In Thy Fee

“Mama, Mama! I want to tell you a story. Will you listen?” My five year old niece, Yashi came running to me just as I was about to leave for office. I saw my watch, and then I saw her face. And I wondered if a five year old ever expects No as a possible answer.

“Guess not, I can be late to office for a day.” I thought. Right now, I wasn't ready to break such a beautiful heart. So I took her in my lap and gave her a nod.

"Have you heard of Shravan Kumar’s story Mama?" She asked.

"Yes I'd heard it when I was your age, but I don't remember it very clearly now." I replied.

"I will tell you, Ms. Kavya told us yesterday in class." And thus she began.

Shravan Kumar was a young boy. His mummy-papa were old and blind. But he took very good care of them. Ms. Kavya says he was the best son ever. Once he took his mummy-papa to visit a temple far far away. He carried them in two baskets on his shoulders. They couldn't have walked so much. They were really old, you know!

On the way, his mummy-papa wanted to drink water. That time there were no water bottles. So he went to a river to get some water. One king was hunting nearby. When he heard someone at the river, he thought it was a deer and shot an arrow at Shravan Kumar by mistake. When the king realized what he had done, he felt very sorry. Shravan Kumar was hurt very badly, but he was a very good boy. He forgave the king, and asked him to take water to his mummy-papa. Then he died.

So the king took water to Shravan Kumar's old and blind parents and told them about his mistake. Shravan's mummy-papa became very sad when they heard their son had died, and they cursed the king that he would die longing for his son. After this, they too died because of grief for their son.

You know who the king was? He was Raja Dashrath—father of Bhagwan Ram. He later died longing for Bhagwan Ram.

Yashi concluded her story.

"Good story. I like it." I said smiling.

"But you know, what Ms. Kavya says? She says that Bhagwan Ram never cursed anyone and always forgave bad people, just like Shravan Kumar. Ram Bhagwan was the best man, but Shravan Kumar was the best son. That is because he loved his mummy-papa so much, and mummy-papa are Gods. Right na, Mama?" Yashi asked.

I was tempted to say Yes. That's what I was taught all my childhood, and that's true too...almost. But instead I decided to try my luck explaining a deeper truth to my young niece.

"But I think you are also God, my dear." I said.

"Hmm, Mummy also says I'm God. So we are all Gods—Mummy, Papa and me...and Bhaiya also. Mummy and Papa are big Gods and I'm small God, and Bhaiya is very small God."

I let out a big laugh.

"No dear. There's only one God."

"Then how can all of us be Gods?"

I looked around and found an almost perfect example.

"You see this glass of water; if I drink a gulp of it, what is inside me?"

"Water."

"What remains in the glass?"

"Water."

"What is in the bucket?"

"Water."

"What falls when it rains?"

"Water."

"What is in rivers and lakes and seas?"

"Water."

"So, water is in everything around you at the same time...except walls and stones."

"Umm…Yes."

"Now let's take these two glasses of water and put their water together. Can you separate their water now?"

"No."

"You are right. You can't separate the water because it has become one. Because water is always one, its same water that goes round and round on earth. And its the same water that was in both glasses before we mixed them, not different. God is like this water—God is in everything, including walls and stones; and God is one. It is present in everyone and everything at the same time."

"You mean Prajakta is also God? But she always fights with me. How can she be God?"

"Yes my dear, all of us have God inside us. When you love yourself and others, then God in you is awake and everyone can see it. But when you hate yourself or others, God in you is sleeping; and noone can see it."

"I understand it now, because Shravan Kumar's parents loved him, their God was awake and that's why he treated them like Gods?"

"Very right dear."

"When I love Mummy, my God is awake; that's why Mummy says I'm God."

"Excellent. I'm proud of you that you understand this idea. Always remember—Love is the only way to be like God. Love yourself—love everyone."

A Thought

“Tell me something, what’s that one thing you can always do before anything. I put a gun to your head and shoot you point blank, what is that one thing you can do before the bullet hits you?” Sanjog got me confused here.

“Blink?” I said without blinking, knowing that the answer was wrong.

Sanjog smiled. “Can you?” He asked and continued without a pause—
“You can THINK. You can always, always THINK, no matter how less the time you have. That’s why they say, think before you act”. And he winked.

Stop Driving for a While!!!

Life presents itself in the form of very difficult choices and very simple outcomes. When it comes to the matters of your dreams, all the difficult choices lead to more or less just two simple outcomes—either for the rest of your life journey, your dream sits next to you in the front seat smiling at you, or you see her face in the rear view mirror and it haunts you all the time—it all depends on which door you opened for her—it was the choice YOU had made.

 

On a slightly positive note, just in case you stop driving for a while, please look at the rear view mirror carefully--you might notice a disclaimer on it “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”. Think about it…

A Delusional Speech of a drunk Writer

Happiness is a delusion made for those who are destined to die without leaving a footprint. We, my friend, create destiny. We and our kind, create the world as we know it today and as will be known tomorrow. Happiness and creation don't coexist. Be glad to be not happy, it doesn't deserve you.

Disgust

There's ALWAYS a way, but sometimes it's just not worth finding it.

Relationship and Bike

A relationship is like a bike-you find some jitters, you have to service it. Else either the life of the bike is shortened or that of its riders or BOTH.

Marriage in our changing society

For time immemorial, all around the world people have glorified institutions that are helpful in continuing human race in an unhindered manner. Marriage, divine status of "mother", compromising and adjusting nature of females, stoicity of males, just to name a few. You can find direct connections between these qualities and how they facilitate easy proliferation of human race.

but i believe humanity has come to a point in its evolution where it can explore further and not just be responsible for continuing itself. Though reproduction still remains our primary responsibility, we have sufficient numbers already so that some of us can get off the hook. Anyways, with the existing and ever improving medical technologies, we have sent natural selection for a toss.

So i think its alright if some individuals choose not to produce offsprings and rear them, but rather go find a different purpose of their lives--good or bad, productive or not....i would not care as long as they don't end up being suicide bombers or something. Just don't undo what others are doing, and I feel this world won't be missing a few X and Y chromosomes after a few decades.

I don't think such a line of thinking makes someone anti-social. In fact, in my opinion both lines of thinking are perfectly OK; as for me, i haven't taken a decision yet....

Candles at the Altar

Stepping off the Avadh-Assam Express, I was very conscious of the fact that my greatest dream is being realized into my greatest achievement. I had a smile on my face, the one you have when you feel all giggly—just like when you get that first smile from someone special, like when you write something beautiful, or like when you land from a bungee jump. Near the stairs two sweet-smiling guys were standing, obviously not Assamese. They held a chart with IIT Guwahati-1999 batch freshers written across in sketch pen—not even remotely a calligraphic attempt. It was not the way I would have written anything on a chart paper. A fresher was standing there with his dad. My dad engaged his dad while I engaged him in a light chat. He had joined the Bachelor of Design course, something I hadn't heard of before receiving the all-IIT pamphlet from IITD upon my selection. In India, your choice of specialization during Engineering depends on the job prospects of the branch rather than your interests. You consult anyone whose consultancy you can remotely trust; and he considers your rank and invariably suggest you to go for the branch with the highest probability of getting you a job with a good pay. So my first choice during the counseling was CSE even though I had never seen a computer till then in my life, leave alone knowing what a job with a computer in front of you meant.

In about fifteen minutes, five other guys, all with that same smile as mine had gathered around the chart paper. The chart paper guys lead us outside the station into a green colored Green Valley bus. The scene outside the Guwahati station was no different from that of any other North-Indian railway station I had seen in my very travel-some life.

It was a 52-seater bus, 3-seater benches on the right and 2-seaters on the left. I took the first 3-seater, Ashish sat next to me and we went into a chatter about our schools and JEE counseling experience. Our dads took a seat somewhere behind. I vaguely noticed when a tall guy came in the bus with a lady and a gentleman. The three sat behind on fourth or fifth 3-seater bench.

The chart paper guys introduced themselves as Babulal and Shekhar, 4th yearites. They took our attendance and we were told that we will be first taken to Euphoria hostel where the B.Des. guys will get down, B.Tech. guys will then be taken to Hostel # 1. That meant Ashish will be living in a different hostel, which was kind of bad as I had already started to like this guy. He was nice, smiled warmly, listened with attentive eyes and talked wisely. The bus soon started moving, giving out a strange chhuk-chhuk sound from the back. I never understood what caused that sound, but for the next four years, I remembered of this first day whenever I sat in this bus and heard that sound.

For some reason I turned back to look at my dad when I saw the tall guy's mom pushing him and asking him to go and talk to us. The tall guy got up, not reluctantly, not eagerly; came and sat behind us and said "Hi, I am Sanjog." We introduced ourselves—usual guy-to-guy handshakes. I looked at Sanjog, tall but not imposing, broad shoulders but not gymly-build, handsome but not striking, tidy hair but not combed, small mustache but not mature looking, not shy but not outspoken, not reluctant but not eager……

"So where are you guys from?" Sanjog asked. I was from Bareilly, Ashish was from Nainital. "I am from Lucknow" he said. When I told him that I am in ECE, there was a sudden smile on his face. "Me too" there was a simultaneous excitement and relief in his smile, almost as if he had opted for ECE with the sole hope of having me as his batchmate. His eye brows rose, eyes widened and mouth stretched into a smile as his face came an inch forward, and moved back a half inch. We three talked insignia and by the time the bus pulled into the hostel Euphoria porch, there was an angle rather than triangle of talk going on, with Sanjog as the vertex. The bus dropped Ashish and another guy and their parents and shuttled for Hostel # 1. Though the seat next to me was empty now, Sanjog kept sitting on the seat behind me.

As we entered the hostel, the Akhomiya guards showed us to a counter. We were asked to stand in a queue and get rooms allotted. I was first in the queue with Sanjog behind me. His mom came to me and told that the rooms are 2-seaters, so I can take room with Sanjog. I agreed. We got keys with "205" written on them. As we started to carry our luggage to our rooms,…

I was standing on the balcony at the end of the corridor leading to my room. Sanjog was standing next to me. Within a matter of few hours I had realized I was too glad to have this guy as my roommate—he was a down to earth and simple guy without any pretense. He was not comfortable mingling with strangers like me; so we both stood there watching the people pouring into the hostel, taking comfort in that safe distance of two floors. We were up above all others, like two gods; watching humans below wander about in their petty pursuits of life.

Soon our solitary refuge was intruded by a skinny guy with a V-shaped face, big eyes that were accentuated with those four or five power glasses and an even bigger forehead. He was so thin and his face had such a perfect V shape that it seemed at the first look as if he was being sucked up from inside and his lips and chin are on the verge of disappearing. His name was Abhishek Gupta. He had come for a small introduction and left soon. So many years have passed, but I don't know why I still remember this small incident—may be it was his face.

Me and Sanjog were alone again…with an empty corridor behind, stars above and people walking into the hostel below us. He was as much of a frustu as I was, so standing up there we went into a discussion about the girls we had met during counseling. Sanjog, with a subtle but visible pride in his voice, told me that he overheard his mom convincing a hot girl to join Guwahati during counseling. I enjoyed the look in his eyes, the innocence I had seen in the morning when we were two strangers had disappeared. The guy who stood in front of me had a very calculating look in his half closed eyes and a smirk on his face. Years later when busied with our lives and I got to see less and less of those looks on Sanjog's face; Sarav introduced me to the volumes of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. It was in those expressions of Calvin that I think I could fully comprehend what hid between those contrasting faces of Sanjog.

Sanjog had just finished his mom-and-hot-girl-at-counseling story when we noticed a really really black guy entering the hostel gates with a girl along his side. We looked at each other, there was a smile and I knew that instant there was only one question in both our minds—will she be in ECE? As life turned out, neither that girl nor that guy was in ECE. The girl was the black guy's sister and had come to see him off. I never saw the girl again; I'll never see the black guy again.

When I look back at that evening now, I can see myself standing at the end of that empty corridor, with that innocence in my eyes—like a lamb about to be slain at the altars of the "real world" and its demands to "grow up". It was this day—24th of July when the hatchet first tugged at my jugular; all those faces are still lit like candles in front of that altar. I can see their lights, some are far, and some are near. The black guy has gone and his black candle burns no more, it sleeps there as black wax, but there's something about it that every time I turn my head back to look at that pile of burning candles, I always notice its black wax—soundless, still, not crackling anymore; but the very sight of it is deafening.

A thought crosses my mind—may be life is all about collecting those candles at your tomb. And it's their lights and the burnt out wax that justifies all the sacrifice that the real world demanded from you.

Flushed

Its probably one of the greatest ironies of nature that what feels like a warm,scented pool in which you go swimming occasionally can become a shitpot suddenly leaving you gaping at the knob of flush. And one pull of that knob flushes you down into immeasurable depths--depths where everything that's visible is black; depths that rip apart your clothes, your skin and make a mockery of your skeleton; depths that make you believe that afterall life is just the absence of death.

Why would life choose such absurd ways to define herself is beyond my understanding. But what I do understand is that THIS is the bottom. And down here I find all my bones fragile and brittle. Silverlining is that there's never noone around to twitch your bones into pieces--except yourself. However, bluelining is that if you stay too long down in there, the darkness dissolves your bones and then comes a time when you can never stand again.

When I look around, I realize I've been here before. The darkness is strangly familiar. I've no clue how I had managed to float back to the surface on previous occasions. So I sit down and think...and write...and realize one must 'do'--HANG ON.

And guess what the enlightenment is--you might not see anything in the dark around you--but you are not alone, there's everyone down at that depth with you--someone's skeleton wandering about in the dark, others' ghosts pulling their skeletons down. And if you try real real hard, you can hear R.E.M. singing somewhere in the same darkness--Everybody hurts and everybody cries...sometimes.

I still don't know how to get out of here, but I know I will survive.

Irresistible Pastime

Main bhool jaaon tumhein, ab yahi munasib hai.
Magar bhulana bhi chaahun to kis tarah bhoolun…
Ke tum to phir bhi hakikat ho koi khwaab nahi.

Bhula saka na woh silsila jo tha hi nahi,
woh ek khyaal jo awaaz tak gaya hi nahi,
woh ek baat jo main kah nahi saka tumse,
woh ek rapt jo humne kabhi raha hi nahi.

Mujhe hai yaad woh sab jo kabhi hua hi nahi,
Agar yeh haal hai dil ka to koi samjhaaye,
Tumhein bhulana bhi chaahun to kis tarah bhoolon,
Tum to phir bhi hakikar ho koi khwaab nahi.

This is a song by Jagjit Singh. Found relevant to the blog below, so put here.

A Pile of Rust

Here's another one Sanjog, I came up with this one when I was talking to Supad last night.

Sometimes and a real rare sometimes in life, there comes along a passion that makes you wonder how you spent your life without it all along. It doesn't always have to be love for a girl for that matter, it can be anything—absolutely anything on earth, you never know what!!!

To me it came in the form of a crude shapeless piece of wrought iron my uncle working in TELCO gifted me one day. That was I guess some nine years back. I was interested in metallurgy from start; so I setup my own small lab at home. I had an image in my mind of what I wanted to make. I invested a lot of effort and money in realizing this dream. In the college, I would work on perfecting the image in my mind and every semester break I was back home; I would spend most of my time in my lab working on that piece. I melted-casted- molded it. There was something about this work that successfully involved the whole of me for years.

After 7 years of working on it, I was finally able to give it a shape. It was a bust of Fleud. It was just adorable, couldn't have been better—it was a sheer height of perfection. But now what? I couldn't have suffered any kind of loss to it. So I opened a safety locker in a premier bank in my city—in fact the best one I could find. And then—I slept calmly for two years.

Today morning I went to check on my masterpiece. As I took it out, my heart skipped a beat seeing it covered with a layer of rust. I brought it home and started scrubbing it. As I scrubbed more and more, the rust seemed deeper and deeper. I hardly realized until it was too late, that my masterpiece had turned into a pile of rust.

Did I cry? No, but I did grieve. Not long, I gave a look at myself and the grief turned into horror. Because it was not just my masterpiece that had turned into a pile of rust; my right hand was gone too. The wrist remained—the hand was gone—into the pile of rust. I had rusted. Sometime during the scrubbing, my hand has caught the rust and got rubbed away along with the masterpiece.

I looked at my no-hand-wrist. There was a thin layer of rust covering the cross-section where the hand had gone. I sat and wondered—should I scrub this rust off? Will I end up exterminating myself? Have I turned into rust myself? If so, at what point did I start?

“Do you think it is an irreversible process?” Sanjog asked me after thinking for a while.

“I don't know.”

“You know it Amit. You have all the answers. So now open your eyes and tell me—is it an irreversible process?”

“What—the rusting?”

“No, the loss of hand.”

“Umm…No. Its not.”

“So, how do you get back your hand now?”

“I guess stop scrubbing off the rust. It's a part of you now. You can never leave it behind and move on—learn to live with it. And it's not all that scary having the rust on you, it's a remnant of what was once a splendid period of your life. Its not there to remind you of what you lost, but to remind you of what extreme bliss you are capable of and you deserve.”

“Eggjactly dude.”

Work and Apathy

I am writing after a long-long time. Now S asked me to write something for a weekly newsletter in her company. Well, its difficult to start without a clear purpose in mind—PURPOSE, as everyone who’s seen the Matrix series and claims to have understood at least some dialogues would understand, is the single most important entity that rules our lives, without who’s existence our own existence loses its soul. So I chose to speak about anything that might concern the company as a whole.

My friend recently had a session in her company—Product Consciousness Training. It called for, among other things, a feeling of ownership for your product, taking initiatives in the teams and owning responsibilities. To draw upon an analogy, it’s like raising your child. If she is wrong somewhere, it’s your own responsibility and you don’t (and you can’t) blame others for that. You got to take initiatives and devise ways of correcting it. But we are talking about your work here and hence, in this article I won’t say anywhere–you MUST develop all that; for such a frame of mind, like Boyle’s law, exists only under ideal conditions. We live in a real world (though I don’t deny the inevitable but rare events called ‘Exceptions’).

So looking from the ‘real world’ point of view, a person ‘wanting’ to nurture such a consciousness would naturally expect the world around him to do the same, be honest to others and to themselves. But in the real world, things aren’t really that rosy. And its not easy to change them because if one’s dishonest to others, Buddha and Gandhi can change him; but what about those who’ve ceased to be honest to themselves, in other words ceased to be dishonest “consciously”???

To move further, the training was in fact very different from most others, my friend gives credit to the presentation skills of Mr. X and also the person who conceived and designed the training. But the bottomline is that even such training has to have a PURPOSE, and it is supposed to fulfill it. Did it? Did it not?? I am not a judge for that and I don’t propose to probe in that direction. But the direction I think I can safely probe into is whether and to what extent such training CAN meet its purpose in my friend’s workplace.

I am strictly against all forms of presumptions and so let me go by facts. And here comes to my help the “Internal Employee Satisfaction Survey Findings” of her company that my friend shared with me. Her third mail in the series doesn’t deserve much of my attention; it contains all goody-goody signs and good things don’t deserve any comment except DON’T GET COMPLACENT!!!

So I prefer to look more carefully at the second presentation, which incidentally is not so goody. There’s so much in that presentation we can talk about, but allow me to choose the slide titled “Interesting facts on Commitment”, I must say, appropriately named. This slide contains some information that struck me as the most “interesting” stuff. It hints at the APATHY of a significant chunk of voters there. Safely assuming that the survey properly represents the overall views of the employees, it might look a little disturbing when you see that averaging over all the questions 36% of voters haven’t taken any stand at all. Only 2 major possibilities exist:

• Employees are not frank, and/or




• they haven’t decided on these issues

anymore? Can PhyDoc suggest something?

As for the first one, why shouldn’t they be frank? I can’t think of any reason (were they asked to write their names on their response sheets, no way).

I personally want to drop the first option, so assuming the second one’s true, I come back to the APATHY of the employees towards the organization and this link takes me further back to the fulfillment of the purpose of the “Product Consciousness Training”. So after this long-long prelude, I ask you this—can the concept of Product Consciousness coexist with Apathy???

Am no authority on psychology, but my understanding of human nature says, that the two concepts are poles apart. If more than a third of your employees are apathetic towards the organization, and just exist here because life has brought them here; I don’t think they’ll ever come forward to claim the work, or their faults or…anything. Its like bureaucracy, you care about nothing save the 1st of every month and your bank balance. Talking in terms of the analogy I talked about earlier, it’s like raising someone else’s child—you just don’t care what becomes of it. And if a significant number of people with such an attitude exist around you, trying to use you to serve their apathy, I wonder how long will it be before your mind gives up the rigors of treating your work as your own child.

I want to write more, but time and space, though endless, still are the biggest constraints you always face. Never mind, as far as the PURPOSE of the article is concerned, it’s solved—to raise a question. Let the policy makers think about it, and if they care to ask for my suggestion, I would say you are dealing with group of grownups of 21st century, who as I understand have a great deal of confidence on their thoughts and on their ways. You expect them to change by a two-hour session? I’ll say—don’t be so naïve. It takes more to motivate someone. Let the concept of product consciousness expand itself to assimilate the “Team Consciousness” and “Organization Consciousness”. Let it flow like water—downwards. Set examples, and let me feel I am following someone who’s truly superior to me. How you do it?? That’s your job.

LIFE and DEATH

I was getting laid in those days. It was good, after years of drought, the rain felt very, very, very good. We had finished with one round some fifteen minutes back. I was reading Amitav Ghosh; she was trying to sleep off. But the bulbs just above the bed wouldn’t let her sleep, and “The Hungry Tide” was getting too interesting to be left at that point; switching the bulbs off was out of question.

You can’t suppress too long a girl who just has had sex. Soon she was all over me, kissing and caressing, closing my eyes with her soft hands, creating a “jheena purdah” between me and the book with her hair, begging me to leave the book, switch off the lights and sleep with her. Now you can’t expect a guy to disregard such a strong overflow of sensual expression who just has had his first sex of the day. Though I still tried to concentrate on my book, her every wet kiss gave rise to a wave starting somewhere below my right ribcage, traveling diagonally below and ending just above my right testicle. Yes, it was a wave, like the ones you feel in a bathtub full of warm water; that tingling sensation of the wave going down to your groins, and like the ripples in the water, reflecting back in all directions and sending tremors to all parts of your body. As the waves struck my extremities, legs got entangled in hers, hands went around her pressing her hard against my body……feeling her skin with my palms and fingers, as if for years you’ve stood alone in a rice field, and looked up at the blue sky, that canopy stretching above you—so enchanting, so appealing, but yet unreachable, untouchable, the higher you go the higher it grows above you; and then one day you suddenly knew just where to extend your hand to reach out and touch it, to feel that blueness against your palm.
The wave came up, up and reached my throat, constricted there as in a bottleneck; and I could almost feel that a lump has stuck in my throat, just like the one you can feel when you’re shit-scared and gulping your fear in; of course this time the movement of the lump was in opposite direction. Keeping the book aside, I raised my face upwards to give it a straight pathway up in the head. As the wave traveled up, my eyes closed involuntarily, lips and tongue started responding to hers, the head went in for a twitch.
I knew I couldn’t have waited another second to be inside her, when I realized that I used up the last condom I had in the previous round. I was scared of AIDS no more; I went for it without them. But just as I was about to enter, her hand held my organ and she said a firm ‘no’. there was no way I was to do it without condoms. I pleaded, I begged, I argued, I forced, but nothing could budge her. At that point my mind strayed off from sensual side to a more philosophical side and wondered “What is she so scared of?” Two answers came to my mind—AIDS and pregnancy. So different but still having the same affect!!! While AIDS meant a death, pregnancy meant giving a life. Then what’s that intersection of these two opposite ends of human life scale? I decided to look for an answer in the girl’s mind itself…

MY LAST DAYS

You ever got that feeling of understanding something without experiencing? It’s actually nice. I can imagine how it will feel to resign and wait for the relieving day. Detached from your work, from the files and folders you spent your years and hours with; you don’t want to look at them anymore coz you know that you won’t be around to see what becomes of them. When I sit back and start thinking too much in the moments like this one, I can almost feel the same (without actually experiencing it), lekin yahaan zara zindagi aur maut kaa maamla hai.

Started watching Philadelphia yesterday, couldn’t finish. I can’t, am too damn scared—so scared that I don’t even want to get a test done and know things for sure. Fact is, I am not sure how am I gonna face the truth if the truth is ugly. My one night stand in Bangkok, my first ever and first ever with a hooker; has left me with a deep sense of—not guilt, not satisfaction, not pleasure, no……nothing at all. What a waste! I just know that I can’t get the Elisa test done. Its hard to face that you lost the chance to live a lifetime with your best friend, to see him marry the girl you helped him get, see him have (shote-shote) kids, see him fighting to find time for you between his post-MBA job, wife and kids; and its hard to face that you miss all these same things happening to you as well and let your friend see it.

It’s hard, it’s too damn hard. I can’t imagine how am I gonna take it if I have indeed f*&ked up my life. Assume for an instance that I am done, I am doomed. This best friend I am talking so fondly of, will stop seeing me. My parents, my sisters, my cousins and relatives who have so idolized me; what do I become to them—I can’t even begin to imagine. I am sure I really can’t say anything without underestimating or overestimating their affection for me. Although I do understand that I will be a shame to everybody who has ever known and loved me; but what I don’t understand is how I become a rotten, a fallen human because I slept with a girl who was ready to sleep with me for some money. How come all the deeds of a lifetime be lost to one moment of ……..call it “fallacy” if you like. Now if I kill or rape someone, a finger pointing at me will have a shape, it will have a whole body behind it……a body borne out of my guilt and the wrongness (<What is right?>) I inflicted onto another human. I could have seen the body with my eyes, I could have touched it; and shivered. But I dint do nothing like that. My one moment of …whatever ………………
Why do you hate me so much? Wat can I say, I am just too damn scared.

Comfortably Numb

Bangalore
May 12, 2004
Its pretty late I am starting to write this. But I had such a nice discussion with Kalyan that I can’t help writing about it.

It started when Kalyan talked about the elections. Ganga said that Sonia will come into power. Kalyan asked for my views, I said I don’t have any. He respects me as someone who is capable of having his own views, so this struck him and now the object of interest for him was why I don’t have any views.

Well, the ego of the man in me doesn’t allow me to say this but the fact is that I have given up this battle, even before I entered it. I don’t have any views because I don’t have the power and courage to have any views. I have accepted my defeat from the forces of corruption and unaccountability of bureaucratic powers; the forces that I haven’t seen or known, but I have felt in every walk of my life—with every compromise that I do against my self-respect, with every time I keep my mouth shut while I am being exploited, with every penny I give to someone who didn’t earn it from me, with every short-cut I take for obtaining a license, with every bit of paper I throw on the road, with every time I travel without a proper ticket. I have accepted my defeat even before I entered the battlefield; I have accepted that this system cannot change. I have accepted it because I am as much a part of this system as anyone else; I have contributed as much to the making of this system as anybody else. To fight the system means to fight against mySELF, can I fight against mySELF; do I want to fight against mySELF? THIS IS WHY I DON’T HAVE VIEWS. I am conmfortably numb.

History Repeats Itself

Bangalore: 10 May’04
“History repeats itself” I said to Sanjog. “What!!!” he was annoyed. I could see that and justifiably so, I could see that too.

Since past few months, Sanjog has been on the receiving end of my frustrations for not being able to find a girl friend. At age 23, it really sucks. I firmly believe when I say “Don’t crib”. Even the best of friendships and relationships can‘t sustain a non-stop volley of cribbing sessions. And so I don’t blame my dear and close friend Sanjog for not being very happy with me that day when I couldn’t approach a girl who seemed to be flirting openly with me, giving me all possible signs that the “Indian girl” tag in her head allowed her to. But still, as on many other occasions, I couldn’t muster the courage to speak to her. It was at this point that this thought came to my head and here I was telling it to Sanjog.

“History repeats itself, but do you know till when?”, this question was sufficient to draw his interest. His brows raised and pat came my reply—“till man doesn’t learn from it.” So I decided to make the episode with that girl on brigade, a part of history that will never repeat itself. And next week I’m expecting to date a babe. WOW!!!!

Well but the actual reason why I took up writing about “History Repeats Itself” is not to talk about my ‘in’capacity to speak to girls, but my ‘in’capacity to speak in situations that demand a man to speak out, assert himself and do what he thinks is right.

I lost my mobile in February this year, how it happened is out of scope of this document. My well-wishers told me to have an FIR lodged to avoid owning responsibility for any antisocial activity that my mobile can be used for. So I decide to go to a police station. I took a friend with me for my language problems (I can’t speak or understand Kannada). We go to Indiranagar police station. As I enter, some sort of fear grips me. I haven’t had the good luck of visiting such places often. I was genuinely shaking. We approach what looked like a reception. I tell a guy I have lost my mobile—he points to his boss who was sitting at a table listening to two ladies. Near the corner a man was shouting at another man. I couldn’t ascertain this ‘another’ man was a defaulter or a fariyaadi. I waited for my turn as two ladies told ……………

Ok many things were told and listened to. Now the scene is, I am sitting with my friend on chairs waiting for our turn. 5 meters ahead of us, there sits a table one chair on a side and 3 on the other, a police sub inspector sits on the one-chair side. A lady sits opposite to him. I don’t go by looks usually but she looked really pathetic. She was in trouble. With pleading eyes she looked at the sub-ins, sub-ins looked straight at her breasts, me at both of them. The lady wanted to say something, sub-ins wanted to have some tea, I wanted to shout. I wanted the go inside the earth as went Sita. (isn’t this escapism???) She tried to tell her story several times but was cut short by some files, phone calls and others complainants (including me), that sub-ins cared to attend. I wish I could describe the look in her eyes. But either I don’t have the words or sometimes words sound so conspicuously dumbo. I don’t know what happened to the lady and her story, I was called by the sub-ins during their conversation and he signed on the application I held in my hand. I had the acknowledgement of an FIR that was never lodged. He asked for some compliments, I gave him a hundred bucks and got out of the place—into the “free” world that I was familiar with. I went to Styx with my friend and we drank our hearts out at the horrible experience.

Till date until I wrote last line, I never realized this. I always believed I am living in a free world of my own. But it ain’t free. It’s a matrix, where we are bound by …… do we really know by what or whom. But we are not free. Why should I have given those 100 bucks to him for a signature? Why should I have sat there watching the sub-ins gazing at the lady’s breast? Is it the free world I am living in? Where I don’t do what I believe in, where I shrug my conscience by a mere thought that one can’t fight the system. Is all this stuff ever to remain on my Compi and never to get out and disturb anyone else as they have disturbed me?

My sister needs a passport, an ins came for verification. He took 100 bucks as verification fees—history repeated. She was asked to come to the police station with some certificates today. Another 100 bucks demanded and conceded for unknown reasons—history repeated again. 100 bucks is nothing, but question is why? A guy like me, who doesn’t give a single penny in alms, has to shed 100 bucks for one signature!!! Till when the history will repeat itself? Answer is simple—till man doesn’t learn from it. But when will man learn from it? I don’t have an answer.