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Sunday, November 21, 2021

You. And you.


You.
And your vitriol of cynicism about how
All who are successful are but corrupt,
And all with money, evil
All who're passionate are shallow,
And all who disagree a disappointment.
All those dismissive remarks,
And the throaty, metallic clot of blood,
Always present to flavour the days
And make everything taste the same

And you.
And your immature, vapid snobbery, ticking
All the checkboxes of the Zeitgeist
And from it, conveniently discarding
All that is inconvenient or vulgar.
And through those proud, unwatched charades
All you do is disgrace yourself to those who see
And leave them with a sense of pity, for
All your dance is to get one more chance
And undo the callousness that has passed


Friday, September 14, 2018

Riprap

#############################
Somewhere among,
the scrolls and taps,
the flips and flaps,
the rock and rap
and myriad apps
between bottom and caps
in beer from taps
and highs and naps
from powder and sap
and as my fingers snap
you should mind the gap
and see the trap
and before a mishap
you must escape...

Monday, February 24, 2014

Sale!

I once read somewhere that we are living in the 'Age of the Trader'. The age of the warrior came before this when the kings fought and was preceded by the age of the scholar when the ancient texts were written and next up is the age of the worker/creator. I find the notion appealing, and I find it hard to disagree that we are living in a world that is furiously and relentlessly trading everything there is.

"Your resume should be a sales pitch", my boss told me once, "you should hard-sell all your positives and sweep the negatives under the carpet". All employers are looking for supermen in employees, or at least the resumes of supermen and women. But somewhere I find it degrading to my self respect to sell myself as wonderful bag of "team player, independent, original, collaborative, leveraging cross functional domain expertise" goodies.

Whether or not we live in the age of the trader, it is hard to miss the rampant disparagement of everything remotely scholarly in our collective narratives. The philosophy of our times is "that's how things are", we seem to have accepted the indifference of the universe to our plight and are almost convinced that ends justify all means.

I say almost because we say this with a defeatist finality, and when we see someone raise their voices against the moral decadence, we are secretly supportive, sometimes openly supportive, but even our support comes with a little asterix that reads "that's how things are".

When that's how things are, the best we can do is to scramble for the tangibles. The best we can do is to gather a property, a portfolio of stocks, a car, a shiny gadget, weekend retreats, certificate courses for advancing our careers etc. which we can comfortably label as investments and wait for the return on investment. Our hobbies are tangible as well, why waste time painting for a week when you can immediately click a photograph and 'sell' it on social media. Who will take your reading habit seriously if you don't have the Jaipur Literature Festival photographs uploaded.

So what, eh? After all, there is nothing wrong with such a hedonistic pursuit. Do what makes you happy, no? If you want to go sit in a jungle and paint, sing, dance and write about the human condition, who is stopping you? No one.

And that bothers me. That our conviction in how things are is almost a compromise stemming from "that's how things are". If the alternative is stupid, where are the staunch supporters?

Where are the naysayers? What happened to the communists (I don't mean the party members)? Where are the voices of dissent against this blindly accepted, post modern, liberal litany obsessed with what we have and will have more than who we are and what we are becoming? 

Friday, August 24, 2012

Wilson

"Amma! You said yesterday that you will give me twenty rupees amma. Pakki's shop has only two wilsons 'ma. I saw yesterday" said Putta.

"Do your holiday homework, don't bother me now" amma retorted amidst a hundred things she seemed to be doing simultaneously.

Amma's mornings were always busy, but over the years they had become fine tuned like clockwork. Her day started at six, and by nine she would have finished making breakfast for four, three for the family and one neatly packed into the blue and yellow Tupperware Tiffin box for Putta. Until eleven she attended to everything else that needed her attention before rushing into the kitchen for lunch preparations.

The lunch would have to be ready by twelve thirty, the time at which Putta's father would come in for his lunch break from the office carrying his briefcase and all the worries of the outside world with it. Any delay in the schedule meant that she would have lunch with a grumpier husband at a gloomier table.

She reached out for a box of poppadums and started frying them in a pan of oil. Presently, the house was filled with the pleasant pungent smoke of oil and fried spices and caught Putta's attention.

He wandered into the kitchen, for reasons best known to himself, carrying a bottle of ketchup in one hand and tugged at amma's saree from behind. In a moment of frightened surprise, amma's elbow caught Putta on the face and the bottle of ketchup was sent flying to the wall. When Amma turned around, the kitchen floor and walls seemed straight out of a brutal murder scene.

As a sense of fright and guilt realized, tears welled up in Putta's eyes. Amma, however paid no attention to this emotional display and twisted his ears.

"You idiot, look what you have done", she screamed. "You and your monkey business during the holidays, so much better when you go to school, idiot!" she said as she twisted his ears harder.

Putta's fears compounded when he heard his father's voice say "what happened?" through the door. As his father walked into the kitchen and understood what had happened, Putta freed himself from his mother's grip and made a dash for the doorway only to be foiled in this meaningless flight by his father's hand that caught his hair and dragged him out.

One tight slap later, he was sent out to the corridor where he heard his father's stern voice instructing his mother

"I don't understand why you can't keep that scoundrel in control. Don't feed him today. No lunch. No dinner. That should teach him". He walked out to the corridor to a shaking Putta and raised his hand for another slap but stopped.

"No playing today. No cricket. I want you to sit and do your homework until I come back in the evening, understood? and you'll stand here for one hour, OK?", he said.

He dragged him out to the porch and said "stand here".

The midday sun made Putta remember that he had gone to the kitchen to ask for water. He felt unbearably thirsty now.

"Amma, water" he shouted.
"shut up! You think you are standing there for some royal treatment?" his father quipped.

Realizing there was no water coming, his mind drifted back to Wilson. Ah! The glorious 'cricket tennis ball'. He remembered Teju, the best 'fastballer' outside of the older kids who played at the college grounds in the evening, praising the Wilson.

"Fastballing needs pucca cricket ball", he had said. "Tennis ball has no swing, no speed. That is why, if you want to play with Viju and all at college grounds, you need practice with Wilson".

He had gone on to explain to a bunch of wide eyed eight year olds the nuances of 'Fastballing'. "Wilson, if you put some spit and rub it, it goes slow after bounce. But batsman can't guess how slow because you secretly put spit on it while taking runup. Especially when you play with lbw rules and all, not like we play with both side fielding".

In his reverie, Putta had lost track of time and was surprised when his mom called him inside for lunch. But Putta still bore a grudge against her for letting appa know that it was he who broke the bottle. He looked away from her and quietly sat at the lunch table.

"I don't want to eat", he proclaimed.

"My darling is angry? Did appa hit you too hard?" asked Amma.

"no, he can't hit me hard because I am strong. Very strong", he said and made it clear that he was not interested in lunch anyway.

"eat! Here, take this twenty for whatever game that you wanted to buy. After you eat.

The mention of the twenty made him reconsider his unshakeable stand on lunch. His mind was however covered with pictures of his adulation in the evening.

He would be the hero who bought the 'fastballer' ball to the match today. And he would practice by hanging the ball from the wall, just like they showed on t.v. He could also practice 'Fastballing' in the house.

And his worth among his fellow cricketers would be raised a few notches higher once he told them how he fought with his parents for the ball.

The possibilities seemed endless as he rushed across the street to pakki's shop for the Wilson and confidently gave pakki the twenty.

'Wilson is twenty five" said pakki and handed him a Vincent instead and added "and I don't have Wilson anyway. No one plays with it, it is too hard".

"Not even at college grounds?" asked Putta.
"No, not even there".
It took a while to sink in that he had fought too hard for too little for a good for nothing. His euphoric sense that he had brought with him on his way to pakki's shop was quickly disappearing. As the transition from the conqueror of challenges to a victim of circumstances occurred, Putta smiled and felt like he had suddenly grown up.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Trip

It is 1:00 AM. He sits alone in the center of a large room and wonders what it all means. He is glad to have found solitude at the end of an uneventful day, although the hour is a bit late and he feels drowsy.

It has been a tumultuous day. So have the past few days. He seems lost, hopeless and helpless. He finds hope in the fact that his patience is running out and if this goes on for a few more days his lividity will be replaced by a cool indifference to the proceedings of his fate.

"Fate is mere hindsight", he remembers himself proudly proclaiming to his college mates busy appeasing Lady Luck with chants and chains. Yet he feels chained by his own helplessness in the face of hopeless adversity now. He wonders if things would have turned out any different if his reactions were any different to all that life has thrown at him.

He realizes that he cannot get out by fighting harder because he is not in a fight. Or at least, he knows little who he is fighting. His natural reaction is to take what life has thrown at him and complain about it. "If life gives you lemons, notice how bitter the seeds are", he remembers his witty jibe, his rephrasing of a smart televison advert.

He gets up and picks up the phone. It is late at night. But airports work all night.
"When does the next flight to Bangkok leave?"
"6:30 AM, sir"
"Thank you", he says and hangs up.

He realizes he hasn't inquired about the cost of travel. Makes a guess that it must not be more than a few lakhs of rupees. Nothing that his shiny new credit card can't cover. He looks around and picks up all the clothes that he had washed the previous day. Stuffs them in the backpack that he finds lying in a corner.

He wonders if they'll let an unshaven, sickly man in shorts get into an international flight. The challenge is not the flight, but the airport he realizes. It is more likely the security at the airport will scrutinize his appearences more closely than the flight crew with plastic smiles stuck to their faces. He wonders what a flight attendant will tell him of the frustrations of her job if he were to meet her at a bar.

Meeting a flight attendant at a bar. That would be one hell of an
achievement, something he could boast about for at least a couple of years were he still 5 years younger. But of course, he would not in the least be interested in her frustration with the job then. He would probably be scampering around for a camera to prove his adventurous escapade is not all glib fantasy.

Is this what is called maturity, he wonders. His reverie is broken by an auto driver's honking. He realizes that he has walked a bit from home, down to main road that leads to the airport. He is glad that the auto found him. This might well turn out to be a lucky day.

"Airport, Terminal 3" he says.

"300" says the auto driver. He doesn't bother arguing over the price.

The auto driver is a meek man. There are pictures of deities and deified men within. Filmstars and cricketers. His thoughts move to the retirement of a cricketing great and he wonders who will come in to bat at number 3 in the next test match that India plays.

The policeman at the airport entrance inspects him with the suspicion reserved for men with long beards. He lets him through, seemingly half heartedly but is helpful enough to tell him that he must head left for his flight. He gives the guard a perfunctory nod and marches on.

The boarding call for the flight is another 2 hours away. He chooses to read a book over catching some sleep. "Beyond the beautiful forevers" by Katherine Boo. He reads dispassionately through the struggles of Mumbai's underbelly for the basic necessities of life. He looks at the man at the coffee counter and wonders how it must feel to wear a cap all day.

He is now tired. Physically in addition to all the mental strain. He leans back and looks at the little airport world that surrounds him, a microcosm of humanity with a multitude of two legged apes of all ethnicities scampering around. "Sheeple" comes to mind.

"Sheeple", he says out aloud leaning back against a pillar that is behind his seat. And a comic strip comes to mind. From xkcd. A train with a bunch of travellers, each thinking "Sheeple" about everyone else. Sheeple. The word has a strange ring to it.

A skinny girl hurrying past him with baggage twice her size stumbles. As she regains her balance and her carefully crafted gait, she looks at him. No, she seems to be looking and judging him. It is a "Sheeple" look.

The hunter becomes the hunted. The observer becomes the experiment. The lab rat adjusts his spectacles and realizes that there are only lab rats in a room filled with incomprehensible machinery.

He smiles. Gets up. Picks up his backpack and heads back out. The cool Delhi air seems crisp and refreshing. He hails down an auto and decides it is time to go home.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Depressed. Mildly.

Face it. There is nothing grand about it. No grand escapades, no great adventures, no grand encounters, not even great and grand tragedies. There are only two grand things in your life - overwhelming hypocrisy and your own repugnant mediocrity.

We have grand conversations, where poor excuses for an adventure are flimsily stitched together into a grand tale worth sharing. Worth sharing with a grand congregation of equally pathetic fools, grandly called a fuckin party, a misplaced hope that a ton of mediocrity at one place would somehow magically exceed its own limits and turn into something grand.

A hope that meaninglessly flailing arms and twitching legs to the nauseating beats of an idiot aiming to describe life, love and the entire universe in half a dozen words would add meaning to existence.

A hope that a drunken sermon, a pastiche of pop philosophy, cheap self help books and stylish movies, delivered by an all too obvious pseudo intellectual nescient idiot would suddenly show you something profound.

A hope that exchanged snippets of conversation about shared interests in deliberately chosen vague areas of art and sport would suddenly lead us out of this quagmire and show us the light. Exaggerated laughters, pointless screams, ad-campaign slogans - almost meant to shut out the din of a quaint voice deep within.

A fleeting moment of introspection, curiosity and the tiniest spark of intellectual activity doused out by an overwhelming desire to stop, show and tell. It is only strange how we all, with a heart rending straight face, admit how difficult the questions are and yet how easily we dispense with answers.

The Approval Junkie is well and alive.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Mother

I love my mother. So does everyone, but I am in love with a certain kind of mother, now sadly a dieing dying breed. These are mothers from a time when India was still maintaining a surreptitious distance from an impending economic boom, much like a diwali enthused child would maintain from a firecracker she has just lit.

Back in the 80's, for the mums born in the extensive and extensively referred villages of India (which would be most of the mothers, as India back then, still quite comfortably lived in her villages) women empowerment was a parochial concept, and something that was earned gratefully and was not worth taking morchas out for. Modernity was still clad in the Sarees of Indira Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu, whose off colored Sarees they found rather distasteful anyway. Their achievements, while being whole heartedly commendable were still strictly inimitable, like the feats of a Jumbo circus ring master.

So as my mom, walked into the big blinding lights of the city plagued by incessant power cuts, she decided to stick with doing what she did best to cope with darkness like in the villages from whence she had come. Lighting candles.

She took gingerly to the modern gadgetry of the city kitchen, which in those days meant no more than a mixer grinder and a noisy Kelvinator and was only too happy to see the sliding door television box throw out government regulated images. Long before DD started churning out messages with young women stomping around vigorously in the name of girl child empowerment and equality, the desire to watch, weigh and imbibe these messages was replaced by a maternal concern.

Twenty years later, little has changed. This desire to feed and fend for her children is an instinct so strangely prolific, that in an instant you are at home when you visit your good friend's mother you have never seen before. It is an implicit code of honour, a unifying trait that perhaps most womens groups wishing for equality with men wish for. It is a profound statement for the discerning, which ,very wrongly, is seen as an acceptance of defeat by the fighting feminists.

Because, for my mom, it was never a fight and was merely an unintentionally profound statement to make - that without her, life would not be possible.

Thank you Amma.