ColourS ©

quick review: marley and me

2009-05-14T00:57:00.001+05:30

quick review
marley and me
by john grogan

had no idea this was a book. i saw the movie quite sometime back, on my room mate juhi's strong recommendation, and found myself crying my eyes out for a good part of the film, which to tell you the truth is nothing to go by as i cry in all movies at the drop of a hat. the movie was decent and surprisingly 100% true to the book which is saying something considering the trend to interpret/slash/edit novels to make it screenplay-worthy (slumdog millionaire, harry potter etc).

coming to the point that has been bothering me for quite sometime now - are all the novels i picked up for my summer reading drab, slow and boring or is it just me? nothing i pick up seems to be touching a chord. let alone touching chords, nothing seems to even whiff past them.

so without wasting anymore time let me jump straight to my favourite activity- annihilating every aspect of the god-darned book.

to begin with, i humbly admit that i am not the best judge of a man-dog relationship book. i am dead scared of dogs and fail to find anything remotely cute about them as i am more busy being, well, scared of them . i don't hate them. its just that they make me nervous, sweaty and very very uncomfortable. and this book and its description of the 'world's worst dog' has only strengthened my resolve to never have any pets in the house. also, i may have disliked the book a little less had i read it before watching the movie. knowing what is going to happen next kind of kills it.

the story starts off with a young married couple madly in love. they have great careers and a great house. they decide to get a dog so that their lives can become more picture-perfect and that the girl can start practising being a mother before their baby comes. little do they know that their lives would completely change with the arrival of the wild spirited pup. the narrative drags along about 300 pages outlining the fun times and the trying times in the life of an ordinary family and their dog. the story is a typical everyday-life story and hence is tiresome to say the least. its so ordinary in parts that it could easily be my life or your life, so it brings a trace of smile and you nod in acknowledgement. the book does have it moments but they are few and far between. the writing is an easy flowy style that i like. but the content is devoid of any excitement or entertainment value. the movie was much much better.

bunk the book. watch the movie.

quick review: train to pakistan

2009-05-13T14:05:00.002+05:30

quick book review
train to pakistan
by kushwant singh

undoubtedly the most over-rated, over-hyped author i know, kushwant singh and anything to do with kushwant singh has always made me very sceptical. apart from a short story called 'potrait of a lady', which was a part of the cbse english syllabus in 8th and 11th standard (yes, the same story twice) and in which he writes about his grandmother, all his other works failed to do anything for me. so, with great deliberation and a tinge of negative bias i picked up this book and immediately regretted it.

the narrative is fractured and has a poorly constructed plot. reading the book gave me this irritating feeling that he sat down to write without a pre-meditated plot and wrote whatever came to his mind. this style is suitable only if you are the genius douglas adams and want to write arbit mad-hat stuff like the restaurant at the end of the universe. on the other hand, this style is anything but suitable if you are a second-grade author writing about sensitive, heavy duty stuff like the aftermath of india-pakistan partition. the pace is exasperatingly slow and gives you this itch to jump a few pages every now and then.

but to give credit where it's due, his sentences are easy on the brain and he refrains from unnecessary cosmeticization of sentences that most mediocre authors find irresistible. he also earns points for painstakingly carving out each of his characters with surprising clarity though ultimately failing to interleave them in any meaningful way in his shallow narrative. he also succeeds in describing the cultural and social structure that existed in 1947 - how corrupt officers played petty politics to serve their own ends, how the villagers were unaware of the happenings in the country and believed any rumour, how religious groups instigated the gullible into a fury that wasn't theirs.

the story is set in the partition era. the focus is on a small village on the indo-pak border and its inhabitants. the author hasn't written much about the political aspect of the partition, choosing instead to focus on the local, social, human impact. the story involves sub-stories of the local bad boy of village, a social worker from england, corrupt manipulative government officers. the message of the book is that both hindus and muslims were equally responsible for the bloodbath. both slaughtered. both raped.

read it only if you are interested in indian history (which i am guessing you aren't) and can deal with slow storytelling.

quick review: enchantress of florence

2009-05-13T01:32:00.004+05:30

quick review
enchantress of florence
by salman rushdie

the only reason why i reached page 70 of this uninspiring tedious novel is because i am ill and bedridden and have absolutely nothing else to do. the reason why i take the trouble to write this review is the also same as aforementioned.

rushdie has a thing for long, winding irksome sentences. the whole book feels as if its a self- congratulatory exercise by the author for having such outstanding command on the english language. he lost me somewhere between page 2 and 3 with his insistence to decorate every sentence with garish ornate extravaganza (i am beginning to sound like him), but as mentioned earlier, for the utter lack of anything to do i carried on like a brave soldier, who is brave only because he has no other choice, on the path to assured self-destruction.

the story is barely a story for the lack of any structure whatsoever. it meanders like a mad river here there everywhere. he is too creative for his own good. the chapters are abrupt jumps from one confusing narrative to another, all in deliberately difficult english. A foreign traveller has travelled all the way to India to tell Akbar, the mughal emperor, a secret that is 'meant for his ears only'. the secret being he is the son of an 'enchanting mughal beauty' who possessed magical powers, thereby making him a blood relative to the king. i think thats the general story, but i can't confirm because i haven't read the whole book nor intend to do so.

don't try to read it. its a waste of time and would make you feel nauseous. it would also make you feel that if this book can sell so many copies then why don't you write a book and become a millionaire. but i'd, sadly, have to burst your bubble and tell you that this man wrote the book that won booker of the booker (have to read it and figure out what's the hullabaloo about) which guarantees that no matter what crap this one-book-wonder churns out he will still have publishers & readers. also he's very lucky which most of you aren't.

quick review: inheritance of loss

2009-05-12T11:11:00.005+05:30

quick review
inheritance of loss
by kiran desai

purchased this 500 rs book for 100 rs from the local second hand book store which has a marvellous scheme under which returning the book will get me 70% money back.

the story revolves around Sai, an orphaned girl who lives with her detached grandfather, and is set in backdrop of the Nepalese separatist demands for Gorkhaland in post colonial India. With many other parallel stories; the cook's son in the US, grandfather's flashback to his ICS days, Sai falling in love; brilliantly interwoven together, it makes for a delightful read.

what i loved:
the language is remarkably crisp and intelligent. the author has a phenomenal aptitude for converting feelings and emotions to clear, distilled words. on numerous occasions whilst reading the book i felt that she defined a feeling i've long felt but never really knew exactly what it was.

"Love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love is the ache, the anticipation the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."

the book is laden with many such insightful sentences that make you want to grab a pen and underline and come back again and again till they're committed to memory because they are just too beautiful to forget. even though there is lack of pace in the narrative, there is something romantic about the laidback, lazy tempo and not once you feel bored.

what i did not like:
like all indian authors who write about india, she has sadly succumbed to the inherent urge to write in great length and detail about defecation. also, like most of the mature adult books it doesn't really have an ending. i've always felt that books without a definitive logical finish are like those floating fluffy white things that carry seeds. they have a final destination but you're almost always too lazy to get up and follow.

pick up the book because its refreshing, creative, sharp and will keep your intellect entertained for days.

princess

2008-11-01T15:32:00.000+05:30

It's Mother

2008-05-15T00:48:00.003+05:30

The continuous wailing had begun to grate on her ears. She had to do something about it. With all the energy she could muster in her lean exhausted frame, she got up and shook back her shiny brown locks that limply framed her gorgeous face. Slowly and hesitatingly, she climbed the richly carpeted wooden staircase, almost dreading reaching that Thing.

Her footsteps drummed a muffled noise into the carpet, much like the suffocated beating of her heart. She cast her beautiful eyes on the wooden wall which gently curved with the staircase. It was lined with the heads of dead animals and portraits of her forefathers who looked rather displeased with her.

She reached the hall and saw It. Suddenly, the hate that clung to every emotion she felt nowadays, growled in her head with an unreasonable ferocity. The screaming greasy little thing was propped on the pram. It was kicking its thin twisted arms towards the sky, as if worshipping the devil. It was howling as if trying to wake up every evil, dead and decaying thing that’s rotting in the depths of hell.

Oh, why couldn’t it shut up just for once? She couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. It repulsed her.

She turned abruptly and caught the huge ornate mirror looking lovingly at her. The mirror, her favorite family heirloom, had always loved her and she in turn loved it. Even now, when she was in her foulest mood and expression, the old mirror told her that she was the most beautiful women the countryside had ever seen.

She knew it. She eyed the delicate curves of her pout which gleamed a fiery red against her moon washed skin. She looked at her big, innocent rabbit eyes, set symmetrically across her perfect little nose. Her high cheek bones and her strong sharp chin gave her face a sublime hint of royalty.

So many hearts had bled for her, had cried for her, and had desired her. She was aware that after marriage, her cult status had somewhat diminished. She missed the fanatic importance and attention she was so used to.

She raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows, widened her eyes and tilted her face to that perfect angle. She blinked innocently and enjoyed the adorable expression that resulted; the diligently rehearsed expression that had turned many strong men into purring weaklings.

The greasy hideous thing was still crying. With practiced aloofness, she turned and walked towards the Victorian window of her sprawling mansion. She gave the iron gates one last look, and breathed out a whistle of relief before closing the windows and drawing the heavy curtains over it.

The baby’s screech now echoed off the walls of hall, closing in around her. It hammered relentlessly against her eardrums, shooting a sharp pain through her already throbbing head. She paced up and down nervously near the window, wrenching her hands in utter misery. In order to calm herself, she slowed down and tried to mouth a tune she had heard on Hector’s old gramophone. She trailed off into silence, unable to remember the exact strains. It was one of those silly pompous little tunes which were overtly jolly; but that was all she could remember.

A few months ago, for the first time in his life, Hector had done something unpredictable. In a moment of alcohol inspired madness, he and a couple of his equally predictable and insufferably boring friends had decided to fight the Marrownese war, that had initially started in the big town of Marrow which was a good 50 miles away.

“They can’t bloody take away our bloody land and get their god-forsaken bloody hands on our women!!” Hector had roared in a state of drunken stupidity.

“Ahoy!!”, the group had cheered on.

“We will put on our finest straw hats and gun their guts out! Bloody hell, their guts. Our guns. Our bloody fair women!!”he had drawled.

“HOYYY!!!” “HOOUY!!”

The next day she had watched with mild amusement as he had put on his boots, his finest field hat, and his tasseled leather jacket. He dusted his old double barreled gun and filled his pockets with pouches of grainy black gunpowder.

Was he really going to leave her in this condition? She had looked down at her swollen stomach with mild disgust. It had irked her no end, that she would lose her perfect body to ugly stretch marks and unwieldy fat. Her breasts had become very sensitive and heavy with milk, in anticipation of the baby. They hurt when she moved around quickly and her brassiere stroked her nipples, the cloth biting into it.

Everyday she complained of something or the other. At first, Hector used to get worried. On many occasions, he had called the local doctor. Once, he also got her the best doctor from Marrow. But all doctors assured him in their grave voices that nothing was wrong and that the mother would be fit as fiddle after the delivery.

She, in her heart, knew that something would go wrong. She could not help but be filled with an inexplicable sense of foreboding and doom.

She knew German soldiers were ruthless and many people had already died. But, she never stopped her husband. She did not hate him, but she was not awfully fond of him either.

Her father, the richest trader in the countryside, had given away her hand in marriage to Hector, because he had saved his life. Her father had listed out many reasons why Hector was ideal for her. She couldn’t remember any of those. All she remembered was how much she had protested against the proposal.

Hector was poor! she had wailed which was amongst her many other complaints.

Her father had dismissed all her protests with a casual wave of his hand. She was going to marry Hector, whether she liked it or not, he had barked. She was too young and frivolous to make such an important decision, he had continued, and he didn’t want her to be a victim of her youth and fall in love with one of the good-for-nothing characters that loafed around under her room’s balcony. She had tried every trick she could think of, to persuade her father. But, when her watery big innocent rabbit eyes failed to move him, she had accepted her fate grudgingly.

As a wedding gift, her father had given the couple the huge Victorian mansion and all that was in it. He had also given away bags of gold and 1000 paces of fertile land. He would never have her princess be anything but a princess, he had whispered in her ears during the father-daughter wedding dance ritual.

Hector never really bothered about the wealth. He had continued his original job which was that of a millet farmer.

Everyday, he would put on his hat and stride out of the house after kissing her lightly on her forehead. And everyday, he would come back at dusk, with unfailing regularity. And then he would sit with his feet up on the wooden barrel in the courtyard and smoke his pipe. In the night he would say he loved her. He would then make love to her. He was so bloody predictable. She hated it.

She also hated his big fat broken nose and the ugly scar tracing the contours of his smile till the back of his neck, giving him a horrible lop-sided toothy grin. It did not matter to her that he had acquired the scar whilst putting his life in danger and saving many passengers, including her father, from the derailed steam engine. She hated it.

But, most of all, she hated it when children scampered up to her shouting “Beauty and the beast”, before breaking into a run. Hector, evidently found this funny and mock-chased the laughing kids. She hated it. All of it.

And now, it had been two months, since he had disappeared with his gun, his hat, his boots and his favorite tasseled leather jacket. Soon after he had gone, she had called midwives and got her labor induced. She could not take Its burden any longer. She wanted It out of her body.

she had hated ‘it’ from the moment she had set her eyes on it. It was covered in white slick and didn’t move, just like a sick naked helpless little animal.

-----------

Unable to bear the asphyxiating thoughts from her past, she threw open the windows again. She walked slowly towards the baby. It reminded her forcefully of Hector. It had the same broad ugly nose and sparse hair. It had the same weird lop-sided, but toothless, smile. It also had copious amounts of sticky saliva dribbling all over its body.

Her thoughts avalanched uncontrollably into her loveless marriage that was forced on her, the boring life she led, the passionless nights with him, the mean children who teased her, her jealous middle aged friends, her scarred abdomen, his scarred face, the war, her prince who was supposed to come but never did, her dead father, her burning craving for attention….

She was sure. She hated it.

It confused her greatly, because she knew that she was extremely emotional and soft at heart. ‘You’ll make a wonderful mother someday’, her nanny had told her when she had cried over the injured rabbit and nursed it lovingly back to health.

Her big, innocent rabbit eyes had swollen up with tears when her father had taken her on one of his hunting trips. She had cried herself to sleep for a week, and made her father swear he would never hurt any animal. Even as a teenager, she had taken care of little Susie as if her own, when Susie’s mother who was her elder sister suffered from a terrible bout of black fever. Her heart would invariably melt at the slightest provocation. And here she was standing in the huge hall of her mansion thinking how much she hated her own baby.

She hurriedly pushed back these thoughts when the baby gave a rather urgent piercing screech. It was hungry. It had been hungry for quite sometime now. She unbuttoned her blouse and picked up the baby as gently as her quivering hands would allow. “Gently darling”, she thought to herself, “you don’t want to drop the baby now, do you?” She stood in silence for a moment, numbed with shock and guilt.

She put it against her soft breasts, and winced in pain as it started sucking violently. 'It doesn’t like you too' she mused, her guilt reducing ever so slightly.

She did not know what to name It. Hector, if he ever came back, would insist on something like Hector junior, which ofcourse, suited the thing perfectly. It did not have any trace of her.

But, she doubted if Hector would ever return. Everyday, sick with anticipation, she would eye the tall iron gates of her mansion. He never showed up, and she would be oddly relieved. She would draw the heavy curtains across all the windows and gloat over the strange satisfaction that consumed her when she thought that her husband is most probably dead, and that soon she’d marry her prince.

But she couldn’t help wondering whether eligible bachelors would want to marry a widow with a baby.

It had stopped sucking now, and lay quite still in her arms - whimpering and wheezing breathlessly like an injured puppy. She looked at the large grandfather clock beside the window as it loudly struck 7. “Time for a walk” she said mechanically. “…Darling” she added as an afterthought. No one could say she was not trying. She had been brave and tolerated everything since the time it was born. She had done everything she could to force herself to think and behave normally, like other mothers do. She was so guilty of her feelings that she could not bring herself to tell anyone about it. And so, all by herself she had fought her demons, getting weaker by the day.

“Time for a walk” she repeated loudly in a bid to rid her mind of these depressing thoughts. Her voice came out unnaturally shrill, and did not sound like her own.

She carefully tucked the baby in the pram and wheeled it around. The baby had started crying again. But, she was not irritated any longer. A curious happiness had begun gnawing at her heart. Maybe, she was getting better. Maybe, she was winning over her mind.

She wheeled the pram purposefully down the hall and through the corridor, humming the same tune which had eluded her moments ago. She had never noticed before that the tune had a sinister edge to it. ‘Strange!’ she thought. She stood with the pram at the edge of the magnificent wooden staircase, still humming the sinister tune below her breath.

Lined on the wall, in order of seniority, the portraits of her forefathers still carried the disapproving look. Together they glared down at her, forbidding her – warning her. Their disapproving eyes had acquired a blazing intensity which she had definitely not noticed before.

Each portrait of her ancestor was accompanied by his most prized kill. Garrold M. Bardot was accompanied by a tiger head which hung below his formidable and proud looking portrait. Werner Bardot looked a little less formidable, almost a bit embarrassed, with his black buck and its slender twisted black antlers. She smirked at them and their silly paltry kills.

‘Time for a…..walk’ she said and stepped down carefully, one stair at a time, pushing the pram with utmost care. Suddenly, she faltered at a step and the pram slipped out of her hands.

As the pram bumped up and down the staircase, her blood curdled and she froze where she stood. She blinked unbelievingly, stupidly. She heard the Thing shriek a thousand vile things at her, accusing her of black wicked sins. She heard her forefathers wail and moan, beating their chests in unison. She heard the animals screech in protest, growling, roaring, condemning her and damning her existence. She shut her ears with her violently shaking hands, but the screams magnified inside her head. With one final crash, the house suddenly drowned in unnatural deathly silence.

“Oh-no…” she whispered; tears welling up in her big, innocent, rabbit eyes.

A strange quiet - By Papa

2007-11-17T10:21:00.000+05:30

Dad wrote this for me, whe my diwali holidays ended and i came back to bombay.

When you leave,
A strange quiet
Tip-toes in
To fill
The void.

It sits at your desk
Busy working at the computer,
Or stretches languidly
On your bed
With a novel in hand.

Your absence hums
Like a familiar ringtone
From here, there,
Everywhere.

Speech is sparse,
Smile walks out of home.
When you leave,
A strange quiet
Creeps in like winter fog.

When you leave,
A strange emptiness
Gnaws at the heart, and
Grows and grows

Episode

2007-11-07T13:45:00.000+05:30

This incident took place more than 10 years ago. Its funny how some childhood memories refuse to fade out. They keep coming back,when you least expect them to, and haunt you with unnerving explicit details.

I was about 7 or 8 years old then.

I was traveling with my family in our white ambassador. We were in transit between two hill-stations. We were descending a beautiful stunted hill.

I was playing some word game with papa. Niku (my brother, younger to me by 4 years) was sleeping on mummy’s lap. Ira (my sister, younger by 2 years), too small to play word games, was staring blankly outside the window. She was looking particularly cute with her big vacant eyes, flushed cheeks and a flat pink nose. Her hair was rolled up tightly into two wee-little buns on either side of her adorably big head, which kept rolling left or right depending on the turn the car took. She was wearing a pink fluffy sweater and a crisp denim jacket. She had put on pink striped socks and cute white shoes which were glow-in-dark. Many a times during the journey, to amuse herself, she would dive down to her shoes, cup her hands around it and marvel at the magical fluorescence.

The word game was getting too boring. Suddenly, our car came to a halt. The roadblock were a gang of young mountain children, who had formed a human chain to stop our car.There were about 5-6 boys aged 10-12 years. As our ambassador came to a standstill, they gave a boisterous hoot, causing ira to duck into mummy’s shawl. Papa smiled. She came out after a few minutes and surveyed the boys with her big wide eyes.

Each boy carried a basket of guavas. Big and green. They had been freshly plucked from some nearby terrace farm or maybe the mountain forests. The boys began elbowing and shoving each other inorder to be the first one to get to papa and sell the guavas. My dad was all dazed, not knowing from whom to buy the guavas. All the guavas were equally good and fresh.

Then, I saw her. She was a pretty little thing. She also had a basket of guavas, which was precariously balanced on her head. The delicate features of her face were screwed in utmost concentration, as she pushed and pulled the other older boys with her undersized frail hand. A small boy held her other hand. The boy’s basket was propped on his slender waist. He made no effort at jostling the crowd. He was concentrating on carefully maneuvering the small girl away from the particularly rowdy older boys.

There was something very strange about the little girl. She kept bumping clumsily into others’ baskets. She stumbled on obvious rocks. The eyes. Her deep brown eyes. They were curiously dead and numb. The small girl was clearly blind. I mutely pointed her out to papa. Papa, sensing my unease, bekoned at the small boy to bring the girl near him.

The group of old boys grudgingly made way for her. The little boy was overjoyed. He held her hand tightly and both of them ran clumsily to the car. She was a wild little thing. She laughed teasingly at others; and mildly pushed away whoever came between her and her rightful customer. No. She was too happy and confident to evoke any sympathy.

Like all mountain kids, her nose was bitten red by the freezing winds. Lots of dry freckles spotted her candy-floss cheeks. She had her long brown hair tied into a cute rough pony tail. She was wearing a long green floral skirt and a mismatched thin blue sweater. It was clearly inadequate for the weather, but she must have got used to it because she was not shivering.

She got to the car and loudly banged the door to make sure she had reached. She smiled shyly at the general direction of my dad and thrust her fruit basket under his nose.Her eyes were no longer dead. They flickered madly - with triumph.

Her brother stood meekly beside her. He hesitantly showed us his basket too. Both the baskets were filled with over-ripe damaged guavas. The older boys, obviously, had managed to get all the good guavas; leaving the blind girl and her small brother with the bad ones. The small boy was aware of the bad fruits in his and his sister's basket. He looked down dejectedly, waiting to be turned away any second. The little girl, in bliss ignorance, stood there eagerly with the basket in her wide-stretched slender arms.

I tugged at my dad's sleeve. Papa also didn’t have the heart to turn away the smiling blind girl. He picked a few pieces from her basket and a few good ones from an older boy's.

Papa handed her some money. She carefully took it, with both her hands. Her eyes shone with the brilliance of achievement. She handed over the entire money to her brother. He smiled lovingly at her and gave a quick half hug.

Our car moved on. I couldn’t take away my eyes from her. As our car took a bend, I saw one of the older boys grab the money from the small boy. He didn't resist. Maybe he feared his sister's safety. He pulled her near him and held her tightly. The small blind girl continued smiling, unaware that her victory had been rudely snatched.

the magic of marine drive

2007-11-05T19:22:00.000+05:30

God’s* natural extravaganzas have this peculiar and sadistic way of making you feel like a speck of dust. The smallest speck of dust, mind you. Infact, so impossibly pitiful and insignificant, that it isn’t even nuisance enough to make anyone want to brush it off. Take for example the stars on a dark nightsky's expanse. They invariably make you marvel at the immense obscurity of your existance when mercilessly pitted against the mysterious cosmic greatness. Or take for example the massive mountains or the vast oceans. You are downgraded to a petty scrubby little rat. A miserable little rat at that, grudging the promotion a rat-friend got or worried-to-death about some extra cash that shall make your ratty existence a little less unbearable.

But not the marine drive. No. On a lazy night, you look down at the ocean from a beautiful, long ,raised platform. The waves crash gently, on machine cut diamond-lattice-shaped rocks, way below your dangling feet. The glittering night sky, when viewed whilst laying down on the cool slabs of the raised platform, fails to intimidate. The grand, towering high-rises, lining the marine drive on the other end of the road, seem to kiss the stars…and suddenly the stars feel within your reach. And so does the top-most penthouse. Wisps of dreams come together and take solid shapes in your head. The perfect blend of man-made and god-made ensure that you are not overawed silly by the scene and can concentrate on your self. Your joys, sorrows, dreams, ambitions and small little things which are of supreme importance to you.

Sitting on the platform, with legs embraced tightly in your arms, tucked below your chin, gives you an acute sense of giving oneself company.
You become deeply conscious of your self. Relationships and daily happenings in your life are no longer trivial. They are momentous and meaningful because you become the universe's nucleus, around which everything and everyone revolves.

The strongest of the waves, which approaches as if to drown you, can do little more that gingerly spray your face with cool salty water. You lick your lips in faint triumph, taking in the mild tang of the ocean air and the crystallized salt powder lining your mouth. You look fondly at the defeated receding waters. You don’t smirk because you are in the generous, forgiving mood of someone who knows he is great and almighty.

Marine drive feels like two different photographs glued together. You sit facing one part of the photo and peer below your feet to see god’s small, red critters scrambling and sliding on the man-made rocks. Its dark and peaceful. Miraculously, the noise from the traffic, a few feet behind, fails to pierce the tranquility of the experience. Though you can hear it faintly - a low comfortable buzz nodding approvingly at the musical sea.Inspite of the brilliance of the lights in the ‘queen’s necklace’, this part of the picture is shadowy, but not unnervingly dark.
You turn to the other side of the picture and see rows of expensive cars, lined in obedience as if waiting to be chosen by you and taken home. You see pubs, discs, expensive hotels and people dressed smartly.

Its sunset.You take off your footwear and use a bag or someone’s lap as a pillow. The ocean air clings to your hair, eyelids. The sun spills buckets of gold all over the ocean. You are bathed in the soft yellowness. The birds don't fly here. They glide wherever the ocean winds take them.

You come here with select few friends. Sit. For hours.In the boulevard of dreams.

sketch 5

2007-10-28T04:54:00.000+05:30

From Drop Box

After a long long time....
I miss blogging : (
This is especially for *you*

Wah Taj

2007-07-08T16:11:00.001+05:30

We, Indians, are a happy lot today. A couple of hours ago, The Taj Mahal was 'officially' acknowledged as one of the new seven wonders of the world. The fact that it wasn't on the list earlier, never bothered us. We stubbornly insisted that it was the 'seventh wonder' of the world and pompously advertised it , which makes me wonder what difference the recent declaration is going to make.

Tomorrow, every newspaper worth its salt shall devote every nook of its space to the Taj facts, Taj dates, Taj did-you-knows, Taj who's-who. We shall be dutifully forced fed all things Taj - including statistics such as the exact length of the corridor between the dome and the tomb. Accompanying the pictures of Taj from every possible angle at different times of the day, will be interviews ranging from the excited Tourism minister to sweaty foreigners with heat-freckles, all marveling in awed voices as to how beautiful the monument is.

The tv is already in a frenzied overdrive due to the excess of stuff it has to report. A deep baritone will inform us, in a hyper-sensationalized loud voice, for the hundredth time, on a special 2 hour show called 'taj ka raj' inbetween the news, how the monument is a symbol of pure love blah blah, how-when-why it was visited by the Clintons, Mussharaf, Princess Diana blah blah, how it is getting black-er by the day because of pollutants in the atmosphere, and how p.c sarkar wanted to vanish the Taj for a few minutes but didn't get Govt.'s permission to do so, and more Taj blah blah till our brains are pickled dead.

We all did our bit for the Taj. I voted and so did you. A.R.Rehman sang for a promotional video, and because the battle is all over and won, we graciously side-step the issue as to why a chinless girl was hired to play modern mumtaz, paired with a particularly ugly breed of roadside romeo as the 21st century Shah Jehan. We also refuse to tax our brains as to why would anyone want to hire Bipasha Basu as an anchor to announce the seven wonders of the world.

We are very happy. And so, we politely overlook the fact that Bipasha Basu chose to wear, for one of the most prestigious international events, a chameli-inspired costume in the most hideous colour imaginable. Why our bollywood actors, who are immaculately dressed back home, desert whatever little fashion sense they possess when they have to represent India abroad, is a brain numbing mystery. We Indians have invariably noticed and hence concluded with confidence that more important the event, more appalling the dress.

We also promise not to file a petition in the court and burn Basu's effigies on the road because she has the audacity to go against the Indian tehzib, and receive, with an unconcealed glee, a peck on the cheek from Ronaldo - the football star. On the stage. Infront of millions.

Our emotional little Indian hearts, a major factor responsible for the avalanche of votes Taj recieved, is overtly pleased. Hence, we will not make faces and sulk just because Miss. Basu, in her excitement of going to Lisbon and having a boyfriend called 'John', promptly forgot all about her Indian roots and pronounced the Taj Mahal as Taj Maa-haal, with an unmistakable British accent.

Our Taj has got a well deserved victory. Taj is womanhood. Taj is love. In the words of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore,it is "A tear drop on the cheek of time". In the words of a particular tea brand, "Wah Taj".

Sketch 4

2007-06-24T20:20:00.000+05:30

Sketch 3

2007-06-23T00:18:00.000+05:30

1.5 hours. minimalistic.
Wanted her to wear an intricate gown. Got impatient. Got lazy. So, she ended up looking like a Russian Tennis star posing for a glossy. Also, something wrong with the scanner. stupid white line. Probably a dot on the lens or reader or whatever...the whole line corrosponding to the dot wasnt scanned. All my sketches are going to have the stupid white line from now on...Sad.

Sketch 2

2007-06-22T16:02:00.000+05:30

3 hours. I am happy :)

Sketch 1

2007-06-22T01:40:00.000+05:30

Drew this today. Sketching after a year. 2.5 hours. Felt like 20 minutes.
I love you Art, for you have no limits.

Click here to view the enlarged image.

Bheja Fry

2007-06-12T13:51:00.000+05:30

It may have to do something with the fact that I watched this movie just after watching two Hollywood blockbusters- Ocean’s 13 and V for Vendetta. Or, it might be the fact that this self- proclaimed ‘situational comedy riot’ tries too hard to be funny in a sickening art-sy sort of way, failing to deliver like a bunch of weak sperms. Whatever the case, I couldn’t care less. All I know is that the movie, true to its name, is pure Bheja Fry.
Give me an honest Bollywood masala flick anyday, I say, and I shall lap it up, but please spare me such a sad apology of a film, which is more suited to a low budget theatre performance than the multiplex.
The lame (also deaf, dumb, paralyzed all over ) story goes something like this- Rajat Kapoor is a music-director (or something along the same lines) who indulges, every Friday, in a fun game called ‘Bring-an-idiot-to-dinner-party’. This he does to sate his and his friends’ sadistic cravings. He chances upon his biggest find ever in Bharat Bhushan (the short fat actor in Great Indian Comedy show, whose name I forget) who thinks of himself as a great ‘gayak’ and hence keeps singing according to situations (For eg: Rajat Kapoor ditches friend and steals friend’s wife, so mr. bhushan sings Dost Dost naa raha, Pyaar Pyaar naa raha…) This he does with an irritatingly high frequency making you squirm in your seats. The crap movie is anything but funny. Kapoor’s wife leaves home as she doesn’t approve of her husband’s pathetic ways of deriving pleasure at some idiot’s expense. The whole movie is about how he tries to find his wife with the help of Bhushan and the telephone, without getting up from his comfy couch.
The movie scores a big fat zero in comedy and earns negative marks for having the cheek to rope in such good actors and making them mouth pathetic,insipid jokes lacking punchline.

Reds and blues

2007-06-07T13:56:00.000+05:30

Note: Of late, have been involved in solving lots of love-life problems for friends. The following , i write for *h* and *a*.

Playing the waiting game,
blushing a scheming red,
'What is it?' , I teased,
'Nothing' , you said.

Quivering eyelashes,
Leaning in,
If you still don't get it,
you gotto be kiddin'.

Hints. Signs. Clues.
Rebound off you.
Nothing works,
feeling blue...

duhh! its a crime,
overlooking tell-tale signs.

Lets get you drunk,
and make you confess
Get it over with
this delay, this stress.

The game drags on & on...
Either you don't know the rules,
or you are just a freakin moron.

The burning red,
turns a casual pink,
Good lord!
Its wearing off I think.

Uggh! It bores me,
this silly game, you see.

What the helI, I quit,
and watch, amused,
you still at it.

He & me

2007-06-03T14:44:00.000+05:30

Note: I have been meaning to write about this since ever. And thanks to the long hours spent discussing pseudo intellectual junk with Yeshi and Aditya, I finally got interested enough to do so. But, before starting, I would like to make it very clear that this post reflects my opinions only. I do not wish to hurt anyone’s religious sentiments nor do I wish to convert anyone to my line of thinking.

There exist several concepts incomprehensible to the intellect of man. For example: the origin of the universe, visualization/understanding the concept of the ‘infinite and ever expanding galaxies’, life and its complexities, abstractions of death and life after death, the sham/reality of soul/spirit etc etc.

It has always been irritating and highly exasperating for man ‘not to know’. After much thinking/ assuming/ theory-developing/ observing/ guessing/ experimenting with different philosophies – the closest man has come to justifying the universe and all that’s in it – is the invention of ‘God’ and the ever convenient -‘God knows’.

For starters, it helped in getting rid of all the nagging questions about ‘how and why of things’. God made the universe *fullstop*. God decides destiny *fullstop*. The world and all its happening are intended by God *another big fullstop* Smart solution. As you can see, the concept is intelligent in extremes, the proof being, it’s the only invention of man which hasn’t been altered/questioned much and continues to have wide spread acceptance, even after thousands of years after its proposal.

Firstly, we all know and fully accept the fact that ‘God’ is something that the human mind has synthesized. We have to deal with the fact that there has been no such thing as God’s revelation/announcement that he*(he/she/it) exists. Irrespective of all the claims, miracles, visions there is no hardcore proof that he is a reality. Virgin Mary/ Valmiki having dreams can hardly be considered as proofs.

But, again, can the lack of proof be taken to mean the opposite? If no proof can be found against a murderer, then its logical and fair to think he ‘may’ not have committed the crime but one can’t say for sure. The truth about the crime doesn’t depend on proof or the lack of it. The truth remains unaltered and non-dependent on how many people believe/ not believe.

Its easy to disregard the existent of God. Doesn’t take a second. But to explain all that he stands for is the tough part. Not that ‘God knows’ is a sufficient explanation , but its sufficient enough for many people and is the best man can do about questions it shall never find answers to.

Man’s belief in God is inversely proportional to the advancement he makes in Science. Now man can explain lightning, he can predict floods and tsunamis, he can cure diseases. So now, diseases/lightning/floods are no longer the wrath of God. But HE still exists because many fundamental questions about man and universe remain a mystery. If we manage to explain the universe and its working, only then shall we be able to do away with ‘God’. Ignorance is crippling. And God is a convenient pair of crutches. Crutches which man* (when I say man*, I mean the society as a whole and not a few ‘different’ individuals) can NEVER do without. Because if one thing is certain, then it is this : Man shall never be able to fully grasp the concepts which I have mentioned at the start of this post.

A monkey, the smartest possible of its kind, can never understand, say, calculus … no matter how much effort is put. Its brain is limited and cannot see the *obvious*.Its purpose in life is to survive and mate. As we have far greater IQ than animals, our purpose in life is *higher*. But, as in the case of the monkey, our brains are not wired so as to understand the secrets of the universe. We can’t. We are handicapped by a limited IQ, limited lifespan and limited resources. We don’t have the means to *know*. We may be shut in a world teeming with ‘signs’ that tell all. But, we aren’t meant to read it. No amount of trying shall yield anything but frustration. So, renouncing the world and meditating bare-bodied on a mountain top is stupidity glorified. Nothing else. Also, stubbornness to accept only those things which have ‘logic’ won’t help either. Because logic exists, only that you aren’t smart enough to get it.

God, most probably, doesn’t exist. God is a random *theory*, the chances of which being correct being very low, though definitely not zero. Assuming for the time being that God doesn’t exist (which I believe), then What? By what phenomena or how did the world become as it is?? As, I have already discussed that its futile to even attempt answering; it leaves me with no other option but to revert back to thinking that probably there is some super-being/energy/phenomena that is responsible for everything.*Something * is above us and has *created* us.

But for some reason, this train of thought is hard to digest. And I shall attempt to answer why I am an atheist. Disregarding the ‘trick questions’, where the believers score an unconvincing point , there are many other aspects/repercussions of ‘God’ that can be conveniently explained in isolation of him.

I have heard, as well as seen medical miracles happen because of *unbreakable faith in God*. It is not the faith in God which is responsible. Its *faith*-on either medicines/doctor/self or of course on HIM. Faith is the miracle here. Not God. Some people prefer it the God way, but that does not make them weak. It’s a matter of choice. I choose to bank on medicines and you may choose to trust *God*. As long as the end product, getting well, is the same, it shouldn’t irk anyone.

Then again, the feelings of calmness/devotion/joy during chanting/praying/visiting temples are not fake. It’s a reality for believers. Though its possible to experience far more satisfying emotions by being happy/positive about oneself, seeking forgiveness from self rather than god, having enough confidence in *self* and hardwork to see oneself through difficult times rather than banking on God to set things right. Its therefore useless to do ‘yangas’ and super useless to get one’s horoscopes read (more on destiny later).

I do not frown upon people who go to temples and pray. I respect their decision to believe in God. But, many times than not, my decision to not go to one, has been looked down upon and I have been branded as snobbish in the process. I don’t blame such people though, because protesting non-conformist behavior, irrespective of it mattering to the protestor, has been ingrained in the genes of many since birth, and especially protesting touchy issues like god, religion. I do not expect, say, my grandfather to understand – because 70 years of believing in something shuts the mind of all logic proving otherwise. But, when my teenage friends don’t understand, it’s a mild shock.

Though, I do believe in some concepts which have propagated under the pretence of ‘God says’. Only, I choose to view and apply those concepts in detachment of the God factor. (Though, for those with blind faith and an incapacity to think for self , 'God says' can be dangerous as death. More of it later.)

I believe in self-discovery and consequently, self improvement. Being self-centered in this way, can do a lot of good to the world. Everything else is secondary to self-charity. So, if you think you anger quick, you should ‘consciously’ try to control it. It will make you feel good about yourself. The world mirrors what you think of yourself and hence, it shall, too, feel good about you. On the other hand if you think you are a good-for-nothing failure, wallow in self-pity and do nothing about it , the world will confirm your belief.

I also, very strongly, believe in doing good for others. This actually, automatically follows from the first theory of being a good person. Good deeds for others is nothing short of worshipping man and self. And, ofcourse, ‘karma’ is earned in the process which inturn makes good things happen to the good-doer.

Its established now, that I am a pure atheist. And probably its irony at its best, that my name, Ishavasyam, literally means ‘Where God lives’. I prefer to twist its meaning to connote ‘Man is his own God’ and synchronize it with my belief of man-worship.

Amen.

Beedi - Part 2

2007-05-22T12:22:00.000+05:30

The Bansiville Diaries

Chapter 4

Part -2

Jhoom Barabar jhoom...

(dedicated to my most 'patient' reader , Kat'h'rani)

Continued...

(For those who haven't read Part-1 , scroll down....)

...Then, something happened... Something so sensational and miraculous , that it went down the Kudos' history as 'THE MOMENT'.

Yeshi envisioned this Gawd-level brilliant idea which grabbed the competition by both hands and smashed it on our rivals' faces.

She narrated the plan in a breathless rush of excitement.That was it. It couldn't have been more perfect. I lapped it up instantly. I knew it would work.

The knotted, throbbing veins of tension near my temple unfurled ,like blooming red flowers in spring-time rejoice. It felt as if someone had uncorked a bottle of Navratna tel and poured it down my burning head.

The plan was a beauty...it was gorgeous...

We were to dress up as guys - crude, rustic roadside-romeos and boogie in an ..uhm..'unrefined' manner on beedi (Omkara).

The strategy was foolproof. We figured that it would require only marginal co-ordination .There would be crude baarati steps, requiring minimal practice, which could be conjured at the last minute and could be learnt with relative ease. And to top it, there would be no need of matching costumes either. Our props could be beer bottles and bright garish duppattas .I could feel the plan working already.

A few agreed but it didn't go down well with most of the gang. It would be very vulgar and obscene, they objected. There was no time for all this. So Yeshi, Akanksha & I, the convincing queens, grabbed hold of every single girl and shook them violently till it was drilled into their heads that it was going to be the most sophisticated and classy thing they'd ever do in their lives. With bucketfulls of appropriate soothing noises,we drowned the remaining doubts.

One by one everyone agreed.It was not going to be vulgar.

But then, there is no such thing as a 'line' between vulgarity and decency.Its more of a fuzzy area , the boundaries of which are undefined.And in that fuzzy area of undefined boundaries, called the no man's land, we were going to gyrate in awkward angles, sloshing godforsaken beer bottles.

The next day was going to be a fatal duel between society induced sensibilities and crazy creativity ,with our carefully preserved image at stake.

No one could guarantee the reaction of the crowd - but we knew one thing- either they would love it to death or hate it with every particle of their being.

There would be no middle reaction. Actually, there can be no middle reaction, when well-bred girls dress as guys, and cheesy-ly dance in the no man's land ,clutching desi beer bottles.

1:00 am

Everyone finally gave the green signal. The plan managed to pass through the Kudos' Veto System, but not without some deep bruises of scornful contempt.

The first step now, was to get hold of the damned song. The wi-fi system in the hostel crashed and we couldn't download it. All of us went up and down the entire hostel and woke up the entire B-Tech asking for Beedi .Not a soul had it. And here I thought that stupid thing was a hit!

1:30 am

Yeshi and I went to the Pharma-Tech/MBA Boys' hostel and begged the guard to send 'any' guy down. A 'Kshitij' came down and like a knight in shining armour got us beedi in a pendrive. (Thanks Kshitij...like Abhi, even you would never see this...still..)

2:00 am

We began the choreographing. Due to utter lack of time, we scrapped the Veto System and formulated a dictatorship. We barely had 4-5 hours left. The dance competition was at 1 pm.Each one of us had to report to the college by 10 am as we were all event-heads of some or the other event at the fest. Jayna and I were the event-head for a spectacularly flop journalism competition called The Newshounds.

I fondly remember choreographing for Beedi as one of my most fun moments in Bansiville. Everybody got into the baarati dance mood. We squatted, jumped, flayed around limbs in the most shockingly undignified manner. It looked as if 10 girls unanimously suffered an epileptic attack.

3:00 am

They say, dare to dance like no ones watching you. But we dared to dance like we normally wouldn't have dared, even in an empty room.All inhibitions sunk in the whirlpool of our madness.

We strained our minds to remember the all the goofy steps the guys in our class do. Every now and then, somebody would jump up and be like Lets do the 'The Chabbra step!!' or 'The Hallu step!!'.

Now, Kritika, Pallavi and Neha are hopelessly feminine. We just couldn't imagine them executing the raw ,low-grade stuff we were doing.Every fluttering eyelash and every graceful hand movement of theirs ,screamed feminity.No problem. We made them Bipasha Basu-s.

We danced away the night belting out C-grade sleazy moves. The trashy-er the steps, the more excited we would get.Prerna ,who is a master actress, taught everyone lecherous expressions. It was all very gross. And it was all so much fun.We were like a couple of Chambal valley dacoits celebrating a bulky loot over lots of beer and three sensous women.

There was obviously no way we could practice on the stage even once. Hence, all the positioning and the formations were decided on a piece of paper. After lots of scratchings, cuttings and long sqiggly arrows running amok all over the paper, forming what seemed like a highly complicated interlocked grid, we gave up. We balled the stupid paper and threw it away.

Tomorrow we shall be spontaneous and natural.

4:00 am

We called the boys' hostel and ordered black shirts(Thanks Abhinav, Vedant, Rahul, Rohit, Ritesh and many others). They were all, obvoiously, very baggy and loose.Beggars can't be choosers.So, all of us wore ill-fitted sloppy shirts. We flung loud, bright duppattas around the neck and wore dark goggles(Thanks Ishaan).Hence,we succeeded in looking authentically lowbrow and uncouth. We looked perfect.

The 'girls' got long flowy white and silver skirts , maroon strapped tops,snow white dupattas.The costumes didn't match perfectly but at the last moment this was the best we could come up with.

5:00 am

Everyone was dead tired. Prerna,Swapnil and Akanksha had collapsed on one bed and nobody had the heart to wake them up.

We were still left with the choreography of the last 30 seconds.We didn't have any energy to choreograph further and so it was decided that we would spread all over the stage and do whatever comes to mind.

Everyone got up at 8 to practice. Rehearsed till 10. I was sleepy and completely drained out.Together with the dance, I had to handle the journalism shit and the fashion show practice. My body was killing me. I thought I would pass out on the stage or something.

Everybody, like me, was thoroughly zombi-fied. Me and Yeshi were the worst hit and had to gulp down two painkiller tablets to be able to stand.

Yeshi and I, went to the kabadi walla to purchase empty beer bottles. He inquired inquisitively whether they were for some science project.I said 'Yes'.Yeshi said 'No' and plunged into a long explaination of the dance,the props; till I dragged her away.

I don't know what happened on stage. I don't know where the hell my lethargy and weakness vanished. The moment the first chord of beedi struck, it sent a mild current through the crowd and gave a deadly 1000 volt shock to all of us.

Everyone went beserk. It was as if a few wild animals had been let lose.We lashed out floods of lewd expressions and danced like theres no tomorrow. Everyone was so superbly confident. There wan't a trace of shyness or consciousness.We rocked the world.

As the tempo of the cheering increased to deafening levels ,invisible testosterone surged through our bodies.With every come-hither lip-biting and powerful pelvic thrustings, the roar rose higher and higher. We were breathtakingly superb.It didn't matter that not even a single step synchronized.It didn't matter that we were forgetting steps. We were still breathtakingly superb.

The dance was supposed to be of three minutes. We were at the last stages of 'no choreography'. I could see from the corner of my eye Swapnil busy eve-teasing Kritika. Prerna was running amok all over the stage in a spasm-induced frenzy, Apoorva and Swati were engrossed with a very brave step at the foot of the stage. I was concentrating on balancing the beer bottle on my head.

The DJ, probably lost in the dance too, forgot to stop the music after 3 minutes.The music kept playing and we kept dancing. Apurva was the only one in her senses and went around pushing everyone off the stage. I think, I got drunk with the music and the crowd. I kept going on and on. I was the last person to get off the stage.

The crowd erupted like one crazy volcano..Once More , Twice More !! Encore!! ... Encore !!!We were the only group to have got an encore. I saw the judge was sitting ,all dumb struck and flustered.

They say , hardwork always pays. In our case, Rs 5000.

We stood second and danced away the night in celebration of our sweet, well-deserved victory.

We had the time of our lives.

Beedi - Part 1

2007-05-18T12:48:00.000+05:30

The Bansiville Diaries

Chapter-4 , Part 1

Aaja Nach Le

Dancers,they say, are athletes of Gods.

Losing oneself to dance is the most classic,most perfect, most unadulterated form of joy I know. It is like a potent drug which simmers down the soul, numbing one to the world. Infact, dancing makes me feel less like God's athlete and more like a Goddess – all gloriously charged up, happy and ready to rule the world.

Dance is the biggest and the most urgent passion shared by the Kudos—all 13 of us.

It is drugs and it is wonderfully addictive.We just got to have our weekly dose of a dance party .The days we aren't able to get high in a disco; we take Pallavi's music system,dim the lights and party till we reach a stage of a fainting fit or till the 1st floor aunty bangs open the door, armed with a zillion angry complaints.

So, when the auditioning for the official dance team for the college festival began; all of us voluntarily dropped out of it.We courageously renounced the chance to get trained by a professional choreographer and decided to make our very own dance group!

But we were't blind.Neither did we suffer from the mirage of self-glory and greatness which is a rampant disease with most people.We knew our 'aukaad' (sorry, an english version of that word doesn't exist). We could fully fathom the impending doom that awaited us when we would compete against the 'official' NMIMS team and the other colleges' dance troops.

All of us knew in our hearts that this was nothing less than a mad death wish and that our chances of beating the other teams were about as bright as that of Laloo becoming the President of the US.

So,we all peacefully harmonized with the fact that we would participate 'just to have fun' which is the kind of forceful positive spirit one has, when one knows how hopeless it is to even think of winning.

We pre-judged and declared that we weren't going to clear the first elimination round.Therefore, there arose no question of preparing separately for the finals.

Now, there are all kinds of dancers in the Kudos - the trained ones, the good ones and the average ones.But there is one thing common - the throbbing uncontrollable infatuation with dance.

And so, three weeks before the performance day, we engrossed selves in back-breaking hardwork (literally).

Apurva,Swapnil,Pallavi,Swati,Prerna and I were the choreographers.Choreographing, as it turned out, was a really really tough job.

Firstly because, every goddamned step had to pass through the strict scrutiny of the Kudos Veto System. All dancers had the Veto power. Even if one of our sisters refused to do any step because ; the step made her look fat, it didn't suit her body type,or she felt she could become the queen of England before ever managing to move her body like that ; the step was discarded ,but not without an hour or so of heated round table conference with lots of banshee like screeching and an avalanche of cranky suggestions.

And secondly because, one of us happened to be left handed.Now, this posed a super huge problem. 9 of us found most of the steps un-doable from the left hand side and she found most of the steps un-doable from the right hand side. And so, after a lot of brain wrecking calculations, we made exactly 10% of the total steps left-y.

It took long dragging hours to to finalize a single swing .Thanks to the veto system and the left-right issue ,our rejects started heaping up with scary speed.Our bank of steps started depleting and everybody's creative juices froze to a stagnant halt.

Plagiarism is the best bet in such cases. We turned to the dance channels in gross desperation - from VH1 to Surya TV.We watched it for hours, day after day, to fish dance moves.Surya TV and other such Tamil Channels aided in our sad times.A few edits like: toned down bosom heaving, lacking enthusiasm while at the pelvic thrusts, limited force while executing the violent foot thumping -- and whooopy! we had invented fresh, never-seen-before moves!!

But don't call it copying.no.We were Eklavyas and the TV was our Guru Dronacharya.

Still, the initial days were hopeless beyond words can describe,so much so that, many a times we thought we'd just cancel the whole thing instead of making a complete fool of ourselves, infront of all colleges of Bombay.

We kept forgetting the sequence,kept falling,tripping,crashing into our partners with our unbelievable shoddy footwork.Basically, it was one huge mess. And to top it all, there wasn't a hint of co-ordination between any two people picked in any random permutation or combination.

We had short girls, tall girls, stocky girls, lanky girls,skinny girls and not so skinny girls...all body shapes and sizes which made the same step look totally different on everyone.

But then, thank God ! we had the good sense to go on and not give up.

We trained non-stop,into the nights,for 4-5 hours at a stretch, on the 2nd floor hall.Unfailingly everyday,the poor 1st floor aunty would send up the Super Security guard inorder to beg,plead,threaten us to stop stomping on the floors and turn down the volume.We would take care and softly pad around for the next five minutes after which we were back to booting the floor with all our strength .Her pleadings, begging and threatening were all brushed off and lay ignored.

Abhi Shah (our classmate) aka Handsome aka Chanti (long story) aka DJ Shah ;an amateur DJ,brilliantly mixed our songs for us with the finesse and the expertise of a professional.(Fast n Furious,Temperature,Mama-mia remix,Bebot,Punjabi mix of Me against the music).

My gratitude oozes out in flowing rivers because he mixed the songs, sitting in the TT hall ,at 2 in the night,in the oppressive humidity, in the midst of millions of swarming blood sucking mosquitoes.(Thanks so much, Abhi...and I know you'd never read this blog but anyways...)

Pallavi and Prerna did a fantastic job with our costumes.They got these marvelous stretchable black tops which surprisingly fit everyone, as if tailor made.We looked perfect for the dance with military green cargoes, military caps, painted hands and tattoos!!(check out the pics on the side bar)

S-l-o-w-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y, after pouring infinite hours and buckets of sweat into the dance ,it started taking some little definable form.Little by little, the steps started synchronizing. A day before 'the day' , I must admit, it looked pretty good.

The night before the performance, we went to practice on the actual stage inorder to get the 'feel' of the spacings. We saw the official NMIMS team practicing there.With every swishy-swashy fancy move they did,I shrank lower and lower in my seat and my heart rose higher and higher in my choking dry throat. The dance was inhumanly fast,energetic coupled with monster levels of precision and co-ordination. I was so sad.

XYZ was sitting next to me with a silly maniac-like smile stuck on her face.She turned to me and happily announced that the Kudos would definitely beat them.She dismissed their mind boggling performance with a casual swish of her hand." Isha!! Open your eyes and look! they have Dinosaur-age steps "

Yessss!! it was true! Short of the Macarena, they had included every concievable old ,fossiled and done-to-death steps. Observing further, I noticed that 90% of their steps were from the junkyard of Kudos' rejects.

Now we were perked up and confident. We had all the reasons in the world to qualify for the finals.

1. There were fresh new steps,not to mention 10 gorgeous girls dishing them out with oodles of confidence ,in smart sexy costumes.

2. The dance event organizer,Ritesh, happened to be the muh-bola brother of half the Kudos'.

3. Last and THE LEAST : The judge for the day was organized by Juhi (a Kudos' member)Though, I swear, there wasn't any foul play.

There was simply no way we wouldn't qualify for the finals.

There was just one single hitch.It started looking like we'd be selected for the finals ,which was the next day and nobody had any idea what to do about it.

We performed.Got applauds.

And then, the bomb dropped.As expected, we did manage to scrape through the eliminations(with the lowest score).By the time we were done with the celebrations of clearing the elims and by the time the reality of the situation hit us squarely between our eyebrows, it was already 11 in the night.We were in deep deep shit.

It had taken us a good three weeks to come up with a decent 5 minute performance. Now, with half a day left for the finals, we had no idea about the costume, or the steps or even the f**king song we were supposed to dance on.

And at this very juncture of such overwhelming crisis, God decided to play spoilsport.The judge for the final round,we were informed by Ritesh, was not our judge.

The finals was to be a prop-round. Even after endless debates: howling,yelling,bossing,forcing,accusing,judging and planning we weren't able to come up with even one song for the dance.Time was slipping away and so was my sanity.

It struck 12 .My blood pressure threatened to pierce my skin and shoot right out my body, and my mind had begun to explode like a cracker factory on fire. STRESS STRESS STRESSSS.Everyone was depressed and dead tired.A few even went off to sleep.

Then, something happened. Something so sensational and miraculous , that it went down the Kudos' history as 'THE MOMENT'.

Yeshi envisioned this Gawd-level brilliant idea which grabbed the competition by both hands and smashed it on our rivals' faces...

To be continued.....

Tell the Smell

2007-05-08T11:37:00.000+05:30

The Bansiville Diaries
Chapter 3
Life's Essence

I've known it since I was a child. I have a very keen nose. I could always tell if a lizard had died somewhere in the room hours before anyone else realized.

Dad said that I must have been a dog in my previous birth. And when I pointed out to him that ants have better noses (5 ,I think ) he laughed and said I must have been an ant then.
I have a serious ,very grim disorder.Nuerological, I think.I smell everything. My Dad gifts me a watch.I smell it. My new laptop.I smell it. I smell pens before using them, socks before wearing them.I sprawl on the floor and smell the new carpet mom got.I have this uncontrollable urge to smell things.And if I don't then something funny gnaws at the back of my head.

I have favorite smells.My dad's wardrobe smells the best.Its one of my most loved passtimes to bury my head in his cubboard and rub my face on his shirts and coats (He doesn't know this. I am sure he'd freak out).

Camel's pastel colors smell out of the world.Much to my sister's disgust, I grab her box and sit with it for half an hour at a stretch, making aaaaah,oooooh and many such inappropriate noises. She finds this repulsive.And,this is one of the countless reasons why she solemnly testifies that I am insane.

Lastly, the smell of fresh books. Nothing like flipping the fresh crisp pages and have the scent hit you before the first word does.Old books also smell nice, but not all old books.Something to do with the paper used ,I guess.

Earlier, I was very particular about how I smelt. I wouldn't dream of putting on a scent which wasn't imported and was not nightmarishly expensive.Even after mom's vehement protests, papa indulged me.Got me Bvlgari.Got me Calvin Klein.Chanel.Armani.

It all changed with my coming to Bombay.Mom said there was no way she would allow me to take such exorbitantly pricey and fancy bottles to the hostel. And so, now I have to be really rude with my body , squirting it with some local ,eighy rupees worth stench.My body flinches and shudders in pure horror .My nose revolts and cries foul.But I tell them to stop behaving like the princess in the fable 'The Princess and the pea' and spray on with the determination of a hardened disciplined army officer.

In school, I recognized and remembered friends through their smells.In Bansiville, this carefully nurtured talent is rendered useless.Everyone uses everyone's perfumes and everyone smells the same. Of Fa.Lemon.At eighty rupees , it is economical and all that we can afford with our middle-class monthly budget.

There are two distinct aromas @ Bansiville.

One is the 'Parle' fragrance .
Bansiville is in Vile Parle West.Its named after the 'Parle' factory here.Every morning before sunrise, God himself wafts in through our windows in the form of blissfully enchanting nirvan-ic aromas. Of freshly baked cakes and biscuits.

We generally don't get to smell it because we are sleeping at those unearthly hours. But, during exam times, when we are busy mugging up insane stuff like the working and construction of 'hair hygrometer'(an instrument that measures humidity in the air using human hair)and are up all night, this intoxicating flavor creeps slowly towards us and lulls us into a dreamy trance.

And suddenly every nerve in the body bursts with appetite. We dive into the kitchen cabinets with a sense of acute urgency and scavenge something to eat. Hair hygrometer lies forgotton.

The second prominent smell @ Bansiville is that of open drains. The odor it emnates can be a potential killer.And I am not exaggerating.It has the power to render you senseless if you are a first-timer. For hardcores like us, it just gives migrains.It has its own moods. Sometime it stinks, but most of the time it lies dormant.

More later.

Chicken Biryani for lunch today. I can smell it.

Of K-evins and K-ates

2007-05-07T10:50:00.001+05:30

The Bansiville Diaries

Chapter 2

The Beginnings

The story begins from the 29th of June 2006, which, with a happy coincidence is my birthday too(50 days to go!).
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It was the first day of College - the 'Orientation' day . A sacred ritual, religiously held every year ,to brainwash rapt wide-eyed new students into thinking that MBA-Tech is the best course on planet and that on graduation we'd earn an annual starting salary of Rs.15 lakhs (that's roughly thrice what an IIT-ian earns ).Tone it down Mr.xyz , even our shamefaced politicians don't peddle dreams with such vulgar enthusiasm.
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Prolonged dull sermons were doled out on moral-ism, hardwork (kill me,please ) and many other such offending topics ,which I don't remember because I was busy 'accidentally' letting people around me know that it was my birthday and shamelessly getting them to wish me.
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I did not listen.And after sitting through the Question-Answer-Session which yielded queries like 'Which are the best discs in Mumbai?',I seriously doubt whether anybody did.

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The next day, was the first day of stay at Bansiville.All girls were at their very formal best.And so,there was lots of foolish smiling at each other and an overdose of 'excuse me-s' and 'thank you-s' in honeyed voices which gives you this funny feeling of drowning in a pool of sick.
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Thankfully it just lasted a day, and by the next evening we were back to our तू - ता selves.For once, the silly monsoons did some good. Bansiville stands in a low-lying area and it becomes completely cut off during heavy rains.So, the 13 of us (Swati, Jayna, Prerna, Swapnil, Yeshi, Neha, Apoorva, Rashmi, Pallavi, Akanksha, Juhi, Kritika and me) got stranded in the hostel for 5 days and bonded like hyper reactive chemical substances ,over hot coffee and hotter gossips.We ganged-up on the 2nd floor which is exclusively an MBA-Tech अड्डा .
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By the end of the second day we were updated with every romantic detail of each others' love life.We learnt how to say 'I Love You' in Rajasthani,Gujrati,Oriya,Punjabi,Bengali and Tamil. By the end of the third day we were done with playing antakshari,raja-mantri, killer-killer and many such low IQ ,hare-brained games. We were done with ghost stories.Done with bitching about the B-Tech girls.Done with irritating the neighbouring building's guard from our windows.Done with inventing 'the witch dance ritual'.And done with every conceivable thing-to-do which imagination allows.
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And then, on the fourth day there was simply nothing left to do.
Soon we were reduced to discussing the future of India and the state of party politics. And on one such day, when I was playing word meaning game (I was that bored) with apoorva, we chanced upon the word 'Kudos' in the dictionary. It means honor, glory and acclaim.We impulsively decided that this is what we would call the group. It didn't go down well with the others (Yaar! thats horribly similar to कूड़ा (garbage)) and we thought we'd change it but somehow no one really bothered and the name stuck.
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The unending confinement did things to our brains. We invented secret signs,codes and logos ,like a gaggle of 10 yr olds getting over excited after reading the famous five. Sample this :
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Kevin - is a fusion of K + Seven which means seven of the choicest गालियाँ (insults) starting from the letter 'K'. करम जली (the characterless one),कर्कशी (the harsh one), कलमूही (the black-faced one) etc etc , you get the drift.
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We used this for everyone we didn't like ,which more or less was the entire hostel, except us.For people we hated even more , there was always 'Kate'.
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Kate - K + Eight which is an assortment of all the seven 'K' insults together with 'K-ockroach'.
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So, the final equation was something like this :
Kevin + Kockroach = Kate

If you get all this goofy garbage , good. If you don't , even better.
I'll spare you the gory details of more such Kudos' exploits( for the sake of our इज़्ज़त and your sanity).
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But undoubtedly, all that was tremendous fun.
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The Kudos -- an unshakable , unbreakable group we've forged which has been further strengthened by everybody's strict adherence to the Kudos' motto, ' आओ बहन चुगली करें'
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Bitching is bonding.
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And that is a scientifically proven fact.

हिंदी मैं लिखने का प्रयास

2007-05-06T21:45:00.000+05:30

ब्लॉगर ने एक बहुत ही कूल सा नया प्हीचर निकला है । हिंदी में ब्लोग्गिंग करने का । क़सम से ,मज़ा आ रहा है।

देखिए ,मेरी हिंदी गोबर है । बाद में नहीं कहियेगा कि मैंने आपको सचेत नहीं किया ।

स्कूल में मेरी इंग्लिश की टीचर मुझसे जितनी खुश थी , मेरी हिंदी टीचर मुझसे उतनी ही दुःखी। कभी भी अछे नम्बर नहीं आये।

आएंगे कैसे? आज तक एक हिंदी कि बुक भी पढी होती तो नम्बर पर हक जता सकती। कभी हिंदी अख़बार तक नहीं पढा । प्रेमचंद तक अंग्रेजी में पढ़ डाली।

ममी को शादी के वक्त हिंदी नहीं आती थी। पापा उन्हें शादी करके मध्य प्रदेश ले आये जहाँ हिंदी के सेवाये कोई कुछ नहीं समझता । हर रोज घर में एक ही सब्जी बाना करती थी। पापा दुःखी हो गए । जब घर के नौकरों को बुला के पुछा तो पाया कि मेमसाहिब सिर्फ भिंडी खरीदने को कहती थी । पापा ने ममी से सवाल किया । ममी बेचारी को हिंदी में सिर्फ एक ही सब्जी का नाम आता था।

शुक्र है , मैं तब पैदा नहीं हुई थी।

और इससे पहले आप मेरी हिंदी को लेके अपना सर दीवार पर फोड़ लें , मैं यहीं रूक जाती हूँ।

Lift Band KARO-OoOoO !!

2007-05-03T23:18:00.000+05:30

The Bansiville Diaries - Chapter 1

Lift Band Karo-OoOoO!!!

Bansiville is actually Bansi Villa, the MBA-Tech + B-Tech girls' hostel of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management and Higher Studies, Mumbai.Me and a few friends fondly call it Bansiville after Townsville sheher of Powerpuff girls (umm....please don't judge us on this).

It is a 7 storied ,2-winged ordinary building ,in one of the vague threadlike lanes of Vile-Parle,Mumbai. The front wing is the NMIMS boys' hostel where an odd assortment of MBA uncles and pharma-tech guys put up. The back wing has us. And just to clear a query of a rather brain-dead guy ,there is no maternity ward in between the two wings.

Bansiville is zealously patrolled by 'Super Security' guards who, for some very perplexing reason,seem to be the only brand of guards in all of Mumbai.All malls,theatres,colleges and even Amitabh Bachhan's house (15 minutes walking distance) hire the services of 'Super Security'. Big League.

At the very entrance of our wing ,there is a wall-to-wall Herculean iron grill . It has been installed ,just recently, by some half-witted goose(Mr.Lobo, the hostel-in-charge, no doubt) inorder to prevent girls' going out after the official deadline of 8pm. I am a 19-yr-old living in Mumbai. And you have no idea how stupid that sounds.

Since when have iron grills stopped iron wills, anyways? So, grills or no grills - it couldn't have made less of a difference.

Beyond the grill, lies a big passage leading to the female guards' desk where girls are supposed to ceremoniously jot down the in-time,out-time, reason for stepping out in the big bad world etc etc. Behind the desk some thoughtful soul(can't possibly be Lobo) has installed a jumbo king-size mirror, helping us last minute re-re-adjustments of hair and re-working the kohl. God bless whoever he is.

And infront of it lies the elevator. Now, the lift happens to be the sole mode of entry or exit ,to and from the hostel. This is because, the first floor is inhabited by some private people (and does not belong to the college) who have grilled the entrance to the stairs.

Its not your ordinary lift, no.It is one of those ancient models which the Bansiville builders have ,no doubt, scavenged from the remains of some pre-historic building.One of mankind's first designs ever.

It has two bulky grills which earlier had to be pulled,tugged,heaved,wrenched and finally yanked open with what took your life. Thankfully, now it is loose at its joints and gives away to a mere jerk with lots of protesting noises like a cranky stubborn old man.

And like all cranky stubborn old men , its very very fussy. So, if you leave open any of the two grills, even a fraction of a hair's breadth, its mayhem in hell.The lift becomes un-operational from all floors rendering all inmates of Bansiville paralyzed (can't use the stairs, remember?).

The inevitable follows. Long drawn angry cries of "Lift band Karo". "*$##@ Lift Band KarOOOOOOOO".(Close the lift) The entire hostel reverberates with this war cry till frantic girls from all floors rush out to see whether the heinous crime has been unknowingly committed by them.Somebody with an apologetic breathless hurry closes the grills and life is peaceful again.

The frequency of this outcry is maddeningly high.You get to hear it unfalteringly from 7 in the morning to 3 in the night. You hear it everyday, every hour.Almost non stop.Every particle of your being has to be directed towards self control.(I musn't slap the screeching bitch, I musn't,I musn't).

"Lift Band Karo","Arrey!! Lift Band Karoooo". You hear screechy cries,hoarse cries,desperate cries,abuse-laced cries,blood curdling cries.

(Take a deep breath. I must not, must not...)

Booming.Fuming.Pleading.Cacophonic.

(Control. Concentrate. Must not...)

Fireworks.bang bang bang.

(God in heaven, have mercy)

But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. My lungs have become sturdier and can now hold a greater volume of air courtesy wailing Lift Band Karo most of the year. Which means greater supply of oxygen to my brain and heart making me sharper and healthier.Thank you lift.

The fact that we have heard this particular monologue throughout our first year, (and am sure we'd hear lots more of it in the years to come) and that this common thread has bound all the Bansiville lodgers together in their times of glory and despair, has made it the chorus of the soon-to-be composed Bansiville anthem.

One of my friends got so sick with this 'Lift Band Karo' Syndrome that when she came to Delhi for her vacations, and called the lift to take her to her flat, to her deep embarrassment and horror she unconsciously hollered 'Lift Band Karo'.....

....Attachment. Bansiville does that to you.

Bombay, anyday.

2007-05-01T16:54:00.000+05:30

Bombay is a free city. It liberates you. Especially ,if you are a student who has tasted and savored gross freedom for the first time ever. It grows on you slowly.And before you know it.... you are in love. Madly, deeply.

Bombay gave me wings ,just like Red Bull does (and no, it doesn't contain bull semen like most of my friends have assured me gravely).

I remember initially whining endlessly about Bombay. The class(in college) roughly forked into two camps , Delhi-ites v/s the Local-ites.Word wars were waged. It was our pet pass time.

There were so many put-offs.

The slums, for instance.
When your aeroplane is about to land in Bombay, all your eyes behold ,is a massive sea of blue, engulfing the occasional high rise.On closer inspection, you are relieved that no tsunami has struck .But at the same time you are disturbed by the fact that the massive sea of blue is actually millions and millions of scrubby grimy little living holes , huddled together in mutual support ,as if to ward off some evil.Some merciless form of evil which shattered their dreams, emotions .The dreams that got them to Bombay in the first place.

Fantasies bring in thousands everyday.It is a strain on the fixed resources of the city. But one can't deprive people the modest ambition of having a higher standard of living and wishing their children educated and successful. And so, with open arms ,Bombay harbors million of hopes.
I understood these things.And so, slums no longer repulse me.

Then there is the utter lack of greenery ,which beautifully ornaments the national capital. Everywhere there is dust and more dust.I've always said that there are 3 seasons in Bombay : hot , HOTTER , HOTTEST. Oh of course! There is one more season in which Bombay goes crazy.The rains, when the ruthless heavens open their windows and let lose turbo waterfalls.

And there are the narrow asphyxiating roads where every inch of the pavements is hungrily devoured by road side vendors and ugly metallic bill boards advertising some obnoxiously expensive brand of designer clothing.

I loathed the local trains earlier .It is repulsive to have every unimaginable sweaty part your body rub against every unimaginable sweaty part of someone else's body.And trust me, it is arduous for the poor olfactory senses when your head is thrust inside some one's chameli oiled hair. But soon I realized how efficient and convinient they were.Cheap too.

The local trains are lifesavers , especially when you want to go from Juhu to Churchgate and you don't exactly have the leisure of 2 days. With excellent frequency and very marginal mishaps they are the pride of the city. A pure delight.

I grudgingly started accepting that Bombay, after all, was much much better than Delhi (you are most welcome to disagree, its just my point of view).

The people are friendlier here (so what if they smooch-call you? ....i let that pass)

Note : There is this very funny smooch-call-culture in Bombay.Supposing I want you to grace me with your attention. You are standing at a considerable distance. I am unaware of what name you go by. What do I do? Go AAAIIIEEEEEEE YYYOOOUU, SAAALEEE KUTTEEE SUN ..... like they do in Delhi?Or, bellow 'Excuse me' like a cultured person from the civilized world and add 'Madame in red ,please' ,in case the person ignores your presence? No. Definitely not.

What you should do is this. Purse your lips into a seductive 'O' and go smooch-smooch in the loudest , most uncouth and the most undignified way possible.That's how Bombay works.I was shocked earlier when the canteen-walla or shopkeepers did it. But when I witnessed the librarian do it , I had to accept that this was a part of an ancient tradition, passed down from father to son ,or,probably ingrained in their genes.Can we have the Shiv Sena's attention please?

Its safer here. Fewer incidences of rape and harassment cases compared to our sin capital. One of my friends says that this is due to the free and flourishing flesh market here .There is 'no need' to rape. Whatever. All that concerns me is that it thinkable to be out on the roads at 3 in the night. In Delhi, you'd do it only if you have lost the desire to live.

Delhi is dead after 10. Bombay never sleeps. You actually have to look left-right-left and then carefully cross the roads, even at 3 am. The night life of Delhi fades (like our men in faded-blue) when compared with Bombay. Heck! There is just no comparison. I might as well be comparing the Manchester United with Mohun Bagan.

There is much to do in Bombay. You can never be bored. If you tire of the malls, the street shopping, discs and the other hang-outs; there is always the beach- forever lusty and inviting. Most of the things are there in Delhi too , but Bombay has that special zing-thing.

I am not a star struck teenager. And like everyone in Bombay, I don't even bother a second look .

But, then I am not even complaining if Viveik (or is it Vieeviiek? or Kviveik? with the 'K' silent perhaps? )Oberoi jogs besides me on the Juhu beach or Kajol queues up behind me at Barrista's or Jackie Shroff dances next to me at Poison or Shaan eats next to me in Marriot. Nope, not complaining at all.

The creed is different. Different ideologies . No one bothers what you are doing or not doing. No one bothers what you are wearing (or not wearing). Girls can easily get away with a backless in the middle of busy streets (In Delhi that would spell something like R-A-P-E.)

In Bombay, people keep to themselves. Smile a lot oftener.

There is money in the air. All you need to do is reach out and grab it. A land of mega opportunities.Truly, a land of bright golden dreams.

I love it. Love the ambience of the city. Also love the tasteless stuff girls wear, which in turn makes your simple hand-me-down t-shirts look classy and chic.

Needlessly to say, I've taken to the Bombay life like fish takes to crystal clear-extra oxygenated-pure-water. Bombay Rocks!!!Hard!!!