Katha

As he sat there twiddling his thumbs, wondering what was taking so long, he couldn't help but notice the piece of gum stretched along the side of his boot.  Darn, when will those teenagers ever learn.  Must have been spat quite recently, he thought to himself after an up-close inspection.  They had been in pristine condition as he stepped out on the warm sunny afternoon.  It wasn't till later in the evening that the heavens opened up and he regretted having taken the brand new suede leather out.  Trying his level best to skip from shelter to shelter without having to dip into any puddles, he tip-toed along the road back home.  At the last crossing he remembered cursing the hatchback as it splashed and sped past bringing all his effort to naught.  Mumbling and cursing, he bent down to tie his shoelaces, and salvage whatever dry patch there was left, only to see he had stepped on a filthy piece of gum too.  A shrill honking sound pierced through his ears and before he could look up, his name was called out as he got up from his chair to walk towards the pearly white gates. The End.

Pack of wolves

I’ve been spending a lot more time on Twitter lately. I tend to get my daily news digest, the day’s hilarity and at times an interesting article or two is thrown may way during the day. Perhaps the way a lot gets said in a meagre 140 characters is what has kept me hooked for the past few months. Today was no different. Following TED for a long time and getting intrigued by the videos being tweeted, I decided it was time to download the app on my phone rather than go through the drill of swiping everything into my Flipboard magazine for later viewing. On a side note, I ought to get some sponsorships for this post considering I’ve already mentioned three online content portals in the first paragraph itself. Thirty eight new videos uploaded on TED flashed before my eyes as I opened the application. The first, a talk given by Monica Lewinsky. I must say it seemed intriguing, but I still scrolled through. Haven’t been one for gossip or conspiracy theories. But as I scrolled down to probably the fourth or fifth video on the list, the title struck me again – ‘The Price of Shame’. Now this does not sound like a political gimmick, a PR act nor did it appear to be a long-awaited confession of shame. The ‘price’ of ‘shame’ – I do not know. I figured twenty two minutes would not be a bad investment considering lunch was still a good half hour away. I clicked on play and listened.

I must confess, there was this anticipation that it’ll turn into a crib session where she’ll curse the world for making her life hell. However, listening through the entire talk put a lot of things in perspective. We wield a power whose strength we do not fully comprehend. Our digital lives have transformed into something more than just an extension of our being. The digital ‘us’ defines how we move and function in society, not the other way around. We pacify our insatiable need to ‘fit in’ with a conformist approach to be a part of the pack. To hunt is now the only way to keep yourself from being hunted. We have evolved over thousands of years suppressing our basic instinct to kill and eat as the most rudimentary functions of life. Unfortunately, we have not realised that the destructive mentality has underlined our behaviour to the point where it has become one of the strongest unifying elements. We rejoice when a news anchor performs a character assassination on national television, laud the efforts of a rebellious mob that tries to take law into its own hands, make a hero out of a keen observer who pointed out one cricket website’s plagiarism of another’s commentary for a single ball leading to someone losing his job. Our personal timelines read of unimportant dribble. To rake up a storm, people put up messages in support of social outrage. Worth is measured in the number of likes you get, the more you have, the stronger you’re supposed to feel. Nobody cares about solutions, about application, understanding. It is all about broadcast. How far can you yell? Message boards get created, ridiculing, shaming, booing. Hand pick a few of this pack, question them, probe if they really understand the gravity or the context of what is going on and they disappoint. Why then this herd mentality?

Because we are too afraid to go at it alone. Let me wait for some ruckus to brew and I can contribute. If so many people are doing it, there must be some logic to it, maybe I too should be a part of it. A tiger hunts alone, because he realises that the risk of going alone is his own, the choice his own and the consequence his own to bear. Wolves hunt in packs, for them the choice is never theirs so the consequences of their actions never theirs to bear. We are a pack of wolves, gladly a part of the hunt, never willing to be attributed for the kill. It is time we held ourselves accountable and understood the gravity of our actions. To be compassionate once again, to not judge so easily and above all to have our heart in the right place. It is much easier to destroy than it is to build.

It is time to roar like a tiger than to howl like a wolf.

Losing the funny

This is one of those where the title came to mind first, and probably a rough silhouette of the intent with it.  What exactly was to be put on paper was still unclear.   Origins of this post lay in the wasteland of happenings from the past week wherein it became increasingly difficult to comprehend when to make light of a situation and when not.  As a result, I used to be pissed with people more than usual.  Those who know me would understand “being pissed more than usual” , in my case, means a lot.  Inevitably, the response was either “relax, I was just joking” or the more diplomatic “I wasn’t referring to you, it was meant as a general observation”.  As if the pin pricks of having to hear such disguised insolence wasn’t enough, the increased frequency of it was starting to get to me.  Everybody could not have been wrong, right?  Was it me?  Was I losing my sense of humour? 

Bitter as I may be, a sense of humour is what I take a lot of pride in.  You cannot take the funny away from a sarcastic twisted f#$% like me.  That would just be brutal.  Call it a shield and what not, but the fact remains that humour is not to be joked around with (this is where you applaud for what I just did there).   The root problem that has surfaced time and again is the lack of understanding of implicit humour.  People’s ignorance of wit and an overjoyed lackadaisical appreciation for in-your-face-slap-stick humour has always been, irritating, if not something more.  Yet, somehow there always was the chance encounter when your humour would be appreciated and lauded.  Yes, we all are self-centred a-holes who love an audience.  But here I was, the complete opposite, being eyed by others in a peculiar way, spoken of in hushed tones behind my back, as that guy who could not take a joke.  When you get labelled as that guy, your inner Hulk takes over and no matter how politely you try to fend off such accusatory glances, the glean in your eyes and the venom you spew just never loses its sting.  It set me back.  Probably made me look dreary and  ill the past few days too.  I am not joking.

One good thing it did do for me though was give me calm and serenity.  People stopped approaching me with eyes full of hope of getting to hear something that they could take back home, relay in a totally mundane way and then have to apologise “you should have heard it then, it was real funny”.  I could just hang around without having the pressure of being the go-to guy when you’re down.  I could have my chips down too, for a change.  Sure I didn’t tweet a demeaning quip, post a ridiculing status, but I sure as hell got time to relax and drift in to the background, away from all the banter of a gathering whenever I was in one.  Yes, I just loved being that guy.  Losing the funny was actually not all that bad.  I had no complaints.

This is where this post should have ended. 

And then it happened today morning. 

The word ‘tuppence’ just whisked by and pop came a line to slight someone.  Fine, a one off line doesn’t matter, let’s stick to the program of relaxing and not having to be at our best the whole time, I thought to myself.  I could do that.  How hard can it be to just sloth around?  And then came the audience.  That seducing captivating appreciating audience of one person that draws you out from your cove till you are totally vulnerable to go over to the dark side yet again.  There I was, basking in the glory of acknowledgment for the cynical jest that had been produced in the passing.   If this posed me tantalisingly close to the edge of falling over again into the pit of being funny, the slight push came in from the follow-up aphorism.  I caved.  I just could not live with losing the funny.  Its worse than addiction and more liberating too.  It comes with its expectations and pressures, but at the end of the day, I’d rather be that sarcastic twisted f#$% I know myself to be.

April’s a double header

Two posts in a month!  I think I just got turned on here.  When was the last time this happened?  Wait, let me check.  May, 2011.  Sh*t!

Now that the melodrama is out of the way, back to business.  I have successfully been able to finish a third of a book I have picked up in a long time despite the sentences being entwined with secondary notes, implicitly embedded in layers requiring utmost comprehension.    I am drearily slow at reading.  When others are half way through am still struggling to get to the milestone of the first quarter of the book.  Keep telling myself its probably because I want to internalise what the author is saying, but truth be told, I really don’t, well not all the time.  Why then, I wondered this weekend, do I lag? 

And then it struck me on my 50 page continuous reading streak.   I actually try to visualise the characters, setting up the scene inside my head, sourcing inventory from places visited, realising characters in close association with faces previously seen, to best satiate the author’s unrelenting gumption for the descriptive.  What makes the whole charade even more complicated is the fact that I have managed to pick up “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel that works around the time of Tudor England.  Yes, imagine that.   I do not know how many of us out there actually have the same way of reading.  It does not matter if this is something weird a few experience or is simply commonplace.  The alacrity with which I have been reading, imagining, witnessing the events and characters unfold, intrigues me. 

I do not remember if I have ever been an avid reader.  I might have quoted so in an interview or two, but definitely not been one in real life.   And what has made me all the more happier is that words long forgotten come rushing back to memory.   Reading has given me a nudge again in the direction of writing.  I have always been a stickler for the printed word than the spoken one.   Probably why I prefer keeping all official communication on mail.  That’s a joke.  Stop snickering.  Anyhow, it just seems that scribbling is a more involved activity than reciting or speaking.  Great speeches are always written first for a reason.  Taking nothing away from great orators of past and present, the spoken word is ephemeral (I am on fire today!) while the written more constant.   Extempore is an art, but diction and comprehension are skills acquired over a long period of time.  But lets not pit one against the other.  It is hardly fair.  Both have undeniable merits.  To each their own.

Coming back to the point of reading, and writing, for that matter.  Yes,  I believe I have been away from my book for quite some time now and am yet to have dinner too.  Therefore, for want of time and overzealous dribble on the subject, let me close with a few observations I made about my preferences in light of this revelation, no matter how unrelated they may seem.

I prefer Twitter over Facebook.

I prefer earphones over speakers.

I prefer scribbling over typing.

I prefer the smell of Ariel over Surf Excel.

I prefer Candara over all other fonts.

I prefer being weird over mundane.

Signing off.  Yours truly.

35mm of happiness

Yeah its not what you think it is, so wipe that smirk off your face.

This post probably comes out of the blue, which one doesn’t actually, especially when its almost weeks and months on end between two posts on this blog!  I think I waste too much time building a preamble for a post that it just gets too mentally exhausting to even grasp at what I’m writing about.  Sign of a bad author.  Yes, I just called myself an author, not all authors necessarily have to write a book or something to that effect.  Pfeesh!  Anyhow, enough with the senseless dribble. 

I finally figured that it was time to actual get off my sorry arse and visit a camera doctor.  A doctor, yes, perhaps more so because this one had been lying in coma for quite some time.  If the city’s moisture infested weather wasn’t harsh enough, the dingy bag it had been nestled all these months wasn’t helping either.  The prognosis – a bit of dusting probably would do the trick.  The diagnosis, however, revealed a much layered infection – the body had been bruised, with signs of internal injury and surgery was recommended.

Rolling your eyes yet?  I know I sound melodramatic.  But then every fool with a DSLR, well at least from my generation [honestly don’t know what the hell’s out of place with the younger one], would tell you that there’s just that weird connection you establish with the machine year after year.  And my sweetheart turns six this year.   I agree I haven’t been the best of companions, while she’s stood by me through thick and thin – shooting moments of joy, sorrow and plain crazy.  Yet, this post is not about confessions or to discuss my weird inclinations.  While going through a friend’s blog today I read a post which talked about how he got started off on photography.  His father’s Nikon SLR became his best friend, encouraged through childhood to go explore and play around with it.  The result, I now ask him for tips and at times even go to his blog for inspiration. 

I wondered, why’d I buy mine?  What got me started?

It struck me.  Vienna, internship.  The year 2006, an internship at TU Graz, thought I’d get myself a point and shoot camera.  Sony came to mind, but given all the hype of the Cybershot, thought I’d act a little more informed and explore Nikon.  Ended up buying a Nikon Coolpix from Saturn on Mariahilfer Strasse.  What an uneventful story.  Boring.

Flipped forward a couple of chapters of my life and remembered how much I used to click landscapes and birds with that little fat black magic box.   My family loves the photos I had clicked, probably more so because the best ones we’ve had are the ones from childhood when mom and dad captured as many moments as they could.  Encouraging, but still not amazing enough a story.  Flipping through, reached the Singapore internship of 2008.  Ah yes, this has to be it, that moment of shining. 

The pay was good, the expenses not high.  I could afford a bit of extravagance, and I wondered why none of my trips abroad ever bore me any savings.  I must say, it wasn’t an easy decision, as I kept flitting my thumbs wondering if this was my calling.  Photography? I mean I love writing, but combining it with photography sounds uber-cool but can I do it?  Do I want to do it?  Had a friend I was interning with, who volunteered to help me out.  This chap actually gave up a full time job to become a wedding photographer and a sports photographer – see another brilliant story, wonder where mine’s going.  So for a 10 liner email written to him, I got an entire essay on what to see and what to choose from.  I was sold on Nikon.  If not earlier, then definitely by his mail (another Nikon enthusiast).  He pointed me in the right direction, the shop, the vendor and advised me to pick up the last surviving piece of the Nikon D80 already out of production for its newer D90 version with video recording (thoo!).  

I must say as I lay my hands on it, picked it up inside John 3:16, and the owner, Samuel, nodded for me to go on ahead and give it a try, it just felt right.  People say a camera is all about ergonomics.  If it feels right in your hand, that’s the one you want.  Much like a magic wand from Harry Potter!  And what can I say, it was love at first touch.  I clicked away to glory and am happy I moved on from the usual point and shoot within a matter of weeks, exploring options, manual, shutter and what not.  Ecstatic, I felt liberated with the cam by my side.  Never was there a moment I went out without it. 

And as I sit here, reminiscing, on the special moments I have lived through with my Nikon D80 I realise, my story need not be special for anyone, but for me.  That warm fuzzy feeling inside, and a smile that comes to my face connecting with something in life that has been an anchor and a reason to keep trying harder and moving forward.   You might not find this post remarkable, but it has invigorated in me today a sense of belongingness and probably a will to go out and make a date of it, when my cam comes out of surgery tomorrow.

Welcome home precious.

24 minutes on a Sunday afternoon

After a 30 minute quick nap having been bored by the uneventful India-Pakistan cricket match, I decided to quit procrastinating and get one of my shoes repaired from the friendly neighbourhood cobbler.  Digging them out from behind the shoe rack took a bit of time and then dusting them off so as not to be embarrassed at the cobbler’s took a little more.  All set, I then pocketed both phones, my wallet and the keys to the house, well apartment actually.

It was bright and sunny, a cool breeze blowing through if you walked in the shade, the rays sifting through the leaves and branches – just your regular Sunday afternoon in Bombay.  As I ambled slowly to the first right turn, reflecting on how giving ‘watching cricket on the telly’ a second chance was such a bad idea given the start of today’s match, I found myself sub-consciously attracted to a game of gully cricket going on inside the neighbourhood garden.  Eight a-side, I counted.  Not bad at three in the afternoon I said to myself.  A good mix of the burly bullies, the aspiring ‘henchmen’ and the tiny minions in their tidy whites and oversized caps in the outfield who usually were the suppliers of the bat, ball and wickets.  I stood there watching, an over bowled by, and a conversation started unravelling inside my head.  What if I were to approach these guys and be a part of their mohalla cricket club, how would that go down?  I was no punk, no mean streak about me, just your average bespectacled Joe, dressed in a black tee and white shorts, a satchel with his shoes in one hand, the other pocketed in, grabbing hard at the wallet.  Yeah right they’d want me in.  Frankly, it wasn’t so bad, the conversation I had built in my head, but honestly, I forget how it unfolded, but yes I do feel it brought a smile to my face as I turned around to reach the cobbler before his afternoon tea break. 

Crossing on to the main road a small kid rushed out of his building, waving goodbye to his mother, backpack slung around his shoulders and a notebook rolled up in one hand, biting into a sandwich from the other.  Tuition, I ventured – that time of year when exams are round the corner.  Though I do not know anymore when board exams take place, seems like they have changed the time and pattern or something – I wasn’t particularly attentive when one of my aunts was rambling on about the rising pressure on her son and daughter because of the new system.  Anyhow, so here he was walking in front of me, literally trying to outrun himself, appearing more like a football stumbling forth.  Just round the corner were the two trademark iconoclastic stereotypical lanky goons-of-a-student who took our little bouncy boy by the neck and gave him a good rub on the head.  ‘Abe Hindi ke liye kaun padhta hai be, ch****e!  Chal ghoomne!’ , they mocked. No, I didn’t slow down my pace to see how Bouncy reacted, or what became of this ‘awesome threesome’, instead I stayed my course and moved on. 

Having reached the cobbler, I explained the condition of the shoe, he nodded, and worked his magic.  Thirty rupees and 5 minutes later I was on my way back home.  Cottage cheese, I almost forgot, have to get some for the week.  Household chores you see.  Good, I’d get change for a thousand too *evil smirk*.  Now, I was on my way back with the satchel firmly in one hand and the dingy, moist packet of cottage cheese from the local shop in the other (too many ‘in the other’ references in this post, my apologies).

Two girls were out on the street, mounted on their frilly bicycles, discussing what the other was planning to get after her exams, and what daddy had promised if she scored well, while the first was busy struggling trying to bring her bicycle to a halt – yup, one of those high seated ones you would get just to feel that much older than the others who still whisk by on their stunted two wheels.   The plastic on the mudguards was all dirty but intact, creating that annoying whooshing sound as they tried to pedal hard, and I wondered, what is it with Indian kids and their parents in keeping the bloody wrapping on even after years of usage?  Anyhow, made me remember the days when I’d speed up on my red Hero Ranger, bent down low, pretending to get ready to hit warp speed, and then screeching to a halt, again imagining the cycle had turned a full 360 in the air with the front wheel stuck to the ground.  How we’d get a useless rear-view mirror stuck on to the side of the handle and that ringing bell to get us an inch closer to building ourselves a motorbike for kids.  Some idea of adventure that was.

Back on the last left turn on my way home, a new group had started playing cricket, this time on the streets, and as I came into sight from behind the parked bus, all of them shouted ‘bhaiyya ball, bhaiyya ball’ and this brother was not going to disappoint the little laddies, or let go of this opportunity to feel a cricket ball in his hands after such a long time.  So down went the satchel, the ball fielded as if done on a cricket ground, and with all my might, I threw the ball at them, high and long, proud of myself, did not hit anything on its way, pretty neat, even after so many years.

Yes, I think I ripped my arm out of its socket, I’d better go apply some ice on it now.

The End.

PS:  I don’t know why I wrote this post, there’s no point to it, so don’t try finding one.  Hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing it.

01.01.2014

I am pleasantly at ease today.  After so much anticipation on how the first day of the new year should be and would be, I must say am so much at peace.  The usual humdrum at office, a quiet lunch, some mindless banter with friends, and a cup of the regular diabetic-killing tea.  The bottom right of the laptop reads 01-01-2014 and I do not know why but that just brings a smile to my face as I sit here and type this post.  Quite uncharacteristically, I came to office almost three quarters of an hour late, without any qualms or the usual rushed hurriedness about my walk, ambling at a leisurely pace, greeting all passers-by the usual new year niceties.  More surprisingly so, humming to the tune of ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’!  So enthused since morning that I made a short trip to the nearest petrol pump just to get a whiff of ye’ old crude.

Unwilling to patronise and go the usual teenage girl route of OMG’ing everything, am just glad its not turned out to be a sore or spiteful day thus far.  It really is something to be able to reply at the end of the day “my day, why not bad at all”.   Its not a revelation or a resolution, not an appreciation for nature all of a sudden or the chirping of the sparrow ringing in my ear, but just a gentle calm that am basking in right now, a sort of placid refuge that I am overcome with. 

It would behove me to carry on with such resolve throughout the year, but I dare not enter into such frivolous platitude for therein lies the biggest fallacy of expectation and disappointment.  Instead, I choose to wind up this post here, ready to go out for another walk, content with having written a post during office time, striking something off that long-drawn list for once.