Observations of an Unknown Indian

It has been 3 weeks and 3 days since said unknown Indian has returned after nearly 5 years. The more the things change, the more they remain the same.

1. Bachelors in the IT industry are the lowest on the totem pole of rentable individuals. If you know what happens at the bottom of totem poles or any similar pole in India, you know that it is an unenviable location.
2. In 5 years my salary has more than doubled. Expenses are, however, projected to more than triple.
3. 'But you work in IT' is an acceptable reason to be overcharged, shortchanged and out-negotiated in any transaction.
4. Auto drivers seem surprisingly reasonable these days. Maybe the negativity over compensated on this one.
5. Commutes are unreasonable, fraught with danger and can suck the life out of the most chipper of us.
6. Maybe it's December, but the weather is glorious with barely any crippling rains or sapping heat.
7. Air conditioners are operated at a very high premium. Hotels don't run it. IT companies turn it off at night.
8. People have ready inputs on why you might have made a poor deal. Not one has offered a better deal, however.
9. Go with the flow but realize and recognize there ate some things that you must stand up for or against.
10. Despite all the obvious problems, the proximity to friends and family eliminates the captivity of negativity.

Good to be home.

White Trash

If there was a color to Trash, it would be white, it would be white...

I believe in Djinns and Demons, and that ...
Horlicks is not the secret of energy, Hunger is ...

3 dots .... Create, Preserve and Destroy...
Remember, Repeat and Rinse! Nihuism is back!

Where is the time for elegance or an Aha! or a wow?
when the front line is money, and the bottom line is it too....

Zeitgeist Addendum was a real awakening, so was Inception,
and so is Food, and many other documentaries...

However, like coconut that is a must between steam cakes,
don't humans need be reminded ? oft and oft, till its a boring routine?

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Thoughts in an unlit room

The iPod plays the melancholy, meandering music of a million mortal coils unraveling.
For once I resist the urge to fill my brain with any form of distraction.
lights turned dim, I rest my eyes. Awake but not necessarily aware.
I contemplate my drink with a matter of fact acknowledgment that it is here and it is meant to be drunk.

My friends have all fallen asleep. Those that are awake still sleep walk. As for myself, I stay suspended between the realm of the living and the un-

The music is fortunately devoid of any words. I allow my brain to fill it in with an emotional context that is all my own. Why I am I so melancholy today? Is it cabin fever from spending all day indoors? Or more symptomatic of a more chronic evil?

The more I think, the more drunk I feel. It cannot be the liquor for it is still untouched. Maybe its my thoughts that finally can roam unhindered.

movie house and a girlfriend named Athena

From across the movie hall was a tiny tea place with a stained samovar, lot of steam and open basket of snacks. As we drank from the cups there i eyed the slowly growing line at the hall entrance. With time i have perfected the entry time to these films. Not too early and look stupid, and not too late to miss any chance of watching the movie. Athena gave me a mild nudge with her elbows. Sign that i was silent for too long. Her friends were talking about the politics of abortion. I won't be forced to give an opinion that i don't have.

After finishing the cups we slowly walked to the hall. The white stairs that lead up were stained from years of abuse and poor maintenance. But the hall was in great condition. Every time i saw the entrance to the hall i remembered the puppet lions that danced on these screens, a scene from the first foreign film i saw here. This was Athena's first trip to this place. But she lead the way with a sense of familiarity.

As we pushed the door into the hall the large screen greeted us with a friendly authority. I felt its impatient gaze till we found a nice row to settle down. Soon it was dark around us with beams of light drawing pictures on the screen. Sounds broke into the air at rare intervals. I was engrossed in the movie that i forgot about Athena and her friends for some time. As the movie progressed the light beams painted more darkness on the screen. A piercing scream of agony with dark blood on the screen brought me back to my seat. I searched for Athena's hand to comfort her. I couldn't find it. Her seat was empty and so was the next. I was sitting in a row of empty chairs. My heart raced to a higher speed. I saw a human form near the exit. I ran behind it.

I was out in the deserted street which ran downhill towards a bunch of well lit houses. The girl who ran ahead of me has stopped now in the middle of the road. I was in two minds about approaching her when she turned around and beckoned me. I could see her face now. I asked her about Athena. She had no clue. She said she was lost and that she forgot the way to her place. She asked if i could help her find it. The movie reels were still rolling in my mind. I slowly walked back to the hall leaving her on the road. My shadow was almost invisible as i walked towards my seat. And i barely made a sound as i settled down. The light beams were still at work.

- From a dream.

Inviting death

The mat that held me was held up in the air by 4 people. It was gliding through a narrow street which sloped down towards Ganga. When we reached the ghats they kept the mat down on the veranda of a small building. I remembered this place. Not long before i had come here with my friends. We were staring at the dead bodies, some burning and some waiting to be burned. A person who called himself the keeper of the eternal fire had shown us that fire. While my friend was trying to sneak a picture of the ghat which was a camera free zone i was eying the narrow, cozy lane that goes back to the town. Piles of dry wood were stacked everywhere. There was a corpse at the exact same place that i was lying now.

Will writing about death invite it? Was thinking about this little thing i wrote sometime last year, when I had a brush with death in December.

Falling Down

The wind does not whip my face,
As I fall away from grace.
It really is no fall at all.

A slow elevator does descend,
Stopping at each apartment,
Taking more spectators along.

Some they watch with interests vested,
others, distracted, tweeted. Jested.
Like the crowds at the previews of Fall.

This is Falling. Falling down.
Each new day you break low ground.
Sinking into black abyss.

While you patiently wait, do remember to cooperate.
The bottom is far as you move along, sedate.
This is not an exit.

When it's over, it will be a mess.
Excused, perhaps, by drunkenness.
Though escape will still elude.

WTF

"What on earth were you thinking?"

"Well, actually, I was thinking of something non-earthly"

"Oh! like heavenly?"

"Not exactly, which is precisely why I used the non existant term non-earthly instead of unearthly, and compared both of them in this sentence, when none of them are really valid".

"I am wondering why I am having this conversation".

"Possibly because you need solace for that broken bottle of milk, lying on the floor!".

"What! How did you know that?"

"You know, I know that you don't know that you have a problem with you, and I didn't know that you didn't have a problem knowing that you didn't know that you have a problem with you".

"what has happend to both of us?"

"which is the root cause, we are are just two voices in the same mind!"

"is this how people go mad? its really scary"

"wait till you stop realizing that its happening, then its all fun, and sometimes unexplained agony..."

"do you have any idea, what it means to put up with you?"

"who else would have a better idea than yourself?"

"you mean - myself?"

"yourself , myself, its all the same .. remember?"

"oooo... ok, i will go to sleep now"

"am wondering, how this all started..."

"oops! there it starts again!"

baggage cart with a broken wheel

She runs across the airport floor,
heels tapping out an urgent encore.
Balances the over-sized glasses on her hair
And whispers to an ear disembodied, not there.
Half smile breaks the plane of her face.
She is not beautiful yet filled with grace.

As the endless belts roll on by
people, who to lay claim, lie
Still speaking as she hauls one on
to a little baggage cart that she has drawn
quick turn and there she stands framed
by the cart and and endless line of baggage unclaimed.

Engrossed she misses the pavement
Her lips make a perfect O of lament
As she twists an ankle and breaks the heel
of her left shoe and the baggage cart's left wheel
Looks around at a world running by
and hobbles on, embarrassed, without a reason why.

Wish

I remember the woman who would look both ways
before she crossed the road, with animated scenes
of her own death being played in her perepheral vision

I wish i had those visions, of gory death, crushed
by a moving bus, or through derailment of a train,
add a bit of blood, or a lot of it, oozing from my flesh

I wish i could see, me cutting up myself to pieces,
driving nails through my bones, with a nice steel hammer,
that i could listen to my last hoarse breaths of life, in idle moments

I could use them over all these crazy images, that i
conjure from thin fucking nothings, which then haunt me
for minutes, hours and days, until a new one takes its place

The Least Interesting Man in the World

With Apologies to a comic on the Internets
who's careful stick figures stand up in jest
Like this protagonist from weeks ago,
I do haunt this blog with a furrowed brow.

Should I post about this most prosaic of days?
Or rave and rant in panicked dismay?
Should I stay ensconced in the captivity of negativity?
Be verbose or go on an exercise of brevity?

Shall I resist the urge to apologize?
For the lack of posts to plagiarize?
Or should I succumb to my urges as a quitter?
And limit myself to 140 characters on twitter?

Whichever be the path on the fork that's chosen,
This one thing shall remain frozen.
Even now as in days of old,
I shall remain the least interesting man in the world.