Ok folks, fresh venom. And I could not hold it back.

Dr. Manmohan Singh packs his bags so that whoever is the new incumbent gets the house on day zero – a perfect gentleman’s perfect course of action. How do we interpret it? We conclude with all confidence that the Congress is expecting a sad and much deserved defeat. We need to mature so much as a country.

Second, the son of our ‘Environment’ minister wins, so guess what? The dear ‘ol supporters get a 10,000 ki ladi just outside my house to massage his pride and rest of our ear drums. Now what does the word ‘pollution’ mean again? We need to become much deeper as a nation.

Sigh!

Anyways, I got a hair cut today. I’m now flaunting baby pink hair clips on a navy blue dress, talk about an image reversal! Anyways, I’d really recommend this place; it’s on the slightly pricier side, but definitely worth the dough. This mother and daughter duo are doing a great job, and in spite of a lot many un-well wishers talking about their lime light hogging behavior, they know how to cut hair. It’s tough these days to carve out a space for yourself in this highly competitive market; and they are entitled to try out all means to do the same. I thought it’s my duty to tell people about the great makeovers they are giving folks who are walking into their salon.

The place is called ‘Sangeeta & Ishita’ (it could be ‘Ishita & Sangeeta’, im not sure) located at SEC 29, Vashi, just opposite IDBI bank. Do try them out! And no, I’m not getting a free hair cut for this ;)

It's something every denizen of the Maharashtra state must know and follow in her heart. You cannot voice your opinion about the Shiv Sainiks in public. Be it reporters from esteemable dailies or naive apolitical girls in their early twenties. The papers report facts, not their analysis.I remember once tugging at my dad's sleeve while in a local train, and asking him if the sainiks were gangsters. (That's probably what any kid would assume at seeing the clippings of the rampant violence set off by a couple in love, by...well... holding hands.) It didn't take my mother even a split second to turn to me with eyes made the size of saucers and place a viciously shaking finger over my lips. The co-passengers instinctively looked radially outward from the spot at which we were standing. (Ah! what a perfect helicopter view that must have made!) Welcome to Aamchi Mumbai!

And now, here we have our man spitting venom at an actor, who merely decided to give something back (in his capacity) to the society. What is our man's point? We'll, if its Bombay that has given Mr. Bachchan the fame and money, why are the girls from Lucknow his beneficiaries? I will not discuss here if he does have a point in this or not, conditioned as i am since childhood to stay mum about the brand 'Thackeray', i join the despicable band of the puppet reporters and dailies i just denounced.

But there is something else that is bothering me. We have decided to blindly drop the reigns of our mind and let it run just about anywhere,like a horse without blinkers.I say 'we', because on an average, every Maharashtrian household harbours a sainik.What has led to this situation? The man whose name was hailed till yesterday, whose movies like Deewar and Sholay we watched just last night, whose name we swear by, had his home stoned today,by us. What is it that holds the key to the public mind that is capable of bringing about just a drastic change in the public mood overnight? It was not that we didn't know about the school before. The process of planning and acquisition has been on since months. It's only when our man spelt it out that we decided to express our rage. And who were the perpetrators and the victims? Aamchi maanus of course.(it included a few odd bhel puri waalas who were unfortunate enough to be at the scene, and who of course did not have any political affiliations).All for what? A girls' school.

I refuse to attribute this to one man's charisma.In my opinion, there's a lot more to the story. The unemployment, the frustration or rather sheer boredom. The bored mass needs entertainment, it needs a means to vent out its passion. So it needs an excuse, that our man provides. I wouldn't say it was misplaced faith in his followers, I'm sure our man fully realised the impact of his words.(It comes from years of practice and experience after all)
Yet, the party needs to keep up its followers' spirits. It's like throwing a ball for your pet dog to go and fetch it back, to keep him in good health, you know.We'll now his ball is back, and so is the media. Is this desirable for our man? Mmm, maybe. Was it desirable for the state? I don't think so. So isn't our man talking about the betterment of that very state? Very much so.

What we need is education. Not in the sense of being able to sign our names and do rudimentary calculations.But in the sense of acquiring the capability of reception without reaction. At this point i fantasise, how would things be if we could all really smirk at our man and say "nice try man, better luck next time. Next issue please...".We are living through a crisis. At this moment, we need not look to Western learning to come to our aid, even the Indian school of thought can do the job. So arise and awake O Mighty Saffron men! Use Hindutva as your bastion and Maharashtra's culture as your cushion, but at least try to have good intentions. This is definitely not the culture one wishes to 'protect'.

When nature conspires against you and each of its elements heartlessly turn their backs at you, what do you turn to? The blogosphere of ce! The pleasure of knowing that a few folks out there are actually reading this (ignoring the obvious fact that no one cares and that they prably crib for having wasted their precious time on someone’s miserable rants). Of course, the same very fact impels one to charily edit out certain (read: most) parts of the post. Anyways, making suitable compromises, I proceed…

I ask a friend out to dinner, it being his last dinner with me, I get unusually benevolent; let him lead every conversation (I being the snap-back-right-at-your-face kind, uncalled for, or otherwise, without the slightest shred of hesitation, it quite understandably required an enormous effort at my end). I let him place the order, again without forcing my preferences on him (a Herculean achievement, mind you). I stick my brains out to ensure an amicable banter, and guess what I am awarded with? Snide and absolutely callous comments on how my bank balance can never deplete being the covetous miser I am, how absolutely dross I happen to be, and how I would need a chaperon to get to the next block in one piece. Fighting the urge to rough him up and permanently deform his anyways equine visage, I put up an air of nonchalance, hoping desperately that the ache doesn’t show on the surface. I agree that this image of mine is my own creation, simply because I enjoy pulling out my weaknesses and blowing them out of proportions. It passes for a glib conversation without risking one’s creed of not biting behind others’ backs. But that doesn’t give someone else the license to blatantly cross all limits of societal etiquettes and be crass with the person who is presently being billed (out of choice, to underline my point) for the cornucopia of things that is being ingested by him.
With a muttered oath of sticking to my little coterie of friends henceforth, when all I hope for is a pleasurable evening, I forgive the man, but as it seems, I haven’t quite been able to forget the episode. After having worded the twisted, toxic sensation, I hope to achieve the same.

Cut to scene two:
To make a long story short, I lose my phone, out of my own carelessness I tell myself. My guilt makes me want to renounce the handy facility until I learn to exercise caution while traveling, but my family mocks at my deplorably episodic conscience, and gets me a new ( thankfully cheaper) phone. Now, this is a very uncomfortable situation, you must agree. When you truly repent something and no one gives it a damn. I’d say it’s fatal to your self-esteem. As for me, I feel thoroughly mortified! But the delay at the service provider’s end more than makes up for the promptness at my unduly generous and forgiving mother’s end. The lady at the counter on the other hand makes full use of her technical vocabulary of ‘server’, ‘backend’, and ‘glitch’ and I am pitilessly exposed to 72 different sentences embedded with these words within 72 hours of purchase. Yet all I hear when I dial a number is “to resume service, please contact customer service”. Yes, I will, but could you please tell me who this “customer service” is? The *333 definitely isn’t. After half an hour of restless waiting, what I get is as follows:

Me: hi, my number is blab la bla…
*333: blab la what?
Me: blab la blab la (at a snails pace)
*333: I repeat, blab la (and a wrong) bla
Me: no, no, blab la (zzzz, so slow that I almost doze off)
(At the fifth attempt she finally gets the number, bless her!)
Me: (thrilled at finally making a progress, I proceed, tentatively)
I have misplaced my phone and …..(I get her up to date)
*333: ya, first of all madam, I am sorry to hear that you have lost your phone…
Me: (cutting her short, imagine this after a 30 min wait and a fifteen min exercise to get your number across!) yeah, that’s ok, but could you please….(I repeat my point, yet again)
*333: please hold on ( and after what seemed like an eon,) madam, I am sorry to say, everything has been done at the back end, you have to visit the web world. Nothing is possible at our end.
Me: how many ends does your system have? I have tried two as of now.
(At this my mother who happened to be around gives me a menacing look and I am forced to hang up with a quick half hearted apology)

But I must confess, I feel a strange freedom. I have begun to like the present situation. I have quit bothering myself with enquiring what people are up to, worrying if I didn’t receive a reply and having worthless conversations with people I am not sure if they really care. I indeed needed this hiatus in my social life. I might just want to continue this way.

So, to all those who have tried to get in touch with me lately, Hello. :)

Epitomised, held in black glass corneas,
now reduced to flesh and blood.
So fragile, so stainable.
its image, unattainable.
So draining on the retina,
that the eye couldn't sustain.
It rolled down in a liquid globe,
muddy, opaque, sickly,
That only reflects itself,
birthing infinity in its womb.
A gloomy infinity.
For it's the object that makes infinity private.
But its object watches from without,
not capable of acknowledging its origin.
And the origin doesn't want to acknowledge its manifestation.
The gloomy globe bears mute witness to the pain.
For it's so much easier to hate imperfection,
than to love the nearly perfect.

To the man that could be…

I have been absolutely distracted and disoriented this week. I do not even know how to start this post or if I should at all. Though I do know that I need to.

It was over breakfast today, with a friend. We happened to be discussing his future prospects and preferences when I blurted out that id probably sit for GRE sometime, though not to get myself an admission abroad, that’s the last thing I’d want to do, but just because I like doing what it needs us to do….digest words.

I remember learning the difference between an ego ‘ist’ and an ego ‘tist’ when I was six. I remember stunning people with terms like ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘idiosyncrasies’ at grade 2. I was taught it was never ‘awf’ human bondage, but ‘av’ human bondage. I was told it wasn’t ‘echh’ but ‘hech’ with a very subtle ‘huh’ (though I remember vehemently opposing the idea, stating it was probably the effect of hanging out with lots of friends of a south Indian origin). It was only in the year 2004 that I realized that it indeed is ‘hech’.

I had tinkered with a stolen CRO at seven. (yessir!, though I know that doesn’t show much, and I suspect it cost him his job) I had injected IV into anonymous buttocks at ten. I had seen the live pictures of an ongoing CT scan and repeated the process without adult help…. The list is endless.

He could be a great father. A great friend. A great mentor.

But I grew up and the social pressures grew on me.

It’s terrible to grow up. The grown ups take things too seriously. Things that a six year old doesn’t need to bother with. Things that a sixty year old wouldn’t bother with. But then when your six, you cant resist the pressure. And when you’re sixty, you can’t undo whats done anymore. Sometimes I wish things had happened a bit differently. I would be a different person. So would he.

We are strangers now. I don’t think I could recognize him anymore. Not from a distance atleast. But I do have an inkling that his hairline has probably receded. And the radius of his balding patch has increased by over an inch. (o yes, we measured that too, once upon a time, not to mention the lice he caught once right there and stored overnight under a whiteboard marker cap to show it to me under the microscope the next day, after I was back from school) we laughed for hours together over the lice’s daftness at its choice of a place for safe dwelling.

I suppose he does keep a track of what I’m up to. In a broad sense. I don’t speak to him. Not done that in the last 6 years. I’d want him to know that he is not thought of with wrath (which he probably thinks). It’s a new found indifference. At the same time I know he will never read this, and I’m sighing with relief at it. Nobody who makes a difference will read this.

But I pray to the all mighty, to bless him with the same indifference I have recently found. That would make his life easier, as it has made mine. And lots of fond good wishes for another life (if that happens in the first place, I have my reservations)

May he make different choices then if faced with similar situations. May he marry, procreate, and have a lovely daughter. May it be me.

borrowed hide, to hide.

Had to make one of those unexpected trips back to B'bay. the last minute packing din't leave much time or energy to decide on a suitable textual matter to keep me company through the flight. (you can't expect much from the airlines these days, especially when you're travelling economy!)
Waiting at the lounge at the airport, i stared at the huge LCD screen hanging ominously overhead,impudently and unrelentingly showing slolen clips of the Ash-AB wedding rerimony. i almost denounced the media folks as a bunch of fools, but then i stood corrected seeing the crowd enthralled by the 2 minute clip, that was being played for the 17th time in the last half an hour. well, one can't scowl at the supplier of marbles claiming to be the 'market movers' when the market seems to be filled with midgets! besides, with the kind of 24x7 news channels, there is an ostensible dearth of 'news' happening around the world worth being reported. hmm. bones for dogs and carrot for donkeys... as long as it pays.
Restless and frustrated, i decided to re-orient some of my silent acerbic sarcasm at my co-passengers.(at this point comes the announcement of the flight being delayed due to air traffic.i managed to restrain a free display of a paroxysm of rage)
2 kids were playing car racing, with a cute authentic American accent. i could almost sense the pang of sympathy that it aroused in me. the skin colour that would alienate them in a place they had come to think as home, and the accent that would alienate them at home, a home that refused to be home to them any longer. then came in the mother with a brazenly conjured up fake accent, one that wouldn't fit in any corner of the massive and generous globe. here is a snippet from their conversation.

mother: aam feeling hawdd.no fan heeyerr. bluddy indhyaa!
daughter:but the AC's on...
mother: yea beydaa, bud aam feeling hawdd!!

At this point, our good lady sheds away all her decency, squats on the floor, opens up her suitcase to display an embarrassing amount of underthings,(one could easily believe that they were being smuggled to the States),pulls out a lace handkerchief and mops away her sweat with a painfully sophisticated pat-pat and dab-dab. it made me wonder...does the accent come in an attempt to conceal the uncouthness of the natural attitude?
though i'm yet to figure out, what made 'Indhyaa' so 'bluddy' to our good lady here. Agreed, that the number of aircrafts have gone up but the infrastructure is still shamefully trying to catch up. Agreed that we are a triffle below the other 'developed' countries, but give me another nation that has come this far, at this rate, with 1652 different languages and dialects,with so many diferent castes with a million conflicting interests,with a billion strong population with a fourth being below poverty line and yet we are quoted as "THE largest successful democracy". and not to mention the nearly 200 years of british subjugation and planned mortification of the nation.

this might make me sound like a die hard patriot, but anyone who knows me will scoff at the appelation. but yes, i do feel tithered to my country, my people and the kinds, in a strange way.though another thing the lady needs to thank "indhyaa" is for the lay man's fear of the law enforcing mechanism. if not for that, she would invariably fid 32 minus a few teeth while brushing them that night.