Sunday, December 23, 2012

'We' the people


Well, at the outset, I’m at quite a loss. Not because whatever happened in Delhi has not happened before, though the brutality of the act is quite reportedly unprecedented, but because of what happened in the aftermath. I wasn’t there when the lathicharge was happening, I was walking my dog in a posh colony somewhere, and being the totally non concerned citizen that I am, I have no proclivities towards staying abreast of whatever goes on in the city via newspapers and news channels. I stay preoccupied with my car, my motorcycle, issues at work and whichever woman I may be in love with at any given time and finding and improvising on ways and means to woo her.

That being said, I was having dinner with my folks and they’re slightly addicted to NDTV 24x7. And I saw. I saw a woman in an orange suit being hit thrice in the stomach by some four helmeted, bullet proofed, and rather well geared policemen, Delhi’s finest, the elite, crème de la crème, so to speak. The woman got up, doubled up, fell down again and crawled to the side of the pavement. After which, I, being the responsible citizen that I am, tweeted and facebooked my resentment, replete with the hashtags, mind you. As I then proceeded to take more gravy and satiate my gluttonous and rather ravenous appetite, I received a call from my reporter friend about another reporter that I know who lost a chunk of flesh, as a tear gas canister exploded near her feet. I got another update on twitter about it being on you tube and checked out the link. I saw the shell land at her feet and the camera going haywire and the resulting chaos. Its probably something that is extremely common in war reporting, and maybe even better delivered by  Hollywood, if you remember the Ironman flick. But this was someone I knew.  The TV then went on to get Renuka Choudhary’s comments on the same. I believed that the woman, being a woman, would maybe sensitize the issue a bit and reach out, or moreover, being a ruling party member of Parliament, would play it sly and try to pacify the viewers, if nothing, then for preserving the votebank. But  no, the level of brashness in today’s political circles is such that she said, and I quote, “Arre baba ‘we’ also want the security of ‘you people’only”. The demarcation was pretty clear, though Barkha Dutt refused to pick on it.

And that, I think, was it. I do not know how to term it, I did not get a mini gun and tear down Congress headquarters. I did what I could. I went to India Gate. The crowds had dwindled. But they were still there. And that, really was not how I remembered India Gate. There were shoes, not in pairs, but single shoes strewn about, scarves, shawls, blood smudged pavements and asphalt. There was an elderly gentleman who was looking for his left shoe since the afternoon stampede. One from a bunch of pretty battered first year kids had given him his bright red Converse chappals, and held the man’s surviving shoe as he skipped around in damp and dirty socks, regaled by a bunch of ‘awww’ing girls. It felt good to be around them. I met another kid, who was shaking inconsolably in front of a camera with a lacerated arm repeating just one question, why did they hit us. Some guy with a camera produced a flask of water which I passed to the shaken and stirred boy. I saw a warzone in Lutyens. And they were still sitting there, with their placards and candles. Still not retorting but with a resilience that people with rage issues like me cannot comprehend. I stayed there for another hour, trying to do my bit, desperately trying to understand where these kids muster the reserve, not to take the beating, but to still stand there and not retaliate. A force that actually could not be swayed.

I do not know what the outcome of this conflict will be. I’m quite assured that this bunch of ragtag kids cannot bring this Government down, and I also know that even if it were possible, we are in stark need of a currently absent political alternative. And I also know that what these kids need, what we all need is for us to switch off those flatscreens and land up in the trenches with them. For, as has been specified by the Government today, it is about taking sides.

And I’m definitely going. Not with candles or placards. Not with baseball bats either. Because their resolve, even if puerile, needs to be encouraged. Even if it means just helping an old man find his missing shoe.

Oh, and if you’re reading this, 'we' could use some company.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Counting stripes with Mephistopheles


Its not about the furtive glances you get at a traffic signal.
Its not about the kids watching in wonder as you rip the road apart.
Its not about the image of badassery that you carry among your peers.
Its not about impressing women. Well, not just all about it.
Its not about scaring your boss into submission with the roar of a free flow exhaust.
Its not about buying gear worth more than the motorcycle itself.
Its not about cleaning visors with more accuracy than when you’re cleaning a gun chamber.
Its not about helmet decals, carbon fiber knuckles or bionic knee greaves.
Its not about the likes on facebook.
Its not about running to the hills.
Its not about being sprinkled with the first drizzle of the season.
Its not about getting drenched to your underwear in a torrential downpour.
Its not about the endless trips to the mechanic.
Its not about speed.
Its not about cruising aimlessly to the horizon.
Its not about the odo crossing a million.
Its not about the chrome or the powder coat.
Its not about the achy shoulders.
Its not about the bad back.
Its not about the dirty denims, smelly socks, scummy shirts and stinky jackets.
Its not about racing lineage or caliber.
Its not about deciding whether to wear black or black.

Its about more.

Its about looking like a dusted raccoon when you take off your helmet after 300 miles of truck dodging.
Its about the cup of tea that you gulp down on a country track that tastes like carbureted gruel.
Its about the corner you crash into.
Its about getting back into the saddle and conquering the same corner, a little lower, grazing footpegs.
Its about cussing at a broken headlamp before cussing at a broken ankle.
Its about the reserve to go another mile.
Its about the reserve to go another fifty miles.
Its about enjoying an unsettling, clinical and cold noise.
Its about peeling off throttle calluses at formal gatherings, cubbyholed in a corner.
Its about unnecessary revs in neutral.
Its about not understanding the point of public transport.
Its about hitting the next gear into the void, grinning.
Its about a belief that the corner will submit.
Its about stubborn faith that the tyres will hold.
Its about stitches, casts, physiotherapy, cat scans and sticky bandages.
Its about basking in the glory of being an absolute nobody.
Its about realizing you’re the best hummingbird this side of the planet.
Its about laughing at Armani and worshipping Alpinestars.
Its about understanding that a spanner can be a lifesaver.
Its about worried mothers and perplexed proud fathers.
Its about exasperated wives and proud girlfriends, or if you’re lucky, vice versa.
Its about the will to shrug off disasters.
Its about learning to use tourniquets.
Its about everything that makes sense and everything that doesn’t.
Its about survival on a higher plane.
Its about realizing that impossibilities are just a notion.
Its about preaching salvation and redemption.
Its about god, the Devil and everything that comes in between.
Its about all you are, in consonance with what you were twenty years back, and what you will be at your granddaughter’s fifth birthday party.
Its about confluence, divergence, internal combustion and the social contract theory.

Its about you.
And you, my friend, have only just begun.



Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A quantum of admissibility




They love us because we're bad boys.
They leave us because we're bad boys.
                                                                  -KS






I remember when we parted ways.  I remember the literal continental drift before we did so. I remember the relief when it was over. I also remember the smothering heaviness the morning after.

They’ve asked me over the past year how I’ve been so normal, so clinically detached from the fact that you’re not there anymore. They’ve noticed the lack of theatrics and eccentricities that usually accompany a break up. I’ve always shrugged it off by saying it got over when it should have. That it got over while there was still no bad blood. That it got over before it got ugly. That it got over because we wanted different things. That it was because we weren’t seeing eye to eye (well, for one, we couldn’t because you were decidedly taller). That it was because you were younger and didn’t see things as I did. That it was because I was older and therefore, outgrown of the romance that you could still see. That it was because I had gotten tamer and now lacked being the wild child that got you in the first place. 

Well, the truth is I’m not over you. And I really don’t think I’ll ever be. Or want to be. Or expect to be. You’re like that perfect childhood movie that stays with you, there to be remembered as the greatest singular movie ever. That being said, I’ve noticed how unsettling the relationships around me have been.  Some have been defeatist experiments in an absolute quagmire of futility. Well, most if one looks at it in complete objectivity. But then, they also say that human behavioral patterns have to be studied in subjective unit patterns, unlike complex mechanical systems. Human relationships can be as complex as dynamic cloud patterns, meteor showers, insane ratios of fractal curves but the quantum of chaos involved remains the same. Or maybe more, who gives a shit. A cloud or a gulf stream or a rising tectonic plate does not care where or how it goes, humans do. A little more than bloody necessary even, at times. Hell, most times.

I’ve seen grown men in bars, looking at their watches and dreading a call from the better half. I’ve seen them lie. I’ve lied for a few of them personally. I’ve seen them walk out of a movie hall to receive a call. I’ve seen them rise not to meet a woman but frown as if they were responding to a subpoena from the most ruthless judge in town. Seriously, its like watching someone play Call of Duty. In first person.  I’m eternally thankful that it was never required of me from you to be someone as petrified as any of them. 

Then there are some of them who have a problem with the time and space continuum. They need all the space and a little more than all of the time in the world. They’ll let you hang out with the boys late but want to an integral part of the august gathering, either in the flesh or as a defence satellite via the ever so unsanctimonious cellular phone. Noble thought, but irksome in the real world. Like a gnat at a fucking barbeque. It does not work. No chauvinistic reason as such. It just doesn’t work.  It just falls in the same category as keeping the poor man in shackles and away from the gang. Sad, but true. I’m thankful that I was never on a leash for the time that you were there. 

Then there are the card readers. They believe, abjectly and ceremoniously believe that they know it all. They don’t question or argue, they come to life altering conclusions. Verdicts. Commandments. Holy edicts. Men are idiots if they do not conform. Thankfully, and from what I could gauge,  I think you gave the other gender credit when it was due.

Which brings us back to why we’re not married with three kids, a dog, a mortgage and a minivan. Seriously, I’ve given it a lot of thought, but I still do not have a plausible answer. It’s the law of diminishing marginal utility proving itself in a study of perfect emotionless harmony. Where the perfect mechanics will falter because that is the way of the world. A very dark, Hobbesian world, but a worldly flaw nonetheless. It’s the simplest rule of chaos. You fire a cannonball from a spot. It lands at another spot. You fire another cannonball from the same spot, it will land somewhere very close to the earlier spot of impact but not exactly there. May go the same distance, but it may falter because one errs in the placement of the canon, because the wind changes the yaw and trajectory of the cannonball, because the hammer didn’t wind correctly the first time or a million other reasons. The outcome of all human relationships will be the same. A lack of feeling. The lack may differ in intensity for different beings in  the end, it may take multiple routes, but it will die. 
Ultimately. 

But, as I was saying, chaos really just tells me the outcome was rational considering what we had as a complex mechanical or live system. That it just wasn’t supposed to work for eternity. But it doesn’t sort the shit when I wake up and you’re not there. When nobody’s holding down the hood of the jacket so it doesn’t hit one in the face on the pillion seat of a motorcycle. When I don’t have to look for cafes at 3.00 A.M. Or when I chat up with thirty other women who just strike themselves off the list within 60 seconds of an introduction.

Or the totally gut wrenching pull when I realize that I love you. I do not want you there but can’t let you go either. Won’t is more like it. 

So much for fucking chaos.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Inebriated visions in pink

Alcohol. When consumed in volumes, makes one speak volumes. Alcohol, I believe, offers a clarity that most embrace, and few understand and there are still a bunch of a select fewer who treasure it as the last semblance of a human trace left in the alcohol stream. And, therefore, understand the true import of the pungent viscosity of the wondrous elixir that you're downing by the gallon.

I see you. Sitting on the table opposite mine, while I pretend to gawk at a stupid cricket match on the plasma across you. Couldn't be more loserly, could I now. You know the guy you're downing the Bud with just ain't worth it. The Nokia is your excuse at times, the match or the loo at others.

I see you. Basking in the blue backlight of the Nokia. Lighting you up in an unearthly beautiful hue.

I see you. Scratching the label off that sorry unwitting bottle of beer. Adjusting your sunglasses on your head at 11 P.M. With that hair, that wondrous shock of hair, that Yves himself would discount your unpronounced but surreptitiously understated roundish belly for.

I see you. With the pink, suggestive, and if I may be allowed to add, only tastefully suggestive pink shirt, the conservatism, just screaming forth from the white spaghetti underneath.

I see you. With the mammoth ring on the finger. A constant reminder of the horrendously stupid mistake you made probably a year back, considering you still have a beer outing on a tuesday evening.

I see you. As you disdainfully sign the bill and gulp what remains of your beer. As you put that credit card immaculately back in that red clutch. As you take out a listerine strip and offer it to the expectant cock across the table knowing all too fully well what you'll be enduring in the parking lot.

I see you. I know I want you, covet you as you leave the table and walk away. I hate to see you go. But it would be a sin to say that I don't love to watch you leave. The alacrity of your asymmetrical perfection can only elicit a sigh of relief, as you now stand a distant memory to be wiped out with the next potent mix of Bailey's, Kahlua and Cointreau. And if you're really lucky, I'd dedicate to you two rounds of tequila post your exit-de-trance.

Another one bites the dust. The pointlessness of the situation reigns supreme as I come back to the conversation on my table where we burn old friends on the spit, gawk at the new women in the bar. By the fifth tequila you're nearly out of my head. Only to be filled by another masterpiece in the image and splendour of the maker. I try and understand your thoughts, trials, tribulations and smiles and how I could be the white knight salvaging all that matters to you. Another tequila please.

No.
I don't see you anymore. Fading, like an infantile injury from the mind of a greying individual. Drowning in tequila seems to be an option which becomes infinitely more viable. The clink of a zippo and you're nearly forgotten. As I retrace my steps to the car, I don't even remember what the whole toast to pink in the bar was all about.

I see you.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Diamond diabolique

What do I do with you? Its a holographic image I'm trying to scrape off my skin, but a few unsuccessful patches of leather later, I realize that this one shall be a little more indelible than the last. A drunk fucking tattoo one can excuse as a mistake. This one's bigger. A coarse engraving. Interspersed with diamonds. The crudity won't let you rest, the shimmer won't let you get rid of it. So it stays, festering to cancerous proportions. All the issues come tumbling down getting neatly arranged via credit card into lines of grade A cocaine. And how, though crazy and momentary it was, there is no other bliss that would remotely satiate.

All one could have done was to wait for the anomaly to understand and fold. Instead the hand was played and played well. One loses the pot as well as the plot. All that is left are unbreakable anomalous diamond shards spilling over, screaming for release. Redemption. Wine and the harp provide mediocre recourse. Even a catnap revives an astute kaleidoscope of sinking despair. Lack of resentment, overdose of willful melancholia. Unfounded and confounded with a questionable bitterness that is cloaked, misty, seemingly emerging from the shadows every night but still hopelessly elusive beyond reasonable doubt.

Shine on. They say diamonds are forever. One hopes.

A reverential flying fuck and a half.

Fucking asswipe of a computer. Stupid motherfucking cunt of a machine. Just fails to deliver. Killer of thoughts. Murderer of expression. A wastrel of the virtual. Fails to recognize true emotion. Its quite apparent when you type the most endearing word in the English language. Fuck.

Small, yet fluid, electric on the nerves at a mere mention, immediately a harbinger of a million thoughts. A sum total of all hopes, disappointments, goals and losses. The balance between cunts and goddesses from Olympus. Yet, type the word, and a heathen crooked red underline shall rudely bring you out of your reverie with an equally inane option for spell check. Really. Fuck.

The world outside has gone much on the same lines with the pointlessness aspect as well. The flourish of a fountain pen is a thing of the distant past. Burn fuel but save electricity. Fucking nincompoops. Political correctness. Equality of gender. Fucking dog poop catcher full of stinky hogwash, if you ask me. You're judged. Fuck it.

In a recent sequence of inadvertence, I attended a congregation where feminism was fanned faster than a clit in heat and almost to the same passionate and orgasmic levels. Irked the living daylights outta me, rubbing me the wrong way with the pointlessness of the whole exercise exactly like microsoft word does with the spell check minion. Don't get me wrong, I love women. An intelligent conversation with one goes miles. Miles longer than where an inconsequential fuck would end. The former has the potency to get me off my posterior and make her a nice cup of tea, whereas, the latter could be forgotten by the next evening. Sorry, morning.

There are other things that I could discuss or rant about, like economic disparity, or maybe something even more pointless, professional sports, perhaps? I might appear to be a classical textbook definition of a patriarchal asshole and well, maybe I am. But seriously, is there anything remotely more discussion worthy apart from a woman? Let me answer that. No.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, this dedication shall forever be in the reverent exploits of the fairer chromosome. May woman inherit the earth. Raise your goblets.

To cunts and goddesses.

To Aphrodite and Medusa.