to bombay

Imagine entering or being pushed inside a jam-packed compartment —your feet almost dangling in air, your body (not even the skeleton is spared) contorted in shapes unimaginable, inexorable forces moving up and down your shape. Inside, the crowd is bristled up by a motive not grander than reaching their everyday destination—office or home—but as urgent nevertheless. The invaders—you—are welcomed by pushes, shoves, and gropes; cries of andar, andar fill the air that has been stifled between and beneath tumultuous bodies. And after much warfare, when you do acquire a foothold on a patch that has not been annexed by another sole and as you struggle to keep a clammy hand hinged onto something, you’re treated to extraordinary sights: comrades nestled cosily, shuffling a pack of worn-out cards, a gentleman reading ‘Kasturba: a life’, or a group chorusing Marathi songs.

And imagine going through almost all of this all over again, twice a day, everyday, for days and days.

Bombay takes you by the scruff, turns you over, and shakes the last ounce of you from your piggybank. The experience is exhilarating, disgusting, exacting, refreshing—all at once. Two nights ago, at 1130, I saw one having a haircut, and one giving it too! When the narrators in Bollywood flicks say ‘the city never sleeps’ this is what they mean.

The contrast of India cannot possibly hit you harder anywhere but here. My office, in central, posh Lokhandwala, is opposite a string of huge malls but adjacent to a line of jhuggis and chawls. While there are coumtless eateries nearby, the streets are lined with makeshift huts that dole out lunches at dirt-cheap prices.

And public transport is the greatest leveler. Classless commutes. Everyone travels (rather has to) by local train or bus. The hottest chick to the oldest uncle, to the loudest mawaali, to the most straitjacketed buzurg.

Today, as I got down at the bus stop near my office, I saw Hrithik’s bare chest shouting out loud from a giant poster. I couldn’t help grimace. That instant, nothing was further from truth, from reality. After a bus-train-bus ride of almost one and a half hour, after the jostling and huffing and puffing nothing was more absurd. I think that’s why people are so passionate about movies—to escape a harsh, shared reality. To saunter in a place so unimaginable that it refuses to acknowledge their depressing and exhausting truth.

There’re a hundred things to write about. But I’ll give myself time to sauté them, then deep fry and relish them.

from bangalore

From Bangalore:

Last days at a place involve you before releasing you altogether, for better or for worse. There’s the meeting up and final words with friends and then coming back to your solitary thoughts. Within the last minute chaos is a new direction. Everyone else knows about it but only you are entitled to feel it.

I’ve 2 more days in Bangalore. I had arrived here quite inauspiciously, having forgotten my 10th marks card that had, to cut a long story very close to its denouement, resulted in 4 weeks in a pigeonhole with a dastardly patron to survive. I survived, if this post isn’t proof enough.

Back then, I had a better plan for the future; right now there’s a much stronger conviction.

Yesterday I went to 3 shops to sell off old furniture, understood soon that their keepers didn’t think much of my belongings and ended up making the deal with a very good friend. It’s uncomfortable to do business with a friend; you are wary about hurting his sensitivities by quoting a high price, and too low a price only ends up making you rue the transaction. And with a close friend you’re afraid something untoward may creep into, and then disturb, the mutual equation and with barely a friend, the deal shall set the tone for future affairs.

Non-sequitur: my mother is unconvinced about my skill at packing. She pesters me with questions that concern vexing details. I’m not as concerned. Is this skill gender specific or am I just too bad to notice my level of inaptitude? My checquered career has had a few blemishes (refer to the story of the missing 10th marks and the sneaking patron) which, my mother feels, don’t give me the liberty, or audacity, to pacify her worries.

Going off a philosophical tangent, most choices you make aren’t that momentous. They only set the tone. It’s what you do afterwards that bake or burn. Such a vantage point can work both ways: it can keep you more focused on action and keep your mind off unnecessary regret or elation, or it can take the sheen off the finality of any occasion and make your approach towards any decision lackadaisical.

I wonder about friends though. Will it be the same ever again? Something very sublime inside of me asks, ‘Why can’t it be better?’ I’m bad at keeping in touch. But I hope the sublime outlasts this something so commonplace.

The next 2 days will pass off and arrange themselves in a week, which will tuck itself in a month that will fit in a year. Just a number: 2006. As I’ll remember that figure with events—personal and national—I’ll probably never pause to ask: what did I learn from it? Did living become just a force of habit? Or did it actually matter?

The nub is to travel the journey and not to canter to any destination.

that name on the merit list

They hadn't cost her a dime, her dreams. But there, in that very public of places, they melted into tears. And fell off her luminous eyes. Slowly and softly. She didn’t mind them, slipping away. There were enough happy, sparkling, bulbous beads to spare. She remained glued to that name on the hastily written list, checking every letter, her lips mouthing every syllable. That was the one, she told herself. That had to be her child.

She pulled herself out from the cloud of nervous parents. The glistening film on her upper lip was wiped away by an impatient hand that longed to be clasped with the other in prayer. She looked upwards and then inwards. Her God had a heart, surely.

That night she rode up the crescent moon and pitched her nascent dreams into the night sky. Before she came down, she broke a small piece off the lucent concave, heedful that it would disappear into an emptiness soon. She would try to make it last until the end of the month. Like an item of grocery. And then wait for it again.

She couldn’t believe that name on the merit list still. How much would an English school education cost? For then, it didn’t matter. Neither did the blisters wedged between her toes.

my plough, my land

Ladies and gentlemen, seraphs, elves and pirates, exhibit number 1: a star-studded plough.

What would you think if you’re pointed out a plough in the sky? Any sense of wonder? Gasps--audible and visible? Diminutive dreams tumble out from your imagination, swell and threaten to turn real. Oh, back to the plough. A plough with which to till the skies, with glittering stars for beads of your perspiration. Clouds who had been reconnoitering, though aimlessly, waiting to pour down on, now gather with an unmistakable urgency. Something debatable, worth talking about, has led to their most recent caucus. After much deliberation they decide on a plough–-that one with stars.

And drop it onto my backyard. A plough with which to till the skies, with glittering stars for beads of my perspiration.

And guess what? I got the job.

black-faced happiness

This time when I had been home I went to Keonjhar, as promised, to spend a few days with my mom. All through my engineering I had tactfully avoided staying there stating the value of the precious few days of my semester breaks.

Keonjhar is a sleepy little place laden with huge iron and chrome ore deposits, coal mines and tribals. That is an extremely uncharitable statement and it doesn't say much more than it says.

When I went for a run early morning I saw hordes of locals being trooped onto trucks that lined the streets. Men were paid as less as 60 and women lesser for an entire day’s work in the coal mining quarries in nearby Mayurbhanj. Evenings would witness black-faced happiness with soiled currency in hard hands. Life happened one day at a time. When they saw me running in my Benetton T-shirt and Reebok tracks I wonder what they must’ve thought. I felt inexplicably embarrassed, although I reasoned there was no particular reason why I should be. It was my hard-earned money which had allowed me life’s comforts and no one could take that away from me, much less the happiness I derived from enjoying them.

One evening I accompanied mom to an acquaintance’s (rather an old employee’s) house. She had a 5 year old daughter who was asked to sing rhymes and the latest songs before me. The house comprised of one room with a detached, makeshift bath-latrine. When I arrived beds were dusted off and utensils, books, clothes were cleared. I was offered Sprite when I knew they wouldn’t have it themselves. That 8 rupees would go into an account where every penny mattered. Every rupee saved would bring a smile of relief. It would buy an ounce of happiness which came cheap for people like me. Still, there was this genuine largess sitting right across me in a single bedroom of hope. That belittled.

Baba, will you have anything else? Kurkure, Cadbury?

Such memories mean much more than can ever be fathomed. They bring forth a wave of emotions. A surge of guilt mostly. But to do anything out of guilt would be just not it.

Some duties are not obligatory. They're just more important.

Which bubble should I fill and which one will burst?

Should I trust my instincts? This always crops up like an assiduous turtle called to race against the profligate hare – not in full measure but just enough to keep me interested. There’re intelligent guesses and then there’re blind ones. Then there’re some absurd ones which come across as veritably brilliant and vice-versa (don’t flip-flop all the adjectives).

I’ve been though phases. To guess and proffer phase. To stay mum and withdraw phase. And an in-between, mishmash phase. Poignantly and retorospectively I’ve had complaints against and during each of them. When I’ve been forthcoming, on occasions, I’ve shot off absolutely dumb momos and when I’ve kept the jackpot answer to myself I’ve been left with randomly uprooted clumps of hair from my scalp. I’ve tried to get people (teachers, instructors, friends, etc) to understand that genius sleeps with stupid for better and for worse and hence they should accept esprit and dumb momos with equal receptivity. This phenomenon has not just been restricted to classroom (or similar face-to-face) situations. Its ambit include MCQs with negative marking. On countless occasions, when I’ve narrowed my choices down to two, the battle between the possible and the probable--that strife between instinct and reason (though not in such clear terms)--has just thickened. Leaving me nowhere. Dammit! What’s the use of eliminating 2/3 choices if you’re left with options you can’t decide between? It’s all the more frustrating. And then Murphy himself has to be countered. If I trust my intuition it turns out wrong and when I don’t I rue missing my chance because that just would've been bingo!

More about the strife. For all these years I’ve believed myself to be one. Except of course when I’ve had to choose between having junk food during jaundice and drooling in public. Or similar moral dilemmas. But faced with two tussling MCQ options I’m split asunder, along the seams. There sprouts a reasonable, play-safe alter ego who cants me to see the truth: discretion is better than valour. And the just-do-it second self who requests me to trust my hunch. I oscillate between the safety of a staid spouse or the thrill of the enticing other in a backless choli. Precisely. (I dare not draw the analogy for the fairer sex for fear of a dumb momo)

Back to MCQs. What do I do? And before I’ve made up my mind the clock hands have changed numbers. Generally, I refrain from choices or take the safe highway (rather than my way). And am ensconced in my cocoon. In this CAT season I suppose this dilemma has great significance for our burgeoning aspiring-managerial populace. I wonder if someone can come up with an algorithm that can be customized to suit every user and thus maxmise his or her usage of intuition. What an invention!! And stupid me, as a child I thought, while going through long GK lists, that all great inventions had already been, well, invented and there would be nothing worthwhile left to, well, invent in the coming years.

to be the one you want to be

Five years ago I started studying to be a Mechanical Engineer. A year and a half ago I became a Software Engineer. A few months ago I was on the verge of studying to become an MBA, having got through 2 IIMs. And now, I’m doing something I haven’t been formally trained in at any point in my life. If a pithy statement is necessitated it is this: sometimes we may/do spend years climbing up long ladders only to find, at the top or somewhere in the higher rungs, that we’ve been snaking up the wrong ones. Or even that we’re way too up on some ones to get down and climb on to the right ones the--ones we would love to.

When I quit my job and subsequently forfeited my chance of pursuing an MBA I didn’t have a career path chalked out. I was only beginning to feel strongly about one particular thing: of all the kinds of imprisonments that we find ourselves living in one of the worst is to carry a question mark as a legacy of our past or as a precursor of the future. And this was just one aspect. Another driving issue was reason. Why one should be doing what one does. There should be at least thousand reasons for a thousand of us. Quite often the best of the worst lot comes up for serious consideration. And elimination. I can’t be this, this and this. That leaves this. So let me become this. Voila!

While the possibility of putting safety/security over choice/interest looms large at every junction, there is also the period of drifting along saying ‘let me find out what I want to do in life and then I’ll do something about it’. We (the ones who are reading this blog) are in a far better position to decide our destinies than many many others. When I was involved with a group of volunteers in teaching underprivileged kids the basics of computers a question had cropped up as to what lasting, tangible benefit the kids would extract out of a sporadic, even solitary, exercise such as learning computers. They may very well never have to do anything with it again. But then were we willing to bet on it? And wasn’t it better to give the kids a certain level of acceptance and a few choices which could help them later in life? It struck me that we, by virtue of our position in the scheme of larger things such as status, acceptance, and comfort in society, are far better off. And if we don’t make efforts to avail ourselves of it then isn’t that a pity?

I’m expecting a few to ask: is it entirely possible for us to decide our own fates? To decide one's destiny and to evaluate oneself on evident, more acceptable yardsticks are not two exclusive areas. For every Kiran Desai who wins recognition as a practitioner of a lonely, reclusive art there may be hundreds others who live in oblivion. But then, is the Booker the criterion for her success? What about the absolute joy she had while stringing together each of those thousands of lines? And herein is my point.

That when we truly enjoy what we’re doing we will think before we (or even will not) measure ourselves against hikes, bonuses, awards and start looking elsewhere when they don’t come our way. Or feel disenchanted about our lives.

Today I’ve a telephonic interview, possibly the final round, for an editing job. If I get through it’ll be redemption of sorts. Solely because I’ll be able to do what I want to do.