What can you give a person who is going to die?

A few days back, I was home to spend some time with my parents before they leave for Haj pilgrimage. The house was full of guests and random relatives whom I barely know. Suddenly, from the motley group of people I found a familiar face, rather familiar to my childhood. Yes, I said, she’s “Bhoori”, one of our very old domestic help. She was more than just a domestic help but, a sympathetic ear to my mother’s cribs, an accomplice, a well-wisher, a relative, family. But she looked a lot different than what I remembered, a pale boney face with no flesh. The color of her skin has become dark, like over boiled tea. She sat in a corner with her burqa on, her back hunched and face stooped low.

I went to her and said “Assalamoalaikum”, she barely managed to return my salaam. My mother felt a need to introduce us – again, “Ye chota beta hai, bahut chota tha jab tune ise dekha hoga”, she said.  Bhoori smiled, with a pain in her eyes, a tangible pain, more than just physical. My mother told me she’s ill, she’s not able to work anymore. I thought I should help, I immediately handed over some money to my mother to give her. She took the money and smiled, her eyes were moist. She kept her hands on my head, gave me blessings for my better future and left.

I asked my mother, after she left “What’s wrong with her, bahut kamzor lag rahi hai bhoori.” She has a hole in her heart my mother says, and she’s so weak she would not be able to survive the surgery. She’ll not be able to make it, she says. I felt asphyxiated, like life giving me a blow on my face. One of those times when you tell yourself, life is not fair.

I went outside my house, looked for a corner and lit a smoke. I took out my wallet, stared and asked myself “What can you give a person who is going to die?”    

Me Mumbaikar ahe !!!!

After a diametrical journey across India from the eastern coast of the bay of Bengal to the vast Arabian sea in just three days we finally landed amchi Mumbai. After a gusty ride to IGI airport breaking a substantial amount of red lights though my brother sitting by my side was still composed smoking his barhi gold flake, I guess that’s how you become when you have boarded a dozen of international flights being in a profession like merchant navy. And again there were some cheerful faces on the airport with hidden sorrows, with some flying dreams and again I joined them forgetting my own journey and trying being a part of theirs.

The flight was more fun than expected, one of my female colleague’s bag was thrown open at the security check and all the cosmetics I’ve used in my entire life could be seen peeping out of that poor bag. To her embarrassment all bottles with different brands, different colours were out on the anvil and the jokes that followed we’re still laughing on them. As usual there was a desperate attempt to hit on the cutest air hostess in the flight by all of my male pals but her gummy smile pushed all of us back into our seats. One thing I really admire about these air hostesses is how they are able to hold their laugh while doing all those stupid security mock drills when they are obviously laughing in their heads.

After jostling like kids I was able to conquer the window seat from the above mentioned embarrassed colleague of mine, and the first glance down the window took me to the panoramic Aravali mountains. It was a moment when you think you are one lucky soul who gets to witness such a visual ecstasy. Such moments really reinforce my dreams being a great Himalaya fan and an aspiring hiking and mountaineering trainer myself.

Thanks to my new job in TCS I’ve finally arrived in Mumbai, a city which every Indian can relate to for one reason or another. As a kid even I grew up with a dream of going to Mumbai and being a top shot model some day. There’s one more dream I have with Mumbai which is joining the bullet club indie thumpers, mumbai’s own bullet club. But as my brother is still very much in love with his bullet and I don’t seem to have that much of salary that I can buy a bullet of my own, so this dream will have to wait for some time. Much to my amusement and contrary to all the notions I had in my mind due to the much hullaballoo about the city, Mumbai doesn’t seem to be much different from Delhi or other big cites I’ve been to. You can see the same 42424242 easy cabs, the same black and yellow autos, though the autowallahs seem to be more honest and disciplined than delhi. It’s march and Mumbai is hot like anything but the nights are definitely pleasent and much more lively than delhi. You can walk freely at 12 in the night and the Mumbai will walk with you. The “bhaiya” factor is definitely an election agenda as most of the people here like to be addressed here as bhaiya more than “bhaoo”. The city is full of people, there are people everywhere in the queues for auto, for buses, in the malls, on the roads, in the restaurants. The city has definitely brought good luck to me in terms of shopping, I got to buy a jodhpuri bandgala from blackberry for half the price.

The first day at office was really an eyeopener, after a short stint at the picturesque thane location amidst the green shrubs grown in between the working bays we were sent to the real IT bonecushers, the concrete jungles, the skyscrapers where millions of people start working everyday, some quit some keep getting crushed under the same drudgery. There’s a similar dynamic, people gathered outside green glass sky scrapers, smoking in groups, eating Manchurian and noodles, a smile crosses their face when they bitch about their bosses and ex-colleagues and they laugh endlessly on lewd jokes when their worries try to drip down their face. They smoke, they have tea and then they leave.

Mumbai seems to be a lot of struggle but I’m still a part of it. The other day one of my friend called me up and she said she had a dream, a bad bad dream like a nightmare and she was so bewildered she called me up in the middle of the night. In the middle of gulping down my beer I picked up the call and that too on a number I stopped using a long time back and so she narrates the dream after a lot of pestering and her concern of my well being “tabish, you have gone to visit the Arabian sea and you’ve drowned in the sea and a long shark is dragging you in and you’re not able to swim”. I listened, processed the data and the only thing I could fathom was how metaphoric that dream is. I certainly am in the middle of a vast sea and there are a million of carnivores sharks around clenching their jaws into my body, trying to tear my flesh apart and turn me into bones. All I can do is keep swimming as I’ve done for all these years.

and then it was me

I know after taking this long sabbatical I should write something appeasing for you “genesis” but this is just another random rush of my synapses.

As my college is about to get over this year and we are supposed to become really mature and level headed professionals {that’s what they suppose} there’s a lot that life’s is still unveiling. It’s strange that a person like me who has been with motley categories of people and has a gargantuan friend circle (social circle to be precise) could go so wrong in his approach towards friendship.

I am a person of the psyche that “what goes around, comes around” and always religiously followed the doctrine. In the last two years I realised that people I had least expectations with lived up to them and the people I always expected to be my side when I really needed them disappointed me up to a certain extent. This phenomenon led me to inevitably ponder that “expectation is the mother of all grief”, though it works all the time but on a very sadistic and abstinent note. I started to design this martinet approach of approaching people and letting people approach me and I lost some of the very beautiful and worthy people in this restructuring process.

But life’s like an entrepreneurial endeavour of gradual learning and recovering from momentary setbacks. You formulate a business plan, identify your niche, hammer out a strategy and calculate the risk. Apparently I am realising that I never calculated risks and even if I did those risks were worth investing for, but it all seems in vain now. I am really not able to let go of relations, people and life. I am having expectations again and more importantly people have expectations with me too, which is slightly more problematic.

“Life screws you exactly when you think you’ve figured it out”. I am perplexed, amused, bewildered and jittery but feel alive. Yes, I do and after a very long time.

malice

everyone's drifting away

all the co-ordinates have gone biased

though you sometimes seem deceptive

to my chagrin,u didn't stay.

you judge me by your own notions

a phoney face is all what u see

but you couldn't scramble to the candid whiteness

ironical were all your motions.

hey!!! teachers leave us kids alone

I think all the engineering students are bugged by the syndrome of studying in the last few ungodly days before the exams, thanks to the motley activities incumbent on the poor souls around the whole semester. Me being one from the beleaguered league was gruelling and toiling my nerve cells since morning with one of the major subjects (say COMNET) of my current semester. I preferred abnegating myself from the soul stirring puns and metaphors of our professor of the above mentioned subject and it appeared one more mundane name in the list of 40 blockbuster subjects that we're supposed to go through in the lifecycle of our course.

But I was taken aback completely when I could not resist myself studying COMNET out and out which appeared to be rocket science to me when our Gabriel used to carry messages of Comnet God to us, the prophets in disguise.

Well, this has led me thinking inevitably about the pedagogy used in the dozens of bizarre technology institutes spreading like a plague in our country. One more thing that that passes through my mind is most of the professors we have are not professors by choice, either they could not land a job or they find teaching as the best option to make a quick buck while they are preparing for other exams of the likes of IAS and PCS. Teachers like these have little or no interest in teaching as they are just making a living out of teaching rather than pursuing it as a passion. An enthusiastic teacher can make his pupils really interested in the subject while another can let them abhor his books forever. Things that are spoon fed and left to mug by us and throw up the other day in the answer sheet could be conveyed in an interesting and unconventional manner that involves active participation of even the most disinterested student in the class.

But we've less to do to ameliorate the milieu rife in most of the institutes today. The authorities should keep in mind that at stake is the future of millions of students admitted in lure of a lucrative career, but end up as victims of the unlikely awry system, at stake is the young creative minds which are completely washed out if any rebellious, indigenous thoughts it was endowed with, at stake is the future of the second fastest developing economy riding pillion with these prophets in disguise.

evolution

Its been three days since i saw the the anurag kashyap's recently directed flick "gulaal" but i haven't overcome the stupor n hysteria yet.It was such an amazing experience  to watch the movie that you will wonder whether you are watching a bollywood commercial movie or the juxtaposition of a theatrical play on the 35 mm screen.

i was in 2nd standard when i got to watch my first movie in a cinema hall ajay devgan starrer "jigar"...n from there the list grows exponentially.Being a movie buff i can really say that bollywood has truly come of age and is really going places from the typical dhishum-dhishum,kumbh ke mela and boorhi maan ka badla stories to the critically acclaimed out of the box movies today.

once the term parallel cinema was used for these small budget which had no big stars,contemporary plots and were signified by a small budget and obscure actors.but slowly these movies carved a small niche for themselves with the flicks like "arth" "thora hai thore ki zaroorat hai" "namkeen" in 1970's. actors like naseeruddin shah, raj babbar,smita patil, amol palekar were some of the prominent faces of this kind of cinema.

with the rise of mall culture and multiplexes,the taste of people has really evolved now, people are not afraid of going and watching any random flick which can turn out to be a blockbuster and many small budget movies have done that in the past too.A motley array of movie makers have just transformed the whole milieu and a lot of experimental cinema,backed by a good research work has got to be seen in recent days which is definitely a treat for the people in search of some esoteric cinema.Whether it's adaptation of Shakespeare's plays as india's grassroot politics or the bold new face of sharat chandra's devdas, these eclectic plots have added a whole new dimension to the movie experience which is certainly nowhere behind the hollywood.

Maybe the 8 academy award bash of the bollywood's step-daughter "slumdog millionaire" is not over yet but the true bollywood has finally arrived in high spirits and raring to go.

100 bucks

m walkinn down d deserted road,condomeniums standing upright kissing the sky....wondering wat would be the fate of the last 100 bucks left in my pocket.

i have just finished up with my semester exams, and with a lot of my time i spent in the lap of my bed this semester....i could have ended up nowhere but in the list of students detained for examination.

"sir, i don't have my admit card in the list"

"you are ?"

"roll no. 54,sir"

"fill a bond of 5000/- and get your admit card right away"

"5000/-,but why on the earth should i pay this amount to give my exams"

"this my son,u must have thought before bunking your classes"

so this way i landed in this situation where i was literally broke throughout my examination....

phew a tough time.....most of my money during the exams is spent either on cigarettes or the life giving tea that saves you from the languid 4 am mind-boggling sessions.

but save my friends who are heavily into smoking,so i survived with these 100 bucks at last...

now a lots of plans are running through my mind related to the possible places where i can invest this amount....

-get a pack of cigarettes{best option}

-go for a movie

-grab some junkie...
oh my god..wat could be a better place save CCD to sit and give a rush to your synapses...
so here i am sipping delectable coffee may be not justifying the precious 100 bucks but still it is
kind of fulfilling.
(P.S. - this post was written a long time ago,but i was rather too perplexed whether this post deserves a space in my blog,though it is too trivial but may be thats what we call contemporary.)