The Death of Hope

To born again, first you have to die. So says Rushdie Sir.

Is this my death we’re talking about? Am I supposed to be born again?

A joker might abhor me, but me too do not like things when they doesn’t go according to “the plan”. Because that means that then I’ll have to come up with a new plan. And that requires a lot of meticulous work on my part. But -like every other living thing, and me being no different- don’t want to do that.

We live in difficult times.

When the Electricity Played Spoilsport.

It’s been more than an year. 366 days, to be very precise, ever since I’ve not written. Well, ever since I’ve not written here. Otherwise, I’ve written a lot. A lot of it in the office, with a real pen and paper, during the long -and insanely sleepy- afternoons of the unbearable summer which seemed to last forever.

I’m kind running against time, and this was so not planned. I’ve a train to catch in about two hours from now, and right now, it is terribly cold. Just the way I like it. While we are on that, the electricity is not here anymore. So I will have to stop right here. But this is not over. Not so soon.

See you all soon, really!

Back from the Dead

It feels a bit awkward to pay for net. Kinda like how you feel when you’re asked to pay for water [mineral or whatever] at a restaurant. No? Well, ever since I’ve known internet, I’ve known it to be free. Something like accommodation, up untill you’re living with your parents that is. Then you step out in real world. And wham! Which, by the way, partly explains why it took me almost 5 months to get it. The other reason is much simpler: I never really felt the need of it.

Imagine an overfed child, suddenly being forced to not to eat. Or an excessively social person put to extreme solitary confinement. Or lovers, separated overnight. Too many analogies! Or may be, it’s over-accumulated urge to blab here; after all, it’s been 13 months.

Thirteen months is a long, really long frame of time. Picture yourself 13 months ago, and you’ll know. So many changes – I know! Some for good, others for bad; but you’ve to accept them, nonetheless. Calvin says it the best, “Little by little, nothing seems to change, but nothing remains the same with time.” More precisely, “Nothing lasts forever, even cold november rain”, as Axl Rose puts it.

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Wiki Leaks and Radiia Tapes have uncanny similarity. Particularly, in the modus operandi of the respective authorities in trying to curb them. Whatever may be the final outcome of these overwhelming phenomenons, one thing is for sure, I’ll never read an article or believe in any news piece as before. There is no going back. They’ve changed things. Forever.

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Delhi is in desperate need of its own Dark Knight, so that all the women may wander at night without any concerns. Expecting Delhi’s men to change is futile. And too far fetched. Just like expecting Vivek Oberoi to deliver a solo hit.

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All I want right now is India to win this test against South Africa. Which again seems too far fetched. Lets just pray before we sleep. Or after we wake up.

All Will [be] Well

The way I see it, life is never as fair and just as much I fancied it to be.  As the college nears its inevitable end, I can’t help but realize that those were -effectively- the best days of my life, and the road ahead is so not smooth. Considering the fact that I’m such a complicatedly manufactured specimen of human race, the predicament seems a million times worse than it actually was/is/will ever be. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves, that we are underlings. May be. May not be. It was supposed to happen like this, I know. But then, why does it hurt so much? That I’ll never know.

I always believed that life is a very continuous series of crests and troughs, arranged in a very neat fashion. Like a simple sine wave. But I really can’t recall even one single moment when I felt genuinely happy ever since I’ve been in college. The occasional once which came had their little baggage. But I never really cribbed about them. I kept consoling myself that there must be a better plan for me by Him. I hope there is. I seriously hope there is.

Novembers used to be the best year of the month for me. I used to look forward for them every time when Decembers came. For twenty two years, they just kept on getting better and better. Then came the twenty-third, and November is no longer the most cherished month of the year! Thinking about the last November, I also realize life changes so much in just a span of twelve months. Like right now, I’ve no idea where I’ll be in the next November. More importantly, how I’ll be.

I’ve almost stopped listening to music these days. More or Less. But there is this one song from 3 Idiots- All izz well. The song is not great or something per se, but there are these lines from the song which made immense amount of sense to me. Henceforth, they’ll be my facebook status for a long time to come.

Scholarship की पी गया दारु, गम तो फिर भी मिटा नहीं,

अगरबत्तियां राख हो गयी, God तो फिर भी दिखा नहीं.

I don’t know. Prasoon Joshi, is it? Too lazy to do a Google search.

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I’ve a feeling, that my Godot will come. And I’ll prove Becket wrong, individually. But then, the feelings, the aspiration, who the hell cares about them anyway? Isn’t the world much simpler, absolutely non-layered, right? If Only.

V for Virginity

I do not write to intend this as a novel [or a story for that matter]… This was how my story was supposed to begin. Before anything else, let me be very clear that in this blog post, all forms of interrogative, inquisitive comments are strictly proscribed by the author [which is none other than me]. Colloquially, no How-What-Where-Why-Who et al.  Bromidic as it may sound, but all this which is about to follow in italics is purely a work of authors abjectly rich imagination. Ergo, even the slightest resemblance with any person living/dead is [un]fortunately coincidental.

So without any further delay, let’s get going with it.

I do not write to intend this as a novel, but sometimes the need to communicate gets all transcending and utterly primordial. And this [almost] carnal desire to communicate is the raison d’atre for this present fable. I’ll begin from the beginning.

The entire engineering fraternity [The reader is hereby pleaded to take note of the word ‘fraternity’ with full heed. The author has used this with utmost deliberation, carefully shunning ‘sorority’ for reasons which will get obvious as he reaches towards the fag end of this sentence.] is notorious for it’s obsession with fairer sex – and sex, to be more specific- mostly because of their [it’s] sheer paucity in this profession. Sequestering all the chronic contentions, allow me to take you all to a point which is important here without giving you -and me- the sweetly indulging and obviously titillating luxury of digression.

I never lost my virginity. I knew exactly what I did with it. And this is an unabashed [albeit, an honest and carefully non-vulgar] account of what I did.

The first time I had a girlfriend, I didn’t even touch her. We barely met. The fling was primarily on phone. I thought lust is for animals. Love is something which is pure. And hence, it can’t be intermingled with love. How insanely stupid must I’ve been back then; and what a bitch must she have been to dump me for someone else!

The world hadn’t seen much sunlight before I was into another [even more] serious relationship [if possible!]. I was fast this time. We held hands! And that was pretty much it. But before things got really serious, we kinda broke up. That, or we were on an indefinite break. Whatever! Implies the same. I didn’t even try for anything before I was into my third super-serious relationship. The only difference being that I was much more relaxed and nonchalant about all the ‘relationship’ stuff this time. I was kinda ‘been-there-done-situation’. Irrelevant, perhaps. Boisterous, definitely. Also, I moved to the ‘next’ level too. But as it turned out to be, the girl was too ethical. ‘No ding-dong before you sing a song’. What the fuck! I can’t marry at 21! I mean I legally can, but pragmatically I won’t. And this gave me my smoothest break-up ever.

By this time, I was done with girls. Not forever, but yes, for the time being. I strived to strengthen my male bonding [in an absolutely non-gay way]. I paid attention to academics. Tried improving my grades, with little or no success in the long run. That was a period of self-abnegation, for no fucking good reason. If you subtract the word ‘good’ from the last sentence, I think it’d have described my situation more aptly. To put it most simply, I was just not being me. This was unacceptable. And un-natural. I knew I had to revert back to my old ways. Sooner or later. And sooner, I did. I was back doing what I do best. Well, definitely it wasn’t ‘the best’ coz had it been that, I wouldn’t have been…

Now I’m the kind of guy who learns from his mistakes, as well as from other’s mistakes. And I never repeat the same mistake. I really take utmost care so as it won’t get repeated. But the problem with me is that I get so engrossed in avoiding the previous one that I just am not able to foresee an unprecedented one coming. To sum it up, I never repeat a previous mistake; I always do a brand new one. Why did I tell all this will be apparent in a matter of few lines.

I was careful enough not to have my fourth girl as one of the previous three. Now I honestly don’t know how many species of human females exist on this planet at any given point of time. I think that number will be highly debatable. Anyway, that’s not what I’m here for. All I knew by now was those previous three were not of my type. Therefore, this one should be of completely different type altogether. Fair Enough. I started praying for a nymphomaniac in morning/evening prayer. Oh, before that, I started having morning/evening prayers. And as Paolo Coelho says, if you really desire for something, the entire universe conspires for you to get it. And get her, I did. But then, as the saying goes ‘Be Careful for what you wish, coz you might just get it all, and then some you don’t want’; and I wished for too much. I realized it pretty soon. But not soon enough to mend myself. Redemption was right there, but the correct path is not easy and sins are always tempting. Taking the higher moral and literal ground  -like all great authors do- our author here too won’t get into the gory details of the act. Suffice is to say that on a very hot Sunday afternoon, in an air-conditioned room, with no electricity, amidst seas of sweat, I lost something to gain everything.

Right then, I had what alcoholics call as ‘moment of clarity’. And in that moment, what ranged in my head was this. ‘Women are stupid. But if women weren’t stupid, the world won’t go round’.

One of the novelties of being human beings is that we can almost never do what we set out to do.

And that was how the story was supposed to end. It didn’t make much sense to me though. It might make sense to some of you. There is also a tini-tiny problem. What I feel is that this [the fiction] might be offensive to some feminist kinda people. Now I don’t have particularly anything against them, but then I’m also not too fond of them. So in case you’re one of them, I do apologize sincerely.

Kaminey Kritics!

I don’t remember any movie in a long time whose pre-release fuss was so much. Honestly speaking, I get a little excited and little more curious with all this kind of stuff. Ever since I saw the trailor of Kaminey in march [when I was watching Pink Panther-2. No! I don't want any comments on this, coz this post isn't about that] for the first time, I knew I’ll be seeing it as soon as it gets released. My only tiny apprehension was regarding Shahid Kapoor. Just that, he really can’t act. But I convinced myself, coz the movie bore the tag of Vishal Bhardwaj. That was March.

Aah! The notorious bollywood strike was here. April. May. June. July saw the unveiling of the music of  Kaminey. And also, the very famous Dhan Te Nan. So far so good. Then there were the tracks Pehli baar mohabbat ki hai and Raat ke dhai baje. Things were looking better. We’ll get to see an intelligent movie; probably the first one after DevD.

Two days before the release of the movie, I read this review. Things haven’t been so good ever! I was super excited. I couldn’t wait for it’s release. I’ve lost count on the number of attempts I made to book the tickets. Online, Offline. All Failed! Because, my ATM Debit Card is neither Visa or Mastercard. But I was content. I was watching it on saturday. Not too shabby for me. And I already had plans to watch it again sometime in the coming week. Yaayye!

Saturday, 15th of August. This was the first time I was not watching a movie in PVR in Delhi, attributed to apparent unavailability of tickets. Duhh! We were at 3Cs in Lajpat Nagar. The movie hall was good. The company which I had was even better.

Cut to the movie. The movie [almost] began with a very sensual lip-locking between Shahid and Priyanka. Very realistic! Very passionate. Instantaneous turn-on. With respect to the movie, ofcourse. Half an hour into the movie, there was just this one chasing sequence which got me to the edge of the seat. And I wanted to be on the edge for the rest of the movie too. I was glad! Finally, the movie is really ‘starting’. Little did I know that it’d be last time I’ll be on the edge in a 3 hour long ordeal. Well, ‘ordeal’ would be a little too harsh word to use. It was a nice movie. When I say ‘nice’, all I mean is that it wasn’t bad. Definitely not good. The disappointment which I felt after the movie was over was not because of Vishal Bhardwaj [or even Shahid Kapoor!], it was because of the reviews and the hype.

The movie had nothing which the critics claimed it did. You can compare Vishal Bhardwaj to Quentin Tarantino in a very broad sense of word. But you just can’t compare Pulp Fiction with Kaminey. So Not done, dear reviewers! I’ll never understand why Guddu stammered, or why Charlie lisped, or why Shahid wasn’t made to dance [the only thing which he is really good at]; probably not till I am alive and in my right senses. And I’m very sorry Priyanka, I didn’t fall in love with Sweety -like we did to Geet in Jab We Met- simply because she was hardly there in the movie. Apart from the hand-held camera work, there was nothing extra-ordinarily brilliant about the movie. It is so not the most well edited movies of recent times. Let’s not talk about DevD, but even Gulal was much better edited. Vishal Bhardwaj ji, I think you had too-much-to handle in one go. Go Charlie Go was good. But not Charlie, or Guddu, or Sweety! Gulzar sir did justice, and so did the music director in Vishal Bhardwaj. But that was pretty much it.

This review, is more like a review of reviewers rather than of the movie per se. I think I’ve lost faith in you people. May be, me and my friends should start our own reviewing service.

I Never got Past ‘The Past’

I happened to visit the place where I lived from 1989 to 1995. It was a chance encounter, the visit I mean. I didn’t plan it. I was passing by that lane, and almost impulsively, I took a left turn instead of going straight.

I don’t know about other people, but I can recall my childhood pretty vividly. The labyrinthine lanes seemed so pregnant with past. So much so that it almost gave me goose bumps and involuntarily, I started returning. I had to coerce myself not to. The lanes had a proper road with tar and all [as opposed to the bricks which they used to have previously]. They were so not the same as they used to be, and yet I had a striking familiarity with them. It also reminded me of all of the childhood friends which I had. I lost touch with them as soon as I left that place, and I’ve no idea of even their physical appearance now. I don’t think I’d be able to recognize them with their face anymore. Just a moment, I think I should name them all here. Who knows one of them might see this and get in touch. The names are [as much chronological as possible]- Mohit, Golu, Ekta, Ashu, Nishu, Chhotu, Betu, Prateek, Little, Mini, Garima. This is pretty much it. I really don’t know their proper names, so pardon me for that. The dusty ‘park’ where we used to ‘play’ now has a 4 storey house.

Then I saw the home where I used to live when I didn’t go to school. Astonishingly, it was still the very same! Superficially, nothing had changed there. That was some sight. Plastic Ball Cricket, the first day at school, my thumb nail getting squished, getting drenched in rain, bathing in sun light during winters, the doordarshan, death of Rajiv Gandhi.. these are some of the things which I remember with utmost clarity. My reading habit started from the newspaper report of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It was such sensational news of its time that I thought, damn.. only if I could read and understand everything written on that boring and awkwardly ‘huge’ newspaper. [No, the newspapers didn’t use to be any bigger than they’re now, but I was too small for them ].

Our landlord, Gupta ji [who was almost a grandfather figure to me] is no more. The name plate was engraved with the dreaded letters LATE. I think I felt a lump in throat for no good reason.

I never knew I’d be so connected with my past, but as it turns out.. Apparently, I am. And much later, I realized that this what I’ve been wanting to do for quite sometime now. Sometimes, living in past is not such a bad idea at all.