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.

He who could have been

Epilogue

Did you go to his funeral? Did he even have a family? Of course, he had one. Why do you ask? Didn’t I tell you they had all come wearing black armbands?

In mourning? Of course.

What did I see?

I saw them going home, into their loos. “Fucking long funeral,” they said and perched over their shitpots. The radio was on full blast. Turn it loud, Captain. A little jig, a little swerve, and a spray of sallow pee all over. And the band came undone and fell under. Then they flushed their loos. Or they remembered to save water and didn’t.

The next morning the obituary read

Loving father and caring husband passed away in his sleep.

He was bereaved by his 2 children and wife, who inherited a sprawling 52 acre estate and a plush bungalow.

Many years ago, as a child, he had looked up to his parents and had inherited his father’s stupidity and his mother’s perfidy. He led a life blissfully unaware of that, tinged only with the regret of a moment when he had been weak enough to believe in himself.

He went no further than a fetid shitpot. That is where he had to go.

At least, he didn’t have to suffer. He met a painless death.

That moment

A ray of light darted in his head. Yet, it did so like a streak that belonged to a lingering sunset, casting a glow over the remains on the shore. Memories shone resplendent like wet, glistening rock faces only to be extinguished, awash, by the returning waves. A shadow had come upon some parts of the world, while the others waited for their turn. Something told them their moment would come, and they must blaze in all glory then. “I must not forget. I must not,” the words jetted out from between his teeth.

He wanted to learn to enunciate each sorrow, each prick, each punch. And let the pain seep in like faith seeping out during acts of infidelity. Hold every image against the fading light and see through the negatives. Let them dance, with nakedness as their sole guise. Under the naked guise of pity, promise, and fatherhood. Stand with arms hanging lazily by his side and witness the collapse of institutions. Throw his head back insolently, proudly. And say, “You can’t touch me.”

Quality

“There’s so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions,” said Wynand. “I’ve always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them.” (The Fountainhead)

I don’t remember examining this “human inconstancy” anything beyond the usual life goes on…people change bromide*. We ascribe the change in our feelings (toward something static) to the notion that life itself is dynamic by virtue of transient circumstances, situations, settings, moods encompassed within it. Every song, movie, book, play, poem—any work of art, anything that is not subject to intrinsic change once it has been brought to fruition—is evaluated by the subject in a state of mind. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. So, if the beholder’s perception of an object wavers with time, then it translates into a situation wherein the aspects of beauty that are perceived have changed. Thus, the judgments we pass on works of art are not merely subjective (with respect to the subject), they also change temporally, i.e., with time, even when the subject is held constant.

However, there’s a more fundamental character to our judgments. While it is explicit that we perceive different things differently, what is implied in the context introduced above is that we also perceive the same thing differently at different instances. There are books I had liked when I was younger that, now, I wonder how I possibly could have (What did I see in them then? What don’t I like in them now? Are they the same things?). More pertinently, sometimes, this chasm in one’s opinion may widen with age or fluctuate in phases.

When we look for one essential trait in any object, our perception of the object cannot change solely because the object is immutable. The crux that questions every judgment is whether or not the object has integrity. Does it have a purpose, a meaning, a central function? This quality is exclusive of the subject/observer and intrinsic of the object. This meaning holds, regardless of any criterion that the human mind may impose to evaluate. What an object stands for, to the greatest degree, is not transient. Those who understand this, and look for that one shining trait, are unlikely to change their opinions of things.

I’ve a feeling this is one of the things that Robert Pirsig tried to put across when he tried so hard to define Quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He essentially imparted an absolute nature to his Quality and removed any duality in the process. And that is how he could ascertain whether or not a motorbike or a restaurant had that Quality, regardless of who drove the bike or who dined in the restaurant.

Coming back, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the reasoning behind such a view as Wynand’s had I not read Rand.

*Bromide is an interesting word. Also check sulphite if you’re amused.

At 1:52

Right at 1:52, a tingle will run up their spines. A fluid sensation, swiveling upward like a young flame that laughs off the wind, will gush forth. The flowers—golden, merry, purple, auburn—will pick themselves up and float wavily, waft, and stow themselves in no particular order in the heart of a hutch burrowed deep in a sunny patch. Creatures of the earth, ye little puppy, creepy-crawlies, grounded feathers, and the tiny girl with lips wearing a riot of Holi and the listless simian Heckava nestled in her arms will meander from their businesses. They will, no shall, arrive with the crackling of dry leaves underfoot, flitting back and forth, humming now and then, rustling awake other tiny lives. All of them—members of the most recent family—will wind up near the flowers. The tiny puppy will sniff with a liquidy nose, the millipede will glue itself around the stalks with a thousand feet, and the girl will have the shape of wonder in her bulbous eyes. She will keep Heckava down but not before asking the assiduous ants to vacate the patch. The irascible teeny-weenies will pay no heed and continue to stomp from here to there. They—entire colonies of them—will chomp Heckava’s soft behind, gifting the simian a red rind. He will try to act strong, in spite of his immaculate composure being stretched thin, and will present a brave, bland face. The puppy, timid and small, will have never had smelled a petal. Until then. He will lick off the finespun petals, as if they were caked with something sapid, and the blades will then shimmer. The ants, seeing the glistening petals, will blitz toward them and clamber up the stalks, over the millipede, in search of manna. The little sparrow with plumage that had not yet met the winds will tip-toe and peck nervously. The blazing, tender, riot-colored lips of the girl will part and a soft zephyr will drift. A violent commotion will occur—the ants will cling tight to the surface with all their might. “That was not funny at all,” will they shout in unison. The girl will giggle with little pink-nailed fingers over her mouth. A delighted Heckava, having tasted redemption, will remove the pretty, green scarf from around his neck and, in a display of exhibitionism, will swing it in the air. The puppy, satisfied with his grasp of the goings-on, will wag his tail in a display of shtick. The lonely house lizard will look wistfully from the window opposite the patch, and yearn. For a moment, he’ll forget his household and consider inviting himself over to the proceedings.

Then I shall pull the shutters down on my world. And that will be it.

unleashing a self-seeking spirit

Sometime later, or earlier, a bus passed by. It was as packed as packed could be. Suddenly, unsurprisingly, I had this pang of pity.

People’s lives, hard as flintstones, and peopled lives smacked hard by myriad everyday gavels, grunts passing off as breaths, making ends meet only by burning at both ends. And then? This hard anatomy turns brittle. As brittle as rickety bones. Or glass. And breaks into shards that pierces their bodies or makes them crumble into amorphous masses, shapeless, and brings them at the mercy of a solitary gust. During moments of weakness, they measure their stretched existences in all or nothing. During moments of joy, they try to forget their moments of enervation.

But then, I thought, it is their choice. Haven’t they chosen to expend their waking hours under the shade of a dubious shape, in the quest for a greater pursuit. Comfort, security, insurance against bouts of profligacy, endorsement—a higher ideal, nevertheless. Higher than their horizontal, flattened lives. A Shangri-La where their lowly hunger—this extreme desire to come good, deliver, meet the expectations of others—should be appeased. Why, then, do I find solace in pity? Shouldn’t I be proud of, and happy for, them; should not this very awareness embolden me to lay claim to being selfless, by virtue of being happy without a stake?

Selfish—it sustains an odor. The odor of something concealable. Garlic on breath. Or that of censures, mock and otherwise, that condition to an extent wherein should the very word be uttered in anything addressed to us, all elements of our existence react to throw out its sheepish smell with a single-minded sincerety only replicated in affairs beneath the sheets. Huge endeavors are undertaken to mask a guilt-ridden smell by periodic, convenient, intermittent altruistic deeds and thoughts. Like my pang of pity that tried to camouflage the odor of my ignoble, selfish existence by sensing the poignancy of the bus-laden lives of my less fortunate brothers. In the span of that one thought, I atoned for my sins. O, Father! I know I have sinned. Let my path meander with the bends of your hallowed course such that at every opportune occasion I can let your waters cleanse me. And thus I did wash my sins clean.

Opulent, ornate facades of buildings are gloriously analogous to the empty designs that we showcase in the course of the tirade to fit in, in society. The ostentatious archways only expiate the dingy matchboxes inside, stacked unimaginatively, laboriously upon one another. What could I have been? When did I realize that I’m as corrupt as the ones I despised in fables? When did I become one of them?

So that we are valued agreeably in societal eyes and earn good riddance of our compunction, we propitiate by offering alms and acting meek. This by far is the most popular path to selflessness: The duties include satisfying the presumption of others, being projected favorably onto them, and, in doing so, sacrificing the absolute ideal—the purpose of existence. Should I quell my spirit to bargain for an acceptable apology for a moral code? By being flung to the streets at throwaway prices, it is demeaned, rather ironically, to a more humanly character.

I earnestly aspire to offer my selfish self at the altar of altruism. I, as the embodiment of self-absorption. Why do I need to ask for forgiveness? Nothing, but the individual spirit, is absolute. I have a purpose that far outruns that of bandy altruistic legs. There is no end to the means. It is only the means. Perfect happiness is not in its realization. It’s not in retrospect, nor in summing up. It’s in the moment. In the somersaults without a crowd. In the lonely smiles. In the process of being unleashed. Like a rabid spirit.