I am a pang

I’m perished. I’m blank. Tissues of torpor have invaded my core. Moments of pith have deserted me.

My body is a sheet that shrouds and protects the dignity of the corpse underneath; only my eyes belie. Of late, the sense of déjà vu has been unmistakable. I’ve been looking for an alcove to find shelter in at every possible opportunity. I’m afraid that my efforts at separating myself from the outside may just peter out. I may become a vegetable.

I need space and time. I need a place to myself. I do not want to escape into a world of fantasy; I want to create one of my own. I cringe at the idea of what a normal weekend entails but have been partly subjecting myself to the same. Because I can’t write at home—with the TV, phone conversations, and people—I sleep, read, surf, and waste precious hours.

Everyday, I need to string words for myself. It’s only when I’ve penned them that I feel a sense of living. But, by not being appeased, this appetite is eating me from inside. The days smother me but are cruel enough to let a few faint glimmers in through slits. The nights perform the coups de grâce, blemishing hope and snuffing out life. And I can’t even lie naked on the floor and stare at nothingness. For every unit of space has twisted itself into a diseased shape; across every patch of the floor are strewn banal lives.

I feel like an immovable block of stone has been placed on the fountainhead within me. I just can’t displace it.

While I sleep, the hours are slipping away from under my pillow. They teach me—as they have proselytized many before me—that life goes on. I am a pang.

Rain-washed and sun-soaked
Imagination—frosted,
Culled by incubus.

world’s deadliest animals

With the human habitat rapidly encroaching upon the wilderness, several species are being rabidly threatened. This has led to a status quo wherein the butterfly effect has emerged as a conspicuous and frequent phenomenon.

When socialite Paris Hilton handed herself over to the authorities soon after attending the MTV Awards Show and a day before her scheduled date, the Sheriff’s department was caught napping. “Such a high-profile client, and you don’t even have the basic amenities for subsistence celebrity living,” he fulminated. “Get your shoddy asses to the Walmart store, and get Ms Hilton all the lip gloss and mascara that she needs. Now!” Meanwhile, in the penitentiary, there was a huge ruckus, for its most visible boarder did not have a cell for herself. This led to an ad hoc arrangement, and it was decided by the powers that be that for the time being, Ms. Hilton would be stocked in a makeshift tent a little away from the main block.

But first things first.

In the 1950s, African honey bees were brought to Brazil for cross-breeding with the resident European bees. Little did they anticipate the ferocious speed with which the African breeders would pommel their European counterparts, turning what the farmers thought to be a bee-hive of activity into mass orgies that Kubrick had visualised for Eyes Wide Shut. Very soon, the beeziness spread across the Americas and the swarm annexed countries like the Roman Empire in the heighth of its fashion. Thus, by the 80s, they had arrived in Hollywood, O my Brothers.

Anyway, so, for putting up Ms Hilton’s abode, a rare teakwood had to be chopped off, much against the vibrato of vocal environmentalists, and in the doing of this, a beehive that thrived in a knothole of the tree trunk was displaced. Evicted out of their hearth, the cross-bred buzzers went berserk, wrecking havoc, pushing their tribe further up along Amreeka. After much reconnaissance, they finally selected a patch close to a placid lake (hereafter Lake Placid) where the Augusta Masters (goalf tournament, Dinesh bhai?) golf course. Now, the crocs in Lake Placid had already been much bugged by the prying wannabe NGC explorers who in the pursuit of croc-footage (that would get them a primetime slot) had disturbed their habitat. With the constant drumming by the newbies, the ghariyals were at the end of their tether. Now, all this oblivious to the human world, the preparations for the Augusta Tournament were in full swing (or birdie). So, when Tiger (no, not a species but a goalfer, remember Dinesh bhai?) shook his butt—taking the earth’s rotation and spin into consideration—to hit his approach shot into the green, he went a little too deep into the marshy rough, where the lazy alpha ghariyal was basking. Peeved no end, he snapped at Woods’ Achilles heel, (no, one person only) sending the latter’s title-deprived competitors into spontaneous rapture.

This broke open a Pandora’s box—on one hand was the Damocles’ sword of the Gogo Green Earth environmentalists’ group, who cried foul against the senseless human intrusion into natural habitats, while on the other hand was Mr Bush who ordered a high-level probe suspecting the crocs to be Al-Qaeda trained.

Across the oceans, Mr Mush, extracting full juice out of the potential squeeze, asked his media honchos to shoot a croc-training footage, and sent the same to Mr Bush, with the P.S. of the mail requesting Amreeka’s help in saving Mushy’s domestic ass.

Not to be left behind, with the intent of parrying media frenzy, Manu and Sonia are meeting today, in disguise, at PVR, Saket, over a show of Dharm (which they expect to be snail-paced so as to enable them to continue their emergency talks).

P.S: There are no typos in this post. All the puns are intended. No mammals were harmed during the making of this post.

my sunday brunch

Big B sits on the steps of a circular platform in the main party area and waits. Nathulal, owner of the proverbial moocchhen (bushy upper-lip appendage), gifts Big B a huge bottle of some brand of alcohol from the License Raj. And, behind him, waiting in line are several other well-wishers of the Budday Boy, that is Big B, with bottles similar to Nathu’s. After the gifting-shifting is over, one of the guests, quite nonchalantly, asks Big B as to why he isn’t indulging himself in cake-cutting and subsequent eating. To which he, Big B that is, remarks, in a demonstrance of his unsurrendered volition, Amaa, hamara janamdin hai, hamaari party hai, jab hamaara man kare hum cake kaatenge (my birthday, my party, i’ll cut the god-damned cake when i feel like). In the delivery of this fiercely individualistic line, though, a dil ka taar (string of heart) is strung, and Big B, reeling under the weight of the absence of a certain one in his party, accuses Munshiji of being culpable of a great, emotionally punishable, crime. He reminds the latter, though not in mockery, of what he, the latter that is, had said about an aurat (woman) lending wazan (weight, gravity) to a mard ki baatein (man’s words). Ho hum, hum mein hai dum (we have the guts; the introductory phrase only for musical impact, much in the lines of chhaiyan chhaiyan, tamma tamma, humma humma) may have cried the feminists. Munshiji, to his credit, doesn’t babble arey bhaagwaan (common form of address used by rural Indian husbands for their respective better halves). Instead, buoyed by his well-tuned gut feeling, he says, Mujhe yakeen hai woh aayegi, chaahe qayamat aa jaaye (I have faith in her coming, even if disaster striking). Big B orders all the lights to be switched off save one—that which glows pure as a flame, literally. He lays down his terms: He shall wait until the candle melts to wax, and dust grounds to dust, and if she does not turn up by then, his faith in candles shall be destroyed. The guests, mute spectators thus far, bow in shame served aplenty with hunger, and wait. So, Big B waits, Munshiji waits, Nathulal and his moustache wait, and the sidekicks in the crowd wait.

Unable to bear the wait now, with three-fourths of an hour past, Big B picks up a guitar and starts rendering a song about intehaan (test) and intezaar (wait) that is languid only to emphasize its synonymy with the purport of the song. Gradually, as he croons past the mukhda (opening line of the song), he picks himself up and asks pertinent questions such as aaaina kuch khabar mere yaar ki (mirror, do you have some news about my beloved?). The melancholy in the air runs itself thin and slips into the realms of the bizarre. However, just before this process is consummated and the mysterious sightings of an unidentified dancing object mindfuck Big B any further, attired in glitzy-glossy appropriated from the wardrobe of Baapida (legendary music director who weighs as much as his jewellery and speaks a language in which the last line of this post is written) appears the weighty (t)issue that is Jayaprada. The trumpets and the trombones give way to drums, lots of them, and those instruments that squeal disco Baapida sounds. A muhalla (neighborhood) crowd gushes in, in dated suits, sarees, and chappals to bestow significance upon the occasion. Jayaji, dances to Baapida’s beats and lip-syncs to the voice of Asha taai (rhymes with baai but men have lesser sexual motor response for this species). Gyrating, pirouetting, serenading. Big B, catatonic, with two left legs and two right (he is a leftie, ya) hands. Plays the drums, sings the song, and cavorts. All at once.

In Baapida’s words, it would hab been bhery phoolish to hab bhizualijed this song in any aather way.

P.S: (1) This post is my version of the song Intehaan ho gayi from Sharaabi, which I happened to catch on Max. For reference, Munshiji is Om Prakash and Big B is…now c’mon guys .

(2) I think the cellphone operators can use the waiting-period footage to make far better ads than the daadu-chessplaying-pota-traingoing Airtel version.