Sirocco

Memories are always like those phone calls you get, asking whether you are interested in taking a credit card. When you actually want one, no one ever calls. But, the moment you are engaged in some work that has a deadline..

Of course, in this particular instance, deciding to get drunk on whisky neat wasn't also helping the case. There were three of them in that room. Five, if you included the fictional puppies in the B&W label. They had to make sure that everything was aligned before the sale went live tomorrow. It was mundane work and the alcohol was supposed to alleviate the boredom that could plague them.

For reasons unknown to Raghu, his thoughts went back to his geography class and the things that he had to mug up. Sirocco. He vaguely remembered that the name of a local wind in the Mediterranean region. He took a peek at Lachu, who had burrowed herself in her laptop. 

"Hey. Do you remember about the local winds that we studied back in school? Sirocco and all that?"

She looked up and so did Nihal. Their face were contorted into expressions of bewilderment. Though he was looking at Lachu when he was asking the question, he could make out that Nihal was shooting glances at both the bottle and his glass.

"No, Nihal. I am not drunk."

"What's with the random nonsense then?"

"Wasn't Sirocco the hot, dry wind coming from Africa? Weren't there two more? I think Bora and Mistral. But, they were centred around Europe, I think." Lachu interrupted.

"Are you encouraging this? We have a deadline." Nihal looked at her.

"Oh shut up. I need a break. What's with your sudden affection for geography anyway, Raghu?"

By that time, he had already opened the Wikipedia page for the said names in his phone browser. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when his dad would have made him get out their Britannica Encyclopaedia collection, if they had to search for some information. That collection was expensive, he remembered and his family could barely be called middle-class, straining much in order to make their financial ends meet. 

"Not sure. According to the wikipedia page, Sirocco is not exactly a hot, dry wind. It picks up moisture when it crosses the Mediterranean sea and causes rainfall in Italy."

"That's funny." Lachu replied. "I was so sure that we studied about it as one part of a kind of duet. Sirocco being hot and dry. Borah and Mistral being the cold ones." Her voice trailed off towards the end.

Winds, like the ones that blew over his face, when he drove his rickety scooter to meet them at their usual haunts near the beach. His graduation gang. They had studied at the same branch in his college in Trivandrum. He couldn't remember how they came to be - Priya, him, Ravi, Natasha and Imran. But, it happened somewhere during the middle of second year and had remained so for a decent amount of time after college. Given how conservative Trivandrum was in those days, they had to be careful in order to ensure that they had some place, where they could sit and drink in peace with the girls. This usually meant a some posh beach side hotel, with a view. It also meant a constant drain on their pockets. As long as he told his dad that he was borrowing it to buy some books, he didn't mind. Raghu was sure that he would have guessed eventually since his shelves were not exactly overflowing with the books that he was supposed to have bought. But, his dad never asked and never stopped giving him money, when he asked for it.

His mind drifted back to the conversation. "..school books don't usually give a complete picture" Nihal was saying. "It's like the concept of a map. Technically, there are a lot of inaccuracies that crop up when we a project an oblongated sphere onto a rectangular piece of paper. But, spending time explaining all the intricacies is just futile. This is especially true for kids."

"So, does this mean that we cannot trust anything that we once studied?"Raghu asked. 

"I don't think that's true. Most education curricula is built in a manner that even if they give simplified versions of the facts during the lower stages, more of the pieces are exposed to us as we go up." Nihal replied.

"Like a jigsaw puzzle" Lachu mused, as she poured another round for all of us. Simplified versions and jigsaw puzzles. Priya, the quiet and studious one. But, always ready to bunk the class. Ravi, who used to be a good dancer and therefore the centre of attention in college. It was every guy's dream to be someone like him and yet Ravi was always uncomfortable with it. Natasha, loud and ballsy, always ready to pick up a fight. And, Imran, who alternated between weed driven hazes and political preaching. It was an odd group. Raghu was always amused by the loyalty they had shown to each other during their college going phase. Priya's tutoring before examinations. Natasha and him dragging Imran out of his bed and into classes, when he got a bit too comfortable with weed. All of them cheering wildly, when Ravi participated in various dance competitions and Imran calling all his political connections, when Natasha landed into trouble. They needed each other and they were there for each other.

Simplified versions...

The last they had met was at Natasha's wedding, nearly four years ago. She had married an N.R.I. that her parents had found for her. She would eventually emigrate to the States. They were not able to call Imran for that wedding. They had no idea what had become of him. He had barely passed college and immediately disappeared afterwards. And, Priya and Ravi. They had married before that. Neither he nor Natasha had any clue as to what was going on, till they told them some three months before their marriage. When Natasha had called a month back, he came to know from her that Ravi and Priya had been quarreling a lot, almost to a point where they were thinking of separation. Priya used to call her once in a while. Neither Ravi nor Priya had kept in touch with him.

Jigsaw puzzles...

"You are in one of those moods, aren't you?" Lachu lightly tapped his forehead with his hand, as she placed the glass near his side. He smiled. She sat near him. Nihal, always conscientious, had gone back to his laptop after putting in his two cents.

"I was thinking of the names of the winds. For all we know, it's the same air that circulates between all of these. It's kind of stupid to have names anyway."

"True." Lachu replied "But, for people over there, it make sense. They know that Sirocco blows from the south. And, they know where Bora and Mistral come from. They also know how it'll affect them. That's all the matters for them. You sitting over here and never having faced those winds, you have the luxury to think these thoughts."

"You are right as usual." Raghu smiled, as he slightly raised his glass towards hers.

The Vixen at Sankhumugham

A pair of gigantic breasts, exposed to the sun. Sexuality and heat exuded from the statue to have a tete-a-tete with the intense radiation emanating from the sun. The air shimmered and our malayaliness cowered. Nobody knew why they had put a big naked woman's statue nearby the Sankhumugham beach and people did their best to ignore it publicly. Only ninja-like private glances were allowed.

Acha, Dende aa prathimakku thuniyilla. Athentha angane kidakane?Mukham entha angane?

Dad, the statue isn't clothed. Why is it lying like that?Why is the face like that?

Mone, beachil poyi kalicho

Son, you can go play in the beach.

Achaa...

Dad...

Shaluvee, avane beachilottu kondu poye. 

Shalu, take him to the beach.

People liked Sankhumugham much better during those times when Indian Coffee House, with pride and boredom, used to serve coffee on the beach. Indian Coffee House has disappeared. A sign of changing times. The same reason why our lonely Attar uncle walking along the beach rubbing scent from his small scent bottles onto the back of people's palms find his wares not getting sold much. Attar uncle in that typical lungi, grey-haired and speaking very little.

The toy seller makes a circle out of brightly and differently coloured luminescent sticks. So, that he can sit inside and try his best to attract a new and modern generation to things of the past. There must be a dad out there, who takes his kids to the beach daily evening for a walk together to spend time together instead of spending it only on taking them early morning to the tuition centres. IIT-JEE. PMT. AIIMS. KVPY. Success Guaranteed. 100%. The coloured luminescent sticks in circles and the tuition centres...

Da, How do you people know him? Did you all study in the same school?

We studied in Trivandrum. Someone knows somebody knows someone else.

Navy Blue. Dark Red. Light Blue. Vacuum.  Ties and ties. Stories usually with similar rebellious and preparatory strains, at a stage when rebellion and preparations meant a lot. 

The wind picks up at the beach and the ordinary, bland-faced, people dip their ordinary feet in the salty-and-more-muddy-than-Kovalam waves. Foam and feet. Feet and foam. Children screaming in delight. And, the aged with ice-creaming expressions. The sound of the waves drowns away all the luggage you brought there. And, the approaching dusk made a grandma look at grandpa nearby, all romance and all, out of the corner of her eyes. Dusk and windswept, wet as well as frilly hair and nose-rings. Mothers of all romance. 

Curly haired freakans in eye-blasting bermudas and gone on all weedy at the sea. New values and new meanings and new ways. So, well represented by their presence as by the absence of their generations preceding them. Trapped in air-conditioned offices somewhere. The horses on the beach available on rent, had thick cardboards covering its eyes, on the sides. It could only see straight ahead, just like our absent generation.

Salted and cut raw mangos. Cut, boiled and spicy kadala-tomato-cucumber and roasted peanuts. Strong chai at the thattukadas(dhabas) nearby. Vazhakappam. Ulli vada. Dosa, small and thick with chutney and omelettes. The poetry of food. 

And, you just sit and look at the horizon. As brightness turns to orangeness and redness and greyness and darkness. Time creeps backward and forward as memories mix with contemplation of future. The music eventually starts, as someone sings through a mic, with a bucket nearby for monetary contribution. 

The drone of an airplane is heard from the background of an airbus taking off from the airport nearby. The airport, whose good-smooth surrounding roads lend itself to good-smooth driving for people who want to go in good-smooth circles in their good-smooth vehicles living a good-smooth life.

Our holy, naked vixen exuding oodles of sexuality will eventually fall like Ozymandias into disrepair. The visits back will lessen. The roots will eventually shrivel. And, we'll also fall with her as we learn to ignore and move forward. This slow world of heart-felt abstracts.

The plane

The boy could be best described as scrawny with an ujala stained, dust-covered, supposedly white shirt and navy blue shorts. Standing on the terrace of his house, he drew an imaginary paper airplane in the air and then gently blew it, willing it to carry himself. And, it set off at dusk that day, gliding through the orange sky, through the temporal plane where time acted like space and the spatial plane where space acted like space as well as their intersection where both danced with each other.

It curved its way deep into a building which had surrendered itself to midnight. Loud music blared out from the speakers, ignored by everyone, who had paper cups in their hands. Full MH bottles stood proudly and empty coke bottles lay around defeated. The air surrendered to humidity and drops of perspiration died down slow deaths on smooth faces as it flowed down. Somebody yelled pointing to the cemented floor."I am not drunk at all. Look. I'll walk on that straight line marked there."

Roy dropped himself onto the floor, beside Raghu, silently watching the unfolding drama. The in-house, boys-only-because-it's-the-boys'-hostel party was the aftermath of the successful completion of the college cultural fest. The challenger did a duck walk, his cheerful butt dancing sinusoidally.

"I don't exactly think he is walking on the line." Raghu commented through the din of the shouts and music. "No. That is obvious from the way, people are hooting at him." Roy replied.
"Drunk idiot. He is pointlessly embarrassing himself."
"I don't know about that. As far as he is concerned, he is walking straight. Seems pretty happy and proud about it too."

Raghu's airplane and the drunkard zigzagged their way through the straight line. At the end of it, nobody even knew what the challenge had been and they all toasted to all that they had done together. The plane twirled a bit, flashing strobe lights and whisked itself away.

February 1, 2003 was a Saturday. Both Raghu and Diya usually tucked themselves in the bed with a splattering of brunch and dinner on Saturdays at his apartment. That day was supposed to be no different. However, at around 11 AM, Diya still in her pajamas, rushed to the bedroom and shook him up from his sleep.

"Raghuuu" she screamed. He woke up alarmed and groggy.
"What?"
"Come. See the telly."
He put on his spectacles and shuffled behind Diya towards the living-cum-dining room. A waft of whatever she was cooking, floated towards him from the kitchen. He looked at the television and saw the images of a spacecraft burning up. The ticker announced that the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated, killing all seven crew members, including Kalpana Chawla.

"She means something to me." Diya whispered.

He glanced at Diya. She seemed transfixed. Partially here. Partially over in those skies. Her eyes had moistened slightly. He went towards her and embraced her in a tight hug. The kind that can't be described by a writer using weird similes and metaphors. The airplane encircled them, letting out a warm glow and orange-red hues.

Raghu was gazing through the glass door of the ICU. There was nothing symmetrical about heart beats. And, yet the already irregular heart beat could apparently get even more irregular. Roy's mom lay huddled inside. That was pretty much the only family Roy had.  The doctor came outside to talk to him. He was looking grim. Raghu always had the trouble of expressing emotions at the right moment. Anger. Grief. Panic. Happiness. Everything came like the credits at the end of a movie after all the drama got over. As the doctor spoke to him, he felt like he could hear a confused but mild movement in the air around him. It almost felt like somebody had sprayed something to nail a bug and it was stuttering back and forth in its flight.

People expect a relationship to end like cricket world cups. There is a final, there is that one point where that final run is scored, or the final wicket falls. There is a winner and a loser. Everything happens in a definite manner and with clarity. But, mostly it's just muddled up like the insides of a washing machine that's doing what it is supposed to be doing. Smelly with lots of dirty water mixed with slimy and greasy detergent, circling in loops. And, then there are odd times when even that doesn't happen. People just fade and fade and then one of them decides that not only should the clothes be washed but it should be positively bleached, whether quickly or slowly. The colour leaks out of memories and then the black leaches out. The outlines blur and then it's just white. That had been what happened to him and Diya and it had mostly happened without his knowledge.

Colourless. Oddly at around that time, a paper airplane limping around suddenly started becoming translucent. Whereas it had emitted colours earlier unseen, now it had become more visible in a dull, grey manner. And, it's existence was attributed by random people including Raghu to unidentified kids.

The darkness was split open by a single line of light and it widened very hesitantly. That December morning had been particularly cold and Raghu was finding it difficult to wake up. It had been two months since he was fired from his last workplace. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and other waste. Summoning whatever reserve of strength, he had and went towards the balcony of his apartment. He looked at the people milling in the streets below. It did not evoke anything in him. In fact, it almost appeared as if everything was pressing against him. It reminded him of Roy.

"Plath once compared depression to being inside a glass bell jar, you know. As if suddenly, you are gasping for breath and you cannot reach beyond that glass wall and make contact. You are trapped. You are constricted. Everything outside seems distorted when seen through the thick glass wall."
"Must be tough."
"Very." Roy paused for a second. " But, you know, sometimes I think depression has made me more human. Being able to understand grief and pain. And, understand it when it happens in others. It's almost like you can touch it and it's like jam or jelly gone wrong."
"You should have let me known about what you were going through. I never imagined.."
"..that I could go through that. I know. Somehow, I didn't want to tell anybody. Not a really good move. But, I am opening up now."
"So, what exactly are you doing to tackle it?"
"I am taking professional help, yes. If that's what, you mean. No drugs though. But, more importantly, I am trying to see again the things that I took for granted. If you reach the rock-bottom and summon enough courage to stand up and look around, it's very different from what you see from above and much better. And, even when you look behind, it's different. People like me tend to have tattered memories initially because of all the things you feel like blanking out.  But, work your way around the holes and you have scraps of things that you had never paid attention to before. And, before you know it, what you thought was tattered mends itself and becomes visible albeit in a different way."
Roy paused for some more time and continued "But, you know the best thing. At one point of time, you positively want to rebel. Like you want to gather all the scraps and whatever you have going for you and make a last stand."

Memories of long ago are sometimes so effective that you almost feel like the real person is standing beside you. Raghu glanced sideways to make sure that it wasn't the case and that's when he noticed the paper airplane lying on the floor of the balcony. He smiled. Ever since he was little, he always had a thing for planes, rockets and space shuttles. He took the plane and looked at it carefully. It was not in a very good condition. He closed his eyes for a few seconds. And, then he launched the plane against the wind. It went up vertically and he almost immediately lost sight of it. That's weird, he thought before going inside.

The plane meanwhile vertically shot up. All the layers of air pressing down on it was heating it up. It was burning and becoming almost incandescent. Yet, the flimsy thing held itself together. And, it soared higher and higher to an unknown destination, as if to prove a point to some unknown entity somewhere. 

Face-to-Face

The beach winds usually made Raghu's hair dry, frizzy and unmanageable. What was left of his hair, that is. He was sharing roasted peanuts with Diya. They were sitting somewhat close to what Raghu called the Sea-Lick line. Behind which, they were somewhat safe from a frontal assault from the creeping waves which would have gotten their asses wet and sent them scrambling backwards. Right now, only the finely grained sand possessed any threat to their jeans.

"Ey. The ape-to-man picture right. The one that starts from the monkey and ends up in Sapien Sapien." Diya suddenly pricked the ballooning silence against which the sounds of the waves were making little effect.

"Yes. What about it?"
"It's odd that they can see the backs of their evolved versions. I think they should all be looking backwards and wondering at their previous versions. Not one of them should be able to see their future versions. That's not how it works."
"I take this to be the starting point of something else."
"No. Nothing. It's a fascinating picture, that's all. I look at you and I can see six of you."
"Myself and my past selves?"
"Something like that. In parallel. Almost like Trivandrum itself."
"How?"

Little tanned boys in uniformed shorts were playing in the sand at a distance under the watchful eyes of oily haired, saree clad and underpaid teachers. They seemed to be from a Govt. school. None of that christianised, private school-ish illusion of sophistication.

"Look at Trivandrum now. It's almost like a cultural clash. You have a generation putting their feet into two boats. Weed is abundantly available and so is pre-marital sex with no semblance of any sort of emotional relationships. International Film Festival of Kerala flourishes.."

"IFFK flourishes and attracts even non-cinema lovers because of the nudity. I wonder whether the vast majority can make any sense otherwise of those movies and I certainly do not think it is flourishing because we have, overnight, developed impressive art analysing skills."

"Anyway, I think the new generation is more casual and accepting about a lot many things. And yet, while they seem to be almost swinging all the way to that end..You know, one of my cousin's childhood friend called him up to ask about this girl who studied with my cousin during his graduation. I think it was a marriage proposal or something for that guy. My cousin promptly told him that she had more than two relationships during their college days. And that was it."

"I see. An eerie foam of orthodox morality beneath the mattresses of testosterone and estrogen."
"Yes. Not only that. Try visiting the Museum and Park during the evening. It's populated by the grey haired. Or families-with-bubbly children. Our generation is absent."
"Hmm. Diya. It's not like they can find any jobs here."
"I know."

"I do not mind hypocrisies and absence. The former is probably due to the fact that we are that generation where entrenched ideals are slowly changing. It's never a smooth transition. And, absence. Well, there is something about Trivandrum. I don't feel the same way about this place like I once used to. Familiarity and all. I have been away from this place for long. But, this place still calms me down. I think our generation may not like the idea of living forever around here but they will always return, once in a while. The city will always pull us from the distance and push us away when we stay around here too much."

Diya looked at Raghu as he was talking. Dilating pupils. A distant look. One that was scanning the faraway orangish-bluish boundaries.

"But, something is bothering you." She ventured.
He nodded.
"Sometimes, I get this idea that we are ageing at a more accelerated rate than what is actually happening physically. As compared to the generation before us for whom a stable job and family were more important, I think we really want to make an impact on life. And, because of that as well as all the multiple difficulties our generation has to deal with, personal and otherwise, I think we are getting mentally grey-haired."

Diya smirked.
"You just miss us back then."
Raghu turned and faced her. One side of his lips slightly taut.
"Anyway, it's not like you can make people rewind experiences or forget them." He commented.
"I think you can. Momentarily, anyway."
"Huh?"

"I don't know. You realise that we don't keep in touch, in the conventional sense. It's not like we call each other every day or every week or even every other month. But, we do try to meet up whenever possible. May that be twice or thrice a year. We have some coffee or watch some distant birds or people milling around like bees and we talk. We catch up. And, I get this sense of satisfaction, you know."

"As if time's like a washed piece of cloth, neatly pressed. So that what should be distant, dirty and wrinkled, come together and touch each other."

"Weird way to put it, but yeah. The moment we really talk, it's like every bad thing that ever happened lightens up a bit. Some of them even seem downright silly and others, survivable."

The day had faded and it was beginning to darken at Sankhumugham, the beach where they were sitting. Raghu could hear the vague sounds of aeroplanes taking off from the airport at a distance. He looked ahead. At a distance in the sea, the fishing boats turned on their lights one by one. Points of light stubbornly resisting the invasion of night. Points of light at a distance in the sea in a horizontal line and a curly, moist wind wafting through the beach. Points of light like parallel versions of themselves, each by itself illuminating and yet at a distance not easily touched. But, visible to the two of them who were sitting and ruminating so much.

Scattering

You touch this Earth with your palm
And a whirlwind happens
That turns into dust
the many shadowy strangers

And at the dead centre of it,
you carve out a new world.
From out of the void.

But, what can be made out of emptiness?
Except emptiness.
And, you have opened one more eye
There is no more sieve.

It all falls down.
The good. The bad. The irrelevant.
That new world.
Frightening.
One pair of footprint trailing behind.
Multiplying into many.
All of which disappearing under the dusty winds

And, the tempest you made refuses to die down,
Stirring up so much dust
that you can't see ahead.
And, your feet walks slower.
It gets colder
And, the dust piles up.
And your feet walks slower.

Drags.
And, then it too turns into sand.
As the whirlwind preys on itself.
You scatter yourself,
ever so slowly.
You comprehend and understand
that you have slowly become your world.

Storifying

#Courtesy: Waltz with Bashir. Daniel Kahneman. Some random articles. And, what I always love doing. Talking and catching up with people face-to-face.

It was almost dusk. Two old friends were sitting on the grassy lawn of that beautiful park. It was evident that they had been sitting and chatting for quite some time. About things that happened long back when they were together as well as things that happened afterwards.

"Do you know that famous experiment involving childhood memories? " Nihal asked Liz.

"Which one?"

"So, they conducted an experiment in which the subjects under study were shown 10 photographs of their childhood. One of them was fake with their selves superimposed on a background of say, an amusement park. They were asked to recollect their experiences after being given those photos."

"And what happened?"

"80% of the subjects actually 'recounted' experiences surrounding those fake photos. They were able to build stories around it."

"Memories abhor gaps huh? This story telling, I understand somewhat though. The mind, I guess, would have a tendency to fill gaps by making up something that would ensure that it's a part of a coherent story. In fact, I have read somewhere that it is difficult for human beings to think of their lives as something other than stories. Think of it. Our lives are actually anything but stories. It's a collection of totally random incidents, one bearing little relation to another, except for the relationship that we want them to have. And, yet we insist that our lives are like a progression. A sequence with one event connected to another."

"Hmm. But, Liz. Our lives are stories. Each time something happens, it changes us a bit. So, the next time we face something or make a decision, we would do it differently."
"Maybe. But, there is no sequence. Whatever happens, happens randomly and individually. We storify it in retrospect. In retrospect, we believe that it couldn't have happened any other way. It makes perfect sense. However, the problem is that it makes sense only because we have experienced it and we make a story out of it. We haven't lived out the million alternate versions and those are not as real to us. "

"That reminds me of Kahneman. Ever heard of him? In a famous TED talk, he actually compares experience with memories. He talks of patients going through an endoscopy surgery. He compares patients who have had a short period of painful surgery and also patients who have had a long period of painful surgery which ended on a gradual note with the pain decreasing towards the end instead of being constantly high like the former. The latter actually had a worse experience but ended up with better memories of the surgery than the former. "

"All that we talked about adds a different perspective, doesn't it? All of us meeting up together long after schools, college and all that. What are we meeting up for? Nostalgia? But then, that's different for each of us. We look back and each of us have our own perspective. Even what we underwent individually afterwards, influences the memories we look back at. The way you remember things will be totally different from the way I remember it because we went different ways and lived different lives afterwards."

"And yet, we meet. We end up feeling a certain sense of relief as well as comfort in meeting and we hope to rekindle our relative memories of our experiences."

"And sometimes after all those years, when we meet up and talk, we realise that we idolised some people and experience because of who or what they were to us. It's when we talk, compare notes and allow our mind to accept the various perspectives and versions that we are finally able to understand and comprehend. Even if a person was not lying or an experience felt awesome, we realise that what we thought at the time was just like copy-paste. We missed out all the nuances of the person or the experience because we thought without actually thinking by ourselves."

"Hahaha. Liz. So, in the end, all this meeting up and nostalgia is faltoo. It's like what somebody once said. New is always better. Never anchor yourself in the past."

"Naaaa. I think I would like to understand the past me, the past you and the past everybody. I also like tracing how all of us grew up."

"Storiiiifying, Liz. Double standards, you have."

Liz laughed. "Maybe. I never said that I don't indulge in it. I do because I need to make sense of it. I am not narrow minded enough to think that the way it played out is perfect. However, those stories often help me understand who we all are and to understand why each of us have changed. From those same stories, I derive my sense of identity and belonging."

"Mm. Yes. And there is no right or wrong. Just all the stuff that happened."

"Exactly."

"I have definitely missed you a lot, Liz. Hmm. You reckon that it'll always be the same between us even if we keep in touch only infrequently?"

"That depends on what you decide to tell me and what I decide to tell you when we do meet. Also, you need to ensure that you buy me the best ice-cream around here when we meet up. "

Nihal got up from the lawn, wiped his jeans and extended his hand towards Liz.

"That's a deal."

Our Holy Potato

Greetings to my fellow human beings.

I am a follower of YoYoism and I want to talk to you about the immense amount of disrespect that is being shown to the Potato, the living and magnificient symbol of our religion.

YoYoism started in 10000 BC when humanity was far more advanced. In those days, everyone flew from every place to every other place by attaching biogenetically engineered crows to their feet. Humanity has fallen much afterwards but we still maintain vestiges of that greatly civilised era by being ready to kill one and all in the name of our great God, YoYo. We believe in YoYo because he keeps sending his bearded sons and daughters and hot secretaries once in a while to the Earth to teach us the YoYo way. We hope he sends one right now. We desperately need it.

But, back to the potato. You see the potato is different from your tomatoes and brinjals. It shouldn't be eaten. Our holy scriptures say that it is our daddy. We mostly believe so. The most exalted, YoYo, constantly carried the Potato around with him. The moment the most exalted YoYo felt bored, the potato would fly from his pocket and randomly smack some lesser God's head much to his delight. From the potato, comes life, goodness and all things nice.

You scientific pricks. You do not believe us? Jagdish Chandra Bose, the great Indian scientist, once proved that plants have life. They can feel pain. Don't you get it? The Potato has a beating heart. And, yet you skin it. Boil it. Kill it. And, eat it. Our holy symbol. Our giver of life. Skinned. Boiled. Killed. Eaten.

Our blood curdles when we think of that. We feel like stoning you all. We want legislations and court judgements banning people from eating the Potato. We feel offended and abused. What food chain are you talking about? No. No. We don't really care if you gently kill the potato and then eat it. We don't really care about brinjals, radishes, bittergourds and all such other vegetables. We only care about potatoes.

 All potatoes have a right to live. In fact, all potatoes have more of a right to live than human beings. Potatoes can shrivel and waste out slowly but they shouldn't die. And, those who dare lay their teeth on the potato should be lynched. Traitors!Cold Hearts! We don't care about age or gender. They should all die a slow, painful death.

Hail Potato Daddy..

Indian Government, you hear? We expect potato laws to come in soon

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop.

Greyish skies, monochrome people, slanting rainfall,
A strong chai by the roadside, an assortment of bajis to eat from.
And, a city inside this city, that has to be pulled up,
that had been kept deeply buried in woolly memories.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop.

Brightening and simmering headlights with prancing droplets between,
Bobbing umbrellas and running people and confused street dogs,
Warm-hearted Malayalis dipping their noses into businesses, big and small.
Always prying, advising, policing to preserve a once-tremendous-culture.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Seven cents of land with your name marked on it.
With tapioca and bananas growing in it, to keep the soil wet.
For that time, when you will return bearing all that dust on your face
North Indian dust and if-so-happens, American and European dust.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Two parents, growing old together and wide-eyed waiting,
for the shorter-than-seconds moments together
With rasam, murukku and paayasam.
And the separation growing longer and longer and longer

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

As dreams sour and stale and become cliched,
Paths become murukky loops and you dance on the border of your equilibrium,
The steamy chai and the watered air conspire and moist your glasses
To blind you to the apparitions walking around from your memories.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Apparitions and their mirrors in reality, the change and contrast,
the ageing, the greying, the clouding, the water-exposed wrinkling,
the maturing, the 'practical'ising, the wearing down
Apparitions of connecting webs, still lingering from the past.

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

Against that all, an animalistic love is let loose into that bulky air,
A-class Malayali love,  dusky, bubble-gummy,coconutty,
A love to the faded and the beaten and the average and the struggling,
To the lonely, to the distant, to the separated, to the long-lost
To the oily, unanswered prayers and the unheard, fresh-smelling archanas
It balloons and wafts and floats and sinks
And lights a fire in those dying scars

Plitter, Platter, Plop, Plop

The sense of being an Indian.

The metro doors slid open. Dark brown, scraggly skinned, wide eyed and reddish-yellowish teethed people with dirty clothes entered. The first time, that they were travelling in a metro. People moved away since there was a chance that they might be carrying harmful bacteria and other microbes. Ey Shiva! There is a good chance that they might also be robbers or gangsters. Of course, you can never trust the CISF checking. It isn't effective enough. The well-dressed, well-brushed gentlemen and ladies should always stand 3-4 metres away from such crowd. That chasm shouldn't be crossed.

"Why do you not speak Hindi?"
"I come from a place where it is rarely spoken."
"But, it is the national language, no?"
"There are around 780 languages spoken in India. 22 languages have been recognised by the constitution. The question should be whether any language should be made a national language."
"But, a vast majority of Indians speak Hindi."

Majority. An India as defined by a majority. A sanskaar to which everyone has to pay homage. A ruling government which has decided to define Indianness through its own ideologies and religion. See, if you don't accept our beliefs, why don't you go to Pakistan? Because, only our beliefs and our thoughts are Indian thoughts.

The shrewdness of Sardar Patel as he made 547 princely kingdoms accede to the Indian Union, in addition to British India, which was already diverse beyond measure. An iconography of an Indian Flag, an Anthem and a Pledge to create oneness in them. A Republic Day. An Independence Day. Freedom Fighters. A storyline. A Father of the nation. And, minorities who resort to ghettoisation and sometimes violence to fight back against that imposed identity. Hey, nobody consulted us before making us Indians?

It's the same set of questions that we have to ask ourselves today. What is this sense of being an Indian? Do the dirty, blind, shrivelled and the downtrodden living on subsistence possess the same kind of Indianness as the average middle class? Does this Indianness flower suddenly on specific days like August 15th when the wide array of iconography like our flag and our anthem is put on display and speeches made? Does this Indianness pervade beyond our "Love laws" as dictated by a society which states who shall love who? A Hindu shall love a Hindu. A Brahmin shall love a Brahmin. A Tribal shall love a tribal.

He decided to take a train from Delhi to his home state. Since he hadn't booked in advance,he had to travel in the general compartment. 
"Why did you come in the general compartment from New Delhi? You could have waited. The journey must have been difficult."Amma asked him, when he came out after a bath. 
"It was all right, Amma."
His Maami did not keep quiet though. "Chee. You were smelling when you came here. Those compartments are dirty."
"Yes. Maami, most of the others in the compartment were seasonal workers coming here. And, it was tightly packed. I could hardly move. "
"Of course, I knew that. You should never travel in general compartment. It's full of such people."
"Maami, such people also ensured that I always had a seat by not allowing anybody else to sit there. They also shared their food with me, inspite of not having much for themselves."

Such people. Us and them. The touchables and the untouchables. The ones to be pitied at from a distance. The ones from another religion. The right religion and the wrong religion. The enemy religion and the friendly religion. The ones from another caste. Another class. Another strata. Another language. And, we take our bath on August 15th mornings, stand under flags, distribute sweets, sing songs and celebrate Independence day while our differences bubble up inside us, egged on by our "Indian" Society. And, we all feel proud to be Indians.

Petrichor

The smell of lashed, wet earth leaking through the cracks of that mud wall. The white ripples on the surface of puddles amongst the grassy fields. The wet, wrinkled hair of the wild-hearted village women. A single drop flowing down the long ridge of her nose, slowly and dramatically. And the way, it stops and hangs at the bottom edge. Not collecting enough of courage or itself to fall down. Hanging like a nose ring. Broken bangles, bits and pieces, bouncing on the water polished rocks.

The way, the slim legged stork, prances about in the watery, green fields. The way she slightly lifts her lehenga, to reveal those nimble feet and glistening silver anklets, as she takes a hop over the muddy path in between the fields. The great big cumulonimbus overhead. Thunder and lightning as it slowly billows and blows over the Indian sub-continent. And, she looks up to see its coming and passing. Travelling from the south, bearing the aspirations of the dirt-stained, plough bearing farmers of varied language, clothes and customs.

She wonders whether it'll wash away the grime in the pans and pots inside the darkness of that thatched hut or whether it'll sweep the veil covering her unseen eyes. Or, whether it'll lighten the burden that she has become to her father, by reaching the age where she could bear a child.

The thunderclouds bellow. The anguish of the lowly and the downtrodden. Of the men and women, nearest to the soil. Yet, the rains bring a new hope. A new harvest. A new yearning.

Kilometres.

Near the top of the mountain, on those winding tarred roads, near one of those many yellow-white milestones, he stood with his messed-up morning hair, staring towards a far beyond looking into himself as much as into the Himalayas. He smelled of unbrushed teeth, of dried and scaly skin which had not seen a bath for some days and of long, repressed memories. And, there he stood drinking tea in that misty mountainous morning.

An overwhelming freedom seem to have enveloped him. It's not that he hated humanity, it's not that he hated bonds and people. But, there was something about solitude. There was something about a traveller's bag on his back and the worn-out shoes on his foot. Indeed, there was something about trying to fork those Frost-ian paths, which interestingly is on the verge of becoming clichéd. Miles to travel and all that.

Humans live many lives in their one life. And, at different stages, they turn to different things for solace. Friends who they can drink with. Relationships onto which they'll lean everything onto. Religion which promises them heaven, paradise, moksha and so on. Gods which bless them provided they paid their fees in prayers and cash deposits. Families so that they can beget children and see their dream happen through them.

But, it did him little good whether he cared little about the worldly or the heavenly. So, that's when he purchased a travelling bag, a pair of good shoes and just went to the nearest railway station. A journey to see India and maybe eventually the world. He wondered whether he was an escapist. Someone constantly on the run, especially from how life is to be lived. On schedule and with ties, purchasing diapers.

He suddenly heard the footsteps coming from the opposite side of the road. The village woman were coming down the narrow, dusty and grassy footpaths carved perpendicular to the mountains. Wrinkled skin and big nose-rings. Paan-chewing lips. With load on their shoulders and half naked kids by their side. Their lives untouched by time and seeping modernity.

How far can human beings run? An average person walks roughly half of equator's length. He can never circle the entire equator. Some say that it proves the fact that he needs somebody else to cover the rest of the equator. But, he surmised that it was to challenge the human in him, to persuade him to get out of this maze of regularity and to seek the extraordinary. The extraordinariness of a hot cup of steaming team on a mountainous early morning. The extraordinariness of observing the untouched and touched lives. The ability to freeze the schedule and the timetable on which the world runs so that one could take a leap towards undivided time, where the sun rose and set without counts.

That revolt was his raison d'etre. As he sat down on the muddy side, metres away from the precipice, all the faces that he knew passed through his memory. He smiled. Indeed, he had to find out. How far can a human run? From familiarity? From money?From schedules?From bonds? The steam from that hot plastic cup made his spectacles misty. He wiped it. He then took out a pen and a small pocket diary from his pocket. He began scrawling like he always did. The kilometres left and the places and the humans to be seen.

Ivan Yaaro

It can start with our hero walking backwards with his eyes closed, with his arms extended outwards. His shampooed hair ruffled by the light breeze in the campus. A dimpled grin on his face. At that precise moment, the new girl would be standing together with a bunch of her newly found friends talking very seriously but the conversation getting muted by that light romantic melody floating in the college campus. Her frizzled, wet hair strewn all over her face. Kajal-ed and big round eyes. And, then it happens. They collide.

Wait. Rewind the tape. Everything happening backwards in a very fast manner. Stop and start again.

Our man comes on a bike, roaring through the crowd. Heads turn. The new girl is totally oblivious to the sound, of course. He sees her first. She still doesn't see him. His head turns slowly. Two centimetres per second. The bike slowly veers off course and hits the stout tree. The melody still playing.

Naa. Rewind the tape. Backwards. Backwards. Quick. Quick. Staaaap.

The well muscled and sweat covered boy is playing football/badminton/cricket/hockey. It's the deciding last minute/shot. He wipes his forehead with his thumbs. He goes for the last kick/shot and out of the corner of his eyes, sees her. The rest is history. The match is lost. But, our sweaty, well muscled boy is oblivious to that. BGM is a must obviously.

Not quite right. Rewind the tape.

Rains. Aaah. The atmosphere creator. Not torrential, of course. Drizzle. Just enough for either the guy or the girl to dance. The feet should jump and kick muddy water all over so that the other can stand and gawk. You know the drift right now. Humming music all over the place.

Still not novel enough. Rewind the tape. Screeeeeeeech. Halt.

Bharat Matrim..Pftoooo. Faceb...Pftoo Pftooo. Blatantly unromantic. 

Rewind the tape. Get better. Un-cliched.

The calender pages swivel upward quickly. The digits in the years change rapidly. Hairs start greying. The unsatisfied, the cynical and the impatient settle over fire, flowers, the yellowness and illogical stars in crowded places to become plumper year after year. The satified ones, too. Skins sag. The camera zooms through time and space to our hero sitting at a bench in one corner of a park. Countless recognisable faces and lips and curves and conversations and arched necks in the contours of his memory. Reading a newspaper. She comes and occupies the other end of bench at the end of her long jog. Bags and baggages are placed underneath that bench. She sips a bit of water from her bottle and looks at him, gives a slight smile. 

Yes. That's when the music starts.

Alla, pinne.

The wanderer, he was.

A big, black balloon.
Millions of pinpricks and one big hole.
In that night sky, he saw himself.
But, then moonlight streamed around
And the stars twinkled.

He lay on the grass and looked up
They say that light travels slow
Too slow where the distances are infinite
That the night sky is the past.
Thus, the memories were preserved

The curly winds brushed the monochrome leaves
It's gentle sound, the very sound of life
In that gentle breeze, he drew new constellations
After that, he got up and put on his backpack
And then started his meandering walk

The wanderer, he was.

On the Velocity of Life(Jimmiki Kammal)

It was dusk. The starry sky and KSRTC night bus noises(they have a different noise at night) invaded Trivandrum. The call of the conch rose from a nearby temple. Moonlight streamed through the long, narrow leaves of the surrounding coconut trees onto that terrace. Seated on a mat there, were Raghu, Isha and Nair eating sandwiches.

"Nair-ey, you are so stuck up in your past and so stubborn to changes that you are letting go of the new memories that you could have made. Don't keep whining about not belonging. For you, that belonging came after you went neck deep in water. " Sneha remarked.
"Yes. But, I still want to savour the things that happen to me. You jump too fast and get tired too easily."He replied.
"Savouring can wait. Until, old age comes."
"And, when is that?"

"...Hold it."Raghu interjected Nair's dreamy narrative."So, all this is over a clash of opinions. Slow-mo and laid-back versus let's-conquer-the-world."
"That's simplifying it a bit. There were other reasons. But, at the heart.."
"..You were very different people to begin with" Isha finished the sentence for Nair."But, you people did carry off it with flair. I do not understand why your friends think she is to blame though."
"Because, they are our friends"Raghu replied.

"Don't do that bro-thing to me, eh. You Malayalis and your perversion towards simplification. Naive-and-simple-hearted-guy-in-the-gang faces breakup. The girl must be a bitch."
"Simple-hearted-guy can't be the dog."
"I did not say that. But, please eh? You knew Sneha before. You think she can be stereotyped into a black-white continuum? Bitch, my foot. People should reserve their opinion when they do not have adequate information."

"Raghu, you know. First time, I am seeing people eating sandwiches and getting angry."Nair grinned. "But, she is right. It was a slow and gradual attrition. To blame it on either of us, would be injustice. Anyway, that is not important. What's your opinion on the savouring part?"
"Hmm. Potayto. Potahto. Different people. Different ways."she replied.
"What is there to savour so much, around here anyway?"Raghu asked Nair.

"I don't know. This has always been a sleepy town, Trivandrum. And, now its slowly becoming a melting pot for all the different stereotypes. Khaki-and-mundu-wearing opinionated auto-chetans and jasmine-wearing churidaar chechis. Curly haired, thick-specs intellectuals in kurtas and sometimes marley t-shirts. Jeans-wearing college girls who get ogled at. All the prim and proper Catholic schools. Thattukadas. Strong chais. Temples and Mosques. Extreme conservatism fighting against a  new liberal generation. Alavalathis in superbikes. The pub culture slowly trying to seep in. Our sexual contradictions. I like this sleepy town. We work our asses off in other states and countries so that we can come back and let go here. "

"Haha. Like on this terrace, yeah. Eating sandwiches and toasting ourselves to the moonlight."
"Exactly. I mean you come to this place. And, your heart slows down a bit. You offload all the work. Have some good old communist, philosophic thoughts."

"KOBAYASHI MARU." Isha burst into the conversation.
"Huh?"
"What?"
"That's my opinion. Kobayashi Maru. It just struck me. Let me explain. Kobayashi Maru is a term from Star Trek."
"Aah. Star trek."
"Shut up. So, Kobayashi Maru is a simulation game that the Starfleet cadets have to undergo in order to complete their officer training. It's a no-win game. You cannot win that simulation and it's designed to test how the officers face defeat."
"Er so??"
"If you read all the philosophers, writers and religious gurus in the past. Camus. Buddha. Sartre. Fitzgerald. They all say the same thing. Life's rigged towards losing. People are too greedy and horny. They long for all sorts of stuff. They don't get it. They lose. Every one of us."

"Cheers to that."Raghu raised his sandwich.

"If so, what's important is we lose in a style comfy for us. I mean, we do it our way. We lose in a way that reflects us the best. For you, that means something slow. Dipping yourself in nostalgia often. You are the wine guy. You sip. You savour. You toast. You have sandwiches with friends on a beautiful moony night. You fall in love with a land that has so many assholes and as many sweethearts. A place with contradictions that is a reflection of you."

There was absolute silence for a while. Then, Nair spoke up.

"So if I am the wine guy, she must be the tequila woman. All shots. Lapping up new experiences, one after the other. Always on an adventure. "
"And both give you a hangover in excess. "Raghu quipped and winked. "But, Isha, this also seems like an excuse to mediocrity."
"Agreed. People should not make such a reasoning an excuse towards mediocrity. The whole point is they should chip at stuff they love and chip in a way they love because at the end of the day, nobody is really a success story. We all bob up and down in sine waves."

"So, the lazy going, mundu-wearing, beedi-smoking, philosophy-chewing and philosophy spitting commie uncle is doing it in style as well."
"Oh yes, he is. As long as that is the life, that satisfies his soul. "

Nair went to the edge of the terrace. He touched his phone and suddenly pink floyd filled the air in a subdued volume. He flicked his sandwich away.
"Haha. Isha. You and your theories."
"Sweethearts, both of you know one thing. I am always right."

Towards a new Sun

NB:- I hate poems and poets in general. Because most of the time, poetry is what people do when they feel lazy because prose requires sharper words, more number of words and more thought. Of course, some poems are an exception to the above and a class apart. This one below is not. 

Move aside.
Move aside, garlands, symbols, imagery and image-less.
To the side, beards and ashes.
To the side, rahu and ketu and shaitan.

And the old vultures encircling the bleeding carcass,
And the false red flags on the battlefield,
Burn.
They are here.

Destroying the gates, walls and the useless legends.
And stories that tell you what needs to be done.
Dusting the antique to see its worth
Wisdom, courage and humanity.

Hear them, descending down the mountains.
Each prisms of their past.
And yet lightly packed on their horses.
Each deciding the quantum they will bear.

Firm but light steps.  New rules.
Deep roots into a soil that sustains.
And yet winged to rise.
A lump of clay shaped by words.
Words that are blind.
Onwards.
To a new sun.

A stranger and his land.

So, today, I came back home after some time(The coming-back has become a rarity). I got out of the airport.

Random cab-driver: Taxi veno?
Me: Nahi.
Both of us: *pling*

So, I ended up replying in a language that I never used to like in my hometown to people who never really understood it either.

A little later, my dad comes to pick me up because of the luggage. On the way, I see that he is fumbling a bit with the driving. I duly inquire. "Mon, it's becoming a bit difficult to see in the dark." Age. Time slowly ticking away.

Time. These days, whenever I meet up with old friends, the topic always comes to how time has passed. It doesn't matter that we are all 20-somethings. Our faces wrinkle and asses elongate under the baggage of the experiences 20-somethings go through. Emotional disconnects. Flailing relationships. Career question-marks. An "Ayee Machaa..?" does not as easily bring back people as it used to do. Lost chances, love, success, opportunities.

People. A generation grows up. Little kids on sports bikes burning tarred roads under the hot sun. A far cry from cycles and muddy, dusty roads and shady trees. Succeeding generations coming to know what addiction is, one quantum of time before the previous one. No, it's not a criticism. To each generation, it's own.

The dilution of the left-liberal view of a society into a bunch of pseudo-leftists who create a heap of smoke and no fire, disruption and no solution. The creation of brand new hindutva, christitva and islamtva. Feeding a new generation into seeing only a quarter side of the coin. And the churning of bank officers, IT professionals, Yem-Bee-Ayes without rhyme and reason. Cliches.

 I pick up my old diaries, writings and thoughts and I feel like a stranger and a misfit in my own land. Like in the poem by Frost, where at the fork in the woods, my land took one way and I took another. And, neither one of us can decided which is the less threaded one.

Discontent. Pitch-black discontent.

At our greying society and lost ideals and 100 pavan gold at weddings.

And becoming a wanderer eating aloo parantha and pyaaz parantha, with no place to call one's own.

Of looking forward and back.

The three wheeled auto screeched through the newly and unevenly tarred narrow lanes, still slick with oil. It eventually halted where the oily modernity halted. A 6.5 cent plot of land, enclosed by a cement wall, with a mini-jungle inside. It was noon and two dishevelled individuals got out of the auto. A middle aged gentleman and a young kid. A trolley-bag followed.

"Why do you want to go to India, Kishore?"Anu sounded annoyed. 
"It's been some some time. I want to check the property, once in a while." He replied. 
"Why do you hang on to that small fragment of land? It's a small plot. And for that, you want to go every one year. I don't mind your trips but you are wasting a lot of money and time."
"Come on. It's Rahul's vacation as well. Let him see his extended family."
"Really now? You have never bothered to keep in touch with them, except for your uncle and you want him to see all of  them?"

"Ahm, Dad? Are we supposed to camp out here?"
"No, kiddo. Your great-uncle lives nearby. We'll be going there."
He took a look around. Three years had passed, since he last visited this plot. Things had already changed a lot. The lane had been re-tarred. New houses had come up and very few vacant plots were left in the area.

"Awesome. Now, we both get to go to the US of A. And, that too, jobs in the same city." Anu could hardly contain her excitement.
Kishore smiled. 
"You don't look too happy, Kis-o?"
"Nothing. You do know that I have a thing for memories. It breaks my heart to actually leave this place behind."
"I know." Anu came closer and gently kissed his forehead. "But, it's a necessity. You are lucky to have a supportive family. I need to be away from mine for some time."
"Yes. Yes. I know. And to add to it, you want to look towards the future and leave the past behind."Kishore winked.
"Haha. Yes. I do. There are a million things out there. Miles to go, no? Nostalgia can wait until we loose our teeth and wrinkle our faces."

"Daad, I am hungry."
"Whaat? You just ate like half an hour ago."
"I spent it all on that autorickshaw ride."
"Pinnaee."Kishore grinned as he waded through the weed that had grown around. He inspected and uprooted a plant. He had asked his cousin to plant some tapioca there. His cousin had took his words to heart. This one had been planted recently and the result was nothing short of spectacular. He suddenly heard some joyful shouts from across the neighbourhood. Rahul went and peered through the cracks in the wall. Kishore moved towards him.

"Haha. So you. To come here after, exactly 10 years."Anu remarked.
"Big attitude eh? Why did you tag along then?"
"Aah, Kis-o. Chekkane kandu veenu poyille. Pyaar, mohabatt and all that. What can I do? I have to tag along."
Anu shoved Kishore and ran. 
"Aha. Who exactly is the kid here?" Kishore shouted as he ran behind her, along the Rajpath strewn with dried leaves.
They had both studied at REC-Calicut. Today, it was called NIT-C. But, he somehow felt that  things hadn't changed much around there.

Colours were flying around. It took Kishore by surprise. Holi. That's one festival he did not expect to see, being celebrated with gusto in this neighbourhood. He wondered whether there were any North Indian families settled around here or whether India's heterogeneous cultures were seeping in and mixing together just like he, at the heights of his idealism, believed it would.
"What's happening, Dad?"Rahul asked. His big eyes widened at the sight of all the colours.
"They are playing Holi. It's an Indian festival. I'll tell you the story behind it later. You go play with them."
"But, my clothes?"
"I never liked your mom's selection anyway. Now, go. Shoo"
He gave a friendly wave to the other kids. They waved back.
Holi. His mom was a Gujarati while his dad was a quintessential Mallu. This meant that he usually celebrated more number of holidays than the average kid around in Trivandrum.

"And, so I fell in love with Trivandrum and your dad. "his mom finished the story for the umpteenth time. He did not mind the repetitions. He loved seeing the way her eyes sparkle as she recollected the bits and pieces. She was watering the anthuriums that she had planted in the plot. 
"You know. We bought this plot for you because you wanted to come back here one day."
"I know, Amma. You needn't have. I would have bought a plot of land myself later. There was no need for you to have bought it now. "
"Land prices will shoot up eventually. Maatramalla, it's something from your dad and me to you. We have always loved this place so much."

The land that his mom and dad had loved that much. He had been reading some of the Indian newspapers early morning in his flight to Trivandrum. Rapes. Hindutva. Jihad. Oppression. Poverty. It reminded him of Hirschmann's theory of voice or exit. People like Anu shunned the bad and the good memories and went away in search of a better future, never bothering to look at their painful or maybe uninteresting or even a happy past. He had a different perspective on that past versus future debate. He wasn't sure whether he was right. Sometimes, he stubbornly resisted change. He wondered why he came back. Maybe, it was because he was an optimist. He believed in voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Rahul and the other kids running towards him with buckets. They were soaked in mud.

This land, where he found friends that lasted for a lifetime, where he fell head-over-heels in love and then ended up with a bitter heartbreak and then found love again in an old friend. This land, which made him a communist, with scant respect for oppressive traditions . Yet, this land, which made him fall for outdated and heart warming ideals. This land, that his dad and mom loved with all their hearts.

Rahul let out a yell and threw the mud at him. A small and high-pitched yell. The voice of a new generation, who should be given the choice to develop their individual stories in a land that they could call their own, despite its imperfections.

The mud ricocheted off the cement wall and splashed all over his polo t-shirt. He grinned, jumped over the wall and ran behind the kids who broke off in different directions.

Jimmikki Kammal - 3

# Do read the two previous posts in this series. Oh and how many times do I need to tell you? It's fiction, dei. :D

The sea brushed itself against the boulders and destroyed itself into a white spray fountain. The salty, water-laden winds made a mess of Raghu's hairs. He was sitting on top of one of those random boulders at Kovalam. The sun was dissolving in the sky, spreading itself into an orange haze.  The divorce procedure had been completed. He would get to see Nihal, once in a week, as per the court ruling. So, that was that. His idealism and her pragmatism had finally decided to quit after what seemed like a lifetime of struggle.

He did not exactly know whether Isha would marry again. She would probably do what was best for Nihal. And at that particular point of time, neither of them knew what that meant. A young couple clambered up the boulder that he was sitting on like bees attracted to each other and the honeyed horizon, gently buzzing into his thought processes without meaning to. His thoughts took a brief pause to survey them and then drifted onto relationships and solitude. There were so many questions that he had to answer so that he could move forward. And, there were others he were simply curious about.

For instance, now what? Indians tended to treat divorce as an anathema. Something to be done, when the relationship bordered on abusive or when the extra-marital quietly intruded. Theirs was simply dysfunctional. Of course, there might have been some guy somewhere. But, it was more often than not true that in case of relationships, a character can enter only when there is a vacant space. He wondered how that vacant space got created. Not that it helped, of course. But, his mind always wandered. This time though, he purposefully brought it back. Now, what? How do you move forward from a dysfunctional relationship? A court order would take care about the legalities. But, what about their psyche and their son's? Would he eventually fall for someone else again(Ooh. Anathema. Anathema)? That was something difficult for him to imagine. For one, he firmly believed that relationships took time to build. One of the many reasons why he never understood mechanical arranged Indian marriages, which was equivalent to playing Russian roulette. The secondary research never increased your probabilities enough.

Time might heal things. But, it did take someone genuinely out-of-the-world to replace Isha. He wondered whether he was suffering from a modified version of Stockholm syndrome. The last few months had been very difficult. Yet, looking back, everything just seemed to glow. But, he wondered whether it was just the fact that Isha was one of the very few girls who genuinely got him and now since that narrative was over, it was difficult for him to push himself back into the market. Not to mention the fact that at mid-30's, he was balding, happily obese and still tended to run around like a wild goose when it came to career. He smiled to himself. Too pessimistic. Of course, finding somebody again was not something easy. His psyche itself wouldn't allow him to make any active effort. However, he resolved not to let not to shut himself out. Love is not rocket science. If that one-in-a-million person or who he thought was somebody like that came again, he would give it a fair shot just like he did with Isha. Otherwise, solitude would be fine. Fuck society. He knew that no relationship of his could dissolve his bonds towards Isha and Nihal. He would always be there for them.

He took a cigarette out and lit it. The bright red spot gallantly stood and opposed the encroaching darkness which was munching on the orangy sky. The rhythmic sound of the waves made him think about solitude. He knew that there was a high probability that he would have to go solo. He would definitely have to make a bucket list. As Camus once said, one must imagine Sisyphus happy. True that, nothing had exactly gone his way. Most of his career dreams had crashed out pretty badly. His one source of solace, his marriage, had also miserably failed. By every definition of the society in which he lived, he was a loser. However, to become a bitter old man was unbecoming. He had to learn to shake off his fears and nightmares and launch himself back onto the ceaseless struggle to do what he believed was meaningful. He had to pursue happiness and meaning, even though it would have every chance of ending up meaningless. Because, even if the end was a failure, the journey would always be meaningful.

Looking back at his marriage, he knew that it was exactly that. Meaningful. Because even in the dying stages, there were those moments of extreme happiness and intimacy. Yes, he must imagine Sisyphus happy. He took the last drag, threw the butt onto the sea and got up. He wondered how the world look at a "failure" like him, philosophising about a brave new world and messing up his already his messy life. It was in these moments that he loved being human. These weird moments where he could back at life, the highs and lows, with a tinge of haloed nostalgia and be thankful.  He turned his head and saw the young couple going back to the nearby parking lot. Their intertwined footprints were etched on the sands. But, the incoming waves were slowly eroding the prints. A clean slate. Suddenly, the sea winds began to blow at full force, before dying out, to herald the arrival of night. His eyes, nose and lips grinned through his salty-moist spectacles.

11:57 PM

Time : 11:57 PM

Riyaz lit a cigarette. His office was on the top floor of that old, dark red highrise. And he was standing near the stairs to the terrace. It had been a long day for him. Almost the entire hierarchy of his superiors had had a screaming session with him, for a faulty production decision he had taken last week. It had resulted in the company losing a good deal of money. It was only due to his status as a star performer and the fact that this was the only mistake that he had ever committed that had enabled him to escape the hatchet. As the cigarette slowly fell off as ash, Riyaz thought about his job and childhood dream. It wasn't remotely related. He had always wanted to become an astronomer. Even as a kid, the thing that made him the happiest had been gazing at the stars and the constellations. One thought led to another and the cigarette reduced itself to a stub. He dropped it and stamped on it.  As he was about to go back to the office, he noticed that the terrace door was ajar.

Time : 11:57:30 PM

Rahul was in his bed. He was unable to sleep. The creaky fan and the ceiling paint which was about to peel off did not exactly soothe away his tensed thoughts. He had been out of a job for the past three months. The house owner had given him some leeway initially with respect to the rent because Rahul knew him well. But, he had prolonged it too much. And, the owner was getting impatient. He turned sideways. Suma was sleeping peacefully. She was the silver lining of his life. He took a deep breath. They had promised themselves not to have any kids till the situation stabilised. She had a small part-time job as a stenographer in a firm nearby. His thoughts went to the job interview that was scheduled for tomorrow. His old friend, Nair, would be in the interview panel. He envied him. They both passed out from the same local engineering college but he had managed to reach a high position within a short span of five years. Nair knew him well enough. He knew that Rahul had all the necessary skills required for the job and communication was his only problem. But, Rahul was sure about tomorrow as the job itself did not need much communication skills. Besides, Nair was there. Tomorrow, he would write a new chapter in his life.

Time : 11:57:45 PM

The car raced through the empty streets. Sanjay was driving at breakneck speeds. No. He was not exactly a rash driver. But, Jacob was lying injured in the backseat. Ranjith was also there at the back trying to talk to Jacob, gently encouraging him. It had been a really bad accident. The three of them had gone on a trip to the nearby beach. They had always loved the beach. It had been a reunion of sorts that day in the city they called home. It had been almost two years since they had gone their different ways. And as usual today, inspite of having a car, Jacob wanted to take his bike out. Even though, there were only three people. Sanjay clenched his jaw. He was not really accustomed to high speeds. There were not many cars on the road at this time of the hour. But, any unexpected diversions or incidents, could completely mess up his driving at this speed. It could lead to an even worse catastrophe. Sanjay took a glance at the back of the car. He blinked his eyes for a fraction of a second and pressed the accelerator. He would reach that familiar dark red landmark in around one and a half minute at this speed. A hundred meters beyond that was the hospital.

Time : 11:58:30 PM

Nair was sipping a Bloody Mary at his friend's party. The disco was filled with his people but he was sitting beside one of the tables in a thoughtful reverie. He and Anjali had another quarrel today. It was a minor one. But, the frequency of such quarrels had been increasing lately. He had a feeling that Anjali was not telling him something. It was true that he had been spending less time with her but it was not like she had any mush syndromes. She had always been a partial tomboy, plucky and beautiful. Enough so, to sweep a relatively no-nonsense person like him off his feet. He smiled. He would make up to her, he decided. He would have a frank talk with her tomorrow night. He sipped some more of the Bloody Mary.

Time : 11:59:15 PM

The cold, night wind gently lashed at Anjali's open hair. She looked at the view beneath her. The city was relatively silent that night. She closed her eyes. She could see Nair's face. A droplet of tear slowly ran down from her right eye down the entire length of her right cheeks. She slowly moved towards the building ledge. The ledge was a shade darker than the dark red paint, which enveloped the outside of that building, where the small boutique she managed was situated. She had no idea why she was doing it. It wasn't worth it. But, her mind was numb and her feet kept egging her on. She loved Nair, she was sure. He loved her as well. The thoughts which were consuming her should have never existed in the first place. Her feet almost reached the edge. A seemingly infinite bottom beckoned to her. She, standing at the highest point in the building, felt swayed. She did not even hear the blazing car horn, whose volume was slowly increasing.

Time : 11:59:20 PM, IST, Earth Time

In one corner of the cosmos, the thing some people called God, some others called Fortune and yet others called the Universe, smiled to itself. It never was omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent as many in the cosmos believed. It was more like a gambler, who was able to roll a couple of dices here and there, do some dirty tricks, change a couple of digits in the many equations. However, the interesting thing was that it always gambled in a similar manner. When it rolled those dices, it rolled them keeping faith in a particular variable called the human spirit. It hadn't yet counted its win and losses. But, with the widest possible grin, it rolled the dices again and gambled for that resolute race called humans in that very highly random cosmic game. 

Crumpled Sexiness

"Crumpled Sexiness."

"Crumpled Sexiness?"

"Yeap. It's like this. The moment she wakes up from sleep and puts away the crumpled sheets, when her hair is messed up and eyes are barely open and look flushed and her face has that special sleepy tone to it, if she is at her sexiest then, that's the sort of girl I'll fall for. Of course, that is only when you are taking looks into consideration. There are the other stuff too."
"That just seems a bit too filmy. People look like shit when they wake up."
"Aah. Hmm. Maybe, I got the cause-effect relation wrong. I guess, if I look at her then and feel awed, I must have fallen for her hook, line and sinker. But, there is something to that face that she usually hesitates from showing to the rest of the world and yet doesn't give a damn about when she is with you."
"I do like the brutally honest opinion. Much better than the usual ones where guys keep trumpeting how they fell for the personality and yada yada. I mean that might be true in case of people who have been friends for long. But, bullcrap-ish otherwise.Waise, one more thing. Do tell me how you going to decide to who to pursue with that criteria for look?Are you going to peek into their bedrooms?"
"Aye. It wouldn't help in deciding. It's like a check. If you are in a relationship, you decide whether you are really in that relationship by deciding, whether you like them in their rawness and in their worst moods."

"But, I was asking how you decide who to pursue? Is it just testosterone?That fleeting second and you decide, she's the one. Or is there some rational process? Like a checklist?"
"Ey. Don't make it logical and un-romantic. There is no rational process. The falling-for is irrational. Always. That's why there are so many heartburns around. The getting-up is part is rational. You don't get to make a logical decision as to who to fall for. I guess you just wing it. You fall and get-up and make a routine out of it till you get your crumpled-sexiness."
"Hmm. Fine. Fine. But how should the first scene play out? I think the movie one's the best. I want something akin to that in real life. The girl walks in slowly. Her hair is flowing in the wind. He is leaning against a tree. He sees her and voila."
"No."

"No?"
"It should be more like you are doing some mundane task with a friend of yours and you look at her face. And then you remember every part of that friendship that has lasted for quite some time and then suddenly you see her differently. Voila."
"Whaaat? Why no love-at-first-sight?"
"Not rational."
"Oye. Stop contradicting yourself. You said it's never rational and now you are saying I have to know the person."
"Well, it's not. But it doesn't mean you should be stupid and go horny over random people on the road. And however much you know a person, it's still winging."
"Oho. And, what if you never find your crumpled sexiness?Or worse, the crumpled sexiness just doesn't feel the same about you?"
"Well, there is the Everest to climb. Then, there is bungee jumping in Switzerland. You can go on a a bike-ride to North-East India or skinny dip in Gokarna. You can write a novel. Go on a bike trip. Drink up with your friends and talk crazy-shit and do-crazier-shit. Or, not drink up and do the same."

"Cliched."
"Maybe."

"Arranged?"
"My foot. The trailer can never tell you whether the movie will be a hit."

"Come to think of it, bungee jumping does seem a better choice rather than all this jazz."
 Her friend grinned and winked. He then drew himself close to her and whispered.

"Maybe. Or, maybe not? Only one way to find out."