Short story: The involuntary return to abyss

The admiration for her just kept growing in him. What he was most impressed in her was her simplicity and her readiness to smile for anything. Smiles are contagious and she had an example to portray. She was charming and she had a beautiful hair. Not many of his friends looked at a girl’s hair to decide if she was the right girl for them. But he was different and he was mocked frequently for it. But nothing could deter him. This girl was just perfect. And he found himself falling.

Falling for a girl was nothing new to him. It had happened too many times in the past. And he knew how torturous it was. Sometimes he wondered if it was his weakness- the ease with which he could fall for a girl. Every time he fell for a girl, he used to harbour his feelings for months. And then the feeling just used to fade away. His favourite movie line was from Love Actually- “Whats more worse than the total agony of being in love?” The reason for it to be his favourite line was the truth behind it. And he had experienced the truth just too many times.

Every step they took, he found her increasingly tempting. He found himself staring at her a few times. There were a few times she had noted his prying eyes. And every time their eyes met, he felt his heart experiencing zero-gravity. When she spoke, he admired her voice. When she laughed, he admired her eyes. He even admired her fingers and her toes. And thats when he realized that he was falling into the abyss again, the abyss where both pleasure and pain contribute equally to ones feelings.

And so he decided to get out of it. In one instant decision, he decided that he didnt want to go through it all over again. He had had enough. He knew it would be tough but he had to act. There was no way he could get rid of the girl but he knew how to get rid of his feelings. All he had to do was concentrate on something else. He tried looking at the advertisement hoardings, he tried to study the faces of people around him and he even tried eating a sickness-inducing chocolate ice-cream. But more than anything else, he had to avoid looking at her- which he did. And when she left him, he was thankful that the ordeal was finally over.

Memories can be naughty sometimes and he knew it. He had enough of her in his memory for it to come back to him and taunt him. The only way he could avert it was by keeping himself busy for a few days. He discovered how serious he was at getting rid of her and he felt happy for himself. It was no more a weakness. He went to a book store, tried his best at not choosing the romantic ones and finally bought an inspiring entrepreneurial story. There was no way Larry Page and Sergey Brin could permit a girl’s memories into his mind.

Later that night, he went to bed thinking of having his own enterprise someday. But in his dreams, she was back. She smiled, she laughed and she let her flowing hair tickle him. She was mesmeric. And thats when he woke up. His heart was beating fast and he knew he was happy. But he still cursed himself for he knew that his nightmarish months were just about to begin.

Lots of things

A new beginning

How life changes! After leading a nocturnal life for almost six years wherein I rarely went to sleep before 2 or 3 in the morning, its now back to being a normal person (as most people would like to call me now) Since last Monday, I have been going to bed at 10 and getting up at 6. It wasn’t difficult to get accustomed to this style as I had imagined, but what has surprised me the most is the ease with which I am getting used to my new life, the life in which I am no longer the student whose heavy bag carried loads of books but rather a ‘techie’ who now carries a Thinkpad in his bag. This Monday I began working!

Day 1 was off to a rollicking start. The Wimbledon final was just too good to miss out even if you knew you were starting a new and important phase of your life early next morning. Not many will recommend getting just 3 hours of sleep before such a big day. But there I was, next morning, sitting in the conference hall of my organization and drifting off to sleep. But thankfully I had company and I wasn’t the only tennis buff sitting in the hall.

Since then it’s been good, to say the least. I have enjoyed every moment of the last week and I am sure that I will continue to do so in the future as well.

TV appearance

One day after the exams, we all sat and discussed the things that we had ‘not’ done during our four years at engineering college. The obvious things crept up. (I needn’t explain what those obvious things are) But then there was also something else that we had missed out on. We had never watched a movie first day first show. And so we went. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na had to be the movie. The movie was ‘not bad’ and considering that I have begun to hate every movie that I have been seeing recently, ‘not bad’ is a very positive expression.

And as we were coming out of the hall, there was a news crew who wanted to know how good or bad the movie was. Though we did every attempt to escape from the camera onslaught, a couple of us were caught and interviewed. And later that night, there were people calling home, some excited to see me on TV and some skeptical (did YOU really go to a movie?) And so there I was, first time on TV- a 24/7 news channel to be particular.

Three mistakes of my life

If I thought ‘One night @ the call centre’ was very silly, Three mistakes was even sillier. It gets very boring in a lot of parts and I did skip a lot of pages in the middle and still found myself understanding the flow of the story. But then there are a few positives too. As always, Chethan Bhagat has portrayed romance exceptionally well and makes you long for more of Vidya. And then, the parts where he describes Godhra and the ensuing riots in Gujarat are wonderful. It made me recollect those times back in 2002 (I was in 10^th std and I was asked to talk about the riots in school. I had done pretty well but I had pointed fingers at a few people which didn’t go well with teachers and I had to be warned not to name anybody.) Bhagat, though indirectly, daringly mentions that the riots were orchestrated by the administration and its only in these parts that you begin to feel the grip of the book.

And in the end, I was wondering why the book is called so. Yes, the author mentions the three mistakes committed by the protagonist, but if I were to be the protagonist, I would have never called them ‘mistakes’. In fact, none of them even qualifies as a mistake.

Dasavatharam: My review

In what is supposed to be a very ‘serious’ climax scene, the Japanese Kamal Hassan and the CIA Kamal Hassan are involved in a weaponless fight, and in the middle of it, the CIA Kamal Hassan says, “Remember Hiroshima?” To which the Japanese replies, “Remember Pearl Harbour?” And seriously, we began laughing then and stopped only when the tsunami hit.

There were numerous laughable jokes interspersed in the story, but the audience was made to laugh more at the puerility of the story line than at the intended comedy scenes. In fact, we began laughing when Mallika Sherawat came on to the screen with her cabaret naach. Its actually surprising that Sherawat accepted a role as preposterous as hers. Her role is limited to one cheap dance, one god-knows-why marriage, one seductive conversation and then she’s gone, with her own murder.

If you use a little bit of common sense, you can actually predict where all the run and chase is leading to. And you can do the prediction at every single turn of the movie. This is where the movie loses its sheen. Kamal Hassan seems to have copied a lot from the Da Vinci Code into his screenplay, but leaves a lot for the audience to imagine and understand. The screenplay looks very silly at times. Consider these- A RAW officer going out to welcome the FBI agents with garlands in the middle of a serious interrogation of an international terrorist, the FBI people asking the blatantly insane RAW officer ‘What do we do now?’, the ex-CIA agent messing up simple complications, the arrival of helicopters at the drop of a hat etc. You might say- there wouldn’t have been a Dasavatharam without such silly sequences, but that’s the whole point. Why make such a silly movie?

Asin gives a mediocre performance and gets very irritable at times. There were times when her presence was depriving the scene of its seriousness. And its difficult to imagine that the same actress had had me begging for more of her screen presence in Ghajni.

Out of the ten roles that Kamal Hassan plays, I thought only the twelfth century Vaishnavite and George Bush’s roles are where he puts in good performances. All other roles are wasted and never seem to convince. Some roles have been put in only to increase ‘the count’ to ten.

I haven’t seen a movie sillier and more spiteful than this. Watch it only if you have a suicidal intent of spoiling your own evening.

I am out of it

My ‘virtual life’ is in disarray. Google decided to suspend my Orkut account. And for no reason. Its been more than two weeks now and I am, now, finally getting out of the shock that it had inflicted upon me. You know how hard it is to get over an addiction. What I really don’t understand is how Google still keeps those profiles whose albums are filled with hardcore porn content and also those communities which blatantly patronize anti-India terrorism, and victimize rather ‘innocent’ profiles like mine.

The feeling still hasn’t crept in. Even today I sub-consciously log into Orkut but only to see the unmannerly message- ‘You account has been suspended.’

Orkut, for me, was not just a time-pass activity. It was a place where I could meet ‘everybody’. At the recent farewell party that was meted out to us by my college, a friend told me- ‘Life might separate us. What difference does that make? You are on orkut. I am on Orkut.‘ Thats how much Orkut has influenced each one of our lives. In the two years I was on orkut, I made lots of wonderful acquaintances- a few strangers, a few whom I knew but had never spoken to and a few with whom my relationship grew stronger and stronger. And how I cherish each one of those!

I wont be able to scrap you ever again. I wont be able to write you a testimonial ever again. I wont be in your fan list, I cant mark you as cool and sexy and I cant even flaunt my pictures. You might say-’Simple. Start an new profile.’ But I dont want to go through the whole thing again.

But then social networking isn’t over for me. I shall remain active on facebook. Orkut, just, didn’t deserve me!

A time-killing post

(Warning: If you are a student writing an exam in a week’s time, please do not try these at home!)

In a week’s time, the final exams of my graduation life are supposed to kickstart and in the last week, I have been doing everything but studying. I thought it would be fitting to write a chronicle of what I have been doing in the run up to the exams.

So here they go:

- Watched ‘Love Actually’ again.

- Finished ‘Sunny days’ in 2 days. Started ‘The thousand splendid suns’.

- Have been watching the video of Sonali Bendre’s song ‘Jo haal Dil Ka’ atleast 5 times a day.

- Spent endless hours on Youtube watching random war clips and presidential speeches.

- Endlessly Orkutted.

- Tried my hand at sketching. Did a fine sketch of a sea, a setting sun, a few birds, a rock and a woman on a rock. And I managed to put them all in the same sketch.

- Have been drinking atleast 6 litres of water a day, evoking complaints from folks at home.

- Spent almost two hours thinking up the design of a space-toilet.

- Have gone through the syllabus book atleast 10 times in 2 days.

- Have been taking the new Xeta on long drives, including a couple of ‘very long ones’.

- Have been spending 2 hours a day switching between Channel V and MTV.

- Read every single news item on newspapers (DH and DC) in the last week.

- Compared the offer letters of two companies (Ta and Ad) for a long long time, and finally decided that the former has the better offer letter albeit not the better offer.

- And also had a 30 minute telephonic conversation with lesbi during which we journeyed through the length and breadth of Karnataka on ‘Google maps’, searching for a place for a post-exam class trip.

So thats how the last week has gone. And I have spent 40 minutes here writing this post. After this, I have decided to finally watch the last one hour of ‘Pulp fiction’. And then go to sleep.

Adios.

Common sense prevails

Today’s fuel price hike didn’t surprise me one bit. If one had been following the rising graph of international crude prices over the last few months, one would have known that this was on the cards.

But the timing of the hike could prove detrimental to the Congress’ aspirations of coming back to power in the next general elections. Keeping that in mind, I should, in fact, laud the courage of the UPA government in its endeavor to save our ailing petro companies. The petroleum secretary made a very important point on television today- ‘What situation would you like? Paying marginally high for continuous supply of fuel or a complete stoppage of fuel supply?‘

There was no way the government could go on retailing fuel at a subsidized rate. The Swaminomics column on TOI made a very important point. By granting large subsidies on fuel, the Government was literally paying an average of Rs.100 to every vehicle owner in India whereas the lower class got no such benefits. The column called it Bogus Socialism and I totally agree with the author. (And also read this)

The time has now come for us to start thinking. The price hike gives us a good reason to increase our use of public transport. It also makes a good case for us to start using alternative sources of energy.

And no matter how much the BJP and the Left make a hue and cry over this in the coming days, I am sure that if they had been in power they would have been compelled to take the same decision.

I got tagged..

This is the first tag I am doing.

This is what I am supposed to do.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

So here it goes:

1. Here’s a book, right on my printer. Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar. The book came out of my cupboard just yesterday. And I guess this is the seventh time I am trying to read it. Every time I have read it, I have aspired to be an opening batsman in the Indian cricket team. It was a childhood aspiration- to be an opening batsman. Then as days passed by and as I kept on losing my middle stump every now and then, I decided that I should be an umpire. Then I couldn’t make out if the batsman edged the ball or not, so I decided that I should be a commentator. And in the end, my microphone commentaries came nowhere close to being as good as being my keyboard ones. So I finally decided to blog.

2. Page 123! This is an unvisited section of the book.

3. Here’s the fifth sentence: ‘The journey from Colombo city to the airport takes longer than the air journey from Madras to Colombo’. (Doesn’t this line sound familiar to Bangaloreans? LOL)

4. And here are the next three sentences.

‘Solkar and I went to see Vishwanath off at the airport and I have never seen the good humoured Vishwanath so upset as on that day’.

‘As we were driving to the airport, he did all the physical exercises one can think of excepting standing on his head to prove that there was nothing wrong with his knee’.

‘Vishwanath is tremendously popular, and we were all disappointed that he had to go away particularly since he was fit to carry on’.

5. I got tagged by Gammafunction and I take this ‘privileged opportunity’ to ’solemnly’ tag the following:

Keerthi, The Melting Pot, Daya Vinci Code and Beads of dew.

A short story: Gods and lights

(First of all, this is a work of pure fiction. Any resemblance to anybody dead or alive, theists or atheists, spectacled or non-spectacled, man or a woman, must only be sheer coincidence. And for god’s sake, its not my story too.)

“Excuse me. Can you please stop doing that?”

That broke me out of my trance. That had surely come from the girl seated to my left. I turned to her and there she was, staring at me. “Huh-uh!? Doing what?”, I blurted out still unsure what her problem was.

“Stop doing that nonsense you just did, the thing you just did when we passed the temple”, she said.

I stared at her. I tried to think what I had done. But my thinking was hampered by the sight her face had to offer. She was not someone blessed with an unassailable beauty, but she had a pretty round face adorned by round thin rimmed spectacles. I hadn’t taken much of a notice of her earlier. She got into the bus at Jayanagar and had not found a seat in the section reserved for women. Seeing the empty seat next to me, she had come and pushed herself into the seat and had left out a heavy sigh of exhaustion. And after that, she had opened a book and begun reading.

“What are you talking about?”, I said, completely befuddled by then.

“Arre. I was talking about the act of prostration you did in front of the temple. That was the sixth time you were doing it. Six temples and six times you go through the routine. And each routine lasts-what- 40 seconds? I am getting irritated here.” Her tone indicated that she was indeed miffed.

I stared at her. She explained it alright, but my confusion had just doubled. I had only paid my salutations to God at each of those temples and had muttered a two line prayer. But I do that all the time. I do that whenever I see a temple or anything holy. It was an act of sub-conscious more than the conscious. And there I was on that bus, trying to find words to explain it to that attractive stranger who had taken an objection to it.

“See. I don’t understand what your problem is. I do that whenever I see a temple. You might say that my devotion to God is a little exaggerated. But I don’t care what you think. This is the way I have lived my life. The sole reason for what I am at the moment is God. And its my duty to seek his blessings. I don’t see any reason for that to irritate you”. I realized that I had lost my temper, but I did my best to hide my boiling emotions.

She was probably taken aback by my sudden outburst. But she had invited it. It was all her fault. She was now staring at a point past me, out of the window. I waited for a response. She looked at me, half-smiled, nodded and opened her book and began reading.

It began to rain. It had begun as a drizzle and then had steadily grown heavy. Knowing Bangalore’s weather over the previous few evenings, I was sure that it could turn into an inclement thunderstorm. The splattering of the rain drops on the roof of the bus was now deafening. And the traffic was stagnant on JC road. I continued to stare out of the window, now oblivious of the girl. The rain had taken most of the two-wheelers off the road but that gave no respite to Bangalore’s traffic.

“I am sorry”, she suddenly said, without warning. “I am a staunch atheist and I find such excessive adulation towards an idea as crazy as God’s preposterous. I know you wont understand. But I think I have a few things to learn. I have to learn not to belittle others’ beliefs. I am really sorry if I hurt you in anyway.”

She had looked very pretty earlier while she was creating a confusion inside me. And she looked even more prettier now. Probably that was the reason why there was an old adage about how apologizing makes people more cleaner and beautiful.

“Thats ok. But may be you have to change your idea about God”, I said, smiling. She smiled too.

“Thats more or less impossible. And to copy your own line- This is the way I have lived my life. Anyways, I had vowed that I wont pick up the topic of God during any conversation with anyone. Lets stop this.”

I laughed and she joined me in laughter. ‘She is a crazy girl’, I thought. The bus had made its way through the traffic and was now at Hudson circle.

“What’s that book about?”, I asked. “The way you are reading it, it must surely be a very interesting one.”

“Oh yeah. It is. It’s a novel about an American president. And his sex scandal featuring a Hollywood actress”, she said emphatically, showing the cover page of the novel.

I was surprised at her casual tone when she uttered ’sex scandal’. I, being one of those few men who flinch at the word ’sex’ or anything related to it, the surprise turned to shock in a few seconds.

“Oh its about Bill Clinton and the lady- whats her name- Monica or something?”, I asked. My limited general knowledge coming to some help.

“No stupid. Monica Lewinsky was not a Hollywood actress. The characters in this book closely resemble John F Kennedy and Marylin Monroe.”

And that put me off. How can a girl, whose acquaintance I have received just a few minutes back, categorise me as stupid? May be she was very loquacious or something like that. But I thought it was slanderous to call me stupid. Or am I being a little puerile in refusing to accept what I really am - a stupid? A little distance away, the lights which embellished Bangalore City Corporation’s palatial building were put off, probably due to a power failure. The thunderstorm raged on.

<to be continued>

Its not BJP’s victory, its our victory

As the news began trickling in that there might not be any more games of coalition politics in Karnataka, I guess the entire state heaved a huge sigh of relief. After four years of torment by the deeds (or misdeeds) of coalitions, there was no way we could take more. For me, like most people I know, it was not a question of who would be ruling us for the next five years. It was, rather, a question of whether the torment will end. And thankfully, and hopefully, the torment is over.

I thought I will put in a few words about each of the parties here. So here they go.

Let me start with the JDs. Reduced to 28 seats and devastated. Well, what I don’t understand is how they got those 28 seats. A friend of mine once commented that only ignorant fools will vote for JDs this time. And I couldn’t have agreed with him more. Their symbol might be of a lady farmer but all that the JDs symbolises to the people of Karnataka is opportunistic politics and betrayal. And there is no doubt that given a role this time, they would have done the same. How can a national party be so insensitive to people’s needs? And today, after their loss, I see on TV a former office bearer of the JDs blaming the mis-administration of the Election Commission for their loss. What a ridiculous reason to give!

Coming over to the congress. Something is wrong with them. Over confidence? Internal bickerings? The hoopla surrounding Krishna’s return didn’t work. Siddharamaiah’s charisma didn’t work. Rahul Gandhi’s road show didn’t work. Six potential chief ministerial candidates campaign and all they get is 80 seats? And anti-incumbency against the other parties was supposed to be working in their favour! Well, first of all, they didn’t give tickets to the right candidates. The congress candidate in my constituency slept through the campaigning phase. Nobody saw even a picture of him until the election day while the BJP candidate had a well publicized campaign. A party of the congress’ calibre cannot afford to have such men contesting elections. They got their strategy entirely wrong.

BJP will hold the reins alright but we should not forget that even they have not got an absolute mandate from the electorate. Karnataka BJP is a largely inexperienced party and the political ineptness on their part might dominate headlines in the days to come. Yeddiyurappa was Chief Minister for a week and a week was enough for him to make a government contract go in his son’s favour. They have come to power after sitting years and years in the house warming the benches and I can imagine a few MLAs already licking their fingers and thinking about using the next five years to double their personal assets, through methods perhaps best left untold.

Samajvadi party made an entire family go out of business and the BSP can be forgotten as one of those myriad failed experiments of Mayawati.

Lok Paritran is seriously in need of HR managers. They might have the IITians and now it looks like they desperately need a few from IIMs. No party can hope to win elections by campaigning through forwarded e-mails. And if they are in lack of funds, I don’t see them making any fund-raising efforts either.

And for the independents, its time to start counting money.

After a brief hiatus

There suddenly seems to be no time for anything these days. There were a lot of things I wanted to write about but could not for the only reason that I never found time to write. There have been a couple of ideas brewing in my mind all these days, which I will put in the form of short stories in a few days. Ever since ‘Speechless Conversations’ came out and ever since the admirations for ‘Sinchana’ started flowing out, everything I see in life has begun to inspire me to write, to put it in the form of fiction. So the next time I write something and say its fiction, you might not be wrong if you guessed that it was real. But anyways, as an author, I have the liberty to deny a few things!

The last couple of weeks has been both tiring and memorable. While on one hand I have been stuck with the project and the project report, on the other hand the days have dished out numerous moments of joy and nostalgia. An official farewell was meted out to us which turned out to be absolute fun. Well, I know that farewells are not supposed to be fun and the clichéd adjective that is used for ‘farewell’ is ‘tearful’. But ours came nowhere near to being tearful though it turned out to be quite emotional in the end. Then there was also the disco. We danced like crazy, mostly to kannada numbers and there were also bits and pieces of Shakira and Jenny Lopez.

A lot has happened in the last 2 weeks. Media attention on a certain Bollywood star’s blog has grown exponentially, a liquor baron’s foray into cricket has proved to be a damp squib, exit polls have hinted at the return of coalition politics in a state which went to polls to root out coalition politics, an international airport is finally set for inauguration, a legendary leg-spinner has hinted at coming back from retirement, on the other side of the planet a war between a black man and a white woman has never seemed to end, at a border a ceasefire was broken and not far from the red square a certain ‘red’ football club made history.

As for me- I did pretty well to get over a bout of severe depression, got enticed by G again, got over G again, cheered for the Royal Challengers all through the IPL, completely forgot about this blog and went on an exhilarating journey from the first world war to the second world war through America’s great depression and the Nazi Germany and Pearl harbour- through Howard Fast’s Second Generation.