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.

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!

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.

****

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.

****

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.

****

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.

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.

*****

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.

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.