Gobbledegook.

I stand at the sideline and look at all the big players, playing and winning at every possible game. I look at their happy faces and try to touch their intangible achievements with the hope that that'll give me the feel that I could never give myself. But there again I fail because there's something God never gave me, the ability to pick up my pieces and make another attempt, the ability to be the proverbial phoenix. I am sorry because I am just another normal human being with big dreams, bigger limitations and mammoth failures to my name. I try not to indulge in self pity and put up a smiling face to the huge wide world. I try to hide that feeling of deficiency with a wry smile scratched across my face. But at times, all the restraint fails and all thats left of the being that is me, is heap of smoldering remains of what started off as a crackling fire. There again, I smile and say, "Its better to burn out than fade away."

I hear people laughing and talking about what he did or she did, what he made and she found. I smile and think about what I could have done and I didn't do. And I sit on this chair, in front of this computer and keep pumping incoherent chains of random thought into the internet.

Thanks to Google, they've made so much space on the net, nobody would deny me my cribbing domain.

RAW ENERGY

Now this is what I call Mud Surfing!




I couldn't take my eyes off this snap when I came across it in The Hindu a couple of days ago. It's a glimpse of the annual cattle Race at Palakkad in Kerala.

Why Gump pipped Shawshank...

4th September was the day when I finally unravelled one of the biggest mysteries of Hollywood. I used to hate this highly acclaimed film called Forrest Gump because it took away all the Oscars from Shawshank Redemption which millions of people, along with me, think, is one of Hollywood's greatest creations. However, there definitely are some reasons why the best film award went to Forrest Gump. Firstly, the movie speaks of hope more forcefully than Shawshank Redemption and hope and faith in the face of physical disability always seems to work better than the hope of a prisoner, however wrongly imprisoned, does. That's the kind of hope that's a little difficult to accept, let alone idealize. That way, I would like to think that the only thing that killed Shawshank is its gory background, the cruelity of prison life, the bare truth. And, everyone know, the bare truth is not so well accepted as the doctored one.

Another thing that pulls an American towards Forrest Gump is the sarcastic take on the image of the American war Hero! The way the american lieutenant thinks its better to be blown up by your own bombers than live on after the war and make a life for yourself, drives the viewer to the wall. I mean, dude! there's some thing beyond all the bloodshed! Forrest Gump is everything that is acceptable to the American Society of 1994. Opposition to war, the heartfelt loss of some of America's JFK, the demystification of Watergate and all of it seen through the life of a cripple who runs due to a miracle, loves due to another, gets on the cover of Fortune magazine due to another one, plays football by chance and lives because he could run. The wayward Jenny gives you the views of the radical American kid with a tortured childhood and with Forrest fathering a physically and mentally excellent kid, it all fits in like clockwork. Something that will inspire one and all. From the peaceseeker to the hippie. From the soldier to the Shrimp Farmer. These kinds of film are made for oscars. I would still maintain, Shawshank deserved an oscar for all the right reasons, its a pity it was released in the same year.

One last observation, say what you may, Tom Hanks couldn't do half of what Morgan Freeman did with the Narration!

Biking

Took a detour to Agra on my bike last Sunday. As a part of common practice, Sunday mornings are too scarce to be whiled away on a motor cycle on a moderately busy highway. But with the level of boredom coupled with intense frustration with life in general and job in particular, I decided to make the journey. Only to have a look at something different for a change.

The landscape has got much lusher while we were busy toiling at our piping and erection work. The babul trees lining the highway wore a gleaming, bright green hue along with dense foliage that has sprung forth from all nooks and corners. The fields on either sides of the highway are at different stages of being ploughed and planted, one of the farmers has even built a raw shack with four hovels for support and a thatched roof. Something thats typical of Bengal but hardly ever noticed in UP. Notably, the farming techniques in UP are much advanced than those of Bengal where you could still spot the farmers egging on their bullocks tethered at the end of the tortured plough. UP has taken to mechanical ploughs, harvestors and threshers in a big way. Its a matter of concern when you have a look at the rotary threshers seperating tonnes of grains from chaff in a day in comparison to the meagres 40 bundles of paddy that is thrashed manually by the harvestors on wooden or concrete slabs in my Bengal.

But then, I am prevaricating. The lusher landscape freshens up the mind like no other entertainment. That coupled with the wind blowing hard against the face, forcing the unwilling tear to fly past my sideburn along the unconventional arial route instead of streaming down a stubbled jaw, the fatigue in the elbows and knees from long hours of biking at average speeds of 85 to 90 Kmph bestow a feeling of retribution for all the wrongs done unto myself.

Its good. Good for the soul.

The best and the worst

The last post was followed by a blur of events and activities which happened so fast that there never was enough time to devote to updation of a blog. On another hand there was a lingering feeling confirming my fall from grace in my own eyes. I couldn't bring myself to believe that I was significant enough in the whole huge scheme of things to make my musings matter.

Two trips to Delhi one after another, followed by a Plant Shutdown when I was taught the importance of real hard work, continued illness for more than three weeks, a desperate journey home to get back to acceptable physical shape and mental state before my sister's wedding. Stuff happened, lessons were learnt and ideas were formed.

But that's the past. I am back from home after the longest vacation since June, 2006. I am back at my desk, making estimates, paying bills, calculating pressure and temperature and trying to feel happy and optimistic about a dreary future. Someone told me, an optimist lives longer. My answer was, it only increases the pain. Poor chap decided against counselling me further.

But thats not what I sat down to write today....

Have you ever moved from a state of ecstasy to despair within a couple of seconds? I never knew it could happen in reality till yesterday. I was listening to an old bong song last evening, about how the same colour means different thing to us at different ages. ( red, for example is the colour of a ball when you are 4, the colour of lips when you are 14 and the colour of communism when you are 24). I started laughing out loud and then as the realization dawned I ended up shedding tears like a weeping ninny. Times stolen past my vigilant eyes.I turn 24 next year.

Rantings...

I was sitting at office kicking myself mentally for having started my professional life with the largest business house of the country when I started scribbling something on a sliver of paper lying on my desk... and just so that I don't lose the scribbling I decided to digitize the effort:

"Every person is born with a purpose. No one is free, no one is useless. The moment you understand your purpose you will learn to live. But till then you will be embroiled in the constant existential crisis about one uncomfortable question, WHY ME. Why so much mediocrity after the exposure to abandance of excellence? Why this imporvishment of faculties after the cornucopia of sensual pleasure? Why does my life alone have to roll down hill without a stop? Why do I keep asking "Why me?" every night before I sleep. Why me?

This is called a lack of freedom. This is called being bound to senses. This is why you are not free. You have to learn to live for yourself, without regrets, you have to make decisions that you wouldn't want to blame on anyone else. You have to stop asking for advice. Live for yourself. For a change."

Cardiology = Pump Maintenance

We work with huge devices that run with a roar and lift volumes of fluid to dizzy heights. Large, dangerous machines which have given us the capacity to move the world, the kind that are too huge to imagine unless you stand in front of them and see them work. Life is easy with them.
But think of having to work with such a critical pump when its running continuously. When you are not allowed to stop the machine and still have to remove a snag in it. My engineering sense will call it an impossibility in the beginning and foolishness at a later stage. But thats exactly what a cardiologist does.

Everything that happens to the heart can be compared with the working of a pump in general and a reciprocating pump in particular. Be it surge, pressure drop, cavitation everything can be talked about in terms of a reciprocating pump in every sense. When these people wearing white coats and grim expressions amble along the sterile corridors filled with tense relatives of patients, you realize that even without the grease, spanner and an odd peice of emery paper here and there, these people are very much maintenance engineers. Just that they are involved in the most unenviable task of working with devices they cannot willingly declare "Redundant".

Waiting for the rains...

It hasn't rained yet. Life seems more parched and thirsty than ever before. Physically I am drained beyond recognition and the mind is running around in directions unknown. The plethora of feelings that I used to experience once upon a time have shrunk into an ugly petrified stone. I have nothing of myself left.

Life is hanging on hope. Hope that I will be able to get out of this place in this lifetime. Hope that the tunnel won't be too long after all. Because I still am hanging on to those words,

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing of all."

Medicine Shop

List of all the medicines I consumed ( and was required to pump into my body through a puncture in my left hand) in the last 10 days:
1. Metronidazole
2. Paracetamol
3. Norflox
4. Avil
5. Dexona
6. A variety of Vitamin Capsules
7. Anti inflamatory Analgesics ( Basically a lot of paracetamol with a little bit of something called iboprofen or something like that!
8. Zinetac
and another three different pills that looks really sad!

And now that I am finally off medication... breathing seems like a gut wrenching exercise!

"What's wrong with you?"

There are some things in life we take for granted. Some of them being society of like minded people, a set of physical and emotional conditions that keep you mind balanced and a definition of happiness.. at times, the sheer absense of sadness is defined as happiness and at times there is something more that we look for... probably this is one time when I am looking for that something extra.

People ask me objective questions like "Why are you sad?"," Why are you cribbing?", " There is nothing wrong in your life, why do you make it sound so bad?". I never answer those questions.

They never adress the problem at hand. If I knew why I was so sad, I would definitely have adressed the situation.

I just don't know. I am depressed for no reason that I can think of, I should be prefectly happy and upbeat, but something just doesn't seem right. Probably I still haven't recovered from the culture shock that I was not prepared for.

Back to the Canvas

I found my motivation! Its time to go back to the empty canvas...

"...Take me out to the pastures and shoot me."

How would you feel when there's absolutely nothing to look forward to when you go home from office tonight? oops! did I say, home ? I didn't mean home, home is what I get to go to only in August (if everything works out well, that is) I go back to my room... to my beloved virus infested laptop and the same spik'n'span clean room with everything in its place.

Sometimes, the absence of anything great or different to do drives me crazy... sometimes its preserves my sanity and sometimes... its just flowing with the current...

There's absolutely nothing to look forward to...there's nothing to look forward to when I come to office and there's nothing to look forward to when I go home. Now I know why people go mad. Because nothing is happening. the gray mist never clears, the mundane reigns supreme in life and the urge to finish it off once and for all gnaws at my bone.

But I persist in my attempt to look for it a little longer, and please don't get me wrong; the presistence if more a result of the lack of conviction in my decisions than the hope of spring boarding back to being alive.

Saalam Saab

There is something different about working in a managerial position in a company which requires a lot of unskilled labour and people who hardly know anything more than earning their hundred bucks at the end of the day. You get a glimpse of the bigger picture of the country known to the world for its kings and elephants and now for its fast expanding cyber tentacles. Please don't confuse me with a typical cybercrazy Neophyte who figured his life cannot go on without a few hours spent in front of a computer tapping into the internet or a nihilist on his way to changing the world order and sweeping the cyber dependence away from our lives altogether.

I am talking about that unskilled rigger whose complete day's work comprises moving pipes. Just moving pipes. starting from the smallest of sizes and progressively moving higher. I am talking of the fitter who's only job is to align pipes and get them ready for welding. I am talking about the welder who creates one joint after another with a bidi break in between.

For these people their Saab is their God, the sole provider for their families. They'll make an extra effort to come and stand in front of you, maybe catch your eye for a fraction of a second and touch side of his plastic safety hat with the tip of his finger to say the customary Salaam and give you an apprehensive smile. And if you happen to smile back, you will get the biggest smile in return. Because for them, its not just a smile, its recognition, its an assurance that the Saab remembers him.

That face is the true face of our country. The face that is eager to please for that handful of foodgrains for his family, the man who works throughout the day pushing pipes.

They are my people and at times, I can't deny the pride I feel being called Saab by these people, because I can swear to God, I cannot do the kind of work they do with such painstaking accuracy and precision.

Deeper down...

I walk back to my room with drooping shoulders after spending eleven and half hours at office doing material estimation like a machine, opening multiple windows in SAP and running half a dozen code searches before ascertaining the availability of little component in a whole huge piping scheme. Life continues mocking me and keeps taking me to the edge every evening while I languish alone in my room with books and magazines opened around me. My eyes refuse to read the newspaper, I truly feel dead, if ever there was any feeling like that.

Even after spending more than 7 hours in the bed under a blanket I am just as tired as I was the previous evening. The fatigue seems to have a cumulative effect on the mind and the body. No effort seems to freshen me up. As I stand under the cold spray for the customary 5 to ten minutes, there is no effect. I just stand there like a corpse propped up with poles. And then I take out a shirt, a pair of trousers and clean socks. As dead as ever I walk off to the mess for a breakfast and finally board someone's car and go to office. I am scared for driving my bike lest I drove it faster than I could control. I have decided to take lifts till I feel more alive again.

Once I am in office, the reticence to talk to people or socialize return. I work as long as I sanely can and then I go insane. The same things go over my head, over and over again. I don't read mails, I don't reply to them, I am just indifferent to people and why shouldn't I be?

Only I am responsible for the mess I am in today and no one can really bring me back to life, therefore where's the point? where's the point in putting up a facade when I am not that good an actor off the stage?

There is no positivity anywhere... there is nothing good happening.

I have started accepting it now, everyday as I walk back to my room with the drooping shoulders, I am dead. truly, dead.

Relapse

Just when you start taking the wind under your wings for granted, one little jolt grounds you with sudden devastation of getting hit by a sledge hammer. Life is fine as long as you are looking at it within a fixed framework of people, job, salary, expertise and skill. The moment something from the outside probes the walls of the fragile comfort zone you had started building around yourself, the discomfort returns.
The feeling that eats you away from within, leaving behind an empty shell, devoid of a soul; a canister empty of its contents. The contents that have been burned away by circumstances, luck, fear and at times, even misplaced trust and thoughtless ambitions. Groping for the good old past and refusing to accept a dim future, you tread your present like a zombie, confounding every second of a life that would better not be there, since its being wasted anyways. When twenty three years of existence gives you only 3 and a half years worth of memories, there’s absolutely nothing to feel great about. Such a life is a failure.
There will come a time when you’ll not be able to get in touch with your peers because they are much more advanced and socially acceptable than the rustic vagabond that you have made yourself.

But then its too late now, isn’t it. There’s no turning back and you can already see life sporting that mocking grin as the sun rises to herald another day you have to live through to make the journey a day shorter, desperately groping for something to remember, a little conversation, something to remember. Something to take to your grave. Because life, as it is being lived, will not last too long.

As good as it gets...

The last time I saw this movie from beginning to end without moving the mouse to the progress bar was at Sujan and Aney’s Flat, in Bangalore on Deepti’s Computer along with Bhargav and Sikandar. That was the last time we buggers spent some time together before being thrown to corners of two different countries.
But as Andy puts it,
“Hope… is a good thing, maybe the best thing” And I am still hoping that the day will come when all of us will sit around a table and see this movie once again.

This time however I viewed it on Shobhith’s computer in a Hostel room along with Shobhith and Patel. But this time the hope line had receded in the back ground, guess I have already put it into my system…. The fact that hope is probably the best thing.
The lines that caught my attention this time were,
“Some birds just cannot be caged, their wings are too bright”
I hope to fly away someday to a better place, a better neighbourhood… to a better life and not become institutionalized as would be the case if I did hang on for too long.

The one movie that everyone should see: Shawshank Redemption, because “Salvation lies within”.

blah!

And then again.... after the fun comes the time of reckoning.
I remember in Class three I had a teacher called Mrs. Gayner who was probably one of the best teachers one could have when he is in third standard. She would let us go and play around and still make sure we never broke those formations we were made to walk around in.
But that is not the point, the subject of this post is something that she had said in the broken hindi with a thick Irish accent,
"Pehle majaa, phir sajaa".
Sometimes things remain with you for eternity, I haven't seen Mrs. Gayner for more than 14 years now, but everytime I think how bad I feel now that I have to work so much after those carefree days in College, I always come up with that one sentence,
"Pehle Majaa, phir sajaa"!

Honeymoon Travails

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed, questions raised and comments made in the following article are completely my own and should not be interpreted to represent the view of anyone related to me.

1. Why would you, (anyone for that matter) want to go on a Honeymoon with a bus full of other couples who are perfect strangers?

2. What kind of people bark and purr on the first night on honeymoon?

3. How often do honeymooning couples from all over the country, across communities travel in the same bus for honeymoon?

4. How does a Gay Indian man differ from a Gay NRI?

5. How does a Bengali woman drape her saree so that it comes off at every half chance?

6.When do superheroes find superheroes to marry?

7. How do you follow a bus on an imported sports bike without being noticed?

And last question....

8. How do you define a totally mindless comedy?

Your answer lies in the heading... go watch the movie and before you set out for the theatre, please extract your brains and leave it well preserved in the house. Exposing it to so much anomaly can take its toll!

Disappointing silence

The woman is brilliant. That is, she's brilliant considering three things, one, She's from the U.S.A, two, She's a newcomer and this is her first silverscreen appearance and three, she's just a kid!

The storyline is non existent. There is no story, as expected though. The whole film rides on the theme. There's nothing much supporting it. The story of a man falling in love with a girl less than a third of his age is too big a first statement for the director to attach something to it in the form of a well thoughtout story line, proper characterization of the supporting actors or even a thoughtful end to the story. Someone has to tell our man that silence is not a great medicine for all circumstances. The same silence that awed the audience in Sarkar seems overused throughout the movie and even thrust on the actors at certain places. Just like you shouldn't typecast an actor, you shouldn't typecast an art, in this case, the art of using silence to higlight emotions... at times it just doesn't fit.

Jiah Khan impresses alright. But the character is essentially flawed. She plays an estraged kid traumatised by the loss of a father and an extramarital relationship her mother is involved in. The fact that her attraction to Vijay could even be a daughterly inclination has been grossly overlooked to give the movie a 'Lolita' angle. It would hae been a more complete portrayal of the situation had that angle been explored in a couple of scenes.

The character of the wife and her brother looked really stiff. Except for the one places where she loses her cool, Vijay's wife is just another suspecting Indian woman who gives up everything for the family and expects the family to give up everything for her, in turn.

And finally, the trauma of a girl when she finds out about her father having an affair with her friend is also underplayed. There could be two reasons for it, either the person playing the role wasn't upto it or the role itself was weakened to highlight 'the other woman'. Eitherways, these are some points which could have been explored more at the expense of the long Nishabdh scenes which were meant for the audience to track the path of Amitabh Bachchan's tears as they roll down his cheek.

There's no point talking about the man himself for he's made a habit of surpassing all his previous performances in every new film he does and whether its weeping for a seperated wife in Baghban or shedding tears for an 18 year older lover in Nishabdh he does it with equal wizardry.

All said and done, Nishabh would have been a great watch had there been a little more shabdh in it.

Saturday

There was no hangover! I slept like a kid till eight in the morning and since the guys hadn't awakened by eight, I had to sleep for another couple of hours before it was time for the "household" to rise and decide to conquer PVR. Yeah, thats exactly what was decided!

We (thats suhel, Arjun and I) decided on a Goan Lunch at Bernardo's (which turned out to be the best lunch I have had in more than six months. The last time happened to be our farewell lunch at Inchara in Bangalore) and go watch Nishabdh and The Last King of Scotland.

By the time we decide to leave the flat, time was already running out. The lunch was ordered in a hurry and gobbled up in 10 minutes flat.

The other two people would agree that we didn't talk too much while having our lunch, especially after making the error of assuming someone else's lunch to be ours and smirking to ourselves when we figured the truth, while that someone else, rather, the two 'someone' elses considered us to be nothing less than hungry hogs.

Nishabdh couldn't live up to expectations and by interval we were sure that we wanted to watch something else to lift our mood before we went in for Forrest Whitaker's magnum opus.

Therefore, the decision to go in for Honeymoon Travels Private Limited was made and the tickets, procured in a jiffy. I was lined up for my first true movie marathon of my life! (Three Shows starting at 3:40, 5:15 and 8:45 respectively!)

Honeymoon travels wasn't too bad a movie as long as you left your brains at home and sat there to enjoy the mindless comedy, but then again, you would need your brains to appreciate the brilliance of Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi. And if you were planning to get into the theatre for another movie called The Last King of Scotland, you had better run home and get your brains, whatever little bit of it you have.

We walked out of PVR at 11 in the night and I can bet that beside the movies, I probably had the greatest variety of flesh I ever had in one day. Starting with hot and sour fish, Goanese style Chicken cooked in coconut paste and spicy pork, moving on to chicken Hotdog at the theatre and ending the day with half a grilled chicken! Thats a lot of flesh and I can say with full conviction that I enjoyed every last bit of it!

One hell of a Saturday!