I follow in my father's great wake, skip for giant step. I've made it into a bit of a game, I imagine his six foot frame leaving a temporary indentation in the macadamized road and then plant my bare nine year old foot in the center of the impression. It keeps me amused as I accompany my father traveling from one palatial door to the next, gathering garbage so that we can relish the joy of frisking the waste in search of the seemingly worthless. Since it's an hour or so before lunch, I delight in the subtle savor of sizzling spices and herbs besiege my senses. The aromas that trigger desire intermingle with the stench of putrid festering foods of yesterday, which then delivered me the same momentous elation.
We arrive at the home of an aged spinster. She opens the door, hands my father the bleak bag that speaks of things dead and gives me a piece of candy with a wide gleeful smile etched into her wrinkled face. I take it with a grin and a slight joy brushes past me and dissolves her. As the transient dances with the permanent, my father reminds me of the inveterate liars we all are. The ones with argent and gold have been self-deluded into thinking the destitute are fortunate for they possess happiness. And the ones entrenched in penury are convinced that they are paying due penance for crimes committed in lives they remember not and may never have lived. Having received such declamations on several occasions, I lose track of father's words as I trace his path onto the next mahogany door.
We reach the threshold of a curious family that has an array of rumours incessantly pestering it- there always is a family that is preyed upon in a neighbourhood such as this where incongruity is looked at with askance and time is plenteous. Being a Sunday, the father, the crux of all rumours, opens the door. The man is undoubtedly formidable- towering over my father with shoulder built to support leaden worlds and thick eyebrows converging at the center, his dour look is an awesome sight. He eyes us and then hollers to his wife to get the garbage, a moment later his son comes up to him and tugs his shirt. But the boy spots me gazing at his red toy car and all thoughts of pater fade into abyss. He shows me the mesmerizing piece of plastic. It is unquestionably brand new- the wheels aren't frayed. It has several logos stamped on it and a faceless man seated in it. The scarlet paint gleams in the sun, taunting me. I grab the car and before the bliss seeps in and the boy leaks a tear, my father steals it from my fragile grasp and hands it over the austere man with a mumbled apology. His flinty features are slightly softened by a smile but his visage is still one that could make a man flinch. But for now, both men are cringing on the inside as they are stuck in one of those moments for which awkward is an euphemistic adjective. Ah! finally the wife arrives and hands over the bag of future prospects to my father. Both men breathe a silent sigh and we once again set off on our way.
All the way back home I am reprimanded for my ludicrous act and yet again my grip on father's words is loosened sometime after the first period for now I have added a new element to my game. Hereafter it is against the rules for me to step on leaves making it much harder considering the ample supply of withered once greens.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
The Step Game
Saturday, 7 June 2008
I'm IT
I was tagged by Bharat and since it seems I haven't posted for nearly a month, I decided to give my blog a bit of a stir.
- At least two books (currently The Dubliners and The Odyssey)
- My iPod which has only some 3 gig left :(
- Something to write with.
- Something to write on.
- Empty space intended for money that I never possessed.
- The vinyl records adorning my wall
- Piano.
- Laptop- me mac!!
- The books littering every inch of my room (I don't have a book shelf, no room for it. So if any unfortunate soul decides to enter my room he/she/it will have to wade through a knee high pile of junk because every platform is loaded with books.)
- Assortment of articles on topics ranging from music to astrophysics.
- Travel back in time to the Renaissance period.
- Sky dive, deep sea dive and get to base camp of Mt. Everest.
- Visit and preferably live in almost every country on the bloody globe.
- Learn Italian, German, Mandarin and how to play the guitar, drums and saxophone.
- Attend a Pink Floyd concert.
- Go - riveting game!
- Random and generally useless torrents.
- Playing Halo for reasons beyond the tangible.
- Trying to flesh out a story that has been roaming my mind for a while.
- Avoiding the copious supply of house guests.
Sunday, 11 May 2008
Ode to the Sunday morning
[Foot fetish anyone?]
A poem as a tribute to the all-pervasive, indomitable, sagacious BO.
[This poem is the unfortunate result of a exhausting, mind-numbing, dehydrating, stomach-churning and crazy Sunday (and a tad amount of plagiarism). Details should soon be up on Radhika's blog]
Bhow, bhow,
Oh my God, its Bo!
You only reap what you sow
You have hairy palms, no?
We shall go - play with Play Doh
Hona hai jo, hone do.
Listen to the crow crow
The Indian Space Research Organisation is called ISRO
You rise when its dark
The heavens break apart
And quote to thee,
Lucifer's child, the anti-lark
[Six, six six! The number of the Beast!]
Prepared is thy zoic feast
Thy arrows :
Will through bone marrow
And call to blithe mortals in a low baritone
'Minions, Armageddon nears
Look to the heavens, fear oh fear'
Bo, neo Zeus
Aam, seb, ganna juice
Das rupay, paanch rupay, teen rupay glass
Aao piyo, bahut hai khaas
A glass of sang-froid stands prepared
Vlad [the Impaler] hath not better fared
Slitting the throats of a thousand kind
Slaying more monsters than you can find
Woe betide thee oh Earth and Sea
O Bo, please set us free.
Credit for this master piece goes to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (aka: Vas), Freak-of-Nature (aka: Radhika) and Abominable Being (i.e. me).
[Disclaimer: Any mental retardation, hallucinations of pink elephants and/or spontaneous fires caused by the reading of this post is not the responsibility of anyone/thing other than the towel with yellow Polka dots in the junk yard across my home.]
22 comments Labels: friends, humor, insanity, lames ass poetry, Radhika, Sundays, Vasudha
Monday, 28 April 2008
A Strange Thing
“When you stare into the eye of Death, you don’t see death”, these were the words that besieged her mind as she drove her dilapidated Ambassador back home. But of course she was exaggerating, Death wasn't at her threshold it was merely at her garden fence; as per the four oncologists she had met with, she had six months to live if she went without treatment.
In her minds eye, her months were mapped out in accordance with her future physical condition. She knew she would not tell her family of her illness for another four months. For she also knew that if she revealed it to them earlier, they would manage to persuade her into wearing a wig despite her resolve to live and die a little sooner rather than to live a life in death and wait longer.
In compliance with her well-manufactured plans, she would be spending the next month in the Himalayas heading for Everest Base Camp. This dream of conquering Base Camp had been one she had shared with her father. She even remembered the exact moment they had conjured it- she had been spending the winter holidays with her family in Dehradun’s frost. As father and daughter sat in front of a toasty, crackling fire they read the evening paper and sipped scalding cocoa. On chancing upon an article that spoke of a climbers success on Everest, he revealed to the ten year old his adolescent yearning to breathe in the air at Base Camp. Right then the two decided that once she turned twenty-one, together they would realize his hopes.
Her mother had thought it was a load if trite but they had made elaborate, intricate plans and fully intended on seeing them through. However a year ago, in a four way pile up her father had met his unfortunate end. And along with this loss, the dream had dimmed in the light if insignificance. But now, on being confronted with her own death, she was determined to go through with their plans, only a year later than previously devised. She could visualize herself sighing the frigid, crisp air. And then taking photographs that would help fill the album that would be her parting gift to her mother.
After returning from the Himalayas she would head for The Four Seasons. She’d live in the world of the opulent for as long as her scant savings would support. And in the resort she would take in every conceivable luxury - from room service to spas - after the long arduous trek (always having lived in extremes, moderation had seemed far too mundane to her).
When she would near the end, she decided she would settle old scores, pay off debts, write her will and make her funerary arrangements for she would never forget the turmoil her mother went through the previous year.
Taking the final turn into the lane whose every nook she knew, she continued to awe at the absurdity of Death. Thinking of the inevitable, she saw not her burial site six feet under but the funeral itself: the people who would attend it, how they would speak of her, her eulogy and all the rest. It all eluded her for even as shadows faced her, she saw everything but Darkness.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Untitled
Anger emanates from within,
Ruminations of reason and objectivism
Succumb to riotous hatred.
All before initiation, the argument
Lost to the irrational.
Logic and pragmatism peter
In the simplicity of rage.
But none occur without reason;
Incentive justifies for all but one.
One, solitary and despondent,
Carries on in penance.
Sunday, 13 April 2008
Zeus' Wife
[The movie Juno has managed to inspire my bleak and desolate mind to write a run of the mill blog post about adolescence.]
We don't know where we are going and we don't know where we are from.
As soon as adolescence materializes, hormones surface and your mind brims with questions which are far less than tangible. You inevitably question the existence of God (iconoclasm is quickly, if not hastily, adopted) and incontrovertibly loose your faith in Humanity. The hypocrisy of life and the speciousness of morality hits you so hard that it send you reeling for seven years.
Ironically though, while you loose faith in all the institutions that require it, you also become an idealist. Sanguinely hoping that maybe through the grace of something you no longer believe in, your cynicism and skepticism will be shattered in the light of the marvelous wonder of altruism (or anything a notch below egocentrism).
Those years of stupendous contradictions have only one road to salvation, humour. It is the solitary thing that will keep you from being obliterated; loose it and you end up as just another platitudinous piece of text in black and white.
13 comments Labels: adolescence, humor, insanity, irrelevant to anything significant, philosophy, same old, sense
