Psychedelic orange parkas in the heat of Delhi,
And electric green sweaters in Mumbai-
Disguises presented to the world,
The cold winter of indifference,
In scorching summers of truth.
Reading stories, human audio-books,
Or living life,
Human cinemas, we balance snails on knife edges
And read T S Eliot
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends!!

Not with a bang but a whimper-
Sounds familiar?
Writing is release, telling stories not so much,
And we are not good storytellers, anyway,
Tongue-tied pleaders,
Begging for redemption,
Somewhat smaller than life,
And too ugly to be forgotten.

Too easy to be remembered,
And too unrepentant to be thought of,
We write our stories, and leave them,
Yellowing rolls of parchment among grey cobwebs,
Seeking forgetting, and remembering seeking-
We are abstruse, and clumsy and cantankerous,
Ever living in lines of forgotten poets,
Easily remembered, and fading before the end,
We embark on voyages, and when finished with futility,
Depart.Similar Posts:

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He used to run…around that one eighty odd acre campus…and go on long walks alone, on the Thursdays which were half-days at school. Running or walking through the fields where the school grew its rice or wheat or mustard or rye to feed its children, walking over water-supply pipes where they formed enchantingly inviting bridges over canals seven foot deep, crossing imaginary gulfs, and playing explorer in deserted buildings that once used to be pumphouses or residences of watchmen who once had to guard the fields, but lost their jobs with the cutting of costs…run down houses with half a ceiling abd broken stairs, a pocket sized Indiana Jones. He was weird in that way.

And, naturally, he grew up to be a flawed man. One who lived inside his brain more often than outside it. He used to write poetry and drink a lot of beer and chain smoke, and had deep character flaws which probably did not make him less than human, but certainly not human neither. He was a man who would get drunk and at 4am insist on reciting Neruda to you. He would rather read a passage from Bulgakov rather than tell you a ribald joke, even though he had a fine store of them, and used to repeat them quite frequently when sober.

He was not a good man, though he never tried to be good. Perhaps his future was in his genes. Some said he wrote good poetry, others said he wasted his time and theirs. Not many knew of him. He loved the sea, and wanted to spend his life just sitting on a rock, and listening to the waves crash against the rocks, the spray wetting his face. And yet, he hardly ever went to the sea. He was a contradiction in that. He used to fall in love often. And he sometimes played chess. He was never a good player of chess, his teacher told him he used to play with his heart rather than his brain. And he played his life the way he played his chess. But he never got the sea.

Three days ago, he shut the door of his apartment, double locked it from the inside, put a gun in his mouth and shot himself. He never won a game of chess in his life.Similar Posts:

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He is not himself these days. He does not jog anymore, and two days of sickness have taken their toll. High fever and hour after hour sleeping with cramping bodyaches have almost made him believe in brandy. As it happens, the fever abated in the afternoon, and he will again drink beer. And hell with the consequences.

He wants to make a new life. To make a clean break with all things yesterday. Even with all things this past minute. He wants to be like a branch cut of and transplanted somewhere else, in unaccustomed earths. He knows that the stuff that is in the genes, the makeup of the DNA will follow him even there. But, probably falsely, he believes, that he might be able to grow again. Maybe even flourish.

He wants a new life. He does not want to relive his old life, no. But maybe even that is partially incorrect; he doesn’t really want a whole new life. He just wants his life from here on to not follow the pattern of the past.

Nouns, once they have persisted enough, become so much like expletives- people, places, things…all of them grow to become mocking in a distant future. Maybe not all people, not all places, not all things. But many, too many for comfort. Even those nouns who were associated with wonderful memories, turn into taunts later. And those associated with uncomfortable memories- well, they are always taunts. Each of us fights his or her own Mahabharata. And as always, there are no winners or losers, in the end, there is always a Pyrrhus left, in all of us- a madman who looks at the carnage all around us, the shambles of what was meant to be a life- and laughs in bloodthirsty cackles, yearning for more and more destruction.

He just wants to go to the sea. It is a noisy and dirty and ugly companion, who smells of wet salt and urine and the filth of a city of a million denizens who pour their waste into it, but is never mocking. The sea sometimes does get angry, very angry and rages against it’s binds, trying to break the puny stone walls built around it, it will often spray him with it’s ugly, smelly, dirty water if he get’s too close- just enough to remind him how much it hates him- but it will never mock him. It just reminds him of that vast expanse that is still left in front of him. A sea of opportunities? That is drivel only Shakespeare could write, but a sea? Yes. The sea will consume everything- even him, when he chooses to enter it.

He just wants a chance to live his life in a new way, the rest of it. In unaccustomed earths.

PS: The phrase Unaccustomed Earth was used most famously by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in one of my favourite passages:

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (Selected Works: The Custom-House, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun)

Later the phrase was used as a title for her book by Jhumpa Lahiri.
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Still, thoroughly disgruntled, I stayed on for the convocation ceremony, got myself thoroughly plastered in the post-convo party- in a bad way, spent the rest of night running through whatever remaining conversation there was with some of the people I had spent the two years at XL, and ran through another bottle of whiskey. And next day, puking and panting, I left for Bombay to join my new job which I was very doubtful about.

It’s been nearly one year. The new job is now old enough, and though it still doesn’t pay me a million rupees a year, it is something I turned out to like from Day-1, it’s taught me things, has earned me the respect of my colleagues and reportees; and a footing from where I can not talk to people and confidently say that its not all just gyan that I accumulated in two years of XL and one year of work. And, even though I was very unhappy when I left the campus, I was not sure I wanted to be back there anymore, I have been back there many times, probably more times in the past one year than any of my other friends (I stopped counting after four times in four months).

I did not go back to XL initially for XL. I went there because my job took me in those parts frequently, and my best friend was placed in Jamshedpur and I would spend my weekends with him. And I would visit campus sometimes- just go, have a coffee and smoke at Dadu’s, make a couple rounds of the JLT (never spend time sitting there, idling- didn’t do that after first term), roam a bit around the Learning Center and come back (the first visits happened in April and May, when there was no one on campus).

I kept going back to Jamshedpur as and when time permitted, and most times I would also visit XL, sometimes to meet some guys from my junior batch whom I knew- sometimes just for a coffee at dadu’s and back. Neither here nor there kind of visits. But I did go. And the past three months I have not been there. Work, other travelling, other commitments in life have all conspired to prevent any visits to Jamshedpur. And my best friend is no longer there. And the junior batch is also going now, so next I go, there will be no one I know in that town, except the profs. No more all night booze sessions, no more roof-top parties, no more evening jogs- one year after leaving XL, I know now with a finality that there will be no going back in the way the two years were spent there. No more wet-nites neither. So many of those parties spent serving and imbibing drinks- and it all boils down to this- I still hate the racket made in wetnites- but could I have just one more please?

Ohh, and I found my OMAXI tee today. It was lost somewhere in the jumble of stuff when I shifted homes, but it is back, and it shall be worn again with pride, whenever I get time to roam around. Because even though I hated being parts of groups, it was kinda cool. Even though I hated noisy parties in large groups, those were kinda nice. And I am sure those who are going to be checking out of XL now would also be thinking the same- could I have one more please?

I will be going back to XL again, this month or the next month- some plans are being made. This time there will be no familiar faces among the students, but they will still be XLers, there will be Dadu’s where I will sit and sip my coffee (without the chocolate powder, please), maybe even have an egg maggi, and get the gossip about things.

And I will do it again, and again and again. Because now I realize that I was not right to be disgruntled. Nay, I was not really disgruntled. For most of us, XL now is like a love- we can have fights, we can argue, we can stop talking for a few days. But we do not stop loving each other, because we are each made of each other. XL has bits of me in her (her…as one of the current batch aptly says), and I will always have bits of XL in me, where ever I go- because I will always be an XLer. Things earned there will never change. Twenty years down the line, I will sit down for drinks with those guys- we will still go “PIYO BC!” and Ek-Do-Teen-Chaar will always be shouted, even by the most genteel of us…and I will always want one more day there…one more wetnite, one more cup of coffee at Dadu’s, one more terrace party, one more breakfast at the Regent (it will NEVER be the Sonnet for me)…ohh, and would FLIX please screen Gunda again?Similar Posts:

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so rational being that i am, i try to analyze it. of course there is much time left. the next plane i fly on is not going to crash. the next train i travel on is not going to have an accident. and the next time i cross the road, someone is not going to try to harvest me for their roadkill. that, of course, is daftly intuitive, you know all that else you cannot carry on living. and so i know that. and still this nagging feeling- so i try to quantify it. there might not be much time left-meaning…there might be 15-20 years still? i will settle for 20, if it is possible. there will still be so much to do, but 20? for a short time, yes, 20 more years wouldn’t do any harm.

so…20 years. and how will it happen? i am not daft enough to believe in plane-crashes or road or rail accidents. no. it also will probably not be a case of violent termination of life. not because it can’t be. i just don’t see any goon pulling his sixshooter or katta or automatic on me. nor a terrorist. if i have to go in 20, perhaps the most likely candidate for my (untimely, i still insist) demise, will be the little white men- the white sticks with brown strips on their ends. and i will pass happily perhaps.

but twenty years- only twenty…there is still so much to do. the job has just started. the parents are barely settling. the books have barely been started upon. the novel and the poetry have hardly been written. the world has hardly been travelled. why, i have never been out of the country! and the girl i am wooing has still to be wooed. i have not even started a family yet!! and what if there are no twenty year, not really…but just twenty days? what will i have missed out on? the party will have died without me ever having been part of it, the sights will be seen, but not by me. the book will be written- hopefully, but i will not be the one writing. the poems will be recited, but my expression will no longer be in there. the feathers will still float on melodious winds, but the colours of the music will no longer be there in my life. rather, my life will no longer be there in the colours of the music, because i will have gone, lost. ash scattered in the waters of a murky river will be what i will be. and the girl will have found someone else…hopefully someone who will tell her jokes which make her laugh harder, will bear her temper tantrums better, will sometimes make her cry, and then wipe off the tears too. someone who will not just live with her, but someone who will make a life with her, someone who will take her to deep purple concerts, who will revive her love for country music, who will make her understand the language of jazz once again, someone who will sing for her in a voice less off-key than mine…someone who will understand her, but more importantly, someone who will make her understand herself; someone who will have a lot of time…twenty years are nowhere near enough.

the little white men, the little white men…the lighten my life so much and they poison it so, but they still make life worth living, even if they shorten it a bit. the little white men. the cause of so many disasters and i still cannot let them go. at least the girl understands. i wish she would make up her mind quickly. i think it was a dream what i had today, but there really might not be too much time. and then what do we do?

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death (by The Master- Yeats)

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all that talk, about kisses stolen,
all the heat, that passed-
from your lips to mine,
the sour taste that we shared and loved.

tonight is adieu night,
when i say goodbye, to it all;
to you, your dreams, desires of you,
everything is like grass now…

green, beautiful,
and utterly useless when i go hungry,
let us survive these alonenesses,
and the dreams melt,

sometime, we will meet again,
perhaps at the arms of others,
and that time, lovely,
we will love each other.

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2. i accept.

3. FB gives notification: “your friendship is confirmed.”

Sweet!!Similar Posts:

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There is no drive. If I had enough money

to kill myself, I would. Thats a paradox.

There is one way- the way to freedom.

There is a void, and in that void there is

someone. That someone calls out

loud-perhaps. Or perhaps doesnt call out

at all. I wish they would, I long to hear

a voice. Somewhere. Somehow. Sometime.

Too much alcohol. Too little time. Too

much of a daze to bother. Too much love.

And too much loneliness. Too much

forgetting. And too much still remembered.

Life is lived in its excesses, between

fragments of routine.

Can we just go somewhere where we can sit

and talk? Can we talk. Ever?

Illusions. We live in illusions. Of too

little, and too much. Too late. Or never.

Let us sing. Sometime. Let us dance to The

Second Coming. Let us get mad, and tap our

feet to desolation- the void in which the

beast will be born.

Let us end the stories. There is no time.

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I see books forgotten, half read, and
Stories never told, raconteurs who went too shy-
And I tell myself-‘this is not too bad, I will live’
Every morning, I look in a cup full of ashes,
And things I have abandoned to survive,
To live and be called alive- loves, dreams and desires
Pieces of coloured paper burnt in a dusty gray in an indifferent fire,
and scraps of yellow sunshine forgotten in neon signs,
hidden behind sulky memoranda and deceptively pretty presentations,
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All the things
I hoped would go away this morning.
The stuff I live with every day. What
I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.
But for a minute or two I did forget
myself and everything else. I know I did.
For when I turned back i didn’t know
where I was. Until some birds rose up
from the gnarled trees. And flew
in the direction I needed to be going.

: Raymond Carver
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You want to be simple. Normal. And you are more complex than a system of Chinese boxes. There is always something new. Like your admission of craving normalcy.  I want to be complex, and perhaps am just normal.

What does one do when one has made oneself unfit for what one craves? How do you end a story which has grown around you to involve you? How do you write a non-tragic end to a story in which you are yourself a character?

Nights are complex affairs, even in cities where you can barely see a mouthful of sky- stars form intricate patterns with other stars which you can see. And they are interwoven with the gazillion stars you know you cannot see. Are they similar to factors which govern your life? And what if you tell yourself, that you are the only factor which governs your life? That you are no mere star but a blazing sun? And what happens to the lifeless planets around you?

Stories, stories and poems. How do you know which ones are true? And what is the truth from what you would like to believe? How is I Love You different from I Think I Love You? Isn’t the first as great a camouflage of confidence as the second a farce of desire?

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You. Me. Everyone. Who understands, and who doesn’t?
Or are we merely straw men? Fathers, all,
Begotters of jealousy, illicitly betrothed to the truth?
You, Me- tied to each other- and understanding.
Madly trying to understand, you think perhaps,
And I think, ‘what if not?’ You. Me. Restricted by understanding.
Or how little we understand.

Sad little stories. Of a parent not speaking.
And of a lover speaking too much. Or maybe-
Of long silences with intermittent music.
Space quarrelling with an indeterminate time,
And we are bound with ourselves, committed to staying noncommittal.
Love. Indifference. Distrust. Unsureness.
We are human. And hope to be humane.
Straw men- bearing false witness-
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The story, revolving round the mad infatuation of Henry VII, then king of England, for Anne Boleyn, with the regular court intrigues is not a bad one, as stories go. Throw in the historical impact of the affair- the breaking of the Church by Henry (and orchestrated by Cromwell), and the resistance he encountered from More- and it becomes a cracking good tale. Cromwell himself is a very interesting character- his rise from a common soldier to the Prime Minister of England would have been fascinating in itself, in any other hands.

Instead, despite Mantel’s monomaniacal devotion to Cromwell (if this were a movie, Cromwell would be present in almost every frame), in the end I closed the book feeling nothing for Cromwell. Apathy would probably best describe my feelings about the character of Cromwell, and as for my reaction to the novel- perhaps a faint gladness that finally it was over. I knew very little of his motivations for bringing in the English Reformation; and I cared even less. Of course, there was a faint taste of revenge in his actions- for Wolsey, his patron- but throughout, you are left wondering if that is prime motivation. Or, does he in fact have a motivation- except his self interest? He does come through as the consummate politician which he was- but even consummate politicians have motives beyond self, one would like to think.

Even if one accepts the fact that only self was the motive driving Cromwell, the story remains incomplete. For the novel ends with the redrawing by Cromwell of ‘The Map of Christiandom’- but if that is not his primary motive, then the story has not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion at this point. The novel, in this case, serving as the story of Thomas Cromwell, should then also trace his downfall- and of his schemes- first with the beheading of Anne Boleyn (in the year 1536- the novel ends in 1535) and then Cromwell’s own execution in the year 1540 by the same king.

As most historical novels, this one also has a rich collage of characters which could have provided great color, but are woefully neglected. We read of Thomas More, the primary opponent of the Reformation, but we never get to know him well- and like or hate him- as a character.  Similarly, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn are never fleshed out as personalities. Poor Henry ends up being portrayed as a headstrong and immature prince who spends most of his time in the pursuit of Anne Boleyn (which he probably did) and Anne comes across as a pretty and pretty mean calculating machine (which again she probably was). But what of the strength of character, the moral conviction required to go through with something as momentous as the break of the state from the church, and carrying through the split with Rome? In the end, most of the characters seem plastic, with events taking over the place which should have been occupied by people, and the novel ends up becoming a showcase Mantel’s knowledge of history.

But then, if wanted to read the history of the English Reformation, we already have more concise and accurate textbooks, no?

The only redeeming features are some passages when the author does try to halfheartedly focus on the character of
Cromwell, especially in the earlier parts where his relationship with Wolsey is touched upon. And a touch of sardonic humor helps to rush through the earlier pages, but that is about it.Similar Posts:

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marne ki arzoo me jiye ja raha hiin main.’

(chaapoed from a hindi movie)Similar Posts:

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2. read till 2 am in the morning.

3. wake up at 11am on saturday.

4. ask the bai to cook chicken and rice.

5. order two beers.

6. watch a movie on laptop, forget to eat lunch till 5pm.

7. order another two beers. read a book till twelve.

8. remember to eat leftover lunch as dinner. then sleep.

9. repeat on saturday.

10. wake up 10 am on sunday. omg i have a 1pm flight to catch.

11. hastily pack and reach airport.

12. realise you remembered to take three books you will never read on the trip, but forgot to pack your shaving kit and socks.Similar Posts:

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