Why is all the weakness in me?

Ten thousand texts I’ve sent, but you never reply,
Or to the calls that I make when I’m drunk and I cry;
Nor look up when I pretend to be just passing by.
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?

I did not see you for a week after we broke up.
It was a nightmare from which I never woke up.
Here I cry rivers and only stop to sick up,
And they say you’ve never even shed a tear

I sleep in my room whole day and only come out
To drink myself to sleep again. While you hangout
With you friends and go on with life all stout.
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?

I send hateful messages so you will get angry
And talk to me, ‘cause even for your abuse I’m hungry.
I’m trying to date even though it feels like adultery,
Because in some girls I see your hair in some your eyes

I want to get back, this time I’ll be a better person
To correct my mistake, to put out my own arson.
But you said you don’t and let things even worsen
How are you so strong and why is all the weakness in me?

Ten thousand times you’ve tried me, ten thousand times I turned myself to stone.
But I’ll die if I think you cry let alone hear you on the phone.
Can’t dare look up to you, lest you see in my eyes love still shone.
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?

Overdosed on sleeping pills, was in hospital for week after we broke up.
Nightmares are better than the life to which I woke up.
If I start crying I know I will never let up,
Maybe I'm too sad to cry, too tired to bring a tear in my eye.

I cannot sleep at all, not since they took away the pills
Can’t even stay in the house your memories give me chills
My friends are all that keeps me sane, but nothing fulfills
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?

I see you that you hate me but I cannot say anything,
because it is my fault that caused this thing.
I am happy for you that you are now dating.
Me, I know cannot get another you, this I always knew.

My heart sored when you asked to get back together,
Then I realized you were drunk, not sure you remember whether.
I will never be good enough for you, too false a hope to tether.
But how are you so strong and all the weakness is in me?




P.S. - Inspired by the Joan Armatrading song of the same name

Finding the One and life's other fallacies

All of us as kids start out with a lot of fantasies. Some of us want to be wizards, some of us hope to be secret princesses, some want to be super heroes. As we grow older some geeks like me continue to believe in these fantasies, we are sort of overgrown kids actually. We like comic books, super hero movies, Harry Potter and other fantasy novels.

Rest of us graduate to a higher fantasy – finding the One. The one that the universe intended them to be with, the one they will have an earth shattering romance with, the one that will fight the entire world to be with them, the one which when they see a millions violins will go off, daisies will blow in the wind and time itself will skip a beat.

In my humble opinion you have equal chances of finding out that you can fly and finding the one. The one that you always dreamt of, the one who likes the same quaint movies that you do, the one who likes your friends but has interesting ones of his own too, the one who is good looking but not too much to attract unwanted attention, the one who is outgoing and likes to do stuff but also likes to cuddle in a blanket and watch a movie on the weekends that you don’t feel like going out. The one who swears that one cannot start his or her day without tea if you like tea or is highly knowledgeable about wines and single malts if you are into that kind of stuff. The one who is career oriented and respects yours too but has interesting hobbies and a happening life beyond work. The one who understands your passion for dubstep and your hatred for four-on-the-floor beat or is into ghazals of Farida Khanum If you are. The one who has sense to never wear brown shoes with black pants but is daring enough to wear brogues and not stick to oxfords. The one who is smooth and knows the right thing to say, the one who is never tongue tied or looking for you to show the way but is not too bossy or a control freak either and understands that in some things you know best. The one with whom you will endless conversations till morning every time you talk. The one for candlelight dinners, surprise birthday parties and romantic beach walks.

This One is a fantasy like any other, perpetrated by romantic movies and novels, reinforced by greeting card companies and seemingly realized by happy couple photographs on Facebook. And the biggest difference between us geeks watching Avengers and people watching Notting Hill or DDLJ is that we know Thor and Loki are fictional characters. The point that Anna Scott and Raj are ones too is seemingly missed by a lot of people. Those are the ones who put these expectations on real people. When (or if) aliens attack I will follow emergency evacuation procedure and will try to keep my head down. Not wait for The Avengers to rescue me. But the people searching for the one expect their date/girl or boy friend/marriage prospect to behave exactly like Jack or Rose from Titanic. And then they move on after calculating that he or she is not the one.

Sometimes I feel that these people are more in love with the idea of being in love. For them finding love is a way to make themselves complete and fulfilled. As if finding true love will solve all their problems and their life will be the ones worth flaunting where they can cock a snook at everyone else who hasn’t found their the One yet. Love is a wonderful thing, it really is, it can brighten up the dullest days, it can give you the power to fight through the toughest odds, it really is the rabbit hole that can show Alice or you a wonderful new place but it isn’t a Parasmani. So when you try to find meaning in your life by searching for the one you are putting the burden of your entire fulfillment on him or her.

Your significant other cannot take the burden of being romantically alluring and matching your every taste and being your activity partner and your friend and friend of your friends and being liked by your parents and forethoughtful providers/care givers That is, to take the burden of being the One. He or she cannot take it. No one can.

That is why you have friends. And you need to maintain those friendships even after you find the one. That one friend who can do the Govinda dance steps with you, that one friend who likes hiking as you do, that one friend who also thinks that is totally ok to travel 20 kms to eat a Idli, that one friend who can spend the entire night arguing with you if Sam and not Frodo was the real hero of Lord of The Rings.

Friendships like any plant need to be seeded and then maintained and this day and age it is become increasingly easy to stay in touch and maintain your friendships. Now it is possible to talk to your friends across continents and time zones. To drop in a line or see once in a while what are they up to. And with the internet, online forums and special interest Usenets can get you to talk with total strangers and cultivate friendships across any social divide and almost across languages as well. I argue with 882 strangers whether Stannis was right to burn Shireen on Reddit and don’t really need my One to really care that deeply about Game of Thrones. Most people around me these days keep agreeing to posts and rants that Smarthphones and Facebook are hampering relationships and getting people away from each other. I beg to disagree, I would rather stare in my phone and see photos on FB and send Whatsapp messages to people that I am actually friends with then chat idly with people that I am stuck in train with. These things make you possible to stay in touch with people that you liked and were friends with but are no longer together geographically. Blaming phones for getting people away is like saying Cars are actually hampering transportation because sometimes they run over pedestrians.

And with the aid of these friendships you can really search for the qualities in your significant other that are the most important for you. I would not try to be an expert on love and make a declaration on what these qualities should be, to each one their own. But as an observant introvert I would say this, that everyone has their own problems and solutions, emotional baggage and wisdom, shortfalls and qualities. To accept one without the other is like expecting to be a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist like Ironman and also have time to work those 6 pack abs.

Growing up is funny business

Growing up is funny business. For example the whole idea of wearing ties to work is a funny thing, it is laughable to even think that we need even more ties at and to work. The work to-do list has even replaced the singing in the shower. But what is even funnier is the sight of kids playing cricket in a small open area and our hope that they will maybe hit the ball towards you today, so you can throw it back and feel like that you are also a part of their game. Like you are not playing enough games as it is. One game at work, blaming your co-workers in office in front of the boss so that ask for a better rating and appreciating the same people to their face so that you can ask for favours. The game of drinking enough coffee to stay awake through the day and enough whisky to stay asleep through the night. The impossible game of saving enough money to keep the parents happy and spending enough to keep the wife and kids happy. At this time we must remind ourselves that we are not boys anymore.

There is maybe one thing equally droll, which is browsing an electronics shop or shopping website looking for ACs and toasters when an offer on some good speakers catches your eye and you train of thought goes towards all the things your younger self wanted to buy like 350 CC bikes, iPods, gaming consoles and bean bags. It almost feels like they are desires from other life. Because this life has FDs and real estate to take all your savings, and then some more. Who the hell would actually want a guitar? And where is the time and solitude to listen to the songs you wanted to listen anyways, right? It is hilarious why we even wished those things, equally hilarious that tug on the heart still when we think of those things. Quickly now before it gets any worse - we are not boys anymore.

There are other desires as well, most of them half forgotten, fully planned and never realized. All of them are so ridiculous that they border on the farcical. Desires of bike trips, treks in Leh and going to New Zealand for bungee jumping. Side-splitting to think of all these things now, when even meeting friends for a dinner requires juggling work timings, location in the city near to everyone, deciding on which restaurant to go to, promises made to wife etc etc. Promises made to selves have been forgotten long ago though, promises that I will never ask my parents for money anymore, promise to be able to buy the clothes that you really wanted to buy, promise that we will always keep in touch with our friends, promise that one day I will spend an entire week in Goa and do whatever the fuck I wanted. But then we are not boys anymore.

Now when I think of Goa I can think of one thing even more hysterical than the last one; that is planning vacations. The thing that is supposed to make you relaxed is so stressful that I am surprised that all travel portals do not sell medication to lower blood pressure along with their usual stuff. First you have to decide a place where you and your wife want to go, then think of whether your kids will have something to do there, then whether anybody would want to go with you will the dates suit them, whether you will be able to convince your boss to grant you leaves for the vacation, whether the hotel will be good but not too expensive, are you buying the tickets for the right dates and so on and so forth. Then most of us will anyway sleep through it, apart from the time that you are on call with office people or fretting how much over budget this trip is getting on and lastly; an occasional throwback to the time where vacations were a bunch of impromptu plans, fifteen friends coming together on a whim, five minutes of packing, cheap booze and cheap hotel, a night full of antics and hilarious stories. But who would those kind of vacations now, right? I mean we are not boys anymore.

Equally amusing is the constant struggle of us aged people to try to look older and fretting about how we are looking older. We start growing moustaches and beards so as to look older, wardrobe starts seeing addition of only greys, blacks and pastels. Then there are the replacements of bikes with cars, dress watches with sports, polos with round necks and so on. That carefully rehearsed list of hobbies such as reading business magazines, watching Oscar winning movies and taking trips to culturally significant places. Even though we prefer reading Buzzfeed over Business India, David Dhawan over David Lynch and watching Big Boss over visiting Bodh Gaya.  All that is done on the passive mode. Actively we search of white hairs to be clipped from head and beards. Look for gym memberships and affairs with 20 something women. We can’t help chuckling when we think about when once age was a number we had to only calculate while filling in entrance examination forms. But we can’t afford that now, we are not boys anymore.

But the thing which is the most crazy, comical and capricious about this whole thing is the thinking of the reason we even did grow up in the first place. From the point of wanting to get away from home and be free to the point where the thought that you can’t call your dad to fix everything keeps you awake on some nights. The dream of having your own car, your own house is just that, a dream. The house will never will be yours, not at least for another 25 years, and the car is not your getaway machine, it is another thing that require money, maintenance and a constant struggle to keep up with Joneses. Or that odd realization in a lonely hotel room that why you were keeping score of how much you got you forgot to realize that what you actually wanted was something else. The whole thought that the world forced you to grow up and moulded into the thing that you made fun of as a boy is so funny that it hurts while laughing. Or the dawning of the fact that getting older consists not of Hugo Boss suits and mansions but EMIs, long commutes, tuition fees and regret of roads not taken. It is a ‘Killing Joke’. With the infusion of such hilarity in our life I am sure we all ecstatic that we are not boys anymore, right guys?

Guys?

Anyone?

Life for rent

 

Have you watched Outlander? I haven’t, except for the first episode, and one scene of it stays with me. The one where Claire, the protagonist, sees a vase and has a sort of existential crisis. For that moment I felt exactly like her, she saw a vase and said this “Like the moment I realized I'd never owned a vase.
That I'd never lived any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing”.

I have no show pieces that I own, nothing that that isn’t purely functional, except maybe a few fridge magnets and gifts that I have received over the years and I carry along. I have no home so to speak of, just houses that I rent for a while. And probably no concept of one either, my parents stay abroad in a rented house, the house that they own is rented out to someone else. Also I have been staying away from them for 14 years now, cannot even call their home as mine. So where is my home?

I have lived in six different cities in the past six years. Moving everywhere permanently and staying everywhere temporarily. I gain things and friends wherever I stay and lose some of them every time I move. I attach myself to every city I move wholeheartedly, always knowing that I have to move soon. It fuels both my nihilism and hedonism every time I think about it. Nothing is of consequence because nothing is of permanence, I can make friends or be hated by my neighbors, I can buy a nice house or rent a shoddy one , buy comfortable chairs and a vase or sit on the floor; all of this does not matter because I am going to be moving soon anyways. But on the other hand it also tells me to go the extra mile to agree with people, to really try to live like a local, to see the city and try to understand it and its people, to try to grow roots; because there is nowhere else to go, no home to return to, no normal situation that I expect to come back, this is life, and right now is the only time to enjoy it.

There is perhaps no word for this feeling that I have, at least none in English or Hindi, there is one in Portuguese though – Saudade. Saudade is a sense of melancholic longing of someone or something that you liked too much and you lost, the understanding that the thing lost is permanent in suppressed but also known. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. So it is sad and happy feeling at the same time, it really is hard to describe and understand except for the people who have felt this.

Every time that someone asks me where I am from, I give a different answer, depending on what I think would be easier to explain, to people here in Spain I say I am from Bangalore because that is where took the flight to Spain from. To people in Bangalore I said I am from Jodhpur because that is where I went when I was getting married, to people in Delhi I said I am from Kota because that is where I used to go on college breaks. The people that I meet while travelling here in Europe I say I am from Madrid.  I can’t speak Spanish, Kannada, Hadoti or Marwari good enough to pass for a local in any of these places though. Every city that I go to, I am an outsider. A ship without a port, so to speak. A lot of people ask me where do I want to settle down, or they ask me don’t you want to move closer to home? And I have to reply every time, where is home? My parents don’t stay in Jodhpur anyways, Kota is a place I wouldn’t want to settle down, Bangalore is going to the dogs and Madrid is too foreign to even consider. Why would anyone want to go to the city they were born in? They just happened to be born there, there is nothing magical about it, no reason to even care. Many kids are born in airplanes, ships, military camps and soon to be abandoned mining towns. They would have turned out to be ok, right? Except that everybody wants to go home. Home is where the heart is, or so they say, so perhaps you have no heart if you do not have a home.

Of course it is not all bad, I like Samosa, Kabooli, Masala Dosa and Spanish Omelette equally and can ask you to fuck off in five languages, I have houses in so many cities where I can turn up and would be welcomed into. I have a better perspective on cultures and people than some scholars of anthropology. Unlike some people I know my life is not a constant struggle to get transferred to North India or Delhi or Jaipur or any of those places. And I do not have to spend loads of money on every Diwali to go home, I utilize that on Scotch and Seekh Kababs. There is no culture that I have to carry and uphold. No lamentation that this is good but it not like home. I know I have limited time everywhere so I try to do things today rather than later on. There is nothing so emancipating like this feeling in life, except maybe very high number of Jager Bombs.

There are others like me, I see them transiting through places and life. You learn their names, say a few kind words and then prepare for a goodbye. People who are of nowhere, like the Wandering Jew cursed to wander the Earth till the second coming. People who always stay in rented houses, look for furnished houses, try to make friends with other outsiders, who struggle for coming up with address proofs and dread things that have to be posted to their permanent addresses. People who poke fun at the things that are in the city that they live and the cities that they have lived, with very less baggage, physical and emotional. Taking up prepaid phone connections, looking out for DTH boxes with less deposit and good taxi services instead of good cars. Enjoying both the city park picnics and legendary eating places. Searching for English speaking people and depending on Google maps. But the most I identify with something is the ocean, it is all one and connected everywhere but goes by so many different names and behaves so differently wherever it goes. It is Pacific somewhere and Indian someplace else, it is hot somewhere and frozen some other place, it is teeming with life at some places and also dead some other place.

It is both a boon and bane, living without a home, an anchor, belonging to nowhere, with no one to go back to and nobody holding you back. Of short visits and long promises. Enjoying the impermanence and dreading it at the same time. The life with rented houses, coolers, TVs, cars and beds. The life, itself and wholly or partly, for rent.

P.S - This is a video of Fado music from Portugal, a music which very deeply signifies Saudade

 

The tale of two brothers

No this is not Deewar, but it is pretty similar.

There are two brothers who work in the same office that I do, here in Madrid. They both are about 50 years old. One is my client reporting manager, while the other is the one whom I eat lunch with and socialize after work.

One brother, the younger one, wears suits to office, drives a Mercedes M Class which costs around 50 lakhs in India, eats lunch in a fancy Italian restaurant every day and is like a VP here with direct reporting to the CIO.

He is also unmarried, lives alone, has a reputation of being too picky, has only travelled once outside of Spain to Germany, that too for work and makes a graceful but quick exit from office parties after one drink. He also looks more aged than his older brother and reportedly gets upset if you compare the two of them.

The older brother on the other hand drinks till everyone else is drinking and then urges them on some more, he taught me the Spanish toast before a shot (quite handy if you are travelling in any of the Spanish speaking countries or quite cool if you are not). He has been to India twice, once to Nepal, Egypt, China and pretty much all of Europe. Can speak a few words of Hindi, Swahili, Cantonese, Croatian and fluent German. Can sing ‘Pardesi pardesi jaana nahi’ and say ‘Mero Nepali naam Ram Bahadur ho’. He has a wife that works in the same office, a daughter; a dog named Kika, he sings in the local choir on weekdays and treks on the weekends.

By now you I think you would have pretty much made up your mind which brother that you want to be. But wait, there is more. The older brother is actually junior to the younger brother in the office hierarchy, though he has been working longer here. He drives an old Volkswagen hatchback full of dog hair, his trekking T shirts have holes in them and he brings lunch in a reused plastic container. His reportees skip him to discuss a severe problem in the software that he works on and directly go to the manager. While the younger brother has a cabin of his own the older one sits in a cubicle like me, with his headphones on, listening to western classical music. He said he has never been to Ibiza as it very expensive (it is).

I want to be rich and well liked and well-travelled and fluent in multiple languages and high up in the corporate ladder and have fancy lunches wearing fancy suits and to have time for my hobbies to which I want to go to in my expensive car. I really do like being married (except when I am made to clean a perfectly clean house or when Supermodels invite me to share a hot tub with them; although the former happens more frequently than the latter) and I want to be close to my family. But seeing these brothers I understand that some of these things are mutually exclusive. It’s like the ending of the two paths, which I keep wondering about, laid out in front of me. One of them is the future of the decisions that I take today. I sometimes do console myself saying that “Naah, I’ll walk the middle path, get the best of both worlds.” But I don’t know if there is a middle path? And does it entail the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds?

And to people who keep sharing posts like “If travelling is free you will never see me again” or “I'd rather have a passport full of stamps than a house full of stuff” I say bullshit. You can sell the stuff in your house and travel half the world. Hell, you can sell your phone and spend 5 days travelling Cambodia or buy a return flight to Europe or have a week exploring Rajasthan. But no you want that STUFF, you need that stuff. You want to hold a job which says Associate vice president or Product manager or some other fancy shit.  You want a fancy car. You want a big couch for days when you want to stay at home and don’t want to meet new people. You want to stay in a beach resort in Thailand with a staff that speaks fluent English and has a good Italian restaurant, while drinking a Dutch beer. More on this later perhaps.

Getting back to the two brothers, I really can’t say who has done better, who made the better choices, who is enjoying his life the most, whose compromise is worth it. It is like choosing between the Devil and deep blue sea, or rock and a hard place. When I think of it I feel that I am not choosing some things but rather letting go of some things. I mean will you let go of your brand new SUV  for a trip to the Moon? Will you give up an extra bedroom in your house for meeting your dad 15 more times before he dies. Will you like to have a best friend in office or would you like to get higher rating than your colleagues and rise above them. There was once a survey, can't find the exact link, but it went something like this. "Would you want a week in Paris or would you want a new wardrobe?" 75% people took the new wardrobe, they all said that the new wardrobe will last them years instead of the trip to Paris which they anyways plan to have. 90% of the people regretted their decision. And none of new wardrobe people took a trip to Paris in the next 3 years the survey tracked them.

We live in a society and everyone of us likes to get to a higher place in that society. Many of our decisions are influenced by what will others think of it. Getting a tattoo is only cool if others around you appreciate it, otherwise you are paying money to scar yourself. A Volkswagen Beetle's classic value of 22 Lakh is only derived from people who think it is a classic, drive that shit into a village in India and people would be laughing their asses off. So the point is that, between these two brothers can you even make a choice yourself or is the choice made for you by the society that you live in or our parents? Main Engineer / Doctor bana kyunki ye meri maa ka sapna tha. Aren't we all dancing on the strings held by the people who came before us, who were dancing on their forefather's strings? Acting how we do to live up to their expectations or do disprove their theories. I know quite a few people who did the shit that they did do just to piss their parents off and be established as a rebel. So all in all, do we even have a choice a chose a path? Or is nature or nurture? Or kismat as some of us call it? Or answer to the hundreds of prayers that people around us keep us chanting?

Poets die with an empty stomach but a full heart, materialistic people at least have a full belly even if their dreams are crushed. And from what I know hunger pangs hurt as much as hopelessness. No matter how I think about it I cannot make up my mind about which brother that I want to be. Can you?


Aaj mere paas building hai, property hai, bank balance hai, bungalow hai, gaari hai, kya hain
tumhare paas?
Mer paas Kika hai!
(Kyunki maa to dono ke pass nahi hai, wo Leon mae unke baap ke saath rehti hai)

My Favorite Beer Point

My favorite beer drinking place has been a bend in the Dehradun Mussourie road for around 8 years now. It is one of those innumerable Maggi points that dot that road, one of those places which offer tea, biscuits , their own recipe of maggi and a makeshift stone bench. But this one had a bench further down the level of the road and a clearing in front of it which gave a clear view of Dehradun from it.

And the view was outstanding. The place was calm, not much noise of the vehicles filtered through the trees, there was always a breeze blowing, thought it was freezing in January and the Maggi was good. I was pretty stressed about my MBA entrance exams and other shit but there for a few minutes I felt entirely at peace, I did not think of anything else except how it would feel to live here. No fancy job, no loads of money, no other fancy materialistic bullshit, just come here once in a while to drink a beer on a bike and eat a maggi. Total expense 150 Rupees per trip more or less. Less than the cost of pint in a pub in Bangalore. You can read about the whole Dehradun trip here. It is strange how the priorities of life can shift, I guess this is also a type of masaniya bairag. I will elaborate on the concept of masaniya bairag in a later blog post.

I do not have a photo of that place and sometimes I am glad of it, I can mentally mold the picture every time to the perfect place that I want to be in, in that moment of time. And everybody needs a beer point, even if they do not drink beer, it is a place of peace, their garden of Eden, a mental sanctuary.
But that place has now been replaced, by this.


This is near the castle (called Alcazar) of Segovia. Segovia is an old historic town near Madrid, it has an aqueduct from the Roman times, an impressive cathedral and this castle. It is said that this was the inspiration for Walt Disney for the sleeping beauty castle and the tower of Rapunzel.

 


I entered the castle from the regular entrance and the view was not impressive as the biggest tower facing had scaffolding on it, so after seeing the castle from inside I went out and was trying to get around it to see a different angle and came upon some narrow and steep stairs. The stairs are a recent addition, after the discovery of Cueva de la Zorra,

literally translates to the cave of the bitch, though I think it does not mean that. After I reached the bottom of the stairs I walked around I entered the woods near the foot of the rock the castle stands on. These woods called Dehesa in Spanish are typical of all Spanish royal residences, a break from then the hustle bustle of the castle. It also has a stream, which was probably a river surrounding the castle, cutting off approach of armies and has a small wooden bridge, now renovated, on it

While the place isn't really hidden, quite a few locals come here, but it is off the tourist track and thus very quiet.

As I walked in it I saw the leaves on the ground, the view of the castle and heard the sound of the small, gentle stream and I did not want to do anything but stand there, to stay there, to have a beer and think of nothing. And luckily I had a beer in my backpack; you see I was a Scout in school and you should know that their motto is "Be Prepared". So I stood on bridge with my one arm resting on the railing, legs crossed, looking up at the castle and sipped my beer. While the view was mesmerizing I was soon disturbed by a lot of elderly people who were walking their dogs. I thought public drinking would be OK in Spain, but I guess Botellon (Spanish for drinking in the street/park/beach) is now frowned upon and I had to move a little to the side to a stone bench.

And again I was lost from the my worries, like what to have for dinner and what number of bus leads back to the station, which I admit are the biggest worries of my life these days; and transported into a bubble where there was no past, no future, but only the present. I was looking up at the castle and seeing the myriad colors of the leaves, hearing minute changes in the sound of the stream and tasting the flavours in the beer which I hadn't noticed before.

But like all good things this had to come to an end as well, as I had to pee.

Even though I am no longer in that place, and this time I have a photo, but I will not look at it, for me it's my private paradise. So the next time I am stressed, when there is a P2 ticket or my in laws arrive and I need a place to retire to, to think of nothing and to feel relaxed, I will mentally arrive here. My new favorite beer point.

The Idiot's guide to going onsite

You've spent so much time working in office that your own dog growls when you go home, you have published a paper on arcane things like transient cloud interoperability and have put your head so up your manager's ass that when you cough he burps; culminating finally finally into getting the holy grail of IT <drum roll>.................... ONSITE !

And after getting the visa, your shoes polished, not so subtly letting it spread it through your relatives & neighbourhood aunties and buying that new red tie you think all the hard work is behind you, right? No. You cannot be further from the truth! Sowing your crop is something, reaping it is a different ball game altogether.

But do not despair! Help is here! With the Idiot's guide to going onsite you can do this stint abroad like a boss!

1. See the first order of business is to get active on social media sites, reactivate that Facebook account that you deleted because potential wives were liking your 'drinking beer in my favorite lungi' pics. Get on instagram as well, because if you haven't instagrammed 'Spaghetti al carbonara' (even though you couldn't finish it) then you are letting the best things in life pass you by.

2. Second you really really need a DSLR, no self respecting Indian man abroad can take the pictures of autumn trees with an ordinary phone camera. Because a photo taken from DSLR with a watermark with your name and the title "I love <insert name of your city> in fall xoxo" really ups your swag. Take as many ketchup packets from McDonalds so that you can fund your DSLR.

3. Just photos of autumn trees wouldn't do, that was for the classy half of your friends, the other half are going to wonder why are you taking photos of dying trees, for them it is the picture in the <crash cymbal> Snow ! That will make them realize that you are not in India anymore.

4. And the final and most definite photo you need is with the Caucasian people. No that is not another type of Asian people, I mean the white people, the goras, the firangis. But it has to be casual, no forced hand on the shoulder, no white woman awkwardly leaning away from you when you grin like an idiot, no you photobombing when they were taking a photo. Best option is to do it on corporate get togethers when they are forced to socialize with you and post with a casual caption "Lunch with friends / Beer with Yuergen, Havier and Hema"

5. Now that we are done with people and other natural things it comes to the pursuit of the most perfect creation of mankind! CARS ! The formula to stand beside a car that you saw parked on the street and take a picture with it has been done to death by our seniors in the 90s. Now you have to be in the car to make it believable. So hunt for the cheapest rent-a-car and get 5 more guys to pool in and then take the picture in the driving seat in turns.

6. Photos and cars are good but they cannot nourish you, you need food for that, that means rice. Also some rasam, sambhar, gunpowder and pickle would be good with it. Even the people who are in the know of pickle-packaging-for-the-flight understand that 2 KG of pickle isn't going to last you forever, so hound Facebook for people who are traveling from India and carpet bomb them with requests to get Mukkala Pacchdi when they come. Also simultaneously ask the locals which is the cheapest place to buy sona masoori.

7. India's average saving rate is 30%, and that is just average, but you are no average Indian, average Indians are not sent abroad to do the most critical tasks like servicing hardware, entering data in tables and teach people how to use a software. You need to go beyond that, to boldly go where no man except an Indian has gone before, i.e for 90% of savings. For that, share a studio apartment with 4 other people and have beds from wall to wall, skip some meals entirely because they should not expect you to pay 107.50 INR for a sandwich, get your wife to cook the rest, travel only in groups of 11 to share costs, politely decline any invitations where you need to spend money, get a haircut once in a year, get a house in suburbs to travel 2 hours a day and get pressure cookers from India.

8. Praise their infrastructure, social security and healthcare while cursing the 30% taxation, mandatory health insurance and abundance of processes for everything.

9. Wait for 2 months then start treating the new immigrants like they have turnips growing out of their neck instead of a head. Correct their pronunciations, point out helpful facts like you can wait for 4 hours to take the bus instead of spending 30 dollars in a taxi, tell them to ask for 100% Angus beef before ordering in Burger King and memorize phrases like "Dos cervezas por favor" to help them out when they are having a tough time ordering a beer.

10. Be more Indian than Indians. Put a extra colourful Tricolour as your profile picture on 15th August and 26th January. Pay 100 Euros for a Kumar Sanu concert though you downloaded all his songs for free in India. Dress up in ethnic clothes on Diwali party on the weekend after Diwali and say things like "These westerners have no culture" in a mixed group and then describe the cleavage of the girl you saw in the train that day to the guys.

11. Cry and howl if you are being sent back to India by your company. Bring up issues like old mother and blind sister who need the extra income or the fact that you will resign if you are sent back or threaten to go full Julian Assange to the client. But also keep mentioning to everyone else how much you love India and want to go back soon.

12. And lastly but more importantly don't hate me for this, I do it too.
 

A river runs through it

Warning : Long, meandering, spur-of-the-moment kind of post.

It is said that you can’t go home again; it is truer for me than for anyone. I have no home so to speak of in India, parents stay in Mauritius, we have our home in Jodhpur where all the stuff is kept and I had left from Kota when I left home last. 

It has been more than 500 days since I have left Kota, the night of 13^th July, 2010 to be precise when I had left for Bombay. I’ve gone to Bombay, Pune, Zaheerabad, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Delhi, Agra, Bangkok and Bangalore since but never to Kota again. In fact I had left Kota in a way on the morning on 18^th September, 2003 and I had told my mom that for practical purposes I am leaving home today and I never intend to come back. What my visits back home have been what my friend Chirag would call as Pit Stops. I never gave much thought to leaving, in fact I was glad to leave what my brother described as a ‘two storied town’ after the Bon Jovi song. My parents were in fact a little emotional, in fact more than they showed on the eve of my leaving, but I was drunk on the rush of finally being independent and with 3 bags, a big-ass music system , two thick novels and such excitement that only naivety could bring I departed for Bangalore.

Leaving home and especially going to Bangalore meant for me freedom, adventures, doing my own thing, not having to hide the booze on my breath, going where no one knew me and the exhilaration that only being totally on your own could bring. And I got all this, and more. I have drank sitting on the pavement outside a bakery right out of a Bacardi bottle, kissed on the dance floor of a crowded disc, been broke to the extent to be literally not able to buy food ,  been caught by police numerous times and spent time in the police station thrice, wheelied (jack-rabbited) my bike being drunk out of my senses, rode back on bike at 3 on the night in freezing Delhi winter after watching ‘Avatar’, played music out of the balcony on the farewell night and broke beer bottles in the college, got in fight with land lord at 1 o’ clock in the night, fell in love and got my heart broken, been made a fool of many times, humiliated and ragged. But I was happy; it was my decisions that lead to these, and to quote William Ernest Henley from my one of my favorite poems –

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

But leaving home is like any adventure sport, whatever excites you also scares the living hell out of you. The fear of having nothing to fall back on, no father to reassure you when you are scared, no mother to sympathize with you even when you were wrong, no one to rescue you when the shit hits the fan. And also the simple leisure in life that only your home can provide - not worrying about your next meal, the car always has petrol, the clothes are washed and leaking taps are fixed, the comfort and amenities of home, the familiarity of your surroundings, you parent’s name opening doors for you. And for all this and more I miss Kota.

It is no paradise let me tell you that; it has senseless traffic, bad roads, extreme weather, rains which bring floods, cunning people, rough sounding language, no natural beauty to speak of, a conservative mentality and the normal small town shit. But yes I miss it today.

Kota to me was my huge house on the outskirts; and it was big, especially by today’s metro’s apartment standards. It was a good old fashioned government quarter on the outskirts of the city, with three and half bedrooms, four bathrooms,  a garden in front and one in back, lots of trees and a separate servant quarter to boot. It had a huge driveway which doubled or rather tripled up as a cricket pitch and a basketball court.

Kota to me was the hustle bustle of Talwandi and Vigyan Nagar areas which had student on the streets as far as you could see all discussing which ‘Sir’ (teacher) had gone to which coaching institution, new books on the market, had yesterday’s DPP (don’t ask what was it if you don’t already know it) been done or not, which mess had the best dal and so on …. You know life for an average teenager in Kota, and I mean average in the Kota sense, life revolved around the coaching class you go to which prepared you for some kind of entrance examination, girls as the second priority, outing with friends as a distant third and school loomed somewhere back in list. And that was pretty much my life too for the last few years there. First preparing for N.T.S.E. (National Talent Search Examination), I crashed out in the final round and in retrospect I don’t understand what the big deal about it was. Then it was preparing for IIT, anybody half decent in Kota with Maths in his 11^th Standard prepared for IIT, and I was half decent, in fact I was above average so I prepared for IIT as well. I didn’t and nor did my parents probably knew at that time that there were more above average people in India than there were seats in the IITs. Especially in Bansal Classes which was like the Colosseum and the toppers of all cities of the neighboring states were the gladiators, and like in the fights, some of them got the thumbs down from the Caesar.

 But in the daily struggle it was meant to be we found quite a lot of time to do other stuff. Thanks to the fab 4 – Mr. Gaurav Mathur, Mr. Vaibhav Shukla, Major Kunal Sahni and Shri shri 108 Sankalp Vyas jee. And not to forget Mr. Tarun Bhatia, in his rented room I had my first drink. Vaibhav and Sankalp used to stay on the way from my house to place where the tests of Bansal Classes were held and we used to go together. And I back then I used to be late for everything, including that, so I used to rush to Vaibhav’s house with a few minutes left for the test to start and he would be standing on the road and curse at me, I would apologize and we used to go to Sankalp’s house, who at that panicked state (only of us two) would slowly come out and say “Abey jaldi kya hai? Kaunsa tumhe test mae kuch aata hai jo tum jaldi jaake kuch kar loge?” Then in our frenzied state we would give that test and in which we did used to get screwed like he had predicted every time, then we would come out the meet the other two; Kunal would then tell us about his elaborate plans of talking to a girl  “Aaj maine na apni bike us ladki kee gaadi mae fasa dee hai, aaj to usko bike hathane ke liye mujhse bolna hee padega”, Gaurav would then grin and then swear at us, the paper, the teachers and a few other people. Then we would wait for everyone to leave and chat in the parking or follow some girl and then would think to go for a pastry at Jai Shiv bakery or to eat Samosa or Kachori of Jodhpur sweets, Brijwasi, Ratan or others.  Or the Poha at Vigyan Nagar.

The mention of Poha reminds me, that I didn’t like it very much, in fact I never ate it home whenever my mom made it, I only had it on that Thela in the morning. And the reason for that is a long one. You see whenever I used to bunk school I had the same routine. I used to pick up my friend Siddharth from his house at around 6:30 or so, as I remember the school time used to be 7:15. We used to go this place by the river bank called ‘Mauji Baba kee Gufa’ or DP (Dying point) as he used to call it, though it was hardly any place to die from. We used to sit by the river bank and kill time; actually I have had my first philosophical discussion about life and its meaning at the age of 16, sitting by the river side throwing stones after bunking school. I had once thrown my Kiney’s key in the river instead of a stone and had to literally lift it from there to some other place, but that is a story for another time, back to my routine. We used to kill time till 7:30 or so as nothing would be open at this time, then we used to head back to that ‘Poha’ place and eat,  by then the pool parlors would open, so we used to play pool for an hour or so and I or we depending on the plan used to go to my house where my mom dad would have left for work and we had the house to ourselves and they wouldn’t realize that I was back at home by 10:30. There is this another ‘Poha’ story with Bengali, actually his name was Arjun Biswas and he was from Baroda but everyone called him Bengali. But for that story is for another time, speaking of Bengali -

Bengali had broken up with his girlfriend of a few years with whom he was very serious and lost his marbles. Unfortunately the movie ‘Devdas had also come out that time which inspired him in strange ways. In one of those days he showed up my house at 11 carrying two quarters on cheap rum and a CD of ‘Devdas’ . Did I forget to mention that it was 11 in the morning? And he knew I was home alone. After half an hour of movie when Paro gets married and he is one quarter down he starts “Yaar <beep> ye ladkiyan bhi badi <beep> hoti hai pehle to <beep> pyar dikhati hai fir sala <beep> pe laat deke nikal leti hai…. <beep> unko to koi dusra mil jaata hai, maa <beep> hai to hamari”. Aa yaar ek peg to tu bhi pee”. Back then as now I was too polite to say no to man offering a drink, so I accepted. When we had finished that second quarter my doorbell rang. It was only 12 o’ clock and way too early for my mom to come in so we had the glasses and empty bottles lying around. I panicked. My nerves were calmed by the sentence “Abey chutiyon daaru kee mehak yahan baahar tak aa rahi hai, kya kar rahe ho be tum?” It was my friend Siddharth (the above mentioned one), he too had dropped in. It took only 5 mins of Bengali’s time to convince him to drink. So they both set out to buy more booze at 12 in the afternoon while I cleaned up everything and prepared the room on the first floor. We started drinking over there and I and Bengali being newbies spaced out in 3 drinks. Bengali was not only drunk but also stupid, he pulled out two bubble gums and tossed them to us and said “Ye kha lena is se daaru kee smell nahi ayegi . This infuriated both me and Siddharth, as it was a strawberry flavored bubble gum, not even a mint and even that wouldn’t cover the stink of cheap rum we had had. Siddharth exclaimed “Theek hai. Aur ye tattoo kya teri gaand pe lagaye?” waving that free stick – on tattoo that came with it. “Nahi ye saale iski gaand pe lagao” he pointed towards me. I said “kyun tumhari mae kya burai hai?”. What transpired next was that three drunk guys at 1:30 in the afternoon were wrestling on the floor trying to stick that tattoo on someone’s ass. Now Siddharth is 5’11” well-built guy and Bengali was an average gym goer too, so as you would have guessed it by now finally that tattoo found its spot on my ass.

After that it was only bits of pieces of good and bad stuff that I remember, of course the high and low points stick in your mind forever. I used to come home for 15 days every 6 months, talk on the phone at nights, eat home food and go back.

Then I shifted back to Kota for 9 months. I remember becoming good friends with Somya Shringi who in his own words is my mirror image (soul wise), getting drunk and eating food kept on the trunk of my car, on the road in the middle of the city at 2 o’ clock in the night.  Driving alone in the roads behind my house listening to Bic Runga’s ‘Drive’. Finding wine and cooking pasta for someone, and getting my hand cut while opening the bottle of wine (the scar is still there). A jinxed new year’s eve, courtesy Mr. Akhil Babel where we finished the Vat 69 before reaching the place we were supposed to drink it.

Of course here Mr. Prateek Bansal deserves a special reference, he was my perennially busy neighbor who never had time to talk in the 5 years I have known him, but used to talk standing on the gate for hours, discussing philosophies of life, movies, books, the psyche of people we knew and taking my advice eagerly but never following it.

I’ve stayed in Kota for 8 years this is the stuff I remember and I miss the most.

When I was close my sometimes I have transported back to that place, sitting on river bank in a foggy morning, where the only sound was the water flowing and cigarette puffs, no worries in life than who’s gonna bounce the stone off the water more number of times, the promise of youth and Siddharth’s question “Bhenchod koi bhi aadmi life mae kya chahta hai?”

P.S. – To the people mentioned in this post. I have linked your name to your Facebook account, if you want that despite your ‘Kaali Kartuute’ you should remain anonymous just tell me I will remove the names’

Tender is the night

I wish I there was this one grand love in everybody's life and everyone ended with their one, their soulmate, but alas it doesn't happen.

Love's labour been lost many a time. I left some, some left me, some didn't know I loved them, some never told me they did.

I almost wish it made me a stoic, astute, non believer but unfortunately i'm still a romantic a heart. And I can only wish for them that wherever they are, whether they will ever read this, whether they still like me or despise me they find love. The kind that lasts.

I have got nothing better to do than stay up and think about this. And act upon my Momentary lapse of reason. But I hope you are sleeping well my loves.

Tender is the night and fleetingly soothing is your strain,
But fly away o nightingale for this moon deserves your flame.
Heavy would be my heart and damp my eye for away you I send,
But for my soul I wish it saw one love reach its end.