The city

Almost unknown and unseen it grows,
like a silent epidemic, it crawls throughout the landscape,
devouring everything in its path with stealth.
At times I see it, right in front of me,
look up towards it with admiring eyes,
yet I do not realise it.
It envelopes me,
creeping up on me,
defining my space,
it instructs me on how to traverse the land.
I am enabled by it,
I am restricted by it.
I loathe it,
I stand in awe of it.
I stare at its beauty from my fifteenth storey window,
I am mesmerised by its enormity,
grateful to be part of it.
It disgusts me,
it reviles me,
it spits me out like an inedible pit.
I sing its praises,
I love its sounds,
of screeching tyres and of the silent whoosh of airconditioned air,
that blasts through when the doors open.
I can’t stand it,
repulsed by its ugliness, I withdraw into my cocoon of familiarity.
There it coaxes me to love again,
to smile,
to forget.
I do.
I forgive its trespasses as I continue to tread on those below me.
It consumes me,
and I it.

The Coffeeshop Conundrum

I am a fairly punctual person. It doesn’t work out so well in a place like Delhi. If given a certain time to meet, people in this city automatically assume it to be at least half an hour later. To which a delay of another half- hour could be added, attributed to thunderstorms, traffic snarls, death and typhoons which may have inconvenienced them en-route. Since I have the unfortunate urgency of getting everywhere on time, I almost always am left with time to kill.

Time to kill. Another dangerous commodity in this city. If you happen to have any time to spare, it’s probably going to cost you a sizeable amount. Why? Well because we live in a highly ‘consumptive constituency’, which is our globalised world. We have but one solution for every need: Buy. Hungry? Buy. Tired? Buy. Sad? Buy. Happy? Buy some more. Idle? Buy again. When was the last time you took a perfectly purposeless stroll to nowhere, and didn’t end up buying anything? My memory fails me. When was the last time you were doing ‘nothing’ and not forking out the cash for it? Fails yet again. Unrealising, we have bought (there..bought again!) into the whole mesmerising myth that is capitalism. Okay, this is not another one of those unceasing socialist tirades against the capitalists. But, haven’t we gone a bit overboard?

I don’t really drink coffee. I used to, but I’ve outgrown my fondness for the frothy cup of Java-joy. But nonetheless I find myself at the coffee shop atleast thrice a week. I don’t really know what I go there to do, but its more often than not, that I seem to have time to kill, and end up sipping a pale cup of lukewarm jasmine teabag tea. At this point, drowning in the sea of ennui, I begin to unknowingly eavesdrop on conversations taking place in the adjoining tables. They are always variants of a similar script, one eerily similar to the one in the first Jungle Book cartoon, between the bored “Beatles” vultures:

Buzzy (yawns): Hey, Flaps, what we gonna do?
Flaps: I don’t know. What you wanna do?
Ziggy: I got it! Let’s flap over to the east side of the jungle!
They’ve always got a bit of action, a bit of a swinging scene.
All right?
Buzzy: Ah, come off it! Things are right dead all over.
Ziggy: You mean you wish they were!
[they laugh]
Dizzy: Very funny.
Buzzy: Okay, so what we gonna do?
Flaps: I don’t know, what you wanna do?
Buzzy: Look, Flaps, first I say, “what we gonna do?” and then you say, “what
you wanna do?”, they I say, “what we gonna do?”, you say “what you
wanna do?”, “what you gonna do”, “what you wanna” – let’s do
something!
Flaps: Okay. What you wanna do?
Buzzy: Oh, blimey, there you go again. The same once again!
Ziggy: I’ve got it! This time, I’ve really got it.
Buzzy: So you got it. So what we gonna do?

This loops again and again and again. In this day and age of the ‘speed, glitz, glamour, bling’ spectacle, are we all just a bit jaded? Behind the lazy steam rising from the coffee cup, is there nothing of substance? Are we all performers in an old play, simply playing out our well-rehearsed bit-parts of Consumption in the hope that it will lead somewhere? Are we just so consumed by consumption itself that we cannot look for substance elsewhere? We go on like a stuck record, playing the same notes over and over and over in the hope that someday the song will end. Or is it just me? It is not a higher purpose I seek, but the rediscovery of the beauty of aimlessness. Of a place where one can meander along without purpose. A place which isn’t pre-packaged and re-sold to me as an ‘experience’. Where I could be, as Pink Floyd put it in a song from their very aptly named album, Animals, “Carelessly passing your time in the grasslands away…”

The silent comity of smokers

Every successive year, the push towards the social alienation of smokers seems to get stronger and stronger. Not only is the price of a pack of cigarettes the same as that of a weeks worth of fuel for a bike, the ban on smoking within bars and pubs has put a serious damper on many a lit stub. Progressively, it is becoming more and more of a pain to light up. You can’t smoke at the bar, can’t smoke in the office, can’t smoke in the canteen, can’t smoke in the car, can’t smoke at the train station, can’t smoke in the airport lounge. The urge to light up now requires serious brainstorming, to find an appropriate spot to take in that leisurely drag. In fact, there is none of the lazy elegance, of watching the world pass by through the haze of cigarette smoke that accompanied the aura of smoking. Now you may find them scurrying about for a few quick puffs before they squelch the rest of the unfinished roll with their heel, lest they miss out on the action inside.

Granted, smoking has nothing good about it. Cancer, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, to name a few, are pretty much guaranteed results. As a erstwhile dabbler into the seductive, hazy world of the ‘drag and flick’, I now feel sick the morning after I’ve been to a party at a friend’s terrace, one of the last surviving havens for those who smoke. The actual act, has no appeal left for me. Beer gives a far more sustainable buzz than nicotine, which pretty much dissappears as fast as the cigarette itself. Plus it tastes better too.

But there is something that I miss about not smoking anymore.

It begins as you crack open the pack of cigarettes, pull one out and flip the pack onto the table. Bringing the cigarette to your lips, you gently purse your lips around the filter. A quick ‘look-around’, a hopeful glance towards the perfect stranger, “Got a light?”.

Got a light. It’s is like the secret password, the ‘Open Sesame’ to be accepted into the fold. Like a key that clicks open a well-oiled lock, almost immediately you are one amongst the many. Those three magical words. And ‘Entrez!’. Out comes the matchbox, with a nonchalant flick of the wrists. A strike. The matchbox returned with a silent nod of acknowledgement. A silent acknowledgement of being one. In the same boat. The perils and joys of being a smoker.

Smokers, like any other endangered species, find safety in numbers. Birds of a feather flock together as they say. There is that one thing that unites them all, the desire to light up. No distinction on class, colour, creed, sex. And anyone, asks anyone for a light. It’s not just about striking that match to satiate that craving. It’s an entire performance. A performance only a select few play out: The silent comity of smokers.

A darker shade of green

She walked down the all too familiar uneven footpaths of Khan Market. The bright-lit store windows with their displays of phantasmagoria didn’t make much of a dent on her jaded eyes. She sighed silently and continued to walk towards the cafe. Just then something in one particular store caught her eye. The tee said, ‘I started an origami business, but pretty soon my company folded up.’ Her smirk slowly turned into a full blown grin. “Priceless” she commented, reminded of something that happened between Armaan and her couple of years ago. Things had been much different back then, and it hadn’t seemed as amusing at the time. She quickly hopped into the store to make the quick buy.
The first time she had seen the tee was in Armaan’s closet, two years ago. Tucked in towards the back, it was kept neatly folded along with a Livestrong bracelet and a comb. “An odd assortment of stuff” she thought, “too odd for a surprise gift.” Plus, Armaan never gave surprises. She pulled it out and slowly brought the tee up to her nose: Obsession by Calvin Klein. She panicked.
That evening when she heard the key in the door, she did not know whether she felt relief or more tension. She rushed to the door and as he entered. He saw her, “What the f…Wow! Hey nice surprise!” he exclaimed. He only noticed her tears as she was throwing a cushion at him and she then collapsed to the floor.
Armaan and Maya had met in the pool. He was floundering his way through a breaststroke when he crashed into her. Apologies were followed by coffee the next week, and sex the following month. She moved in to his apartment on his birthday, the 26th of June, wrapped in just a ribbon. She was kinky that way. Exactly five months later, she took the morning flight to Bombay. As Armaan dropped her off at the airport, she rushed to the departure gate; she turned, blew him a kiss and shouted him, “Don’t wait up!”
He hadn’t. He had tried valiantly but failed as he lay sprawled on the sofa with the end credits of the late night movie rolling. When he opened his eyes next, it was to the sound of the Jurassic Park soundtrack. The T-Rex had just gorged on the guy off the toilet. “Eeyuck!” he exclaimed as he rolled off the sofa and punched the remote to change to the Breakfast News. His jaw dropped and he ran to his phone.
He never could make the call he wanted. The handset at the other end had a bullet hole in the middle of the screen. The same bullet had punctured Maya’s liver and three others were lodged in her heart. She had died instantly, slumped over her plate of roast chicken at the Shamiana, Taj Mahal Palace and Tower.
Armaan had grieved for over a year. His friends had tried to help him “get over her”. But he didn’t want to. To forget her seemed like a betrayal to him. A couple of years later he met Tarini on a flight from Bangalore. He was doing the crossword and she inadvertently blurted out the word to five-across. This time she bought him the coffee. But three months later she surprised him with a cushion to his face as soon as he came home.
That night Tarini could not comprehend why he hadn’t told her about Maya. She could only see his lips move as he tried to tell her the story, none of the words made any sense to her. Rage seethed in her eyes as she picked up the bottle of Gledfiddich from the bar. She emptied it right between where the ‘Origami’ and ‘Fold’ were, and lit her Zippo over the offending items.
At first he was shocked, then speechless, followed by resignation and finally acceptance. After the major jolt of losing Maya in the 26/11 attack, he began to learn to put things behind him and move on. He and Tarini had since resolved to not talk about the incident. He mopped up the mess and she replaced the whiskey. Chapter closed, they even set a wedding date.
At Khan Market Tarini swung her bags by her side as she swept into the Latitude cafe. Armaan had been waiting a while, sipping his Sencha green tea. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you since forever. We’ll be late for dinner. We have reservations you know!!” he exclaimed animatedly feigning his anger. “Sorry, was walking down from Anokhi and then I just got lost in thought!” “And you lost your way here? It’s a just a straight walk! Y’know what, you’re just plain weird!” he said as he smiled at her. Her kookiness was what endeared her to him even more. She whipped out the tee and smiled at him with the silly grin that only people in love can have, “What’s really weird sweetie, is that I was jealous of someone who was dead.”

Us…

trapped in my bubble
i hear my own words
my refrains, my cries : i

walk the streets
cocooned in my thoughts
never listen, only hear : me

talk to you
about my own fears
sitting here, never know : you

turned away
from the the world outside
i see, but never notice : them

sit here
live our whole lives
never loving, we have lost : us

Freedom?

Our Man-‘mohan’ made a speech

Stood atop the same old fort

It’s been the same for sixty odd years

Seems such a long time doesn’t it?

 

‘A tryst with destiny’ he said

The man with a rose in his pocket

It’s a pity we don’t even pause

To reflect upon his dream-laden words

 

Halfway into each August

Our lives take a slight detour

A moment to reflect, realise and redeem

Or just a couple dozen hours to kill

 

The kites still fly over the horizon

Each year still fewer dot the sky

‘What was the dream?’ do we ask ourselves?

Or has it faded away like the kites in the sky

 

Preparations begin well before time

The fort is under siege: no goes in or out

Long queues form outside the walls,

Everything grinds to halt, paralysed

 

Long pages are spoken

Lofty ideals abound

Proud flags are flown

Then trampled to the ground

 

We celebrate our freedom this day

From tyranny and oppression

But what does it mean for us today

How do we value this freedom?

 

History marks this day,

The day our country won her freedom

What was a fledgling nation,

Is now a strong people

 

I guess we all appreciate it,

 It’s historicity in our own way

But a point to ponder is,

What freedom means to you today…

Because I didn’t have an ironed kurta…

We recently had a party, for which each one of us was instructed to “be Indian” with their get up…..well i didn’t have a decent kurta at hand, so instead i decided to write this and take it to the party instead, dressed in white shirt and blue jeans….

 

What does it mean to be Indian? How can we define Indian-ness, in fact, how do we define tradition? Aren’t the definitions of these terms incumbent on the definitions of their exact opposites? In other words, we define ourselves as what we are not, rather than what we are. We define tradition as something that has past, but we still lay claim to it. Is what we see as India today, not the India in our minds? Why is it that in order to assert ourselves we always hark back to our past, to our history, saying, “We were a great people…?” Is what we are today not good enough? If that is true, then we the present generation of 20-somethings have a serious crisis on our hands. Because we are inheriting this nation as it is today. Isn’t it time we redefined ourselves? Isn’t it time we stepped back and look at ourselves, where we stand today?

Is the common thread that binds us all only in our past? We seem to be dividing ourselves further and further into smaller and smaller bits of societies and communities. Every community looks to ‘exclude’ itself from the others, looking to define themselves as not part of the rest. It seems that we are unable to come together as a nation anymore; we are a people of too many different people, who are growing increasingly intolerant. Is there nothing we have in common anymore? Maybe this is true, but then where is India headed? Can we take a look at her now?

Is wearing Levis jeans, Benetton shirts, and Nike shoes un-Indian? Is enjoying the fruits of worldwide prosperity in a globalising nation a crime? Do we like to define ourselves as everything that is non-global? We only need to look around and see that this definition is far from what the reality around us is. It is up to us, to take a critical look at it, and decide for ourselves what we want India to be. What we think today, shapes what might happen tomorrow, if we keep looking back to define ourselves, we might just get hit by the ‘reality check’ truck.

I am all for tradition, but it should not become a hindrance to a vision for the future, or cloud our sight of the present. Instead of always indulging in an easy exercise of pastiche of well-established, stereotypical images, we might want to look beyond, or rather, what is beneath our noses, the present. Can we examine the lives we are living today, think of not only what India means to us, but more importantly, what we can mean to India. Define who we are today, as a nation. Define Indian-ness today; let us start with that, we the inheritors of this nation.

 

The Age of Unreason

Crazed minds in a quest for the truth

It starts slowly as a trickle,

A small drop in the ocean

A miniscule bit, unnoticed, insignificant

I slip away, dark and crazed

Shrieks of a terror prey in my mind

Like an old scratched record

I can’t feel their agony anymore

Numbed by the pain I smile

Sardonic, sadistic,

I hold it within myself

The thoughts I clench,

A drowning man to the last reeds

It offers such hopelessness,

The invincibility of defeat,

Refusing to let go

It bursts within me

Why does it have to end like this…

Is it my destiny?

Or have I crafted it so…

But how….?… why?…

But… it couldn’t….

I sneer at my stupid arrogance,

As I slip past, I see it

The futility of my quest…

To think that I could make sense….

Of this age of unreason.

Shit.

Some people have to have their morning cuppa before they can manage to open their eyes to the world every morning. Some people prefer tea. I have known people who stumble through their day, if they are deprived of their nicotine fix before they get out of bed. Personally, I could fore go all the above, but my morning isn’t complete without my daily date with my newspaper on my pot.

If one should find happiness in the small pleasures of life, this is it for me. Nothing beats this as a morning pick-me-up, as you pick up the freshly delivered newspaper (rubber-banded & rolled or just a simple quarter-fold) from your doorstep/balcony/verandah or lawn. The birds are chirping, the air is crisp, everything seems cheery as you take a quick glance at the day’s headlines, walking back into your house. As you walk, the anticipation builds. You can feel your stomach tighten, the first urges begin, as if on cue, whetted by the news. Your step quickens as you stride towards the loo. You reach the loo, open the door, and quickly shut it behind you, turn the latch. The place is yours now. A deep breath, a quick survey of your domain, no time to lose, the contractions are coming faster. You deposit your lowers hurridly on the floor, slam the toilet seat down, any time now…Once seated, you open the broadsheet to its fullest, the foreplay now reaches its pinnacle, you scan the headlines, looking for an article to delve into. “Parliament hung…sensational triple murder…new survey shows”…the front page holds no interest..the headlines are all done…quickly you flip directly to the last page…this is more like it. Now that you have found the appropriate reading material, you prepare for the final push. The stage is set, the urges have been replaced by crazy pangs now! “Yesterday’s T20 cricket match between India and Austrailia ended in an exciting bowl out after…” This is it! You release your bowels. Thar she blows lads! A feeling of sheer bliss envelopes you, wave upon wave of relief and complete satisfaction. “India captain Dhoni marshalled his resources perfectly as India reached…” The world seems a better place just for those moments of utter happiness. One cannot adequately put to words the feeling one experiences during the time on the pot. All your cares melt away, as you get lost in the new newspaper, the smell of fresh newsprint transports you elsewhere to a magical place, but nowhere else could one find the sheer bliss that one experiences while reading on the pot.

I would have to attribute my voracious reading to this very habit, that I had inculcated quite early in my life. As a kid, I would observe and be inspired by my dad. He was (and still is) my hero, and whatever he did became the way to go for me. He introduced me to the newspaper-pot pleasures, as I watched him every morning. At first the broadsheet was a bit too big for my puny arm-span. So, I took my Dr. Suess books, then graduated to Enid Blyton’s Famous Fives, Secret Sevens, then came the Hardy boys’ series, Sherlock Holmes, TinTin comics, the evergreen Archies comics. The trip to the loo became so enjoyable that I began to visit it 3-4 times a day, much to my mom’s concern over my fickle digestion, and that left her wondering what she might have put in yesterday’s daal that might have thrown my digestive system out of gear. It became a place of recluse, of retreat. A boring chapter of Maths, an argument with mom, a boring hot afternoon at home, all of them lead to the same conclusion.

My loo has a big stack of comics on the counter, ever ready to cater to my sudden urge to retreat. I have now become an architect, and now dream of constructing my dream loo. A large dark mahogany bookshelf, fronted by a pristine ivory pot, with automatic seat height adjustment, automatic seat warmer, retractable bidet water spout, automated flush function, drier and perfume spray. And oh yeah, a newspaper rack, most definitely! All this says to me, “Come let me make an otherwise shitty experience, worth your while!” 

Her

she sat there…. waiting
gazing at the abyss….searching
the broken fragments of sorrow
piercing through the illusions of joy

cold shatters of frozen emotions
she searches for comfort….the warm folds of familiarity
a turquoise haze on the surface
hides the scars etched deep in time

the bird has flown to its flock
she has none of her own
a stranger in time, lost
startled by her intentions
or what they seem to be….

“i’ll be glad to help….”
no, i do not want to cry..
silently…she tosses it away
bolder, stronger yet fragile….

“have you given up….?”
no the journey goes on….eternal….
“then the quest rages on….”
yes it is forever,….immortal….

all i seek is a sense of belonging
or do i?
would i want to leave my own?
to have a name…..a futile existance..

“do i want to find it…?”
it is unending,…. a fruitless pursuit
the utopia of her dreams…a fools paradise
‘learn to love the pain, the hurt, the scars…such is life’

the sun dips far over the horizon
the dark is not far…..
there is a light at the end of the tunnel….
“yes i know”
she could feel the tears welling up….
“but i do not want to cry….”