DUTY-FREE

Tripped Out

2017-10-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Slithering between nature’s beautifully sculpted mountains on coffee-colored plateaus. The afternoon hot air was followed. Each rock was like artist’s private property who had chiseled imagination into a masterpiece. After a steady ascent for about 40 minutes, a group of wide-eyed and supremely excited fellas welcomed us with open arms. The mountain monkeys.

“Homely hotel”, “Luxury hotel”, “Peaceful hotel”. These guys advertised their differentiation bang on. I was looking for one that said “Mount Abu Hotel” but none had that USP, so I settled for luxury presuming peace would come free. Maybe English was the problem. Why else would there be a restaurant with a footwear shop board or even a library welcome post over an abandoned plot. Shooting point became sitting point and sightseeing became sight seen. Maybe they were just thinking ahead.

A charismatic albeit antiquated hill station, Mount Abu was crowded, colourful and chilly. Amongst the loud cacophony of bazaar noises, I immersed myself in everything the streets had to offer. Fruits were sold by the dish, handsome horses were parked next to the parks, and yard carts, advertised as Mercedes, were available for a ride. And even those gave right of way to the cows.

It’s only when you reach your start point back within an hour that you realize just how small the world can be.

The waiting line for our dinner was like waiting for the lottery announcement. If you were the chosen one, those gestures of achievement were priceless to witness: fist air-hammering, voices shrieking, and the most legendary of all, a victorious “YESSS” of the person whose name was called. Food makes people go crazy.

Every now and then, there’d be folks in obscure, lush corners of the town inhaling nature in its purest form and pretend as if meditating when we’d pass by. Maybe that’s why there were no signs of “Beware of pickpockets”. These guys already had their hands full.

But damn, were the people nice! Maybe because they were always high…geographically. I mean the hotel manager apologized for something that wasn’t his fault, a store owner chased us down the street because I paid and forgot to take my shoes, and a tea guy who didn’t have change for 500 put it on the house. I mean if weed does that to people, then screw education, India should make way for cannabis FDI.

And while leaving the mount, I swear I saw a monkey wave back at me. I think the monkey was high.

Because that’s the only explanation.

Wandermust.

2017-09-08T12:32:00.003-07:00

When you’re thrilled to see a kaleidoscope of butterflies, you know you’re in trouble.

This wasn’t difficult. I didn’t have to pick a name from Pinterest’s “10 places you must…”. I didn’t have to backpack across one of those exotic lands TripAdiviser advises you. I didn’t have to fork out a year’s reserves and bargain a frugal life for the later months. All I had to do was say yes.

Mapping the calendars of 10 girls, which magically didn’t create the Great Divide, had reserved us this most sought-after, rustic weekend. A tsunami of countless notifications, pictures, links, updates and lists wondrously hushed to silence as our travel began. Hours of unavoidable public transportation that very literally reminded us of the ups and downs of life managed to shake plenty of things. Just not our spirit.

Throughout the journey, velvet green hills adorned with vibrant valleys and delicate waterfalls beautifully hijacked our surroundings. Finally, miles inside unknown trails of lavish foliage, where time echoed inside the solitude of silence – was our humble abode. A quaint cottage as extravagant inside as it was modest outside, greeted us with its off-grid peace.

Unlandscaped. Unmanicured. Unphotoshopped. It was the purest form of nature. The soothing sounds of water streams, mysterious chirps of tiny birds, gentle gush of winds – had shushed the conversations of 10 over-enthusiastic girls. We were at awe. Not because we’d not taken a trip to the great outdoors before but because we had somehow remembered the priceless feeling of being left alone. No signal, no schedules and no selfies. We all spend our time doing the ordinary things; catching butterflies, dipping toes in rocky pools, squatting down to stare at crabs and crickets, dancing in the rains, taking muddy walks and soaking in every bit of this bucolic beauty. We had all forgotten we had cell phones, Instagrams and ADHD in our worlds of obsession, noise and attention. That weekend, we went back to being basic humans.

Of course, along with karaokes, jamming sessions, card and board games, we did flood our cameras, hysterically laughed, heartily drank and merrily danced, but not before truly living each moment first. We’d never done that before.

And somehow towards the end, inside those jungles of no network, we connected with ourselves.

Keep Distance.

2017-05-09T05:06:00.004-07:00

Rampaging through cold stillness, the swift tracks of this animal left no marks behind. As the morning mist broke against its face, it charged ahead to its determined destination, with no looking back. Not yet at least.

It were as if the NH2 was a bulund darwaza to Delhi’s rural antiquity. The tollbooth darbaans out of uniform, goats flaunting their 4-packs, with their guarding dog off-duty. Sugarcane stalks on their way to meet the footpath ice. And all around, roofs of houses polka-dotted of dung cakes.

The most familiar of all though was this; a man ever-so-often with a plastic PET on his way to check clear his morning business. And here was my face, scrunched up like used aluminium foil. Thank goodness, I wasn’t keeping count. Or was I?

Sitting inside our more than comfortable car, here I was. Chomping on chips and switching radio channels before every un-peppered song could salt me down. The FM at this A.M had no ads. The sound of music sounded even more musical.

The entire trip, my mother had smiling eyes as she played her own travel games. She was identifying each tree down to its cellular level; the fruits, leaves, roots, the stage of photosynthesis. Horticulture. Agriculture. Bacteria culture. She even had a story to what chores may be happening inside that distant shed behind that babool tree. How she knew that was babool from a google maps worth of distance, I didn’t have enough caffeine to comprehend.

Arrey home loans ki kitni chinta hai. Kya hum hamare sapno ka ghar kabhi nahi le payenge?

This wasn’t what my dad said. This was what the FM dad said. The radio ads had started.

And so did my impatience to get to Taj. Okay, Shah Jahan built it. Okay, he cut off the hands of all those workers. Okay, it is one of the world's wonders. Horn Okay Please. Why did trucks continue to slap that on their bums? Anyway, the highway had ended and now it was one mid-construction flyover followed by another followed by another followed by 10, 11, 12 more. Maybe I should have been keeping count of this one.

Each time the tires swiveled up dust, I coughed inside. Each time we stopped for gas, I took out my sanitizer and poured half the bottle on my hands. And each time someone leered inside the window, I became Kangana Ranaut in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai.

What? I was on holiday. I could act however I wanted.

Taj was lost in transit. It was blistering hot outside. Or so I am guessing. I was leaning against my push pillow with my AC/DC and drinking diet coke.

Agra’s Best Panchi Petha. The Best Panchi Petha Of Agra. Panchi Petha, The Best of Agra. Shop board after shop board, the same message to the same audience with the same words. The only difference was that by now I wanted to try some.

If only Taj stopped playing so hard to get.

Finding the tenth cloud

2016-09-14T08:55:00.003-07:00

I am a leaf. I am a leaf let loose in the woodlands of consciousness.

You can wrench your head high because you take young morning walks or meditate ascetically, or because you think you admire trees more than others, which makes you a nature-aficionado. But it doesn’t.

I am cemented in ticking time trying to fracture its walls. But in freedom, I fondle the falling mist and nuzzle with dirt.

Each new green-adventure erases my past green-adventures. This trip to the mountains, I saw that rolling hills are shades of shadows and light, mellow with ripe greens of great ups and lows. I saw that forest fog and clouds come close enough to kiss the vapor off of each other and disperse without a trace. I saw that if you whisper to a horse close enough and caress its neck, you can almost fathom how happy he is to be in the plateaus of home.

I am naïve —even if brown. I befriend the wind, the wood, the water and the wildlife. But perish with effluence. Without saying a word.

Velvety lavenders carpeted both sides of the road and ever-so-often a thread of delicate stream sprung down—whistling a white sonnet. The waterfall they all led to was rightfully its mamma—a roaring force of nature and a dangerously beautiful creation. The frigid waters were a reminder to leave no tracks behind but its gracious summoning came to be powerfully endearing.

I am desperate to be a wing of independence but once I’m on my own, I’m weak enough to trust a foe. I look out at the butterflies and the squirrels and cry inside because I can never survive on my own. Not long enough.

The only sanctity of these woods is that they are largely untouched—the self-sustaining, uninterrupted and breath-taking piece of the planet. The prolific soil and the fruiting trees and the hunting deers needed each other and every time one of them fell short because of external dynamics, the cycle was pricked. So I made sure. I came, I saw and I left no trace.

I am wet and loose and have my sides now gnawed out. But I lived a full live. I saw all seasons, I blossomed and fruited, and I contributed back to nature. Sometimes outside my will. It was only when I was snapped-out from my core, I realized that it was not freedom I seeked.

Tuition To-Let

2015-12-30T22:27:00.000-08:00

(Bell rings)

Mom: “aayiye”

Two boys, Suraj and Santosh aged 10 and 12, enter the house carrying loaded schoolbags.

Mom (to Santosh, the older one): “Waah. Tumhara bracelet bahaut achha hai”

Suraj: “Yeh bracelet nahi hai. Kutte ka patta hai”

(Bursts of laughter)

This is the only Hindi they speak.

The boys’ mother is the domestic help in our house, Padma, whose monthly income from all her houses is roughly Rs.4000. Her husband, Dharam Singh, is a watchman earning Rs. 5-6000. The sporadic nature of their jobs means that their incomes are as mercurial. And they have four children to feed.

Mom, a committed coaching evangelist, passionately aspires for every child to be in school and to do her part in educating as many children as she can. She’s been doing it for 32 years.

She teaches these two boys now, all their subjects: Hindi, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, for two hours every day. Sundays are also a part of that.

It was abstruse getting the boys come and study for two extra hours aside from their school, when they could be crafting their per diem-shenanigans.

Santosh was one of those. A rebellious, mischievous boy who was two years behind in school. It took several months of wheedling, patience and a volume-full of care to get him in for a couple days a week. Now, he never misses a day.

His brother Suraj, a smart, polite and ever-smiling boy always had the study germ within him but never had the opportunity to team with right tutelage. He bristled with excitement when he found out that someone would teach him every day, at a home.

This however, was a coarse-sloped trek. The boys, for their age and class, lacked the basics; of each subject. For a domain that is seething with text and sensible scribbles, theirs was empty. They had no notebooks, no checking of work done anywhere, no words in their diaries. They had no syllabus to share, date-sheet written, or any checked material from school. This was necessary not just to evaluate where they stood in school but to start.

So my mother went to their school; a Hindi-medium, private school. There was no playground, and a room with handful of books; a make-believe motif for a library, that was unlocked only during the external inspection period—and only to inspectors. The principal, a 60+ man who also owned the school, was a crude, crass gent and most unwelcoming of the thought that my mother wanted to speak with him—an outsider.

Throughout the one hour, requested out of great difficulty, there was plenty of discussion. And all of it was disobliging.

When my mother informed him that she was teaching these boys every day and wanted to see their test results to understand where they stand, the principal grunted and said,

“Aaj kal free mein kaun padhata hai?”

She reminded him that these boys came from a very poor family and have no educational guidance outside school and through some extra hours, they can perform better. He snapped again.

“Free mein kyun koi kuch karega? Mujhe ek hospital batao, ek neta batao jo free mein kuch karta hai. Toh aap kyun karoge? Agar charity ‘charity’ hoti, municipal schools ki haalat toh kya hoti!”

It was like swallowing paper for my mother. Why was money becoming the agenda here? She then told him that the boys did not have the dates of exams or material of what they were supposed to study and she wanted that information for a better assessment.

“Log hamanre system mein interfere karein, humein pasand nahi”

He proudly added that organizations had approached him to contribute free lectures to students and he refused. She was out of question.

“Time wastage hain yeh sab. Bade bade school mein yeh naatak hota hai”

The principal was operating the school on his own terms. Some of his brazen ideologies included children to not have a games period till class 5. They didn’t need to play!

He was only sceptical throughout the talk, presuming that he was under a sting operation and mom may be a reporter. Threatened and truculent, he advised her to not meddle in his school and leave the kids as they are, because they had no future anyway, being a watchman’s sons.

This was the last thing he said and last thing mother wanted to hear.

From a 40-marks paper, where both the boys were failing earlier, getting 5-6 marks, they now get 20-25 marks studying at our home. Santosh, who hated the sight of books, now can’t wait to do math every day. Suraj is bursting with curiosity and always starved to study more.

Of course, they need to be incentivized. Unlike their previous tuition teacher who asked Santosh to knead her legs and buy her vegetables from the market, the incentives now come to the boys. Treats, gifts, clothes are worth their unsullied smiles.

“Bye! See you tomorrow, Aunty!”

And ten minutes later their mother rings the bell.

Pause in Paucity

2015-12-05T23:14:00.001-08:00

As your flight from the Mumbai airport upraises into a crest of comfort, you can sight the adjoining public squalor around the runway. And you cower.

Go to Gurgaon’s swish sky-scrapers’ construction sites and right in the middle of the workers’ racks you see a hulking billboard that says “Book your apartment today!”

It’s few of those ironies that bring a different emotion in each wrinkle of your face. India is a country that is scraped sore with wounding stories that are part of someone’s every day. You don’t need to be associated with an NGO or a governmental organization to see this. You need to want to see this.

My train passes this every day and it makes me want to padlock my eyes but peek through at the same time. This is what I see within those two seconds of pass. There are tin houses and through the creaks of one, is a mother cooking on charcoal and midst of its asphyxiating fumes are two children getting their garbage bags ready for the day. The third is on a cradle made of the same garbage bag.

The scum once seeping down has desiccated and the pipes leak water through its kelp strands. Trash aligns the peripheries of the square footage and flowerpots inline within. The old—a shapeless contour of bodies barely coated with soiled shirts and ripped slacks, push their vegetable carts with their hands that now look like a papier-mâché of veins and skin. Candy stores of the rich is cotton candy here. Laundry is by the hand-pump. Salons are open-air and so is defecation. And temples every few meters.

I see men playing poker outside and their wives drying clothes on the tracks’ separators and I know that this is where it shelters. The inequity. But that is the last of anyone’s worries.

First is vulnerability.

Emancipating Religion

2015-10-25T03:03:00.004-07:00

When you are the lovechild of a theist, deist, agnostic AND an atheist, you can’t blame your genes when you are caught in a state of moral abidance and your morale is rolling with your eyes.

Stones are turned sacred with the swoosh of a red paste. The unemployed drape on orange and they become holy avatars. Elderly frown upon you when you wear clothes 3/4^th instead of 7/4^th. But let’s not dive into the religious woes that woo the committed and boo the casual. Freedom to follow prevails but what about freedom to not? Why must all devout expect the respect of all those who swear by other things. Why can’t religion be emancipated?

You take the offering every time you are offered because if you don’t you are disrespectful and if you do but you don’t eat you are disrespectful and if you eat but you don’t like you are disrespectful. While chanting slippers are taboo but while ornamenting the place of worship slippers are all right. All gods are equal but if you are a devotee of only one, that’s all right. You need a yellow flower but you can muster an orange one that’s all right. There are exact requirements but substitutes are all right.

Why can’t others wake up and take in cigarette smoke instead of camphor smoke? Why can’t others have a malt instead of milk after meditation? Why can’t others wear ripped jeans instead of khakhi on festive occasions? If there are rights for gays and rights for education, there should be rights for those who are not religious. Let’s not turn the unbelieving into profane.

Religion is Pareidolia. The hierophany we create in everything living and non-living makes it so easy. Easily found. Easily followed. Maybe that why we stopped looking for God a long time ago. HE makes it into our food.

In an enigma of faulty reassurances and duplicity of faiths, we assure others and re-assure ourselves that religion is mandatory. Denouncing those who breathe non-incense air as nonsense gives us pleasure. But no, we are not mulish!

We are religious.

Mis-carriaged

2015-10-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

Traveling in the Mumbai local is like shopping at the seasonal bridal dress clearance sale in New York. Merciless.

Before war, all ladies are poised and peaceful and lady-like. They saunter with sophistication and sporadically peep up to see which people are peeping back at them. Just when you thought that blue-gold dress looked white, you discover the true colors.

As the train arrives, the women on that other side are pulling their purses over their shoulders —looking at the train — looking at you. This means war. Their face is a whole new QR code. Furrowed brows, pursed eyes, gouged gaze and all leered at you. “I’m going to get that seat, bitch”. “Not before I kill you first”. These are actual thoughts. Trust me.

The experienced ones will broadcast back the same glower of power but if you’re a first-timer, get a doula. It’s a morning workout inside. Aerobics without a routine. Interval training with fewer rest periods. Zumba without zest. You twist like a pretzel, jump hurdles, and flex every muscle that can be flexed. Durations differ. The sweat is the same.

You will never hold anything more passionately than you grab the grab handle; your seatbelt for the train. And with every spasm on the wheels, you vacillate like a purple fountain grass on a squally day and struggle to not sail away into the pastures of perspiration.

Other commuters’ moisture will certainly rub off their destiny (or doom) on you. Their hair will spank you. Their bags will sucker-punch your face. And they will commit all types of fouls, and create all news ones unimaginable. You’ve got to parry before you are pounded.

And by the end of the journey, after all the violent footsies and seat wedgies, when the hormones have returned to the hypothalamus and humans have returned to being human, you exit the platform feeling like a week-old package of complimentary peanuts.

Exactly like that.

Shot to Fame

2015-10-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

The depth of dignity we cascade to our heroes is unfortunately more partisan than preferential. When it comes to looking up to or bowing down for, our senses are skewed in such sketchy proportions that we forget—there in fact, is a difference.

Malala Yousafzai. The red riding 18-year-old, who has been smiling through the storms of suppression; has a story that’s trespassed the tankers of Taliban. She is the new-age hero whose cape is wrapped round her face and who has no alternative identity.

But would Malala be Malala if she hadn’t been shot? Evaluating a fight’s merit with the degree of damage it results to, cannot determine sincerity. We wait for bullet-holes and deathbeds to decide whether to bequeath a wreath on a struggle of self-destruction.

In an oligopoly of awards— institutions are eager to baptize Malala with their pious labels and holy cities are pouring honour from their governance grails. A storm of religious and righteous bestowments begins with each new face. Every NGO, International Organization, Foundation, Magazine, Media, City, State and Country has soaked Malala with such grandiose gestures that it is difficult to function without the support of supremacies.

Yes, we need them. Their reserves, resources and references altogether compose a character certificate for public figures. Nobel Peace Prize makes one statement. Appearance on the Ellen show makes another. Hope is selling by TRPs and trophies. Campaigning of this enormity has camouflaged the cause itself. And this incessant necessity materializes a brand ambassador, When what we need, is a foot soldier.

Alfred Wegener. Gregor Johann Mendel. Henry David Thoreau. Erudite individuals trying to shine truth through the opacity of society and honoured after death. That was then. We’ve gotten better. We now pounce to pronounce people with titles before their final inhalations.

The plinth of recognition has become the plight of expectation. But instead of constellating the doomed stars of wounded champions, we must first, discriminate the significance of a cause away from its casualty.

Education Eureka Exploded

2015-06-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

After 17 years of playing beer pong with coursework, classes and college, dyeing in Monday blues, indulging in food porn, waking up from caffeine comas, and surviving a day full of banter, sarcasm and capitalist hypocrisy, I learnt one thing.

The entire education journey was one, very long video game. The Assassin’s Creed kind. Absolute judgement, fraudulence, teamwork, atonement, ethics divide was all part of the academic package deal. It was the most exhausting, exhilarating encounter. All the needed culture was absorbed through the Greek yogurt, American holidays, British royal baby news, Italian bag and German cars. News wrap-up summed up in tweets, headlines and keeping with the Kardashians. Food was take-out or order in. Chores were an unpaid internship. Holiday was pre-planned and homework was postponed.

But there were prudent moments. Meeting deadlines at their very dead-end; leaving almost visible skid marks, dealing with narking team members either with putting up or pouting out, experimenting with exam studying styles: the chanting, the coping, the copying. We thought we were done with peer pressure and puberty when the pleasures and pressures of dating drama and dealing douchebags to drama duds came to picture.

The more serious times called for silencing phones and shutting the dorm door. I was always a little extreme. Study till the brink of forgetting again, memorize with every trick in the books, study through the nights and through the weathers and expect the best for this unrest. And I succeeded. At the last session of this video game, being pronounced a distinction holder, an MBA topper and a gold medalist, I asked my father, as a joke, if grades matter. My father—the perceived great grades gamer turned to me, smiled and shook a gentle, clandestine, no.

Modi becomes a yogi

2015-06-21T03:01:00.004-07:00

When the PM got up at AM to attempt the Guinness, a sundry synthesis of students, soldiers and spectators woke with him to set the records straight. His RSS feeds were delivered over a turquoise yoga mat, paying tribute with the tri-color draped around the yogi doing the yoga. June 21, 2015 was all about mantra, mudra and of course, Modi.

No he wasn’t twisted around like a golden pretzel like Ram Dev and nor was he draped with the yoga toga that seems to have no problem in convincing nervous followers to close their eyes while exercising. Not that elastic Baba is anything but a grandiose Guru. But the glorious nirvana rays were on Narada Modi today.

Today was not about the poses. Or the exotic dance form. Today was about the asanas that the world knew correctly to identify; one more to the added dictionary of Karma. Thankfully there was no sad in the Sadbhavana that Modi preached for. This mass demonstration was a mass celebration that comes at a rare sight; without the violence and protests and screams of incoherent rattle. Instead of the clichéd retired, aged sages were students along the path at Rajpath; for once teaching the elders to practice.

And as the sun finished up its Suryanamaskar, the rains immediately came down for a performance of their own.

Market Pulse and Minus

2014-06-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

For a company every boardroom, at some point during the course of its tenure, has the inescapable tendency to become a boredroom. But like every mandated law of history this one too comes with its perceptible exception.

For a neophyte, the future workplace is made up of some delusions, notions and some rumours: A keyed up floor with more business suits than bodies shouting at scrollers, screens showing an array of charts and graphs with the symbolic red and green arrows with traders earnestly entering triple decimal point figures on systems. This is what the movies and TV shows make all of us visualize, or at least to unacquainted apprentices. But where I did my internship it was forexclusive.

Lets think of the treasury as a business picnic at the most teeming of all green grounds: Bloomberg. Placing a purchases order on the cart and then switching it for a plain vanilla optionworth at least a thousand millions with a rather relaxed option of making balloon payments. But when the bid and ask gets hostile, the nearby volatile Middle Eastern lake ripples with coarse effects of dark pool liquidity with black swan testing and continuous daisy-chain effects all along the brim of the economically-dominating waters. The golden parachute in the near sight lifts the anxiety above ground, at least momentarily. And when the sun starts to yawn and settle into sleep, the Japanese candlestick charting will bring the stars into light. And then its all about how you want to come: long or short, depending on your spread.

Don’t get mistaken though. Its not anything like a picnic.

In layman’s language, treasury business is unceasing, interminable and needs almost painful amounts of single-mindedness, and while multi-tasking. The magnifier has to be constantly adjusted to track on market rates, economic conditions, political announcements, world scenarios while zooming in to the business needs and agendas. And no matter how much we deny and defy it, emotions always find that minuscule margin and lever up the negotiations.

And while all this happens during successive blinks, the entire work will rollover to the next awaiting period for another sucker’s rally.

The Foxtrot of the Wolf

2014-06-07T10:37:00.002-07:00

Last month was one with the Rise and Demise of Modis. Pardon my words as I do not want to pronounce the newly crowned King, dead. The He of Hercules is very much glowing in the halo of the capital’s heat. But where the bands of the BJP were honking the headlines after their 30-year dry spell, the ticker below was reading remorse for the end of Leela Palaces’ creator Mody. Why one Modi got a TV-load of more attention than the other Mody was regretfully expected.

The V of victory that NaMo has been parading is actually a mocking slingshot aim to the last regime that is now just remains of flames and ashes. And one that Mr. Modi will sweep out with his Clean Ganges campaign.

The poll season this time round was no less rousing than a pole dance. There were flamboyant performers with their influential moves on the dais, synched jazzy songs to complement their seductions, blasting music from the speakers to set the floor vibrating, followed by shrill hooting and a rain of bills when the public was enamored. It was certainly a sweet 16 for the BJP after their 16 years of win. But apart from the enter and entertainment, the polls had a pollen full of drama. The kissing of parliament steps and the tears of political emotion all greased and increased the temperature to an already roasting country. The cymbals of his symbolic gestures have stirred the pot to release an patriotic fragrance.

RSS, the Spartans of Hindus, has always had their metadata and files on tough cookies. And this time again the RSS feeds for the BJP was all in the critical format-supporting xml files of xxl size.

The swearing has been completed, each of its kind- above and below breaths and now the entire country awaits for bits and bytes to bite off with their evening Chai. The hullabaloo and havoc of the nation can either have the B J Pee or it can give them that instant ignition to drive the country to a stable economic condition with a rear that reads: Horn OK BJP.

No dues.

2014-05-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Between some heartaches and handshakes, finals and denials, fire and ice, do’s and drools, yellows and blues it has all been a jazzy papier mâché of one ripened teenage dream. Now, nostalgic glimpses are flashing and the tender sore of leaving everything behind has started to cuddle.

Those days where warm tears skipped down our cheeks and plunged into the pages of our alleged diversion and those late nights with yawny mornings resulting in droopy eyes and crabby moods. Caffeinated shots and aerated guzzles to take-outs and leftovers, we are suddenly so proud, so protective about everything post graduation had to offer; from tea at induction to tequila at ceremony.

Relationships we shared with our classmates, social groups, teachers, juniors, staff and strangers all as if played a sonata on a rubber band. There were days where some came so close that everything else around them became a bokeh and then moments where our infuriation exhaled fumes so hot beads of sweat appeared on our foreheads. Through the searing summers and nippy winters, the elasticity of hot and cold has somehow loosened our hostility and immaturity and cushioned us to become slightly more soft, tolerant. Or so we would like to believe.

We filled our famishes with flavors from every fabric. From the soft foam of our espressos and smileys on our lattes to the sprinkles of sunny showers and the browns of dusty fields, music from the dance parties and smell of freshly melted wax from birthday parties. Vapors of loud colors sprayed our everyday, embellished under diverse forms of music and merriment. Made-to-order.

Crisscrossing our conduits through the laughs and lies we voyaged through the most magnificent times of any student; one where we were looked upon with respect and esteem and where we reciprocated with that branded student sparkle. Because that’s how we identify ourselves: young adults who came in with seasoning and spice and who leave with prudence and many more stories to swank about. And perhaps exaggerate.

The bell’s going to ring and school, for once and for all, will end.

Zimmerman-slaughter?

2013-07-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Sex, drugs, violence. There are some issues that are stark right or wrong, black or white. But not this one. Certainly not this one. Before the prosecution jumps the gun, if its acceptable to say so, and calls it a hate crime, the defense would assert that the baseless, heinous indictment itself should be punishable.

This was the opening statement of George Zimmerman’s lawyer. Or it could have been. Every citizen of every race was involved in this case. Diss the democrats, piss on the system, wear the flag as your underwear, parody public icons, upload a mimickery of Sarah Palin, rap your frustration in a new single, shred down politicos in late night shows and it was all allowed; but when it came to the two races; tacitly in a cold genocide, America was never a free nation.

It was like the most taboo satire taking place in an open theatre. Mind the analogy as there is absolutely nothing ludicrous about this one. But it certainly seemed like a sick joke. A white man shooting a black one. The history, facts, truth, trial all took in a melodramatic gasp with just that being exposed. The public on polls, protests, and papers all had their own point of views. Even President Obama couldn’t stop himself; a needless heedless comment right before the trial perhaps. He really should have maintained diplomatic border relations. The jury should have consisted of 6 blacks and 6 whites, if the issue was ever about racial violence!

Even after the verdict, the surveys continued: being broken down into states, regions, then race. The great African – American Divide (hyphen intended ) appears greener, sometimes on that side of protests and sometimes on the facing side, eventually ending in a grey ground. Or was it stand your ground? The self-defense law may just need to be defended from itself after this.

Libor‐ated

2013-07-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

When the interest of interest is acquisitively manipulated by the monetary institution itself, it’s just a matter of time zone before the dollar is converted into a mere wooden nickel. The country may have obliged blessings of God through Annuit Coeptis but the people certainly were not amused with this amuse‐bouche. And this time the corrosion of corruption broke all grounds as the scandal, almost impressively, started with tainting the rate submissions even before the officials down the government quarry had a chance to mine illegally. It was almost like the United States lost its independence from England all over again as Libor smoothly scammed the system reducing it to a warren of smoke and mirrors.

Banks in England deceitfully schemed their interest rates in attempts to maximizing their gains and profits. Since the US markets use Libor as well, the unfortunate effects ultimately percolated through its economy. From student loans to mortgages, the financial products that used Libor as a basis for reference rates were shaken from this farce and there was terrible turmoil when the discredit came to light.

Murmurs of the Libor case had started back in 2008 but the New York Federal Reserve hushed them down. However, when the size of the scam as damaging as this started rotting the country’s financial products, it was finally time for a shakedown and what tumbled out were insider operations that had raised the bar just too ambitiously and pretentiously high. And this time it was too little too late to write memos of ‘urgency’. The people finally knew.

The banks of England were fined and US had to pay their own dues but apart from the billions of dollars and pounds in a grinder of losses and gains, the common man’s concern became of the classified networking. The trigger hairs of this flytrap had already been detected years ago, but reached the public ears much later. Sensitive talks, settlements, calculations and cover-ups all took over 4 years to be exposed. Earlier, scams were instigated by one or few individuals down the system but this fiasco originated from the supreme institution itself; the Central bank of England. It became a helpless tragedy for the public: the system cheating the people, not the other way round.

It seems as if Big Brother wasn’t paying too much attention. Earlier in 2012, the Murdoch debacle shattered the media industry and everyone else around the world. Libor follows next in this exposé‐succession. Its an all‐new season of scams of ‘England Exposed’!

The Sex Affair

2013-07-11T05:19:00.004-07:00

A nervous teen anxiously ganders the school soccer practice from in-between the bleachers; not in hopes to make it to the next tryouts but to score the midfielder. There’s also the adolescent who longs to talk and touch and desperately kiss the girlfriend. This story is about the boy watching soccer practice and the girl wanting to kiss her girlfriend.

Hold it. The reaction that instantaneously ignited after you read the last line. Hold onto it before the umms and hmms come out so as to deliver the “right” response. Because it’s the one you have, not pretend to have.

There are the stifling supporters who are ready to strip and show you how comfortable they are with the gay SOS going on until you are too. Then there are the animated adversaries with flushes of shame dropping down their heads and averting their eyes. But it’s that third group, those who pick a side just to eschew any controversy, which really is to worry about.

There’s no denying how much men love girl-on-girl action; porn, video games, or actual fights. But those very men turn into court-room drama actors when the lesbians rally for legal rights?

Let’s not get Jesus involved in this one. This is not just any hormonal hallapalooza creating hullabaloos. The LGBT have come a long way to prove what they should not have to. More than sexual urges this is about the feeling of belonging and blending in a group. The confusions, chaos, aches, anxieties, have all been whirling too much too long to create the hurricane of acceptance that is today. But just as it’s important to give approval to those belonging and believing in them, shouldn’t the same be given to those who do not?

The advocates may be termed as liberals but that does not make those watching the protests parochial. Disagreeing and biasing are not the same. Those against gay marriages can still accept them and mend their own ways. “Backward”, “narrow-minded”, “haters” are just as unfair as “creepy”, “un-natural”, and “abnormal”. Pick a side because you believe in it not because it’s the trending way to believe.

“To each its own” works both ways. And that is what should not be forgotten.

Whistling from the Den

2013-07-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

When Dan Brown first published Digital Fortress in 1998, the plot sent a nuclear explosion throughout readers’ worlds with its teetering effects still radioactive. When the foundation of a fictional fortress is chunks of concrete truth, the novel becomes all the more pier-to-peer solidified. Brown was playing in the safe territory by creating a marvelously high-speed car chase of words on an exceptionally classified terrain: The NSA.

While it was Tankado that created the tornado in the novel, his doppleganger is Snowden today. When Thomas L Friedman disclosed incredible insider secrets of the corporate world in The World is Flat, it was termed as cognizance. When Geroge Orwell wrote 1984 it became hugely popular for its revelation of public surveillance. But now when Edward Snowden vocally makes authentic disclosures instead of creating a work of literature; he becomes a threat to national security.

Snowden has not really come out of the exposé-pen just yet. In fact, he hides in it for now, still deciding whether he should find refuge in Caracas or otherwise have his carcass feasted by the NSA, bone by bone. Obama may be shutting down Guantanamo but he certainly would not hesitate to send another resident there, especially when the matter germinates underground his own government.

It’s almost like Julian Assange formed a secret society with WikiLeaks and like Edward Snowden new recruits will soon follow. Snowden has so far not been convicted; just wanted not warranted, then why is the United States playing bounty hunter by canceling his passport and calling international borders to deny him asylum? If this is a security issue, shouldn’t the public, of whose security is being compromised in the first place, be aware of the NSA’s activities concerning their own privacy? If only Dan Brown or George Orwell had revealed what parts were non-fiction in their books. No wonder the sales of their books are proliferating once again.

Just under half the population of the United States believe Snowden is no criminal; survey-wise at least. He has only briefly disclosed what the NSA has been doing and who. In his latest interview he said that “We’re in bed together with the Germans”*. Perhaps all of this is too dirty a secret not to be made into paparazzi. The mélange of Assange and Snowden may have just made it ugly coyote. In collaboration with several private companies, countries* and collaborations, the NSA is peeking into bedrooms and bathrooms, just without an avowal. From the Queen of England to a criminal of Illinois and every person of every alphabet in between, the NSA has its cookies stored everywhere.

The NSA may deem that majority of the common public is too common and thus do not need to know what Snowden leaks over a loud hailer. They are not worried about their phones being tapped or their facebook profile being tracked. But Snowden making headlines everyday is telling us otherwise.

The NSA’s sovereignty and control is severely chilling: TEMPORA, Stuxnet, CDN are just few of its tentacles. And for the sake of national security it’s for theirs to sting. But isn’t whistleblowing blowing whistle on illegal and dishonest behavior of an organization? The real question is: from whose side of too much is too much?

If you’re part of that common population, you already know the answer.

*We refers to NSA

*Germany, UK

Morsified

2013-07-09T06:41:00.001-07:00

The sagas of sacred scarabs, gales of the gothly and godly wonders, consecrated scriptures on the perennial papyrus are all just coming down to pulp. The instant nexus of Egypt is now being deterred from tombstones to turmoil.

Politics is an implicitly relentless and rigid crusade between the liberals and the conservatives but when left and right get a bottom as big and sensitive as religion, the top becomes an un-proportionate configuration. Morsi was the first President democratically-elected but was hotly removed just after a year in office by the military army. He should have known that democracy can also lead to demolition.

There was obviously no Mubarak* in Hosni Mubarak’s regime and more importantly than the world knowing that it was time to voice for a change, the people of Egypt knew. June of 2012 was supposed to be the redemption resolution but ended in a rancorous revolution. Yet again.

Morsi tried to build his presiding tower with Legos on a dais that was too vulnerable and miserable to his Islamist ways. The country has a part shooting up fireworks to celebrate the ousting of Morsi while the other is shooting those who celebrate. There are extremists, elitists, liberals, revolutionaries and those with no side at all trying to cloak the country in their own cotton-wrapping but leave the economic state mummified instead.

Ruling with religion; how much of religion and what of religion in a country that is trying to break-free of the political-Islamist ways is indirectly confirming the axiom that family and business don’t mix. Because they don’t.

The Brotherhood, just like the medieval-fantasy show, is all a Game of Thrones.

*Arabic for blessed

This Blows

2013-06-26T07:36:00.003-07:00

The importance of impotence awareness erected to position by the boon of this blue. Pfizer brought back the riser, not only out of bed but on it, and with warranted eroticism. I mean egotism. The introduction of this linctus spawned in a sensational stimulation-not just privately but publicly within the masses. May it be a celebrity practicing celibacy, idolatries wedged in adulteries, a real SOS call, old-timer with the hands tired, a shy gent who wished his big feet got a standing ovation elsewhere, or a pensioner who wanted his income well-spent. It was a medical marvel.

Within a short span after its release, Viagra became the fastest selling drug in the US. It’s only a wonder that public icons didn’t name their kids after it. The patient-friendly pill however is no longer patent-friendly and this means that the price is expected to fall from £10 a capsule to £1; just the price though, nothing else.

They say weddings are a billion dollar industry and divorces are half that, but in between those is a pill worth $2bn a year. It’s an unconventional nature’s cycle perhaps. The news of Sildenafil getting off patent may just arouse more hormones as the treatment is to become inexpensive and more accessible, which will stipulate sales significantly (hesitant to use sizably). Maybe the price drop wouldn’t matter after all. The prescriptions may even come in latex and then ribbed for extra pleasure!

Some of the greatest inventions happened by mistake but who knew that alongside treating high blood pressure the drug would contrarily give a high elsewhere.

The Ru Pees

2013-06-20T11:46:00.004-07:00

The Indian currency has plummeted to the last stage of its mid-life crisis. 60. Nobody likes that number: the black&white era of television, the letter grade it brings on a report card, the age to be declared a senior citizen and certainly not as the freeway’s speed limit. The country’s monetary value* is a truncated icosahedron and just how they are supposed to be; hollow on the inside. 60 once again, has proven to be a semi perfect number and the finance minister would definitely agree on this one.

The brokers are broke, the ruling party is hung-over, the central bank is tanked, the traders are taxed and the country is axed. The market recently fell 500 points and the experts, analysts, trader gurus are all calling in sick to work. Bloomberg has no bloom and more gloom on its channel, ET is just like the movie ET that leaves the watchers with a seep of weep down their faces, NDTV Profit has competitors spoofing their channel to ‘NDTV Shortage’. The market morning has now become mayhem mourning.

Being sweet sixty only means that the currency will need a hearing aid to go along the walking stick it already had, so it can listen to the country grieving over the decade’s debacle. The trembling hand of the economic condition had been stroking inflation on its expensive fur in efforts to lull it to sleep but the recent developments has now slapped it on the back, with the donkey now running frantically around the money-spinning mill.

No one is appreciating the depreciating rupee and the S&P BSE India Sensex is more like S&M on the financial burden; except its just pain and no pleasure. The central bank is not expected to burn its foreign reserves so it will most likely burn bridges that came to this road in the first place; the one less traveled. With reserves diminishing, monetary value crashing, fiscal stability quivering, the country’s Matador is luring investors with the red cape of bullfighting-except he forgot that at the moment, inflation is more like the bull in a China shop.

* against the US Dollar

**The title is hereby published with all due respect to the Indian Currency

Fortitude Gets a Miscarriage

2013-04-29T02:47:00.002-07:00

It’s time to fall out. We tell ourselves that when the most routing, repugnant stratums of frustration raze through our deepest depths, spanking our soul. Booted to bitterness, it’s as if we become discarded whores to our surroundings unable to satisfy any longer. We become so cold with vexation that after tiers of tears have fountained towards the limitless blue, we look down and see just a pool of our own wounds. We’re ripped off our tolerance and shredded down to a mulch of exasperation so much so, that we become dumb and numb. We then tell ourselves, it’s time to fall out.

The penicillin to our patience attacks our own body and we become a corpse of calamity seeking vendetta with the tiniest element that brought us here in the first place. The goodness we thought we had done comes back to rape us, as a thank you, and leaves with the last laugh after pulling up its zippers.

This isn’t the pout and purr drama. It’s an overlooked crater out of which, as it had to, our magma of mania bangs out. We had done our decent and played fair. But still our virtues boomerang back to us inside a bomb of unwarranted dues. Our passive, subconscious mind engines into production and reminds us of all our righteousness and the unfair reimbursement we receive from it. And all we know is that we are right. We just never asserted so.

But inside the mayhem in our minds, inside the hurt heart, we find solace and rationality and reason. Our judgment was never impaired, even amidst the tar and turmoil of infuriation. As ironic and unfeasible as it sounds, we find our comfort.

And the culprit.

Lascivious Longings Come in Nude-Leggings

2013-04-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

From far, it’s like catching a drooling, deific eye-dip of a Copacabana lady’s sequined orange bikini underneath her white netted poncho. A little closer, it’s like watching her cherry-red, upper lip dive into that pomegranate punch. Even closer is why we have private beach tents.

Lust. It’s sensual, seductive and more often than not, scandalous. And lets face it, we all love lust. That precipitous spike of endorphin, adrenaline and testosterone (or estrogen) is like Victoria’s Secret Angles walking towards you with vodka-washed strawberries. Every corner of the eye escapes, those surreptitious sneak peaks, and guilty glances, all come down to a momentarily lapse of ‘illegal’ pleasure.

Let’s go beyond those secondary slips of stares because quite frankly, that is neither prohibited nor taboo. It is when the fidelity becomes ‘in’ and a partner starts to play ring toss. Gay rights and lesbian marriages are at least rallied with big, bold letterhead posters on crowded New York streets that the demonstrators use as pants but the idea of protesting against polygamy is a hush-hush affair (pun intended).

Promiscuity is like buying an iMac from the fake store in China; it’ll have its price to pay (even after the purchase). So before the bananas in the banana republic of foul play go out of control, remember that this fruit was forbidden for a reason. Apples were long sinned anyway. We all secretly hanker the hanky-panky out of movies, films (note the difference), TV shows and advertisements but when we cross the line over to the dark side ourselves, even “The Force” is out its power.

And it turns out that the line is a napkin with a number on it.

Blame the Name Game

2013-02-21T08:01:00.001-08:00

Shortly after God let go of the celestial strings to Adam and Eve, humans learned that He had made a momentous mistake. So much so, that we now have a longing lust to gain a grip over everything possible. In earlier times, it used to be by spear-heading pestilential wild cats and devouring the hunt but now we’ve cooled our cognizance and instead of wolfing down those beasts, we considerately name it all instead. Whether it is out of unconditional fondness or absolute authority, when couture bags can be so courteously called upon with their labels, then why not everything else right?

It’s become a tripping, trending tendency to title everything; living-dead-nonliving, past-present-future, loved- hated-mediocre. On some days it blooms out of the blue; an appellation we blurt out in blasphemy and relate it for days to come, a pet name we give to pet the pet, or perhaps a darling docket to a dear one.
But English ‘name-calling’ is center-filled with flavored ironies, just like the conundrum language itself. The only standard is that friend or foe, close or cold, we give them designer designations - which sometimes come with prejudices.

We have names. Our dogs and cats have names. The car we own, that good-luck necklace, personal computer and even a favorite tee have all been bathed and baptized in our pious practices. And we really haven’t stopped there.

The King used to be called Alexander the III but now so is the neighbor’s cat and Queen Adelaide is now our best friend’s goldfish. Favorite hideout has become the “secret society”, our room’s the pit, car’s batmobile, and teachers vary from Cruella to Confucius to Medusa to Moses. Our dog is “Marley”, our bike “Harley” and our guitar “Presley”. Cyber Monday. Ash Wednesday. Good Friday. Black Friday. Tuesdays seem to be more popular: Fat Tuesday, Super Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Black Tuesday, Patch Tuesday. Whether it comes from a holiday, a superstition, a belief or a habit, the elongated names of the days of the week are now more important than what we do in them. And everything else.

So after meeting someone, doing something, or going somewhere pick a chic name to kick off a spick relationship right at the nick.

Because a name now is a QR code to the PR game.

Insider Traitor

2012-10-28T23:18:00.002-07:00

In a downcast attempt to play ventriloquist of the stock world, Rajat Gupta too easily marginalized the only obvious fact; Wall Street is no controlled marionette. This sorry flouting now brings him even sorrier flogging. Trying to trump Warren Buffett’s market move, the 5 minutes of quick wits has now fined him 5 billion dollars and the two years of jail term come more than just a quarterly loss.

But call it nationalistic favoritism or sentimental sympathies; there is a sincere solicitousness that reaches out to Gupta. Perhaps it is the writhing childhood that he wriggled out from or the munificent philanthropic work all through his career, but each another look at the market mogul focuses attention to all the hard work hidden behind his wrinkles and that discomfiture in his eyes. Even the prosecution, Preet Bharara, could not help but froth a few words of mellow for the plutocrat before bleaching him pale, layer by layer.

Gupta’s education is only meritorious, right from his engineering at IIT to attending Harvard and later joining McKinsey. His review, résumé, and records have always been in the sovereign of supreme. But it’s that phone conversation on September 23 that rammed the magnate from venerable to vulnerable.

It may have been the persistent peer pressure from Rajaratnam in trying to make Gupta reveal all that was behind the acquisition of Wachovia by Goldman but it certainly proved enough evidence through the wiretap. Acquiring inside information from Gupta on how Goldman was facing a huge loss in that quarter or Buffett’s expected move to invest in the company were like feeding fish to a seal. He eventually did the trick.

Being friends with and helping honchos like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, their testimonies, those 400 letters of plea, NGO support and anonymous petitions to go easy on Gupta expurgated the excise of his imprisonment. To what would have been a severe 10-year confinement is now two years of detention.

The markets have closed for Gupta and now the only suit that he will be wearing for a while will be an orange one that comes without a tie.