newspapers……there’s nothing new…..movie reviews - yes, sports - not interested, comics - definitely, editorials/social news - maybe……………But the main page is monotonous…….

We sign one deal and get entangled in another……there’s no single stand taken in the last 10 years that has been of any significance……yes, we have had events…….we have even had declarations and obviously, ramifications, permutations and combinations of the same……and of course, we have death’s and births.......much more than we ever envisaged.......and bloodier than we expect, every time....

When we were growing up, we read history as being a series of events that were linked by one simple word – significance…..

Significance in the manner that meant as a rudder, as a wind vane, a lighthouse perhaps……significance of direction, of endeavour or even culmination of effort…..I would read news papers as a school kid and convince myself that this was history occurring, something that predicted the way forward……did you ever feel the same?

Or were you too worked up about board results to even sit back and consider what you were reading, besides being useful in the next GK unit test?

And somehow, we were entangled in consumerism that destroyed journalism…..We are entangled in liberalization that has crushed traditional evaluation of self, society…..We are entangled with our understanding within any given structure…….

I am wondering where we are and what we would describe ourselves as…..

Rishabh, my younger colleague at work asked me a few days back, “what’s the solution?”

“Solution to what? There are no solutions, only resolutions, dissolutions and absolutions.” I quipped back.

He was after a solution to this entire issue of terrorism and its eventual solution……I wondered if I had ever posed queries like this, at his age or younger…….After exactly 30 seconds of thought, I decided that I had and I still don’t have answers……Like most people, I tried to make a difference till I finally learnt to let things ride by till they stop bothering me……….tolerance, forbearance, endurance…….whatever you call it……

So, do solutions exist?

Even as a cynical, pessimistic, seen-it-all, done-it-all washed up bum that I have become, I still believe in that one enduring truth……that’s there’s always a way….

(But someone’s got to pay…….says the evil and cynical bum in me)

I admit it…..I can’t answer questions that everyone asks…….but I can think of ways that might construe as means that would ensure an end…….not that they would NOT be easy, not that they would be acceptable or even understood…….but yes, they would be solutions…..

A solution starts with a revolution……..history teaches us that……Hitler found solutions, just like Churchill did, or Bismarck or Blenheim or even by the Borgia’s or by Charlemagne and so on and so forth, or back……just because some worked while others didn’t, doesn’t disprove the fact that they ALL started out as solutions to problems being faced……but the problem with revolutions is that they always come back to where you started off.....that’s why they’re called REVOLUTIONS....

There are many ways to solutions……I always preferred ol’ alex’s way with the geordian knot……We are always one sword slice away from the knottiest problems that can face us……..one sharp, hurting sword slice…….

So, yes……we can have solutions, Rishabh……..but it means a lot of things and takes a lot of people……and maybe some blood, sweat, toil and tears……..bones for bricks and blood as mortar……..and we are past the age of belief, forget about sacrifice…….

As I always say……..freedoms, rights, truth, justice…….it sounds all good…..but nobody ever said that it was nice……and no one talks about the prices paid, because we definitely didn’t pay it……..so, yeah, we can all talk up a storm……as shreya puts it, there’s nothing more stimulating than intellectual masturbation......

You say no revolution? You say satyagraha? You DARE utter Munnabhai or Gandhigiri and I’ll take the family war axe to you, you ignorant philistine!!!

I am sick of Gandhi and his satyagraha bullshit…….when will the world wake up the realise that for one great idea, one man and his multitude of mistakes, dithering, partialism, nepotism, manipulative politics cannot be equated together and all else be forgiven……

Our mistake is that we Indian’s suffer from the royalty complex…..we just want to touch someone’s feet and proclaim them lord god almighty……..although to our benefit, we also have developed the anti-thesis to this…..we expect our gods to perform miracles and if they cannot deliver, we move on to the next would-be god promising us miracles…..truly, as arvind adiga says, we’re a nation of arse kissers and we’ve got far too many arses to kiss, whether they be god’s or supervisor’s.

The bloody Brits were NOT driven out by Gandhi and his movements…..They LEFT of their own free will…..There were three other movements before the Quit India Movements……..Gandhi proved weak and indecisive……I don’t take this as a perspective, but an opinion……others are welcome to dispute my belief’s, but this is not the forum perhaps…..

What we always forget is that behind 1947 stood over 90 years of relentless struggle, most of it violent and singularly and collectively defeated by the British…..since 1857, there have been 90 bloody years of struggle that has been erased by one idea and one politician who was smart enough to push the envelope and become a saint through desperate politicking and insecurity......

What we forget is that India was not a Union of States but a collection of princely states, each with their own mandate, each with their own biases……..

What we forget is that the people were divided as sharply over differing issues and contexts then as they are today……the lines of caste have merely been replaced by bank balances…….the lines of regionalism have replaced the old beliefs of feudalism……not much has changed….As a people today, India within 61 years of independence has achieved the same status that it had in 1857, pre-sepoy mutiny……..

Divided, controlled and yet surging with a restless urge of economic and social transformation……our old lines of control have been erased leaving nothing in their place……

Our social mores & values have disappeared with evolving conditions leaving no solidarity of ground or platform, except that of economics and consumerism……the proverbial carrot to us donkeys…..and we’re still paying for the damn carrot!!!

Our unity is in disarray because we have no common ground, other than that of relentless movement, but even there we are directionless…..

So, into THIS, you want to carve out solutions…….through satyagraha?

Gandhi arrived in a boiling seething mass agitated by 60 years of unremitting activism, singly and collectively, on every possible layer of Indian society and consciousness……It was tumultuous, aye……It was enervating, true……it was perfect timing to leave South Africa and enter India…..of this cohesive whole, he fashioned his idea of non-violence........a brilliant idea, FOR THE TIME & PLACE ONLY.......

Today we have India Shining and its immaculate barricades under siege......as it has always been.......Yesterday it was a western hegemony and today its face of racial and radical hegemonies......

Do we have solutions which are not revolutions? I think not.....

We have to suffer more, be far more bereft and reach the boiling point of cohesion and unity to be ready for hammering out the steel of destiny on the forge of time......just like another generations, a few jumps in the past were submitted to.....

We have not the singularity of purpose with which we can reach a unified objective....
We do not have ideals or beliefs which are above daily, humdrum concerns....

We do not have anything in which the people of our nation believe in.......

We do not have leaders......

We are still awaiting the men of the hour who will take the stand to decide that democracy works when the mass understands the meaning of the vote.......

We are still awaiting the rise of those voices which will not be stilled by the relentless tide of consumerism and self-gratification.....

We still await the presence of sense.........just like me writing these lines and still hoping for the damn messiah!!!

As I stated before, we Indians are still awaiting the next fresh arse to kiss......

And you ask for solutions?

Marital Discomfort

2008-10-03T21:20:00.006Z

Why do men want wives?

The usual answer is because they want to be mommied over, about and rendered completely useless……This is not my definition, but a phenomenon that I have noticed…..A phenomena noticeable in all my friends who bear the brunt of my challenging personality by enduring me over a rather long period of time…….

Okay, I know I am not welcome in your homes anymore……but I still stand my ground!!!!

Take one boy out of his mother’s grasp, dump him in school (for god knows why, because education cant be the real reason) and then onto to college and so on and so forth, till the man who finally emerges in the rat race is capable of managing for himself……

By managing I mean, being able to do everything from tying up his own shoe laces to drying out the towel to actually earning his own money and spending it as he damn pleases!!!!

And then, one way or the other, he gets married and reverts back to childhood within a span of a few months…….for some, it takes barely weeks……sucking on his thumb is optional, I am informed…..He gets a mom to chivvy him around and manage his life…….and for this he gets married???!!!!!

Okay, previously I stated, I need company…….that’s a requirement……a mom would be a liability……My mom, for example, would be rather big liability on my liquor cabinet, I believe……..

Okay, I have heard enough reasons from the opposite sex……. ESPECIALLY from those who are married………apparently, the very sight of an untrammelled and rather happy young man with enough glib lines to get some decent dates and earning enough to be able to pay for all the beer the PYT’s consume, drives them BATTY (something I am truly relishing presently!!!)

But coming back to the topic, trust me, I have heard all the rationalizations the petty female human mind can dream up and they are all drivel…….Men are so pathetic and so easily manipulated that its with utter shame I call myself one……..

So, WHY do we buy the damn cow when you can get the milk…….especially now that it comes in different flavours???

One answer was given by an old lawschool pal (face it guys, I went to lawschool, all I’ll have are lawschool pals…..we endured each other for 5 yrs to the point of becoming immured to each other) who is now a rather well recognised judicial magistrate and proud father of a very beautiful daughter ……..

So, according to Dhar-Babu, as we all knew him, men get married because marriage is the price men pay for sex…….Arguably, the arranged marriage system exists for the sole fact that it helps reticent Indian men to get laid for a flat fee of paying all other and incidental expenses……

Oh, and yes, the incidental expenses keep on accruing……..its not a reducing balance EMI payment with calculated interest on depreciation and similar…….its an increasing interest rate that grows exponentially for every given year of marriage, with intense verbal paperwork such as temper tantrums, PMT and pregnancy issues, not to mention a whole plethora of added side issues like in-laws and friends of the partner ……..and that’s not the end……we have yet to begin on the issues of penalties against non-performance of duties, viz. non ability to pay bills, create children, timely and understandable formulation of affection via materialistic expressions and substantiation thereof……

In short, I just don’t bloody get it……..WHY do we have to marry?? Just to get laid???

WOW...........

So, anyway, now the question stands…….WHY do we want to get married??

You can get dumped, you can get taken, you can get reverted to immaturity and regressed childhood……..the list doesn’t stop, but the marriages don’t stop either…….

Anyone answering Love, may please refer back to my earlier blogs;

http://phoren-se.blogspot.com/2007/05/travails-of-marriagechauvinistically.html

Anyone answering boredom can refer to my other blog sites;

http://storiesfromthegrave.blogspot.com/2007/10/pre-marital-woes.html

Anyone referring to anything sensible may please draft the same in tissue paper and do whatever it is that one does to tissue paper……

The rest of you, still reading.......get married!!!!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha..........

Cars & Company....

2008-10-02T09:17:00.003Z

Okay, I need a wife.....and a car...

No, that’s kind of wrong…. I need a jeep and I need company…..

Yeah….that makes some kind of sense…..I guess….

I mean, they go together, yeah? Like when you’re single, you have a bike and you are usually broke….and then you get a girl and you eventually move towards a car and then a flat and get more broke and stuff like that…..

I am always the contrary one…..so I got myself a thunderbird when I was younger…..

Am older now, so a car maybe……naaah, I want a jeep…..

The women, you ask? They’re company…….cant figure out how to decide which one I want or will do for me……jeeps, cars, bikes – they’re easy……women, not really….I mean, you cant really test drive a woman and then decide, yeah?

And before you get married, women can seriously confuse you and themselves that a test drive doesnt seem enough.......you end up thinking of insurance......COMPREHENSIVE insurance from all the mistakes you might make!!!!

However, I just took a test drive on the Mahindra Invader…… boy, it was cool……but its gonna get cooler….its the platform vehicle for the Inspira, you see……

You don’t??

Okay, lemme explain…..

My latest obsession is with the customised Mahindra Inspira – the Indian version of the Jeep Wrangler……its time, I bought a car and of course, me being yours truly……it will have to be something that stands apart from the crowd…… of course, at times, considering my size, I am a crowd…..

Anyway, observe my thunderbird…….when initially bought, it was one of the most expensive motorcycles in India and the first proper cruiser…….not satisfied with that, I further modified it as you can see in the pics below…. I built it to resemble the lean harley chopper with the high back and the pulled back handlebars…..plus a few other things….

So, it’s kind of like obvious that I will want something similar when I buy a car…..

A jeep is what I want…..a modified, customised one at that…….like the Inspira….

So here it goes…….everyone I know has bought a car ……. Thus, no reason why I should not, yeah?

Rahul states in horrified tones that driving in delhi is madness………I’ll kind of agree with that…..driving anywhere in India is madness…….which is why I disliked driving in the west……its too sane!!!

At times, Rahul reminds me of my relations in Jorhat and other sleepy towns in Upper Assam. They are filled with people 68 years old who were going to do something big in their lives but waited till it was safe. Now it is safe and they are 68 years old.

It’s the same with driving…..you cant wait till all the streets are clear and all the traffic lights are green….. You just have to make the most of what you get…..

Indians are possibly the most accomplished drivers in the world, followed closely by the Portuguese, the Greeks and the Italians……..well, the order is interchangeable but the singular first place is held by Indians…..

Driving in any city in India is a dog-fight pure and simple…….right back to the days of WWII when the British, American and German pilots slugged it out over the English Channel and the fields of Normandy, the idea of a dog fight meant exactly what it says……a fight for simple survival where the enemy can pop out of any damn where and you better have your ears, eyes and every sense attuned and alert for any change in the present circumstances…..you can expect the same on any Indian road and the enemy might turn out to be little boys, men, women, animals and other vehicles of any random order to pop out anywhere and at anytime……

Therefore, If you want to drive in India, you better be good…….

Its the ultimate challenge for any driver to simply get to his destination…….you can jump lanes, even borders and curbs, go up wrong ways, take illegal u-turns, double park and everything else that you aren’t supposed to do……in essence, traffic in india is still in its adolescence while the rest of the world has reached senility!!!

So anyway, after that soporific digression, to the main issue…..the meat, as it were;

At law school, life was hard enough what with lack of funds, resources, so I would dream about having this open top convertible or a beast of a jeep where I could sit up high and good and scare the shit out of anything smaller on the road…..

So, when I saw the Inspira, I was hooked……

Built on the above mentioned Mahindra Invader platform, it has a stupendous amount of customized add-on’s…….the price is a bit steep, but hell I waited like 10 years to get here, so fuck I’ll be deterred by price now…..

The handling is much smoother than I expected but the ride is still that of a jeep…..ready to take on anything…..the gear handle is a little short and the steering wheel a tad small for such a large vehicle, but those are cosmetic changes…..so off I went…..

I laughed at the pot holes in lado sarai and scared the living daylights out of drivers on the moolchand flyover…..the company representative sitting next to me was willing to agree to everything I said, as long as I didn’t ask him to let go of the crash bar and the door clutches…..

My neighbours asked me when I was buying the jeep and I told them not for the next 6 months or so……

I mean, as I told panks today……its not just about going out to the showroom and just picking up a car or any product and then saying its yours and you wanted it….. ANYONE can do that….

You have to wait for it……plan for it, save for it……even if you have the money, you should savour the delicious taste of the wanting, the desire to possess should completely overwhelm you…..and then you should weigh the merits and the demerits…..

I have joined at least three different online forum’s for car aficionado’s and jeep owners…….posted threads about this specific jeep asking about its performance, its qualities etc….

Over the next 6 months, I would date this car, get snaps, probe, test ride and do all in my power to check it out from every possible angle or manner of thought…..Loan options, saving schemes, everything that could possibly give me more information or means to completely own this magnificient vehicle…..

Madness you say……obsession I say…..and it is better to obsess than to merely possess…..

Well, its easy to write about machines……but as for the company, the wife etc etc…....

I guess, I’ll just stay silent on that one……for now !!!

Weird Shit...

2008-09-21T08:48:00.006Z

I have too much shit piled up in my life.... this blog is part of a series dedicated to the trash canning of the amount of junk I have in my mind, hard drive and life.....

Old lawschool poster hanging outside my door -

Lex Legalis Bastardis

Lupinus Rex Eo Carpe Jugulum

(Translation)

A bastard of the law

A lone wolf at your throat

Another classic one above my desk -

Acquiris Quod Cumque Rapis

(Translation)

you get what you grab

Now, if that is not weird enough.....take a look at one of my finest compositions which rings a sure bell for psycho-analysts and straight jackets !!!

Truth and Lies

A life of lies; an existence paid in deceit

A baseless living, where meaning is forfeit

Treachery, betrayal, hatred, guile

Tools to make a mask so vile

Where the value of self has no belief

And time itself is but a thief

A sense of direction, false in its hope

An emotion of success, in vain to gloat

A creation of itself, no one to blame,

A man of the times, without any shame

Well is it known, the birth of such fear

The end is however unclear

To subsist on hope and to despair of it all

Awaiting each day, each hour, the executioners call

A stock of words and to string them fine

A house of cards, with expression benign

A tale of woe, finely etched, well wrought

A new pack of victims to be eagerly sought

Promises, oaths and others too

Made with a flourish, broken with a smile

Think not, what to say and what to do

Nothing but another notch on the wall, another unknown file

Crazed for respect, a denigration of ideals

Need to feel that common touch

Of emotions responded, and feelings reciprocated

Of the need of humanity, is that too much?

A life of lies; an existence paid in deceit

A baseless living, where meaning is forfeit

A touch of the moon, the Reaper’s call

A life lived wrong that’s all.

***

Nuff' said.....

..... for now..... hehehehehehehehehehehehehehe......

Going…Going….Glasgow Long Gone….

2008-09-08T13:54:00.001Z

Haven’t blogged in a while…..issues, concerns, the usual excuses etc abound….but as the title says, Glasgow is long gone…

I took my first dump in years, aeons it seems on an Indian toilet in an Indian train…..it was sadistic…..part pleasure, part pain…. my shit was in serious traction, read it as you will…..

Time to face the facts…..I am FAT….not obese, not over-weight, but pure and simple fat….

Used to be able to do this exercise without a worry in my halcyon years in college and then on…..I mean, I spent about 7-8 years criss-crossing India on the magnificent Indian railways and taking all the facilities as my father’s, if not my grand-daddy’s domain…..Air flights were still expensive and collegiate students in my days, were wolf packs who travelled in numbers and ate everything that came in sight…..liberalization and cheap air fuel has had a very detrimental effect on college education, as I see it….

At one point of time, me and my buddies were on first name basis with half the rail staff on the northern and the western routes, and once we were across the Howrah station, we were treated like royalty…..we were the “boys” …… now that I think of it, we were more like the “brats”….. we terrorized the bloody routes, most of the time…..but all that being said and exclaimed over….I was still a limber boy and though I was over-weight still, I effectively and efficiently carried the weight around and used it to proper effect in various fora (namely, as a battering ram most usually wherever it was required and even a few places, it was not)

Anyway, ablutions done, I returned to my cabin and plopped myself down with DBoy II to at least make amends with myself, if not with any idiot who’s mad enough to read this….

AND there ARE people who read this…..and then find ways of complaining to my relatives that I have written such and such!!! I am still laughing at that!!! Someone wants to sue for name-calling?? Bring it ON!!!! I still have the drunken tapes and worse…..

Okay, sorry for the digression…..

How the hell did I land up here, on an Indian toilet, still smoking my beloved roll-up’s and wondering where the fuck am I going to get into next??

It was about 2 years ago around the same time that I started this blog…..yeah, dates be damned, I started the blog, once I got my laptop (DBoy I, who is now my brother’s property) but the thought process I had described had actually started around that time….

The whole concept of leaving the UK had been playing on my mind for quite some time, but the moot question was how to go back and what the hell I would do back home….plus the issue of becoming “secure” which my girl was concerned about and I was frantic for….

I had a decent job, but it was a job which paid the rent and not something I could possibly call a career to be dead honest…..I had decent lodgings, but if I wanted to see a future ahead for myself, all I got was a hell of a lot of static on the crystal ball….

On a sudden impulse (yeah, stop grinning you, I know I am impulsive) I decided to go home….I mean, like hell I deserved it…..It was more than 20 months since I had taken a break, gone home or done anything beyond work…..(time spent with P does not count ……. hehehehehehehehehe……)

Utilizing the utmost caution, I booked my tickets, took leave from work and sety off home…..having no informed ANYONE back home that I was coming, it was an utter and splendid surprise with mom actually going beserk for a few minutes and quasi-beserk for the next two weeks (she would insist on hitting me everytime I was around – to make up for the past 2 years quota, she’d claim)

But the honest fact was, before I bought the tickets, I had been talking to my buddies back home to check out the scene and setting up interviews……yeah, it was hell on my phone bills, but I guess it was worth it…..working up the nerve to actually book the tickets on a do or die expedition to go back home and knock on a few doors was the impulsive part……

To cut a long story short, I got an interview with a consultancy firm working with SEBI on trade disinvestment and other such issues that I had studied about and knew how to blow the breeze for all I was worth…..and THAT is a humongous amount of bullshit to be up in the air, let me tell you….

So, they offered me a decent package and I upped sticks, as the expression goes…..not that it was not hard leaving P, but I really needed to get the hell going, if I wanted to have any sort of a future with her…..in fact, any kind of a future at all….

So here you find me, on my way to Delhi to make good all that bullshit…..and I am just done shitting, if you know what I mean….

I have no idea where I’ll land up next…..as my friends tell me, I am the epitome of the reckless adventurer every boy dreams of becoming ….. (AND every boy dumps the dream; the minute he sees a pretty girl’s eyes twinkling back at him…..I was just unlucky, I still state)

I am the most incongruous adventurer type you’ll ever find…..I am fat (intend to change that – VLCC, here I come!!), lazy, a slob and existentially the most uninterested character one can ever find…..Brendan Fraser, I sure am NOT…..

And yet, I still live the dream….essentially fancy free and foot loose with a huge bike, a bag full of degree’s, a head stuffed with imagination and a tongue glib enough to convince the ferryman to let me cross the river to the next bend……

I believe in myself….. I believe that one can essentially live life, if one takes whatever is thrown at him and makes use of the same…..I live life in the small details….in the sadistic pleasures of a dump aboard an Indian train, of watching the clouds form a fleecy firmament at 35,000 feet above the earth, of the surprise (actually shock) of my mom’s face, of the wind ruffling my bare scalp as I ride without a helmet……Yes, I believe life can be lived like a gamble, riding high on the chance, on the roll of the dice, learning from the lows even….

One HAS to gamble with life…..not always, but at times…..you cannot live life by the book…..but you can sure as hell write the damn book yourself….

Small things, all of us can do, the small pleasures of life….even with the pains, which make it all so alive…..

Glasgow is long gone……here comes Delhi….

Blog on, aye??!!!

Thing's are happening.....

2008-05-05T03:57:00.003Z

Just finished wiping up my roomie's puke......and before any of you get anxious or even sickened by this, allow me to tell you, its no worse than dog puke.....

Dog puke....and poop.....that really teaches you to be a dad.....nothing like wiping up someone else's shyte just because you like them enough to keep them......

Do I wanna be a dad ?? Hell no.......not yet.....

But I wouldnt mind being one......not yet, but some day perhaps.....and goddamn it, I am sure getting the trainng for it.....

I thought of different things that would go into this blog....

Thunderstorms and how homesick I get when I hear the thunder crackling and the lightening flashing.....

About the craziness of life and how it treats you.....and how good hash tastes after nearly 9 years......

About the law and how its worse than heroin......I mean addictive powress and its whole grip on your consciousness

Also about how much I love my girl......and hell, thats one subject I never thought I'd EVER write about....EVER again........

Hiya folks, this is my first post from DBoy-2........my second lappy, in case you were wondering........am still stuck at the dead end job at John Lewis, despite promotions and discounts on JL products.....courtsey my new lappy and the sexy altec lansing speakers.........

Guess I am a lil bit happy tonite.......4 cans of beer and followed by a cleaning up session, followed by a rum and lime juice session (hell, come on, I dont have fresh limes...not at 4.34 am!!!) but then I am happy for things beyond just alcohol......

I have a sad job......which pays the rent......and I have a girlfriend with a short fuse......one who pays for my serenity......I mean, hello....I was the one with the short fuse......and suddenly she is the one with the short fuse and the penis in the relationship (as tonyda put's it succintly)....

I cant even begin to explain my adventures till date.....and that's just how bad it is......

My parents are still not very happy about breaking up with the one mentioned before.....did I ever tell you about that phase in life ? ..... No ?? trust me you dont wanna hear about it.....and guess what, I didnt even meet the damn female !!! One for the record books you'll all say......but hey, I am the guy who has seen it all, done it before and bought that damn t-shirt.....at a bargain too !!!!

I was on the floor the other day when summer came calling in scotalnd with gales, thunderstorm's and warm rain........well warm by our standards......

The girls on the floor were shivering and the guys were being very nice and macho about it....I was simply wonderstuck......the very sound of the thunder was striking me homesick with every crack and crackle.......I grew up in a area of high precipitation......and the thunder meant always home for me.......rain and the sun, thats what I grew up with.....and if I wont get the sun, damn me if I wont make do with the damn rain......

its getting on morning......I can see the light lightening.....I mean, how more pedantic can you get.....but its what it is....its a holiday and I just dont want to waste it........

I have to give my QLTT's (Qualified Lawyers Transfer Test) equivalent to the solicitor's exams out here......cant seem to get a job as a project officer anywhere.......27 interview rejections is a lil hard to take ...... and the law seems to give out a siren call to me, no matter where I am......

As palz says "you cant outrun your destiny"......and I ran my heart out......but I have always ended up advising people on what they should do or not......or better still, getting them out of scrapes.....its like destiny or fate handed me the damn mop and bucket and told me to clean up people's messes as best as I could....

This does not reflect on my roomie......poor bugger is a kid.........but in any case, I cant seem to help it.......I have to consult and advise people.....whether at home or at work.......

So, after a hiathus of more than 2 years I am preparing to go into the field I was actually trained for........no doubt with more rules and encircling safeguards than in India.....but hell, I'll probably find out some loopholes here as well, not to mention guys who''ll give me a break and a slight chance ahead of the other idiots hammer their heads at the bar rails.....oops, pun there, nearly.....

I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do........27 rejections in 1.5 months is nothing to sniff at......I nearly went beserk........I have always achieved every damn thing I wanted....and suddenly, the door's are all closed.......and trust me, I tried......

Popny says its good for character building.......god, its odious......if this is character building, I am out of the construction business

I love palz.......a small lil thing with the temper of a greek goddess and the cherubic looks of the same.......its crazy, I know......should have known better, should have done better.....but I cant.....it just happened.....she has this crazy sense of pragmatism and humour that is well nigh unassailable....I cant make her see sense or reason....

I was renouned for my fierce temper and indomitable attitude.....I just wouldnt give up and I'd blow at the slightest infraction......in any case.....as dad would have it, the great lion has become a tabby cat........and she has got my strings.....

There's just so much to write and these are just my impressions........the book is a bit further away than you and I envisaged it to be, old friend.......

I have acquired a new girlfriend, a new lappy and apparently a new take on life.......things are happening.....

9 Minutes to Freedom

2008-04-06T03:57:00.002Z

Hi there,

Its been a while……

Expanses of white welcome me back, like a comfortable back rub…… with the sudden wait for a better phrase, like a sudden twinge of a muscle eased back into place…..

Everything’s changed and yet not……for starter’s, I want to write about something and that something which is not a rant……this is a post intended to be happy…..doubtful if it manages that, but the intention is there….

Freedom….. 9 minutes to freedom……

Obsessive, compulsive , reckless, incomprehensible and complete…..freedom….

The clock’s seem to slow down in their relentless run just as the witching hour approaches……the adrenaline surges and the spirit soar’s……..its 9 minutes to 5 pm…..might be 9 minutes to 6, 7, 8 or whatever…….even 12 is good…..

The 9 minutes are the slowest crawl to finishing office……whatever the damn time is…..

You can see the stolen glances at watches, the rummaging of the desk debris to be stuffed into backpack’s……the clearing of spaces, the stretching of limbs…….its like a silent signal, undulating in waves……

You never get to see the 9 minutes to slavery……..wouldnt want to……its private space to yourself and pretty much jealously guarded……you know what I mean…..

But the 9 minutes to freedom is shared…….people you don’t like will manage a nod, if not a grin……and its not even the weekend……

Lives consolidated reach out in that 9 minutes of intended reprieve……

Why am I even writing about something so insignificant?

Well, after much and arduous introspection which got me absolutely nowhere……and an idiotic rage and heartache which led me away from happiness and back to it again……I am resolved to enjoy the insignificant moments of life…..

Resolved to wring to the utmost, the elation of the resurgent sun rising as I blearily walk into office on a 7 am shift…….he says hi to me and I grumble back at him….

Determined to enjoy the bitter tang of unsweetened coffee as sugar level’s go down…….bitter is also a taste and one can savor it as much as sweetness……

Decided to believe in fate and the possibility of approaching joy of 9 minutes to freedom…….and to grin in those 9 minutes…..

Its not much that we do in this world that actually determine our existence……there are just so many factor’s and possibilities that weigh on an outcome that all we can do is to do our best and enjoy the moment……

Those very same insignificant moments……

Like when I am taken aback by some inane witticism of palz……or it could be just anything at all…..anything that makes me feel ……

Not much we feel today……considering how wrapped up we all are…..in our lives, anxieties and so MUCH baggage…..

I wonder when you last TASTED food? The last time you rolled in bed and held someone warm on a chilly morning? The last time you felt the sun on your shoulder blades or anything else at all and said to yourself….this….THIS ….. is good and I am good……

You gotta love those minute’s…….

Like I said……9 minutes to freedom……

Next time, wait, sit back, look around…..in those 9 minutes to freedom….

You might surprise yourself…….

Yeah…..I am back…..

Lost & Found.....

2008-01-06T21:20:00.000Z

Its sometimes funny how life really turns out.....or turns in......simply drifts away on a tangent you never expect......

Its been quite a while since I logged back on these pages and the funniest thing is that I honestly did not expect to return here in such a bemused state of mind.......

Truth, Love, Justice, Belief's......and so much more.....and how I have ranted and raved over the months on these very same pages that today I wonder where it all came out of....

The facts of life as we observe them are never as we wish them to remain .....and yet change, inevitable change is bound to happen.....and when it does we are either confused or basically unprepared for them......

I once wrote that its only possible for me to write or rather rave & rant when I have nothing else in my heart........well......it still holds true......

Nearly three months of mind-numbing hard labour in the John Lewis call centre floor and then finally on to the logistics branch......but hell thats my usual shyte.....nae baaver.....

Three months in which got graduated, got a new job, got paid, got promoted, got a girl.......and finally my stock of words is dry and myself too...

So, what do I do with this blog page ?? And the rest of myself ???

I am finally grinning again......for no good reason......

Its a wee bit scary and funny and a thousand feeelings and ideas and fears run rampant....and I am unable to pin them down with my words and my keyboard.....

She is funny and pretty and inane and insane, disgusting and enthralling, patient and impatient.......yeah, yeah....you get the hint, I know

The point is....I dont have a point....

Will get back to you when I do have a point.......to make that is and not to berate and bullshit about....

So, message to the rest of you and myself ;

Unavoidably detained by the world
Expect me when you see me.....

Chicken and Conversation...

2007-10-06T21:11:00.001Z

Its a late Saturday evening and I am sitting before my beloved D-boy…..the lights are twinkling all over Glasgow’s West end and I can see them from my lounge window as I type.

There’s a pot of chicken cooking on my stove and the lid is clattering against the pot as fragrant steam tries to make mad attempts for independence and freedom…

It’s a simple chicken curry….a new recipe or perhaps an old one…..sai says I should note down my recipes here…..for posterity’s sake, I presume!!!

Chop up onions (2 large ones per kilo) finely diced and quarter some potatoes (4 per kilo)….please wash all ingredients and yourself if possible, before cooking…..some chillies (6 I believe) also roughly chopped……1 packet of chicken thighs (8 medium sized pieces) the skin ripped off and washed …….dump the skin, the onions and the chillies into a large pot and pour in a generous dose of garlic sauce/paste and mix it all up….you could use other sauces if you like, I had only garlic so that’s that….finally dump in the chicken pieces and mix the whole up and put it on the burner……add a dash of oil…..on a low flame, let the whole simmer….stir every 4 minutes….as you can see, I am a lover of even numbers…..oh, and add salt

The onions and the skin and the chillies give off oil and water….and so does the meat…..after a while, the whole broth like thing starts smelling delicious and bubbles away quite merrily, which leaves me to simply do the rice, which is easier and quicker to do than it’ll take to write it here, so skip that……after a while the onions melt and the chicken juices combine to make it a sort of broth….which is where you can add the potatoes and if you want a stew, just add some veggies and you’re almost done….

But not quite…..I have just added a generous helping of masala paste so the whole hue of the chicken is now a rich reddish-brown in colour and also half a can of tomatoes that has been feeling rather forlorn and neglected in my almost bare fridge…..so, there you have it….stir and stir and stir….simmer, simmer, simmer…..always on a low flame…..

Makes me feel like a witch in a Shakespearian production in my own ktchen….boil and bubble, toil and tubble, cauldron boil and brew trouble and so on and so forth…..

And as the damn chicken and rice bubble and boil, so does my brain……I like cooking because with a cigarette epoxy glued to my lips and my hands busy, my every churning mind takes stock…..hehehehe, forgive the silly pun…was not intended….

I wonder what the hell does one get stuck in conversations, get stuck in belief’s and also in honour and sensibility……I wonder why my ever agile mind and facile tongue have suddenly found themselves stuck in the quagmires and quicksand of conversation, simple easy conversation with someone…..

Its hard enough to do with disabilities of looks and a rather pugnacious and idiotic personality that like karna, I am stuck at the end battle without weapons and without abilities…..

Recently, someone from my past, a friend who I had met about 6 years and more, and since been good net friends with declared that she had feelings for me……

After a long hiatus, it was as if my heart suddenly realized its existence……must have been shock value to even find that someone could even find me bearable, much less like…..well, not as in like like, but as in like MORE than a friend…..

Sounds pretty soppy and juvenile perhaps, but…..

Damn, my curry just got a little stuck to the bottom of the pot….I HATE THAT….I have to scrape and suddenly black bits appear in my gravy….hmmmm, multi-tasking does have some drawbacks……anyway, give me a minute here…..need a cigarette now that the damn curry’s done as well as the rice, I can chill and have a smoke ….

Anyway….leaving aside my petty sentimentality and perhaps senility of accepting a fate of being singularly lonely and idiotically possessing large groups of friends who eat my rubbish and drive away my blues……the point here was that I had honestly never expected this….

Expect, hell, I had specifically even stopped myself from even daydreaming about ever being liked enough to be considered even the least bit romantically….

I mean, my whole life I had fought, schemed and planned for attention and liking…..I had become interesting so that people might like talking to me…..had learnt how to dance, cook, be witty, be savvy, smart and knowledgeable……I know, it sounds all so inane now and oh so important then……For a hug, for a look, for a kiss, I had used whatever tools god had given me and fashioned an arsenal of weapons, that was in retrospect, truly formidable….

And all for absolutely NO BLOODY USE……

You JUST cant get more pathetic than that…..

Anyway, after sairekha left me, I arrived at a crossroads of life…..I found myself, my dreams and my abilities hollow and meaningless…..and so like every other desperado and idiot of the books, I set out to find myself and perhaps some peace….

So hear ye, hear ye, hear ye……after many travails and encounters, our hero just did find that rotten and hard earned peace…..at the cost of indifference and perhaps even reallocation of self and baggage…..

I was boring perhaps, I was me perhaps…..simple and easy and different…..

And then to hear that someone was interested in me…..not for my food or my scintillating conversation or even my dubious abilities……I tell you, it was heady and idiotic and somehow it felt right…..even when it was wrong….

She was due to be married and somehow thought that I had found love in the unlikeliest of places…..or that I was in love and so could handle it…..I mean, what the fuck…..

I was NOT in love and nor was I looking for any….or so I told myself and had almost half convinced my errant and recidivist heart…….

I mean, I asked myself, she’s getting married in two months….what’s this, some freaking Karan Johar megastarrer ?? With myself as the reluctant khan??

Some fuckin’ bad joke, yeah ??

Anyway……so, I humour her…..yes, I am a bastard…..but hopefully an honest one…..

I liked hearing her voice, let me say this honestly…..And I thought that I would let her down easy….she’s just getting cold feet before marriage…..she’s just unsure…..she’s just idiotic, like most girls…..or so I thought….

I mean……she’s getting married to this idiot who loves her, who cares for her…..cares and loves her enough to want to marry her……would I or even could I allow her to break his heart……perhaps a bit like mine own was broken and shattered ? Naaaah…

So, I let her speak and let her spin her webs and so on……wrong move, I know, before you say it……she was a good pal and she had been there when I was broken and bruised….what was I supposed to do…..shut up and not take her calls? Perhaps I should have……

After about a month of such nonsense, I realized two things –

I had moved on in life, but I was still vulnerable and immature
These calls were getting me nowhere and in effect I was merely ruining her already confused life…

I reasoned with her and then when reason did not work anymore, I gave up…..I told her to grow up and sleep on the bed she had made….perhaps brutal, perhaps harsh, perhaps uncalled for…..but reason and logic and sense were not getting her anywhere….

And so I did…..

And then I tried to go on with my life….

And I realise that my heart aches for longing and for relations which go beyond friendships and mere talking….

I thought I was tougher than that…..thought I had banished such wants and desires from my life and my being….

I had given up or at least made myself give up the hope and the want of things more than what I have now…..for the softer things in life which I had fought and schemed for…..for the attention I was deprived of as a child and the peace of merely looking at someone and the warm shiver that would go down my spine….

I guess I am still greedy and hungry…..for things that I cannot have…..and like a lump in my throat that refuses to go away, my tongue and mind have become entangled in the same and refused to budge….

Its not wrong to want……but its wrong to want things that I cannot have……and so I tell myself as I wrap myself in my blankets and switch on the music…….for a long time, I would listen to music and rock myself to sleep…..when I was growing up, I would scheme and figure out till my mind just gave up to fatigue and sleep…..now that I am grown up, I again listen to music and rock myself to sleep…..

To smell the fragrance of shampooed hair......to reach out and hold a warm hand.....to even know……these were not for me, I sternly told myself and worked myself to fatigue and indifference and a hard won peace…..

And yet, I realise that its still not easy……and my tongue and mind are in rebellion against my determination…..and this too shall pass…..I know….

But like my chicken and my friends and my work and everything else……it all seems so incomplete…..an ache that I must dominate and go past….

I guess, I must speak again or else go mute……I must think again or go mad…..

I am still me…..and I am not hungry or perhaps hungrier than ever before….

Chicken anyone?

Butts mark the way

2007-10-03T06:13:00.000Z

Why is it that every time I am waiting for a bus to arrive, the damn thing never comes….and when I have finally given up waiting and have rolled a perfect white cylinder of cancer …. And mind you….JUST LIT IT…that the damn thing decides to make its grand appearance, in defiance of all British standards of time keeping!!!!

I HATE HAVING TO THROW AWAY A FRESH LIT CIGARETTE…..do the Scottish bus driver’s union know that specific secret of mine and conspire against me?

And so it happens that butts mark the way….

I had started smoking way back in almost my pre-teens…..my mom still blames a far-off cousin who introduced me to the then forbidden pleasures of tobacco …….that poor fellow quit long back but the white rice paper cylinders never quit on me…..and the butts started dropping…..

Throughout my adult life, my smoking has always been a part of my life…..especially in times like this when I’d sit all alone at 3 am in the morning and just stare at the screen…….and wait for the words to tumble forth….while the ash grows longer and the coffee colder….

They say that a man has three teachers, three lovers, three enemies and three friends and he never quite knows when he meets whom and never realizes who was whom for him till its over….At the great and hollow age of my late twenties, I do believe that I have either met all the sad bastards life can throw at me or else I am possibly the greatest fraud still alive…..

This blog for me is not a mere point of existence for incoherent ramblings…..or so I tell myself and through me, the world….Unwilling and yet driven I find myself in need of articulation and expression of all that I perceive and observe and to hope to put all of that down in paper…..in the hope of someday committing to a plotline and characters, these very same desires, belief’s and thoughts…..

Like my butts, these blogs too mark a wavering, shambling route to my own self…..crusted with bitter indifference and worn over with cynical attitude, I wearily let my educated fingers wander over the keyboard of my chosen addiction……signposts of a life, hopelessly lost in the mundane truths of being, searching for the grail or even grain of truth which makes up for the rest of the idiotic rambling (both of life and blog)…..

A start…..all it requires is a start….and hopefully an end…..

You need a start to start…that much is but obvious…..and one needs an end to define the start….the rest is all adventure….and sometimes there’s a mis before the adventure and another s at the end….but then, that’s all there is to it…..

A swashbuckling, swaggering, hard-rock sound tracked filled…..at times wry, at times tragic….mostly idiotic, mostly nonsensical….to continue from the beginning and continue to the end….and as the old saying goes….a large piece of prose with something definitely wrong in it somewhere….or so I think…..but then thoughts are one thing, dreams another, nightmares again different and reality a complete new set of crockery all over….

I am presently hunting for gainful employment….of any sort….to tide me over till I can start applying for jobs in mine own field….FTS does not allow us to sign any contracts till our student visas expire….and then again there are various other incidents that happen which make our life a not so monotonous journey….and like life, a lot happens in the cracks of time and space…..

Shantanu has left and Gayatri has arrived…….its like an era is over……the Maratha has left to join his office in Derby and undergo graduate training in Rolls-Royce and yet another set of characters have arrived in these far off shores, searching for education, belief, employment and god-only-knows-what-else…….Gayatri has somehow come into the large and rather shambling debris of our lives…..a little pipsqueak of a character with a grin larger than her entire being and almost like a lost waif, she has been taken in and accepted by my rather large and extended family of urchins and claimed as one of their own……especially by khan….

Shantanu’s leaving has hit perhaps khan the worst…..for over a years they have abused and maligned each other in their own ways and now that the Maratha is gone, the Pathan is well nigh inconsolable…..there’s no one to fight with, he says….

My house has been a din and a cacophony for so long that the sudden silences sometimes worry me……pranay, rishab, asim, jayant, kartick, taimoor, umair, murli, priyanka, joydip, atty….the list is endless…..ramzan is still on and the stories are simply piling up….I wonder what to put down and what I could leave out…..this delay is caused due to this and I don’t regret it….

Of pranay and my encounter’s with keeping roza….which lasted all of 3 days….

Of the hindu’s like rishab and me feeding the muslims like jahanzeb (jazzy) and khan and so many others….

Of the time where umair and shantanu both smoked grass and then finished off a kilo and a half of ice cream by candle light, imagining themselves as gods and the ice cream as the world, while the rest of us were asleep….

Of Joydip and how he would play “jumma chumma” for 3 hours and would have gone on further just that we put a stop to it….

Of poor Atty Rizvi, the ever enduring one, who would smile his shy smile and endure all our crazy antics and still keep his calm and all of us in line….

Of my blanket invitation aftari parties where I would cook like a demon and feed everyone in the vicinity and how they became legend….

Of the crazy antics of all the great “character’s” of Glasgow that pranay ahluwalia would take so much relish in enacting and making us laugh…..like the time nitin ran off with jajali drunk or of the time anand mishra and tikku got into a slanging match in hindi in the MBA class forgetting anyone and everyone else in the class….or of the time khan managed to lure jenny into my flat in the student halls and suddenly like a dog chasing cars, didn’t know what to do once the damn car stopped….

Of the way rishab would take everything from an economic perspective and the way atty rizvi and joydip would eye each other every so often or how shantanu would home in like a homing pigeon on the nearest pair of mammaries after two pegs or how taimoor would behave in a completely different manner with females and with us……..

Of how shantanu and taimoor would abuse each other from the minute they’d open their eyes till they closed their eyes…..and sometimes even with their eyes closed in the middle of dreams or nightmares……

Of how murli would despair of the lot of us and blast us in the kindest possible language and finally how he went into exile in desperation and in protest against all drunk hindi speaking idiots inhabiting the flat……

Of how 20 boys and sometimes more would inhabit the flat and the original owners would either sleep elsewhere or on the floor with all clothes and shoes on….

Of the number of movies murli, shantanu and myself ripped from the net, regardless of taste, language or whatever and watched as a community and the amount of arguments over the movies and anything and everything…..

Of the pakistani’s and the Indians who called my flat as no man’s land and each was the other’s brother….and yet I kicked them all out of my flat the day the india-pak twenty20 match was on….I was mad, legally not medically…..

Of the incessant job searches and the “hausla-afzai” that kept us together….not to mention my coffee grounds, milk and sugar !!!

Of the interviews and the crazy hours of waiting for a call to come through……

Of the calls that did come through and the ones that did not….

Of the celebrations and the mournings and the talks that went on and on and on….

Of youtube and youporn websites which made MTV and anything else redundant and the much abused 20 mbps net connection and the even more abused lappy’s in the house which were used beyond their capacities and were then taken apart with kitchen knives and spoons and brushed clean with toothbrushes and aftershaves…..of IC boards ripped apart and of frantic cable wiring and ebay hunts….

Of ebay hunts for weird stuff…..

Of the never ending search for cheaper and cheaper access codes to call home and near and dear ones….possibly at no cost…..

Of the tremendous amounts of energy expended for the search of trust, truth and love….and their denunciations….and yet the longing for the same…..

Of the girls chatted up to in chat forums, the advice sought, the dates planned and never fulfilled….

Of the girl who called and called and said those words I thought I will never hear again…..and how I bid her adieu and set her on her own way…..

Of the desperation of life and its responsibilities and duties…..

Of the alcohol drunk, the weed smoked, the abuses hurled, the food shared, the beds shared, the lives shared…..

In a year, I have lived 5 years of college and have changed beyond all else and yet not…..

I wonder how I can actually subscribe all these people and their every detail in words and letters. It is not enough to merely write, it is perhaps more important to feel, to know and to experience.

My novel or the large piece of prose with something wrong in it, is nearing completion….I think there’s enough wrong with me and enough in my blogs to actually sit and write about…. I have my characters and I think the plotline will take care of itself…..nothing worth doing is ever easy and each has been hard won…..

My bus comes along and I have to leave the stop or the bus will leave without me…..as does life, as does everyone else…..I have stood, been counted, weighed and hope I have been not found wanting….and sometimes, the butt has to be thrown away, even if I don’t like it, merely to mark the way I passed through….

Conversations and Observations

2007-08-17T20:41:00.000Z

To call oneself a writer, one needs to write….perhaps even to write well enough or at least better than most so as to define one above and beyond other scribblers…

And yet in the shallows of the night, self-realization drives in the honesty of the fact that there is not any difference between the scribbling of others and that of a writer’s…

So, then, what defines a writer……??

A few thousand more words and phrases in your vocabulary…..perhaps a keener wit…..perhaps lucidity and empathy…..and yet even these singular abilities aside, it is still not enough to define someone as a writer….

A writer is perhaps set apart by his observations and understanding of people……more of others and less of his/her own perhaps……and an arrogance to set the same down on paper or screen with a justification that the same cannot or could have been observed or concluded in any other manner….and then to wonder whether it was worth writing at all or not……

Did I mention self-absorption and delusions of grandeur? Writers often give psychologists a reason to call their mumbo-jumbo a profession usually…..

I too observe…..and when I find that my eyes are not enough, I employ my ears and tongue…..that is to say I converse…..with people, with utter strangers, with friends, family and those of mine own and not as well….

I find solace in my feeble attempts to observe the unseen corners of the human existence that is present everywhere and yet is neverwhere….

The little old lady who always stands in the corner of the bus stop to catch the first sight of the bus, rather than taking the shelter of the bus stand…..and likes to talk about what she’s going to prepare for her dinner in the evening…..

The elderly professor who nudges empty and discarded crisps packets or wrappers on the street when he thinks himself alone……and would construct theories of brilliant communication by drawing parallels for the everyday things he does and his chosen subject…..

The father holding the hand of his son and his unconscious pride in his son’s mindless prattle as his son holds his hand trustingly and tells him of his world…..

The stray and solitary library assistant who reads books heavier than himself and digs for boogers in his nose and munches on them with relish, without realising that half the table is trying their hardest not to make a concerted rush for the door……

The affluent and most eligible bachelor with dog hairs all over his body, flat and life who feels safer with his two dogs than alone or worse in frail and undependable female company……

The lonely and well-to-do career woman……my ever-warring parents…….friends……strangers…..anyone and everyone is grist to my every-churning mill and I find myself floundering on the unending grain of people & lives from my mill…..

I find a thousand stories on the sidewalks and discard a few million on the threshold of my flat……..there are a few too many to write about and yet, I write……as many as I can, as many as I can understand and believe……

Stories are like ships, some sail and some sink beneath the waves…..but they are all true ….. at some level or the other….

The truth’s that I perceive are perhaps lies to another and another’s travesties are true to someone else all over again….and so the cycle’s revolve….

Each time I begin a story, I merely wonder where I would be going…….rather I think of the end and find myself being taken there by a cast of characters I never met before and would perhaps never meet again…..I often wish that the journey’s would be longer so that I could get to meet them properly…..

Perhaps, merely to observe them, converse with them….yet again….

Changes....

2007-08-04T04:37:00.000Z

My life is boring…..

Never thought ANYONE would ever get to say that…..least of all me !!!

Finally…..my life is boring….

My office has gained a new health worker…..and I am supposed to show her the ropes….and one of the things I have to show her is the morning bus route and so on the route to the office, my peace suddenly gets shattered by nervous chatter…..

For three days I have taken in the chatter and shop talk disturbing my morning solitude and then the lady hits me with a zinger today…..

She asked me, so what are your plans for the weekend….and of course, I said – working on my dissertation……very automatic response, said she……don’t you like to go out, pubbing, movies, nights out......

To be honest, I just stared at her……for a full 15 minutes before realising that I don’t have a life……

This is insanely hilarious and suddenly sobering as well……Me and not having a life……the very veracity and the ludicrous nature of the situation has indeed taken me by surprise….

My life revolves around my work, my studies, cooking, cleaning and the odd hindi movie I rip from the net…….

On the days I work, I leave my flat around 7 am and get back around 7 pm…..too tired to make anything other than something quick and snappy for dinner and maybe a quick scan of my emails….

On the days I don’t work….I cook, do my washing up, catch up on my reading (for my diss) and sleep…….at odd times, when I get the time, I rip the latest movies from weird Japanese forums……benefits of living with two net techies….you start learning the basic dirty net tricks….

I realise that I haven’t seen the inside of a disco or a pub for ages now……and nor have I spent money uselessly in ages…….

I realise that I haven’t danced for months…..nor have I fought anyone…..not even brawled…..not even felt the lack of that savage rush of blood to my head that I couldn’t do without…..haven’t felt that berserker rage and the ice cool shiver that balances my nature as I set out yet again to prove I am me, cock of the walk, bruised, battered, scarred and still standing….

I realise that I don’t wear cowboy boots that crack authoritatively on the court floors, inviting attention one way or the other and nor do I swagger with the chip on my shoulder and snarl my way clear of the rush…..I now wear soft, padded sneakers which are better for my walking….and my office hallways are carpeted and I’d rather listen to music and wait my turn……

I realise that I haven’t been drunk in ages…..or at least drunk as in crazy drunk…. I am no longer on the razor’s edge…..needing equal and copious quantities of alcohol, madness and battles everyday to fight….. merely to stay alive, to feel alive….

I realise that my only contact to the outside world is through a virtual net service….and a few phone calls……and that’s it…….I shun parties, scared of relapsing into the devil I was…..I shun anything and everything that could perhaps bring out or even about the beast on my back…….

I realise that I have finally achieved what I set out to do….achieved blandness…..I have finally left my world far behind…..

A simple man with a simple job, self-absorbed, normal and just another person on the street who takes the bus to work and cooks and cleans on weekends……no issues, no hurry, no tension, except maybe to finish my dissertation on time…..but that should be possible……

I should celebrate…….and I don’t know how to…..

Should I laugh or merely wonder at myself?

Even today, when I perceive my own life from the eyes of my friends and colleagues, it is hard for me to actually accept that this transformation has indeed taken place…..to my dismay, surprise or happiness…I truly do not know….

If my old lawschool friends or ex-colleagues from the various High Court Bars I hold affiliation to were to observe my lifestyle and my manner of life, they might not believe that they even know me…..Antu would disown me for sure and Rajesh would take me to the nearest hospital…..parry might sit me down and ask for identification and cross-examine to assure himself that I am who I am……The others would still be dumbstuck if not outright disbelieving……

My past life, my dubious reputation and even my character has left such a wide swath on my back trail that anyone seeking to find me will be lost………anonymity has indeed been achieved……and I have no idea what the hell to do with it…..

The truth is a bizarre mix of belief and even perception…..as I had written before….

My usual rants are loosing steam and I have a horrible confession to make…….however the forum is too public for such, so suffice it to say that things have evolved from flickers on the screen…..anything further would be an invitation to disaster or worse…..

The last time such an evolution took place, I shouted it from the rooftops and took umbrage at anyone NOT knowing……things have changed indeed….

Hey you reading this.....the world is not so bitter and the sun does shine sometimes.....

Then again, it might just be that I am being stupid....once again....

Welcome to my world….

2007-07-14T04:26:00.000Z

Hi, I am D.

I live in Glasgow and presently working part time for the NHS while completing my dissertation for my Masters in Development Economics. This is not a blog about how an ex-criminal lawyer from Guwahati, Assam, India came to be doing economics in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

I live in 66, Fergus Drive which is a rather nice address, on top of a hill and then again the apartment on the top floor. But this is again not a blog about how I ended up here in this tastefully decorated and rather messy lounge, looking out of the window and seeing the twinkling lights of the West End of the city and typing on my rather battered and bruised laptop, D-Boy…….honestly, the only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match and a few cans of petrol…..a firebomb would perhaps serve just as well………

I live with 3 other insane roomies and this is a blog about them……

Its also a blog about the various visitor’s who walk in and out of the door’s of my flat and my life………

But basically, this is a blog to invite you to my life and friends and other animals……not because they have asked me to, but because I need to draw up the final chapters of my sojourn’s here…and as always I talk in philosophy and they listen in gibberish……

God’s first words, according to bible were “let there be light”……if my roomies would have been there, they’d have instantly yelled back, “what colour??”

With these words, I do commend my soul to any god who can find it…..

Allow me to define my surroundings like every other author usually does, one way or the other……a frightful bore, I always find it……but there you have it…..you HAVE to define stage space and trust me, this is indeed a stage…..

It’s a nice & sunny two bedroom apartment with a decent lounge and a small, but well equipped kitchenette. The rent we pay is £525 and though its supposed to be a two-man apartment, as is usual with Indian students, we’re fitting four in where two are supposed to exist. I guess, this somehow fits in with the entire ethos of the place…..

The flat is redolent with the usual aroma’s of curries…..hot, spicy and meaty and potatoey….just like our mum’s kitchens would smell, which is of course what defines it as home for us and as a smelly nuisance for the rest of the rather tight-lipped and uncomplaining neighbours.

If I were to start, I guess, I should start with someone interesting…….the problem is exacerbated by the fact that all three are equally insane and therefore of interest…..lucky for me, one of them just popped his inane face through the lounge door and asked me what I was doing……so, I guess he’ll serve to start with…..

The West…..

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you, Shantanu, Maharashtrian and game addict……..earlier readers might remember this great individual with his rather desperate shorts and inane grin from blogs before……A personage of immense appetite and yet stick thin due to a possible hyperactive metabolism and even more possibly a stomach that reaches below his knees, this is a man who absolutely and resolutely retains his identity and amazing neighing laugh and of course the impeccable timing that goes along with his definitive laugh…..

Shantanu arrived on these far and chilly shores in pursuit of further education…….possibly education in all forms and aspects, one would suspect, but education at all costs…….A straight A student, his education commenced with my erstwhile flatmate’s sizeable mammaries and the lady did have a bosom that rose and fell like an empire…….. I do believe his education there is still in a process of fulfilment……this is of course when he finds time away from his unending war games or his dilbert-like projects in his lab….To his credit, shantanu is famous for his walk since he moves in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk…. He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed…..and also to his credit, sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S……

A few words about shantanu…..he HATES cleaning up and cannot cook or rather WILL not cook…….he’ll exist on bread and milk or worse, on dry cereals rather than actually do anything towards procurement of a hot meal….A past master at the art of escaping chores around the house, a fierce defender of anti-conspiracy theories and an absolutely irrepressible and horrible movie interrupter, ever since I dragged his skinny and drunk-on-two-pegs-arse to his bedroom, this great man has been a rather indomitable part of the horde…..

The North….

Taimoor…..the khan was and is still a reluctant visitor to these foreign shores…….when I met him, my first impression was that here’s finally a person who has really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance……and has almost made it an art form !!!

My views over the last year haven’t really undergone much change and the same was reiterated by one of our professors who remarked to khan, "It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever…………have you thought of going into teaching?"

For khan, the ferocious afghan, the whole wide world and perhaps even the universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) fight with, and (d) rocks….how economics figured into this equation has left both the professors and me scratching our collective heads……….

I saw him truly happy a few weeks ago when we were having dinner and suddenly noticed a council house somewhere in Maryhill, or the local Nedsville going up in flames. Khan was jumping up and down for joy and was nearly dressed to go and watch the sight before I managed to grab hold of him and sit on him………for which reason, he is still quite pissed with me. According to khan, TV and the net were subsidiary sources of entertainment to that of a raging fire or so his village folklore ran………..

Khan calls me Jiten and I call him Anwar, the names of our respective cooks back home, since we’ve donned the chef’s apron’s out here and made blood oaths to never reveal this fact to our respective would-be wives……..he makes a mean vegetable “Pilaf” and I don’t do badly at “kheer” ….. the joint decision was based on the fact that neither wants to be spend anymore time in the kitchen than necessary……Yes, we’re are closet MCP’s…….though I don’t mind the cooking so much as long as there is someone to lift the heavy stuff, do the chopping and the cleaning up after wards…..

The South….

The next man in line is the southernmost entity……Murali…….net geek, downloader extraordinaire, the “tanki” who could down 17 shots of whisky and then carry on normally and yet who drinks but rarely, fellow speed demon and a vicious, authoritative and the most insanely logically minded young gun of his ilk that it has been my pleasure to know…..

Murali, murli, MUTTU (as Shantanu calls him after getting drunk on two cans of beer) is of the generation which considers the screen to be the better substitute to pages…..this is a man who’s from a place which had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote……..Rajnikanth aka Murli in our flat was The Man and he had the Vote……and I was never unhappy to go along with him……things were rather simpler and in any case, I do suit the role of the scheming and nasty vizier than the happy-go-lucky ruler with a mind that ticked like a clock……and like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo…… I must say that NO tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete!!!

With murli and the rest of his southern gang, barring a few notable exceptions, the subject of them and sex was a complicated one……… it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, South Indians are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like……or in my beloved Muttu’s case, snore melodiously…..that man could snore like no man’s affair and sawing wood, hewing iron blocks, or even a jackhammer stood no chance against the deep reverberations that emanated from this man’s nostrils……..Thankfully, I was in close pursuit and competition which therefore meant I wasn’t as much affected as the rest of the roomies and the rest of the building and the people living down the hill………

The East…..

Now, its hard to define myself, so I guess I’ll define the others who does not actually live here and yet are perhaps involved in ALL our activities one way or the other……if the others want to define me, they’re free to post me their thoughts…….I promise to publish whatever they send, provided they even bother to.....

The Others……..

One of the most persistent and frequent visitors of our home is P………….an inseparable part of all our activities and endeavours and a constant fountain of disgusting PJ’s, idiotic statements and yet as much a part of 66 Fergus Drive as any of its insane inhabitants……by virtue of the ever present and overworked net connection, this person is as much a part of the house and given equal status by all the flatmates…….that is to say, given status on point……..the point followed by a rather long and sharp sword, possibly…….

Now if I were to actually get down to defining, I guess this is a person who belongs to that breed of People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people……talk to her and you begin to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist……If I was ever to meet this person I guess we’d look at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and wait for the other to back up first…….but then, luck is my middle name….mind you, my first is BAD……which also gives reason to the fact that I can scream for mercy in 19 languages and just scream in another 44……I could go on and give out her name but I guess I could also cut off my own leg with a rusty butter knife, because in the long run, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful, so I guess I should just suffice to state that its my beloved flicker on the screen………

The next pair of intruders were Jay & Karthik……presently in detention and sufferance not to enter our hallowed doors following the incident of the vodka, the camp bed in the lounge and the rather messy carpet stain the morning after…….

These two jokers would make alcohol out of anything they could put in a bucket and eat anything that could not climb out of one……For myself, I think karthik has possibly demolished what I believe to be the better part of a complete poultry farming industry here and back home……….and Jay has probably done his share for possibly quite a few Russian distilleries……both did quite a bit for rare species…….kept them rare, for one thing…..

Then, of course, there’s Umair…….now, this is a man who exudes sexuality in a megawatt range…over several miles, I’d quite believe……Umair has eyes that glitter like a saint’s downfall and when he smiled, he exuded an easy air of undistilled, excitingly dangerous lasciviousness……. He could swagger while asleep…..Umair could, in fact, commit sexual harassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room…..a gentleman in short.

Umair generally follows a great law, which I HAVE to put down here……According to him, you never ever volunteered. ……Not even if an army general stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." ……There was “always” a snag……. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Umair knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear…You have to admire a man like that…..A guy like that always lands on his feet, or on someone else’s feet at any rate….

The list continues and will be updated at frequent intervals……keep an eye at this space….

A finale……

While I was typing out the above, I just got my phone bill and it says that I have spent seventeen thousand rupees on phone calls to India…….and of course, Shantanu has to ask “how?”……the man does have a voice that puts me in mind of a vulture who has arrived a little too late at the dead donkey's feast…….just showed him what I wrote and he gives his usual neighing laugh and is now asking why I am writing this…….you see, he is not a man to mince his words….people and onions, yes; words, no……

He reminds me that I should stop writing about him, if I wish to have people reading my blogs……says I should write about more colourful people in Glasgow, like khan for instance……my answer would perhaps be, Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum……roughly translates, if you have their balls in your grip, their minds will follow……My hands are still distressingly empty, however....

Presently Khan and Shantanu are going at their 9 month old hobby horse………discussing the variety of sins and the possible forms of retribution either will receive in the afterlife as per Islam and Hinduism…….I cannot truly for the life of me decide who is more inane or insane……Khan is religious after a fashion…..he usually fashions where and when he wants to be religious….though to be fair, where he comes from the folks are a god-fearing lot…..they sure had a great deal to afear…..and Shantanu isn't exactly an atheist, as atheism was a non-survival trait in a world with several thousand gods and anyway, the gods back home did like an atheist …..gave them something to aim at…..

Murli just strolled in from work and khan asked in quite a passable brit accent, “oi you, you have fucked down the internet?” The bizarre statement follows a basic head turning of heads towards me…..forgot to add that I am the official interpreter of the flat…..and trust me, there’s enough to interpret indeed…..

After you'd known all three for sometime, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into their collective ears to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way……

They say hell is other people….in time you learn they’re wrong……

Welcome to my world……

Women & Complications...

2007-06-28T01:33:00.000Z

My roomie murli just asked me why women were so complicated…..

In reply, I dug through my scrapbook collection of accumulated wisdom that I found useful and some of my own thoughts on the topic……well, basically I typed “woman” on my find button in MS Word and I kept on clicking…

Some of my finds –

§ A woman is a compendium of wonders. The one thing you must never expect her to be is a gentleman, complete with honour and code.
§ No matter what any man says, there is nothing better than two, a man and a woman, who walk together. When they walk right together, there is no way too long and no night too dark.
§ A man ought to have a woman to cry for him when he goes out. And not just his mother either.
§ There are more snares and traps in a woman’s lashes than in all the poacher’s stores of the world.
§ The proper place for any man or woman is where they are needed.
§ Women are a practical lot. They get right down to bedrock about things and no woman is going to waste time remembering a man who was fool enough to get himself killed. Thing to do is to live for love, not die for it. Though most womenfolk’s would a rather see a man dead than with another woman.
§ No man can shape his life according to a woman’s thinking. Nor should any woman try to influence a man towards her way. There must be give and take between them, but when a man faces a man’s problems, he has to face them a man’s way.
§ A man he has got to get along mostly with hard work and persistence, but with a woman is mostly maneuver. Men have to maneuver too, especially so when it comes to womenfolk’s
§ A beautiful woman……shaped like music.
§ A woman who has trapped her game has a different way about her than one who is still on the stalk.
§ To fall fearlessly in fate as a man falls in love with a shy woman’s best smile.
§ Romantic love is your heart lost in the dream of a woman’s face and your soul lost in the dream of her body.
§ Nothing in the world is as soft and pleasing to the touch, as the skin of a woman’s thigh where the flesh is warm, smooth and supple. No flowers, feather or fabric can match that velvet whisper of flesh. No matter, how unequal they may be in other ways, all women, old and young, fat and thin, beautiful and ugly, have that perfection. It’s a great part of the reason why men hunger to possess women and so often convince themselves that they do possess them, the thigh, that touch.
§ A woman’s long and thick plait of hair is the rope by which a man may climb to heaven.
§ Of the many reasons we love women for, the best is the fact that a woman does what God should do; a woman sometimes gives us a reason to live and love this world.
§ The fully mature woman has about two seconds of life left after maturing.
§ The love of a woman is held in a vault of hearts while the condemning and cruel world tries to reach it through our skin and bones. They claim a hidden corner of our hearts, all those moments that stay with us, unscreamed. That’s where loves, like elephants, drag themselves to die. It’s the place where pride allows itself to cry. You can never tell what people have inside them until you start taking it away, one hope at a time. Sometimes, the worst thing you can do to a woman is to love her.
§ A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
§ Despite the misfortunes of destiny and the vagaries of fate, I always knew with perfect understanding and pleasure I would ever know was in that laugh; to make that woman laugh and to feel the laughter bubbling from her lips against my face, my skin.
§ The tender close hug that a woman gives a man when she knows she can trust him or when she is sure his heart belongs to someone else.

Other people’s writings and thoughts -

§ The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical Morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard. § The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.§ She moved like someone who had grown used to her body and, in general, looked like what Vimes had heard described as "a woman of a certain age." He'd never been quite certain what age that was.§ "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.
§ There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I’ve just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it’s not the end of the world."
§ Never play poker with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
- Algren's Law
§ That man says women can't have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn't a woman. Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.
- Sojouner Truth (1851)
§ It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
- H. L. Mencken
§ A man without a woman is like a tugboat in a logjam.
- Anon
§ Love? Pah. Overrated. Here, look, these are my three wives: Pestilence, Famine and Death. Do you think I married them for their personalities? Their personalities could shatter entire planets! Arranged marriages, every one, but they worked out. They inspired me. Knowing that they are waiting at home for me is what keeps me here -- 75 light years away.
- Londo, "Babylon 5 - The War Prayer"
§ Men always want to be a womans first love - women like to be a mans last romance.
- Oscar Wilde
§ Give me a look, give me a face, that makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,-- Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. - Benjamin Johnson, "Epicaene; Or, the Silent Woman"
§ Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. But beautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the men who have to know about beautiful women. - Katherine Hepburn
§ A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one. - Mae West
§ The game women play is men. - Adam Smith
§ People who get married because they're in love make a ridiculous mistake. It makes much more sense to marry your best friend. You like your best friend more than anyone you're ever going to be in love with. You dont choose your best friend because they have a cute nose. - Fran Lebowitz
§ "One of the great injustices in fiction is that on the whole people with romantic yearnings have romantic faces. But in real life it's not always like that." - Julian Fellowes
§ Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. - William Concreve
§ "In revenge and in love. woman is more barbarous than man." - Nietzsche
§ "You men do it well, tormenting a girl. You must be born with it." - Janie, in "Allegheny Uprising"
§ Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. - Mary Schmich
§ "My old man used to say, before he left this world, never chase buses or women. You always get left behind." - Marlboro to Harley, "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man"
§ What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
- George Bernard Shaw
§ He is a fool who thinks by force or skill to turn the current of a woman's will.
- Samuel Tuke, "Adventures of Five Hours"
§ The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
- Jonathon Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects"
§ Man is the hunter; woman is his game. The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, we hunt them for the beauty of their skins; they love us for it, and we ride them down.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
§ Whether they yield or refuse, it delights women to have been asked.
- Ovid
§ The happiness of the married man depends on the woman he has not married.
- Oscar Wilde
§ "A relationship, I think is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark."
- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
§ "The first thing to learn about a deck of cards is how to handle them. They're a whole lot like women. Usually, when you pick one up, you wish you hadn't."
- Wolf Wylie to Duke Fergus (John Wayne) in "Flame of the Barbary Coast"
§ The behaviour of lovers is oscillating like the moon, and unpredictable as the weather...
- Schuster & Sigmund
§ She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you half fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
- JD Salinger
§ "Ladette Culture doesn't inspire a grown man to want to share his life with a girl who sleeps with as many men as she can pull and drinks until she's sick."
- Joan Collins
§ "What's up with you commitment-phobic men and women? How long will you guys and gals hide behind the word friend to avoid the two scariest words in the English language: girlfriend and boyfriend."
- Ms. Yolanda H
§ Whenever I see two women kissing, it reminds me of nothing so much as two prize-fighters shaking hands.
- HL Mencken
§ "As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately."
- Garrison Keillor, Salon Magazine
§ To Kiss : An attempt to absorb the essence of the other person.
- Casanova
§ "The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before."
- F Scott Fitzgerald
§ Throughout history, adultery has had few rivals as a cause of murder and human misery. The reason we tend to resemble our mates is that many of us are looking for someone who reminds us of our parent or sibling of the opposite sex, who in turn resembles us.
- Jared Diamond, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee"
§ "Ehm, look. Sorry, sorry. I just, ehm, well, this is a very stupid question and..., particularly in view of our recent shopping excursion, but I just wondered, by any chance, ehm, eh, I mean obviously not because I guess I've only slept with 9 people, but-but I-I just wondered... ehh. I really feel, ehh, in short, to recap it slightly in a clearer version, eh, the words of David Cassidy in fact, eh, while he was still with the Partridge family, eh, "I think I love you," and eh, I-I just wondered by any chance you wouldn't like to... Eh... Eh... No, no, no of course not... I'm an idiot, he's not... Excellent, excellent, fantastic, eh, I was gonna say lovely to see you, sorry to disturb... Better get on... " "That was very romantic." "Well, I thought it over a lot, you know, I wanted to get it just right. "
- Charles & Carrie, "Four Weddings & A Funeral "
§ You see an awful lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
- Erica Jong
§ Almost as complicated as a woman. Except it's on time. - Advertisement for IWC watches in "The Spectator"
§ A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
- Don Quinn
§ No man should marry until he had studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
- Balzac
§ Every woman needs one man in her life who is strong and responsible. Given this security, she can proceed to do what she really wants to do: fall in love with men who are weak and irresponsible.
- Richard J. Needham
§ When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man?
- Edith Evans
§ If a man is standing in the middle of a forest, and he says something, and there's no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
- Andrew Blendermann

I reached page 254 on my scrapbook …….have about 3000 odd pages more…….holler if you want more…..

Fear & Ends.....

2007-06-26T21:56:00.000Z

I am on my last packet of Indian cigarette’s…..

I have also just received my results for my master’s degree exams….

Funny that both should coincide with each other….not that they are necessarily related…..I had brought a 1000 sticks of cancer and emphysema with me and bitter ashes in my heart…..

After nearly nine months later, I am down to my last 8 sticks, thanks to khan and others……not that I mind….I roll my own cigarette’s now and have been doing so for quite some time…..In fact, rolling a cigarette is perhaps a fast ending art…..perhaps it is better so…..but its an art nonetheless….you have to patient and dexterous and delicate all at the same time…..its Zen for idiots…..but there you have it….

But coming back to my original topic at hand, I find myself today down to my last few shreds of Indian tobacco and perhaps even vestiges of my past life…..

If I may borrow a rather pathetic line – I had set out to be the monk who sold his Ferrari, but then I was no monk and I damn well didn’t have a Ferrari…and moreover the damn destination was not the mystical east but the material west…..You just cant get more corkscrewed than that……..

Clutching an aching heart and mind, I had come here for penitence and perhaps even salvation…..and I did find it here, of a sort….but it was peace and slumber unaided by alcohol……it sufficed….till now…..the alcohol was and still is far too expensive to form a habit....

Within the confines of enforced education and employment, somehow it so happened that the fires flaring in both mind and heart were finally doused into cold, unfeeling ashes……and within those parameters of sodden, unresponsive flesh, I clasped the weak straws of peace and immortality….for what is immortality but unending life…..bereft maybe of soul or even of hope or feeling…..but you’re alive and life drags and crawls on…….

My final cigarette’s remind me of burning days, of flaring nights……..like a wick in a earthenware lamp after the oil is consumed……black, cold and burnt out….perhaps even my cigarette butts in my soap dish ashtray….that’s my life now…..listless, detached, fearful

And I face finally my greatest enemy within myself…..fear.

After months of relentless search and analysis, I have finally drawn, quartered and divided myself into sections from the coagulated whole that I had brought to the light from the far horizons of mine own land into this damp, chilly and alien land….

Holmes had once said that no problem is unsolvable – all that remains is to unearth the whole and break it down into pieces so minute that the flaw finally reveals itself….

And diving into a 8 percent solution of morphine on my own terms, I drew up and dissected myself here, within these blogs, section by section till I have reached the end……and not too soon either….

These things have a wonderful sense of coincidence……..

Basketball players call it the “zone” – when the way into the basket is clear and nothing opposes and all lanes finally converge upon a single whole – an utter clarity of purpose and realization….and yet all to no use whatsoever…..

For what use is dunking an inflated rubber ball into a iron hoop enmeshed in a rope net or even to find realization of self and yet be unable to do anything but merely look and say, “there, I have finally found it”…….Maybe I lack a Watson to exclaim “elementary” to….or whatever…..and therein, as the bard puts in….lies the rub….

Pa says I ramble all over the world when I write and other’s choose not to notice or worse, like bro, have no idea what I am talking about…..

I fear fear…..fear of fear is perhaps such a cliché that even justifying it is senseless….

Attention seeking behaviour, rash and reckless endeavours, burning ambition, wild swings of euphoria and depression, a brutal will to dominate, fiercely defended beliefs and an unquenchable thirst to prove myself, over and over again…..

For such am I and it has taken me months of relentless searching to understand why I am such…..Why did I not care for so many and yet immersed myself in one…….and then again, walk the arid wastes of desolation…….to the point of self-obsession and beyond….

At the end of it all, the reasons are so pathetic and common that it does not even serve to consider them, much less laugh at the arduous efforts to reach them…….my mythical giants have turned out to be measly ferrets …… the beast on my back has turned out to nothing more than my past riding on my imagination and ego….not easily shaken off, but shaken off all the same…..

My cigarette’s are almost over…..and so is my course……as in my search for peace…..

I can see the end….on the horizon…..and I must face it with all that I have…..this I realise now….I have run long enough, far enough……withheld hard enough, long enough….I am not this cowardly creature that I have turned into….cowering beneath the lash of fortune like a cur, broken spirited or even disembodied……..For broken bones must knit and blood must sing……for the ashes must glow anew….the phoenix arises on its own will……and the will that I forsook is yet in me…..tempered in the chilly winds of shattered hopes, the steaming vapours of nameless agony and the icy waters of shame and undiluted rationale….

For all the shit that I have written above……all it means is this is that I have to believe again….in myself and move beyond the shell I have created……it was not enough that I broke through the cocoon of my past life but I need to break through the image that I had built for myself……

And I am finally ready to face the world…..this is not the end, but it is definitely the beginning of the end…..and so it begins…..

As the Scottish clans would scream, claymore in hand, the wild winds whistling above and beyond……

Crom a boo …..aye…… pluis dru…..

I will burn ….indeed….at the thickest…. (Gathering of enemies)

In modern day language perhaps…… Come on if you’re hard enough!!!

66, Fergus Drive…..

2007-06-22T15:07:00.000Z

The last few weeks have completely drained me.

Everytime I think I should write something down, something even more interesting happens…..
The earlier name of my latest piece was acquaintances, addictions, accomodations, accents, americans, etc…..

Wanted to write about my inability to give up smoking….despite nicotine gum

To write about the interesting conversation that I had with an American desi who gave me a completely new spin on the entire issue of emigration and reasons thereof…..

Thought of writing about a hilarious and binge eating weekend at Pima’s with rashes and the pretty cool time we had…..

And finally of shifting to my new place on Fergus Drive and the insane activities of my roomies…..

Not to mention the total Hindi film style repercussions of chatting with an online flicker for the past 6 months…….

So let me just paste whatever shit I had been shitting about initially and then take off from there….

"Acquaintances, Addictions, Accomodations, Accents, Americans, (in)Activity….."

Why is it that my brain is stimulated by nicotine?

Why is that when everything seems confusing and overwhelming, the slow spirals and fantastic shapes of smoke, soothe and calm me down?

Why does nicotine actually sort out my thought process to the extent of solution?

I had been staring at the screen for ages it seems, waiting for the words to come churning out, akin to regurgitation and yet nothing seems to move without that infernal puff.

For that matter, why do I have this need to put on paper, that which is inside me, a part of me……..its a painful process to even put together this damn thing. I mean, give me a plot and characters anytime….I can build damned castles in the air and lair’s beneath the ground…..

This is like giving birth….well at least mentally…….

Dad recently asked how I got my hand burnt…..told him to read my blog

Bro asked me why I was even considering marriage……read my blog

Friends ask whats happening…….Blog, blog, blog…..blah, blah, blah

Everything is on my blog…….so where am I?

Online, usually would reply palz……..

Now, who’s palz?

Interesting query…….

Met her online at this weird chat line forum I occasionally visit in my moments of insanity ……the more weird fact was that I have no idea how long ago I met her……probably about a year or two back, might even be more……and for most of the time between that and actual communication, I didn’t even realise that she was a girl……

It was quite a bit later that the essential facts became clearer as the chatting frequency grew higher….

Now, the how, the why, the whatever for……don’t ask me…..uh huh, I don’t deal in them …….. I was there primarily for conversation to while away my mad moments between dusk and dawn……yeah, I got bitten by a bat when I was in diapers……

As I tell her, I don’t trust myself in actual reality anymore……Or rather I don’t trust the world…..the virtual world is safer…….I had no wish to know her sex initially and still hold that I have no wish to meet her….And I do believe that the feelings are reciprocated

In a net world where the overwhelming majority of people are online for the sole purpose of creating actual reality out of virtuality, the number of people who exist for the sake of virtuality becomes a rather dominated minority……

Neurotic perhaps…….so is she……anyone else feels like joining the gang?

But am sure, as I have stated before…..this too shall pass…..

So, what do I write about?

That she’s devastatingly witty and yet with no pretensions to brilliance……naaah, the minute she reads this, I’ll never hear the end of it…..bloody female is a pseudo…or so she claims…..But then, it passes the time……

That she is too pretty to be trusted……been telling her that for ages…..but in a weird kind of bonding, I do trust her……funny that….but I still don’t….if you get me.

That she has seen far more sorrow and has handled herself far better than anyone I have known or could perhaps know……..and that I have yet to see such courage and fighting spirit……never had the guts to say such a thing in our regular chats……maybe there was no need to…..

That our conversations are meaningless and insubstantial as wisp’s of smoke that drift towards the ceiling from my cigarette……and yet, they mean the difference between existing and moving on from day to day…..

Have never clapped eyes on her, or even heard her voice…..probably wouldn’t be able to spot her in a crowd, probably wouldn’t be able to even say hi to, even if I came face to face with her…..

She is not a sister, not a friend, not a lover, not a girl, not a person, not anything beyond just a flickering name tag that shows up on my gtalk messenger board……a few pictures of a reed thin female like creature who’d resemble Gollum if it were not for the huge masses of cranial hair and a grin bigger than her entire being…..and that she’s someone I fell safe to talk to…..incessantly idiotic perhaps, unbelieveably irritatingly perhaps……but we talk…..

Enough already, that scrawny thing will be floating near the ceiling, weightless as she is……

P, to even define you would be a task I am not even ready for……..and will never be….and perhaps that’s exactly how things should be…….for now at least…..

(This was written a few weeks earlier to today…..and what is significant about today? – I’ll get to that later….)

After a rather harrowing month of exams, house-hunting, working at the NHS, I finally took a break and went off to see my cousins and aunt in Newcastle…..

My aunt is like a mom to me and feeds me like there’s no tomorrow……..Not a great definition, but I cant think of a better one presently….I love her….

Landed up there with rashes who had come up from U Man;

As Sean asked me; "……another cousin ? They’re really climbing out of the woodwork, aren’t they?"

Tony introduced himself to rashes very civilly I thought……he was like, I believe we share gene’s somehow and managed to shake her hand, before homer and max jumped on her…..homer and max are a Labrador and a Rottweiler respectively, who lay claim on tony’s gene’s as well…..both rather abundant in their proportions with a very specific agenda as to their existence – to lick anything and everything, be as smelly as possible and shed dog hair everywhere……in short be doggy nuisances and adorable……

On my trip to Newcastle, I happened to share seat space with an Americanised Indian….a transplanted south Indian gentleman who was travelling Europe with his wife and kids for their summer vacation.

Well…..that’s too much for one blog…..

(This was about as far as I got…..and then I shifted house!!!)

My new place is brilliant or so I think……not everybody shares that view!!! (pun fully intended as you’ll find out…..

Hey, I like a good view……it’s my way of recharging my batteries and of course of dreaming….

The only problem is that I have to huff and puff my way up nearly a mile to reach my apartment building and THEN drag my sorry & obviously out of shape arse up 4 flights of stairs to get to my door….nearly on the verge of collapse….

Shantanu my beloved idiot savant, who has followed me in my adventures from Queen Margaret Residences to Winton Drive to Fergus Drive derives a lot of amusement from the sight of the huffing & puffing whales of Murli & self….

Murli, the other net barbarian has also followed the damn train and taken up residence with us……

Which leaves us with the last occupant……khan the almighty who’s presently too engrossed in the pleasures of the flesh or at least the pleasures of sight-seeing flesh, to even live in the flat……!!!!

Its an interesting mixture of characters and between us, I do believe we quarter the entire bloody map of undivided India……East (self) West (Shantanu) South (Murli) and North (Khan)……

Anand recently asked me when we’re getting hold of a Chinese and opening up the South East Asia Representative Chapter of Glasgow……

Coming back to the flat…..we have a 20 mbs net connection and absolutely no dearth of movies, music or porn at a ridiculous price…….murli & shantanu hooked up the whole damn flat into a wireless network….particularly impressive in the fact that they did it without a wireless router!!!! And then they encrypted the whole damn thing so that no one else could hack into it…..

I managed to buy a telephone on eBay for 15 pounds, thinking it to be quite a bargain……when khan appeared at the flat and blasted me left right and centre for having wasted my money……and appeared the next day with a huge sack of items for the house…….the provenance of which the rest of us were a leery to even enquire about…..but we used them nonetheless……

Jay, another famous character and an engineer by profession, came to wish us happy housewarming, finished off a bottle of vodka and then disabled the entire smoke detection system so that we could all smoke in peace…..

So basically, I have a house full of items of rather dubious antecedents and characters of even more dubious abilities and character…….

Anand & Jassi are turning up this week and I am just waiting to see what those two come up with……

As I never get tired of saying…….

Glasgow just got invaded by the greatest horde of pirates, thieves, robbers, thugs, tinkers, con-men and lawyers……..Scotland had NO idea what it let itself in for when they opened the Univ. doors with the 3 year work permit FTS scheme…….

So anyway, my mornings are rather interesting presently……I usually wake up with rather long & fragrant tresses and locks of wavy black hair all over my face……which is a pleasant sensation I must tell you……I mean……its like you know…..

And then, I get rudely awakened by the amazing hippo like snores emanating from near the source level of the hair……..

Which is when I realise that its murli’s shoulder long hair on my face, since we share the big queen sized bed…….and which is exactly when I decide that waking up is a better alternative to ……well, it’s a better alternative to ANYTHING…..

The minute I wake up, I am subjected to the view of a pair of appallingly gangly legs on my path to the bathroom clad in a pair of desperate shorts on the verge of rebellion against their very threads holding them together in an unhappy coalition…..

I truly pity shantanu’s wife to be subject to such a sight every morning!!! But then I get reminded of another paid of desperate shorts which have been consigned to flames on the very first week of marriage (Rah & Panks are finally married)…….

And I switch the pity to shantanu…….those desperate shorts are definitive of the last bastion's of male freedom after all !!!! I have a pair myself.....

I also have some pity for murli’s wife……but all that in a later blog…..

My bathroom is quite decent but my kitchen is small……well, we all make adjustments…..and as of now, things seem going okay….and its kind of nice to peck away at my laptop, stretched out on my sofa and staring out of the bay windows and observing Ben Nevis in the distance being lit up intermittently by playful beams of late evening sunlight shafting through the clouds....

Ben Nevis is a famous Scottish mountain which can from my lounge windows......It’s like something out of a fable.....I almost expect to see dragons come rolling up over the horizon and the clans in their kilts and claymores standing on the hillside heather facing the setting sun………

Yeah, I have an over-active imagination, the benefits of which some of you will never know…..
But honestly now…..ever seen purple clouds, on a cerulean blue sky? And a green hill lit up in patches by golden sunlight? Shillong is pretty....but this is seriously what I pay so much for my new apartment.....The bloody view is just breath-taking....

But then as I said, the walk up to my apartment and the 4 flights of stairs also takes my breath away...to be honest

I don’t quite know who’ll read these rambling writings of mine……well, at least until I get down and put them all together in a readable format with a plot and proper characters…..

Speaking of plots……apparently, my life is never simple…….seems like the gods above consider me an interesting case study and most of the same gods are on a steady diet of candyfloss Bollywood shit…..especially the shitty 80’s Bollywood shit…..

I just talk to this flicker on the screen……and half the world and their cousins are making assumptions and presumptions…..not to mention the true "filmi" style upset brother (I kind of get why he’s upset) and the supportive sister-in-law (Her – I just don’t get!!!) and lets not get into the entire side cast of characters from either side…..which is basically time to make a gracious and courteous exit, methinks……

So, I guess……that’s that…….I really enjoyed talking to someone after a long time…..and though I am way too confused and scared to consider anything else than talking, I realise that I will miss her and a lot else besides…….

I am still wondering if I should add something more here……the words are easy, the truth is not……and to be even more honest……I am being indecisive for the first time in my life…..which is damn irritating, let me tell you….

But if the past 9 months here have taught me anything, it is that I must just go with the flow and refuse to force things, to bend them to my will……

The one thing I have to accept and have learnt at bitter cost is that the best that any of us can do is to be ourselves and do the best that we can…….and that this too shall pass………

Pretty shitty ideology it seems to me……I am accustomed to fighting, to overcoming odds…….however, I am going to try it………material success is hollow and the only thing that matters is peace within myself……and yet, my wilful mind asks how do I know peace if I will not strive for it, if I will not fight for it, if I let peace or even happiness slip between my open fingers……..not necessarily in a specific case, but in general, you know……..

And I do not know the reply……any ideas…..

Daydreams ….

2007-05-21T01:15:00.001Z

Nightmare or remembered past….

They say people dream when they are in the theta level of sleep, that they dream of the things that happened to them, of the things that they wish had happened and of course of the horrors that are feared, will happen to them…..

Daydreams are therefore safer, better and more appreciated……we exercise strict control and censorship……and as with most humans, control is basically happiness.

Which is also another reason we deride daydreams and censor it within the social preview; we say its pointless, useless and of course worthless.

Interesting lot, us humans, hey?

I used to daydream a lot as a kid……especially in algebra class……about almost everything else but algebra. My dad claims that half of his hair turned white due this great ability of mine and its consequences on my report cards. He also claims that the other half of his hair turned white due to the same reason, only caused by my younger sibling.

Must have been hard for him, an engineer to have sons with no aptitude for mathematics; the elder needed pen and paper to sum up one and one and the younger needed a calculator!!!

In any case, daydreaming was coherently and comprehensively thrashed out of me by Noel sir’s cane and later on, with the advent of studies without maths, by the advent of actual interest in what I was studying.

Life in college was too hectic to be wasted daydreaming, and after college, it was the work to make those daydreams real that consumed the time allotted to such trivial pursuits.

After a hiatus of decade and more from the fantasy isles of my childhood, I have returned back to it and received a rather warm welcome.

I today believe that my decision to study further was one of the best I have ever taken. And coming from a rather short list of good decisions, it carries much value. For nothing else, it has given me a chance to go back to the magical isle of daydreams.

My usual commute to my place work takes about 40 minutes by bus and the same back. Now, for most people, a bus ride that long is perhaps too long and a hassle, but I treasure that time as it allows me to sink beyond the ordinary and into the extra-ordinary.

Now, daydreams are not possible on buses in India, in fact, I would go further to say that once a person is out of school, daydreams are a thing of the past in India. The pace of life is far too frantic and the sheer crowds of people crowding into your personal space actually renders almost thought impossible, much less daydreams.

Buses and public transport in the West is usually one of the cheapest and most reliable methods of getting anywhere and the best thing about such transport is the singular fact that westerners prefer not to use it. They prefer the privacy and freedom of cars and personal vehicles. Not that I am complaining.

I love the sight of a huge bus seating a comfortable 73 being inhabited by a scant 7 and sometimes even 3. I can choose my seat, stretch out my legs and plug in my headphones and loose myself in my own world of possible situations and scenes…..

List of probable scenarios –
My return back home, without informing anyone. First to land up in Delhi and shock the shit out of my brother in Dehradun and then to arrive together back home and listen to Ma’s insane screeches of delight and surprise
Possible extenuation of the same in relation to relations…pun intended
A day in the future, when I am done with my loans and with a decent job waiting for me back home, packing up the debris of my foreign travels and adventures
My possible life, hopefully comfortable, back in India without hassles and with some decent company to share my load of foreign alcohol and stories
Possibly the day I meet someone chosen by my folks for marriage and scaring the shit out of her to convince her that I am the worst possible choice for marriage and settling down
Maybe finding someone who’ll actually find me interesting enough to spend some time with…….though I doubt that again…..however, it’s a daydream, so what the hell……
My own place, paid for and decorated ( I want a bedroom with three white walls and one wall done up in fire engine red with charcoal sketches of calvin and hobbes on the wall – very minimalist, with a simple double bed and a nice copper wet bar somewhere on the side – haven’t yet decided on the den)
My own garage where I can keep my old beauty, my lovely thunderbird and hopefully a harley-davidson someday and a decent sedan car

Even more hopefully, a son or daughter to teach how to ride the monsters. Doubt the presence of a mom in such a scenario to be honest since I know that even daydreams have limits.

Ah, the list goes on……

The fact still remains, that even if daydreams don’t come true, they are always there for you, to be called up at a moment’s notice, to re-invigorate you, to keep alive the flame of hope burning in your heart.

Another interesting thing is that daydreams are possible here because no one wants to intrude on your private space. A few blogs ago, I had sneered at such need of space, but now I see the benefits of having space.

Space to breathe in, to dream in, to be yourself in, to recharge yourself within to fight the cold and real world outside….

Everyone here jacks in their headphones and forgets the world around them

(except for the little and big old ladies who seem to have some kind of a massive freemason’s society of their own and chatter in their own incomprehensible lingo and seem to recognise each and every one of their own – I sometimes have the feeling that the whole world might be run by the dotty looking granny with the wispy white hair and massive purse who sits opposite me in the morning bus run and her ilk. She does mutter to herself quite a bit, which increases the suspicion – she might be murmuring instructions on a hidden speaker!!)

My usual, blatant paranoia aside, the whole exercise is indeed a form of yogic healing maybe, because I feel one benefits from having a wild imagination and happy thoughts which leave you feeling at least a wee bit happier and better equipped to handle cantankerous professor’s and demanding bosses and give you a reason to smile.

The transition from daydreams to power naps (love that term) is also a probable consequent which also helps in the long term, though it can cause long walks back home when you miss your stop and land up back in the bus depot, about 3 miles from your destination.

They say, difficulties are grist for a writer’s mill and extra exercise is always good for anyone, so I usually just grin and make my long way back home quite often and see much of the neighbourhood than I would usually see. In fact, its all grist for my ever churning mill, supplying the ever increasing demands for places, locations, situations and characters.

Like the crazy NED (Non Educated Delinquent) with the horses teeth who very kindly woke me up at the bus station and pointed me home and the rather smart and kind looking ladies in nice cars, who refuse to give a lift to an uplifted thumb in the pouring rain.

You do meet all sorts and types and they all give you a reason to say, yeah, this is why I came here and whistle through the rain……daydreaming of the day I hit the hot and dusty airport back home, with enough funds to actually implement a micro-hydel project or maybe three back in the village, stop the bloody floods everywhere and generate enough electricity to bring about sustenance……man, wouldn’t that be something to see, a way of generating self sustaining resources, in fact, creating employment as much as giving the people something to be assured about……we might even be a success to try for more projects…..who knows, we might set up a whole network of micro-hydel projects all over Lower Assam, hell, maybe, all of Assam…..

And the feet pound the wet pavement, the wheels turn and the daydreams go on…..

The travails of marriage….chauvinistically speaking!!!

2007-05-06T01:53:00.000Z

Marriage has been termed in so many ways and means that even defining it any further would be an exercise in futility. Allow me to quote that famous phrase which everyone has heard and so often observed in real life;

Marriage is a sweet, eat it and suffer, abstain and hunger…..

My thought is that it is perhaps better to be malnourished than suffer indigestion, if not food poisoning.

Forever have I been called cynical, pessimistic and such similar names for my vehement liking for reality and yet, hatred is often the flip side of love, they say and the grapes are assured to be sour if not cursed. If the accursed things were not sour, what would they be doing, hanging on the branch…….some smart bugger might have just fetched a ladder and done an end to temptation itself.

Marriage for an Indian man is truly a show of horror’s as I have had the opportunity to observe and envisage from all that I have deduced. Considering today’s modern liberalistic and open society, when you do get milk at the supermarket, it just doesn’t make sense to buy the whole bloody cow……..and lucky for us, the milk in the store also comes in different flavours nowadays!!!

They say marriage is the price men pay for sex and sex is the price women pay for marriage. I love aphorism’s like this…..they say such a lot in such brief words and brevity is the soul of wit. But then, the ability to quote also passes for wit today.

For an Indian man to be not married by his late twenties is unpatriotic at best and sacrilegious at worst. In a usual case scenario, by the time, the modern Indian man has hit his job and is finally rid of his studies and subsiding on doleful dole’s from rather tight fatherly purses and if the Gods are with him, he ends up with a hopefully decent packet to take home with.

After years of slogging it out, the poor fellow thinks life might finally be worth living…..or so he thinks…..

Aunts, sister’s, mother’s and in some extreme cases, even grandmother’s descend upon him en masse and demand sacrificial blood and fire. Bedevilled and harassed the poor guy finally accedes to their wishes and enters his second stage of serfdom.

A man has three stages of serfdom – the first under his mother, the second under his wife and the third under his daughter or daughter-in-law and any man who says this is not true, knows where he lies……pun fully intended.

Now, consider the opposite stage of females……..they study and try for jobs and usually husbands. In today’s world of being “politically correct” I refuse to stand corrected. True, there are career women, and the exceptions prove the rule. Any woman who says that she doesn’t wish to get married is already lying……pun again intended.

The hardest part of accepting marriage as a workable solution in today’s world is hard for me, an ex-lawyer, ex-lover, ex-human being perhaps as most of you would say.

A marriage is supposed to be a meeting of minds, divinely ordained and communal bliss in its highest state, which I doubt if ever existed. Our earliest epics show what sorry husbands we males were……I mean, take Ram for an example, dragging his poor wife through enough shit, not to mention the atrocities committed by him, in the name of chastity and reputation. As my granny used to say, to hell with traditions like these which enslave women.

A couple of generations down the line, I am hoping to say, to hell with ideas like marriage which enslave men….

Socially speaking, a wife is nothing but trouble……all the benefits of life are swapped for duties and responsibilities not to mention the insane amount of hassles the whole concept entails in the years ahead.

As I tell my family and friend’s when they talk of marriage to me – I am not going to give you a four day party and wind up paying the bill for the party for the next forty years.

A few years back, when I was still practicing law, I was approached by a client who had a sorry state of affairs. Apparently his mother and wife had a spat and the smart wives shut up her mother-in-law by telling her that if she continued fighting, she, the new wife, would go and file a police complaint for dowry harassment and cruelty and ensure that the rest of the family will be in jail.

Much as I admired the woman’s eminently workable strategy and timing, I wondered what the hell had happened to the entire concept of marriages in itself. As for the client, I told him that if war was joined, the element of surprise counts the most and if she could even say such a thing, the contemplation of such an avenue was evident and the action not very far off. In short, file for divorce and serve notice at the earliest. I must admit that I didn’t hear from the client again but I stand by my advice and statements.

Coming back to today’s world and issues, my friends here have long rambling discussions on this very topic.

How the hell do we choose a wife?

To fall in love is something we have all done and become bitter about and yet still like all male idiots want to be loved and to love back in return. Love marriages and their occurrence in our lives seems a rather distant possibility, however. Living so far away from our homes, in an alien land and working in jobs that pay well but don’t leave you much time for actual socializing. Again, in the event of socializing at all, finding someone who understands you and your background inasmuch as being able to share your life narrows down the field so much that its akin to trying to find a needle in a bloody field of haystacks………and no, you don’t have a magnet to do the job either.

FBCD’s (Foreign Born Confused Desi) are simply out of the question. It is bad enough to have to endure them elsewhere to actually have to live with one. As khan puts it, who wants a bloody coconut, brown on the outside and white inside.

So we come to the issue of arranged marriages. The funniest part of the whole situation is that even considering such a mode of action is nuts enough. I mean, for Christ’s sake, the whole thing stinks of such inequality and is almost an auction of yourself as much as of the opposite party and worse.

I mean, what other choices do we have? Matrimonial websites are just an extension of the same and online dating or chatting is far too risky, if not an absolute disaster.

No, arranged marriages are the best possible outcome. As in, if we are to choose someone and marry them, any problems and the rest of the family is like, YOU chose her, now YOU manage. If the family chooses, at least, somewhere, somehow, I can scream at them, YOU chose so now, YOU manage.

Not a very funny joke or even consideration, however it suffices.

Now the interesting part –

We live abroad and are bound by a very set number of holidays (25 paid leaves to be exact) and within that span of time, it’s next to impossible to envisage a possible manner of knowing someone proposed by our folks.

A very usual scenario is that your folks find a few “possibles” who you hope to meet when you’re on holiday and depending on the meeting or (if you’re lucky) meetings, you make a decision which can change your life.

One meeting or even two or three…….what the bloody FUCK???!!!!

It takes years to even get to know that someone is not the right person for you or better still that you’re not the right person for someone.

So, one or two meetings…….in a span of time that’s hardly enough to see your parents and your friends and family and maybe shake off jet lag and they expect you to know and assess a life-partner???

I mean, even logistically speaking, it’s a nightmare of a proposition, forget about the un-reality of the whole scene.

Again, assuming that even if it was possible, how does one actually know who’s sitting across the table and how they might fit into your life?

You meet someone who’s one of the “possible” person’s and both people are on their best behaviour with much care for appearance as much as behaviour. You meet them once, twice, a few times maybe and neither knows who the actual person really is. All they get to know is perhaps each other’s views and at best, like’s and opinions.

Is that enough to actually make such an important decision which relates to the rest of your life?

Worse, the whole consideration is also based on the proposition that neither has much time to even assess previous baggage that each of us in today’s world manages to accumulate and if it even matches or goes with each other’s.

So, okay, you make a blind choice or as is usual with most males, choose the one who is easiest on the eyes and so on and so forth and things start to get really sticky from then on.

Life is not easy back at home and it’s worse here. I mean, you’re isolated and completely alone usually. You have no family support networks which we took for granted back home and it’s a hard enough life her to manage on the best of terms. You have to do everything yourself and everyone you know here is barely managing their lives to bother with yours.

Into this mad and fast paced life, you’re expected to bring back a bride who’ll take all this into her stride. Not bloody likely, mate.

Then again, consider that the person, who appears shaved, relaxed and with a well filled wallet of conversion rich currency and the person who gets home frazzled and too tired to even try to be charming and chilled out. Consider that the sharp, pressed jeans of the second date at a snazzy restaurant might change for a tattered and torn pair of shorts with curry stains and no desire to be or to do anything on the hard earned weekend. Consider that for most bachelor’s the level’s of neatness or even cleanliness are on bare subsistence level’s with the broom and washing sink playing a bad second lead to a six pack of beer’s and an action movie, preferably Hindi

The bloody female will be home in less than 2 months and file a police complaint for harassment and agony……and probably serve notice of divorce proceedings.

And then comes the final wringer….the laws are biased or even tilted towards women, if you will. It is assumed that the victim is always the poor woman who’s suffered and who has been victimized and what of it that she is educated and qualified and able to work. Cough up the alimony, the maintenance, you rich NRI, and in dollar’s and pounds, not to mention that she keeps all the fancy and expensive stuff that your parents draped her with during the marriage. Yeah, that’s the final icing on the cake, brother, with all the marzipan roses and yellow cream piping.

So, okay, I am assuming a worst case scenario, but what’s the best case scenario anyway?

Our mother’s and aunt’s and even grandmothers were of a different age and had a completely different take on life. Divorce was beyond the pale of contemplation and you made do with whatever was dished out to you. It doesn’t mean that I am saying that our father’s or uncle’s or grandfather’s were absolute devil’s and our maternal folk to be saint’s. But there was a lot of give and take and compromises were struck.

Being married within a society they grew up in meant and stood for something. That something has disappeared today. In today’s world, there are too many option’s and that’s why we all lose our way so easily.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that divorce is a bad thing. In fact, I have seen much within my own family and of friends to think that it’s a definite alternative to the situations people find themselves in. However, I believe that it should be the last resort and not the first choice at the first instance of misunderstanding.

Yeah, I know, that marriages are still happening and there are couples who are making it work and yeah, I have seen how all they are coping and what else.

Some of them make me cringe with embarrassment and shame, some of them make me wish I didn’t know the participants to such a pact or form of social contract. Some, very few, give me hope……..a wee flicker of hope, maybe……..

Yeah, I am being pessimistic, cynical, probably immature, idiotic and wildly neurotic if not outright psychotic.

But then possible starvation is still infinitely preferable to food poisoning and I do like the no fat strawberry flavoured milk I get at Sommerfield’s.

Life goes on.....

2007-04-29T04:35:00.000Z

Birth, childhood, adolescence/teenage, adulthood and so on, all the way to death, life in all its relentless impetus moves ahead, a forward movement that defies all stops and halts in the journey of inhaling and exhaling and we puny humans, believing ourselves to be the master and commanders of our own destinies are caught up in the slipstream of this massive momentum like wisps of fluff….

Life moves despite all that we do to stop its movement, all our prayers, pleadings, heartache’s and all the joys, pleasure, happiness, ecstasy cannot stop this progress.

Well, is it said, that this too shall pass……

This ….. this glorious day with the sun shining and the wind whistling in the eaves of 26 Winton Drive, the warm smell of fresh tea brewed by Jassi, positively dripping with sugar and milk, the funny aroma’s of Jaja’s Chinese cooking, the clean and much rubbed table top, khan attempting industriously to make sense of my rambling notes on an even more rambling subject, Anand too tired to actually study anymore, lounging around and yelling at the rest of us to cut up and dice the bloody cauliflower that he got for a pence at the Sommerfield sale to make aloo-matar-gobi, me with my eternal companion, my beloved D-boy lappy recording all this……this too shall pass…..

So many days, so many seasons…..so much has passed ….. and yet we all go on…..

I went through five years of lawschool and five more years of practice and it all went by in the blink of an eye…….and not a memory that I regret or cherish……

Or maybe, a few too many of both…..

Lived a hundred lifetimes, or so it feels…..and yet each day a new adventure, a new day arisen freshly churned, freshly made, unrepentant and unforgiving….

I had thought I wouldn’t have the strength to smile again, to venture forth again……but the human soul, the relentless heart will not give up, will not admit defeat even when the bitter taste of ashes is still redolent in my mouth…..

And so I live, and I dance and I laugh and I fight and woo and court……

Life goes on……

I once thought I would be enslaved by a set of warm honey coloured eyes for the rest of my life and here I am…..done with penitence, done with repentance…..finding life once again, in a pair of blue cerulean sea foam eyes that look at me with askance for my insane devilry and forgive me at times with a twitch and a pretty blink……a pair of eyes that don’t yet haunt my dreams, but lighten my heart when I see them, a pair of eyes, vulnerable and yet defiant at the world…..ah, pretty eyes, I still fall for you….

They say that this too shall pass……and I have learnt to live in the moment…..to make nimble my feet and my tongue and tie hard my errant heart with the steel chains of remembrances and memory…….to feel the sulky wintry sun and the brisk clamorous wind both together and wish for neither while preparing for either…..

Life goes on…..with promises and offer’s of money, fame and mayhap’s even love and caresses……of whispers of goodnight kisses that still feel soft and inviting and the softer smells of freshly shampooed hair and skin smelling of fragrances and musky undertones….especially when it stays on your skin the next day......

For hands held today are worth a hundred caresses promised for the future and call me a chauvinist for all you are worth, but I have what it takes to be a man and look for a woman, not another man to satisfy my needs, or even for empty words and betrayals for the future…..

I was asked what’s aim, my objective and I found my answer…….maybe a bike, maybe a dog, maybe an open road, maybe someone to ride that road with me……

The answers are simple, as long as you understand the questions asked of you……

And the questions are simple as well, we just make them complex and overly important…

Doesn’t matter where you’ll be employed next, doesn’t matter if tomorrow exists, doesn’t matter what the world thinks of you, doesn’t matter what you think of yourself….

All that matters is what you KNOW of yourself and what you can MAKE of it….

There is no past, and the future can take care of itself…..the present is what that matters….

And if the present contains “kheer” made by boys and fit enough to make the girls salivate…..well, what can I say…..we just rendered another possible weapon useless…..and trust me, 3 liters of milk, 300 grams of rice, assorted nuts, cardamoms, and raisins with ample amounts of sugar and cooked with enough patience, enough beers and enough stirring on a slow flame are enough to render most issues useless and get the bloody female juices flowing….

The way to a modern woman's heart is indeed through judicious use of sugar ...... everywhere !!!

As my aunt says, we’re all fit for marriage or rather unbelievably unfit for marriage, considering our skills within the homes and without…..as much as the antics we all get upto.....

Life does go on……..What we make of this all is always upto us…..

PS

The name’s Jenny….. :D

And this too shall pass.....

Lack of belief...

2007-04-16T05:50:00.000Z

We were watching a movie, a Hindi one of course and a sudden and vehement reaction caught my notice…..

That’s the introduction, I cannot think of a better one presently…

Take a flat of five Indian boys (boys are always boys and rarely men, especially to writers hating creeping age) in a foreign land and you’re bound to find chicken cooking and beer or a Hindi “Phillum” on the menu on any given weekend. Its cheap, it’s effective and universally acceptable at any given time, like it or not. Smokes are an optional extra, though usually and invariably present only with the smoke detector disabled in the local area.

Take my situation for example – with a mixed bag of engineer’s, software geeks, MBA’s, economists and lawyers, the group is about as good as it gets. We’re ready for almost any and every contingency as can be envisaged and pretty much sick of “phoren” land with all its amenities and facilities, not to mention assignments and exam preps.

The chicken was being cooked in Dal, my innovation on the usual curries concocted by us. I mean, half the buggers were yelling for chicken and the other half for plain rice and dal, so economically speaking, I optimalized the given factors and resources available. Trust me, it works beautifully.

The beer and vodka stocks had been raided the night before, the facts of which I’ll get to later on, so it was “phillum” night for all of us.

Shantanu, my mild mannered Maratha who’s an absolute berserker hacker in his dual life had just ripped the latest “phillum” from the net with active collusion of a similar mercenary, the even milder raghu (better known and absolutely feared online as rags) who lives south and a window below me, literally and metaphysically

Anand, the management guru was smoking his beloved B&H’s and framed against his more beloved window ledge and Khan the ferocious afghan was poised near the bloody lappy screen as if ready to just leap into the lush flowing homeland shown on the movie. Khan is homesick and the rest of us are just sick of it all.

I am stuck in front of the stove, my usual spot and peering over the pots as much as following the predictable plot unfolding on screen.

The movie was “Salaam London”, the latest release from the movie factories of Mumbai and depicts the eternal questions of love, as our hero so eloquently states to his leading lady.

Barely as the hero utters the fateful words, gazing deep into the heroine’s eyes with bass and viola solo’s in the background getting into fourth gear, and there’s a sudden eruption of snorts and expletives….

As I grin in collaboration, I wonder at the state of the guys and maybe most guys of our ages when confronted with the issue of love, its proclamation thereof and the derogation as well.

A while later, Jassi turns up sleepy eyed from the catnap’s on which we are all subsisting on these days and I ask him his opinion on love. He in turn shows me all his teeth and asks if that is answer enough.

Suddenly my world is full of men who deride the very idea of love and its associated situations. Jokes, anecdotes and stories abound of others who were in love or are and is usually followed by a heartfelt expletive which is shared with equal emphasis all around present company and usually the punch line is about how stupid they were.

In consideration of this and much more, I am forced to ask myself the question; have we become fanatically cynical and pessimistic about love and has this occurred while we were sleeping?

It seems that Love with the capital L, is for the idiots, it doesn’t exist……or does it?

If you get it good, if you don’t, better says Jassi between sips of no sugar juice. Is he being smart or merely realistic?

The ages in the group range from early to late twenties, a generation by itself, unmarried except for Anand and is as diverse as you might wish for, location wise, experience wise and even career or interest wise. So, considering that this is a good cross-section source of data, I base my analysis on their views;

Has love or the feeling in itself that a man can feel for a woman, become redundant?

Love for parents is necessary as all agree and live up to. The frequency of calls and the huge bills run up by all of us, in that regard give hard testimony to the same. Siblings, friends and family more or less fall in the same category with classifications and is acceptable.

What of that between the sexes?

We have all experienced the same in one way or the other and my surprise is the fact that all are embittered by its contact. Even me

Do I snort when I hear another lovesick swain asking for advice? I do.

Do I give him advice on how to play the game? I do.

Do I think him an idiot when he leaves me? I do.

Am I the idiot or him?

Can we exist without love?

Is it wrong to deride the very concept of love just because it’s a case of sour grapes, embittered memories or even fear of consequences?

Do we even qualify to understand love?

Our grandparents and their parents had it easier perhaps. They just went ahead and made babies and made their way into each other’s life as unobtrusively as possible. Perhaps in the years between the production of babies and the eventual end of the lives, they achieved a form of companionship which could be the closest possible definition of love.

Many of us never get the flame burn of actually seeing someone explode into their vision and complete obsession in that self, so elaborately portrayed by the Hindi “phillum” industry. Some of us do and come away from the experience much shaken and none the wiser as to what the hell just happened to them.

Anand is married and got married at an early age. He even has a son and misses him. I miss my bike, he misses his son – would that signify as love?

For me at least, if not many others, love is the spark that occurs between a man and a woman that causes them to believe in each other to the exclusion of all else. That spark may not last much more than a heartbeat, may last for a lifetime. However, the fact remains that it was love……or maybe it was just lust. After all the highest form of lust is love as quoted my eternally cynical buddy, Rahul, who recently got married and yes, it was a love marriage and the bastard is still as cynical as he always was. He wants to go back home for “legitimate sex” as he calls it, but I think he is in love and unwilling to accept the fact.

Love has many forms and shapes and is whatever you want to make of it. The poets say it better perhaps, but I still prefer the bollywood lyricists anyway. And in someway or the other, we all want it. Black or while, brown or green, we all seek the comfort of its shade in the burning sun of the lives we lead.

If we all want it so much, why are we ashamed to admit to it?

I love to watch romantic comedies in private, as do a lot of guys, perhaps most of us. I always root for the underdog which is exactly what the producers and directors want.

It’s stupid, its predictable, its safe and its what we all want. A happy ending, kisses et al and yet it somehow makes sense……well at least to me, when I want to unwind.

A good hug and kisses would also do the same trick, but isn’t available on my DVD store’s shelves.

Two days ago, the gang went to a Friday night party and I didn’t as I wanted to catch up on my preps. About 11 pm, the whole drunk horde came back with an inebriated female in tow. The gang were followed by two ASR’s absolutely bewildered as to what to do and finding me, the usual ringleader and patron saint of all the drunks of Winton Drive, dumped the collective responsibility on me. After levering out the biggest lummox of them all, I set about feeding and kicking the rest of them into bed, but the bloody female was another problem in itself.

Khan switched on the music on my over-worked lappy and started dancing with the lady and it was more of a vertical demonstration of his horizontal intentions than anything else. The rest of the gang refused to budge while getting a free show, so eventually realizing that it was a hopeless cause and my studies being done anyway, I unlimbered my hidden stocks of vodka and beer to the gang’s delight and joined in.

To make a long story short, the lady was soon in my t-shirt and track lowers and tucked up in my bed and I was using my jacket as an improvised pillow. The morning after was pleasant enough (especially as an ego booster and I was probably insufferable to my roomies and chat buddies alike) but the whole scene merely served to explain to myself how hungry I was for some “touch-therapy” as an old pal in law-school defined it.

The ensuing morning post mortem after the lady was dispatched to her own rooms was enthralling to say the least and especially with Jassi and Khan attempting to open up the Kargil hostilities with Jayant chewing on bread, perched on the counter and playing the male version of Barkha Dutt.

The whole scene was hilarious to me and like all funny situations had its roots in bitter truth which is made more palatable by humour.

Which in essence brings us back to my original question; who are we fooling?

Ourselves…..

We deride the very concept of love because we wish we had it in our lives and since we don’t, we pretend that its stupid and idiotic. The love of a woman makes a man sometimes try to be something more than he is, aspire to greatness even…..even unto the issue of personal hygiene and tidying up of rooms and shaving.

I do admit that I have a morbid belief in love and an endless fascination for the madness that it engenders and I do think that people haven’t stopped believing in love nor have they stopped wanting to be in love. They just don’t believe in a happy ending. They still believe in love and falling in love, but now they know that romances almost never end as well as they begin….and hence they are scared of accepting the sheer fact of love actually existing.

And more than nuclear holocaust, more than global warming or natural disasters, this is what will kill us…..as a generation, as much as age, cancer, cholesterol and liver cirrhosis.

The past twenty centuries have led us to an endless cycle that each generation goes through, with the same questions and the same hopes and shattered dreams and cynical attitudes and know it all belief’s.

The truth is that we all want a part of it and till we don’t get it, we are all in a position of flux and too egoistic to admit that we need anything or even that we hope for the same.

I too want to be in love, to be loved and caressed and hugged and kissed……

I too want to believe…….but I think I have forgotten how…..

And I’ll probably still laugh with derision and snort the next time I watch another Hindi Phillum with the guys……..but I wish I could watch it with someone’s hand holding mine and keep silent……

Couldja, Wouldja, Shouldja....

2007-04-07T06:21:00.000Z

What is a blog?

Is it a story, a series of anecdotes perhaps? A diary even….?

Is it just a means to an end or an end to a means….

I am a writer and this is not my profession or my vocation. What I am beyond these words, these lines, is not anyone’s concern and yet within these lines, everyone is my concern...

A writer writes whatever he writes based on his experiences, on what he feels, on what he see’s and observes….

In the past seven months, I have written much about my own self and yet there’s so much else I want to write about….so many stories that it seems that I have walked onto the set of a Tolstoy novel…..and yet, I have not been able to even encompass the variety and diversity of the people I have seen, experienced and observed and befriended…..

The people of my life are perhaps some of the most interesting characters I ever hoped to find….or even write about….

I only wish I found the plotline or even a reference point where to start…..

Should I begin with the Pakistani’s and the Bangladeshi’s……two sets of people who emerged from opposite ends of the Indian Sub-continent with such diversity between them that its hard to envisage that they share the same ancestry or even that they are perhaps related…..But perhaps its just that the representatives that I observe are such…..

Would I be able to explain the meaning of waking up in a lumpy spring mattress so unlike my old coir one back home or even the much abused cotton waste filled roll that I used back in college for 5 years and then dumped on the Salvation army…and wonder what the hell am I doing on it…..

Could I write about the “foreigner’s” to whom we are the actual foreigner’s…and the look’s in their eyes which we probably mirror back home….

Should I write about the bleak mornings when I stand by my windowsill and smoke hand-rolled cigarette’s and drink coffee while watching the flashy cars below on the street and think of the dusty and hot mornings back home…..

Could I write about our own cousin’s who have lived here so long that they are even more foreign to us than the natives and even more puzzling…..and yet are a part of me as much as my own fingers which type out these words….

Should I consider mine own brethren and the changes that being in a foreign land has wrought upon them…..and perhaps me?

Would I consider explaining about the utter senselessness of the whole system of which I am a student...and yet believe that there is no other alternative to…..

Could I write about my chat pals, three females, who have never seen me and who probably, chat with me just because my insane conversations intrigue them…and thankfully never read my blogs….

Couldya, Wouldya, Shouldya….

I would like to write something that when another person reads it, they’d be able to identify themselves with at least the protagonist, if not one of the main characters….and yet I don’t know how to even create a character which is a composite of the whole…..

I wish I could start with my journey here and work my way back in retrospective, with flashbacks and linkages….kinda smart and a very much over-used idea, I know….but still interesting….

I thought I should write a blog that can define me as much as it would define my own terrain….and perhaps be understood in a context that doesn’t require merely words or status or even visibility to be thus…..and work out a book that would give me enough space to be read in…..and to breathe in….

But what would be reference point? Would it just be another college story, just another frothy, funny piece about the experiences of just another stupid arse who has enough sense to employ some smart gag-lines and have a coherent enough plot for the lowest common denominator of readers to understand and empathise with….

I wish I could write something that would cause a reader to read me, to breathe the slightly smoky, slightly musty air that I am breathing in…..to become a part of me and go on a trip with me….not far perhaps, but far enough that when the final page is turned, there’s a sigh and a small silence for the reader to collect his/her thoughts and breathe deeply enough…

I am not asking for greatness and nor am I asking for fame……perhaps just a bit maybe…that’s not wrong is it?

I want to make a change, to cause a diversion, to make my mark in these ever-shifting sands of time and space…..not by much, but enough to be accepted and to become part of the whole….

I want ….oh, I want….just to be me and appreciated perhaps….

But then, so does everybody else….in their own ways and manner’s…..

Can I be able to link together the various parts of these disjointed pieces and jig-jaws of concentrated insanity onto paper and into a cohesive and sane whole?

As I type here in my warm kitchen ( I have the burners on my cooking range on and its safer to smoke here as the smoke-alarm is not a smoke sensor but merely a heat sensor) and see the sickly yellow walls, the faded red nailed down carpet and the over-flowing trash bins, lined with the ubiquitous black plastic bin liners and the kitchen table over-flowing with the debris of my papers, books, cigarette papers, tobacco pouch, pens, filter tips, markers, cell phones and files folders of notes, I wonder what to make of it all….

Its 5.30 am as my watch tells me and it will soon be just another chilly April morning here in Glasgow, a Saturday morning in just another city.

Does a story start here or is it just another blog?

2007-03-28T04:39:00.000Z

Me!!!

The lull between the waves….

2007-03-28T04:29:00.000Z

Someone recently asked me why I write this blog?

I thought the answer was obvious…..or was it?

The lady asked me to stop being weak, to cover my wounds and to show nothing but strength. Quite an Amazon, one would presume and the advice sensible…..or was it?

She asked me why my need for adulation, why my need for posturing? Why the need to show the world my pain? Don’t others have pain as well? Do all of them write blogs and ask the world to pity them? Or so she asked…….

Interesting thought process…..

Is it wrong to write a blog? To express and not to repress? To define yourself and take recourse in the abstract, almost clinical detachment of setting out in words EXACTLY what you’re going through?

Am I asking for sympathy or worse pity by writing of my own belief’s and thoughts?

The claws of the beast on my back writhed every time I took laptop to hand and set out in no uncertain terms as to my own condition and the grooves of my own defensive shields ran ice cold blood down my spine as I realize anew each that this could be read by one and all…..and be castigated and humiliated as I was by a reader or worse by all………

Was that courage or merely an exorcism of fear?

Is there any substantial difference between the two?

The lady in question asked me if I suffered from the hero complex – to perform hard tasks and expect applause and celebrations….

I did have a handy snappy retort to that, at least….So I replied, heroes only come in three kinds; dead, damaged or dubious….and I do believe I am the third kind…..

The answer didn’t really have the zing in it anyway…..

Much as I wished I couldn’t really explain to her what it meant for me to even consider laying myself bare thus and yet the trusty words that are so quick to defend, to justify, to retaliate, seem inadequate to explain the long years of my comparably short life that has brought me to this phase of my life and the even longer shadows that crowd my thoughts.

Could I or even would I be capable to explain the ruthless, brutal, dishonest and hard life I have left behind me?

Could I or even would I, be capable to ever explain to anyone what it means to be hollow in victory and an empty husk, to flee in the night like a thief and worse, like a coward.

Why did I not stand and fight, she asks, and well she might…..

All my life has been negative space, always waiting for someone, or something or some kind of real feeling to fill me up and give me a reason. I thought I found a reason once and yet it was not to be….

The lady also has issues with me talking about my past life here……quite a nosy character perhaps……but then I did lay it out for everyone to nose around in……

Why does my ex still mail me or even want to be friends with me? I am a past, preferably forgotten, conveniently disposed of, in the easiest possible way and to live in the present and future with nothing but the best to look forward to, with the worst already behind her. Right?

Another old friend, also female, says she is bored and needs to feel comforted and secure in the fact of the existing past as well as the present…..

A bit confusing I found it, to be honest…….but then I do seem to have a few too many female advisors, to be honest, so, that kind of comes with the territory…….

What do I think?

It’s hard enough to write 9 essays of 5000 words apiece within a space of 10 days, not to mention proof reading and restructuring another 45 essays within the very same 10 days…….Not to mention the fucking insane knight of the realm, jack-booted ass I got stuck with as a supervisor (bloody bugger uses engraved notepaper to invite dissertation students to high tea, in friggin’ black tie!!!)

Someone teach me how to say no to people……especially friends in need…..

As I think about the whole issue, I try to look at it from the perspective of honour…..

Most people confuse honour with virtue. Virtue is concerned with what we do and honour is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honourable way – the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason- and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all.

In its essence, honour is the art of being honourable and it’s a simple art to practice……

Don’t do anything that makes you unable to look at yourself in the mirror every morning……

Not that I like looking at myself, anyway, but at least I can meet my own eyes and regard my inner self……

Am I at peace….with myself? I ask myself that question every morning as I brush my teeth

A hard question to ask a soul wrung over from a lifetime of revulsion, hatred, ambition, guile, bad decisions, good experiences and stupid mistakes…..

They say, fate always gives you two choices, the one that you should take and the one that you do.

I did what I did and I do not regret the choice

I am empty inside……unfeeling, cold and clinically detached……neither shame nor exultation……

If I were to answer myself, perhaps I would say that I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation....

I would probably be called insane for thinking thus, but then sanity is a madness put to good use and in today’s age and disillusionment, men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad amounts to another form of madness…..and yeah, everyone in the whole world was a crazy Indian blogger in at least one past life!!!

The flesh surrenders itself,
Eternity takes back its own.
Our bodies stirred these waters but briefly,
Danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self,
Dealt with a few strange ideas, and then submitted itself to the instruments of Time.
What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not….yet, I occurred.

As the Bard had stated - Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

India Extended…

2007-03-12T15:35:00.000Z

Is a nation defined by its boundaries or by its language and cultures?

Back home, we would greet strangers with the commonest possible question;

“Where are you from?”

Now, WHY such a question is asked, we all know, in our varying levels of sociological profiling awareness.

The best answer I have ever received back home, in India, was “From India, same as you….”

The best answer I have received here, in Glasgow, was “Does it matter? I speak your language….”

The boundaries of India once stretched from the upper reaches of the Afghan mountains to the vast saltine marshes of the Hooghly delta.

We might have not spoken the same language then….We even might not have been aware of the extent of our domain.

After Partition, we suddenly did become aware …. Painfully aware….

And after years of being subject to varying influences of regionalism, communalism, casteism et al, without a hint of secularism anywhere, we finally landed on the far shores of a country, not our own, bereft of belief, cynical and hardened by years of defining ourselves and teaching ourselves to be concerned of none else but what concerns us.

And suddenly found cousins and relations…..of language, of culture, of belief, of understanding….across the border and yet in a different country altogether….

We found kindred souls with the same love of Hindi movies and cricket….of the need for heartfelt abuses peppering a conversation shared over gallons of sweet milky tea and cheap cigarettes….of the sudden ease of a person whom you don’t know and yet understand…..

All on the basis of a common language & culture….

Fine, we call it Hindi and they call it Urdu…

Fine, they add salt to their tea and call it kava and we add sugar and call it chai…

Fine, we have the prettier actresses and they have better singers….

Fine, we cant decide who’s fielding a worse team presently….

The differences are less than we had assumed and the similarities more than we could have imagined!!!!

We’ve all here suddenly found pals who we might have grown up with, it seems and allies against the alien culture we find ourselves in.

Suddenly our boundaries are extended…..

One of my old pals who is presently in Melbourne, Australia was just trying to tell me how normal and similar Pakistani’s are to us……I first heard the same a long time when another one of my friends went to Pakistan on a Peace Promotion trip a long time back.

Not that I had specific animosity or such, but Kargil was quite recent and its hard to understand much from what the governments and media spouts.

When cable TV would show the PTV channels, we’d get very upset about how India was being subverted and shown in a bad light or whatever….Never considered how the Pakistani’s might perceive NDTV and Barkha Dutt….

One of the most hilarious scenes I observed recently was when two friends & idiotic buffoons from India and Pakistan started horsing around pretending to be journo’s and media guys from their respective countries……the whole comedy merely underlined the issues of trust and comfort of the ACTUAL people on the ground, rather than the governances or systems…..

My old Chinese roomie truly believes that the Dalai Lama is a threat to China and is building a core terrorist camp in Dharamshala……My American friends think that Bush is an ignorant savage and are even more vociferous in condemning him than ourselves……The Scots and English and the Italians and the Iranians and the Russians and the where-ever-you’re-from’s ……they are all not what we perceive them to be…..

True, there are some similarities…..the Africans or those of African descent DO talk like rastafarians….the English CANNOT smile or laugh with their mouths open……the Scots WILL deep fry a chocolate mars bar……the Iranians ARE sexy and promiscuous….the Chinese ARE incomprehensible when they try to speak English…..and so on and so forth…..

But these are generalizations…..Chanel talks like a BBC newscaster (though she does do wicked imitations of a lot of different people)…..Kat laughs like a banshee and is really cute when she does show her wisdom teeth…..Gillie is still very fat conscious….El Naz does have pimples on her face now…….and Chu-se-kai does manage to be understood in English ……

And we Indians ???

We carry on in these far shores, a part of India in our souls……

We make a decent hospital waiting room appear like a Bihar station when one of us is sick….

We do try and bargain even in discount sales……

We do wear thermal clothes ready for North Pole even on a summer’s day….

We do try to bhangra, even when the DJ is playing ballroom music….

But….

We still hear the familiar strains in the accented English….and sometimes unaccented ones as well…

We still understand problems that can ensue out of seemingly simple questions and issues…

We still absorb the old ways and find askance at changing them….

We still are a singular people….divided by boundaries….marked before we were born

We still are the same people….undivided when pressed upon….wittingly or unwittingly

We still are ….. and continuing to be…..India extended….

Perfect letter to scare off wannabe wives……

2007-03-01T04:46:00.000Z

Dear XYZ,

I wish I could start this letter on more favourable terms however, the fact remains that since both are pretty well scarred, its always better to start with some diffidence...that means, with some distance, silly...don’t reach for the dictionary just right now!!!

Okay, lets have a look at the scenario....

You:

1. Been dumped
2. Getting old
3. Bored out of your wits though not lonely
4. Require companionship as most old pals are too busy with THEIR own lives
5. Require security and yet interesting lifestyle, hopefully with some excitement and fun thrown in…probably some love wouldn’t hurt…and by love, I mean, an idiot who thinks all that you do is sooooo cute and okay-dokie…and for preference, who earns well enough to offer decent security and spending cash…
6. Have to make a decision fast within this year hopefully….one way or the other…
7. No real contenders for your hand in marriage, to be honest, I am more like the runners-up trophy, something if not nothing, half a loaf of bread better than nothing etc etc

Me:

1. Been dumped
2. Getting old
3. Lonely beyond belief though not bored
4. Require companionship as most old pals are too busy with THEIR own lives
5. Require someone who understands my wild ways and need for experimentation as well my abilities….someone who gets my jokes and stops me from going comatose on alcohol if I don’t have enough work to keep me busy….someone who could possibly read my writings and criticise/appreciate them, listen to my wild ramblings and lead me back to saner alternatives…..In short, I require someone who’ll love me despite my failings and accept and understand my efforts to win the world for them.
6. Have no time limit on my decisions….yet, there is a limit on my decisions….I don’t waste time or emotion or at least try not to
7. Have enough participants, though not one yet who is reaching me….maybe because I have the doors shut tight….whatever…..the fact is, despite my obesity (That means being overweight!!) and my wild ways, I am still a decent “catch” for most idiotic females and their bloody families…..something which really depresses me as I don’t fancy being “auctioned” off or being traded like a bloody horse/donkey….I mean, get a grip ladies/families….what’s marriage for you…beauty/youth in exchange for ugly/security….its not a bloody trade off!!!

I don’t mean to be rude and all that jazz, but the truth is a bit convoluted…

You said, you could read anything through… so fine, wade through this and think about it

To start with, my parents did NOT have a decent marriage….fought like cats & dogs and I don’t want a marriage where I have to fight my wife over silly issues instead of resolving them normally…I took a lot of shit from both over different issues and hence my initial supposition of marriage is pretty much shit to begin with….

For me, marriage would involve a life where I could cuddle my wife and argue with her on my lap, some give and take and definitely a lot of space….hmmmm, pretty much what everyone wants, isn’t it?

Next, I have complexes….big ones….they have made me a tougher fighter, but its not easy to live with them….I have a tremendous inferiority complex about my looks and an enormous attention seeking mania amongst others…. Which in turn explains my drive to win at any cost and also my plethora of girlfriends over the years and no commitment to anyone or anything besides my own objectives….As one of my ex’s put it…I am interested in everything, committed to nothing…

So, finally, with all this baggage, I did finally meet someone who could handle it all and yet like me….and THAT’S saying a lot….I gave her a lot of grief initially but in the end, I was hers….

(This is usually me….I will make you laugh and help you and all that shit, but wont trust you till I am sure of you…..but once I do…I am yours for life… typical d-boy nonsense, yeah? But you’ve gotta admit, it sounds very jazzy and nice!!!)

Anyway, took quite a bit of time for the lady to actually open me up….because I don’t ever show who I am or what I am thinking…I show a lot of rubbish…a lot of silliness and inanity, but usually, I know pretty well where I am going and what I am doing….you’ll realise this if you really get to know me and my manner of achieving objectives, which is a rather far way off presently….

NOW, we get really messy….I got dumped….hence, all my existential angst (This means anger at even being alive) and absolute depressionist tendencies and suicidal berserker alcoholic binges… I swing like an yo-yo with no bloody fear of consequences or of falling…hence I am usually successful at the risks I take…

After going through so much verbiage (look this one up in the dictionary….ha ha ha) I would commend you for having survived so far…

The point is….I am a mess….I have some good points and a hell of a lot of bad points…so, basically, I am a talented mess…and that takes some doing…

Do you really want all this shit?

Do you really want a guy who has abilities, dreams and yet is so messed up that he doesn’t know which way to turn if confronted with something personal?

Do you want a guy who can be an utter bastard with all the dirty tricks known and ready to roll, with a past as long as your arm and a scar to show for every time he screwed or got screwed?

Do you want a guy who knows he will make a change someway, somewhere; a guy who’s had the living shit kicked out of him and yet has picked himself up again to fight?

Do you really want this guy or is it merely a compromise for your own needs and wants, because to be honest, this would be the last time this guy would ever even consider opening the doors to his heart, mind and soul….provided you know how to push open the doors?

Regards,

D

PS

If you are still not satisfied with so much of crap, you can read my blogs underneath….and I’d be seriously impressed then….

Have fun…

Nihil Ultra

2007-02-22T02:50:00.000Z

Nothing is Beyond….

What does it signify?

Nothing

Different times have different perspectives…..

A few weeks ago a young and rather brilliant friend of mine (If I may call him such, for at times, I am in awe of him!!) wrote a rather scathing expose on the Indian Judiciary and the judicial system as a whole.

For a few days, I smarted under his comments and wrote pages in reply against his seeming diatribe against one of the pillars of my existence…..but I didn’t publish it. Initially, I wished to polish up the piece and make it more ….shall we say, polished? Perfect examples of tautology perhaps, but be that as it may seem to be…..

I did not publish the piece and as the days went by, I considered the ramifications of what I had written and more importantly, WHY I had so fiercely defended the system?

Was it an underlying sense of loyalty, cultivated over the years, to one’s chosen profession? Was it belief in the system itself?

My arguments were not flawed, I still consider the Indian Judiciary or even the judicial system to be the best in place and I also still think that the system should be allowed to function without pressure of media circuses or even of public pressure.

Aristotle had said, law is reason without passion and yet, it was this principle that I believed in most passionately. The law is nothing but common sense, an operating system without which the edifice of social contract will not subsist and in order for it to be effective, it must operate and function in sanctity, peace and without pressure.

I still honestly believe that it is the rule of the law and it is the law which makes us function as a democracy and that the judiciary is the main cornerstone of any effective governance and so on and so forth.

And yet I did not publish….

My reasoning was cogent, articulate and yet empty of belief…..

I myself am empty of belief, of passion, of sustenance…..

I find it hard to defend principles that I have weathered so many storms for, given so much up for…..

I am questioning, not my principles, or my beliefs or even my foundations, but myself.

There was a time when I prized my fierce warrior instincts, my willingness to fight, right here, right now for anything I happened to believe in….I believed in confrontation, at any cost…..and now after so much lost…I have lost this willingness to fight….I question the need to contest, I question myself….perhaps too much….

Its getting harder for me to write…..

My reactionary and revolutionary pal puts it in an interesting perspective and very charitably states that I am lazy …..He is actually being charitable…..

At his age, I was full of fire and brimstone, piss and vinegar, ready to take on the world and its cousins along with…..I have lost that fire, perhaps.

Expanses of white screen are suddenly causing me nausea …. I think I have writer's block....and I am struggling with writing sans alcohol.....

I seem to bring out the best or the worst in myself when intoxicated beyond belief.... It’s perhaps the only time I don’t find myself or even my existence repulsive

Usually, it’s a low grade chronic headache which keeps on getting worse and finally erupts in a massive drinking binge or possibly a fight or both....and then, next morning, with an aching head or injured hands, I end up churning out 16 pages or so of ridiculous prose!!! Most of which I shouldn’t even be considering……

I honestly don’t know what to think.....do know that I should do.....but suicide is morally reprehensible to me

I burnt myself yesterday with hot oil and my right hand looks like it’s been to the wars but at least, that staved off the drinking bout for a few more weeks. As I burnt my hand, there was a moment of happiness….the pain blocked out everything else…Some experimentation is required here, I feel….

I write verse when I am drunk....absolutely completely disgustingly correct iambic pentameter verse in ringing couplets....my prose comes from the morning after when I am too sick to hate the world, which is usually my default state of being…. so grappling with the idea of output sans alcohol....which is not very productive presently...

I shame myself with my self-obsessed incoherent ramblings and squirm when I read blogs which are passionate and ring with sensibility that shames my rambling outpourings

As I check my inbox, I am appalled to notice that in the past month or so, I have hardly written what has been going on in my life to anyone at all….I building a frigging shell of normalcy and balance…

According to me, a person writes when his soul is in torment and the world is pressing down on him……hence I stopped writing for the years that I spent with my ex ….. I was gloriously and maybe, selfishly happy with the state of my being….

Once she dumped me, the wellspring poured forth a torrent of verbiage, unblocked the dams and dumped (forgive the pun!!) out massive amounts of choked back, repressed rage, anger, bile, vitriolic reminiscences…..and now I am empty. Dig as I might, I find it hard to actually be bothered about anything.

This state of being actually makes me less inhospitable, less insufferable and perhaps less me…..I miss my hatred, my bitterness which has brought me so far….

Diary, Diary, on the screen…..where the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I? Where is that damned smartass legal eagle who could dream and spin out reality from dreams?

Things that have occurred since I last wrote;

Got a job with HBOS –

After 17 interviews and 8 assessments, I am finally working for the Halifax Bank of Scotland in the AML & FSC’s (Anti-Money Laundering & Financial Services Crimes) section. In fact, I recently got semi-promoted to the DPA (Data Protection Act) section and am under negotiations for a full time contract. The work is interesting, the hours are decent (4-8 pm, Mon-Thurs) and the pay is good. Lets see how it goes….

Have severed relations with skinny and hence allayed further apprehensions-

Do I want to talk about this? I don’t know, as usual or rather as is NOT usual. I usually know what I am doing. She was getting too close perhaps, maybe I am too raw still….its been 2 years and more, but the mind and heart still says 4 years of penitence and then retribution, 2 done, 2 to go……I honestly don’t know

Changed rooms and not happy with new roomies-

I have given up my ASR’s post as I need to concentrate on my studies what with the new job and so needed to get out of my nice 2 man flat and have shifted into a 5 person flat. Hardly know my roomies, am too busy with my own issues.

An old junior of ILS days, Udipto came to Glasgow-

Rana was an old junior from Assam and is still the same, if not fatter. But it was nice to reminiscence about ILS days. Got him some decent booze and sent him off with Taimoor to roam the city while I was working.

Did okay in my assignments, still second best and need to do better-

Am scoring solid A’s however, there is still a guy ahead of me and I need to do better. Thank god, I am still competitive where studies are concerned....wish I was so in college, too many distractions.....regret none though.....

Gave a party for my birthday combined with Jay, Karthik, Asim etc. -

This was a bad idea….however, the kids from class enjoyed themselves….which is another way of saying that they got drunk silly, made out all over Jay’s flat where it was held. Jay himself was comatose long before the party ended, and quite a few of his bed sheets were soiled by the guests….but this is “foreign” so all is forgiven…..Chanel was incensed that I was slaving in the kitchen, but soon forgot me with the aid of Stolichnaya and some Zulu chap……I cleaned up as best as I could, threw Sam and Tharun, still lip & tongue locked as usual, out into the street and treated myself to a drink…..it was my b’day after all, and I cant get worse than this….

Haven’t been attending as many classes as I should -

Need to work on this, though I have managed to go to most of important seminars and workshops etc. I am exhausted with work, correcting taimoor’s homework, doing marwat’s essays and my own studies…..not to mention applying to various vacancies in the UN and associated agencies.

Went to the hospital after my Warden nearly dragged me there by the ear -

After I got my hand burnt (4.5 % body surface area second degree & some third degree burns) I nonchalantly washed it in cold water, cooked dinner and went about my business for the next 4 days….it was only when it started suppurating and bleeding worse than could be sustained by tissues that I went down to the Central Services building for some bandages…..the bloody females started howling for the high heavens and sneaked on Kevin, the warden. So, when I got back home late that night, I find Kevin in a fine mood who takes one look at the stinking and bloodied bandages and literally drags me to Western Infirmary. There, they practically flayed me as they ripped up the dead skin which had formed on the burn surface, WITHOUT anaesthetics and bound me up again. I was nearly dizzy with pain, however, the swelling and the slight fever I was running went down with all the antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs they gave me….I didn’t touch the pain-killers as I found the pain to give me focus enough to continue with my job and studies…..So, now I have a decent stock of pain-killers….smart boy I am....

But what has been bothering me is that I haven’t been getting my thoughts in focus… I have issues of lack of issues….am missing my bitterness and hatred…..don’t like it…my resources dwindling…..time running out

I have too many thoughts at the same time and as a result I end up taking the softest option. This is bad for me, but I am unable to break the cycle.

The truth of the matter is that I have become a vagabond, unaffiliated to anyone, free as a cloud and roaming free through the blue expanses of cerulean blue sky…..and I honestly don’t know where I’ll blow next…..

Nihil Ultra….Nothing is Beyond…..

Hop Many in Edinburgh....

2007-01-08T13:34:00.000Z

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, beyond the east of moon and thewest of sun, where is found the homes of the North Winds and the Ice Giantsand the ephemeral Gods of the Universe, a place where Space and Time have nomeaning…..an old man is surrounded by his nephews and grand-nephews,littered around his already littered study…..all clamouring for astory….most are in their teens and yet listening to his stories is a delightfrom childhood and still continues to be so…

The old man puts aside his old and battered laptop and starts rolling acigarette…something forbidden and not allowed in any of their homes andhence, all the more intriguing for all of them….

“So, what kind of a story would you like to hear?” starts the man as he getsout his beloved rizzla rice papers and his aromatic tobacco pouch.

“Not the one about your hiding in a bunker in Afghanistan or your war stories in Africa…they’re too scary” interjects one of the elder girls.

There is an instant uproar from the male segment and they are in themajority.Grandada’s harrowing life and death stories with the associated accents,scars and noises re-telling were delicious in their horror and left one withshivers down the spine…..though some of the horrors did get a little bit tooreal at night, each one grew up with these stories and were an importantpart of their childhood…

“Hmmm….how about my law school hostel stories?” suggested the man, squintingwith concentration at rolling the fine paper with the tobacco and the filterinto a slim little cylinder…it was getting harder these days than it wasbefore….“Naaaa…” “Not AGAIN..” there is no helping it, the kids of today areseriously loud, thought the man as the cylinder was finally rolled to hissatisfaction, a slim and slender roll of impending death….what the hell, its one of the few pleasures left, the man thought as he snapped open hisbattered steel lighter, another remnant of a near-forgotten age.

“Hmmmm….did I ever tell you about the time, I went to the wildest streetparty in Europe?”

The children suddenly silent…this is a new one….grandada actually going to aPARTY!!!.....what’s a street party….how wild could it be…..

The silence rolls around the suddenly silent room as slow sensuous spiralsdrift toward the ceiling from the lit cigarette…

“it was in the winter of 2006, I was in Glasgow, studying in the Universityof Glasgow for my second masters in…”

“Development Economics!!!” crow half the boys in the room, the girlsgrinning…The man grins as well, the children know his bio-data better than he didhimself, nowadays…

“Anyway, it was bitterly cold and I was very interested in mystudies…something you guys should be as well…”

(A chance to drive the importance of education was not to be missed….afterall, he got enough of it in HIS days, why should he not return the favour!!)

The series of whines,, growls and similar noises to suggest an orchestra ofcats on hot tin roofs urged the story onwards…

“I was in Glasgow for the first time and had become something of ahermit…hardly knew anything more than the University, my classes, theLibrary and my room….Things were getting really boring and so I decided todo something interesting for New Years Eve.”

As the story unfolded in front of his content audience, the years rolledback as he recalled the days of the winter of ’06….

Initially, there were only two responses to his google group email…Dorte, aGerman girl in my class, who was home in Germany for Christmas and PranayAlhuwalia, that revolutionary dramatist-journo who was also vacationing backhome in Delhi. However, there were hardly any others interested and this wasabout 3 weeks before new years. Everyone was busy with the assignments andessay submissions.It was only a few days before New Years Eve that Rishab Khanna, anotherbatchmate met up and suggested the very same idea. I, of course, had decidednot to go by then and was reconciling myself for a very quiet NYE soundasleep in my bed.

Rishi-Boy, as I called him then, was much in earnest and roped in hisroomie, Athar Rizvi from Pakistan. Athar preferred to be called Atty and wasa lanky, tall, fair guy. Next to turn up was another fellow called Faizan,also from Pakistan who came up with the information that the InternationalStudents Centre was providing free board in Edinburgh for NYE.

It was at the Winterfest, an evening sponsored by the International StudentsCentre that Atty, Faizan and I got together and met up with Calum, thePresident of the Int. Students Centre who assured us a roof over our headsin Edinburgh. Calum, the poor, poor man, had actually no idea what he wasdealing with here, but gave us the go-ahead for making plans. And finally ina bar in Byres Road, (Curlers) we agreed on the policy to go ahead and makea mess on NYE at Edinburgh. Rishi-Boy was noticeably absent due to hispresence with his latest lady-love in City Centre and agreed in proxy viaAtty.At that point, the whole plan started materializing and I started making therequisite tickets for the Princess Street Party as well as the bus ticketsetc.

Around this time, I scrapped Pranay for his final decision and wasassured his presence subsequent to his calling me up the minute he reachedGlasgow. Conveniently, I completely forgot poor Dorte….

The four of us would make plans to meet up every day after that to finalizedetails and we never got around to meeting each other for one thing or theother. Finally on the 30th, I managed to meet up with Atty and Rishi-boy inStarbucks and accompanied them home to print out the tickets and passes etc.

By this time, Pranay had not called up, and hence we assumed that he was notcoming and so got the tickets only for the three of us, Rishi-Boy, AttyRizvi and self (Faizan was getting his own tickets).

As we went over to another pal’s room to get the tickets printed from mymail, the first person we see is Pranay who had just arrived back from Indiathat very minute!!! He was delayed due to fog and adverse weatherconditions. So, we had to figure out how to arrange another party pass forhim as well.

If this was not enough, after the tickets were printed out, I suddenly sawthat we collect the bloody passes from the Hub offices in Edinburgh before 5pm the next day. Our bus tickets were booked for arriving in Edinburgh at7:45 pm!!

To be honest, this was where I should have realised that the entireendeavour was not going to go as planned….

However, being the go-getter sort, decided that I would go to Edinburghearly and the others would catch up with me there. Since I was the one whohad booked the party passes on my credit card, it would have to be me whowent and so, around noon, the next day, I hopped on the Megabus link and setoff…

When I reached the city and got off the bus, I felt I was back home inIndia…..

Pranay was once asked by a guy what he missed most about India, here inGlasgow…and he had replied in his classic style….looking out of the windowand not seeing 500 people outside….

Edinburgh was packed….according to the statistics, there were half a millionpeople there to celebrate the wildest street party in Europe…

It was already a usual Scottish day, windy and with a fine misty rain,chilling one to the bone. I hopped onto a taxi and reached the Hub officesat the bottom of Castle mile and found it swarming with a mini UnitedNations crowd. Making my way to the line, I managed to get tickets for thewhole group

This was when Rishi-Boy calls up and informs me that Faizan is not going tomake it and Dorte is back in town and wants to come along. So, I muscle myway back into the offices and manage to get another ticket. I even madefriends with a rather pretty girl at the counter called Emma but was toobusy to notice the signals.

By the time, I was done and had got outside the wind had picked up and itwas already dark so I went called up Calum and got directions to the placewe were supposed to be lodging in for the night.

That walk was perhaps one of the craziest I had taken. People were driftingtowards the party venue and the wind and the rain were steadily picking up.The place I was supposed to get to was halfway across town and as I walkedthere, the wind practically helped me along. It was bitterly cold anddespite having on a really heavy sweatshirt and a heavier fleece jacket, thewind cut through like a knife. I saw a chain-link fence about 18 feet longtorn off its moorings and lying on the street and no, I am not kidding. Atone point, I was practically edging along a building for fear of slipping onthe wet and slippery road or worse, being buffeted by the wind into it.

Anyway, I managed to reach the address and Calum, good man that he was hadthe place organised. It was the International Students Centre offices. Bythe time, the others reached the place, I had well and truly talked Calum’sear off. The others reached the place safe and sound and within minutesRishi-Boy unlimbered the bottle of Scotch I had insisted he get, and pouredout a hefty dram (two in my case) to everyone.

After making sure everyone was well covered up, the whole gang, Atty,Rishi-Boy, Pranay, Dorte and self set out for the evening’s festivities…

It was raining like anything and Rishi-Boy and Dorte stumbled and fell onceeach along the way, but by the time we reached the gates, we were informedby the police that the party had been cancelled. Pranay and I insisted ongetting photographs with the police guy. We told him that we’d come all theway from India and couldn’t go back without evidence that we had reallyreached the place and that it was cancelled!! The poor officer complied withus…twice…
By this time, we were all well and truly wet, chilled and pissed anddetermined that we were going to party and so walked on in the rain and windlooking for pubs. A lot of people had the same idea, apparently and all thepubs were packed.

The first pub that we went into was called the Iron and as I went to getbeer for Dorte and myself, I saw a girl pulling up her jumper to haveanother snap a photo of her …umm, assets.

After that sight, I was invigorated and figured that the night might not besuch a loss….

The series of events that occurred after that are a bit hazy to memory…but Ibelieve it involved numerous other pubs, a beer had in each, with generoustots from the bottle of scotch that Rishi-Boy carried.

We wound up around 11 pm at a rather classy pub where all the boys wereroundly kissed for providing lights for some equally drunk female’scigarette’s and finally we rolled on in the search of disco’s to dance in…

I remember being treated to beers for lifting two huge guys up and singingSutta Na Mila quite loudly on the streets….with rishi-boy happily abusingeach and every white guy on the street in Hindi…I believe Pranay and I alsojoined in and Dorte getting more and more freaked out by our antics….

The next I remember, I found myself dancing with a French guy whileRishi-Boy tried to make out with the guy’s girlfriend and shouting out thecountdown to the New Years.

All the time, the only guy who was not drinking was Atty Rizvi and if itwere not for him, I doubt if all of us would have stayed together…

But there was more to come… to poor decent Atty’s mounting horror….

Around 1 am, the guys got hungry and I had clean finished off the bottle ofscotch, so they dumped me on a bench to doze off and got in a line to getsome fast food. By the time, they came back, I was in deep conversation witha girl and apparently refused to recognise them and went off for a walk withthe bloody female….

After a while, I got back …..with a smirk on my face, according to Rizvi to his utter disgust….

At 4 am in the morning, Dorte disappeared and we found ourselves in a busstand, deciding what to do next…

According to the others, I quite showed my horrible side and suggested verypractically that dorte could go to hell, and we should catch the next bus toGlasgow…and promptly went for a piss behind a parked car….when rishi-boy andpranay attempted to do the same, the car drove off….

Around 8 am, I was awoken by Rizvi inside a Royal Bank ATM, to go and catchthe bus back home….and there we met Dorte as well….no one was in a mood toask questions and so everyone just piled inside the bus.

By this time, Atty Rizvi was in utter and absolute shock and probably readyto turn himself in at the next mental asylum….

Inside the bus, finally, Pranay and Rishi-Boy decided to exercise theirsinging skills again and I joined in, till I went to sleep again…

We arrived in Glasgow around 9.30 am with my tongue tasting and feeling likean alligator’s tail, with its head way down in my stomach…..

Rajat and Vivian, a really decent couple from my Halls of Residences offeredme a lift and I got back home to my room, completely frazzled out andextremely zoned out…

The next time, I actually opened my eyes, it was the 2nd of Jan’06….

The cigarette had been burnt down along with two others in the overflowingashtray as the children finally realised that the story was done…

“You actually did all that….??? Seriously??” asked one of the girls

“Of course, he did, he doesn’t tell lies, do you, Grandada ?!!” interjectedthe youngest one.

The man merely smiled and went to pour himself some scotch as the voices ofthe children started the usual squabbling and arguments and looked up at oneof the numerous pictures above the bar, showing a bunch of bedraggled andgrinning group of boys, a girl and a rather harassed looking British policeofficer in his neon green jacket and slightly raised his glass to them.

International Studies & Students

2007-01-03T11:09:00.000Z

My cousin Sean calls me a scab….as in dabboodada, you’re such a scab

He is not calling me a name, he is defining me. And not wrongly, either…..

A student is a scab on the skin of society. Useful both in the short term and the long term, but presently a little gross looking and definitely an irritant as well as being scratchy and….. ummm, well, figure it out..

One of the most interesting things about being a scab on the skin of society, that is, being a student is the fact that;

a. You have enough time to actually introspect absolutely insane inanities of your life, though this is usually during the horribly boring and totally useless vacations.
b. You have enough time, during the same vacations to go completely out of your mind, either by drinking copious amounts of alcohol or by exhaustively digging through the internet.
c. You can discuss into early morning topics which make no sense, no possible use and possibly will be forgotten by the time you wake up
d. You can get bloody idiotic and the world, more or less forgives you….
e. You can get away with being irresponsible, idiotic, insane, incorrigible, obnoxious, repulsive etc etc that is, you can also be yourself…

I mean, I love being a student….I only wonder why I stopped being one a few years back.

We’re the finest species of humanity on the planet… and its no wonder that these years are most often called the golden years, the wonder years.

Talking about golden years, there are certainly golden moments of being an international student in a foreign land and sharing space with other ….ummm, students..

My Chinese room mate calls himself cougar…..like tiger, he defines as I nod along….trying hard not to grin….

The dude is so intense that he is adorable and is a real sweetheart…..especially at 2 am in the morning when I’m making enough noise to wake the devil.

His real name is unpronounceable…as mine would be to him…BTW, I call myself D….its simpler for the poor whites….and the rest of the world….

In any case, my roomie and I, have these amazing conversations and random moments of absolute insanity.

Like a few days ago, I had myself some anda bhurji, that infamously simple dish of eggs so beloved of all men who have to cook for themselves…

I mean, I can write an entire blog on anda bhurji or fried eggs….I have friends who would die if it were not for this dish, as it is the only dish they CAN make….

Eggs by themselves can keep a man alive and my pal taimoor, poor fellow, is a living example of this.....

For those not in the know, taimoor is a rather ferocious afghan who has “imaan” (beliefs) you couldn’t cut with a knife and hence wont touch non-halal food. The man has been existing on bread, eggs, kava (a salt-ish tea) and chocolates…

If you think, this is the limit, wait till you hear about another old pal from my law-school days who has been surviving here in the UK for almost 5 years now on a steady diet of chocolates, biscuits and milk….and amazingly, he is thriving on the bloody diet…

Anyway, so, I had made myself some anda bhurji the usual way, with eggs, onions and some garlic mince and chilli powder when my room mate walks into the kitchen and sees the fragrant dish being served out into a bowl

(I still love eating out of bowls – hence I have only one plate and about 12 bowls – all plastic)

Anyway, he goes like, what’s that? I say, eggs. He goggles at me and says, You’re cooking eggs? You don’t cook eggs…..eggs are not supposed to be cooked, would you cook an apple?

I am inured to most international cuisines by now, so I am like, yeah, well, WE cook them and LOVE cooked eggs…

My poor roomie shakes his head at my weird ways and starts making a sandwich out of bread, strawberry jam and chicken…boiled chicken, that is…

I goggle back at him and ask him what he is doing and he offers to make me one….says the chicken is quite fresh…

I say thanks, but no thanks…

So there we are, sitting and eating anda bhurji and Strawberry Jam & boiled chicken sandwiches ….. trying not to look at each other's plates/bowls…

My roomie is also quite musical …. He plays two different types of flutes and also a stringed instrument called the “cushin” which basically looks like a sitar lying down and taking it easy…

Today, my roomie was practicing his stuff when he said that he would play me my national anthem….I was quite surprised and …to be honest, a little intrigued….

So, anyway, I was like, cool dude…lets rock…and stand at attention

So, the guy starts strumming his instrument and the melody though quite recognisable, is not the Tagore composition we used to bray out in school and in my NCC days…..and I listen with and at attention….

After he finished, the poor guy grins at me and explains that he heard me playing it on my laptop quite often and learnt it….

I gave a weak grin and offered my compliments and my heartfelt thanks ….

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was playing Atif Aslam’s "Yakeen"….

Am planning to go to Edinburgh for the wildest street party in Europe…. Or so it is said.

The Scots celebrate hogmanay, that’s the new years out on the streets and am hoping to go and see that… will blog on that later.

But my cousin Tony’s advice on behaviour during this eminent festival based on personal experience goes as follows –

Have party passes, don’t drink beer, don’t drink urine, don’t snog girls, don’t make sexual advances at animals….

(This blog was delayed due to lack of internet connections at my halls of residence for nearly a week before new years eve....Managed to study a bit therefore...wait for the Hogmanay special ...or as we called it HOP MANY !!!)

Who am I?

2006-12-20T12:23:00.000Z

The weather turns colder…and I am starting not to notice it….getting acclimatized I guess…

So much to write…not even sure where to begin…

Okay, let’s start with the basics….

My best friend is terrorized by his fiancé and he seems to like it….

The fiancé claims to be terrorized by my pal and seems to revel in it…

I am terrorized by both of them….and I also enjoy being human….once in a while….

My married pals seem to lead double existences of baseline Siamese twin existences with their respective spouses….. Bloody guys can’t seem to think for themselves…Bloody females cant think at all….

My unmarried other pals are living in a constant state of sexual frustration and in an intense state of seeking means of alleviating the said state….never seem to achieve it, unless by marriage and then also, I am doubtful of their success…

My professors are intensely happy that the semester is over but the librarians seem to wear a harried look as I start haunting the library instead of the classrooms… I am getting really intense about my subject…there is so much to read….

My cousin shibu passed away ….was found dead in a pool of blood in his bed…..alcohol abuse….. Earlier than we all expected….I grieved for 10 minutes and then got back to work on my assignments….is that normal?

My parents are looking for girls for me and I am scared stiff of spending a life with a woman who won’t get my jokes and worse….that’s assuming my folks find a girl at all….Me being who I am, am sure most females are gonna go; “…… ‘ells bells, head for the hills!!!”…. and I kind of like the idea of being so repulsive !!! Saves me a lot of trouble, as I will outline later…

Am hoping to get seriously blasted and blown in Edinburgh for Hogmanay….but I don’t know if even that’ll happen… have too much to study…

I corresponded with my ex with a flurry of 10 mails in total over two days and then finally it ended as abruptly as it started…my buddy explained it in his inimitable style “dono lambe lambe chod rahe the, as usual, needed the gas out of the system, simple”

Was she ever in my life….seems so long ago that I am wondering if it seriously occurred…… Life is as before now, wonder why I went through so much shit for a female at all…..but then, again, it was a learning experience….

I find solace in endless day long conversations with an old friend who met me for only two-three days 5 years ago and 5 years later, we are still talking and second guessing each other’s thoughts and moods…..and no, we are not romantically involved, both are a bit too pragmatic about each other’s needs and objectives in life!!! She needs a rich hubby and I need to get ahead in my life….well, further than where I am….

I find my world revolves around gmail, yahoo/msn messenger and orkut ….and yes, d-boy…

My fingers are typing blind ….. my second greatest fear is starting to get erased…

(Second greatest fear: if I loose my sight, how would I transcribe my thoughts in English and not in Braille….I cant think in braille…though the thought itches my cranium and I wouldn’t mind trying it to see how long it would take me to master it….)

Hmmm….I am living in interesting times…which is another way of claiming that I am cursed by my Chinese roomie for making too much noise at 2 am in the morning…

My thoughts are disorganised and dis-oriented, I need sleep….write later…

Okay, awake and it’s the next day……

I like the new songs from the movies Dor and Guru…..Okesite is an interesting website for downloading movie songs….I also like the midival punditz version of Don…it’s a classic rock version….

I seem to have a motley crew around me all the time….presently, I am surrounded by afghans and pathans with a sprinkling of maratha’s, two diga’s and one pondicherrian (I wonder if that’s even right??!!)

The only thing in common with us all is the fact that we all are slightly insane in our own ways…. And no, we are not mad…Mad's when you froth at the mouth. We’re all a bit insane, that’s when you froth at the brain…..from too much cranial cogitation, I’d guess.

I like food that’s easy to make when I am studying but my beef sukha is turning out to be quite good….

A blog is supposed to be about you and your experiences….I have so many, that I need dumbledore’s pensieve….

Is this my life….brought down to a standstill surrounded by books on abstract theories….my desk is a mess again….man, I do need help…

I love my studies and my cluttered existence….do I really need anything more than this ?

Recently, I have been having second thoughts about academics…..

I mean, all I need is a functional kitchen with plenty of drawers, a bathroom with hot water, a bedroom with a desk and a swivel chair …. That’s it…..

I have a cluttered existence…my desk is usually a mess and my clothes are flung all over my bedroom…..but my life has become a minimalist structure…. Stripped of all but the bare necessities and it’s an existence that restores peace in my mind…

If I need company, I venture out to see the world passing by with a glass of beer and then I head home, back to my library and my laptop…

It’s a comfortable existence…..do I need anymore?

My studies can lead to a Ph.D, or worse, I guess…do I need to really change the world?

Why do I need to change the world at all? Or even if I do agree that it needs changing, why not do it through a classroom?

Is this me?

Hmmmm…….