Splurge

On Sunday, as fate would have it, I found myself in the possesion of gift vouchers worth, atleast by my frugal standards, an obscene amount of money at a prominent bookstore in the city, one that makes up for its overbearing pretentiousness with a decidedly above average collection of classic literature. Any bookshop that houses multiple copies of "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters " and "The Bell Jar" wins my immediate seal of approval, let it be known.

So off I went, two other similarly fortunate souls in tow, to the heart of the city, finding myself in the decidedly unique situation of having money to splurge. I have always found looking at price tags of books a little humiliating, and though it is a habit far too deeply entrenched in my psyche for me to lose it overnight, it always stings less when the pockets are bulging.

This is what, after three hours of frenetic price-totalling and much soul-searching, i finally bought -

The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (in a dead cheap edition that made me wonder if they forgot to print another digit on the price tag)
Selected Works of Kahlil Gibran (as Kristian will testify, I have been after this for a while)
The Plays of Anton Chekov(including 'The Cherry Orchard", the play everyone has been plaguing me to read)
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (massive 1000 page tome, this one, including the original Spanish verse)

I was also sorely tempted to buy a translation of Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, but decided against it in the end, the reasons for which i am not entirely certain myself. Perhaps it was a sub-conscious thing. You never know when that book might come in useful, though.

As I opened the Dickinson collection, the lines on the very first page struck me, Emily's genius already established with the potency of these startling verses :

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me
The simple news that Nature told
With tender majesty

Her message is committed
To hands i cannot see
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

Very appropriate for this, or indeed any blog, don't you think?

heart-to-heart

I have often been informed, by various sources, that we got along famously when I was younger. Like houses on fire, setting the neighbourhood alight with our dazzling displays of public affection for each other.

There are even pictures to prove it, of me nestling on your stomach , looking evry bit the movie-star I was never destined to be, my face ethereal in the knowledge that I would not rather be anywhere else in the world.
Incidentally, I believe these are probably the only pictures of mine in existence, apart from the group photos that seem to be such essential ingredients of high-school graduation days. Yes, that one. The one mom coerced you to attend.

You will appreciate that it is incredibly difficult for me to establish what went wrong, or do any finger-pointing in your direction. Perhaps it is all my fault, of never living up to your expectations, for being the quiet introverted son that you never wanted.

Maybe it all started to unravel that day in the fifth grade when I reported that I had stood fourth in a class of forty, and was greeted by that look of derision which haunts me to this day. Or when I overhead you telling mom how 'certain people' are born selfish, such as me, and how 'nothing can be done about it'.Or when you left home to work in another city, those long years when mom and me had only each other to seek some solace in, your periodic appearances at home becoming increasingly sporadic as I waded uncertainly through my early teens.

I always had this image in my mind of having a perfect family, the textbook kind, with dinner-table conversations and jolly picnics. All you contributed was that ferocious anger and unpardonable violence, taking out all your frustrations on us with words that stung and hit where they really hurt. Even after twenty-one years of marriage to mom, you still make her cry. You should be ashamed.

I don't want to be bitter anymore. I want to move on, and not have my disappointments with you hang like an albatross around my neck.

All I will say is that I hope my little sister doesn't turn out the way I have, self-loathing and often depressed, though it breaks my heart to say that it looks inevitable. Be nice to her, if atleast only till she's half the fine woman she still could become.

And so, happy birthday,your fifty-first, if i am not mistaken. Blow them candes( hypothetical, of course), and make those wishes, and I sincerely hope they come true.

Here's to a better future.

creep

Today is the lowest I've felt in the last ten months.
Useless, incompetent, unwanted, and alone.

Tablet time.

Catharsis

"Did you know that eating alone could cause kidney damage ? "

-Sean Penn, in 21 Grams

It all seems so long ago now, a veritable eternity, when I swore to myself in a typically foolhardy fit of bravado that I would never go out of campus alone again.

Oh no, I had told myself on that particularly depressing night in the town last semester, next time I shall find someone to accompany me on my (usually) forthnightly jaunts outside the
college gates, atleast for the sake of my kidneys, if nothing else.

However, being the fickle-minded weak-willed person that I am, yesterday I set off, alone , for the ocean (It's really a bay, but I prefer calling it an ocean. So much more grand, no? ) , deciding to make a quick stop at the college library, in a vain attempt to salvage some course-books , the ones not already usurped in furious early-semester raids by my studious peers.

Incidentally, I was wearing a Kurt Cobain T-Shirt, which, as you will appreciate, is as good a shirt as any when you are feeling a bit suicidal, and the librarian , with the keen eye and sharp intellect that landed him the job, asks me:

"Hey, who is this Kurt Cobain ?", in an accent generously smeared by the local tongue.

"Err, he is a singer, and a song-writer ", I reply, a little self-consciously.

"Oh, like Michael Jackson ! ", he jumps up, all excited by this piece of knowledge he has just acquired.

"Err, yes sir. Absolutely. "

The book I had asked him to register was Suzuki's "Living by Zen ".
Nirvana, at that very moment, has never seemed further away.

Thus, I made my way to the college gates, and proceeded on to my destination, the air all the time getting cooler, and soon I could smell the ocean-spray, and see the world dancing before me in those innumnerable grains of sand. No wild flowers though, heaven (or hell, for that matter) would have to wait. No new arrival today.

And there it was, in Jackson Pollock like blobs of white and moon-lit black, leading its own lonely life of quiet desperation, flowing in a mad rush to nowhere, trying to reach my sprawled self in relentless pursuit, but failing, like all the people before it who have cared to try the same. So I went closer, slowly, cautiously, and felt its soft, cool touch on my palm, stroking me , consoling me.

And you know what, it felt pretty good.
My soon to be eroded footprints on the sand below, a solitary star nestling in the quiet serenity of the crescent moon above, and infinity beyond.

A quiet dinner in a crowded restaurant , and a long walk later, I was back in my room, purged of all the negativity of the past few days. No more sadness, I would think, for a week atleast.

Only one other problem still persists.
Game for a kidney transplant, anyone?

Fact of the Day

I don't mean to gloat or anything, but did you know that my maternal grandfather's first cousin, and his uncle, are both recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics?

It's little wonder then, that the rest of the family suffers from a congenital inferiority complex regarding the capabilities of their grey matter, or the lack thereof.

Play the ending again, Sam

I was watching When Harry met Sally the other day, and amidst comic capers and fake orgasms, Harry raises an issue that remains wholly contentious to me to this day - the ending of Casablanca.

Why in the world does Humphrey Bogart allow the incandescent Ingrid Bergman to leave Casablanca with the very creepy-looking Victor Lazslo character, especially when he holds all the cards ?
It's simply beyond me.

Just look at Ingrid, Humphrey, for Chrissakes . She's so bea-yoo-ti-ful, and she loves you.

And what do you do? You let her go.

Sometimes I feel I understand men even lesser than I understand women.

Book-Worm-Hole

I made another one of my increasingly frequent forays into a bookshop yesterday, seeking , as ever, to dissolve the ennui of a now tedious vacation in the please-grope-me smell of fresh paper.

Armed with little more than conspicuously light pockets, i stepped cautiously into the decidedly regal premises, and felt the full force of a dozen 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' hard-bound editions staring me in the face, snickering in all their over-hyped, but i must admit, not wholly undeserved glory.

After this rather inauspicious beginning, i started looking around the vast and immensely complicated labyrinth, stumbling hurriedly past sections entitled Cookery (I've never understood the motivation for buying, leave alone writing, cookbooks) , General Knowledge (whatever that may be), Erotica ( ok, so i sneaked a little peek here), and reached Literature, quietly occupying a little corner, uninhabited but for a Japanese girl feverishly haranguing a shop-attendant for a copy of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club.

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.

With a half-smile, and afore-mentioned fatalistic utterances, now on my lips, I look up and see a new edition of The Fountainhead, the redesigned cover lily-white and Communist Red,colurs i would have thought hardly appropriate.
Howard Roark, i am sure, laughed.

Jack Kerouac simply sits, in satori-induced stupor, not taking insult, in true Buddhist fashion, at the ignominy of being placed next to Jackie Collins(why are you here ?),and I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

Continuing on my merry ride, i spot other masters laid to a dusty rest, Gogol's Dead Souls probably lamenting Sophocles' Tragedies (under 'Greek', you see) , Kawabata and Murakami and Ishiguro and Oe trying manfully to catch the Japanese cutie's attention, Huxley's Doors of Perception leading to Hugo's Hunchback, and so on and on and on in a never-ending rollercoaster through the literary ages.

And after three hours or so , With the customary sigh, i prepared to troop out, Neruda's clouds waving white handkerchiefs of goodbye, my pockets still feeling the same, but my spirit well and truly uplifted, when Scott Fitzgerald, genius of the Jazz Age, chronicler of the 1920s, beckons me one last time, and who am I to refuse?

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Before I die, I want to own a book-shop.

20 something

Twenty is such an awful age. I can't even blame my deficiencies on teenage angst anymore.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future.

From Trainspotting

Ahhh.
So many choices, so little time.

Wish

I just wish tomorrow goes by as quickly , and as painlessly, as possible .

The sun is the same
in a relative way,
But you're older.
Shorter of breath, and
One year closer to death.

Circle of Life

You could, one day, if the notion appeals to you, find yourself an empty bench in the neighbourhood park and watch the world go by, joining me, in unspoken harmony, in observing the curious traits of an unhappy civilization.

Let us, for the sake of brevity, assume the aforesaid park is roughly circular in shape, its circumference eternally lined by teeming multides of walkers, joggers et al, performing their daily exercises oblivious, or perhaps disdainful, of nature's bounty spread out like a tiny forest across the centre.

Notice, if you will, the top software company executive, attired in designer walk-wear, striding along like a pot-bellied colossus, earplugs in one ear, cell phone kissing the other. Quietly following him, his wife (by arranged-marriage, of course) looks around sadly, discontentedly, the dissatisfaction in her eyes impossible to miss.

Groups of women chatter along excitedly,no doubt playing out their own mobile version of 'Desperate Houswives', complete with fake Nikes on pedicured feet and simulated concern in hoarse voices. A single, lonely old woman then walks by, arms swinging in true Hitlerian fashion, the determination in her eyes fiercely contesting the truth which her failing body cannot hide - the inevitability of death.

Suddenly, as you look closer, a grandfather appears on the scene, pushing a little pram having, presumably, his infantile grandson. They move anti-clockwise, unlike everybody else, and get in everyone's way. The baby, dotted on its cheek to ward off the evil eye, invites broad smiles, the grandfather receives only cold stares.

Amidst all the quiet mayhem, you , and I, half the world apart, softly whistle 'Colonel Bogey's March', and do nothing.

Memory Lane

The sun today, as is its wont at this time of year, chose to hide behind the big fluffy clouds that blanketed the sky in great black portentous wisps. The wind, not daring to disturb the delicate equanimity in the firmament, blew gently, soothingly. And I, never one to pass over as fine an oppurtunity as this, walked a few miles down memory lane, to the house of my childhood.

The roads were empty, and I strode quickly, hopping over little brown puddles of water, remnants of late night thunderstorms and poverty-stricken tears. As the roads slowly began to grow narrower, and the skyline shorter, I knew I had arrived again in the old neighbourhood, three years after I had left without as much as a goodbye.

I gazed down at my feet as I walked, studiously avoiding old acquaintances who chanced upon my path, when all of a sudden, without warning, i was engulfed in an irrepressible wave of nostalgia, and thoughts safely locked away in a never-to-be-delved-into-again reservoir exploded through the proverbial floodgates, overwhelming me with the sheer ferocity of their reminiscence.

And so, i gave in, and remembered. The memories simply came rushing back.

Memories of growing up, of spending ten years of childhood,
of living in a neighbourhood that was more ghetto than suburbia,
of the utter decrepitude of the buildings, windows broken, walls peeling, pillars threatening,
of how poverty and beauty meshed so completely that you couldn't tell the difference,
of interminably long summer vacations spent playing hide-and-seek around the infinitely complex maze of run-down sheds,
of cross-breed stray dogs we christened after reigning beauty queens,
of butchers beside temples, and mosques behind, and never was a stone thrown in anger,
of people who were there before me, and are predestined to stay there forever,
of the first pair of twins i ever knew, with rhyming names and identical clothes and everything, bless them,
of climbing trees in the neighbourhood park- the regular haunt of cosying-up couples, and as legend would have it, the occasional rapist,
of strange old men with giant-size pipes and vintage cars and foul mouths,
of the jangling sound of coins in my pocket that were never enough for what i really wanted,
of the flea-market, teeming with diseased flies and a million lies, and the vegetable vendor who never gave the discount he offered the last time around,
of the first, and only, time i have stared at a teacher for a time more than that was strictly necessary,
of prodigious imaginations that would have conjured up profound visions of apocalypse at my sudden departure,
of the best friends i ever had, and lost.

And i closed my lips in a soft 'goodbye' , turned and walked away, and closed one chapter of my life.

Forever.

Experiments with truth

I spent my evening today watching Rodgers and Hammerstein's singularly influential contribution to the Austrian tourism industry ,'The Sound of Music'. Cut to a converation between the Von Trapp children.

Brigitta (observing the guests in the ballroom): "The women look so beautiful!"
Kurt: "I think they look ugly."
Louisa: "You just say that because you're scared of them."
Kurt: "Silly, only grown-up men are scared of women"

We find wisdom in the most unexpected places.

Passing

Writer's block is a cruel, cruel way to die.

Peeping Tom

I went down to the cinema for the first time in more than 18 months today. I have always felt a natural aversion to theatres; a sense of claustrophobic loneliness that suffocates slowly and leaves me gasping for a breath of fresh air.

They gave me the best seat in the house, right at the back of the balcony, and as I later realized, this turns out to be as good a vantage point as any to pursue voyeuristic endeavours, let alone mundane activities such as movie-watching.
Whenever the actor and his girl start getting it on, as if on cue, the couples in the audience cuddle up a little closer, hands tighten over shoulders, and sweet nothings begin wafting across the now infinitesimal distance between lip and ear.
It's so sickeningly sweet it makes my head swim .

The film, by the way, was 'Batman Begins', by Christopher Nolan, the same director who gave us the unforgettable 'Memento'; and despite working on a fundamentally weak premise, it does not disappoint. 'Batman Begins' continues to build on the oeuvre established by the Spiderman series of movies, of infallible yet sensitive superheroes with three-dimensional personalities, not just slam-bang-there-you-go-ma'am types.

Perhaps the only letdown is the token female interest- Katie Holmes- utterly under-utilized in a weak role. I wonder what Tom Cruise thinks about her height though; she pretty much towers over him, just like old Nicole Kidman used to.

I can almost hear the feminists screaming in my ears, and do correct me if I am wrong, but if the man is taller, it does make the couple more photogenic, no?

a la Winona

Since last week or so, everytime I walk into a mart, it has become increasingly difficult for me to resist an overwhelming temptation to pick up something from the shelves, slip it into my pocket and simply walk away.

I have even gone to great lengths in checking the positoning of the security cameras, and the vigilance of the personnel, and the only thing that prevented me from snapping up two extra-large bars of Swiss chocolate was an unexpected intervention from a hitherto unrecognised moral recess of my character that forced me to place the items on the billing desk.

Its not that I don't have the money, or that I am in need of thrills; I don't even have an urge to steal anything particularly expensive. Maybe these are early symptoms of kleptomania.
It is in moments like these that i feel great sympathy for actress Winona Ryder, who was convicted for shoplifting, and appeared in a daze throughout her trial. Interestingly, her favourite book is Franny and Zooey. When I see her, I am going to ask her to marry me. We must be made for each other.

P.S
I just saw Michael Stipe make a surprise guest appearance with his band on Boston Public( of all T.V. shows) and perform 'Losing my Religion' . R.E.M just make me so happy. The greatest living band in the world.

the hospital chronicles

Let me, at the outset, thank everyone for their kind wishes. I am truly touched, and deeply grateful. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. My mother is doing pretty good after the surgery , alive though not quite kicking , but well on the road to recovery.

All hospitals seem to have a particular smell, a sickly sweet smorgasbord of acrid vapours that waft into your olfactory receptors,smirk at the sheer helplessness of your condition, and eventally pummel you into a numb stupor.

No scholarship interview, or major college-entrance exam I have ever written, can compare with the excruciating ninety minute wait outside the operation theatre. There is just something utterly submissive about an operation, about leaving the well-being of a human being completely in the hands of another.

As I spent three sleepless nights in the ward with my mother, my only company was a beautiful, moving book called 'Norwegian Wood' by the celebrated Japanese author Haruki Murakami, and it is perhaps ironic that it is in such unhappy cirumstances, sharing the ward with a dazed lady who gave birth 2 weeks before time to a 1.67 kg waif, that i finally discovered my fictional alter ego - Toru Watanabe be his name.

By the way, it amazes me how nurses manage to keep in such good cheer amidst such disease, despair and often, death. God bless their souls.

Another thing. As i rummaged through my mother's medical files, I noticed something funny; evidently she had had three previous operations, two of which I knew were Caesareans for me and my lil sis, and discreet enquiries revealed that the third was a miscarriage.A bloody miscarriage. And I didn't even know.
Maybe that's why I feel so lonely all the time.
I miss my lost sibling.

oh hell

They've diagnosed my mother with fibroids in her uterus. I have no idea what fibroids are, all i know is that they are serious enough for the doctors to advise an immediate hysterectomy - the surgical removal of the uterus.

Mom will be operated on this Saturday, and despite the doctor's assurance that it is a fairly uncomplicated procedure, I can't help feeling a bit nervous about this. My last memory of a hospital, and this is about two years back, is watching my grandmother having a stroke and flopping around gasping for air, and then proceeding to die on me.

This is not going to be a fun weekend at all. Please God, please let everything be all right at the end of it.

The long arm of the Law

It should be made compulsory by law that all fathers-or-lawyers-to-be be given a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Never has a book had as admirable a central character as Atticus Finch, be it in his gentle but firm style of parenting, or his silent determination as a defense attorney.

For whatever reason, lawyers have always been looked upon somewhat derisively, while the law itself, as George Bernard Shaw informed us,is but an ass, and the cornucopia of lawyer jokes doing the rounds is perhaps representative of this image.

Case in point:
Q)If you were stranded on an island with Adolf Hitler, a lawyer and the Devil himself, and you had a gun with two bullets, whom do you shoot ?
A)The lawyer twice.

I am beginning to like lawyers though. Despite my abhorrence of John Grisham's yearly forays into the bestseller lists, and his now innumerable imitators, I've always had something of a soft spot for Ally McBeal, and am now wholly in awe of James Spader's Emmy winning performance in The Practice.

Just shows how the long arm of the law has tightened its grip around the neck of pop culture.

frankly, my dear

If there's one thing that really puts me in a bad mood, it's a movie with a sad ending. Especially if it is three-and-a-half hours long, like Gone with the Wind was. Of course, not that i would mind ogling a bit more at old Vivien Leigh ,or Clark Gable for that matter ;) , but for god's sake, why can't everyone live happily ever after ?

I had read the book a few years before, and i knew what was coming, but that didn't make it easier to take. It's depressing to watch pretty four-year-old girls die in horse-riding accidents.
Sigh.I'm such a sucker for sentimentality.

And I can't understand Scarlett O'Hara.First she wants to marry Ashley, who is attracted to her but loves another, in order to make him jealous she marries Charles, who dies in the American Civil war, whilst Ashley battles on grimly; then she saves Ashley's wife from death in labour, and proceeds to slyly marry her sister's beau to pay off taxes on her family plantation, all this while Rhett wooes her with characteristic panache; when the second husband dies, she gets married to Rhett, produces the doomed afore-mentioned pretty girl, and oh if you forgot, she still 'loves' Ashley during this tumultuous period. And so, finally, when Ashley's wife dies and he is there for the taking, she decides to stay with Rhett (?!), who utterly put off by her Ashley-obsession, walks out on her with the immortal words, "Frankly my dear,I don't give a damn. "

Phew. Talk of confused women .
I can't help wondering if they are this way in real life too.

Ode to a squishy stomach

I hate looking up at billboards and seeing those muscular, brawny body-building types smile their fake plastic
smiles and cavort in their Jockeys or Calvin Kleins.

I don't have a six-pack. Or a four-pack. Or a one-pack. Or any abs to speak of. If you want to know the bare truth, I have a nice squishy stomach.

And what's more, I'm proud of it. Proud of having dropped 4 inches across my waist over the last year, down to a very respectable 30. Proud of not letting my self-esteem suffer at the hands of gym-obsessed image addicts with a penchant for giving individuals less statuesque than themselves inferiority complexes.

Maybe I'm just averse to sweating it out. Big lazy bum, I can almost hear you say, grimly nodding your all-knowing head. Maybe you should try sitting around with my books and my music, with a bit of football thrown in, just for fun. And who says fat people can't play a bit of the beautiful game ? Just look at good old-Che tattooed hand-of-god junkie Diego.

I'm sure a killer body feels good. And impressive to some too. I'm just happy with my squishy stomach thankyouverymuch.
Somebody pass me that chocolate cake.