Thoughts running nineteen to the dozen..

The vendor of flowers

2011-11-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

The vendor of flowers lay on the wayside pavement
his flowers strewn about him
they adorned his lowly bed and each night transported him
to a land where metal lacked worth
at the altar of Marigolds and Roses
where sleep was slept under an aromatic jasmine moon
and days spent in meadows of Lavender
to a land where counting petals was occupation
and impregnating the earth, worship
Where buzzing messengers from above
came seeking the sweet Manna of His

The vendor of flowers sleeps alone tonight
his flowers strewn about him
as the wayside pavement, his beloved’s bosom, lovingly cradles him
The stars tonight shall take him away from this wicked Nadir of Noise
Far away to his cradle land to her honey- sweetened voice
Away from this abyss where pieces of metal bought dreams
away to her address in the clouds where tender love held supreme

Tonight in the Nadir of Noise as the living dead bustled in haste
The vendor of flowers slept in silence, redolent and chaste

The Lulling Last Tune

2011-06-15T22:10:00.001-07:00

The Pianist’s fingers waltzed daintily on the black and white keys of his Steinway and out came tumbling the lilting, honey drunken notes. Clear as crystalline dew drops, warm as dreams of loved ones, grey as monsoon clouds, now fast and confident, now shy and reticent, now slow, now breathless, now angry and gurgling, they told his story to the looming dark clouds, they sang his lore to the crying winds outside. From the stream of whiskey that snaked from the bottle that lay on the carpet, to the revolver that lay by his side, his material and immaterial audiences sighed and listened intently to his lulling last tune, their tune, swaying violently to the turbulent winds that rocked his little dwelling by the brook.

He played for her tonight, he played to her shadows, he let his fingers translate the dictate of his heart as the notes searched for her in the empty, desolate corners of his existence, searched for her beautiful voice in the dark, dusty air of his dwelling. They wanted to reach out to her, to tell her of his dark madness, to remind her, that one last touch of remembrance, of a loving kiss kissed, of a once earnest promise promised, of love that had once been and of a fragile mind that has lost to the heart in the race.

Elsewhere, she knotted her rich finery, bejeweled with her present and future with someone else’s. Yet, as she rose, a listless swan, to walk after him, around the fiery, holy, flame, an inadvertent song sprang in her heart and sweetly, she sang with him his lulling last tune.
His one hand rose from the keys and groped for his gun. Still playing with the other hand, he picked it up and rested his forefinger on the cold metallic crescent inside the ring.

As a thumb bloodied itself with vermillion, her song reached it’s coda, she knew she loved him, and for this folly she’d die anew everyday. Oh what a colossal folly. The time was now to act, to undo what was being done…
Two clear shots rang out amidst the windy carousel that night and her breasts exploded in a burst of red. Amidst all the hell breaking loose around her she fell in a flurry of flowers and jewels, her knot broke with a snap. The retreating, panicking well-wishers split to reveal the Pianist in the crowd. The silvery, wispy smoke from his gun coiled and hung low in the night air as he strode up to where she lay.
Her forehead bore no sign of red, the thick garlands, she had broken and the sacred, nuptial necklace followed a snaking, winding course of gold and black beads over the flowing red river.

“She was on her way back to you, you fool, on her way back to YOU…” cried someone.

For a split moment a crimson, ruby spangled crown formed on the fluvial stream of blood and disappeared immediately as a salty drop dissolved in it.

The air was split by another deafening report.

Beams of light from an early morning sun ushered in numerous tiny, illuminated particles of dust that seemed to come dancing all the way from the skies above like little blessings. In his bright, little chamber the Pianist cradled her in his arms lovingly and gazed into her auburn eyes as little songbirds chirped heartily at his windowsill. The little dwelling overlooked a luscious, green meadow by a busy, bubbling brook whose cool waters cascaded onto little terraces of moss covered rocks and formed playful concentric currents in the soft shadow of ferns growing on the edges of the water.
A pair of hands descended gently upon the old Steinway’s keys and drummed out a familiar allegro. At length, they were joined by another pair, dainty and small. Her demure fingers almost instinctively trailed his tune and played a subtler melodic progression to it and suddenly, they felt, they had known this intro. This faintly sweet melody, now fast and confident, now shy and reticent, now slow, now breathless, now angry and gurgling, a lulling last tune… their lulling last tune?

In some past life, perhaps, in another earthly existence.

And so sat the Pianist and his love painting the air with a lovely sonata, now fast and confident, now shy and reticent, now slow, now breathless, now angry and gurgling, a lulling last tune, their lulling last tune!

2011-04-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

What a fucking travesty albums can be, you stick material memories on them...and then when you lose them, they're gone forever!

My mind's an album too but with a difference. One day it captured eyes, her eyes...that is one memory I could do without but no, it just wouldn't go, just wouldn't go especially when I am in the higher rungs of consciousness, her eyes would stick there, even if someday I went insane, they'd fucking stick there, fucking annoying.

The hearts a picture book of images one doesn't need, burn it

2011-04-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

Its only alcohol baby, wouldnt kill me
although I wish it did
....sometimes, not always though
they say it benumbs you to your pains...

bullshit

you cant feel your limbs, your face or your eyes...
cause it leaves you alone...
isolated with a buzz in your ears and an ache in your heart
it leaves you alone
you and your heart, alone
you and your mind, alone

Alcohol is your estranged love, another bottle please.

2011-02-28T02:45:00.000-08:00

As he soared skywards, strains of his mother’s voice surrounded him, her sonorous voice echoed in every unit of his physical being and he for the first time felt safe, safe in the cradle of her voice.

His heart, which had drummed ceaselessly inside him ever since the attack was announced, was allayed now.

His mother was there, with him, right by his side, as he, gripping the throttle, pushed it forward.

As his battle chariot took to the skies, he briefly shut his eyes.

“Ma, shed not your tears? Rejoice, as I shall soon return to you, as the bright rays of the sun that shine on your beautiful face every dawn when you rise, as the young flower that you tend to in the garden, in the sweet waft of your puja incense, I shall visit you as heaven’s drops that sweeten the wet earth, you shall find me in the cool morning air, ma, you shall find me in your arms every time you think of me, crying, bundled in white, you shall find me sitting by your bedside every night as you shut your eyes, you shall, find me in the eyes of my brothers who fly today with me.”

As he fell, fell from an alien sky far away, his mother arose and smelled the morning air as golden rays from the sun washed her beautiful face.

2011-01-31T00:51:00.001-08:00

I felt what an explosion, what a bomb blowing up on my face would feel like. It’s fucking painful!

Now there’s peace, there’s music playing at the back of my head and my feet are rising up in the air, whatever I am thinking, is all in singsong, first the thought then the same, very same words in singsong…fucking singsong.

And then you appear, a drop of the Sun, a radiant drop of the Sun (fucking singsong!) and a faint but haunting pain burns my stomach and chokes my throat (fucking singsong!) and I wish God hadn’t given me the heart (fucking singsong!) and you, those eyes.

Open your doors, oh home of mine

2010-10-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

A wandering bird always returns to its nest.

As the long, hard day meanders towards a conclusion the bird seeks refuge. No matter where he flutters off to when there is light in the sky, no matter how far he wanders, no matter how long it takes him to find food, he always manages to return where he belongs, home, warmly ensconced in his comforting nest. Snug and safe.

My decision to shake off all apprehensions and lethargy and return to the refuge of writing again, makes me such a bird. I am trying to find my way back home again. Neither the aestivating forces of a broken heart nor the painful ravages at the wake of a prolonged phase of ill fortune could restrain me for very long.

He who said that first love always remains the first; no matter how many times your heart opens its doors for others, couldn’t have been more correct. I am coming back.

I

2010-09-09T22:49:00.001-07:00

I am my best friend, my biggest might I am
I am my lone savior, my trusted confidant
I am my own hero, my handsome champion
A stranger lives in my mirror all day, my biggest fear I am

My hiccups with hook ups

2010-06-02T00:23:00.000-07:00

A few days ago a friend commented on one of my blog-posts, saying that it seemed to him as though I had hit a purple patch with writing! A dazzling compliment, although I sincerely doubt my worthiness of it, what with the annoyingly juvenile approach towards most of my subjects, the whiny-ness and the rather knotty manner of my writing, I thank him for his kindness. It’s true, last week saw a sudden spate of short posts covering a range of issues that was becoming too irksome for endurance and I needed to get the load off my chest. You can find the posts below.

My point is, I go through these fleeting phases of eventfulness before its time again to plunge into the horizontalness of everyday existence and I feel a dire need, an almost incontrollable push to record these events, scribble these happenings down and share them with everybody. That’s what spurs me to shoot off post after post. It’s a need. It’s addictive, and I don’t have problems writing them down in between work. It’s an old habit.

This one though, concerns a slightly different issue but an equally nudging one;

Like some of my more recent posts, this concerns an admission and yes there is no shame in this one either. It’s just another crumb of truth and I suffer little indignity in declaring that I have been single forever, yes, that I have been for merely one date, maybe two thus far. I only remember one of them as being a textbook ‘date’ as the other was conveniently christened a ‘meet-up’ (not by me). At 25 I have never had a girlfriend and neither have I been in any sort of relationship. So there!

My equation with singlehood can be best expressed as a love-hate one. I love it and hate it and sometimes both at the same time! Akin to most things that constitute my life, both are twisted with each other, mixed so inextricably that I sometimes find it difficult to evaluate if I am better off singled or mingled. My mother attributes it to my dressing sense, left to her she'd make sure I go to bed every night in a Tuxedo and wear a Sherwani at home on holidays. My little sister thinks I am too aloof and often proodish and dad thankfully never comments on such things.

Over these years many of my well meaning friends, and I say so without the slightest uncertainty or suspicion of their benevolence and well meaning-ness, have taken the trouble and attempted to hook me up with someone or the other they knew. Now to be very honest here I have never exactly seen the Devil in this. Never, really!
I mean, if you are someone, apparently, so thoroughly incapable of finding a woman for himself that his friends finally decide to take charge of things, it’s supposed to be a nice thing, right? Why then does this spoon-feeding tweak, twirl, poke and prod my conscience?

Something about it doesn’t feel right, something I can’t put a finger on…but I’ll try nonetheless.

Although, I have the audacity in claiming that my charms, if any, are perfectly functional and no matter how feeble and ineffective they may have proven on women over these years, even so much as an answered SMS or a returned smile is a tiny personal triumph. Call it what you may, I am content with it. Even though, clearly inadequate, it is what I can do with what I have been given and I hope to get better eventually.
Introducing two people with the deliberate intention of getting them to date each other is beyond embarrassing and I refuse to endorse the ‘last resort’ theory.
So, with no offence at all to anybody, I am not in favor of being hooked to someone with the purpose of getting hitched.

Even though I don’t know what it is, I have my own game going.

The Khudiram Boses of the streets of Kolkata …

2010-05-25T23:09:00.001-07:00

It’s queer. If it’s the same everywhere else, I do not know or whether it is, as I think, just another idiosyncrasy of Kolkatans, I don’t know either. But leaving aside the fact that it’s dangerous, it’s also extremely annoying and more often than never I get an overpowering urge to ask my driver to pull over, get out of the car and give the bloke a smack on his head. It’s a different thing that I do not actually do it.

It’s an established fact, more like an aphorism that the people’s traffic sense in Kolkata is less than nil, but I am talking about the way roads are crossed here. It’s appalling.

Contrary to the general idea, displays of near suicidal attempts to cross roads can be witnessed when the streets have rather sparse traffic. Our subject waits for the nearest speeding car to get dangerously close and then dashes across suddenly, leaping, bounding and lolloping across the road, barely missing the mudguard of the passing car by mere inches he managing to keep his balance precariously, his toes just about touch the banks of the pavement on the other side and he salvages himself as the car whizzes past him missing him by centimeters. Clothes fluttering in the strong draft of the vehicle just passed, he leaves the driver shocked and often disoriented. He prefers to risk his life and that of the car driver’s rather than wait for it to pass and then comfortably walk across. No, where’s the fun, where’s the rush in that, where’s the challenge?

Would it be fanciful to assume for a moment that such impulsive actions have something to do with ambitions of martyrdom engendering from deep rooted frustrations, that these spurt from, a burning realization of failure seething in some hidden corner of the blood pumping appendage of this city’s inhabitant’s? Do such brash and irresponsible heroic acts help allaying, by some unknown palliative, the agony inside? A badly mistaken and decontextualized idea of martyrdom we have then. If you have a yen for Adrenalin-pumping action, the streets are not your playground.

On the other hand, there are drunks, the handicapped and unfortunate imbeciles who are incapacitated inherently from employing good judgement. Sadly, not much can be done about them.

The Scorpioid curse…

2010-05-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

About three months back something happened. Something terrible. Although we were expecting it, people spoke of it in hushed tones, but the day it came, it wreaked an overwhelming assault on everybody and left in me a deep, throbbing gash in its wake. All of us who knew him struggled to come to terms with what had happened. I for one, did not want to accept it although I stood outside his room in the hospital looking at his face, still and cold while the paper work was being finished. Fate leaves no survivors.

A boy of eighteen, the son of an acquaintance, someone we had seen growing up over the years into a rather nice, amiable young boy, Guddu had started falling ill very frequently. He was shown to a doctor who naively dismissed his ailment as mere bouts of influenza and one day when things went out of hand, prescribed him a day or two in the nursing home and a barriage of tests for the poor boy to be put through.

It was a rainy evening when Gautam Kaku called. Interestingly enough, I was again the one to answer the call. Its strange that, in the past, everytime my family has received bad news over the phone, I was the one who received it first and had to suffer the ordeal of breaking it to everybody else. Once again I had to walk up to dad and mom and tell them that someone else was either gravely ill or dead.
Guddu had been detected with throat cancer. My head reeled.

The following years saw a desperate battle during which the boy had to be flown between Bombay, Delhi, Ahmedabad and back to Kolkata sometimes for as little as a single injection. It left his gradually weakening body ravaged and endless sessions of Chaemotherapy turned him into another person altogether, someone whom we didnt know, someone who looked totally different from the healthy, plump boy we had known. He started losing hair rapidly and became a bag of bones in some six short months. In between he showed signs of improvement which gave birth to a renewed zeal in his father who had a bone marrow transplantation or some such thing done on him. Then followed pujas and visits to numerous places for divine propitiation. But about three months before it all ended, Guddu started sliding back to the same darkness that his family fought so hard to keep at bay.

The day he passed away he expressed a desire to taste some ice cream. As his mother, frail from the years of mental agony, put the last spoon full of ice cream in his mouth, he held both his parents hands close to him and shut his eyes. Our Guddu was on his way to the other side. I still see the boy's face sometimes when I shut my eyes. As a kid he once told me how much he loved Bruce Lee and wanted to take up Karate classes but his mother wouldnt let him, she was scared he'd get hurt.

The curse took both my grandparents, a few friends and quite a few relatives and surprisingly most of them never smoked or drank in their lives.
What inspired me to write this was, last evening I came to know that an old neighbour of ours was dying of the disease and was in her final stages, the only available cure to which is prayer.

About a century back people used to die of diseases like Tuberculosis and Cholera. Over the years the former became a treatable malady while the latter, eradicated in many countries.
The thought that peeves me is that, about fifty years from now if and when the cure to this scorpioid curse is finally found, a lot of people will wish it had surfaced a few years earlier.

I still remember my grandma lamenting the loss of her best friend who had died of TB many years back. How she wished they had come up with the cure a little earlier.

Of Stagging it to the theatre

2010-05-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked an important day in my life. I made a resolution of sorts. More like a self-assertive decision which goes somewhat to the effect of; “I shall not whine about not having anybody to take to the movies and I shall go watch a movie if and when I feel like doing so, alone and unencumbered, if that’s what circumstances require”.

After weeks of deferring my plans of watching certain movies that I have waited eagerly for awhile, hoping I’d finally find someone to take along, I decided to stop being a loser and head off to watch Iron-Man 2 all by myself. I felt proud. I was completely overcome with joy at this little personal triumph and wallowed in a self-congratulatory feeling of victory at such an ill-fortune-vanquishing stand. Kudos!

I stood gaunt and proud as the escalator escalated me to the second floor of South City mall which houses the pompous and ridiculously expensive Fame theatre. As I walked past the bench-fulls of canoodling couples I shot them an arrogant side glance. I didn’t need an arm candy to enjoy a good movie. Besides, it was economical too, had I been taking someone along I’d inevitably end up paying for her ticket, miserably losing the fierce internal battle between my perceptions of a gentlemanly gesture and just being practical and going Dutch by asking her for her share of the ticket money. This one battle, I have ALWAYS lost.

Nevertheless, I marched right up to the ticket counter and as I looked up at the screen above that flashed the show timings and rates my heart sank. There was only a single show for Iron Man 2, that too as late as half past ten at night.

Drat!

Even if I went for it, it would invoke my parent’s right to subject me to excruciatingly prolonged badgering the whole of the following morning about my complete disregard for ‘rules’ and insensitiveness. At this juncture, in my life I am prepared to endure pretty much anything, anything but lecturing. I have had enough of that and more.

Clenching my fists I turned around and headed back to the parking area. If being single isn’t that big a pain in the ass, unreasonable movie timings definitely is!

My initiation to the agency life...

2010-05-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

So here I am, at Rediffusion Young & Rubicam, Kolkata as a trainee Copywriter cum ad ideator. I sincerely wonder why the name ‘copywriter’ still exists when the integral process that defines our work has come to involve ideating, mainly. Coming up with as many creative solutions to a brief as possible, wording those ideas as briefly and comprehensively as possible then zeroing in on the most feasible ones till you reach that winner of an idea that is presented first before your Creative Director and pending his approval, the client, is what we do.

We should all be re-christened ‘ad ideators’ with copywriting or art direction being our chosen modes of work, since the main job of every creative essentially is to come up with ‘ideas’, right?

Going through the work of the likes of Indra Sinha, Paul Arden, Neil French, all three of whom now share space with the pantheon of Gods that occupy the religious segment of my mind, one wonders if they should at all be called ‘copywriters’. In my opinion they transcended to great writers the day they began writing ads like the public service campaign for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy or the Volkswagon campaign much before their literary accomplishments came about.

Among other things, the energy here is unbelievable. It’s a different sort of energy. You have to join in the flow soon enough else you might be left standing on the banks looking despondently at the river rush by and I of all people can’t afford that.

ATM Pirates & Meditators

2010-05-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

No, they may not always be stupid. I smell maleficence most of the time.
He hangs around the corner sneakily, waiting till you disembark from your vehicle and head towards the ATM. Just before you reach for the door handle he swoops in for the kill. About a millisecond before your hand touches the cold metal of the door handle he inserts his card inside the slot from underneath your armpit unlocking the door quickly, smiles a teethy one and slips in with vulpine ease through the ajared door and you’re left standing outside, wondering how someone could have pulled that off considering you were less than six inches away from the ATM door!

I call them ATM pirates. Loserly lowlifes. Although they may not eye your wallet or make a go at your bag (although I am not entirely ruling out such a possibility by their kind) their conduct is no less repulsive.

There is another category of ATM users that I abhor. The ‘meditator’, the ‘ATM procrastinator’ is what I like to call such individuals. These people stand before the machine and get lost in deep contemplation. Even though the screen flashes as simple a question as, ‘Would you like a receipt for your transaction?’ with an option of YES or NO, the object of my utter frustration will stand right there, index finger on chin, ruminating, contemplating the deeper implications of answering that question, like the existence of him, his family and possibly the whole of humanity depended on his answer.

It’s completely justified to take a minute or two to decide how much money needs to be withdrawn or to recall the PIN code, but it’s utterly unacceptable to indulge in self-reflection and profound thought, especially when there are others waiting in a long queue outside.

ATM meditator, if you’re reading this, make up your mind beforehand on how much money you would want to withdraw for starters, then recollect the PIN and decide whether you need the receipt before entering the ATM. Also, take all the cash out in bulk, then divide it and tuck it in any corner, fold or inbuilt pocket of your under pant that your heart desires (after giving due consideration to the fact that people are watching). DO NOT withdraw in installments and then take forever to decide where to hide them each time.

You are an annoying pestilence, thats what you are!

On being 25 and living with parents

2010-05-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

It causes me little shame in proclaiming that I am 25 and like many others who fall in the same age group and nationality as mine, I live with my parents.
In the UK almost a third of men and a fifth of women aged between 20 and 34 live at home with their parents, according to a survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics in 2009. In the US more and more young adults are known to prefer staying home citing recession as the main reason. Although, mine is a different saga, I just gave up a high paying job for something that pays me a twelve year old's weekly allowance every month:

Being 25 and living with parents has its perks and shortfalls, both so inextricably intertwined and mutually inclusive that when it finally comes to moving out, things tend to become difficult because you try to figure out whether moving out, after all is that good an idea. You're torn between all the great 'home' things you'll miss and the uncollared freedom of living alone.

So, perks first:

1) No rent. Yes, no rent and no electricity or mortgage payment either. Its all taken care of on time and so are the telephone bills. Also during summers, the central air conditioning and in the winters, mom covering you up at night when your blanket slips away.

2) Transportation. Again, no shame here either. I am not allowed to have a bike and my driving skills are err...better left undiscussed. Therefore, sole solution at hand is dad's car.

3) Food. As much of it as you like and often, how you like it too. This aspect alone justifies it all. Our cook transcends all superlatives and when mom joins forces, it raises the waters in my eyes and tongue alike!

4) Dad's wardrobe. This may not hold true for a lot of you but for those like me who have a rather old school-ish sense of dressing, dad's vast wardrobe can come in handy more often than never.

5) Club visits. Now the luxuries. Every visit to the club/clubs for 'a drink' gets debited to your dad's membership account while your's lay untouched for ever. So even if its for a relaxing massage or a scented steam bath or even a trip to the sauna, its covered.

6) The social-angle. Such attendances often prove to be more lucrative than one can imagine. In such parties, every so often someone shows up and introduces his/her pretty, nubile daughter/s to your parents and you stand there pretending not to have been noticed till you too are summoned and introduced. Whether you can take things further from there shall subsequently establish whether you really are a gameless loser or just a loser, you know, the garden variety.

And now, for a more realistic appreciaition, the shortcomings;

1) The ubiquitous in-time. Even if the gig kicks off at 10.00 pm, you have to report to base by 10.30. No two ways about it. Any act of defiance shall meet with phsychotically repetitive calls on your phone and possible deprivation of dinner.

2) No alcohol policy. Many a chilly winter evening have I approached my Scotch sipping old man seeking a drop or two of that spangling golden decadence and instead received a discource on alcoholism and palpable signs of 'alcoholic inclinations' in me. He would base all of his apprehensions on that half a peg of Scotch he had administered to me some six months ago.

3) Constant criticism and comparisons with people. Leave this to the professionals. Irrespective of subject matter, time and place my mother reserves the ability to turn on and off the tap with great deftness each time.

4) "You have terrible dressing sense"
"Why are your trousers hanging so low?"
"Tuck that shirt, TUCK that shirt!!"
"NO, no fast bikes"
"Its impolite to fart so loudly, you'll scare grandma..go find a corner"
"Dont sneeze so loudly, you're giving me an aneurysm"
"Always look left then right then left then right before crossing the road"
"You have no common sense"
"Why is there a folder full of girly videos in my E-Drive, why are they ALL topless?"
"Peanuts are fattening"
"Coconuts are fattening"
"Cold water is fattening"
"Eat your veggies else no muttonm for you"
"Wear your grandpa's sweater, you look so handsome in it, for MY sake"
"Why dont you wear those chaddis(underpants) that I got you last month, so what if they are red and pink in colour and have cartoon characters on them?"
"Did you really have to say that to Mr Sengupta, is this what we have taught you, is this how you treat your parents?"
"You call that a haircut, you look like a POW?"
"Go to sleep, what are you doing up so late? Its 10.30 pm for God's sake!"
"What is this trash you're listening to? Why is he screaming so loudly?"
"When I was a young man........."
"When your grandpa was a young man...."
"You'll never get a girlfriend"
"CHEW your food"
"Eat with your mouth shut, dont be uncouth"
"Why do you sleep with your mouth open?"
"Why was you mouth shut tonight?"
"Wear these rings, they'll bring you good fortune"
"My son, you have screwed up your life"
"You ate all the grapes? Use the other bathroom tomorrow"
"Why is your face bloated? I hope you are not doing drugs"
"You are putting on way too much weight"

Till about five years back such admonitions would have been justified on the basis that their subject was not matured enough to make his own decisions and lacked judgment. Now, it causes exhasperation.

Nevertheless, this is not meant to be a rant, just my take on living with one's folks. Yes, I am writing this after a lost fight with my parents over a late night movie plan with my colleagues at work.

By the way...

2010-05-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

A-ha! look who is back after a prolonged hiatus from his once favourite passtime, what a delightful surprise!
A lot has been going on in my life lately. Its interesting, the mathematics of it, how and when things take place in the human life. One minute you are in limbo, nothing seems to be happening, good or bad and then all of a sudden things start happening, tumbling out of fate's wallet, again, good or bad, they rush in like a vertiginous tornado reshuffling and rearranging your life at the bat of an eyelid and leave you completely bewildered in their wake. You never realise it. Like a guerilla attack in a dense jungle. Swift and effective.
So after months of boredom and frustration I finally got 'taken in' at Rediffusion Young & Rubicam as a trainee copywriter & ad ideator at their Kolkata office. I start work later this week. A pretty exciting developement this, considering I was not required to 'roam the streets under the sun all day long with my resumae held underneath my armpit' for this one. To put it in a way so as not to sound too prudish, a few lucky 'associations' struck over the last few months at a couple of parties did it for me. A few calls, a swift interview, a copy test and it was done. I am thankful to all who have had a role in this.
Athough what I'll be making per month as a rookie at Rediffusion would run out if I bought a chewing gum every morning on my way to work, the training I expect to get is really what I am looking forward to.
All of this has also brought me to somewhat of a dilemma, a knot in the line. Now I am at a loss as to whether I should go ahead with applying to WestHearts college or Bucks in the UK for a Post Grad course in Creative Advertising. Many say, once the door to an agency has opened up to you theres no need for further education. Agreed. But I have always wanted to study in Vilayat, big dreams, long story...what do I do of that? Besides my aunt has agreed to accomodate me at her place in London in case I were to go, the offer may not subsist if I went later and in such an event I would have to cough up three times my course fee on accomodation, travel, food and alcohol. Time is running out, the courses start in September, this year.
I hope my next post talks about a decision on this.
Finally, I intend to get myself a pair of those thick framed 'geek' glasses in a day or two, must look the part.

An ‘odd’ fixation

2010-02-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

It’s strange to be blogging after so long. Truth be told I am a little scared. Although my love for writing remains intact my inclination to blog has diminished over time. I have little idea why this is so. It maybe one of those things that captures your interest in the beginning and with time your obsession with it heightens to a climax when it becomes a part of your way of life, but then gradually, for some reason the love starts to wane before you completely decide to be off it and for good. Or it could just be the testing times I am going through. It has lately been putting me off a lot of things I love to do.
I have been debating with myself as to whether its time I gave my blogs, all the three of them, a more serious picture. Like, integrating them and turning them into purpose driven journals with the aim to talk about only one issue, be it Advertising (ah yes, advertising reminds me that there’s a lot that needs to be covered, my departure from Blogger has indeed been inordinately long) or music or whatever it is I decide to write about, a focused blog and not something haphazard.
On the other hand, I could just leave them the way they are; one, a bullshit blog meant to collate my most bizarre ponderings among other zany and totally pointless ramblings; this one, a regular diary, if I twisted an ankle in the staircase I would write about it here; and finally, the third and my favourite, “Gods got a twisted sense of humour..!” which is a documentation of all things memorable and not so memorable in my life. What else are blogs meant for afterall?
Honestly, I miss those days when I could just and belt out anything that came to my mind. Just about anything. The language I used was the voice that spoke from inside. Word to word and not the slightest bit of it was revised or corrected for perfect grammar or context. Now, that to me is true blogging and that was what I loved. Nowadays, I am simply afraid to write. I judge my writing a lot and I take it a bit too seriously, so seriously that I am afraid to sit and write down anything that flies through the doors of my mind. And why is that? It’s mainly because the grammar obviously wouldn’t be right. The content might not be so profound. I might not be able to do it the justice it deserves and the biggest fear of all, in my attempt to polish all grammatical errors off my writing I might end up diluting the very essence of the words and most importantly, the feeling that I set out to emote. But at the end of it all, it still far from perfect and that frustrates me.
Now, I will, for a moment digress from the present topic to talk about another pretty worrying situation I am facing. I feel it has got something to with my predicament as described above. What you are about to read may appear funny but it definitely wouldn’t be so if you were the one to face it and yes, it took me a lot of courage to write about it here.
I have never talked about this to anyone before and I would not have either, untill tonight, when I realised that this could actually lead to something serious. I am sure I hinted on it in a previous blog entry where I wrote about my uncontrollable habit of washing my hands repeatedly till I am convinced they are completely rid of any living organism, good or bad. But I feel my readers should know about this.
I have of late begun repeating words in my head feverishly, over and over again for no reason at all and I am doing it right now as I type. For example, if I hear a word I like, I feel a strong, almost insane need to repeat it in my head for a definite number of times till I feel satisfied. In my case it is mostly 11 times or any odd number, even number wouldn’t do. I have to repeat those words 11 times in my head and say them aloud 11 times. I can’t control it. I have always had this problem and initially it was much worse, if I scratched one ear I would have to compulsively scratch the other. Before leaving a room I would turn on and off the lights 11 times. If I looked at a person a certain way, I’d repeat it 11 times with that person standing right in front me watching me do it. I have been able to work my way out of that madness successfully but little things like, if my tapped my left finger twice I will have to tap that very same finger on the right hand twice and if I tapped one extra time by mistake I’d have to tap the left finger one extra time to balance the number of taps, still exist till date. Also, I tend to repeat facial expressions and I do it on the sly for obvious reasons but it’s hard, very hard.
I pray for my parents lives every fifteen minutes as a voice inside my head keeps repeating stubbornly that I am going to lose them. I have tried to work my way around the problem by instead trying to think they’d live longer but it doesn’t work.

I see a certain disorder at work here and I am at my wits end as to how to set it right. I guess I am still in denial and wouldn’t call it OCD yet but I know I am getting there slowly. It’s scary how obsessed I am with the proportionality of things and how I hate people walking behind me. It scares me like nothing else to be walking down an empty street with someone walking behind me even if he were several meters away. This is perhaps why I hated playing chase as a kid. It would send chills down my spine to have someone on my tail and I would run for my dear life.
Now, having said all this, I see my mad fixation with grammatical correctness of even the smallest of sentences I write, as an extension of this strange anomaly. That’s why the fear.

of The JB…

2009-12-22T01:42:00.001-08:00

The foot opposite the Standard Chartered Bank branch near Kolkata High Court isn’t exactly the place one would expect to find such things lying around, especially, if you know that the sort of people that work or live around that area wouldn’t know of the existence of such a thing as Bourbon and that too JB.

Some one around clearly has very good taste and knows his Bourbon..

The fever

2009-11-12T00:38:00.001-08:00

I am in office and I can feel the fever coming. My shoulders feel heavy, like someone just slung bags full of lead over them and my head is throbbing with pain.
My eyes are dizzy. Now ,thats a good thing cause its fun watching hazy images of people floating around and nothing that anybody tells you registers.
Makes it easier to face impending troubles. I dont need to see these people.
So everyone should get a little fever every now and then.

Weird stuff...GOOD stuff!

The Piscine Passion

2009-11-02T02:28:00.000-08:00

Never separate a simple man from his cheese they say. In this part of the continent the saying enjoys a slightly different variation; here in Bengal we never separate a Bengali from his fish!
I experienced a nonchalant display of such fixation early yesterday at the fish bazaar. Now, unless it is obvious, there is nothing I hate more than having to wake up early on a Sunday morning and being sent off to buy fish without even being given a cup of tea. I had to be the only customer in that smelly, slushy, fly plagued market who after ordering his fish stood photographing everything around him!

“Aare dada, maccher chokh deke bole deova jaye she mach bhalo kina…!”
(You can look into the eyes of a fish and tell whether it is good quality or not!),

“Mamaaaa……Ami Puri-te giye shudhui Katla, Koi, Ilish, Rui, Nadosh, Pabda, Bhola, Bhetki ja peyechi gaande- pinde shatiyechi…jibon amar sarthok holo guru!”
(Duuude…. I visited Puri and voraciously ate whatever fish I could find; now my existence makes sense (followed by a long list of fish))

“Peti norom hova chai, NOROM, tita hole nebo na!”
(The stomach needs to be SOFT, I will not accept it if its bitter!)

"Phees Cutlet, Phees Phry, Phees Chop, Phees Kobiraji, Phees Phingar, Phees Pulao, Phees-er jhol, Shorsher-tele bhaja Ilish-er gaada, jast Phees!"

(A food-shack owner screaming out his fish-menu to passer-bys!)

Watch the Bengali argue with a fish vendor over the quality of fish and you will get a fair idea how Plato and Socrates would have debated a Metaphysical phenomenon or Western Philosophical theory; the knowledge and ingenuity thrown across at each other is just unsurpassable!

"Deem chharan, Deemta chhariye alada kore deen, bhaja khabo!!" (remove the eggs and pack them separately, I'll fry them!!), I said to the fish vendor as he removed a blob of eggs from the belly of my two kilo Rui and kept it aside.

I am one of them too.

The Recession hit Kolkata Cuppa

2009-10-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

Cant live without these, I'll admit that first off. Over the months though, the size of the average 'Bhaand' everywhere has shrunken distinctly.

Yesterday I was seated at Bankshall Court waiting for my case to be called on and realising I had time to sneak a chai I ushered a chai-walla lurking nearby. The minute he produced this dwarfed earthen pot I made a face to which his reply was priceless.

"Reesheshaan" (Recession), he said.

I bought one of these for Rs2/- like the quintessential, overpaying recession hit customer and needless to say, the 'reesheshaanary' (recessionary) earthen pot was dry after I took a single draught.

So whoever said, recession hits everything, DID afterall have Kolkata's 'Bhaander Cha-walla' in mind while making his inference!

And salutaions to the chai-walla for keeping abreast!

An ode to Cad-B

2009-10-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

Honestly, this was a long time coming. I had earlier been introduced to the Cad-B shake during the final months of college in Pune but could never remember to write about the blessed thing. For the uninitiated, Cad-B shake is the thickest chocolate shake on the planet and by ‘thick’ I mean REALLY thick and viscous, in near freezing temperatures you can invert the glass for as long as you want and the thing won’t even flow out!

To add heavily to its sinfully addictiveness is a heap of grated chocolate spread generously on its surface, served frozen for the maximum near-orgasmic pleasure!

You can get these shakes in two sizes, Half and Full and boy you should see the difference between the two! The Full Cad-B shake is a universe of chocolate and you can’t dig deep enough into its thick, brown depths to scoop out those little chunks of chocolate floating inside.

I have often fantasised about the Cad-B shake and imagined wonderful variations of it. What if there was a Strawberry Cad-B, with chunky strawberries floating around deep in the chocolate? Maybe a Honey Cad-B with a dollop of honey on the chocolate grating..? Or for that matter even a Caramel, Mocha or a Mint Cad-B…!

If you are new to Pune or have never tasted the beverage before, maybe you should take a walk down to Deep Bangla Chowk or Kamla Nehru Park (among other places) and have one, maybe two, you can never get enough of Cad-B!

Warning: It is not meant for the “Oh I ate a pea I am gonna get fat..!” kind.

The constant duel

2009-10-13T03:02:00.001-07:00

My present predicament has brought me to a face off between philosophy and pragmatism. All my prior decisions and actions have been taken favouring the latter whereas the former has always been set aside as fantasy, as romantic ‘gas-balloons’, gas-balloons that eventually get lost in the sky or pop.

I was standing at the edge of a cliff all this time and the coup de grace has just come through, I have finally, more or less come to terms with myself on a decision I am going to take pretty soon but this time its philosophy I am going to go with.

Philosophy, a refuge for the confused, the dazed, individuals seeking answers deep within themselves, introspecting all the time.

We shall see if philosophy brings me happiness, satiation. Mine is a rarely trodden path, a path for the brave, a walk in the hills at night, blindfolded, a path for those who are willing to endure pain in order to pursue their aspirations, an image, a single image of the perfect future.

I think its motivation that’s more like the gas-balloons, they either get lost high up in the sky or pop. It’s the motivation that needs to be garnered, protected.

A strong, single minded focus is the binding string, faith being the fabric.

Sam

2009-09-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

Its Sam’s turn now. He leaves on the 15th of this month for Cardiff to pursue his MBA. I called him a little while back to have one of those last pre-departure chats. A Trademark “Bol Bail-ke-Bulle” (I decline to translate that) greeted me from the other side and immediately an overwhelming pain welled up inside. Although the guy kept insisting he would come back after his course was done and take up a job at Pune, I know and I am sure he does too, that this probably was going be it. The point where Sam leaves the nest.
The process began with Babu leaving Pune in 2006, Karan Singh around the same time for Mumbai and then Jeetu, followed by Bikram who eventually came back and finally myself in 2008. Mayukh plans to leave in about a year or so. Although Jeetu keeps coming down from Aurangabad and catches up with Bikram and Mayukh da, Babu hasn’t been to Pune for a while.
I dare to think what would become of Pune in about two or three years from now. Bikram would be gone and so would Mayukh da. The city for me wouldn’t be complete without the rest of the seven. The city would be the same as what it was in the monsoon of 2003 when I first set foot in it as a lone stranger. There wouldn’t be much of a point visiting it alone.
Before hanging up I wished Sameer all the very best. I couldn’t tell him how much I would miss him, I wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but if you’re reading this Sam, Carpe Diem man! Get back soon, Ehsaas hasn’t played its best gig yet!

Palone in the rain

2009-09-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday taught me that you can have fun irrespective of the company, place or situation, only if you want to. That day I was pretty sure a few places in Kolkata were on their way to getting completely submerged under water, the incessant rainfall accompanied by storm like winds made it impossible for anyone to have a Saturday night out. Every street in the city was flooded and it just wouldn't cease to rain.

I had been out earlier that afternoon to meet an old friend and have a drink with him but that plan went up the chimney when he showed up badly sozzled and apologetically begged me to call the plan off, reluctantly I obliged, put him in a taxi and sent him off silently cursing him under my breath for having made me wait for almost two and a half hours while he was at another party guzzling away....

With a heavy-ish heart I made off to meet another friend of mine who lived nearby to salvage whatever was left of my Saturday evening. The both of us were in need. He wasnt feeling well and needed someone to talk to and I needed a beer. By the time I had marched half way through his place the heavens had begun spraying the city with a renewed vengeance and the winds had gotten worse. My umbrella barely managed to protect my upper half while my lower half suffered punishing lashes of wind and rain. Walking like a maniac I reached his place in about fifteen minutes , wet and pretty mad at the sheer injustice of it all.

I hadnt reached the guy's doorstep when I heard his voice from the terrace above; "Dude, dont come in, lets go out for a walk instead!"

"...only if we're getting beer!"

Within seconds he was downstairs looking ridiculous in his see-through, plastic rain-coat, a huge picnic umbrella and a silly grin on his face.

A daunting task, walking a kilometer and a half to the nearest beer store, the odds were, getting fearfully wet because of the cyclonic conditions outside, drowning and ending up in some ditch, getting run over by a speeding car blinded by the wind and rain, stepping into a drain overflowing with the filthiest water mankind has ever seen and the likes. A silent prayer and off we were.

The tiny gullys that make inlets into neighbourhoods are the worst to tackle during such heavy rains as the levels of accumulated water could get very high, sometimes as high as your privates, maybe higher and there's no telling what could be floating around in the mucky water and the slightest of inadvertent exposure of that water to your precious-s to could have disastrous consequences. Yet, we delved into it like brave soldiers holding on to each other's shoulders for support. People stood huddled underneath parapets, on the pavements on either side and gaped at us, probably wondering what could have impelled such intrepidity.

After a few minutes of wading through the water, balancing ourselves with one arm on each other's shoulders and the other holding our respective umbrellas the blessed sight of the beer shack started to appear within visual range, but hold on, why was the owner standing near the exit fiddling with the lock?

My "Oooo bhai...darao, bondho koro na, amra aschi!" (Hey there, dont shut down, we're coming!!) fell to deaf ears and in an almost Bollywood-ish (actually more like Tollywood-ish) artistryI gunned ahead leaving my friend badly disbalanced who for a few seconds wobbled around for support , then submitting to the might of the water current let himself splash into the muck face down, his gigantic picnic-umbrella floated around happily. The shutter had almost come half way down when with an earth shattering cry I tossed my umbrella at the metal shutter that made a more than audible bang!! The shutter immediately went up and peeped out a slightly scared face....

Spitting out a mouthful of gooey water and gasping desperately for breath the greedy and suffering Gollum in me spoke..."Two cans of Palone...chilled...my p..p..precious!"

We stood dripping wet underneath a tree that Saturday night, the two of us, sipping beer, talking and celebrating the fruits of human endeavour. Beer had never tasted better before.

Pearls of wisdom from Loserville

2009-08-07T06:43:00.000-07:00

I am internet dependant to such an extent that just the other day, after my boss literally lost his voice screaming at me the entire afternoon after I made a horrendously dim-witted mistake in one of my tasks, I tottered back to my chamber and looked up, “Ways to get more intelligent” or “Why do bosses yell when they really need not?” and “How not to be a complete idiot” on Google.

Wonder of wonders Google had answers!

I discovered that there actually are a number of websites that offered solutions ranging from altering one's intelligence and perceptive abilities to real life suggestions and theories like; “10 ways to live you life if you are stupid!”, “The laws of human stupidity” and “So what if I thought differently..?”
Even Wiki answers offered some rather enlightening inputs on the question, “How to cure idiocy?”.

Well, that’s another day’s story…

This evening was the worst scream fest ever and better still, before clients and other lawyers, so I rushed back to Google “10 ways to go painlessly”, “Suicide made easy” and the works. Just for a broad idea;
On came,” A practical guide to suicide from a http://www.satanservice.org/”, “suicide methods”, “A ten minute suicide guide” and “Loner today goner tomorrow…”

Never mind the internet dependecy syndrome, my point is, be informed, there are more people out there who are like you than you know.
Life may be a bucketload of trash for the most part, with a bottle or two of leftover Scotch lying around in it for you to find (trust me to come up with the seemingly weirdest of analogies but if you are like me you'll get my point), remember everybody out there is getting their behinds wooped some way or the other.

Dont believe me? .....

Check out the number of co-members I have on the "Yes, I have a stammer...sometimes I slap my thigh red to speak!" Community on Orkut.

(Noteworthy point: Apparently Mr. Chetan Bhagat too Googled 'Ways to commit suicide'; Read '2 States; The story of my marriage' to find out more; Now I have famous friends!)

2009-07-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog

This evening I was given a taste of my own insensitiveness. Taste, quite literally so;

Morning time for a litigating lawyer is the busiest part of his day. It requires shuttling between courts and office innumerable times, making frenzied phone calls to clients, counsels etc, making sure everybody reaches court on time, making sure the papers have reached the courtrooms and the counsels have been briefed on the day’s strategy, documents should be filed at their respective departments by 10.00 – 10.30 am with all the formalities, stamping, punching and affirmation immaculately carried out, in the lower courts if any previous orders are to be noted after filing, you have exactly around five minutes to do so before the clerks start getting cranky, I could go on! Often such overwhelming preoccupation spills over to lunchtime and beyond and by the time we get to have lunch, its tea time! So more often than never, the best way of catching up on lunch is to grab a bite on the go, a sandwich or a fruit.

This morning I jetted out to make for a tribunal about a kilometre away from office and I had approximately four and half minutes to cover the distance. I had a thick bundle of files tightly locked under my right arm and a banana clutched in my left hand. Breakfast! Now, I had to maintain near- blinding walking speed while make sure the files do not slip out and simultaneously peel my banana and eat it! With the bundle tightly clamped underneath my chin I managed to peel the banana. After eating I tossed the skin nonchalantly underneath a lamppost and walked off, who had the time to find a dustbin? Besides during monsoons the whole area looked like a big garbage dump I thought!

The rest of the day advanced like usual when around a couple of hours back my boss instructed me to jog down to the same tribunal and pick up some papers from a counsel. By this time the area around our office resembled a Tsunami hit village, there was knee deep water everywhere and rubbish floated around in it like little bath-tub duckies. I rolled up my trouser sleeves, grabbed my boots and wading through the water I made for the tribunal. Although the thought of the mega-dirty water passing between my fingers and leaving sticky goo all over my skin gave me goosebumps I felt secured that the upper half of my body was clean and dry…….

Before my face hit the reeking water I calmly uttered the four letter curse starting with an ‘f’……

The second I stepped on that slimy skin-like thing I knew it could only be a banana peel, little did I realise that it was THE banana peel until, on my way down I looked up at the lamp post, the very lamp post under which I had chucked the peel arrogantly a few hours back!

So blog, I headed back to office that evening, completely soaked and filthy, with a mouth full of dirt and a heart full of bitterness. It’s okay to be taught a lesson or two once in a while, we all could use a little bit of introspection and realisation from time to time, but going easy on the ‘methods’ could definitely make things better, more so, efficacious!

Karma, old friend, you listening?

Love
Master.

A Gimlet for you sir...?

2009-07-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

I never knew they called Gin mixed with lime cordial and shaken with crushed ice, a 'Gimlet'. Untill last night it was good old 'Gin, lime cordial and tonic'. And Gimlets are rather expensive. Maybe its the little cherry they put on the glass. Cherries make things pricey, dont they?

Dry County

2009-06-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

'Dry County' by Bon Jovi and his band holds a special place in my heart for more reasons than one. First, the video is brilliantly shot, tastefully edited to match the mood of the song note by note. Essentially a song meant to infuse optimism among it's listeners, it retains the classic elements of a Bon Jovi number, the overpowering presence of big guitars and long solos, the unabashedly loud and assertive drumming, great harmonization and deep lyrics.

But what gets me dragging the progess-bar on the media player back over and over again onto one particular part of the song is the explosive crescendo that storms in somewhere around the middle....

A short, melodic lull paves the way for a ripping guitar solo spanning around 15 and a half bars and 33 seconds where Sambora locks completely with Tico Torres on the drums creating a resultant sonic mayhem with the words "Lord didn't bring me this far to leave me now..!" flashing on the screen.

Highly recommended!

2009-06-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Little things that fight darkness

Darkness is an odd state of affairs. Sometimes it’s as endless and unremitting as the farthest depths of an ocean and sometimes the smallest of things hammer holes into its resonant walls projecting bright and much needed rays of hope through them.

Mom wasn’t around for almost three weeks, her trip to her maternal place cum vacation seemed to last for ages, but life carried on. I was surviving in a state of limbo, a vacuum, where things around me moved in hyper-speed and I drooped around and struggled, wading and drifting in ultra-slow motion. Days took weeks to pass and weeks, months. Frankly, mom’s absence did not so much as occupy one-tenth of my concerns, not that I did not miss her but because I knew she was around, I knew she would come home.

Last night, as mom walked out of the airport, I looked into her eyes and something magical happened, something transformed in me. As she walked towards dad and me, smiling, I realised I had actually never known how radiant her smile was and how beautiful she actually was. She hugged me and in a flash all the sadness was gone, a great hollow was filled and brimming. She ran her fingers through my hair and told me calmly that things would be fine and that the tough times wouldn’t last long and I transformed immediately, I straightened up, flashed my 32, picked up her bags and bounded along towards the car. Although my little sister was away in college, for once it felt good to be together as a family, rather two-third of it.

I guess, its nature’s way, every once in a while, of reminding everybody of the importance and meaning of family and the powers it holds, also that love is only for a precious few and it’s worthwhile to try not to take the ones that love you for granted.

2009-05-20T21:26:00.000-07:00

Cliche on its way.....'Listen to others but do what your heart says!!'
...or else you'll end up with a sitting duck of a conscience like mine as I listen to what others have to say way too much and have no regard to what I think is right cause, weird enough, what others say always comes out right! I have lost confidence in my own judgement.
My conscience is like a Taliban outpost stupidly placed underneath the open sky, alfresco, inviting some explosive-attention..."Bomb me bit***s...show me yer motherload!!"
I think its more than my conscience, its my brain....
...there you go, indecision again...I need a break!

The dark blog?

2009-05-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Its obvious that this is shaping up to be a pretty dark blog but be informed I never intended it to be so in the first place.

In contrast to 'God's got a twisted sense of humour' and 'Well...fiddlededee' that somewhat reflect my state of mind a few years back, I find this to be remarkably glum and for good reasons. I was going through some of the the posts last night and I thought maybe renaming this blog would do justice to it, giving it a sadder, more sober name would befit it's mood and content but just then a thought struck me; the arbit thoughts that run nineeteen to the dozen through my head arent really always sad. Though I agree I am pretty low these days, anger and frustration is not all that I feel; I feel love, I feel hopeful, I feel thankful for all the good things I have, I am thankful for who I am and I feel like a Martini pretty much all the time!

It would be interesting watching this blog's mood change when the good times roll in . I only hope it happens soon.

The silver spoon in my mouth...

2009-05-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

Folks from the previous generation get a mean kick out of tom-toming their struggles. Some cycled for miles to get to school, some travelled by crowded buses, some carried buckets of water back home from a hand pump somewhere far away, some gave private lessons to finance their further education and some studied underneath a streetlamp.

I respect all of the above. Point taken!

But I do not agree that since we have had it better, we are scum.

I cannot explain how much it ticks me off every single day to be made subject to that routine harangue by everybody, at home, at office, in busses, in the courts, at the markets; to be told that I have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and to be told that our generation doesnt value what we have, to be pointed a finger at and told that we 'Elite college' folks dont know shit and that we lack strength of character as we do not know what 'real struggle' is.

I only wish they had a taste of what we are put through sometimes , more often than never because of a few members of their own generation! Maybe if they'd quit being so over-proud of their humble origins and wake up, they would see that we, kids, are faced with concerns graver than they could have ever dreamt of during their times.

So typically Kolkata!

2009-05-07T12:21:00.001-07:00

Hello blog!

It’s been a helluva long time, I missed you.

To me you have a rather anthromoprhic existence therefore I feel safe unloading the contents of my blood-pumping appendage into you, with you I have the distinguished advantage of not having to worry about your whining or complaining.

Although I am largely happy that you are always silent, I sometimes wish you could speak.

I haven’t visited you in a while and neither have I fed you with new stuff. I am at fault and I have perfectly good reasons. You see there’s hardly a point scooping your spoon inside an empty bowl for the simple reason that, well, it is empty. Another similar analogy to drive home the point would be, an empty cone is nothing without the ice-cream in it.

Well blog, I am that empty bowl right now, the empty cone. I am spent and I am highly de-motivated, profuse thanks to recent events in my personal and work life, I’ve never been lower.

But be informed that I shall be back soon.

Why is the traffic so woefully low? Haven’t I dressed you up well enough?

Love

Master.

Living a lie...

2009-04-04T04:25:00.000-07:00

Things haven’t hit rock bottom yet but the drudgery is beginning to get unbearable and I am slipping into depression again. I am living a lie. I lie to a whole lot of people every single day from morning till night and I lie to myself. I have become a wimp, a cry baby, a coward, a pretender, a slave to circumstance, a sedentary vegetable and who is to be blamed for this? Who else?

I wake up every morning wishing I were dead instead, often hammering a nail into my head seems more withstand able then getting out of bed. I have allowed myself to be tossed about like a ball from foot to foot, I am like the stray who is loved today, hated tomorrow and loved again the day thereafter. I may work here but these don’t seem to be my people. Nobody trusts me and nobody has let me decide what’s best for me, everybody has his own way of trying to ‘fix’ me, set me right. But what is it exactly that needs fixing? Is it the problematic germ at all? And I haven’t protested either, I have allowed my mind to be raped, to be fucked; I have flowed with the flow, followed the herd and never opened my mouth once. I am tortured inside and I am mad as I know, my hands aren’t clean either.

I am sure there are a lot of things in me that could use fixing and I may be proving difficult, I may be one in a thousand, difficulty personified but who hasn’t benefited from a little time, the right kind of guidance and a little luck?
I know my own self well and I am losing this battle I’ve waged against myself.

Nobody’s opinion matters as I am all alone.

It’s always easier to wade against the current when you are at a safe distance from the waterfall but once you are in it and off the cliff, there’s no way out.

2009-03-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

As my skills on the instrument ebb everyday something insidious, sinister, like a cancer chews on me from within. I can never give it the sort of time, dedication it demands. Standing at the brink of something great I fear to leap in. Knowing fully well what needs to be done to give me that extra edge over others I falter repeatedly. And I do not speak only about my instrument when I say the above.
I cannot put my finger on the source of this strange lack of motivation, this lethargy. Maybe there are bigger things at play here, things that have metamorphasized me from a happy guy into a reclusive octogenarian.
I really need to sort things out, to talk to someone, someone who'd have answers.
Its amusing how someone who spent most of his days listening to other's problems for hours, now has noone to talk to about his own issues.
Anybody out there who'd lend me an ear? anybody with answers? anybody at all?

2009-03-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

A woman's instincts are never to be underestimated...
One stupid move and you risk getting into a lot of trouble, I am learning the hard way..
Whom do I trust?

2009-03-07T05:37:00.000-08:00

I am the best 'cellphone boyfriend' ever!

2009-02-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

The junk blogger's Literary surfeit...

I will never grace any product of my pen as a ‘literary’ work, in any sense of the term. Although I have always believed in maintaining a certain amount of content matter in whatever I jot down it’s becoming a tad difficult of late.
A few months back I suffered from the worst bout of writer’s block ever(on record), come to think of it I did have a few things bundled up inside my head which I wanted to bring down on paper and eventually up here on Blogger but I just couldn’t get myself to write. The motivation was gone!
Now, that equation has seen an astonishing reversal! I find myself doodling all over my writing-pad at office, inside courtrooms, in the car, in bed, at dinner, all the time and the frustrating part is that I have nothing to write about! I scribble mindless things everywhere because the craving to write is almost crazy but sadly nothing comes to my mind, a strong consequence of which is clearly visible through the increase in the number of junk posts on my blogs of late. Hell, I have an entire blog dedicated to junk writeups....

This is not an advertisement for http://quixoticsensibilities.blogspot.com/ at all.

2009-02-16T23:26:00.000-08:00

My Tree...

It’s frustrating beyond imagination at times, to be called an outcast, to be an outcast. I know, because I am one, in more ways than a hundred. For good or for bad, in ways big or small, I shamelessly disagree with a random bunch of five hundred people picked from any part of this city at any point of time.
It’s a fish market outside your door and no one is who he really is. Not all can put up with my kind, we never pretend. Being who you are comes with a price tag, a proviso, that at some point in life you’ll be shoved aside and called an ‘outsider’, a ‘misfit’.
I have felt this way all my life, I am feeling it this very moment and I know tomorrow, I’ll feel it again.
But I am happy. I am not the usual shades of red, white and yellow. I am Auburn, Cobalt, Gray!
It’s not me who doesn’t fit in with my surroundings, it’s my surroundings that don’t complement me. A famous bard from Bengal had once said, “Bonyera bonete sundor, shishura matrikrore” meaning; ‘wild animals look best when in jungles and children, in their mother’s arms’. It’s as important to be different as it is to know where one belongs.

Every outcast has his home, his tree, his flock. Wheres mine?

2009-02-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to me, my little doll is slowly turning into a stereotypical 'chick';
yapping with guys over the phone literally for hours, having her life dictated by brands, cheesy humour, 'dudes', being a hypochondriacal drama queen and being highly insensitive to sentiments. Although I wanted her to be someone different, I suppose I'll have to live with this.
What can I do? I love her as much as I despice her behaviour. I hope and pray she comes out of it someday.

2009-02-11T08:19:00.001-08:00

The time has come, the time has come for me to do something drastic about my drunk-calling habits. But you really cant blame me, you know.
Last week I victimised Jeetu and of course my favourite, Bikram way past midnight! Both drawled their 'hello's and all the subsequent talk from their end went above my swirling head. I just wanted to hear those voices. They do strange things to me, like a chemical reaction of some kind or recollections from a past life.
We all have our tools for battling loneliness. This ones mine.

2009-02-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Life is a huge gamble, I finally admit. Either you get lucky and win or your decisions go terribly wrong and you lose, the loss drags you to the gutters. Its justified if you repent then. But, the worst kind of life is that in which there are no decisions and you repent at the end for having taken none.
So standing at the threshold of the current phase in my life is it justified to get carried away by romantic notions and make drastic decisions, real tough decisions or stick to the horizontal straightness of the path that lay before, irrespective of whether that could potentially result in my being unhappy for the rest of my days?
Everyone has the ability to make his/her life less ordinary, all it takes is courage. I need pocketfulls of it cause a decision is on its way.

The day it all stopped....

2009-01-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

The other night on my way back from office I slowly drifted off to my good old childhood, thinking about the bygone days, events bitter and sweet when a particularly relevant incident in my life came tumbling out of the closet. Heres goes;
My father has never been one of those parents who never hesitate to hit their kids everytime the smallest of things go wrong, nevertheless I have had my share of beatings. Now that I get bashed up a lot less relatively, I realise that it actually took a lot to get my dad to lose his temper completely and believe me, getting up at five in the morning back in the days and dragging me out of bed to hammer Math or Bengali into my skull could even get the Dalai Lama screaming abuses and throwing his arms and legs about in the air.
I have always had this dangerous habit of inventing my own Math formulas, putting random 'x's and 'y's here and there just for the heck of it!! The bit that made it dangerous was that I did it on the examination papers too. It so happened that none of my teachers shared my sense of humour. So in the simplest of terms I always failed in Math. Bengali is another day's story.

One fine evening my report card came home and dad was in a particularly nasty mood, my life is all about such wonderful co-incidences, nevertheless, the minute he saw the bright red zero next to 'Math' he was baying for my blood.

I quietly sat in a corner playing with my Gi-Joes and pretending nothing had happened when dad showed up from behind and twisted my ear with what felt like all his physical strength. For the first half of the twist I was seeing rotating planetary bodies and chirping birds before my eyes and the second half was followed by awe....
There was an audible 'crunch' when dad twisted the ear and alarmingly enough, my ear, the damn thing, remained twisted! it just would not get back to its original shape! Within minutes panicky set in. I sat there Gi-Joe in hand, with a twisted ear, bawling as my parents ran around trying to call doctors. Fuelled by the guilt that he had possibly deformed his son's ear forever dad ran around the most.
Finally came the part where dad, tired of waiting for the doctor to show up, marched upto me, grabbed the ear and twisted it back to position again!
This time it was not only planetary bodies and chirping birds but flashes of light, bells and sparks!
Well, later that night I earned two more Gi-Joes so all was forgiven!

The actual good that came out of the entire episode was that, that day on dad swore never to even think of physically punishing me for my Mathematical misadventures again and he's held on till date.

2008-12-08T21:13:00.001-08:00

For once am at home for legitimate reasons, a public holiday called Bakri Id!
But I feel guilty. My immediate senior has to run around attending conferences with various clients today. She was hoping to be able to stay out of office today especially after we'd worked so hard last Sunday and of course, the following Monday was just crazy!! Filing a writ petition for a paranoid and finicky client is never easy, they want you to change submissions, evidence, people signing Affidavits all the time without completely understanding their legal implications. They can't keep a cool head. Appeasing them, hell, putting up with them is a huge art one learns in this profession.
It beats me how I managed to wriggle out last night of that awkward and frustrating situation when your boss asks you whether you'd be cool with attending office or conferences on a holiday, you try your best to produce a 'yes' poker faced, yet inside you're screaming out 'NOooooo!'
I kept mum when my senior stormed into office late last evening, picked up a bundle of papers and hurried out saying she wouldn't have a day off today cause she has coferences to attend, I could've offered to help out. I didnt. I didnt say a thing. I wanted to eliminate displaying even the slightest bit of intention, reluctant though, to attend those client conferences.

Should I switch off my cell phone right away and forget about things, try my hardest to enjoy this rare treat and risk snide remarks from my seniors tomorrow at work? Or do I keep it switched on, have my formal clothing and laptop on standby, just in case and not go out anywhere cause I may be called to work any minute?

Either ways, my holiday is ruined!

2008-12-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

This morning while washing my hands vigorously with liquid soap in the office toilet I realised I'd been indulging in that practice way too many times over the last few days! True, my hands kept getting extremely dusty from digging into those disgusting old book-shelves, hunting out bundles of prehistoric case-briefs, office copies and gathering evidence pretty much the whole of this week yet why do I still feel the need to get cleaned up all the time ,even when I am not in the archives-floor?
Am I taking a quirk too seriously? Or is it that I am gradually getting an obsessive disorder? I sincerely wish it's the former though.

I am sure this could be linked to my rocketing temper and that slight paranoia of late. I always felt I needed some sort of therapy, but never knew for what exactly. For starters though, I am quitting coffee!

2008-11-29T01:57:00.000-08:00

I am an angry citizen tonight, I am livid.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am not exactly mad because Mumbai has been treated as a sitting duck yet again, I am not mad because this is not the first time that the nation’s financial capital has taken a blow owing of it’s much debated, yet remarkably bad coastal security, I am not mad because this time the buggers showed up in boats formerly belonging to Indian fishermen, I am not mad because the buccaneers ran across streets free and unrestricted, emptying magazine after magazine of bullets on innocent, unsuspecting people, most of whom were foreign tourists, I am definitely not mad at the concerned (yet I very much doubt it) Home Minister and I most definitely am not angry at all with the Centre as it is supremely illogical expecting any strong action from such a wimp of a Ministry, that immediately after it’s inception had POTA repealed calling it a ‘Draconian legislation’. Clearly, none of them did a complete job, none of them leafed through the TADA.

What has gotten my blood simmering is but the shattering slap on the face, the pain of which, at this point, I seem to be feeling personally. It is the thought of the destroyed families of the likes of late Inspector Hemant Karkare, Encounter legend, Vijay Salaskar, Additional Police Commissioner, Ashok Kamte and Major Unnikrishnan, probably the only class of individuals in the country who know and appreciate fully the method of dealing with such predicaments, it is the realisation that in reality, the Indian Intelligence is nothing but a joke, it is the idea that the ISI chief is going to be ‘invited’ to India to take evidence and is probably not going to be sent back to Pakistan in a body bag with a bullet in his skull, is exactly what gets me seething.

I am angry because yet again will such insult have to be borne timidly by not only the physically and emotionally bruised Mumbai-kars but the entire nation. And we shall stay quiet once again. We shall ‘exchange intelligence’ with Islamabad and not invade it, we shall ‘hold talks’ and ‘act tough’ with Bangladesh and not bomb it’s terrorist infrastructure to bits, we shall keep letting settlers in without issuing them ID cards and I am angry as we shall again believe the Politicians next time they lie that the nation is in safe hands. This slumber, this docility is suffocating.

I quite agree with adman Mr. Alyque Padamsee's assertion that an undertaking should be sought from the ruling party stating that if such a security breach were to take place once again they’d allow themselves to be thrown out. Also the question by him, that after the attacks on November 26th why were there no resignation letters from the Intelligence fraternity is highly relevant!

Another such attack and it could have very serious consequences on the nation’s political and economic establishment and at this juncture that’s the last thing we can afford. The masses would pour out into the streets and go on a destructive rampage, countless offices would be destroyed, people killed; there would be processions and a likely communal explosion resulting in massacres and finally, a Gujarat like situation.
Where were Mumbai’s big-mouthed Saffron comedians and their poodles when the Taj burnt? Where were their gallant men when Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus came under attack? I wouldn’t hesitate to go to the extent of saying that the Hotel Staff at Taj and Café Leopold proved to be the actual lion-hearts when things came to saving lives and delving into action in the face of danger.

We have just about had enough with people deliberating on and on about legislations, enough of the Politicians hog washing us the minute they get an opportunity, enough of this lollipop-ministry and enough of shuddering about Geo-political consequences. If I may be allowed to say so we need a change in the Government and someone like Mr Modi taking care of business at the Centre. We need a strong Internal Security Cell with trusted people from the forces running it and having links with the Centre only. We need a very strong Anti-Corruption Legislation and there under an active Anti Corruption Department, again, comprising of persons appointed by the President after consulting the Chief Justice; and finally, POTA needs to be resurrected.
Defences need to be built along the Western coastline with the Indian Navy keeping a closer watch. Police reforms need to be introduced and better training, gear and weapons should be provided to the Police force.
Citizens must play a major role in co-operating with the authorities in their efforts to curb terrorism by doing whatever it takes to assist them and abiding by the law.
Finally, we need to quit going easy on our insidiously hypocritical Western neighbour who's literally been asking to be bombed back to the stone age for decades.
Its time we either put those Sukhois and T-90s to use or donate them to Sri Lanka where they’ll be put to much better use.

2008-11-25T21:27:00.000-08:00

So, I lost my courtroom virginity early today morning and quite surprisingly my head still remains!

2008-11-25T03:51:00.000-08:00

So, I lose my courtroom-virginity tomorrow!

For the kinky, I am not even distantly contemplating an escapade anywhere inside a courtroom. I make my first submissions in court tomorrow before the judge...

This one, I am told, likes to 'chew the heads off' first-timers!

I foresee considerable hardship, a whole lot of humiliation and possible headlessness......

2008-11-24T21:02:00.000-08:00

Writing about how weird my dreams can usually get could make a novelist out of me, it would also most definitely render me unemployed, therefore I shall spare myself the privilege and you that trip through the concentration camp and talk about a particularly nasty one I saw last night.
Last night I dreamt of taking my own mother to court for snoring too loudly.

We settled out of court!

2008-11-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

My life is precisely balanced and therefore sometimes a little frustrating, but its the surgical precision of things that amazes me the most. Good and bad, happy and sad, luck and the lack of it are all rationed and perfectly measured. For instance, if a day at office goes off pretty well it’s highly possible that I might get into trouble the next day, if I enjoy a lot on a certain weekend either the next one or the one after that is bound to be rotten and if it so happens that I get lucky on an occasion or two there’ll definitely come a time when things will get terribly messy because of sheer want of luck. There’s more….

But, to a large extent this balance seems to be skewed in a lot of areas, for instance, I have enjoyed a pretty much non-existent love life throughout my post pubescent years so would that mean I’d be surrounded by women for the rest of my life?

Does it also mean that in the years to come I'll take a keen liking for bubble-gum pop?

Last weeks been terribly hectic at work and I dozed off during a conference at a client’s office last night. Any good times ahead, lady luck?

2008-11-02T04:30:00.000-08:00

Tomorrows not going to be any different, dad has already left for a long tour, mom has work and I’ll probably be getting back from work after 9.00 pm.

Another frightfully lonely and depressing Birthday evening to be dealt with…

Any surprises why I dislike my birthdays so much...? Maybe they just dont make any diference anymore, maybe they shouldn't and if its all a part of growing up, at 24 I'd better be growing the fuck up!

2008-10-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

How would you deal with a situation where, all along you knew you were the hero of the story, the story that your life is, when all of a sudden you realise you are and actually were, all along, just a silly sidekick..?

2008-10-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Its a perfectly beautiful Sunday evening and I am in office, tearing my hair trying to figure out if Sections 581 ZM(1), 581ZM(2), 581ZM(B***c!!) and a horde of other mumbo-jumbo belonging to the Company's Act are of any use to a company (our client) without a Managing Director!!!

GO GET A MANAGING DIRECTOR YOU IGNORAMUSES!

2008-10-17T02:49:00.001-07:00

A writer’s block can at times be the single worst thing to happen to some people, although fortunately it seldom stays too long it most effectively brings about a frustration that far surpasses even the most intense of despairs.

Nothing feels worse when settled down in front of the computer, your attempt to excavate those buried inspirations, little anecdotes, incidents or ideas that you had set aside thinking you’d write about them later because you had work to do, office to go to, other worries to engage your mind with; just wont work and those ideas wont flow when you need them or you don’t like the language you use while writing or for that matter, your thoughts feel like as if they’ve been stuck in some sort of a brain-strainer that lets out the choicest of bullshit restraining the good stuff. Have you ever felt this way? I have. I still do and I hate it.

However, the issue with my blocks are quite different, in the sense; they are unusually prolonged, like a sickness. Every now and then an inspiration used to come flittering around my nose like Gandalf’s little butterfly and I used to try and grab it, if I missed, the idea was lost forever. But of late I seem to be suffering from quite a powerful bout of the block as I feel blankness every time I feel the urge to write, such prolonged lack of inspiration threatens of a possibly permanent creative impotency.

So I found a way around the problem, writing about writer’s block itself. Just for the time being, hoping it would act as a much needed aphrodisiac for my mind and also in a way live up to the description of being a perfect blog-post. But the dilemma lingers, what next?

Where’s that butterfly?

2008-09-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

Its 6 o'clock late in the evening and I am the only one in office watching my Saturday disappear slowly amidst the clouds, soon a depressing twilight will descend all over Old P.O. Street announcing the day's slow demise and I shall still be in office waiting for it to be 8 o’ clock.

6.30 pm; Noisy shutters can be heard closing down nearby and the sparrows outside in the trees seem to have notched up their frenzied cacophony by a few counts, a common phenomena I have often observed among these birds during such times of the day, strange, where do they get all that energy from?
It’s a rare pleasure to be able to sit back and watch through the blinds a quintessentially lazy, old-Calcutta evening roll by. I enjoyed myself watching tiny light bulbs flicker from little shops smattered all around the old street through the blur created by the thick smoke emanating from the clay stoves. Groups of fruit vendors and sellers of small wares chatted as they packed up for the day, the thick smoke descending over Old P.O. Street, the soft chatter, the sound of a perfectly rhythmic, distant temple bell, the smell of freshly fried samosas nearby and the gradually disappearing light, all added to the peculiarly picturesque setup of the place and I sat absorbing it all, feeding that rarer than rare romantic side of mine.

As I wait for it to be 8.00 pm at which time I am to start for Jodhpur Park to attend a meeting with a senior Barrister at his residence and my boss (who by the way conveniently left for home at 2.30 pm), a realisation gripped me. I realised that after all this while I actually sat there killing time! The familiarity of the feeling reminded me once again of how far I had drifted away in these four months, the thought that only four months back I was a student, rich on time made things worse. I had taken for granted something that I was so generously bestowed with and now the tables had turned.

The days of rolling around on moist grass on a hilltop looking up at the clouds, of going for long evening walks down never ending roads, of jamming with the guys, beer drunk or for that matter just sitting by the window on a breezy, cloudy October afternoon looking out at the green hilltops and clouds, are gone and time has become an indulgence I can ill afford.

Its 7.00 pm now, soon after I am done typing this I shall sit back, rest my arms and legs a little, sip hot tea, maybe get a few samosas fom the shop right opposite, I shall enjoy every minute of killing this 1 hour.

(Writing during office hours, or after, has become a terrible habit with me but it can't be helped, the work is such that a little bit of penning around here and there is necessary to keep me from dozing off and it's anyways better getting caught writing your blog than snoozing in office, correct?)

2008-09-18T22:53:00.001-07:00

I am amazed at the way, courage sometimes tears out of the obstructive walls of pessimism and fear projecting the brightest rays of courage into our hearts, helping us row our way through the torried waters of life, adding the might of an extra arm to the oars. Call it hope, call it faith, call it what you may, pray, why does it only last for a day?

2008-09-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

Fear, a sensation I have known for years is an old nemesis; a deep, rotting sense of fear boiling and gurgling deep beneath, splashing against the walls of my stomach and scorching my visceral organs insidiously, fear, that pair of green eyes, that twisted smile of destiny, the conspirator, rubbing its hands, images of which I quite inexplicably see before my eyes every time trepidation grips me, I have often felt it at work, destroying me systematically, breaking me down piece by piece, step by step, disintegrating me, crippling me. I’ve felt it swell up behind my ears, in my head, in my eyes, I’ve smelled it’s overpowering stench, I’ve felt it scream in my ears and buzz in my head rendering me drunken, dizzy and spent. Fear, like a grotesque lizard creeps down your spine, fear dements, it chokes, it sticks to one’s mind like stains of dry blood splattered against a wall, sickening and demobilizing, fear ruins, fear murders slowly...

So everytime I am afraid I go get a drink....