moving around in circles

It was in the 1980s that some popular Hollywood movies began offering consolation, by way of jingoism, for America’s losses during the Vietnam War. It’s hard to imagine Rambo and Uncommon Valor being made between ’64 and ’74. In the late 60s and early 70s, the public mood was more of snowballing rebellion against a war that didn’t stand up for anything that the American people valued. There were Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

Was there any one point when the public realized that the war had gone wrong? The answer, in all probability, is no. The war continued for more than 6 years after the My Lai massacre in 1968. In fact, Nixon started a new war—by ordering an invasion into Cambodia—in 1970. The so-called Christmas bombings happened in 1972. The war moved around in circles.

The US won every battle, yet as the majority believes it lost the war. Or did it? Either way, it’s hard not to be a cynic. The US entered the war to contain communism. It was the height of the Cold War. Maybe US involvement was justified. Yet, if you trace back steps, you find giant Pandora’s boxes strewn along the way. These boxes lock ugly, enervating truths that make you echo Tommy Lee Jones’ words in No Country for Old Men: “I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand.” That’s the overriding feeling I have.

Sometimes, it pays to be a spectator. There’s more room for solace. Ignorance, while probably not being bliss, is definitely a good sedative.

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I visited my friend’s dad in INHS Asvini, a reputed naval hospital, this weekend. Asvini is located in Navy Nagar in Colaba, south Bombay. Not often you see a yawning ocean through hospital windows. The place doesn’t quite exude sickly gloom, or maybe it’s just me imagining things. Uncle has been an eccentric man all his life. I was wrong-footed by his second question—a deep backhand volley when I was at the net, exchanging pleasantries: “So how is life? How much do you earn? 25,000?”

I burst out laughing. It hit me that he hadn’t really changed. Don’t know why I had assumed that he would have mellowed. He pulled me closer to him and held my hand for a long time. Very unlike him. Later, I realized why. Diabetes has eaten his retina. It has also fucked his kidneys and weakened his heart. We had a regular conversation. I didn’t ask him anything about his health, how he felt, etc. He asked me if I had visited Siddhivinayak, Haji Ali, or the Mahalakshmi Temple. And then chided me for being a nastik (atheist). I said I was too scared to visit Siddhivinayak because a friend—a deeply religious guy—had had his pocket picked there. He looked at me and then we both burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the answer. He showed how swollen his legs had become, pressed the skin near his ankles to show the depressions that would form. When we were about to leave, he asked my friend to level the bed. It was one of those beds with a handle you can use to lift the bed. As he raised his head, I saw tufts of hair on the pillow, like a puppy had slept on it. I felt the saddest then, don’t know why.

Old age is not inevitable, not depressing. If you were to ask him, he would shout back at you, “It’s just ridiculous.” He’s that kind of a man.

My plan

I plan to take myself
by the scruff of the neck
turn myself upside down
shake myself
until the last drop of poison
spills on to paper
and soaks it

And after that
who cares.
There’s absolutely nothing beyond that.

Time

My hands—brothers in arms—keep adding bogeys to this toy train called continuum. The hands are three: the long and short, and the frenzied. Together, they keep ticking. They keep everything running.

When early resplendence slides in through doors ajar, I am there to witness musty corners shrug off their wimpy edginess and mingle with the smooth whole. The world as a brave whole…aah…where does it begin?

When the silence of after-lunch siestas eats the day’s vigor, and activity gives in to abeyance, I stand moved. I continue my merry-go-round. Lending substance to naps and dreams that appear and vanish like meteors. When lurky servants pinch off sleazy magazines from under mattresses and spill themselves on Persian carpets, I am there. When they remember the spots of spillage and smile at having stained a rich master’s possession, I am there too.

When shadows make two of each, I am there. When old memories return with long shadows on deserted walks, I walk too. When aggrieved patriarchs rant endlessly in after-dinner outbursts, I do not pause to stop them. When the socially respected take off their contraptions and defenses for others like them before retiring, I bear testimony.

When my hands meet—seduced by coterie—I egg them on. And they start all over again. And they make you start all over again.

Mine is just a job. I don’t know why you do it.

witness to life

I read somewhere that one of the reasons people marry is that they want a witness to their lives. Like much later after things have happened, a married man will have someone to testify what had happened. In conversations, he will not be the only one rambling; there’ll be someone to finish his sentences, to furnish details of the past, to lend credence to his claims.

Which is partly why long-distance relationships are difficult to sustain. Because there’s no constant witness. Witnesses change, and more importantly the ones that are there don’t pay much attention. Or else your work friends would be your best friends.

Solely as proof, the “marriage” kind of a permanent association isn’t worth it. Photographs and home videos should suffice. That marriage rewards you with a guaranteed history is a given. But exactly what sort of history?

I dislike the kind of history that paints pictures in broad, sweeping strokes. I find it irrelevant. There’s just very little detail. It follows then that I don’t particularly like to know about what couples have to say when they sum up their lives together in a few pithy sentences. Such remarks are more like comments fit into a small box in a report card. Like you had to deliver a judgement, so you did it. The judgement is not the truth. Truth is in the details. And at different points in time, truth is different. And part of the truth is that when you do choose to marry, you’re offering yourself as a witness to your partner’s whims and fancies, his vices, his unacceptable traits, his irritating habits. And also his absolutely adorable qualities.

The question I ask myself is whether the virtues redeem the vices. Whether it’s only the sum that counts—not what goes into the final figure.

X

It’s that time of the day when the chutzpah starts to melt. When you realize the fight Obama needs to put up is gargantuan. That all the mayhem around you is not your life, yet is maybe not something that you can extricate yourself out of. That you have no obligation, yet you somehow can’t let things be. It’s that time when every minute is a new thought connected to the previous. When truth is close at hand, but only as a nightly visitor who shall leave your bedside in the morn, is.

Is there a burden of truth? Should truth just be left on its own? Should you not carry it on your shoulders, listen to where it wants to go, help it get there? There’s a waking life in these questions. Yet there’s too much to be lived beyond them. Beyond them, in the territory of farcical democracies, dysfunctional societies, staged performances.

Life is the bubbles you chase behind closed eyelids. It’s ever elusive, yet you know it’s so bloody easy to see those bubbles. It’s a fucking tease, like a little show of naked skin. A possible indulgence.

success and escape

I work for an editing company. A couple of months ago, my bosses took me off editing documents and put me on something very vaguely defined and unstructured. (You may call it business development.) This was because they thought I could add a lot more value and deliver what they wanted. Between then and now, I’ve conceived of and implemented a very important change in the way we edit. I’ve also worked on and launched a new editing service. I’ve written pages of web content and news items and press releases for promotion; created content and design for two ads; written job ads for 4 different positions; created and compiled training material for editors working on the new editing service; written content for internal purposes; worked on the design of a few web pages; held numerous meetings with the most important people in the company; modified work processes and briefed teams about changes; written 45 seconds (150 words) of the script for a show on CNBC in which one of my bosses was featured; and tried to avoid documentation as much as I could.

Today, I was working on case studies. I had to showcase some of the interesting tie-ups my company has had with clients in the recent past. I went to my boss with 4 case studies that I had written. He liked the text but wanted some images to go along with it for impact. So, he gave me 80 minutes—until we met next—to work on it. I decided to try something different. Instead of using flowcharts and diagrams to show how we have helped our clients, I drew stick figures on the back of the printout of each case study. I wanted these stick figures to illustrate the “before” and “after” situations in each of the cases profiled. As I continued to work on it, the idea behind the sketch became clearer and I began to visualize how it would look on a web page. It was only when I was sketching for the last of the 4 case studies that I realized I had something good on my hands. I thought the figures were very different, carried great visual appeal, and conveyed the point succinctly.

When my boss first saw the stick figures, he seemed amused. He looked at them carefully, turned each sheet to read the case study. He seemed ok with the first and the fourth (they were the simplest) and undecided with the rest. After a fairly long time, he mumbled “hmm… very creative.” It sounded more like “good, but sorry we can’t use them.” And they won’t be used.

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I enjoy reasonable freedom in my job, and I’ve got a conventionally bright future with my current employer. However, I like the disappointments that arise from working for yourself much more than I like those that come with working for someone else. And I don’t like authority.

I’ve tried to compartmentalize myself into the “work me” and “me.” But I’ve found it difficult to separate one from the other. The work me tries to ignore Sylvia Plath and Charlie Kauffman, but me is absolutely rivetted to them. The work me admires catchlines like “Be Born Everyday” but me detests the sophistry in them. When the work me runs after something during the day, it’s me that feels exhausted in the evening. When the work me has to give something, it snatches part of that from me. And “I” end up poorer. I end up looking for escape in social intimacy and beer.

I don’t want an escape. I want a better life. And all of me.

run of the mill

In order for you to fully assimilate life’s teachings—the ones that are neatly encapsulated in one-liners so as to save you the toil of peeling off meaning of Rushdie-esque paragraphs—you must learn painful lessons first. And one of them is that you’re just run of the mill. Proof of that? If any vestiges of a maverick were hidden in you, the years gone by should’ve sucked them out for public perusal. But they haven’t. So, there it stands. You’re run of the mill.