Choose Your Life..

It's almost like resting your sore, tired butt on a fleecy cushion and let is sink a few inches into it. And then being handed a martini to get your cerebrum to dilate and puke what it was finding hard to digest...Bloody reality! But I was just being given time to unbend. That's what they do to the new recruits. It was then when the silken pixie by my side pointed her finger towards something down there. I leaned and peeked from the tip of the cloud and almost fell over. It was me lying down there, flies buzzing on the gray matter that had started to squeeze through my pulverized skull.

I turned to her, aghast, my jaw touching the ground ..err cloud ..too stunned to utter a word. "But how???" Her expression instantly made me realize the futility of it and I looked down again. It was unreal, to express it conservatively, to see myself lying there on the concrete sidewalk amidst a huge mob, who didn't want to miss the freak show.

So is this the end? What next? Do they collect my brain splattered out over concrete and carry me to a morgue? Cut me down and sew me up on the autopsy table? Wrap me up in white cotton sheet and garlands and march up to the crematory carrying me over their shoulders? Put me on the logs and fire me up? Why don't I shudder at that thought anymore? After all its my body, MY. MY.... Why does that word feel strange now? Earlier I would look down when I thought about myself and I saw a torso and I knew I was talking about something in bone and flesh. Now what? What exactly am I? Bloody hell!

"It's time", she quipped. I unglued my curious gaze and looked at her again. She had that receptionist's smile at her face, the kind you see when you walk in for an interview and you are left wondering whether she actually knows that you are about to shit in your pants. I had a feeling I was about to have some real tough time soon. My list of sins was pretty lengthy!

Past that august golden gate I used to imagine elysium's doors to be like, walking on the clouds past the cabalistic strata of fog, I was led into a lyceum engulfed in mist. And there they were, the Shangri-la's version of the jury, sitting on a raised dais. Clowns, I thought. I soon realized that they knew everything about me, I mean EVERYTHING. The number of times I had hit that sissy in my neighborhood, the number of roaches I had squashed under my boots, the number of times I had fantasized about that English teacher, times I had pretended to be unwell to skip office, pretended to be truthful, cursed, helped, cried, laughed, had sex, fallen, shaken, feared and other miscellaneous stuff which better be left alone. With time, date and duration stamped against each act of mine arranged chronologically and aggregated for statistical purposes I had nothing left to do but nod. Open and shut case!

But I was in Zion and I deserved some miracles. And I got one! "After a thorough review of your case, though you qualify to be reincarnated as nothing more than a duckbilled platypus, you are just in time for a promotional offer we are running for the male middle aged suicidal cases."

"Why for this category?"

"They are the sleaziest things on earth and we want to encourage them to hurry up on their way up here! Now, this offer is called 'Choose your life'. Are you interested or you would like to earn the distinction of being the only mammal to lay eggs?"

I didn't quite like the idea of laying eggs in cold highlands of Tasmania and I eagerly looked at the three cards they spread out on the table reading the obvious on my face – whoever refused a freebie as good as this, ever?

"Choose one"!

Three cards bearing a snapshot of my potential reincarnated self lay in front of my eyes.

1 - Me standing, holding a large piranha, on the deck of a private yacht, like – 'What a catch!' I look rich, with a little paunch, sun shining on my rather large temples.

2 - A newspaper with my photo on page three. I look pleasantly different in long kurta and jeans. Wearing specs as well! Grinning amidst all the Ramanis, Thakrals and Shankars. I seemed to have made it big in the filthy patronizing creative world.

3- A stolen photograph from one of my albums. They had been doing their homework! Her arms round my neck and we pulling off that funny face. Of course our hands in each others' back pocket didn't get captured. So did the secret little bum squeeze.

I felt a lump in my throat as I gazed at her pearly whites, her disheveled hair in that cold morning breeze. That was the last photo of us together taken a fortnight ago. My hand started to move to pick up the third card.

"Yes, she was here a week ago" – quipped the seemingly oldest one in the jury…"and she did not take up the offer.....”

Confide in me

Its one big messy Cartesian join, this world. I mean, just look at your ever-growing list of contacts in your mobile phone for once. There isn’t enough to set it apart from a list of the ill-famed I-need-to-double-my-money-in-a
-fortnight applicants who applied for the crazy DDA lottery. And then you talk, each one of you to each one of you. Find yourselves those corners of the room which you never knew existed, ram yourself against the wall, covering up your mouth, look at some distant nothing and talk.

You have become one big ear and one big mouth. Jubilant cackles, maudlin whispers, feverish confessions, sloppy tales, anguished boohoos, cacophonic bawls and the works. It all gets thrown around to be chewed, swallowed, digested and excreted. Like a daily shot of cocaine you just can not do without, you just HAVE to talk and you just HAVE to hear someone talk.

There is something strangely alluring and addictive about that someone somewhere, wrapped in a cloak of mystery. You become just a compulsive voyeur waiting for that baronial cape to open up and drop down, for you to have a peek inside. But its actually when you take a moment to think that you realize, it’s the magnet inside you want to wind an extra loop of wire around to pull more, pull the heavier, pull the immovable which makes that someone somewhere intriguing. The urge for them to helplessly shed that cloak, and stand bare in front of YOU, is really what is intriguing.

Its never about them, it’s about you. The lure of playing the agony aunt or a confidante which people will exclusively shed their dirty linen to is quite overwhelming. That dreaded sound of silence is killing. You need them for you to exist. Pain is a sweet pill. The more painful it is the sweeter. Others’ pain always tastes that way. It infact aches if they prefer a shoulder other than yours. You could well be a billboard screaming 'Confide in me!' But after a while they are whining and not talking, about the same old things, about their same old worthless lives. And you need someone with a fresh new cloak, and then some more. Keep them coming….

The more you listen to them, the more you forget about yours. And your linen suddenly looks all the more aglow without you giving it a tiring scrub. You just let it be, because that’s the way it is and there is worse out there. And someone close to you keeps looking at you, legs crossed, waiting patiently for you to turn away from the corner, waiting for your restless steps to halt and turn back, waiting for you to come and sit near to him after you had cut him off at that phone ring.

They never had a gold-threaded cloak to wear but have a lot to say. They share the linen with you which you let lay after you woke up in a jiffy at the ringing of the phone. They lie there denuded underneath that thin linen and wait for the day when you would look into their eyes, caress their hair and say “Confide In Me”….

A crunchy bite of moon…with a dollop of honey!

So, you finally did it! Spent a quarter of your life mugging up those 2-kgs-apiece books to get yourself shot in that hallowed mortarboard (the mug-shot now proudly suspended on your living room wall) , managed to land up in a cushy job, and actually came out with flying colours from the nerve-wrecking marriage market with quite a ‘deal’. Then, braved the agonizing wedding ceremonies lasting whole three days too. And if someone was to go by what you are really itching to do at this point in time, it would be lead to an utterly horrendous conclusion that the whole extravaganza was eventually to get you laid! Just imagine, five hundred people making merry at the thousand-bucks-a-plate dinner you threw in the French gardens to announce it too, totally at your cost. You must be crazy! The world must be crazy too!

You are almost twiddling your thumbs to wait for all of them to vanish and be with your lady love/lady arranged. I know, I know – at this moment, it can well pass for the only reason for your existence. You will be officially left alone, just the two of you to ‘consummate’ (I love that word) your marriage, (to play bang-bang in a luxury resort room – if it were to be put a little crudely). And all that when you have never even had a proper first kiss with someone! Who ever said, you have to die to be in heaven? Don’t you feel like Alice in wonderland already, like a hungry child who has been let into a castle of chocolate? (Gen Y can excuse themselves from this page. I am talking about my generation here, please. We were supposed to be virgins at the time of our wedding. See, I don’t even mind you cocking a snook at me right now. I agree ‘twas weird).

So, here we come Bahamas, Switzerland, Mauritius, Goa and Shimla. We are ready to paint the town red. Oh my! I go weak in my knees just imagining the candle light dinners, beach walks holding hands, scuba diving in blue lagoons, bon fires with mouth-watering Arabian belly dancers around, cuddling up in the ropeway trolley atop the icy mountains, zipping through in a crimson convertible amidst the lush green pastures (yeah with herds of snow-white sheep grazing in them too), lying semi-clad (or unclad wishfully) on a beach on a moonlit night with a whole crate of beer bottles at your disposal. And of course, the best part, to just be there under that gauzy linen on the hotel bed with your partner in crime and just ‘do it’, all night, all day long! Crushed roses, stained satin sheets, jingling red bangles, warm husky whispers, feverish moans, melting bodies and unbridled steamy passion - Honeymoons – aren’t they the most beautiful phenomenon man ever treated himself with?

But, hey! Hold on for a sec. Isn’t this like too good to be true, too rosy to even exist? Damn right, it is.Well if you had an arranged marriage (like most of the lesser mortals) then you just threw the dice in the air expecting it to land up showing a perfect six! Chances of that happening – one in six. You get the drift? Ok, let me illustrate.

Second day into honeymoon, poor you are walking hand in hand on the beach with wind in your hair (if you have any left) and crimson waves kissing your feet, trying to feel that perfect walk-into-the-sunset moment and you suddenly hear “Honey, what have you thought of buying for my dad/mom?”. And as the days/weeks/months/years go by you will realize that you will never EVER want to walk into the sunset with her. Evenings, for her, are synonymous with shopping! Did someone say, love is all you need? He is rightly buried now, at some dilapidated graveyard.

And do you even want to get me started on the virginity fixation. Imagine a guy expecting to marry Nutan and in a flash realizes he married Helen instead. How would he know? Oh he would, in a second!

And this is even worse. You just can’t get it going the first few nights. Guys, you know what I mean, don’t you? Gosh! That looked so easy in the movies you saw in your hostel days, so natural, so totally for granted. You probably couldn’t see the tiny disclaimer at the bottom of the screen “These ‘stunts’ are performed by experts and should not be tried at home”. At that moment it does feel like a ‘stiff’ stunt you just don’t have the ‘strength’ to carry off.

That is still not as weird as someone (either of you) starting to cry after an earth shattering orgasm. I mean really get all mushy and weep. And that’s not a one off rush of emotions as you would shockingly realize. It is a habit. Pitifully, handkerchiefs will become a prop in your love-making! Not to mention those utterly embarrassing 80 decibel screams of passion -“Oh God. I’m there. I’m there….” which initially would make your chest swell in pride. Later it would just make you want to sneak out of your apartment quickly, your tail between your legs, lest you get to see that embarrassing frown-cum-smile from your neighbour again.

I’m not over with the list of horrors. Have you ever thought about the pride-mincing - “Is it over?” What exactly one is supposed to do in one’s life after hearing that except jump down from a rooftop or something?

No, it ain’t too dreamy for the tried and tested, four-years-together-and-done-everything-a zillion-times couples either. They seriously need some reason to go for a honeymoon. They have a valid question - why pay for a gold class ticket of a movie which you have watched to death in premiere class already?

Then why is the world so hung-up about honeymoons, in spite of all the potential unpleasant surprises it can throw up. Why is honeymoon synonymous with bliss and ecstasy? Let me put it this way, for all non-believers and believers alike: Most of us are sold to that proverbial dream with that perfect silhouette of us and our prince/princess draped in divine ivory against the glorious moon stitched on charcoal sky, lip-locked, sitting in the window of a grand castle with white daisies and snowy swans, and milky way itself have had descended on to the terra-firma! It’s that slice of time which we have bribed the casino steward for, to throw up the dice in the air and make it land with a six, every time! It’s our moment of biting the crunchy moon …with a dollop of honey…and it will only last a few bites!

Just You Wait..!

One fine day, I will disdainfully kick my blue office chair with my cherry-black shoes with raw beastly force, enough for it to roll on through the thin long aisle and stop in my boss’s cubicle gently kissing his chair, for him to turn around and ogle in a daze. I would then rise slowly above my cubicle partition, amidst the pin drop silence and hanging jaws. With a Schwarzeneggerusque composed, mean, don’t-mess-with-me expression, I shall roll up my sleeves and look around as a few spectacles start to crack and crumble in disbelief. I would walk down to the other corner and rescue my dream girl who is swooning by now, grab her hand, announce a time off to my trembling boss and walk out of the front gate with the guard frozen in the most duteous salute.

From that day onwards, I will only have head-turning, big-bang entries. Doors will fling open and office stationary will be dismantled and float in thin air and it won’t be before everyone I have passed across has been left gasping and I have settled down in my chair, would the office floor stop trembling. I, you a**holes, would have arrived! Just you wait!

By now, you should know who I am. Or maybe not. Maybe you haven’t even noticed even though I sit bang in the middle of the floor and I am always sitting there; even before you come in and even after you walk out. I complete my work before they put my name against it. I have arrived and already checked my mails before the clock strikes eight. Eight for me is start of work. Eight for others is the time they drag themselves to the shower! They have stopped putting people in the team I am supposed to work in. I am the team! I am the whole bloody team; a one man army!

Everyone is really friendly with me, you know. My shirt has faded at the shoulders by the sheer amount of pats I get on my back. That’s the way they all are with me. A pat, a ceremonial ‘How are you matey?’, a quick question like ‘would you know how this fuc*ing thing works’ and next thing I know is I am writing a step by step cookbook for them after that blank expression I get to see on their face when I have told them ‘that’s is the way this thing works’. And before I have pronounced abracadabra they are on their way shaking their head in disbelief. This carries on throughout the week and it took me a while to figure out why suddenly everyone seems too busy on a Friday afternoon that they don’t have any questions for me that day. It was the day when it hit me - ‘I am a bloody geek’!!

And you Mr. Stud, sitting next to me; I hate your guts Mr. Stud. I mean all you do is talk. I bet you took a training course to learn how to move a mouse and all the work you ever do is at the gym. But then, you are surrounded by all the prettiest girls, leaning over, drooling and laughing at your stupidest of jokes.

I sit there at my desk burgeoning with the thickest of manuals and left over coffee cups trying to look engrossed as they come and stand there at your desk like fifty times in a day smelling like fairies. Can’t you just sit somewhere, madams? I mean you stand with your distracting backside towards me which is way too mmmmmm and I am supposed to behave like you don’t exist which is kinda hard!

I wonder if they really think I am short at listening or my glasses are too thick for me to notice. I hear you bit**es (I won’t call you that if you gather around my cubicle instead), loud and clear. Your chuckles are a signal for me to feel my bum for a strategically placed chewing gum which is now decidedly stuck there, or a ‘I am a Geek’ placard stuck on my back. How could I even blame you for those degrading chuckles when even the boss has a hard time keeping himself from falling off the chair laughing!?

Sigh! I know nothing I will ever do will work. I mean, it will work for my bosses, work for my goddamn company but it will never work for me. Neither the weekend slog, nor the three in a row night outs or an IQ of 180. At the end of the day, I am a piece of precious office furniture which is supposed to be painfully undemanding. It’s just hopeless!

But I have had enough, more than enough! I know its time to throw those glasses out of the window, loosen up my collar button and roll up my sleeves. I refuse to be a part of a doomed species heading for extinction. One day, soon, I would have abandoned my loyalty to the geek kingdom. One day I would have crossed over, from a timid, workaholic, inconspicuous geek to a smooth-talking, go-getter office eye-candy. Just you wait!

Disclaimer : The usual coincidental resemblance to living or dead disclaimer. Yawn! (And yeah, I am not a geek :P)

Silenced Serenade..

Amid the same old nauseating odor of a diaper having served its purpose for the zillionth time occupying the room, amid the night yet again having fidgeted in and out of slumber, oscillating between the disheveled bedcover trying to hold on to the edge of the bed and the cacophonic howls of the street dogs safeguarding their territory somewhere nearby, you hesitant to even let out a cold sigh at the sight of her frown snailing off slowly into a sleeping smile, it must have surely crossed your mind sometime - was it ALL for this? Was everything that you did was for lying awake in the bed at this night, just having rinsed your hands after cleaning up your infant's mess, praying that your wife won't wake up from the much required and deserved sleep, trying to think of a reason why corn flakes (yes the same damn cornflakes you have to put up with each single day as you would in the morning next day) were invented in the first place!

You were terrific, she was incredible. You did things; she knew whom they were for. Just a look from either of you and you both of your would melt. Words were abundant, even though you could totally have done without them. So much to say, so much to praise, so much to adore, so much to fall for. You could be a cowboy riding a colt in the moonlight beneath her castle window, strumming a Spanish guitar, singing for the bewitched her, gently swaying to your magical serenade, spellbound.

This erstwhile no-nonsense cowboy walks silently to his cabin wearing the most credulous of plastic smiles right from the parking lot to his table. Table on which he earns his bread and butter, nodding to the pot-bellied, cruel piece of joke called boss. He has adapted. Has taken to his new sobered up skin. Popularly known as 'Sir' amongst all who know that he won't default his EMIs and pay up his credit card bills 5 days before the due date and would give up after a few agitated cries when you victimize him on fine prints. The tamed citizen of the urban jungle.

Sometimes between those quintessential paper cup coffees or yawning in the black leather chair of the board room during a presentation, you do hear that serenade for a fraction of a second, echoing somewhere in the distance. And it fades even before it has hit an octave. And you wonder whether it happened to me, in this very life? And you wonder - "What Happened"? What happened to that moonlit night, to that colt, to that Spanish guitar. What exactly happened to you, to me?

When exactly was it? When did you first feel your fingers were too sore for the strings? When did you feel too lazy to ride the colt? When did she first forget to wait for you in her window? When was the first time she didn't feel like swaying in the evening breeze? When exactly did your serenade fade....and fell silent? Probably when your jockeys gave way to creased trousers and t-shits to sky blue shirts. Probably when you dumped your guitar in the garage behind your pricy swank sedan. Probably when you got on with the business of living, 'settling' into a comfortable nothingness and manufactured 'happiness' over the weekends.

You just can't remember. Even after banging your head against the wall, you don't know. You search for an explanation in those bootless evolution and change theories, searching for alternatives in work, people and other addictions. But you know that nothing that you put in that big gaping black hole will ever satiate it.

Tonight is just another night when I hear that echo of the silenced serenade, lying awake in the bed. I am not sure whether I still want to hear a melody that belies my vitreaous world. I have become accustomed to nothingness I guess. All I am waiting for is for it to fade away....forever...

Everybody's Moon..

One of those early Sunday mornings, the moon (yes our good ol’ moon) just having returned from night patrol, having heard thousands of all too familiar whispers from the lip-locked lovers in the deserted park benches basking in the moonlight, having been marvelled at and written about by hundreds of poets, having seen a bunch of eager scientists planning to touch it yet again, looks at itself in the mirror, beams a haughty smile, yawns and goes to sleep.

And a million miles below is a genius itching to be revered, a capitalist eager for the next million, a neighbourhood auntie desperate to show off, kid next door curious to boast to his friends. And a time warp theory is disentangled, de-jargoned, printed, wrapped in glossy paperbacks and shipped for public. A galactic icon is created for the graphic designers to get busy with t-shirt prints, mobile wallpapers and animated cursors. A new badge for society moms to show off their awareness for a brilliant future of their pampered Horlicks kids.

Mountains blasted flat, rivers bridged, jungles mowed down and cash registers start to ring. Diesel guzzling tin monsters ferrying overfed urban mobs to the newly accessible paradise. People squatting in the lush meadows of the serene valley. The paradise starts to show up on web pages studded with marqueeing promotional offers, atrocious fuchsia headings and blinking GIFs. Soon it’s on everyone's tourism list. Everyone's!

Somewhere a Nawab is jolted out of slumber by his been-there-done-that, entrepreneurial son. Elephants are festooned with fake gold ornaments, guards are told to brush their moustaches, dark cadaverous women are procured from the neighbourhood slums and made to fit into backless cholisand the ancient sleeping haveli is thrown open to the bundy and bermuda clad firangis hungry for a make-believe ethnic fix for their painfully easy lives.

A masterpiece is dissected by an army of critics. A repertoire of ready made tags wait in their armoury. Cubism, minimalism, post modernism, deconstruction, golden ratio. Formulae applied to beauty, numbers assigned to mystery, measurements defined for perfection. The fish-eyed pictures of the masterpiece make it to the glossy centrespread of the coffee table books in the villas of corporate rats.

The factories continue to roar. The machines continue to peel the aura off brilliant dreams and chop them into mediocre pieces of actuality, neatly packed in millions of showy boxes. A few can't stand mediocrity. Most can't stand brilliance.

Someday, on a full moon day, when it’s carelessly loitering in the night sky, the moon shall be harpooned, tethered and pulled down to the earth. It will be carried to a factory; smoked, grounded and polished into shiny little gemstones. That familiar smirk would be wiped off from the night sky, forever. The heavens would have surrendered to the gluttony of man. Someday the moon shall belong to everyone.…just every damn one...

New Life..

You could prick her with a needle and she would just sit there staring at the wall as if something would suddenly leap out of it. She was not sure what had led her to this. If only there was something she could put her finger on to be the reason for her to feel numb, if there was anything to it at all, it was routine. The same old set of motions to be performed at the same old time of the day...

Rushing back to her workstation after she queasily finished the chores, to log back into ‘New Life’*, she would watch and marvel at the pixellated caricature of Poseidon, creating tiny craters in the plasma while running her fingers over him on the TFT, breathing heavily as he moved across the room towards her, lousy, flickering animation notwithstanding.

She had waited long for that rush in her head, making her delirious with anticipation of being touched, shaken with that long forgotten pleasure wave. The large gaping hole between the virtual and the real had long been filled up with the ever piling laundry and unkempt dishes in her kitchen sink. It had not taken them long to find each other in this virtual world and it felt they belonged, even though they had promised never to let the veil of pixels reveal their real selves…

Out there she was a young, blonde, vivacious, polka-dotted Barbie with a magnetic smile to melt many a hearts. Out there she could be anyone she wanted to be, someone she used to be. It was her never land, it was her new life...

A gracious tall Texan, still some years away from resorting to hipsters to cloak the middle aged flab, cognizant of the little twinkles in her eyes that had managed to survive the years of household rituals, anyone could see that she had had a glorious youth. Yes, she still had it, to make a man want rest his head on her bosom and want to talk about his dreams and have his hair caressed by her long slender fingers.

Her confession was hardly a surprise or an earth shattering shock to her husband. And all he was capable of was managing a resigned, dilated look as she packed her bags. They had already run out of recipes to cook themselves any romantic make-up dinners. He wondered at his composure and the unexpected slice of relief along with the expected stabbing pain. He knew the marital mock drills taken their toll and there was not even pretence of promise for her to rejoice. He had work, she had chores. He wanted her to smile again, but knew he had nothing left to make that happen. 'You can always come back', he said, not sure if he really meant the way it came out!

So she set out to find her cozy sunset with nervous yet buoyant strides. She set out to find the never land despite its name. It’s a moment when you just do an ostrich, albeit all the experience and wisdom. A respite from reality and 'what can't be's'…a leap of faith, jumping off from a cliff, hoping against hope, for those few seconds you are suspended in thin air, the rocks will liquefy into a river, before you hit the ground with a thud.

Poseidon was a brawny, hirsute, cow boyish, well-built man, donned in leather jacket and ripped blues. Her mind quickly mapped the pixels to bone and flesh, alphabets to his husky voice and the flickering animated locomotion in the Newlife arena to his long airy strides and she was in love, almost, all over again, despite the oddities.

Poseidon was having a hard time mapping the polka-dot girl to this early middle aged Texan though, in spite of the exchange of statistics over the wire. He was still lost in his fantasy of a petite Barbie enrobed in kilt, who would come running across the lawn, jump into his tight embrace and be lost in his arms. He might not have run his fingers on the screen, but that Newlife Barbie just won't go off his head!

Wishing it to be a mere sheet of ice which will eventually give away, she grew restless in a couple of days sensing the reluctant hugs and embraces as he sat there on the beach, lost in the distant autumn sunset. It pained her to just look at him trying to be polite and affectionate.

She wanted to stand bare for him to see that inside, she was the same bubbly Barbie of New life. She wanted to smile mischievously at him across a dining table and brush his feet with hers. She wanted to get drunk and pillow fight. Wanted to go beach walking on moonlit nights, wanted him to kempt her hair. She wanted everything she had had in her Newlife. But all those colours seemed to have vanished behind a dismal blue screen...

Staring at the crimson sky across the sea, she saw herself walking down that desolate avenue buried under the rusty maple leaves, leading to her manor, having time to listen to them crumble, beneath her own solitary feet, where she used to walk. She wished that autumn would retreat today, hastily, a few weeks earlier and those maple leaves would decompose and vanish. It was going to be a long walk back home….

*Based on a true story about a few characters of the popular online RPG – ‘SecondLife’