float

I wonder how life has its strange ways of reminding how small and insignificant you are to the larger scheme of things. The funniest part is it comes from your own making.

The elaborate scheme that you conceive ends up consuming you and you try your best to break free. All your plans, your shrewdly, meticulously planned best schemes fall flat on their faces when the time comes for execution.

You realize that everything is in the larger scheme of things and you are allowed to move within a standard deviation range. As long as you are within that range, all your schemes are “perfectly planned and efficiently executed,” as soon as you deviate too much from the unidirectional flow, you are forced back again in the grand scheme of things and your shrewed plan reveals itself as nothing but a collection of most obvious flaws and people ridicule your 'quixotic' endeavor.

There could be exceptions. Or are they exceptions really? Are they something like the first atom shot in a particular direction to which the entire mass should eventually follow? I don’t know.

Of late, some great things have happened in my life in a very short span which has illuminated me and held open the book of life like no amount of book reading and visuals have done. I was carrying a great weight of expectations, a weigh so heavy that it was sinking me in the abyss, in a deep, dark trench without me knowing so. I was sinking deep, deep and I was happy until somebody snapped the rope that was tying me with the great weigh and like a bubble, like a cork I am rising up now … I could see the darkness of the deep slowly giving way to green-blue-emerald forms .... It may not be a mistake if I think I could see a silver sliver turning wide as I rise up. I am rising very fast, without caring for being patient enough to glimpse what’s around me. Like a cork, I am sure about my destination. It’s up, up and above till I see the sun face to face. I can’t and I will not attempt to breathe till I smell the salty air on the surface.

I want to float with the waves, the weeds and the dead fish till I am momentarily stuck at a place and wait for the tsunami to wash me again.

I don’t care about spirituality. Spirituality doesn’t care about me. I know whatever is around me is here and now and I have to smell and touch everything possible to get a feel. I know as soon as I am dead, everything is ash and that’s it. I cease to exist, my feelings, my senses are separated and lost from one another. Just like a hedge fund buying a complete business and selling it part by part until the name of the establishment is erased from the minds of the people and the parts became establishments or part of other rising establishments themselves. When I cease to exist, my senses, which are held ransom in this troubled body will find new houses of their own. My touch may find home to a tiger cub, my smell might go to a pig, my vision could go to an ant , my taste might go to a hungry emaciated dog and my hearing capabilities may reside in a conch-shell so that when you press it on your ear, you hear the sound of sea.

Scattered, the ‘I’ in me will be lost.

It is but a fortune that my senses have decided to be with the ‘I’ in me and I should celebrate that. I should feel everything around me when I am adrift on this vast blue ocean. Yet, I must not rub myself too much to get a mark on me.

From this point, let life be a celebrated journey of nothingness and let it come with its own gloom, doom and cheers. Yet, now having getting the knowledge that I am just but a part of the larger scheme of thing, let it be just a cork on the vast blue ocean. Amen.

lazy, half-drunk thoughts

Maan … despite all these heavy rains in Mumbai for the last couple of days, the municipality has threatened to cut down on water supply. The rains accumulated in the pools are not enough to meet the water needs of this city’s populace. They are even threatening the water level is only enough to sustain six months.

Today being Sunday, I conveniently ignored the door bell at eight in the morning. I swear this is the last eight-o-clock Sunday morning bells that I missed in my life. The kind guard had come to tell me to fill up the bucket/s (I have only one) in half an hour’s time. No water for the next twenty four hour!

Being the lazy champion that I am, I didn’t fill up the bucket last night before sleeping (does anybody do that in any case?). since I am dependent on tap water for drinking purpose, I had nothing to drink too. So I went to buy water in the morning. But thought of better utilisation of money and bought beer instead. Now, technically I cannot wash my face with beer, can i? Nor I can use it for my other urgent needs.

So I had to go to the shops again and buy two bottles of water, two litres each. I was aghast at such precious waste of money. I mean, you buy water in this country! Gosh! Beats me. To comfort myself and to even out the cost to utilisation ratio a bit, I picked up two more bottles of beer.

So here I am, down two bottles of my favourite beer (Indian one). Sitting on my bed, stinking and happily typing whatever comes in mind.

I found the rain god to be very active in answering my prayers. He is a public sector entity with a mind of his own. When there was no rain and sitting on a Mumbai taxi was like entering the oven, I prayed fervently, “oh rain god, bring us some rain.”

Lo, in a week or two, the rains started pouring … till it started getting on my nerves. One day it rained so heavily that the trains stopped. Busses refused to come near where I stay. I desperately requested the taxi drivers to drop me at my place. they gave me dirty looks. Some of them even swore. Wet like a crow, I was running around dadar, and pleading to the drivers to drop me at my place. I was ready to give double meter. None was ready to come.

Finally, one good soul agreed at Rs500, double of what i usually pay. I was ready to dole that out. But just a kilometre and I was stuck in the heavy traffic caused by the flooding of the roads. Have you ever seen a snail moving at its laziest pace? The traffic was slower than that. I estimated if I start walking, I might reach my home by the next day morning. If I sit in the taxi, I will reach the day after. So I got down and started walking. This is after the driver recovered his 500. a contract is a contract after all. It was my wish to get down at the middle of nowhere, not the driver’s fault. I had no right to argue with him.

My wet phone turned out to be very reliable. I managed to call a friend and told him to stay at a particular spot with his car so that I could walk that much and go to his place to stay. I reached that place after two hours walk and found my chauffer standing. He drove me his home and my life was saved. That’s when I complained loud to the rain god. “stop it. I say stop! For the sake of your boss, stop it.”

And the rain stopped forever. Fucker!

Did I mean to take it so literally? My experience with all public sector entities told me that they don’t take things literally and matters get settled at their own pace. So tuned we are at our own public system that if we want something to be done at a particular date two years down the line, we apply now. If you go by the rulebook and apply one day before the date, as normally this is the time to get the job done, it will come to you after two years nevertheless. How do I know the new Indian rain god is so efficient in answering pleas? Didn’t he learn from his bosses? The great Indian lazy gods? One of them has always his eyes shut. Another is lying lazily on a lotus and the other is busy in his library.

At different phases of my life I have requested them to get me things, mainly love interests. I prayed that that chic at the corner of that road be mine. I prayed I get an answer of my proposal to her. She didn’t reply at that time. Because the plea didn’t reach the lazy Indian god’s bed. When it reached and she replied, it was five years late. The girl, a baby on her hand, her baby, lovely girl of two years, told me that day … “ you proposed me, I wish I was wise that time.” What the fuck! Although I fully didn’t understand what she mean by that. Whether it would have been wise of her to accept my proposal or to slap me immediately, but my positive outlook towards life encouraged me to take a positive version. The gods got my plea heard after five years, when things have turned upside down and I was chasing some other chic after getting rejected and refused by ten more.

I know I will continue getting positive answers till I am fifty. I have so many proposals pending on which i didn't get answers till date.

Now where from this active civil servant appeared among these lazy louts? I am lodging a complaint about him now. He will, hopefully get replaced in about five years time.

Don’t take things too literally in India yaar, if you run or walk too fast, you will miss half of India, as somebody said.

There are exceptions to the rule of course.

Mumbai. Everybody is running here. they don’t know why they are running, but run they must. You know just three minutes down there is a train coming and if you board this one, there is a high probability that you will drop from the running train just as a ripe mango. Yet, people run here. when they get down from the train they must push you to overtake you and get stuck in the same place. the entire jamboree of ecstatic crowd, must push the other crowd-loving people coming from the opposite direction. From a distance you will find the platform over-bridge transforming into an ancient battlefield where greek or roman soldiers jostle each other under their giant shields. I love this scene most of the time until I become one of them.

There is so much action happening here. once you come to Bombay you become a true fighter. The entire city is a battlefield. You go out to work not knowing whether you would come back alive or in one piece. It makes you fearless. You never know which bag has what in it. You never know the bus you are riding doesn’t have ingredients to make meat out of you. You become a fearless soul. When news of a bomb blast comes, you open your costliest whiskey to thank the stars for sparing you this time. The next day you go to the office anxiously. Only to face the same shit like everyday. Slowly slowly the shit takes better of your fear and you forget the daily hazards until your benevolent neighbouring country sends a pack of dogs to bite you down at hotels, gatherings and restaurants. When they are short of money to send dogs people from another neighbourhood come in bicycles and keep tiffin boxes or pressure cookers for you. Open that and all your pains vanish in an instant. Yours and several others’. This city makes you fearless.

Fear comes back to you, even while crossing the road, when you step into some other Indian cities, cause you know road accident is the only few reasons you can die there. And you will have no other to blame except yourself.

If the chicken pox spared you here, surely the swine flu will do you. If you have the ability to digest the pig, then comes typhus, or malaria, or anything that you can name of. Each time you thank your lazy gods. You can only pray, by the time they realise you have not been blessed with any one of these, you can escape the city and reach somewhere else.

But would I leave Mumbai for that? Nah … I am a Mumbaikar, resident of the greatest slum on earth. And like any slum dweller, I am sympathetic towards my fellow slum dweller and is ready to stand with him shoulder to shoulder when the time comes to fight back.

May be, I will be done when wine flu hits the shore.

Seeking Roots

I don’t know if I have bored you with the same rhetoric earlier. May be I had, and as is my habit, I did not commit to what I proposed. That’s me.

I am not sure if this time I would be able to honour my commitment, I guess I will be. For it is coming from the genuine depth of rootlessness that I am writing this now, sitting at the office, listening to the intoxicating sound of heavy rains.

I am committing myself to writing in Bengali, my mother tongue.

For writing in any language, the literary type, you have to have that command. I can understand the plight of the Indian writers writing in English. Most of them, except a few, are educated in an English medium school and have no knowledge of their mother tongue. They cannot write in their mother tongue even if they want to. For all I know, Indian languages are far more complicated than English. Even if one is fluent in speaking it, it needs skills to try and write in it.

I am a sensitive guy. I am compelled to write my feelings almost everyday. But the tragedy is that for the last few years, the idea of connecting to an international audience had struck me. I was almost hypnotized and day dreamed of becoming a global ‘author.’

But I guess, you can forgive me for that wishful thinking. I was just very young and like any other young man, had aspirations above the potential.

I have a workable English language skill. I can write news stories perfectly well and fast and can communicate what I saw and what I need to communicate to my audiences. But when it comes to communicating the feeling, I can never do that with my poor knowledge of English language.

I talked to my editor that day about what is lacking in my approach to writing stories, about our project … what he said was bang on. You need 10,000 hours of practice to master any craft. That would turn out to be at least three hours of practice for over a decade.

I am sorry. I don’t have that time with me. I have spent at least 5,000 hours practicing stories in Bengali.

The basic structure is there, I can write stories as I think I want to write. When I write in English, I have perfect control over my subject. I don’t have control over my language. The language is what is pulling me from getting a perfect nirvana in my art. I cannot communicate the beauty, smell and touch in English which I can easily write in my mother tongue.

What the heck, my Bengali was sweet once upon a time. I was a regular in magazines! I had even my poetries published! Where is that language now?

I have lost 75% of that skill worshiping a language in which I don’t think. I still and will continue to think in Bengali before translating it in English.

What precious waste of time!

It depresses me now knowing that I have ignored my sweet Bengali. But looking back at it, I find it perfectly useful. English is how I will earn my bread. I needed to know the language to be faithful to my profession of choice. My continuing endeavor will be to master it further.

But my mother tongue is something that would earn my creative satisfaction. I need to nurture that like before, when I used to dream of writing regularly in those prestigious Bengali magazines.

So, what is in store for you? No more tortures from my side. Only when I would feel like writing some impromptu stuff in English, creative or mundane, I will surely heed the call.

Did I miss saying that you were the ones for this much of improvement in my English? It was horrible when I was fresh out of university and started writing non-text book stuff in English.

I thank you all my dear friends, thanks for enriching my writing skills in my acquired language and thanks for gently guiding me to the right usage of a word whenever I faulted.

Did I disappoint you Ian? Are you feeling dejected and betrayed? For you spent hundreds of hours editing my copies and re-writing those to make it proper English! Kindly forgive me. The idea is not to cheat you.

I have realized the futility of connecting to an international audience. Writing has become a much more sacred ritual to me than what it was before. When it is the question of religion, please allow me to worship my God my own way.

Please allow me to go back to my roots. I am as proficient in my mother tongue as you are in yours.

When I was in school, my Bengali teachers taught me to write, when I was in crisis, fjam taught me to stick to my passion and when I was sure about my passion, you taught me how to achieve perfection in pursuing it. My dear Ian, your influence in my life is much much more than instructions in English.

It’s a larger scheme of things, over and above the language. It’s about the subject itself. It’s about the thought process, the same neurotic vibes, blessings of the muse, that you and I both receive the same way. You taught me how to capture those and how to celebrate that. Your greatest gift to me was that.

Just that, our ways of putting it in paper will be different from this point.

Sabbatical Yay!

It’s a very slow day in office. Voting is going on in Mumbai and the whole world is closed, except the newspaper offices. People are also enjoying this brief break from rusty Mumbai life. As per the initial reports, the turnout is only about 10% in polling booths. Why trouble yourself standing in the crowd in this heat when you can sleep the whole day!

But …

Why should a business paper be open when the stock market, banks or any other financial institutions are closed is beyond me.

Anyway, the boss is pretty calm today. He is a great journalist. He was trying his level best of rubbing his enthusiasm to me but with all my non-activities I have hopefully conveyed the message to him that I am not interested in being a great journalist as him. After several brave attempts including some bursts of inspiring lectures, he has realized his futility and is pretty chilled out with me now. These days he asks me about the weather instead of developments in my beat.

I have successfully conveyed to him that this is job for me and I have passion for it, but not ‘burning’ passion as he wants to see.

Let’s see how long this calm continues. I better do the most of it. I better write a blog post before the bossy wakes up from his slumber, he afterall, sometimes forgets my message to him.

All the star reporters are playing cricket outside. Earlier they used to make my life miserable calling me again and again to join them. But I have demonstrated to them my love for my chair and preference for arm-chair journalism and arm-chair cricket, i.e. watching India Premier League sitting on my chair instead of gathering like bees around the TV-hive. They now know that nothing except cigarettes attract me. But these people don’t smoke. So it takes some effort between us to communicate with each other. Most of the time they do the effort.

Of late, I am thinking of taking a break. Journalists, who in their entire career has achieved nothing, call it “sabbatical.” I know at least five six great useless creatures who have taken a sabbatical after five-six years of doing nothing. My boss, on the other hand, is the most diligent workaholic I have ever seen. I have never seen him talking about taking sabbaticals. At the most, seven or fifteen days leave to recharge, but that’s not sabbatical.

I doubt if he is forced to take sabbatical for a month, he will start a hunger strike at the gate of this office.

But I want a ‘sabbatical.’ I fit the bill perfectly. In my five years of journalistic career, I have done nothing, achieved nothing and I hope to remain the same in my next thirty years.

I fancy myself with that old bloke from the vernacular media who comes to the press conference every time to have free food. The guy is a fragile frame of his former self. As fragile as my news stories.

His body just needs a good shake-up to breath its last. Going by the bulging bags under his fish-like eyes, bent spine, withered skin, I am sure this guy is the happy playground of all kinds of diseases, diabetes to start with.

Yet, this septuagenarian savors a kilo of the sweetest sweets, finishes almost one whole cooked sheep, and eats rice equivalent to a produce of about a square-hector field. If the press conference has drinks too, most of the time people carry him office after the conference. During the conference, he snores. Yet, he comes back for the next conference perfectly fit.

He is my inspiration. I know if he can survive in this profession, I will also. For that I don’t need to be as active as my boss.

My colleagues have realized I am like that ancient stone. You cannot move me. If you really want to disturb my peace, you start worshiping me. They come back to me for some inspiration and pastime when they think they have done enough for the day and are dead tired. With my inspiring talks of non-activity, I give them the much sought after peace of mind.

They don’t disturb me anymore.

I am a perfect guy to flaunt a ‘gone-for-a sabbatical’ tag. But I have to wait for sometime before that. Meanwhile I can go for a fifteen-day vacation and go unnoticed. Far from the madding crowd, if I may be allowed to say it poetically.

I am making some effort in searching for the ideal place. During weekends I am going to far off places to check if my mobile picks up signals. The place where my mobile won’t pick up signal should be the perfect place. It should be “not reachable” whenever contacted. People should not get me when they want. But I should be able to get them whenever I want. The place should be cheap and should have an abundance of chicken and mutton serving restaurants. Booze should be duty-free and the only channel to come there should be Doordarshan. Internet should be unheard of and cable television a dream-come true. Yet, there should be electricity. I should be able to sleep properly with the fan on and mosquito repellants diligently doing their duties.

Oh yes, newspapers should not come there. If you have noticed, the world plunged into sadness after newspapers were invented. Before newspapers, literatures were like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Iliad, Odyssey -- all those great books of superhuman activities. People instantly realized they are not able to match the heroes there and so they didn’t dare to be active, instead sitting calm and composed under the great banyan tree and believing whatever the interpreter told them.
Post newspapers, literatures are like “Hard Times” “Ulysses”, “Outsider”, “Sons and Lovers” and the mother of them all – “War and Peace”. Basically all those troubled-conscience pieces that was possible by writers who read newspapers and started thinking parallel. Not only reading man, the writers were journalists too. All those sad lots …

I also read newspapers. I read them everyday to find out what people in my beat has written and to crystal-gaze as how my day in the office will start.

On my way to the office, being one smelly sardine in the great moving can of sardines, I device clever answers to save my arse from the inevitable question of my boss, “why have you missed this?” My day start with that and ends with, “What? No story for tomorrow too??? I really don’t know how you …”

I hate newspapers. Newspapers should be a strict no-no at the place of my mini-sabbatical.

Oh yes, the most important of all. It should be a paid leave.

There is no incentive in going to a place just for doing nothing when I am getting paid doing the same thing in office everyday.

Laughable stuff

Sorry for not writing here for so long. Sorry for my last post that hurt you. That was intentional. I wanted to pick up a quarrel with somebody, I was fighting with myself, a weight that I wanted to throw at somebody and relax. Sadly nobody gulped the bait.

I am sorry for myself.

Journalism is taking away too much of my time. It discomforts me a great deal when I think about it. But the joy of this profession is that there is no accumulation of profit. You get your due then and there. If you are in a newspaper, you get your reward the next morning.

The fun ends there though.

Next day is a new day, a new challenge, a new tension about what you will write now? Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s wastepaper for the readers. For reporters, today’s newspaper is the filthiest of waste paper. When you were writing the article, you were busy, bosses were happy. Now you are done. Now you are story-less, worse than being penny-less in the world.

But still, you somehow pull yourself to dig a new hole to taste water. Over a period of time, it can become addictive, I guess. Of course, over a period of time, you get to know for sure if you fit the bill or not. Either you get excited or the profession will throw you out. You cannot sustain in journalism if you don’t have passion for it. No fooling business here.

Babes and blokes with those shiny eyes dreaming of becoming pseudo-famous, a word or two for caution – this profession is not glamorous.

Anyway, instead of trying to become the role model in journalism, I better cough it clean. I have conceded defeat. I am a failure in my pursuit.

When we were kids, my father’s favourite word of advice was “dream for the stars, and you shall reach the moon.” How true he was. I always dreamt of becoming a writer. Always. Ever since I was a child, I had this fascination for writers. When I was in college and university I used to roam around College Street, the Mecca of Calcutta’s book loving crowd, just in case I catch a glimpse of a writer! I frequented coffee house, secretly planning to catch hold of a writer and be his apprentice. That never happened. Nobody thought me fit for an apprenticeship. Nevertheless, I made some good friends in some “let us pool and publish” magazines and managed to print some of my juvenile short stories. I started behaving as a writer, as in, intentionally forgetting things and pretending to hear people calling me after a time lag of five seconds.

But then, it tired me, the acting part. I realised I have a long way to go.

I didn’t want to become a journalist. It happened. How it happened is an interesting story for which the aforementioned magazines play a role, but that I reserve to tell you some other day. Nevertheless, I became a journalist. I dreamt for the star, I reached the moon. My father’s wisdom came handy.

Now I cover treasury, the most uninspiring thing for you. And banks, including the central bank of the country, bit interesting, if you chose to take interest in financial systems. But then, my journalism starts and ends there.

People ask me about stock tips. Since I am a ‘financial journalist’. I am supposed to know everything about the market and my recommendations should make the person rich in just a fortnight. When I try to reason that my ‘expertise’ lies in bonds where the minimum lot of trading is Rs50 million, people refuse to believe that I don’t know anything about equity. I am a journalist, I am supposed to know everything under the sun.

Worst, people ask me what is my assessment about the upcoming election. Who is most likely to form the government? What would be the equation like? When I explain that I am a business reporter, they come back to the stock tip. When I tell them, with all my feigned humbleness, that I cover bonds and I have a workable knowledge on bond market, people think I am trying to be modest, or I don’t trust them, or I am a true ‘professional’ – not to divulge secrets. The worst comes when some of them give me a scornful look. It translates into roughly something like this, “If you are a journalist, I must be King Arthur” and “what the fuck you are doing in journalism if you don’t know anything?”

I wither in front of those suspicious looks. I can’t help but to look for cover.

Nevertheless, in my personal space, I am happy with what journalism has so far offered me. People who matter in my field know my name. I get mails (fan-mails? Hate-mails too!) from the readers. My parents feel proud to see my name in printed words. I get to meet the celebrities and heavyweights you see on television and newspapers everyday.

And I get the chance to wonder at their ordinariness.

The ghost of a writer just left me a couple of months ago. Till then, I was torn between my career and my dream. It did no good. Neither I wrote substantial anything, nor I concentrated at my job in hand because I thought this is not my world. It’s almost like betraying the wife for the mistress.

But my neglected profession, as if just to lure me into her arms, is giving me rich rewards. That day I wrote a column. Actually not. I contributed in a daily column in the absence of our consulting editor. He didn’t write that day and instead told me to fill his space. That doesn’t make me a columnist. But yes, it IS writing a column for sure. An unthinkable honour for a junior reporter. You don’t write a column unless you are an expert in it. I am just learning about the bond market, yet, I wrote a column on it.

I was excited.

I called up my mother, “Maa, I am writing a column today.”
“What? You are not writing about banks anymore? Your bosses are angry with you,” she was tensed.

I had no choice but to tell my simple mother that things are fine here in office. But I didn’t try to explain her about the significance of a column.

I called my father, “Baba, I am writing a column.”
“Ok.”

I wanted a word of encouragement from someone. I wrote that old man in England a mail. As expected, there was nothing but encouragements. I knew this. He is predictable. He doesn’t believe in hurting people with his words. May be because he is a refined Englishman, may be because he is a genuine good man. May be because he thinks I am too sensitive and not capable of handling his criticism. But I knew his response, it didn’t encourage me at all. He is predictable in his mails to me.

I am staying alone these days. I missed my friend I wanted to call him and share this piece of news with him. I knew he would be happy, genuinely happy for me. I knew that. He always celebrated my happiness and shared my pain.

But he has hurt me somehow, I don’t know how. I didn’t call him. I won’t share my joys and sorrows with him anymore.

I called my former boss, who also happens to be my good friend, in the pretext of enquiring about a friend’s job application. I broke the news casually, he was excited. I felt happy. Really happy, but feigned to be “it’s normal. I am not a columnist really. It’s just stop gap.” But I was happy.

I wanted to call this guy who I consider my elder brother, who shielded me from all the workplace turbulences throughout my career with him. But he had left Mumbai two days back and I was not sure if I should disturb him with my ‘trivial’ news. Anyway, we are in the same organisation and he will see my name in the paper.

I called up this coolest guy in the world. A man I consider the kindest yet the most brutal in the world, the most moody and the most magnificent. I wanted to talk to him and after sometime I wanted to break the news. Because I believe in his emotions. If he congratulates me, I know it would be no formalities. But he has discarded me from his life I guess. He seemed not interested in talking to me. I knew he was brutal.

“Say something. Why are you answering in monosyllables,” I said. Thinking shall I break the news now? My personal feat?

“I have nothing to say actually,” was his cold answer. I bade him good bye.

True. I have nothing to say too.

Finally, I broke the news to my spiritual guru. We were having beer. He was elated. It was genuine. Suddenly the world seemed all draped in colour. Suddenly it seemed, I have achieved something big. The sparkle on his eyes told me I am happy seeing somebody happy for me.

Suddenly I wished my parents and sister and brother were here. That predictable old man was here. My friend and former flatmate was here with me. I wanted to have my former boss and the meanest and coolest guy at my room with me.

I wished they would demand a party. I wished I would be beaten up for refusing to give a party.

I swear I would have emptied my bank balance if they would have asked for a party.

Yet nobody asked for it.

Mood Swings and Rehman-Gulzar

I don’t know why it should happen. But presently, I don’t need you at all. You must have noticed I am deliberately insulting you or throwing my nasty tantrums on you. You have seen my nice side, but you must be surprised to see my mood swings. I really don’t know why it should happen.

I just want you to leave me alone. Comfortable in my cocoon, I must hibernate and emerge as something totally unknown. I was never a very extrovert and never intend to be. I know I am a good man and I can consciously never hurt anybody, physically. But you are becoming too much intrusive in my life, without actually knowing so. You are dragging me to every party when all I want is just to slip unnoticed in the vast human ocean. When I left my home some five years ago that was upmost in my mind that I will be lost in this vastness and I and only I will be there in my world.

But increasingly, you are trying to make me social, which is dead against my will. I just don’t want to interact with you, I just don’t want to meet you, I just don’t want you to expect me doing something that would please you. I am back to my usual self. That of extreme selfishness and I want you to respect that.

Having said that, let be assured that I love you and I do care for you. I am just begging you for a space of my own.

Thanks for your understanding. Goodbye.

BTW, Rehman got two Oscars for his “Jai Ho” and Gulzar for his lyrics. I guess they both have truckloads of those metal statuettes already for their other songs. If not, fuck Oscars. You don’t know quality. You are still driven by the marketing hoopla. You have preferred your other singers over Rehman or other Indian composers and musicians and lyricists for eternity. And you thought Jai Ho is an extreme example of a good song. Come to India not with dirt in your eyes, looking for slums and garbage. You still require the wisdom of seven births before you realize what is real India.

Go, get a good translator and read what our “bollywood” lyricists have written for ages. You will feel ashamed for the shallowness of your “I want to fuck you” lyrics.

Case in hand: “Na jaane kyun, hota hain yeh zindagi ke sath, achanak yeh man, kisike jane ke baad, kare phir uski yaad, choti choti si baat” or “Kahin dur jab din dhal jaye, sanjh ka dulhan badan churaye, chupke se aye. Mere khayalo ke angan me koi sapno ke deep jalaye … "

(I am not trying to translate it, I am very poor at it. Request somebody to translate it in the comments section. Please. Kindly do it.)

The human drama

It was a cold, very cold night. The young lady was tossing and turning in pain on her bed. This was going on for the last three days. The baby was refusing to come from his mother’s womb. Yet, the doctors won’t operate her because there was a serious lack of anesthetic and cesarean birth was a rare operation that time. Certainly a costly affair that this lower middle class family coudn't afford. Besides, being a government hospital, it was under-equipped. There was no way but to wait for the baby’s wish.

Perhaps the baby sensed, it would be too hard for him to adjust to the world, perhaps he was not satisfied with the world where he would spend his mortal life.

Suicidal missions were not heard of that time but the mother of the young pregnant lady was cursing the baby – he was determined to kill himself and his mother, almost as if in protest.

His would be uncles were pacing restlessly in the almost filthy hospital yard. Taking turns to be present there. Making sure that the tiniest of the difficulty won’t hurt their dear sister, one of eight siblings. The elder son of the family worked in a x-ray clinic, assisting the radiologist in taking photographs and developing the films. The one younger than him would work as a collection agent for a bank earning 2 per cent commission on the proceeds collected daily. The elder one would cycle fifteen miles to reach his job. The younger one would spend twelve hours of his day cycling the town and collecting daily current account deposits from the traders. Between two of their earnings rest the entire burden of their family. They had to marry their sisters and secure a bit more comfortable career, and if possible, marry themselves.

The boy’s grandmother and aunt from his father’s side were patiently waiting for their grandchildren. They were sure it would be a boy, because it would have been a disgrace to have a girl child. Imagine the strain on their loved son’s finance to brought up a girl and to marry her off!

The grandmother was bit anxious for their daughter-in-law but she was sleepless over her grandson. No harm shall befall him. Her family should not sacrifice the child to save their daughter. If they had to choose between one, she will fight till death and make sure that the child was saved. They will arrange one more girl for their handsome and able son. He after all, was in a government service! And was a science graduate!

The father of the kid, meanwhile, was coming to office regularly at a distant land. More than a thousand miles away from where the mystery was unfolding. He was least bothered about whether it would be a daughter or a son. He loved his wife, though he didn’t acknowledge it, but he knew that. And he was anointed by the holy rhymes of Wordsworth and Shakespeare. He was one of the few in his batch, who would read English books and worse … understand them and enjoy!!!

But it’s a disgrace to be at your wife’s side during the childbirth. There was no insult more in this world then to show love to your wife. His mother would kill him if she comes to know that her son has fallen for a woman whom he got to know for little more than a year. Besides, he couldn’t stand his sister's taunts. Although they were from the same town, they never met each other before marriage. His mother told him whom to marry, the girl was told a groom has been arranged for her ... and they were husband and wife in months.

Being one’s woman’s side was a shameful act for both the man and the wife. But he wanted to be in the hospital, he almost decided to, but all his modernist thought was defeated by his fear of termed as an “hen-pecked husband.”

The child was troubling the mother for the last three days, but may be he took some pity on the poor lady and started kicking his mother, demanding to come out fast, as his habit would turn out to be, he would want to do everything in a hurry. Even if that would mean half of his thing remain unfinished.

The lady started crying loudly as the pain intensified, doctors and nurses crowded once again to her. The doctor being a man in his sixties and the head nurse none other than the boy’s grandmom from his father’s side. For she was the head nurse of the hospital. She was from a royal family who dared to marry someone much poorer and run away from her family to settle in this town of Gaya, Bihar. But when her husband passed away, she did all sorts of odd jobs to raise her four kids and to educate them before specializing in delivery cases and become a midwife in the hospital.

After draining the frail mother all her energy, the child finally emerged in a bloody state. The grandmom, also the head nurse, promptly noted down the time and place. “10.45 PM, Gaya, Bihar.”

It would need the doctor to beat the child real hard on his butt before the child would start breathing, filling his little lungs with the smell of all sorts of medicines.

The horde of just-now-became family would then hear a cry very similar to that of a cat’s meow … meow …

They would erupt in joy!!!

The grandmom would rush out from the delivery room to hug her counterpart, the mom’s mom. “Congrats didi!!! It’s a boy! It’s boy!” The old ladies then would hug each other in joy and cry together! The baby was healthy and the mother safe too!

The boy’s complexion was Lal (red)! Pinkwash! He was the first son in her family. Now her husband’s family would survive and the lineage preserved. The proud grandmom claimed her first right in naming the baby of her family. She named her “Laltu.”

The elder brother of the new proud mom (still dizzy and unsure what’s happening around) would jump in triumph. He would empty his pockets and throw the money to the other nurses who demanded money for the good news. His best friend would immediately dispatch to the telegram office to send a telegram to the new proud father, sitting in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

One neighbour present in the hospital would rush to the girl’s house to give the good news hearing which the youngest son in the family, still in school would declare he won’t go to the school and won’t touch his books for seven days because he was “very happy”, a state of mind which he preferred to be often rather than being having “stomach ache” going to school.

Precisely twenty-nine years after that human drama enacted in Gaya, Bihar, the child would write this piece sitting in Mumbai, Maharashtra, wishing himself a happy birthday and thanking the family, his greatest strength, to stand beside him all the time.

And would silently apologise to his mother for troubling her so much and would whisper “Maa, I love you.”