In The Skin Of Desire

R I P Manna Dey - My favorites of the great artist!

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:26:00 +0000

RIP Manna Dey...

Tera ishq main kaise chhod doon, mere umra bhar ki talash hai (How can I stop admiring you? It's the find of my lifetime.)

My favorite songs of the singing great, along with the respective movies, music directors, lyricists and Youtube links...

1. Yeh dosti hum nahi todenge - Sholay - R D Burman - Anand Bakshi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4NOdJdoDzI

2. Yaari hai imaan mera yaar meri zindagi - Zanjeer - Kalyanji Anandji - Gulshan Bawra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KIcWTV3MME

3. Chalat musafir moh liya re pinjre waali muniya - Teesri Kasam - Shankar Jaikishan - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7m8hDAYFkE

4. Zindagi kaisi hai paheli haye - Anand - Salil Chowdhury - Yogesh - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QIYskaGezU

5. Na chahun sona chandi na mangu heera moti - Bobby - Laxmikant Pyarelal - Vitthalbhai Patel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbkpVInN3z8

6. Ae Meri Zohra Zabeen - Waqt - Ravi - Sahir - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfNjDPsX1VQ

7. Na toh karvan ki talash hai - Barsaat Ki Raat - Roshan - Sahir - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3O0cRwkans

8. Tu pyar ka sagar hai - Seema - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2D-kjOMNF0

9. Pyar hua ikraar hua hai - Shree 420 - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXLzfldeDcM

10. Ek chatur naar badi hoshiyar - Padosan - R D Burman - Rajinder Krishnan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LF7ndD8Oj0

11. Laga chunari mein daag chupaun kaise - Dil Hi To Hai - Roshan - Sahir - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLYT8s4D2ek

12. Yeh raat bheegi bheegi yeh mast fizayen - Chori Chori - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DZxkiMjRo

13. Hoke majboor mujhe usne bulaya hoga - Haqeeqat - Madan Mohan - Kaifi Azmi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dttfQiOoTkU

14. Mud mud ke na dekh mud mud ke - Shree 420 - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3D3YNmg-Ak

15. Aayo kahan se ghanshyam - Buddha Mil Gaya - R D Burman - Majrooh Sultanpuri - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc4omjTgolE

16. Babu samjho ishaare horn pukare pom pom pom - S D Burman - Majrooh Sultanpuri - Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e47BnRL1H74

17. Chunari sambhal gori udi chali jaaye re - Baharon Ke Sapne - R D Burman - Majrooh Sultanpuri - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zur6JskNiRU

18. Dil ka haal sune dilwala - Shree 420 - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_fLwXEu388

19. Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum - Chori Chori - Shankar Jaikishen - Shailendra/Hasrat Jaipuri - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfQeV80haE

20. Chham chham baaje re payalia - Jaane Anjaane - Shankar Jaikishen - S H Bihari - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkqCfLo54t8

I am sure you will be remembered forever Manna Da...

10 Reasons NOT To Date An Entrepreneur

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:11:00 +0000

A Tongue-In-Cheek response to the article "Ten Reasons To Date An Entrepreneur" doing the rounds of FB. See the original article here: http://love-not-fear.org/2011/12/02/ten-reasons-to-date-an-entrepreneur/

Guidelines: 1) This article is not to be taken seriously by either entrepreneurs or sane people 2) Entrepreneurs shall take a pledge of not murdering me before reading this.

Full Disclosure: I am an entrepreneur for the last 4 years; about the dates, I don't remember :)

1. Their sense of possibility… To date someone who accepts no limitations means: “Yeah… I can hit on THAT one also… nice eyes… and THAT one… what an ass… and THAT one… ravishing lip… Yes baby, you were saying … No, I AM listening!”

2. They see things in a way that others don’t: “No, that’s NOT coffee I spilled over my shirt coz I was trying to keep myself awake for 36 continuous hours with caffeine… I am just experimenting with a new fabric color! How’s it?... What? When did I shift into clothing? Since my investors told me unless I found a viable business model…”

3. They know the true meaning of commitment and persistence to an idea: “I told you we ARE going to see ‘The Ugly Truth’ for the 4^th time even if you think its mindless coz I just can’t get over Katherine Heigel’s boobs! Man! They are so… Ok, I will talk about something different… Jeez! Umm… can I at least talk about her ass?”

4. They attract and draw into their world new people, experiences and opportunities: I am not explaining that one :D Please let your imagination flow ;)

5. Their vision for the world extends to a vision of long-term relationships: “Ok baby… Muaah… will see you after 2 months so you can be sure our relationship is going to last at least THAT long. Meanwhile I will keep sending you BBMs on how I am contributing to the betterment of humanity… Oh! You don’t have a Blackberry? How do you live?”

6. They have seen failure and know that it is never what defines a man or a woman: “Thanks babe for helping me out with the dough. It’s so great you work for a company whose customers are still buying during recession. Why don’t mine? I don’t know… They are crazy I guess… Anyway… I respect you deeply for still not ditching me.”

7. They are passionate souls with tonnes of energy and a great love and lust for life: “I am NOT going to make something THAT ugly just coz the market wants it. Who the hell the market thinks it is? God? It’s MY life and I am only going to make stuff that I like, not some shitty stuff market wants. What! You like it too? How COULD you? Steve Jobs will never forgive you!”

8. They know the value of partnership in getting things done: “Baby… I know you have been paying the rent of my office for the past 18 months and I owe you a huge debt. I am so sorry… but I CAN make it up to you. Let’s do one thing… let’s become partners. I will offer you a debt-equity swap and you can become part owner of my company. What? You don’t want equity in my company? How CAN you say that? We are growing BIG… I mean we WILL grow big… soon… I promise. Ok, I will make you a deal. I will offer you the equity at 25% discount of the valuation I asked from the VCs in my last failed B-presentation. I even have the entire excel sheet to show you. Now are you happy? Partner…”

9. They know how sometimes you just have to hang in there, work really hard and keep trusting: ”Baby I know I have been promising to marry you for the last 5 years while you’ve been working your ass off to pay the bills… but trust me, I WILL this time as soon as the next round of funding comes… Just hang in there a bit more… We are almost there… Trust is the key… you know right?”

10. They are visionaries who understand the power of love over fear: “Baby you know I will not end this relationship or walk away if you keep telling me to drop this crazy idea of mine and take up a sensible job… but I know you really love me, so you will not walk away either when I don’t listen to you the least… right? I love you but we entrepreneurs need to keep chipping at the stone while the rest of the world doesn’t believe in us. I am sorry. But I know I can depend on you coz we love each other. Right?

The ONLY reason to date an entrepreneur: Coz you feel like it baby :)

Bestselling author looks for a co-author

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:56:00 +0000

Abhimanyu Jha, author of the bestseller romance A Dilli Mumbai Love Story (http://www.facebook.com/adillimumbailovestory) is looking for a partner in crime, in other words a co-author.

It will be a simpler way to see your name in print!

The novel, tentatively titled 'The Surgeon of Hearts', is a modern twist on a Sharatchandra Chatterjee work and has a young woman narrating the story in 1st person.

To apply, you need not have written anything big; you just need to have an interest in reading, a flair for writing, hard working nature, and a total willingness to learn. In addition, you need to be a young woman, either in college or not long out of college, to help me make the 1st person voice authentic. Also, Bangaloreans will be preferred, but it's not mandatory

To apply, write to 4abhimanyu@gmail.com with a 1500 word writing sample attached (simple and romantic prose preferred). And tell all your friends about this, especially if you are not applying!

Last date to apply: Dec 31st

Verify

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:57:00 +0000

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Love & The Art of Bicycle Riding

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:36:00 +0000

Did you ever ride a bicycle on a lonely stretch of road - at midnight in the shadow of trees, when the moon is softly bathing the world in its light like a hallowed sage smiling kindly upon a confused disciple?

Well, at first you go leisurely, for you can’t see much further. The breeze softly caresses your cheeks, while the rustling of the leaves jostles with thoughts for space in your consciousness. Sometimes winning, sometimes biting dust when the matter of reflection is very engaging - too beautiful for the fear of an unexpected happening to overcome it.

But mostly you are cautious even as your feet pedal constantly and the mind imagines the end slowly coming nearer. And though the act has enjoyment in itself, it’s little compared with the pleasure one imagines will be felt when the destination has been reached.

But then bit-by-bit, the intoxication of speed sucks you in its whirl. The feet begin to move faster and faster, and the shoulders stoop as the body bends forward and the muscles tauten. Gradually every fiber in the body begins to quiver at the thrill of the pace with which you tear ahead in the stillness of the night, while the sweat comes pouring down your face as you breathe heavily. Like raindrops sliding off a windowpane, the wind beating a rhythm on it.

And your perception keeps narrowing, till it can hold in its confines only the awareness of hurtling down the road. Like falling in an endless abyss, while things around you are reduced to abstract entities.

Instead of the fear of death, what you feel is a visceral feeling of joy. And what you hear is a single hum - a ceaseless noise in which the rustling of the leaves, the sound of the wind blowing past your face, the calling of the crickets, the creaking of the machine, all mesh together in a seamlessly interwoven tapestry.

The end is of little consequence now. The joy of the experience is what matters most.

Love is a lot like this. It pulls you in slowly in the beginning - you are a bit guarded in your feelings, sparing in your emotions. But you know it not and it has begun to open your heart valves gently. To completeness. You withhold nothing, as the walls you had subconsciously erected get swept away in that torrent of ambrosial passion that has no origin save in itself. The other thoughts quietly go down before this deluge. Love has now enveloped you fully, making the rest of the world disappear in the background.

Before long, life seems to rush past you as if you were in a dream! And you stop caring where you are headed. That’s what happened to me.

Oscar/Booker Winning Story 'The English Patient' - A Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 09:52:00 +0000

If ever a book was written to stir your senses to dizzying heights, it’s ‘The English Patient’. Sometimes like the lilting touch of a kiss, sometimes the prancing pace of a musical verse, sometimes the piercing stab of a needle, sometimes the burning pain of a hot iron… the book affects you in every imaginable way. The third novel of the Sri Lankan born Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje, it follows the same sensual and lyrical but spare style of his earlier novels, and build upon them this time with a passionately pictorial prose and an intricate but tantalizing story.

The second world war is coming to an end in Italy, and a Canadian nurse Hanna, emotionally jaded by the death and destruction of the war, seeks refuge in the abandoned villa of San Girolamo. She chooses to make the care of an unrecognizably burnt patient her mission - a patient called ‘The English Patient’ because that’s the only language he seems to know.

Shortly afterwards, the villa sees the arrival of two more key characters – the thief Caravaggio, an acquaintance of Hanna from her childhood days in Toronto, and Kip (Kirpal Singh), a Sikh soldier who is part of the bomb disposal squad of the British Army. The interplay between these characters and an occasional solitary dip into the memories of the burnt man lead us to the slow unraveling of the man's past.

And what a past it is! A middle-aged explorer deeply in love with the desert, falling for the beautiful, young wife of a friend, leading to a wildly passionate and achingly beautiful romance. From this point in life, we will either find or lose our souls. The woman developing a burning sense of guilt at having betrayed her simple husband. And then withdrawing. We will never love each other again. Followed by anger from his side. Madness. I just want you to know. I don’t miss you yet. His face awful to her, trying to smile.

The lovers separate. But the husband comes to know about the affair somehow and tries to kill them all in a plane crash. Almasy the explorer survives, George Clifton, the husband doesn’t. And the centre of it all, the willowy woman, the one with the classical blood in her face, the one whose voice the weary, hardened explorer had first fallen in love with, Katharine Clifton - she is injured, almost fatally. What happens after that, I will leave you to find out by reading ‘The English Patient’.

In between, we are also treated to another delicious fare – the childlike, vervy romance that develops between Hanna and the soldier Kirpal and occasional flashbacks into how Kirpal has become the smart and courageous, but carefree bomb disposal soldier that he is. And parallel to that, the shenanigans of the thief Caravaggio, who for his own personal reasons, is bent upon discovering the true identity of the English Patient.

Going back and forth between Almasy’s past and this present, the book at times almost drives you to tears with its haunting description of the love between Almasy and Katherine, Hanna and Kirpal. And at other times, leaves you marveling at the lyricism and strength of the prose (and the research behind it) that turns even as dry a subject as bomb disposal into a riveting thriller.

Definitely a book to buy and cherish. No wonder it won the Booker!

After The First Kiss

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:04:00 +0000

A bit of self promotion - My book, a romantic thriller called 'A Dilli-Mumbai ♥ Story', is coming on bookshelves this May.

Celebrations followed the first kiss.

Not the kind where you eat nice things, burst crackers, and catching hold of your love by her waist, swing her around and say, ‘hey! Let’s mambo’; but where it takes place inside the heart, hidden, the joy unnoticed by any except for a pair of swallows about who you could wonder, what the hell were they were doing at this time of the evening out on the trees when it was so damn cold, and you sat down at a quiet place in the garden close to each other and yet shivering, tried to get closer, and then face to face, so close, you suddenly found your lips almost touching, and then imitating a nearby dream, reciting the beginnings of its rarefied verses, you let them tantalizingly brush against each other’s, and then again, and again, cupping the verses, drinking, more of them, then missing something deeply, savagely, trying to tear out that which continuously slipped from your hold, the verses now gone and in their place an anger, an intense pain, the strings of a violin tweaked till they were almost torn, and still the scorching want, to pull her inside you, to decimate, you wanted in your arms... nothing.

And then defeated, you parted, and yet it was a sweet defeat, because all that was inside you had gushed out, almost bringing out tears, the biting cold clawing out the slabs in the mountain that had blocked a spring, the unbearable pain replaced by a calm emptiness. And the world looked beautiful, the moon whiter, the snow clad treetops like monks clad in white fur gazing down at you with a beautiful smile and you laughing at what you had just imagined, the night cozy because day was much harsher, you wanted more swallows, and there was suddenly so much of happiness when you remembered the future will bring more kisses.

Help Choose Cover For My Novel Coming in June

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:08:00 +0000

A Beautiful Suicide

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:38:00 +0000

"Meera!"

She is in love. She was in love. She would always be in love. Always. She puts her left palm on her heart as a gesture of promise to him. Always. They can take away her life but they cannot take away that.

She looks at the shallow silver cup before her that contains the thick blackish poison, bends down, and curls her fingers around the cold stem. As she picks the cup up in a sweeping gesture her fingers shake a little and the surface of the liquid frizzles creating a little wave. She sees him, a tiny him, riding on the crest of that wave. He is smiling his benevolent smile. In one hand is his flute. He waves at her with his other hand and then spreads his arms beckoning her to come into their realm. It calms her and her fingers stop shaking. She smiles back at him. The surface of the liquid comes to rest again.

He then bends down and touches the surface with his finger. A slight touch. She sees the drop of vermillion form at the point, and then it spreads outward like a wave of redness till it hits the walls. She now holds a red liquid in the cup, bright red. She dips her middle finger in the cup, and draws her finger in a red line where her hair parts on her scalp as a symbol of weddedness. She is wedded to him. He smiles at her, a playful smile acknowledging the gesture, and touches the liquid again, now turning it the color of saffron. He then looks at her with raised eyebrows and a thin smile, his lips in a slight pout, as if asking her what she would do now. She nods her head once, acknowledging the challenge. Rising to it, she thinks for a moment, and then begins pouring the liquid over her dress, her shapely hands in a slow dance around her lithe body, turning it the color of saffron. She pours the liquid till all of her is clad in saffron. She is parted from the world now. She looks at him flashing a triumphant smile. "I am as good as you."

He smiles back, and turns the liquid yellow. She smears it in a straight line over the length of her nose. He turns it green. She throws it around herself, on the objects in the room and on the walls, turning the world around her green. He turns it blue. She paints her body blue. He turns it indigo. She daubs her eyelashes in it. He turns it violet. She is lost. What will she do now? She looks around the room searching for a solution. Then she finds it, tucked on the forehead of her lover. She asks him for the feather of the peacock he has. He gives it, albeit reluctantly, knowing he has lost the game, and she smears the violet onto the feather. He bows to her in defeat.

“Meera!” a gruff voice resounds in the room behind her. She hears the clobber of the heavy steps as they slowly near her. She looks at him, her eyes pleading for help. He smiles at her, his face ethereal, and she feels the soft radiance of his smile. Warmth floods her. Then he bends down and dips his finger in the liquid again, and whiteness swirls into the liquid riotously. It froths and foams, and then comes to a sudden rest. It looks milky white. He extends his right hand asking her to come to him. She looks at him, looks at the cup, and then feeling the sudden weight of a heavy hand on her shoulder, she tips the milky contents of the cup into her mouth.

After some time, when people come in to carry her away, they do not find evidence of the painful death by poison they expected. Her face is beautiful as before, enveloped in a serene smile, though the black poison trickles down the side of her mouth. They are astonished. The news of the strange death of the princess spreads through the kingdom like wildfire.

The Beauty Seeker

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:50:00 +0000

Seek
When you have time
A beauty
That is perfect
But for once
Not in reflections
About past, present or morrow
Not in feelings
Of intense joy
Or deep sorrow
That has been and will be again
In countless things
Seen and unseen

Or in nature
That ephemeral element
The azure expanse
The emerald spread
The figures erect
They came and went

Just spread your wings within yourself
And journey beyond
Those realms of faith, reality or truth
To that place
Unbound
Dark and dense

Where one can
At will
Tie knots
Or lay carpets
Sylvan
On the ground or
In the sea

Sew a maze
Of runes golden and bright
With moonbeams in day
Or with sunbeams at night

Embroider a wish
Written
In those gleaming runes
With kisses sylphish
And sweet
And soft magical tunes

Sing a song
With those lilting notes
And join the dance
Of the swirling
Silvery motes
Persuaded by the breeze
As it croons and lingers
On your cheek
And bestows a kiss
When your hands caress it
Like a passionate lover
From tip to toe
With your waving fingers

Conduct a symphony
Of the thuderous music
Made by the storm
As it moldes
The sand dunes of tales untold
Dead and cold
Breathing life and warmth
In the somnolent folds
And the motes glow
Like embers instead
In the crimson morn

There
When this storm
Of Passion
Kindles the flame
Of Imgination
And illuminates
Every dark recess
Awakens
Every drowsy emotion
You might find
What you seek to possess.

Verify

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Life Insurance - Why taking Endowment Policy Doesn't Make Sense!!

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:53:00 +0000

Disclaimer - I am an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus and VP in an education company, and have nothing far and wide to do with insurance sector :) I write this as an informed customer. Anyway, let's begin.

Recently, I took a life insurance policy. And as most people would have experienced, I was advised to take an 'endowment policy' (instead of a 'term' policy). An amazing number of people, unlike me, take that advice. And make the insurance company happy (losing money in the process obviously).

Commonsensical isn't it, to ask the evergreen question "Kitna deti hai?"

Well, in this case, it's actually not. Unless, you are adding the phrase "Tapakne ke baad" before that "Kitna deti hai" question of yours - that is how much do I get after I die? Because that's the only thing a life insurance policy should be about.

But most people don't do that. They add, quite wrongly, another dimension to it. They look for some money in the form of returns even before the 'tapakna' happens - treating it like some kind of mutual fund in addition to life insurance.

Well... guess what? You are flushing your money down the toilet if you do that.

To understand why, imagine what life insurance is in its pure form. It's called 'Term' insurance - and in my opinion, the only form of life insurance worth taking. How does 'Term' insurance works?

Imagine a group of 500 in which there is a serial killer. The serial killer murders 1 person, and only 1 person, in a year. No one knows who that person is (I mean the guy who dies, not the serial killer; everyone knows who the serial killer is). Since you belong to that group too, you could be the one getting murdered! (You are loving me, don't you :)

Anyway, the chance of you dying is obviously is very small, since the serial killer has no particular preference for your blood. The chance is only 1 out of 500. Now life insurance is simply a pot where these 500, totally frightened people, deposit money for a year. And since you could get murdered too, even though the chance is very small, you also contribute your amount in the hope that your nominee will live richly after you have kicked the bucket. In the end, a murder happens and one person takes out all the money from the pot - the nominee of the person who is murdered. Simple!

So if everyone contributes 7000 a year - the total amount is 7000 times 500 equals 35 lakhs. Now the insurance company is a generally vella dude who spends all his time collecting money on behalf of the group, and the group pays him a salary of 5 lakh to do the job. The rest 30 lakhs goes to the nominee of the 1 person who was murdered.

Meanwhile the next year arrives and the group prepares for the next murder and the vella insurance dude goes around collecting money and life (and murder) goes on. Thrilling, isn't it! And yes, no points for guessing who the popular serial killer is and why no CID is being brought to catch him.

Well, that's 'Term' insurance. So what's 'Endowment' then? And why doesn't it make sense to take it.

Go back to the 'Term' thing - remember why it works. Well, it works precisely because if you don't get murdered and you don't die, you get nothing. And so the one who dies gets everything. That's the basic mathematics behind insurance - distributing risk of anything going wrong over many. Everything in insurance, life, vehicle, medical, works from this principle. Many people pay for one person.

Compare that to an 'Endowment' policy. Everyone's getting something at the end (whatever the insurance companies pay you)! How's that possible? That violates the basic principle of insurance! And I am sure you know there is no free lunch in life.

Well... this is what is happening. The insurance company is taking money from you more than the 7000 that was required (go back to the 'serial killer in the group' example if you are confused where the 7000 came from) ... 14000... 15000... 16000... whatever, and investing the extra money it has taken in stocks/mutual funds etc. The returns that it promises you as part of 'Endowment' is basically return from that investment of that extra money. (Note the word extra!)

So, what's wrong with that? Nothing wrong essentially... except it's somewhat similar to going to a dentist to have your eyes checked. What's wrong with that? After all, both are doctors!

No, that's stupid, you will likely say, won't you? Both are doctors, but both are experts in different organs! The dentist will do a poor job of checking your eyes!

Well... taking 'Endowment' policy from an insurance company is stupid in a similar way! Insurance companies are experts in 'insurance', not in 'investment', even though both may come under financial products (like the way both eyes and teeth are your organs too).

Insurance is about maximizing the money in the pot for you (in case you die) by choosing a group of people least likely to die, and then having a strong collection system so that everyone pays their share, and then doing strong checks to make sure the 'murdered' person has indeed been murdered and is not faking it thereby cheating the group. That requires a very different set of knowledge and skills when compared to the knowledge and skills required to invest your money well (in the way being a dentist requires different knowledge and skills from being an ophthalmologist).

So to go to an insurance company, and pay them extra money in the form of an 'endowment' policy' so they can manage it for you and pay you some returns in the end is similar to going to a dentist and letting him have a look at your eyes just because he is a doctor too.

You don't want to do that. If you have money, stop buying 'endowment' policies, and invest that extra money (beyond what you would pay for a 'Term' policy) into pure investment products by going to a company that specializes in investment (FDs, PFs, Mutual funds, stocks, Gold ETFs whatever). Which will be very similar to going to an ophthalmologist if you want to have your eyes checked or an orthopedist if your muscles are giving trouble. And very wise too!

'Insurance' and 'Investment' are two conceptually separate financial products, with totally different mathematics governing them, and though you may not understand that maths (I hope now you do understand the basic math for insurance at least; if in doubt, go back to the 'serial killer in a group' example) , please treat them and invest in them separately. That is the next time you are tempted to buy an endowment policy, hold your wallet, calculate the extra money you are paying (minus the 'Term' policy) and invest that money separately.

If you do that, I guarantee you will make more money doing that than what is promised to you in the form of endowment. (In fact, just do a simple FD in a nationalized bank with that extra money, and you will make more)

Then why people choose endowment in such large numbers? Why? Because of... Well, I am sure you know it too.

You had it too right? - The painful feeling of not getting anything in the end (unless you died) despite paying so much year after year. It hurts, it bites. Kuch toh mil jaye yaar, nahin bhi mare toh. In business, it's called the 'psychology of loss' - human beings hate to lose, much more than they love to gain. And businesses know how to exploit that.

So year after year, you are willing to pay the insurance company money just to avoid that feeling of immediate loss that comes with buying 'Term' insurance. Even though you are making true losses in the long run by foregoing the gains you would have made if you invested the extra money well.

I know that feeling - that'psychology of loss'. But I also had enough knowledge and sense to overcome it, and thus take action that will make for me real money in the long run. So I bought 'Term' insurance. If I tapkofy in the next 5 years, my parents will be so much the richer. And if I don't die, well... I know I will be richer coz I know how to invest sensibly - where to invest and where NOT to.

The Art of Giving A Rose

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 03:58:00 +0000

And then there was the matter of the rose.

There were nine days more to go when I decided upon the D-day, and I am certain that there would be few generals who would have planned as much even for a battle as I did for the declaration of my love. Truly it was no laughing matter. There were so many things to consider. And of course how to give the rose was the most important of them.

To be frank, unlike most people I wasn’t overly fond of that flower or its smell. That is why around the time I was in my final year in college, I had vigorously pushed for replacing the few poor examples of a rose plant that we had in our garden with chrysanthemums, and in spite of facing stiff opposition from my sister, had made mom yield to my demand.

Well, it appeared as if the ghosts of those roses that owing to my intense lobbying had suffered an untimely death had returned to haunt me in my dreams. Because now I saw roses often - during daytime and by night, while snoozing on the sofa or while lying curled up on the bed, whether taking a nap or going for a niner, whenever my eyes closed on their own.

Also, I had never known that roses could be shape-shifters. For I saw one that, when I was on the verge of presenting it to my girl, suddenly grew awfully big thorns as if it had come straight out of a science fiction horror, making her draw back in fear. Or one that shed its petals before her as swiftly as elected politicians broke promises, leaving in my hands the bare stem. One of the nights I even saw a rose that made wings of its petals and glided out of my hands like a helium filled balloon, twirling upwards towards the blue infinity till it disappeared from our gaze as we watched on helplessly.

My nightmares made my sister comment that why didn’t I put my dreams on paper - I might win a Pulitzer, they were such jewels of imagination. I reminded her Pulitzers were reserved only for Americans. She said in that case I should rather focus on how to get the real thing done, than dreaming up stupid dreams about it. To begin with, I was so idle I hadn’t even yet decided from where to get the rose.

This charge was false. While she was right that I hadn’t made up my mind about the flower shop, it was simply because none of the roses I had seen measured up to what I wanted. A rose that I could point to and say to the shop owner: ‘Yes, I want something that good on Friday.’ Well, I didn’t know that hard as I searched, no rose, however beautiful, would be sufficient to fulfill my expectations; smell sweet enough to be presented as a token of my love.

There was something else weighing heavily on my mind. Where to carry that damned rose? Because I wanted to talk to my girl for some time before giving the flower to her. I didn’t want to be abrupt, wishing to lead her to the topic slowly, as she had once guided me on a muddy path, hopping with nimble steps from stone to stone.

Also, since we both worked in a school, I had to take classes before I could have the opportunity of meeting her alone, and I couldn’t possibly walk into the school with a red rose in my hand without raising eyebrows. I might as well have announced my intentions on a loudspeaker. And though I could have decided to bunk my classes and arrive at school just around the time when she became free, in order to minimize the damage to the rose, an inner voice told me that gods might not be too pleased with this shirking of duty for personal reasons. Not being keen to offend them right then, I dropped the idea.

It was quite clear that I couldn’t carry the rose in my shirt or jeans pockets, for they were rather small and would have made mincemeat of the flower by the time I decided to bring it out. My bag was the next alternative and a good one too; I could easily carry it around while chatting with my sweetheart. However, a field experiment I performed with it led to the early demise of a pretty specimen and so that option had to be abandoned too.

Then I briefly flirted with the idea of carrying the rose in an opaque polyethylene bag. But my sister baulked at it saying she had never heard anything more unromantic, and even I fell in line after she asked me to imagine the scene myself. Try taking a rose out of a polybag!

At last, after thinking on the matter for two whole days, me and my sister arrived at the conclusion that to succeed in my endeavor of carrying the rose hidden safely to its desired destination, I had no choice but to wear my navy blue blazer as it was fitted with a roomy inner pocket that had space enough for even a big rose.

People who have lived in Western India in the month of May would probably comment that if all I wanted was to roast myself alive, I might as well have committed suicide and gone to hell. It would have served my intention better. But as the saying went, sometimes one had to make great sacrifices in love, and sweating profusely in the middle of May while articulating sweet nothings had to be one of mine I presume. Moreover as my sister pointed out to boost my courage, I looked quite handsome in the blazer. I prayed to the almighty that he make things better by making the day cooler.

My sister had three more instructions to offer in her “how to give a rose successfully” course. That I should, at intervals of an hour, sprinkle the petals with water so that the rose stayed fresh till the time I gave it. I was also to wrap it in a small polyethylene cover, both to preclude the possibility of the petals getting scratched or my blazer’s getting wet. In addition before giving it to my sweetheart, I should smoothen the stem with a penknife, so that she did not feel any discomfort while holding it.

It was the only time I sincerely wished I was a girl.

The Beginning Of The Fall

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:46:00 +0000

Even then I was waiting for her, till the last day. Love makes you selfish, isn’t it? Cheating my wife, another little drop flicked next to me. She didn’t know that I was waiting for somebody else, not her. My wife loved me in the beginning. She thought that was inevitable and I laughed at her. I was a cruel pig. I was in my own cynical world. A new-born cynic. By the time I realized I was faking it, it was too late. I was bound to a girl I didn’t love, who trusted I loved her. Sometimes you are a king and sometimes you are a beggar. Sometimes you can’t see a thing but the pearls, the rubies, the diamonds and hanker after them. You can see them with clarity - a bit of effort and they will be yours. You don’t want anything else. Jades, amethysts, corals, who cares? They are only stones. They are under our feet, we are above them. Let’s go ahead even without a glance. How does it matter what they feel? Even if they are beautiful they are not beautiful enough. Then I lost her love. By the time I searched for it, it was gone. I was a beggar, with nothing under my feet but clay and sand. But I had my revenge. By the time she died she knew she was a beggar too. Perhaps long before that. I was a beggar and I had made her a beggar.

But I could not bear to know that. That I had cheated myself, cheated her. I had to find an escape. Not remember that. So I pushed her away further. Brought in between my kids, my work. If nothing else my books. Escape back into imagination, an unreal world. By choosing this wormhole of words. But it’s too lonely if you go there alone. One seeks a companion. So I sought my children, the way Beji had sought me once. The way Trishu had sought me once. While I was standing in the college canteen trying to read the small print of the menu board over the heads of a cluster of people, trying to find out how much a plate of idlis cost. She tapped me on my shoulder and I turned around to find my mystery girl giving me a pleasant smile. I, quite happy, smiled back.

You got Rangabhoomi, she asked.

No.

Oh sorry! I thought I saw you carrying it yesterday.

Yes, I have it. But not right now – in my room.

Can you lend it to me for sometime when you are finished with it?

Yes, of course I can.

Thanks, I will take good care of it.

Trishu did take good care of books. I learnt how to take care of books from her. She would get mildly agitated if someone stretched the pages too far. Seventy degrees, no more, she would say. I saw her once explaining patiently for five minutes to two of her friends how much exactly was seventy degrees. They laughed at her and she laughed back, but she didn’t leave them until they knew their seventy degrees. That was her.

She took days to read Rangabhoomi. I thought she found the book boring, or perhaps she was a slow reader. I caught her one day on the grounds. It was twenty days after I had given her the book. She was sitting on the grass, legs folded, feet bare, sandals kicked two feet away. Her head lolling downwards. I didn’t know her name even then. Had forgotten to ask when she had first caught me in the canteen or when I had given her the book in the class. There was just a silent acknowledgement then. I was yet a stranger. A person from whom you could ask a glass of water to quench your thirst once. I helloed her. For a few moments she didn’t respond. I wanted to touch her on the shoulder, but I didn’t. Something held me back. Was it the silent her? She had not even seen me and the boundaries were already defined. I helloed her again. She looked at me angling her face upwards, without changing its altitude. Hair silhouetting half her face, one of the eyes nearly closed in the glare of the sun. She smiled at me. Then pointed with her finger at the ground in front of her. Asking me to sit. How did she know I wanted to sit? I asked her. I know you have not come for the book, she replied. You wouldn’t want to read it so soon again. It’s not very interesting. Premchand was infinitely better in Mansarovar.

It’s boring? I rephrased her words, after sitting at the place she had pointed to.

Not exactly, but it’s not among his better ones either.

That’s why you are taking so long to finish it?

Am I?

Sorry. I thought so. Perhaps you were busy elsewhere.

No, I wasn’t. I just read Hindi slowly. Learned it recently.

You don’t speak Hindi?

I speak Hindi. I just can’t read it fast. It’s not my mother tongue.

That’s what I meant.

Her mother tongue was Oriya. She told me she was from Berhampur. I learned the place she was from before I knew her name. The irony of our lives. The place always moving with her like a shadow. A bigger shadow. A hostile shadow. Watching over us quietly like those watchers from Lord of the Rings. I asked her name then. Trishna. She pronounced the word slowly, relishing the word. It means thirst. I know, I said. I didn’t know enough. How thirsty we would become for each other. How thirsty we would remain for each other when the shadow came and pulled her away. Can you kill shadows? You can’t. You can kill people but you can’t kill shadows. You can’t kill shadows, you can’t argue with them, you can’t…You can do nothing. I could do nothing when Trishu said I have to go, the shadow wants to take me away. She wouldn’t show me any person, only the shadow. Whenever I asked her to take me to a person, she refused. I told her I would talk to her parents, her relatives, whoever it took to make her mine. Please let me. But she refused. I was only shown the shadow. It was their representative. I had to be satisfied with it. So I stood and helplessly watched as the wordless shadow came and took her away. The shadow of Berhampur.

Why did she do this? How could she be so weak? She had been so brave, so crazy once. There was a professor who used to go around checking our class notes. We were undergraduates and he did that. We were supposed to write all or most of the stupid shit he cackled at us. Most of us did; me too. Who wants to bang heads against marble walls. Walls that want to be noticed. He walked too like a wall, or rather waddled like a wall. A very self-important wall. Trishu was once dreaming in the class of this self-important wall. Looking out of the window while he was talking about Mazzini, showering praises on him. Irony at its worst. He caught her, asked her to show him her notes. Trishu showed him her notes - lines imagining Mazzini’s reaction in heaven while he listened to the professor pontificate on him. She told me later it had a paragraph that vividly described Mazzini beating his head on the pearly gates, pleading with St. Peter to let him out - there was a class down there on earth in which he desperately needed to go and change impressions about himself, do some serious correction. When the professor asked what is this, she told him calmly that between the agitprop he had dished out to us and her fiction he had just read, hers was perhaps nearer to truth. We were aghast. Did she know who she was talking to? I was frightened. Thought she was a goner now. This was indiscipline beyond tolerance. I was angry too. Thought she would be thrown out, something of that sort. I was afraid of losing her. Wanted to shake her into her senses. The professor asked her to get out of the class. The matter went to the principal, but mercifully nothing happened beyond that. Trishu managed by apologizing in writing, after I had convinced her into doing that by pelting her with a long angry harangue. When I asked her why she had been so rude to the professor, she said she had been pushed in that class beyond the limit of her endurance. He was behaving like one of those toadys in Congress who thought their duty towards their countrymen was done best by lavishing eulogies on Nehru, getting people inside Congress. The class was not a hunting ground. We were there to learn, not to get indoctrinated. I told her to calm down, there were better things in world to battle for. She asked me with a laugh if I thought she was crazy. I told her yes, she was, but I didn’t mind it as long as it didn’t push us apart. But her craziness didn’t push us apart. Her sanity did, her endurance did. When she began to accept things like the rest – the world is like that Firoj, we won’t be accepted, we will be alone, I can’t leave my people, I don’t know what will happen, but whatever happens I will have to go through it. Whatever happens I will go through it. How could she say that? She had no right to say that. No right to turn sane. That’s what had bound us to each other – the troth of craziness.

You know how we met the third time. Trishu came from behind and thumped me on my back. It was 1957, she was a girl, and she thumped me on my back after having met me just twice. She was that crazy. I turned to find her grinning at me. Remember me, she asked; you should, I still got your book. Yes, I said, I remember you. Then I tried to think what I should talk to her about – anything but the book. I was tired of talking to her about the book. I wanted to talk to her about her. Know more. Whenever I saw her, I wanted to touch her. It was a strange feeling, never had it before. I wanted to hold her. Wished everyone would disappear from the background and there would be a wall and I would hold Trishu against the wall. Stare into her eyes not letting her leave until she had kissed me. I wanted to run my hands through her hair, part the strands from each other. Take both my thumb and press it into her temple down her cheek down her neck into her arms, pressing into the skin till I reached her fingertips. Then I would clasp her wrists with my hands, I would clasp her lips with my own. But I knew I couldn’t touch her with my hands now, so I wanted to touch her with my words. It would be a beginning.

But she wasn’t tired of talking about the book. I am almost finishing it, she began. I am where... I stopped her - let’s talk about something else.

What?

You?

What about me?

Anything. What do your friends think of you?

I don’t have many here right now.

Wherever they are.

You don’t want to know.

Why?

They think I am half mad. Sometimes full. When I am not mad, I am nice.

I am ok with that.

Let’s go then.

Where?

Somewhere less crowded. Do you want to talk about me standing in the middle of this?

Ok, let’s go.

We walked away. That was the beginning of my fall.

I fell with madness, into madness. Doing the dance of Zorba. We were intensely happy.

The Little Word

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:25:00 +0000

It’s my dream
It’s my own dream
I dreamt it lying on a cot
That I was in love with a tot
A mite of a word in some gigantic plot
Hidden, quailing with broken wings
She was a teeny-weeny thing
That one day I wanted to sing
But she wouldn’t come out
Oh! How hard she fought
To stay put on the tip
Of my tongue
There she hung
Right in my mouth
Then shrinking back from my lip
My throat she sought
To drag her out
I tried and tried
Thought so much I almost died
Looked here and there
Got a thesaurus, a dictionary and a chair
The whole day I sat and read
Till they said I had lost my head
But I paid them no heed
As it was a noble deed
To find this word and nudge her out
Frightened she was I had no doubt
To come into the world of men
So to soothe her fear was my yen
I knew she feared why
She must be afraid she would die
But I would tell her that’s a lie
To stay unknown was what was wrong
Instead she should be wafting in a song
If she flew her wings would heal
Never a pain would she ever feel
Hers would be glory in songs and tales
The maiden voyage of a ship that sails
And if she felt these words were untrue
I would read to her what Emily knew
And had once penned down in lines so few.

Ghostworld - The Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 06:57:00 +0000

It was quite reluctantly that I entered Ghostworld. I was only nineteen and enjoying my life. I mean as much enjoyment as a young man of nineteen studying in an all boy’s college could derive out of life - I had never even touched a girl unless they were female relatives - which in general male opinion makes you the owner of a life that pretty much sucks. But frankly it was not all that bad. I had just entered college and was gorging on my new found freedom from strict parental chaperoning, a state that would eventually facilitate my entry into the Ghostworld. Though Chinchionna vehemently disagreed with me when I made this inference, with her belief in predetermination and all – she said I would have died one way or the other as my time had come - I am sure I would never have accepted a bet to go and touch the middle pillar of the Karvi bridge if it were not for my tendency in those days to do anything and everything I was told I couldn’t do. I think my rebellion stemmed from a deep rooted indignation against my father’s over-protectiveness. You shouldn’t go deep into the forest, you shouldn’t climb that high a hill, you shouldn’t go far into the sea – I was met with these platitudes every time my friends had planned an outing to a place where there was the remotest possibility of danger. Usually it ended in his proscribing me from going with my friends till I could prove doubtlessly I wouldn’t be anywhere near doing those things. Agreeing to his caveats would have meant spoiling the trip for the whole group, so most of the times I opted out of the outings voluntarily. Those were the moments I truly felt my life sucked, and I would have given up tens of doe-eyed girlfriends to have my father substituted with a saner specimen.

Chinchionna’s indignant reply to this was terse – in her opinion my claim just displayed my ignorance of the fairer sex; it was because I never had any girl till then, whether doe-eyed or bow-legged, that I was so ready to sacrifice tens of them for a mere father. It appeared she too didn’t have much love lost for fathers, and even lesser for guys who belittled her sex. I had to placate her by saying that I wouldn’t have given up her for getting a better dad; we would surely have worked out some compromise.

Anyway as I was saying, I did accept in one of my rare moments of madness Ravish’s bet to go and touch a pillar of the Karvi Bridge that was right in the middle of the river. It was an extremely foolish decision considering it had rained well a few days ago, so the river was filled nice and proper, and a river in such a state is a not a good place for a brash fellow who has spent his watery life cavorting in bath tubs and calm swimming pools. Ravish didn’t know this – that my experience in swimming was limited to doing laps of swimming pools. His idea of me, and I had played a fair role in developing it so you can apportion some of the blame on me, was that I was a good swimmer now chickening out when faced with the somewhat turbulent waters of Karvi. I came to know this when I was joined in the Ghostworld many years later by Anand, a mutual friend. So Ravish bet me his walkman that I didn’t have the guts to swim to the middle of Karvi, and there being no third person to utter sane words in my ear, I jumped right in the river, more to keep my face and less to keep a Sony Walkman.

Well, I didn’t even manage to keep my life - while nearing the pillar I was sucked in by a strong undercurrent that lashed me against the sharp corners of a rock jutting out from a scraggy formation next to the pillar. It gave me deep lacerations in the left side of my stomach and my back. Writhing in pain, I quickly lost blood, suffered cramps in the cold water, and lost the strength to struggle against the current and come up to the surface. It was a painful drowning that led me to the Ghostworld.

A Dream

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:09:00 +0000

She was like me and unlike me. I was not very different then. I was still a dreamer. I don’t know since when I have been dreaming. When was it, fourteen, fifteen. I don’t remember. Those were the hours, the days, the months when you just dream. Beji encouraged me to dream. She didn’t teach me to dream, that’s what my parents thought. They said she had spoiled me. I would rock for hours on an easychair with my feet up on the table. Once my mother stopped me and asked what I was doing. I told her I was unhappy with the way Ivanhoe ended. I liked Rebecca more than Rowena. Ivanhoe should have loved Rebecca. He was an idiot, so I was trying to think of a better ending. Make him act more sanely. My mother screamed it was time for me to act more sanely. You should have seen the scene. It was damn funny. They blamed it all on Beji. But she was unperturbed. All they said slipped off her as if she was bathed in oil. She told them why the hell were they worrying about my idleness, anyway she was going to give me her money. And she would smirk at me from the sides when they were scolding me, didn’t give a damn what they thought.

That’s what I liked about her too. She also didn’t seem to give a damn what others thought as long as she was sure wasn’t hurting anybody. They could beat their heads to pulp and she could just sit there, grinning at them. I couldn’t do that. I would get excited, troubled, lose myself. And then she would take me to the sides and calm me down. It was funny sometimes. Women are supposed to be more emotional.

At other times she was like me. Dreaming strange things and feeling proud about it. She dreamed of a curve once. It was a white curve to begin with, but every time it looped up, it changed colors. When you touched it drops of colors fell on you. She was not very tall and in a single loop the curve outgrew her. All she could touch was the orange colored loop lying just above the white one. She played with the loop and before long she was an orange girl. She wasn’t happy with her color, so she tried to climb the curve. But the curve suddenly came to life. Shook like crazy and threw her down. Then she discovered it was the tail of a multicolored dragon. In the sky far above appeared a scary mouth breathing flames and bore down upon her. She screamed and tried to run, but before she could have taken three steps, the dragon cut her off. She closed her eyes and braced herself waiting to be burned to ashes. But nothing happened. She slowly opened one eye and saw the dragon grinning at her. Don’t ask me how do dragons grin, that’s what she saw. I like you, the dragon said to her. You are an orange girl, and I like orange girls. I don’t like black girls, and I hate blue girls, but I like orange girls. Saying that he blew a large flame at her scaring her again, but the flame didn’t burn her. It was a cool flame and it smelled nice. That’s how I greet the people I like, he told her. She said good afternoon to him, and told him that’s how she greeted the people she liked, and didn’t know how to do better than that. Apparently he was in a mood for a chat, but suddenly there came a meteor shooting across the sky and fell with a loud boom where they were standing. All around there was blackness and a lot of hullabaloo, and she was falling from building to building, till she finally came to rest in some London home where there were lots of people celebrating one of her old school friend’s birthday. It was a nice birthday but it was a boring dream and so she stopped talking about it. Told me she was really relieved it was an orange loop lying at the bottom of the dragon’s tail and not any other color. She would have been doomed otherwise, especially if it was blue.

I thought I had seen a similar dream sometime. I told her so. But my white curve was not multicolored, it was only white. I didn’t remember the rest of the dream. Only that sometime the white curve became bigger and bigger, looped across the sky and into itself and turned into the petals of a giant flower. I slipped on those petals down inside the flower and fell through its hole into a waterfall, then into a stream. My dream was not interesting or funny. Hers was. But we had similar dreams. Was it a coincidence? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

A couplet from a Mir's ghazal

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:46:00 +0000

Every leaf is aware, every bud knows
Of this love of mine;
But for the flower
For whom I pine,
The whole garden sees my woes

Reminiscences of a Daughter

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:15:00 +0000

I had thought before it was a coincidence that all this had happened. That it could not have been helped, that the gap between papa and ammi had been too large to let papa be nicer to her. Not leave her way alone how she had been. But that night I found out it was not so. He had left her alone deliberately; when he insulted her it was on purpose. He was taking revenge against the world that had snatched away his Trishu, killed his Beji; and ammi in his eyes represented that world - he was taking revenge against ammi when he said those venomous words to her that night. I remembered ammi’s stricken face when he had turned on her and her crying afterwards, and I hated him for making her so miserable. How was he different from those guys whom he so snootily detested? Both were similar, immured in the world of their dogmas, acting on their prejudices, never knowing never understanding or even trying to understand how that hurt people around them. He indirectly claims to be so sensitive and understanding, but he is not. Could he see, ever, ammi’s pain as I did? He should have, isn’t it? He knew her as well and better. Either he was blind then, or worse, uncaring.

But I don’t think he was blind. He knew well what he was doing, that is why he so revered Atticus. He wanted to be like him - in those times when he fought ammi he was standing up for us against her, redeeming us from her stultifying influence. Ammi would not snatch us away the way Trishu had got snatched. And when ammi withdrew or cried after getting stung by him, he had won. I know it’s comical to put it that way, but I think I am right. He would often bandy lines from Mockingbird at her before trying to hurt her, before aiming at her his poisonous darts. And he had chosen Mockingbird precisely because Atticus didn’t seem real, because there was a mild halo round Atticus that he could appropriate. Speaking about Atticus was his beanstalk, on which he could climb to that seventh heaven where he and Trishu had been - from where he thought he had fallen after he had entered the everyday life of drudgery with ammi, after he had begun hating the world. That’s when I realized Mockingbird was a fairy tale too, a fairy tale that suited his intentions perfectly. A fairy tale that would let him hate the world without bearing the guilt for it. A fairy tale of a perfect Atticus. A tragic fairy tale, but nonetheless a fairy tale. Oh! How he loved it because Atticus was never wrong. Never quivered with fear, never burned with hatred. Never got tripped over by his emotions. Always spoke calmly the most sensible, the profoundest of lines. The paragon of justice, the modern Buddha. But did he ever see the modern Buddha was never tested? That for all of Atticus’ trials, Jem and Scout didn’t die under the knife of Bob Ewell. What would he have done if they had? Still talked about justice, still walked around in the shoes of Bob Ewell, still tried to extenuate the murderer for his blind spots? Perhaps he would have. That’s why he was not real, that’s why papa so loved him. Remember how I made you read the book before you met papa. You must have thought me mad, but I was badly scared. I wanted desperately that he like you, and I thought what if he doesn’t? What if he puts you in category of them? He would never outwardly show his dislike; no that would be unlike what he would think was the right thing to do, what Atticus would have done. After all I was an independent person, he should respect my choice. But he would have detested you all the same, tried to hurt you verbally the way he hurt ammi, tried to make you leave me because you were unsuitable for me. All because he would have thought I was a Trishu and I deserved somebody like him.

Sometimes I hated Trishu. We would be sitting in a room, all three of us, and there would be a deep silence. Even if it was broken accidentally, it would be papa talking to me. Between papa and ammi there was no talk, no exchange of looks or gestures, not even the least pretension to any domestic intercourse. They would always be looking in different directions. Ammi mostly at her work, papa at his books because he was reading something, or if he wasn’t then he would be staring vacantly at the ceiling or gazing out of the window. And I would rage why can’t he look at ammi or talk to her once. You even pay a stranger more courtesy. Or perhaps he only paid strangers more courtesy. Then I would imagine he was thinking about Trishu, dreaming about her, and I would feel a strange helplessness, a stab of pain in my heart. More than that. I wanted to stop him from doing so. Throw a stone and break that invisible mirror in which he was seeing Trishu. Grab his head and turn it towards ammi. Look at her. She’s also nice. Why did you marry her if she wasn’t worth looking at? The least vision of papa and Trishu together would set me wriggling; in throes of a feeling that was indescribable, that would leave me bitter all over. I wanted to get my nails on that vision pouring all my hatred into them, and scratch Trishu out of that vision. How could he dream about somebody who was not ammi? I hated love until I met you.

‘Can you tell me something?’

‘What?’

‘Why shouldn’t Monk hate Agnes, hate Oliver Twist?’

An Argument About God

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:27:00 +0000

Six months went by. The seed sprouted into a young and comely Night Queen with a voice that was musical, quite different from the one in which she had first asked the stone with childlike candor, why was he so hard to rest against so that her head was aching from leaning against him for a day, and could he be a little softer, she would be grateful to him for that. The stone, made woebegone by the request, replied that he was sorry but that was the way how he was made and it was not in his power to change himself. But soon there would come powerful northerly winds and they would lift the seed, lighter than a leaf, into their arms and lay her upon the soft ground, where she would find food, water and a comfortable rest. After that he had fallen silent, till the seed had prodded him to ask where was she.

‘In the Himalayas,’ replied the stone in a pensive voice.

‘It’s a beautiful place,’ said the seed, looking down into the valley, where there was an abundance of ladies-mantles and primroses and orchids spread one after another, swaying together in the wind in a cyclorama of newness.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Then why are you so sad?’

‘I wish I could be softer, and make you more comfortable.’

The seed then realized her request had hurt the stone. She tried to think of something to palliate it.

‘But if you were softer, you couldn’t have freed me, isn’t that so? God knows for how long I would have remained inside that locket,’ she said, and was happy the next moment at having thought of such a convincing argument so soon by herself. She felt it meant she was growing up.

His spirits revived by the seed’s words the stone rolled back a bit, just enough not to let the seed fall down. So where have you come from, he then asked her, and the seed replied she had come from a place that was far away down south. There was a Night Queen in a beautiful orchard on the side of a pond next to a big temple in a place called Gaya, where men worshipped a fat man with a very benevolent smile, and on that Night Queen, there was a fruit in which she had lived with many of her friends. The stone, baffled by the chain of references and not understanding much of what was said either, contented himself with asking what was Gaya.

‘Gaya, is a city,’ emphasized the seed.

‘What’s a city?’

‘Huh…’ sighed the seed. She had really come far from civilization.

‘A city is a place where many men live together.’

The stone became curious. He had never seen many men together. Just a few solitary wayfarers, who had sometimes passed by him in their quest for the next resting place.

‘Men live together?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Like sheep?’

‘Not like sheep. They make houses for themselves to live in.’

‘They make what?’

‘Houses. It’s a place in which they go inside, and it covers them up completely, and neither sun, nor rain, nor wind can touch them unless they want it to be so.’

‘How do they do that?’

‘They take… Forget it.’

‘Why?’

‘I have forgotten how they make houses.’

‘Oh! You also lived in one?’

‘No! I lived in an orchard by the side of a pond next to a temple, and a temple is a place where you worship gods, and god is…’

The seed gave up. It was a rather uphill task, explaining things to a stone.

‘I know what god is,’ the birch cut in at this point.

The discovery that the seed could indeed talk had astonished him, and for a while he was in the lookout for a way to join the conversation.

‘I am tall, and so I can see far and hear sharp, and I had once seen groups of men talking about god who lives somewhere yonder, among those peaks,’ he said pointing with his longest branch westward. ‘He is a crazy fellow they said, dark in color, is drunk half the time, and always sits thinking about something with his eyes closed, he has three of them by the way, and woe betide you if he opens his third eye. And that’s not the end; he actually has snakes entwined round his neck! Eeks! I wonder how he survives! Once a krait climbed up my trunk, and I got so scared, I almost fainted. Shook it off as soon as it climbed a branch.’

‘True, snakes are scary,’ agreed the stone, happy to have finally made sense of something and quite disliking god for allowing a snake to curl around his neck, ‘once one of them…’

‘That’s rubbish,’ the seed interrupted hotly before the stone could go further with his tale, ‘god doesn’t have any snake round his neck, or a third eye. He isn’t dark either. He is fat, fair, looks quite good you know, and his face always shines because there is sun behind his head. And he lives not on a mountaintop, but in a temple, where he is worshipped by many other fat men who carry bowls in their hands and go around with their heads bowed. Ya, he thinks all the time, on that I agree.’

‘Why does he think so much?’ asked the stone, getting pretty confused again and latching onto the one trait of god that both his friends agreed upon.

‘How could he have made the world if he didn’t think enough,’ it was the birch. ‘And by the way little girl, nice to know you can speak so early in life, but you should also learn to differentiate between reality and fairy tales. How can there be sun behind god’s head? We all can see the sun clearly. Is there a head in front of it? Don’t believe everything people tell you, men or not.’

‘I think I heard somebody saying god had snakes round his neck!’ was the reply he got.

‘When he’s made the world, he can have anything round his neck.’

‘When he’s made the world, he can have anything behind his head.’

‘Grow up kid.’

‘You stop acting so high and mighty first.’

‘To hell with god, whether he has made the world or not,’ exclaimed the stone, fed up with god by now, ‘why are you fighting about somebody who lives miles away, whether in a temple or on a hilltop. He might do as he pleases with his neck or head and no one the worse for it. Let him be, and think to his heart’s content. We have better things to talk about.’

And so the stone tried to turn the conversation to more cheerful things, but the birch and seed were not convinced and shortly fell silent. Though later on, when she felt the birch was not looking, the seed whispered to the stone that it was likely the birch was right too. The fruit in which she had lived with her friends had once told them that long ago, when god had decided to come down on earth, he was not fat the way men worshipped him in temples nowadays. He was a lean and thin fellow, roaming here and there, making many friends, and telling people good things so that they became happy. And then one day, deciding to go back from where he had come, he had died. But maybe that was not true, and it was probable that while wandering he had just got lost, and had sat down on the hilltop - tired after so much of walking. There he must be still - dark because of sitting in sun for a long time which he must have removed hence - and finding no one else, would have made friends with even such a scary thing as a snake. Quite possible, though she couldn’t imagine how he had grown a third eye or was threatening people with it. He had the most beautiful smile she was told. Maybe he had just grown grumpy with solitude. Hmm… that must be it.

She went on talking like this till the northerly winds arrived in the night, lifted her in their arms, and laid her upon the ground nearby. After that she promptly fell asleep.

The First Kiss

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:25:00 +0000

Celebrations followed the first kiss. Not the kind where you eat nice things, burst crackers, and catching hold of your love by her waist, swing her around and say, ‘hey! Let’s boogie woogie’; but where it takes place inside the heart, hidden, the joy unnoticed by any except for a pair of swallows about who you could wonder, what the hell were they were doing at this time of the evening out on the trees when it was so damn cold, and you sat down at a quiet place in the garden close to each other and yet shivering, tried to get closer, and then face to face, so close, you suddenly found your lips almost touching, and then imitating a nearby dream, reciting the beginnings of its rarefied verses, you let them tantalizingly brush against each other’s, and then again, and again, cupping the verses, drinking, more of them, then missing something deeply, savagely, trying to tear out that which continuously slipped from your hold, the verses now gone and in their place an anger, an intense pain, the strings of a violin tweaked till they were almost torn, and still the scorching want, to pull her inside you, to decimate, you wanted in your arms, nothing.

And then defeated, you parted, and yet it was a sweet defeat, because all that was inside you had gushed out, almost bringing out tears, the biting cold clawing out the slabs in the mountain that had blocked a spring, the unbearable pain replaced by a calm emptiness. And the world looked beautiful, the moon whiter, the snow clad treetops like monks clad in white fur gazing down at you with a beautiful smile and you laughing at what you had just imagined, the night cozy because day was much harsher, you wanted more swallows, and there was suddenly so much of happiness when you remembered the future will bring more kisses.

Passages

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:31:00 +0000

‘A friend, a very good friend,’ he said dreamily. ‘She was so eloquent I remember, explained so beautifully what I felt about that passage, about Maggie. We felt nearness to some passages, she said. They gave us succor, delight, a rousing of anger, a feeling of grief. They were the mason of dreams. Sometimes we passed by them without noticing their beauty, as a person looking for loved ones on a train docked in the station might pass running by their window without more than a glance, his mind consumed by the very desire to find them, disturbed by the joy of anticipation that filled his heart. But often, if we read slowly, the strokes on the paper would remove themselves from their sleeping nests, from their flat world of black and white, whirl up into the air and get transformed into iridescent objects, into frisson of emotions. Through such wizardry had a man once turned moonlight into a dove’s gift to the moon; another had turned the moon itself into a luminous clock; a woman had found bulbs of silvery music rolled inside a lark. They waved the wand of their muse and the letters curled into one another, making us see the bluest lake ever imagined, hear the sweetest song ever sung, kiss the softest lips ever kissed.’

The Lost Word

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:29:00 +0000

‘I was seeking him on orders from ammi, and saw he was searching for something. Searching vehemently, throwing books from his bookcase upon his bed. He was seldom that impatient with books, always treating them tenderly, making a fuss over them. I knew something was wrong then. So I went and asked him what was the matter.

I have lost a word, he said.

Lost a word?

Yes I am looking for this word. She’s somewhere stuck in here, he said tapping his throat, but she won’t come out. I have to find her, winkle her out. Where’s the blasted thesaurus?

Is it that urgent? Ammi is asking for you.

It is. Haven’t you ever lost a word? Don’t you know what it is like?

No, I said confused. I had certainly lost words often, but I was alright with it. Why was he being so impatient?

Then he told me how it was with him when he had lost a word.

It’s almost a physical pain you know, not being able to remember the word, the word that was living on the tip of your tongue. It was like making love to her in a dream. You were almost there but you never did it. The word slipped away.

You couldn’t find her then, didn’t matter where you were looking for her. She wasn’t sleeping in any dictionary; no thesaurus framed her sitting with her pals. Friends feigned they couldn’t understand you when you asked them about her, as if voicing her would be a sacrilege, and you wondered if this was a plot to keep her hidden from you – the word you had loved so, nurturing her, hoarding her carefully in your mind. It seemed as if the whole earth was colluding against you, shielding her from your senses, your thoughts.

Then resisting them all you resolved to remember her, closed your eyes clenched your teeth strained your mind when out of the blue, while the fingers of memory were caressing your eyes, you had this. A pair of twinkles. You felt there was surely an m in her, and maybe maybe an r too…. And then a void. Momentary blackness, the fingers groping hard inside it to claw out something.

An exercise in futility. It was all you got, two flighty drops of rain from a clear sky. Every other letter still kept away, distant, like those paper stars hanging from the roof on festive nights, tempting you to continually stretch for them but then gliding away at the slightest brush with the tip of your fingers, glittering, mocking wherever you looked, never giving you a moment’s rest, but never letting you hold them possess them either. Yes, the letters were like those paper stars. The word was like her.

That’s what he said. And when he had found his word, he was almost ecstatic. Got it, it’s marmoreal, he shouted from his room. Then looking for us he walked in the drawing room where we were sitting, waving a dictionary. It’s marmoreal he repeated, beaming at us.

What does it mean, I asked.

Like marble, he replied. Beautifully white and polished, but at the same time cold and hard. Marmoreal, he pronounced it slowly, stressing the middle syllable and the r, relishing the sound he made. Beautiful word, isn’t it? Gives you a gratifying sensation.’

Partings

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:27:00 +0000

When I found her I was overjoyed. Or rather she found me. Most of the times it happened that way. She was the active one, doing things, taking decisions, defining boundaries. Let’s go to the beach, we shouldn’t talk right now, let’s part. She was the one who left me. We parted at her insistence.

You know partings are not always the same. Some people fade into landscape, slowly but surely. Sadness fills you up and yet you know you won’t raise your voice and call them back. And they will at last blur against the horizon. Some disappear suddenly. Without a moment’s notice. As if they had gone over a cliff. And on some a curtain falls upon from the sky. The bare outlines can still be seen, but everything else gets swallowed up in blackness – of anger and hate. Even nearness doesn’t make any difference. They get lost to you. These partings are endurable. But there is one more that is not - when you clutch the hem of their shirts refusing to let them go and they drag you along with them over a cliff. You part while you are falling. Before crashing into the ground. Before going to pieces. But I didn’t go to pieces when she left me. I should have but I didn’t. Let me break into fragments. Have you ever felt like that? I felt like that. Wanted to cut my heart out it pained so much. All I wanted was emptiness, a moment’s calm. Wanted to clutch it in my hands and crush it, stop it for a moment. Let me be. I took a knife once and scratched deeply a piece of thermocol on which I had pasted the painting of a swan. A thrust on its body and then eight lines drawn outwards from that small dot, like the legs of a spider. A proxy for my breast. Then I took the pill – the key to help me keep my pieces together, preserve myself. I opened the room full of lampblack and rolled into it. The pill of cynicism.

It was all Beji’s fault. She had taught me everything but she hadn’t taught me how to go to pieces. How to accept it, let it happen. She never went to pieces. She was damn sure of herself. Of me. Firoj love is beautiful, she said. It has to be beautiful, that’s when it is true. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s important to remember this cliché. That’s why it has been repeated so many times, become a cliché. Wait and love will come to you. But you have to know what you want, recognize her when she comes. She made me feel that was all. I had just got to recognize her when she came, and everything would fall in place. There was nothing else. A closed world. Just her and me. Two tiny drops in a closed jar, waiting to become one. It happened that way. There was no other world, of complexities, of pain, of helpless drops that were more like puppets. Whom the finger of fate, the boneless wrist of time could flick around as they pleased. Send them somewhere else or leave them to dry. So I couldn’t accept it when they played around with us. I wanted to kill myself. Not my body, but the soul. I wanted to smother my heart in the black flakes. Stop the pain. Replace it with emptiness. I went and got myself married to a girl I didn’t even know.

A Dream

noreply@blogger.com (A world without a view) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:19:00 +0000

She stands, resting her back against the gulmohar tree. He stands in front of her, covering her. It’s a rainy May eve, the sky is clouded and it’s slightly cold. There is no one in the park. At least they cannot see anyone. They stand beneath the crimson umbrella. At times a stray drop of water, after having slept longer than its friends on the bed of leaves and flowers while seeking a temporary halt in the gulmohar, decides to continue its journey downwards, but finds unexpected rest on their bodies instead. One such big drop has just fallen on the swell of her cheeks beneath her eyes, and he watches it, mesmerized, as it slowly travels down her cheek. She expands her eyes by stretching her facial muscles downwards and tries to see the drop he is staring at. She cannot see the drop, but her attempt makes the drop travel faster and then it falls off her chin. He looks up and laughs. She looks comical. His laugh breaks her concentration. She raises her eyes and returns his gaze. She feigns petulance.

What’s so funny?

The way you are making faces.

I am not making faces; I won’t talk to you.

Why?

Come on. I am hurt by you laughing into my face!

I was not laughing into your face.

Literally you were.

Literally let me give you a kiss then. To make that fine.

She pretends for a second as if she is giving that offer careful consideration.

Ok, literally you may, but let me make that a bit unliteral. Have you heard Browning’s views on a kiss?

No, please proceed.

Thank you.

The moth’s kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made me believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide open I burst

That’s all. There is a second stanza and it has to do with a bee’s kiss I believe, but I don’t remember it.

So you want me to kiss you like a moth.

Yes.

He kisses her like a moth. He gently brushes his lips against hers, moving his face side to side. Once. Twice. Thrice. But she is not opening her mouth. It’s suddenly dark. He hits something with his lips. It’s not her mouth. He backs off. She’s not there. She’s there but she is far off. It’s dark everywhere else but he can clearly see her. There is a moth sitting on her mouth. She’s flapping her hands. Her face is contorted. She’s trying to say something. She’s in pain. He feels she can’t breathe. Take that moth of your mouth. But nothing happens. She’s frantically waving her hands. She’s pointing somewhere. What? The police have arrived. They are knocking at the door. She’s inside. Clarence! Clarence! But she can’t reply. She is choking on the moth. There is no one inside somebody says; let’s burn the house. But she is inside! Don’t burn her. Break the door. He is clawing in the air. They are burning the house. Run out! He puts out his hand through the walls. Catch it. But she’s slipping backwards. She’s stumbles over something, falls, and disappears from sight. She’s fallen into a well, and he’s lying over her. He looks into her mouth and there is a dark void. There are no teeth. She has a terrifying smile on her face. She looks horrible. He screams and sits up to find that he was lying curled up on the sides of the burnt badminton court. He breathes. Again and again. The sudden disturbance makes Greasy raise her head and she stands up energetically, but seeing him and no one else she sits back on the ground. She rests her head on her paws and whimpers. He is still exhausted and dizzy and his head throbs because of continuous weeping, and so he goes back to sleep. He is feeling cold.