Crystal Ball

We are born. We study. We Work. We Die. It doesn’t get any simpler.
We are not bothered about the first and the last parts, nothing to do much there actually. Your parents take care of the first part and biology takes care of the last unless some drunken truck driver decides that biology is too boring.

I often look at gray hair of my father and wonder whether they delineated my destiny. They were always gray even in my earliest of memories. Perhaps to do something with my going to the best school in the city even when there wasn’t much left to splurge on essential goodies. Perhaps they got gray in sun during the countless hours that he had to spend for his field work every once in a while. By the time I was finishing the school I already had a feeling that I owed those hair something. Perhaps being good at studies comes naturally to people our kind. It’s a natural instinct which just happens as we watch our parent’s face brighten up at the sight of our score cards when we top our classes. And happens perhaps due to the less talked about fact that he does not have a legacy to leave behind.

Uncles and Aunties would often ask me “What do you want to become?” and I would invariably answer “An Engineer”. They would pat my back and would compliment my father with an approving look. I wonder what they would have said had I said that I wanted to direct films!!

Now several years later, as I drag myself to work everyday, into a cubicle by the window, sipping coffee out of a plastic mug from a vending machine, I often peep out of the window at the herds of people getting out of the cabs, straightening their clothes having a quick peep into the glass facades of their office buildings to check their hair, their laptops dangling by their side, ready to queue up in front of the lifts to get to their seats.

They would rush to their desktops, check their mails, open some forwarded jokes, frown at the messy mail from the boss, check their bank accounts for salary credit, check how much their portfolio has crashed in the bear market and carry on with their daily load.....EVERYBODY..just EVERYBODY. Like they have been cast out of a single mould, like they were a quality controlled factory product, like they were all just.....yes...engineers. I have become an engineer after all..just like EVERYBODY. Sometimes I so badly wish that there were a crystal ball which would tell me, what if I had taken the road less trodden? What if I was not everybody? What if I had not longed for that pat on the back and that gratifying smile on my father’s face? ......But then isn’t everybody longing for that crystal ball...!!!

Cruel Beauty

He could look into those eyes for his entire life. Those big, beautiful brown eyes. He often wondered if they were for real or was he still dreaming when he woke up and saw them looking back at him. He forgot the world around him for those moments as he found himself hypnotically drawn into that sepia crystallized in those glass like eyes.

He would just lay there to hear her breath and watch her tender lips arch in a subtle smile. He was madly in love with her…..and she………she couldn’t care less!!

Oh how cruel beauty can be, like a mirage in a vast desert. It will gaslight you into the land of dreams, in its feather like arms and mind numbing fragrance, tempt you to reach out and touch it, grab it and own it only to throw you back, the moment you stretch out your arms, to the same old world, only harsher and more mundane this time.

She was every man’s fantasy come true. And she knew it to the core. Two kinds of people are always made aware of their physical attributes pretty early – the ugly ones and the pretty ones. The others are confused to their grave, as to where they belong. She enjoyed the reaction she got from the people around her. Even though she longed for some one to sweep her off her feet away from the stammering, head scratching, sweating and nervous herds of men around her, she knew she had something which anyone in the world would do anything to just have a moment of. She had no friends, only voyeurs, admirers and hopeless romantics dying to get within a feet of her.

But it had to happen one day. Her prince charming did come. He seemed unperturbed by her ravishing persona and exuberance only to make her want more and more of him as each day passed and she found herself getting restless without him around. Till a day when she realized that her expensive Barbie doll cast was proving to be prison for her….She confessed, he melted and a beautiful love story began.

How everyone wants to pick the prettiest flower from the garden, foolishly wishing that it would be theirs forever, conveniently forgetting that the flower bloomed for selfish reasons.

His possessiveness had begun to suffocate her. She missed the freedom and that exciting tingle she used to feel as a free bird, at the prospect of that unknown someone somewhere away from the drooling everyones. This someone now had more faces than she saw when she was free. Her ‘untouchability’ had started to hurt her even more than earlier. She had to be free and she no more cared about his heartache. So one day, she walked away……. to flaunt, to entice…..to feel new.

So many someones woke up by her side since, dreaming in haze of her silky locks only to listen to their hearts break like a sheet of glass and ground evaporate beneath their feet…………and she……….she couldn’t care less!!

While I was away...

It wasn't that I didn't anticipate this, but its one of those things which you are in the way of even when you see them coming from miles. I don't know whether its the caprice or the realization that sinks my heart, but I have now started to see this queue from where I stand, running upto you. And though there are just a few around, I feel affronted and dwarfed standing right in the end while you are busy smiling at others.

Not too long ago, I mistook it to be a galactic occurrence, for its not everyday that two wandering souls fit into each other with a clank loud enough for the heads to turn and marvel at the aura, the beauty and the sheer electricity. I was too dazzled to notice others. I was too elated to know what I know now; the world is full of people like me. And now I stand gobsmacked at a distance to despairingly watch my thunder stolen. I, for the want of my dignity, would put up a impervious, unrattled front for God knows how long. But, need I tell you that there's really no ground beneath my feet?

And after enough afternoons have been spent mulling, enough lumps of expendable ego have been bitten and chewed, the mortal finally tears out of your now roughed up, usually tranquil skin, all bruised and battered, thorns in flesh, screaming for explanations. Accusations and defenses follow, loud and teary ones at that. An umbrella of innocence is spread out to hide the diabolic simpers. And you can't really blame anyone for being clinically blase or even pretending to be so. Retribution is too sweet to be given up for anyone. And it won't be too long when you find yourself hanging to their lame 'just a friend' explanations with your teeth. You never really thought how you would handle their admission, did you? Only when you blurt it out do you realize that you started a duel with a gun pointed at yourself. And now you beg them not to let you pull the trigger!

And in those vulnerable moments of oscillating between being a victim and an offender of indifference, a teary 'I'm yours' is all you want to hear, all you want to end it with. I hope it does end that way. It often does. But, if it weren't for your wobbly legs after all this mush, you would have mutely admitted to yourself that there is now a confidante in your special someone's life who now pretty much fills that space which you left while you were away. You wandered too far, for a wee bit too long. Too long for them not to think you didn't care. This friend was the eager, empathizing ears they wanted to pour out their heart to, the praising, assuring mouth they needed to hear the words from and the warm revering eyes they needed to be looked at by, which you felt awkward becoming.

Maybe its awkward as you have been doing it for long, or maybe because you have never done it before as yours has been a aphonic chemistry, or maybe everything that there was to say, has been said one too many times and you would rather stay silent than make it sound like a mechanized recital; but the selfish little piece of flesh that beats in the chest is a lovelorn child longing for the lullaby you used to croon for it every night. Little does it understand that lullabys can't be sung everyday. And after a few silent nights it starts to sleep to the distant melodies finally knowing that there aren't any more lullabys to be sung and swayed to.

The world is a lonely place. The bigger it gets everyday, the lonlier it becomes. You would have known that as you wandered around. You should have known. So, don't you go too far. Don't you go too far to not make it home by night. You know how awfully dark it gets back there while you are away, don't you?

This too shall pass...

"This Too Shall Pass!"

The mother of all phrases, almost as sacred as Bhagwad Geeta itself, this is one panacea to every hell you are going through in your life at a given point in time. The origins of this miraculous adage are not exactly known, but I first heard it in 'My Best Friends Wedding' and it suddenly went down my throat like smooth blended scotch and hit my mind like an ataractic, liberating it from all the 'trivial' worries I had. Julia Roberts screwing up majorly in her attempt to steal her ex-boyfriend from the 'talons' of a very sweet, very marriageable girl. She is all shaken up, sitting in the corridor of the hotel floor, smoking, when this friendly bell boy passes her and sharing her little cigarette stub, coins these magic words"This Too Shall Pass"!

Since then I have seen this get caught on, like one use-anywhere-it-will-fit apothegm and people are not abandoning it anytime soon. It got me thinking though, today, as I saw its liberal use on MS itself over the past few days. So, let's take a moment to see, when you really need someone to come, sit besides you and say "This Too Shall Pass"!

[You accidentally copied a non-vegetarian forward of the most extreme kind to the most gorgeous female (towards whom you were making impressive inroads) in your office, while trying to kill time with you useless ogle-at-all-remotely-pretty-fe
males friend, and by the time you can say oops, the 'thing' is spread out on her 19" LCD screen in its entirety while the 'poor' girl was trying to get the 120 page design document reviewed by her project lead. Man! What will follow shall never pass. It will haunt you like Frankenstein every single day of your life! ..even though every soul you even remotely know, will tell you that "This Too Shall Pass!"]

[You are a living specimen of things gone wrong with independent India. Tobacco-chewing (and spitting in the corner nearest your chair), porcine, greasy haired, sarkari babu who has a bigger desk drawer than the secure vault at RBI. The drawer is bottomless. No one has ever crossed your desk without feeding the hungry drawer. You beam a quintessential smile to the poor chap sitting across the desk and toss the usual 'Vajan thoda kam hai file mein..' only to discover on Aaj Tak next day that the 'poor' chap was a sting reporter. A million people see you running to the toilet door while some more cameras chase you with 'Ab apko kya kehna hai?' and lock yourself inside. Someone needs to get there inside with you and tell you - "This Too Shall Pass!" ]

[You were in the middle of 'something' with your pretty, coquettish neighbour, when your wife returns home early as the tailor she had gone to, to get her dresses done, had ran off with HIS neighbour! I am not sure whether the aftermath will ever pass, but you still need someone to put his hand on your shoulder and tell you - "This Too Shall Pass!"].
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But, seriously, I mean really seriously, have you ever had a moment where you are so dumbstruck that you don't know what to feel?.. when someone has slammed the door in your face so hard your ears still reverberate with the bang…. when you don't know what you are going to do in the days that follow apart from wondering what happened and what could you have done differently…when you can't help but gaze at the door, hoping it to open suddenly and see that face smiling at you again, but deep down you have given up hope. Don't you need someone to come sit next to you, give you a warm cuddly hug and croon softly in your ear - "This Too Shall Pass!"

Oh! I love writers :)

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were buying a perfume and ended up buying one just because you adored the gliding, delicate lines of that artsy bottle. Well, I have! I left Armani to buy a never heard of fragrance just because the bottle was etheral. Ever wondered, what part of you makes you do that seemingly stupid thing? I am not a psychologist to answer that, I am afraid. But I do know there is a little fool lurking around in each one of us which makes you want to find some substance in everything which appears out of the ordinary. "This thing HAS to be good since it looks good"!

Some people know this all too well. This does not stop them from searching that substance however. It just makes them the creator of that illusion. Popularly known as writers, these people know how to sell you a dead duck.

Let's imagine that you meet someone online and just to gauge what lies on the other end of the wire, you pop him/her the uncomfortable (or comfortable depending on what his/her demeanour is :-)) question - "So, what do you look like?". Now, one thing you should know (if you don't already, which would be shocking), that statistically, the chances of the other one being what you imagine (or rather pray) him/her to be is miniscule. I mean really really tiny. So here! The moment of truth! This is screaming for innovation. A writer is about to be born! Remember 'Need is the mother of all inventions'!. This guy/gal on the other side is not going to lie. He/she realizes the futility of it. But then there are ways..:-)

The truth : I am fat and ugly!

The truth softened : I am 'a bit' on the heavier side.

Further dilution : I don't look 'too' good as i have put on weight 'recently'.

Make it vague : I don't like what i see in the mirror. I wish I looked different.

Abstraction : I can't identify with what stares back at me when I look at myself in the mirror. Its a bloated shadow of myself.

Getting there : The world does not look at me the way i do at myself. My facade conflicts with the person that I am inside.

Impressionistic : The guise was never welcome. It just happened as i drifted along with what i thought was more important. Soon, the 'more important' things started to drift away from me as well. And i found myself worrying about the guise more than anything else as if other things were the least important ones to begin with.

THE WRITER : It does make we wonder sometimes 'who am I'? Sometimes on a crimosn evening, i would sit by a stream, throw a pebble in the silent vastness and look at the jaded reflecion of myself as the red ripples throw my face up and down. Suddenly a queer strange feeling engulfs me. I see a weary pair of eyes stare back at me and ask me 'Who are you? Why are you looking at me? I don't know you'. Its an uncomfortable question coming from someone you thought you knew, you thought was friends with you. But the tone is unmistakenly stark and unfamiliar, questioning the very motive of my existence. As the sands trickle down, I have found it increasingly hard to answer that question. As the crimson fades into gray and the face in the stream dissappears, I recede into my nothingness again, all too happy to see the unfriendly face swallowed by the waves. But deep down i know, as a few more grains of sand hit the ground, the face will return again..."

....you will never know what hit you. You will try to interpret that in whatever little stupid ways of interpretation you know of. Your mind will simply refuse to believe 'The Truth' even if you manage to get a grip of it. Guess what! You have just been handed a dead duck!!

Oh! I love Writers :-)

The Saint

The chanting echoed around the hilltop every evening. The devotional baritone soared loud, high and wide, reverberating from the walls of the luscious valley. The entire valley froze for that moment of enigmatic peace resonating from the majestic clanging of the gigantic brass bells. Tiny, lanterns would light up amidst the low hung banana leaves and the woody fragrance of burning sandalwood sticks, flickering in the evening breeze.

Every eye inside that wooden fence would be fixed on his face, enamoring his numinous persona as he sat on the sandstone podium set against the sinking sun. All heads bowed in accord as he stood up to say the final prayer. The sun wrenched its last rays along with it, which kissed his half bare Herculean silhouette and chiseled face, to plunge into another world. He was the God himself, or so would they ardently believe, standing there bewitched and awestruck…

..He quivered ever so slightly at the feel of tender touch on his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down at his feet where he could see a head half-covered with a black sari. He gently put his hand on her head as she looked up. Something shook inside him as he saw a hazel, watery pair of eyes look up to him. She had pain and anticipation written all over her angelic face. The saint stood there soaking what those eyes wanted to cry out to him, without a word. They were the wounds of betrayal which bled through her eyes, which made her travel thousands of miles to the saint, to muster the strength to get through…to start believing again.

He was the healer. His deific words and his celestial touch would cure every pain of mind and heart that was known to man. They would flock to the ashram from farthest corners to momentarily escape from the drudgeries of urban jungle, to get rid of the boulders of sins that lay heavy on their chests, to cry out their hearts and bandage the stabbing wounds the ruthless world inflicted upon them. Yes……he was the God himself.

She sat there in his feet, sobbing and gasping, looking at those flickering lanterns while everyone else slowly left. He sat there, his eyes closed, caressing her head with his fingers, as the tears on his feet started to dry. It occurred to him that it was unusual, him wanting to console anyone…like that… for so long. He had always done it with a sense of aloofness, for he was The Saint. But today, he wanted her to sit there and sob all night and the thought made him nervous.

She stayed back at the ashram in the night, as most people who came from thousands of miles did. She went back to her hut, as milky-way itself seemed to have descended on the valley. Her heart felt a little lighter and she started to revere his balmy touch as she lay there looking out at the starlit sky from the tiny window. She wondered what would have caused a young bewitching man like him to take up sainthood. They were not wrong, she thought. He can not be a mortal.

But he? He was unsettled, for the first time in all those years. He could not think of anything apart from those hazel eyes and the touch of her silky hair on his fingers. His hands grappled with the pages of the Upanishad as he struggled to keep his eyes fixed on the manuscript, but it felt like grappling with sand which itched to squeeze out of his skittish fist. He felt suffocated inside and rushed out in the moonlit night.

“How could this happen to me?”.He was screaming to himself in his mind.
“How could I think about a woman? Hadn’t I swam all the way to the surface, against all the currents, to see this light? Hadn’t I cleansed myself of love, lust and desire? Or, was I ever really above the surface? Had I seen the strongest current yet?”

He caught a glimpse of her as he walked passed her hut. She lay there on the cot, her eyes closed, her angelic face peeking through the black silk, imbued in the fiery hue of the faint kerosene lamp. He felt weak in his knees and stood there frozen, looking at her. He knew right then, that he had been flung off the ground by the strongest tide he could have ever imagined.

He found himself walk up and open the door of her hut. She was woken up by the tiny whimper of the door. It took her a few moments and a look at his face to realize what had happened. She stood up from the cot, petrified, bewildered and blank-faced as he walked up and stood right in front of her.

The conquest was absolute. Everything inside him had given away, every bit of control lost. He stood there as a slave to the almighty mistress. He lifted his hand and reached out for her shoulder hesitantly. Those fingers didn’t have the courage. They quivered and froze an inch away from her, like a servant waiting for the order of his master, too afraid to move. Those few seconds felt like aeons to him as he knew he had entered the fire ring and there was no turning back. For that single moment, every rubric, every epithet just ceased to matter to him.

She slowly lifted her head and looked him straight in his eyes. He could have died any moment just wanting to know what was in those eyes. He browsed her eyes, looking for any signs of submission, to see whether she had stepped into the fire as well. His heart sank as the script on her face began to divest. That expression couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It was shock, it was sorrow, it was disbelief, it was pity. It was anything but what he had imagined it to be.

He slowly turned away and stepped out of the hut, finding it hard even to breathe, as the kerosene lamp sighed and wilted to the darkness. The valley was engulfed in eerie silence next evening. There was no saint on that hilltop any more. There were only mortals…..

Home Coming..

For me it's a bi-monthly affair. My going to my hometown, that is. Its 'different' to my usual existence here in my power-backed up, vitrified floored, security-guarded, 'thou art a stranger, albeit thou art my neighbour' 10th floor abode. It doesn't feel like moving from one town to the other. It's more like moving from one country to the next. But hey! It was Diwali and the visit was inevitable.

It's always been like that since the last few years. I am always greeted by that scornful gaze from Verma Aunty next door, as I park and disembark. The gaze is the impeccable "Aa gaye sahab!!"Can't blame her for this look now, can I? Considering that we (read the rowdiest bunch of kids of 80s) spared nothing to let her know how we felt about all those plastic balls, which she scampered to pick and hide away as and when we managed to launch them into her porcupine-grassed lawn adorned with her solar cooker (which she loved more than her dear life) while playing our 'domestic' version of cricket.

At least we can do something about the other gaze in waiting, which is as impeccably denouncing as the former. We are wannabe bindaas urban species and that's where we are stuck since last few years…at wannabe!! Hence, there is an implicit agreement to adequately tone-down between me and my wife as we head home. She knows her attire well. In go the noodle-strapped, see-through tops, low waist jeans and knee length skirts. Out come the more acceptable suits, kurtis and sarees. Now you don't want the street dogs go insane with unfamiliarity either, do you?

Anyways, I hop out for morning walk and NO! That guy!!? The one I used to beat up at will and he would go hiding in your mammi's pallu wiping his nose from your thaan wali shirt.!!We sheepishly exchange that 'I wish I never get to see your stupid face again' smile. Why does it always happen that you cross all those rustic fellows at a point, where there is nothing to look around at, and you have no option but to stare the moron right in his face? But wait! What is that luxury sedan doing there, parked right outside your gate? Hello! This is a big mistake. I am supposed to be driving one, not you!! Weren't you supposed to be like selling cotton blouse pieces to fat middle class aunties in Sadar Bazar? You nose-dripping sissy! Now I know. You made the most of your father's stint at PWD. Consoling wisdom dawns - anything can be bought in this knavish world. Sob! Sob!

And then I return, dejected and crestfallen, to see my father enthusiastically waiting for me to go and handover those mithai ka dabbas to all those rishtedars, who I have no clue, as to how they are related to me, till date. All I know that my back will be sore from all those charan-sparsh by the time I am back. And do I actually want to come back, is the more serious question I have to scratch my head for….….I have not been known to be a certified atheist in my khandan for nothing. I cringe with discomfort of the most extreme kind just at the thought of hawans and aartis. Mother has half a dozes pages bookmarked in the aarti book for the evening and I sulk, knowing there is no way I can escape this onslaught.

Albeit all this ado I am subjected to, there is always a reason to go home. I enjoy those little stories about my childhood which my father sometimes tells my wife over tea. I love the tiny sparkles in Riya's (my daughter) eyes at the prospect of her meeting her dadu and dadi, the laid back, gentle trotting pace people spend their time at, like chewing each moment to savour it before it will slide away into yesterday, the smile and the handshake that you get greeted with by those old familiar neighborhood shopkeepers. It still feels like coming back to warm cosy quilt I used to cuddle up inside with mother on cold winter days in the night, tucked away in a little nook, safe from the unforgiving chill. There will always be a reason to go back. It will always feel like home coming….