Diary - Day 71

It has been quite some years that a month has been this meandering in its passing and ultimately eventful to me. It has also been a while, actually a long time that a year has passed, leaving me only chuffed. I've made some decent progress professionally, sorted some things characteristically, turned much less judgmental and more patient with irksome phases.

It is only fair to talk about luck when a whole year bore pleasant fruits for me. They say, all in good times. But in this very month, I've seen how irrevocably unfortunate some lives can be. Industrious people debate this by citing the lack of very same industriousness by the less-blessed. But having breathed the same air we do & soiled the same earth we soil, they deserve some compassionate consideration. So good fortune is what I've been blessed with in 2016. Sure I've got things to work on; for who haven't?

Any discourse about how 2016 made me into whatever, has to be disregarded as senseless spew before the year ends. So this is it.

Back tomorrow.

Diary - Day 63

Alright. It has been a while I typed in. But I have got a bag of convincing reasons to reason out the absenteeism. There’s this trip I have embarked on and I should say it is a blast. So much of a blast that I almost tore away from it for a while last night to clear my head and think through the happenings. It could be calibrated in the count and class of the pictures we’ve clicked.

Coming back to the project, first thing it feels like is home. Home is the word that spurs in my head when I come here. 

Fun and folly aside, there’s something essential this trip has shed light on.  There have been moments of gazing into distant dreams of future and dreamily talking about the post-work plans. Of a retirement home and a city that makes it worth a stay. Having been a person who always belonged to cities of hustle-bustle, I thought a serene town could negate a lifetime of noisy existence. Little did I know that what I have been convinced as noise is not noise after all but the ethos of my existence.

So this is the revelation. Or rather an epiphany that came down pressing on me when I was amid beaches and breezes. I could never think myself of belonging to a tier 2 town that offers a lazy lifestyle. A visit every once in a while could recharge my exhausted brain but nerves twitch to get away to the noise after the rejuvenation. Although I curse with my car horn, that city is where I belong. Or rather a bigger one. I could adjust myself to a rather ambitious city but not a nihilistic one.

5 days of holidaying has revealed something very fundamental about me to myself. Not bad a trip after all. Will resume posting regularly. 

Diary - Day 57

Deaths

Two people from one family dead within 48 hours. Lone survivor of the family is apparently munching away his grief into fried potatoes.

This man - my father's cousin, has been my subject of observation ever since 2014. Before that, I knew he existed, drew breath at just 150 km away from where I did and that's that.

Roots

I have developed this unexampled interest in my roots. As in who's my family, where do they come from and what have they been like? Right from the childhood, I've been fairly exposed to my maternal family. People I call cousins belong to the same family singularly. I am well aware of the idiosyncrasies of this family, its quirks and eccentricities.

The paternal family has been mostly wiped out from the history, quite slowly and painstakingly. And so, from my memory. Since my father is a man of few words, all we get from him when we enquire about his family are grunts and sighs that mostly stand for discontent for wasted lives of the people he shared his childhood with. Okay, sorry lives sounds apt than wasted lives.

The Visit

The two deaths had us scurrying to my father's derelict village with a petty population of 1200 or so. 350 households, I was told. To which the cousins had been the revered landlords for decades. I said 'had been' because they stopped existing a long time ago to the villagers. They physically existed, confined amid the crumbling walls that have a great past to tell.

The one who died first was reportedly seen last circa 2013. The two sisters had been known for their inseparable sisterhood and love. Grief engulfed the second within a day. Leaving behind a recluse with empty eyes & as always, an undefined future.

The Project

I thought those 3 siblings did not have drama in their lives. But I was wrong. I have been learning since their deaths many things about them. There has been enough drama to stifle you by throat. Enough conflict to compel you to throw in your towel atop human progress.

I am writing his story. A tale to be told. 

Diary - Day 53

This delay is an unprecedented one in the diary project. Apologies to the ones who keep coming back to check. Last week has been quite an eventful one. Full of unexpected things & my measured responses to such things. I write this on Monday, having just stepped into a new week. Read on the rambling below...

I thought I've buried it. It doesn't necessarily mean I have forgotten its existence. It took careful, diligent cultivation of certain habits which let me stay away from that irresistible valley of longing. I thought I've learnt to walk away from the valley with a heart of disrupted peace & a mind that acts maniacally sometimes. Only until the valley has unearthed itself & presented itself in my face with its widening crevice, making me think that's it's an invitation into its warmth. The insides of that valley are not unknown to me. Only that I think it has become unbecoming. Alien. Unfamiliar. 

It took me good 3 days to grapple with that irresistible valley from the past. Then strikes this year's quota of  days of depression. Those days when the meaninglessness of all of it rises above everything else and speaks to me, shouts at me, looking squarely into my eye. The weight of Purpose becomes an unbearable load on my shoulders. So heavy that I begin to question the existence of Purpose to even bear it. Isn't that what the bitch called Meaninglessness want to do to you? Yes, that's what it wants and it always gets it.

It took art counsel to shake off the load from the shoulders. Respite found amid pages of books & sighs of characters in films. They remind me that it doesn't have to be this painful. The cynic in me almost rages up against such soothing pats but I put him to sleep. 

Oh boy! That valley from the past is irresistible, I tell you. (Close folks of mine know about my succumbing to the irresistible; saves me from the horrific thought of being judged).

Diary - Day 48

This is the nostalgic post I've been excited about. If you can't resonate with it, my bad.

Dated: 30th Nov 2016

Sitting in a bar and waiting for a friend to show up. Ordered myself a beer and got a bowl of roasted peanuts as a complimentary snack to nibble. It's a smart trick by these highbrow restaurants to remind us of our nativities at small costs. 

Roasted peanuts warmly reminded me of my childhood spent in one of the arid towns of Telangana called Karimnagar. It was a dream-come-true for my mother to stay in Karimnagar, for she had spent her pre-married life in a village. Having tied the knot to a man who hailed from an impoverished family, she had taken it upon her to save money which her husband earned by going from doctor to doctor, chemist to chemist to sell the products of the firm he worked for. 

His modest income barred us (myself and the brother) from reaching out to delicious confectionery neatly stacked up in the glorious displays of bakeries. Instead my mother tried making snacks whose recipes she obtained from weeklies. Having been a woman of routine & new things discomfited her. And so the culinary experiments mostly ended up in awry ways. Then she retorted to makeshift snacks that her available ingredients allowed her to. One of them was roasted peanuts. Served with a pinch of jaggery to neutralize the excessive intake of the former. 

Having eaten cup noodles for breakfast & a pizza for lunch, the sight and taste of roasted peanuts gave me taste buds a nostalgic delight. 

We as a family have made progress, monumental progress for where my parents have started. And in that process we have acquired a certain fashion of living. A fashion that flushed roasted peanuts and many more down the toilet. 

Diary - Day 47

This post is a prelude to the intended piece of today. Songs from the glorious past of Snow Patrol are blaring in my ears as I write this.

What makes memories fascinating is their multifaceted nature. I remember reading a trivia titbit that says something on the lines 'if you are thinking about an incident from the past, you are not revisiting the incident but you are actually reminiscing the last time you remembered the incident.' If that's true, that very aspect smears fascination onto memories. Two people could have a memory about incidents they partook in. It's not necessary the two people remember the incidents in a similar way. So that's technically two versions of remembering; both could vary - sometimes radically and other times slightly.

The next post that'll be up (the intended piece) is a nostalgic piece on our (myself and the brother's) childhoods in Karimnagar. I was talking to him about some events that I vividly remember from the times but all the response I got from the other side of the phone was silence. He remembers a few incidents but he cannot revisit them the way I can. How is that possible, was my impulsive question. Same partakers, same incidents. Both remember them in a radically different way.

If I want to talk about my memories with a person about the times we shared them, it's likely I'd only amuse the person with my version of memory. That leaves me disappointed. Like D F Wallace moaned during the last days of his life, 'It's tragic that there's all this inside me and it's so much but they are just words to another person.'

Tragic, yet fascinating - like a glorious mistake or a spectacular failure. 

Diary - Day 46

I am updating this needless update for the sake of keeping this project up and going. Got a couple of solid posts handwritten and sitting warmly in the bag. They will see the light tomorrow and the day thereafter. I hope that should compensate my irregularity and drag me back onto the track.

See you tomorrow.

Diary - Day 43

Smoke from his cigarette rises up against a hanging bulb's backdrop and breeds quite a sight to watch. The government's intention is to hammer it into smokers' heads that such a sight is at the cost of their lives. The scene cuts and camera pans to another location now - his home where he's in the drawing room, staring at the TV with his daughter snuggling into the fatherly warmth of his left arm and rib cage. His right hand is busy holding a cigarette in an awkward manner.

As the TV volume goes down because of his daughter's amplified cough, realization strikes him. He walks towards the balcony, puts off his cigarette, determined it's for good, comes back into the drawing room, embraces his daughter as a father who quit smoking.

He wakes up the next morning. On his way to work, he stops at a shop and lights a cigarette with shaky hands & a remorseful heart. 

Diary - Day 41

There's an insect crawling on my desk
It could be one of those outcasts from its sect
For only idiotic ones set out at a winter's dusk
It nevertheless is slithering into the warm of my monitor's shadow

It must have known different fabrics of warmth.
One could be stifling, another cuddly.
Only the penchant for an unknown warmth
must have gnawed its brain to set out early.

As absurd it is as to think of the insect as smart
but knowing a different level of smartness exists out there
makes it smart indeed. For an insect seeking a
new height of smartness, the warmth it left behind with the peers is surely a tether. 

Diary - Day 39

The entire essence, and hence effort of this diary project has been to keep it as impersonal with respect to my daily happenings as possible. But what has proved difficult is to try and squeeze in time consistently, day after day, to think about the abstract and give it the shape of an entry here. Or maybe, this is what I actually wanted when I dreamt of running a diary project. To delve into the daily torrent of thoughts, think about why I am thinking what I am thinking/feeling and understand myself better. This's just a tool that's expected to help me (as I explained to Sandeep) to make mistakes, put tongue in cheek whenever I realize I made mistakes, learn from them and hone my craft.

This thought of evading the price of staying in IT has become recurrent now. Perhaps, it'd be appropriate to say that it's a 'daily occurrence' now. I dream of things I could do, decently enough, to vouch myself a day job at doing them. I could think of nothing other than speaking and writing. My immediate and direct senior in the Vemuganti's lineage has been a salesman for more than 3 decades now. I may have inadvertently rubbed off some persuasive skills from looking at him persuading people do what they don't actually want to do. Now the very same persuasiveness wins my bread and beer.

Another thing I can (dare I say) consider to hunt a day job for in is Writing. This stint at IT is like a flower pot cracker for me. It's dazzlingly bright for as long as it can go on - so bright that it almost blinds my vision. But we all do know that it has a short life, don't we? So before the flower pot goes off in a disappointing fashion, I should figure out how I could make writing a long-lasting and also a sufficiently bright cracker for me so that I'd while away my time here in its just-enough brightness but for long enough.

Diary - Day 36

I have not really been a lucky person. At least I don't consider myself so. But I've been lucky in one aspect. At every juncture of my life, things have asserted themselves so that I don't lose sight of what's needed of me.

I am writing this today - Friday at 2.30 pm. 3 hours to call it a week. This week has been a bitter one comparatively. Got into a few tiffs (very unlike me), felt pangs of anxiety for a day like I used to feel back in 2014 and got to see the weak side of my father.

Myself and Vikranth have agreed on one thing recently about Indian fathers and the dominantly patriarchal society Indians live in and perpetuate. Coming to think of it, I have had a feeling that I always have my father as my support system when I weather through rocky times.  Maybe, it's about time my father saw me as a grownup compatriot of the Vemugantis, not merely as a son. And he's seeing it that way. This perhaps has urged him to talk to me about his fears, last night over phone.

I played it cool when I was listening to him but it sent shivers down my spine. Those are fears every man would have but like I said somewhere up there, it's my father and it's me thinking he is too brave to feel fear. It has only been recently that I made peace with seeing my parents as not just my parents but distinct individuals with their own sets of weaknesses, fears, strengths, desires and delusions. That is me coming to realize their individual existence. But my father allowing me a glimpse into his fears totally caught me unprepared.

I (or rather we, the Indian kids) am not really used to see the weak side of the father. For me, he has always been a rock solid anchor to whom I could turn, in times of chaos and indecisiveness.

What's undeniable is he's ageing, he's ageing fast and he's ageing right in front of my eyes. And like ageing naturally does, it is weakening him - physically and mentally.

And it's for me to man up and accept it. To view him as a middle-aged man who's made his fair share of cabbage in his day. 

Diary - Day 35

There was a strange truancy of nervousness when I took the stairs to reach home last night around 1 AM. It didn't take me long enough to realize that the comfort was because of knowing I'd open the door to no one. Mom has gone away to be part of a distant cousin's wedding festivities. What is it I've got with being around people and feeling irked? Is it because of the constant let-down they are capable of or is it plain intolerance for discord between my self and theirs?

I must admit I have a thing for women of astounding beauty. Okay, let me say, Elegance. No amount of reading, or discourse or growing up can completely rid me off the feeling that beautiful is good. It's not wrong but it ain't right either. Okay, it's wrong. I guess it's one of my idiosyncrasies. Probably this is what is forgiving thyself. I am coming to grips with the fact that I can't help but relish the elegance from afar. She doesn't need to be in flesh and bone. I can equally take delight in a beautiful woman's portrait. I said beautiful - doesn't necessarily imply succulent or voluptuous or something of that sorts (Hey you New Age Feminazis, you got me there!). It is some sight to watch a woman who can carry herself effortlessly.

So this is about my hatred for keeping company and liking for things of beauty, err..elegance.  

Diary - Day 34

I tasted a bite of New Age Feminism yesterday in the gym.

There were 5 treadmills among which one was unoccupied when I entered the gym. I stepped in, walked towards the one treadmill. A middle-aged, visibly capricious lady sprang up from behind a Pilates ball and asked that she'd take the treadmill instead (it works on a first-come-first-serve basis with treadmills at the gym).

I said okay but pointed out the she'd spend more than permissible time on treadmill (which is 15-20 minutes) during peak hours. She retorted by dragging a friend of hers into the argument by a seeking a validation from her friend that she never overran on a treadmill. I tried to play down the altercation by saying, "I don't have to lie to you, madam. I've seen you going on about 45 minutes and over, many a time" and walked into the weights section.

Some good 30-35 minutes passed and this lady got off the treadmill. Mind you, 30-35 minutes. She walked up to the farthermost corner of the gym where I was working out. She wagged her right hand index finger at me threateningly and said,"Learn how to talk to women first."

This was after I kept addressing her as madam all the while. I spoke only in English - not to give scope for any possible misinterpretations.

I shot back saying,"madam, maybe you need to know how to talk to human beings first before you advise me on learning how to talk to women," and went ahead with my workout.

My back could feel the piercing of virtual arrows she shot while she stood there fuming (probably plotting another gibe at me) as I went on with my workout.

Diary - Day 32

21st November, 2016. 11.46 pm. At work station. If I am fortunate to be alive and sound in mind for few decades from now, I will surely look back at this time, reminiscing these grim days and nights spent in this oddly spacious cubicle with a queer sense of nostalgia.

I get this feeling once in a while. It strikes me when I find myself gazing through the things around me and reel back in reverie. It feels like every travel I make in my life, I leave something behind. Although how much I may hate being in a place during my stay there, I guess I develop a sense of familiarity. That familiarity is more often than not irksome - but only when people are involved (aren't they involved almost always?).

A sense of being in a physical location, devoid of human intervention, allows me to absorb its setting & the associated ambience. I make up stories in my head wherein I imagine montages of events that could be set aptly against such ambiences and so forth. That's all just fantasising parts of stories I wish to write if I ever turn to be a novelist one day.

So some interesting thoughts I get during such times, I jot down and I move on - from such places - further in my life. Literally and figuratively. But what intrigues me is the slow kicking-in of that queer nostalgia when I reminisce about the places left behind.

For instance, I don't like being here right now; with a designation and the attached nonsense of it. But the pensiveness I indulge in while I am here will trigger a later day's nostalgia. 

Diary - Day 29

We live in a time of indifference, apathy and self-indulgence. The ethos of our times has been driven home, quite strikingly, every now & then through thoughtful art, artists, thinkers and other eminent people of the world. It has only been in such point-making instances the increasing indifference of our times glare into my face. As the time passes, its radiance slowly diminishes and settles into an unremarkable doctrine we all quite sporadically grapple with.

There was a human moment this morning, which put me to shame for my shard of indifference and self-indulgence. I went to the cafe after the morning workout. I order my regular, medium-khadak chai (see, obsessed with details of what I did; you're welcome) and opened a QoA based social networking site on the phone.

Charging myself guilty of nasty, pre-defecation reading material, I was reading about a man's sexual encounters he's had through a dating app. Slurping my tea and sucking pleasure from reading a stranger's sexual escapades. That's when a destitute widow walked into the cafe with her under-provided children. Them entering the cafe was registered in my head, only semi-consciously though. Because, consciously I was busy devouring some early morning erotic literature.

There, within a distance of mere 1.5 meters, were two existences - one, falling short of means to provide for her children, counting the coins she has and comparing the prices of stale snacks put up on display; and another, me, feeding on something that's a supply for my free time and thought.

And the misery is, all this didn't strike me for as long as 20 minutes. Only a rerun of happenings in the head and adding a pinch of perspective here and there, revealed to me my abominable indulgence.

I could have bought her something to feed her children - but the pessimist inside me questions about the inadequacy of my service, wondering about their lunch, dinner and rest of the meals until they find some means to be self-sufficient or until they cease to exist. But I can't forgive myself showing this as an excuse to not by them the breakfast I should have bought.

Sure, there are people who are trying within their own rights to defeat and keep the three demonic nouns (ones I mentioned in the beginning) confined to dictionary. Salute to them for trying to do something for which I am plainly not human enough to try doing. But the times we live in are pernicious and sorry but are we doomed.  

Diary - Day 28

Most of the times, I have consciously refrained from writing about any societal happenings on this blog. There have been exceptions, but very few. I too have been the victim of restlessness as currency began eluding common man's reach on November 8th.

Demonetisation

Intents of policies are always noble. Execution is the game spoiler usually. Without much rhetoric, I will talk about my take on the recent demonetisation carried out by GoI.

India has less than 5% of its people who declare their incomes and hence, pay taxes for the same. Being an agricultural country predominantly and farmers & allied workers constituting as much as 56% of the entire country's population, India holds 2nd rank in the global contribution to agricultural output. All these numbers are just to bring in a perspective that agricultural income is not taxed in the country and so is its workforce (largely).

It's no rocket science that more the cashless transactions (if and wherever possible), less the unaccountable money (we call it 'black money' dearly). Use of cashless transactions is as high as 93% , quite predictably, in Belgium, followed by other developed nations like France, Canada, UK, Sweden and Australia, in that order (with difference in percentage between no two countries going over 2%). Coming to India, unsurprisingly, it is as low as 11%. The penetration of cashless transactions isn't going at a great rate either - merely at 0.43% (approx).

As I am scribbling this down, I coincidentally receive a text that goes like "Go Cash-free. Use code XYZ123 to get Rs. 100 cashback before Nov 25th. T&C Apply" from a wallet services provider whose services I use quite infrequently.

Now if mere 11% of the entire populace are going cashless, and in good faither, let's assume the 11% are alleviated from the perils of the cash crunch since Nov 8th - what about the 89% rest? They go all cash for their daily tenders and kaboom! their lives have come to a standstill. Filled with dead air.

I am not questioning the govt's intent behind the alleged masterstroke-ish move. Execution should have been more farsighted, thoughtful and planned.

Now when I say thoughtful, I've got a thing or two to add to the above lines. To drive the country's cash-based-people aka the socioeconomically & technologically naivete masses on the path of cashless transactions, it comes back to educating them, empowering them with tools, leveraging technology to help them go cashless. It's important to drive increasing number of people in the direction of going cashless while the transition is not uncalled for, smooth and does not create the chaos as we experience today. I am saying this because only a small fragment of people who are socioeconomically nurtured enough to receive texts like the one I just received are able to go cashless.

Demonetising bigger bills may hinder currency counterfeiting but if it is handicapping the hapless lot of the country on the other side, I am not sure which side must the weighing scale sway towards.

Diary - Day 27

For as long as my memory can take me back in time, I have always longed to be in a place, far from any place I've ever been in all these years. This elusive place has always been in the back of my head, stoked when I read a piece of fiction or watch a movie - wherein one of the characters seems to be in a similar kind of place which could come fairly close to my fancy.

What's interesting is when I look in retrospect, I've actually walked past such places of etherealness but could barely recognise them, for all their etherealness only exists in my head. That could be an unassuming lane with a scenic tea shop at the end of it in a normal, tier-2 city like Jamshedpur or Darjeeling. Maybe, the whole idea behind such dream is to be in such a place that offers an escape from familiarity. To be somewhere where I could just slip a bag on my shoulder and saunter around. Rid of any obligations to be somewhere else and do something that I'd dread to do.

I started watching Black Mirror yesterday and 3rd episode in the 1st season held my breath. For as sweet as memories seem when they are ephemeral in their flashing, their outlasted lingering in our heads will only welcome their twin sister that goes by the name Chaos. This point was exquisitely dealt in that episode. After a point, one desires memories to be erased - like cleansing roads of snow so that the bogey called life could resume its journey.

The next time I pass thru one of such places, I'd stop, fill my lunges with its air and go on. 

Diary - Day 26

Another week has just kicked in, bringing with it newer challenges at work to which I am not really looking forward. But like it happened so far, will happen so forth.

The queerness of my dreams in alarming nowadays. The more I'm coming to grips with reality in full consciousness, the queerer my dreams are getting. It has taken me good days of rational thinking and pathetic days of paranoia to accept the few unassailable things in my life. But equally oddly, my brain acts quite weirdly in formulating my dreams. When I wake up, I feel I am in my body with someone else's brain - which makes me upper lip quiver in cold, terrifying sweat. This feeling almost puts in jeopardy the torrent of experiences and so the learning milked out of them. Only as minutes pass by into the day, the naughty subconscious part of my brain retires into its lobe and the consciousness reappears on the foreground.

I am still thinking on the lines of whether such stark contrast in the functioning of brain's conscious and subconscious is normal or is there a problem that has to be identified and to be dealt with.   

Diary - Day 24

Ate some chocolate cookies. Watched some new TV series. Read some comic strips in the dailies. Working out right now as I'm typing this. Will prolly catch few pints of beer after this.

See you tomorrow. 

Diary - Day 23

Two days of absence again. It's funny how nothing notifiable happens in as many as 50 hours. Or maybe the entire struggle is to keep it as is. Just to keep up is also hard work. Weekend is here and this one's going to be very boring. The old boys of neighbourhood are busy getting their shit together at 200 km from where they belong to. Trips to the cafe will only end in one cup if chai; or maybe two, given the break time takes before we call it another Monday.

A good friend is tying the knot this Sunday and I wish her all the luck on the new ballgame that awaits her debut. On a parting note, she wished I get a good woman to call mine and I wished her wish come true.

I was talking to another person of interest last night. We mused about the chronology of events that we partook in and it was only epiphanic how I always have managed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some call it hard luck. I prefer Irony.

As more number of days being ladled into my bowl of life, I am beginning to see how humanly flawed the people I call my parents are. I stress humanly flawed. My father's a conservative and only time has taught me that. But he only tried to outdo the definition of a father in every way possible for us kids. My mother's just any other mother, who's always got a pinch of suspicion towards any new friends of her children but her eagerness to feed the hungry us trumps all her other worries.

Only it's getting increasingly difficult to be a homeboy at this age. 2016 has been kind to me. Hope 2017 carries the lineage and lands me up in a place that cures my domestic anxieties. 

Diary - Day 20

There are a few timeless gems Fight Club has given us - long after we disregard it as a cult film that only meant something to all of us during growing-up phase. One of them is the "you are not our job,....." one. Only it is getting tough to keep relating to it.

If me saying that 'what I now make is approximately 8 times of what I first made' sounds cocky, I would encourage you to abort reading this. But if you wish to read further, I have a bit of ranting to do.

Money. It is difficult to resist its allure. The more money you make, more steps you climb up on the mountain called Lifestyle and I am afraid it is one of the only few mountains on which descending is tougher than ascending.

You sit in a bar and happen to overhear quite a lot of things the loudmouthed fellas yap on your adjacent table. You realize they live in a different world - one that's way different from yours. If you are a judgmental person like I once was, you'd judge them by their choices, tastes and interests. But every now and then, one of the loudmouthed says a thing that you can totally resonate with. 6 or 7 times out of 10, such things of concord will be about ubiquitous elements like money, greed, recognition and other humanly universal needs and wants.

Probably that is the elixir on which money has thrived. Probably that's what makes it ubiquitous. What I'd choose to do if handed over a bag of million dollars may radically vary from what you would do but you and me are tied together with the wish of being thrown at, a bag of million dollars.

All this rant is more of a prologue to a short I am working on to put up here shortly. Also serves as my daily feed to the diary project for today. 

Diary - Day 19

Guilty yet again, for 2 days of not showing up. Same excuse - work. But what I'm beginning to like is feeling the need to come back here to type out. Day after day. Okay, day after every two days.

I've learnt that a 19 year old girl who happens to be my apartment watchman's cousin from his village died less than a week ago. I remember her as a maid working for our neighbour whose broomstick was nonchalantly generous to go beyond the neighbour's and swept a part of our house's frontal area too.

I've heard some rueful tales about her sorry state, her increasing illness and her losing battle against a bigger disease she had been fighting since birth - poverty. She had moved to Hyderabad in pursuit of moderate education while her stay was guaranteed at the watchman's & she worked in few houses during the evenings to earn some money - from which she had to send some back to her parents in the village. It was probably her way of contributing to her dysfunctional family - damaged because of a farmer being its breadwinner.

Apparently she had battled TB before she lost to it. But the regular intervention of money, or its dearth, had her treatment ineffective because of irregular visits paid to doctors and pharma stores. And she died. On a nondescript evening, she drew her last gasp

Nothing remarkable about her life; or perhaps she wasn't given a shot at life to make it meaningful (I doubt if the word 'meaningful' holds any meaning here) in her own right. She may not have ended up as a Sania Mirza or a Romila Thapar but she could have had the experience of a life lived to a considerable extent. 19 is too sorry a number to call it a long-lived life.

P.S: Contrary to by ruing in my previous post, Tehran Cafe near Secretariat is unscathed and functioning like it has always functioned.  

Diary - Day 17

Recorded absenteeism on Day 16. Was busy working.

Honestly, I am only writing this to divert my mind from the boring documents for sometime. Coming to think of it, it was a conscious decision to chase money and more money (not that I had a bucket of choices either). Well, no complaints in that right. Little did I know that money doesn't necessarily imply comfort. Comfort can be sought in many ways.

Comfort is the cup of chai after a workout session with no need to glance at one of the cafe's wall-clocks. Comfort is nursing your lower back with heavenly stretches after a week long drives bouncing off the potholes. How much have the definitions changed?

Reminded of cafes, learnt that Tehran Cafe near Secretariat was demolished recently - probably to give way to a rather beautified neighbour to the infamous motel that sits in the backdrop. I did not feel a pinch when I learnt the news but coming to think of  it, it feels very sad.

Maybe I will tell my kids one day that Hyderabad used to have a lot of cafes. And Irani chai used to be much more than just another button on the coffee vending machine.

Diary - Day 15

A good old writing master looked squarely into camera's eye once & shared what I consider a timeless piece of writing advice for aspirants. He goes by the name, V S Naipaul. He said, 'consider the necessity of each sentence before you write it down.'

I was grappling with 3-4 possible opening lines for today's entry and I questioned all of their validity. They didn't pass the test. Readers wouldn't have missed anything if they didn't read those lines. This tantalising quality of writing is what has made me its unquenched pursuer. There's this suffocation inside the head to drain out the unwritten, yet failing to find the appropriate vessel that could give this shapeless string of thoughts a presentable shape.

No joy for me comes close to the one I get when I think I have given a decent frame to words that echo like a sentence I want to be echoed like. And when I am fiddling to do exactly that, time becomes a bearable behemoth. It in fact seems like a giant cloud, pleasant of the ones, whose passing nature makes them pleasant.

There are a couple of shorts I am working on, one of which I may put up here. While readers of the blog (if there are still any left) get busy in judging the short, I jaunt dreamily in the pleasure produced by merely producing a short.

Diary: Day 14

Been a day slightly twisted than the recent others. Can't go into details. Too tired to think about anything to write. So this is a small piece. 

See you tomorrow. 

Diary - Day 13

I went out for the usual post-lunch smoke. Having contracted cold for a few days now, the taste a drag induces in the mouth has more to it than the taste of brushing teeth with coal (I did brush with coal, very infrequently, when my age was a single digit, in my father's under-equipped village, which was habitable then).

That taste took me back to those lonesome afternoons, spent in that hut, right outside that college's premises. Being a student full of loathing & distaste for everything that was associated with that institution, I used to sit and smoke and feel repugnant about the cigarette's taste in my mouth & my teenage life's inability to grit through the loathsome program in that college.

That taste also took me back to tepid afternoons of 2012, when everything was so clueless. I was young, had an overachieving girlfriend and a disproportionate career. Same taste used to trail around in my mouth, which used to be slightly opened, wondering if I'd ever be able to swim ashore with all my portions unscathed.

The same tasted stirred in my mouth today. But the repugnance towards my life wasn't that stark as it had been once. Perhaps, in the perennial process of goofing up and trying to repair the goof-ups, somewhere I may have learnt forgiving myself. From blaming everything around me for my failures to accepting the reality (which mostly has involved as the main culprit in all the twisted fucks of my life) and try not to repeat them.

Yes, I know this is getting a tad self-indulgent. I will try find a thing or two to write about, by tomorrow.

Diary - Day 12

Just a few minutes short of calling it a week. Another one starts in those very few minutes. Made a handful of stops at the cafe today. Alone first, with a buddy next and with the old bunch thereafter. Fully coherent words out of mouths only sounded like sputters - all credit to the noisiest day of the year. 

When I say the noisiest day of the year, I remember referring to it as the glorious day too, a few years ago. There was a queer sense of joy to this festival. Those celebrations that took the shape of a full moon by the eve began only were embryonic. From stealthy sessions of fire-cracking to approved hours under parental vigilance. New clothes and sweets with no healthy-yet-hard slaps on the shoulder from the mother. 

The above paragraph could be totally misleading in its tone - for it may concede an illusion that I miss this festival. Actually, I don't. It's just one of those nameless days - leisure enough in their passing to allow me while away without looking at the clock for lunchtime.

I can totally relate to the annoyed uncle johns of the neighborhood; whose irritation only grows with time as night gets deeper, yet the sky gets brighter; one firecracker at a time. It discomfits me that one blaring, long night among relatively calmer days of a year sets us off to a great extent. It's only at the nib of my thought - I may want to give this more thought and time to think further. You can expect more on this in one of the posts in future.

I've been typing this small piece for as long as 30 minutes now. Which is surprisingly long for my diary pieces. Maybe that's what leisure allows one to do - whiling away. 

Diary: Day 11

Okay. Recorded absenteeism on Days 9 & 10. Blame the corporate. Not getting into much details of it - for it can only sound stodgy.

Day 11: A weekend. Typing this out from office. 3.04 pm. Nothing much has happened in the last two days; except for deteriorated stamina and increased work burden. A friend asked me to sign up for a writing project on www.nanowrimo.org but shelling out as many as 1700 words a day only sounded draining. I am anyways working out on this Diary Project, so I let it pass on.

Diwali is here. I vividly remember the glorious makeup a sweet shop got done for itself during last year's festival. As much as I feel comfortable whiling away my years in darkness and its warmth, such sporadic exposes to eye-widening glories only invoke a childlike joy within me.

There was this time in my life, circa 2013, when I used to dream about a life - devoid of any happenings to call it a happening life. Like the one Irfan Khan has in Lunch Box before he meets his elusive, angelic lunch-feeder. I kind of pined for it back then, considering the stuff that was happening in my life.

Spin 3 years and a few good months on the wheel, I am living that life right now. It is not really as pleasant as I had expected it to be. For that matter, when was the last time I thought something was pleasant? I don't recall that, neither do the ones who read this regularly. You know me, don't you? Always glass-half-empty.

Diary - Day 8

Ah yes. Apologies for not writing on 25th. Like I bemoaned in my post before this one, work had me occupied for more than a day. But here I come, refreshed with a day of joblessness and hence, a replenished me.

I am slightly impressed with my discipline - which's taste I haven't had until a recent while. I am setting targets and working towards them. The pessimist inside me is only caught unawares lately, winking and hinting that it may as well only about time before the newly adapted discipline crumbles.

I place my bet only on my nascent skill of holding shit together that I discovered barely a year ago. This last one year is the only standing evidence of some decent progress I've managed to record. So that's the only thing, forget about anyone else, even myself would dare to place the bet on.

Why am I even talking about discipline? Because I have had some time today to think about myself and on what path I've chosen to tread. To put it bluntly, I had enough time to leisurely think today about the type of pebbles the path I've come down on has been adorned with.

It might be a while I will again rant about paths and their pebbles.

See you tomorrow.

Diary - Day 7

It's 2.00 PM as it type this out. Too early an entry into the blog to be called a daily post. As I've already lamented about afternoons and their uninspiring nature on Day 1's post (if I'm not wrong), I am beginning to like the idea of this post-lunch writing regime - it helps me keep up my writing promise while the thought that goes into these posts stops my brain from slipping into a siesta.

I know what's about to happen in the next 36 hours. Something I've vowed to myself to never conform to, before I took the plunge into this industry. To never give more of myself than what constitutes to one-third of my years' time for as long as I work in this industry. I feel helpless I'm breaking that vow for an umpteenth time in the last one year. While I'm somehow keeping up this promise of writing daily, I am breaking the other. Yep, I am working for 36 straight hours - merely to deliver the agreed.

With more number of years adding to my life's calendar & my stint in this industry, I have been increasingly feeling the need to jump into writing. To tell the stories I've always longed to tell, rather than writing business use cases that hardly stand any character against the former.

I'm well aware all this talk of wanting to be a writer amounts to very little, if not nothing. So hopefully, this will be the last time I crib about how much I want to be one - but actually start working on a couple of short ideas I've been thinking over.

One good thing has started to develop as a result of this daily writing exercise though. I am now able to string words with relative ease. That's some progress, ain't it? 

Diary - Day 6

I have gone to a bar today which I hadn't visited in 2 years. I don't know if it's ironically funny that a waiter or two remember me at the bar from the days I used to frequent. Just bantering over those quick seconds when one of them was serving me beer, I asked a few things, to which their responses were grim.

I asked why the bar seemed so dull and they claimed this season has something to do with the auspiciousness of the time of the year - and so people refrain from pouring in. So god-fearing are people, I sighed for a trice.It just seemed as absurd to me as a man trying to conceive a baby by working out in the gym. The waiters were hopeful that the bar would restore its crowd and so its lost gala, by January.

As I went on with drinking, I later learnt that the waiter bunch of the bar were beaten to their shit for their unwelcoming behavior with the customers.

Diary - Day 5

         "How do you grit through an unpleasant phase? Perhaps, by having something pleasant to look forward to, by  the end of the phase. What if there's nothing to look forward to? Hey, I am arriving at making the 'nonexistence of anything to look forward to' as the adaptable idea. I mean, to not look forward to anything; instead accept the reality for/with all its bleakness and come to grips with it."


What an abysmal line of thought that is?  That's how my thought weave themselves into their web on afternoons. Thankfully, I have crafted a list of things I'd like to look forward to:

• of wanting to be a novelist (not considering the dwindling possibility with each day passing by, supplemented with no effort from my end to do [actually begin] some serious writing).

• of making it to an open foyer in the downtown of any archaic city and wander around without a speck of care for time and trivialities. 

This afternoon is too cruel; for it is not letting me doz off and dream of the things. But it is a touch merciful in allowing me to write about them at the least. 

Diary - Day 4

I am coming back to the blog for fourth day in a row. But 4 is too small a number to account for any kind of consistency. I will talk about consistency and all that at a later time.

There's this colleague at work who walked up to me with a genuine interest to seek anything I know of language (he thinks I am some sort of English virtuoso, which is obviously his untrue opinion about his newfound colleague). I really liked talking to him about the mediocre stuff I know and which I thought could be of some use to him. It kind of added a sense of fulfillment to my morning. I went back to my desk with lungs full of smoke and satisfaction.

Allow me the liberty to say that most part of the industry I work in is made of artificiality. And that touch genuineness was like a rare breeze of warmth on a Serbian's cheeks.

Apart from that, today has been quite a normal day with no surprises springing up from the bushes that grow between two cubicles in the office.

Diary - Day 3

Following days of drunken nights have in them a feeling of pallor and that irks me to a great length.

Lethargy reigns my body in a way as if it has never reigned before.

On days like today, the list of looking-forward-to things gives due space to physical workout, not out of deference but out of the need to purge the lethargy.

But sadly, there's work today stretched into that time of the day when tepid evenings slowly melt into chilly, dark nights.

Perhaps, my tone gets better after a workout tomorrow preceded by a good, long read or a film tonight. 

Diary - Day 2

Winter is here. And so are those chilly mornings & evenings. Hyderabad's winters have always been special for me - not for what they bring  into my living but by their mere occurrence and the associated pleasantness. Maybe it has got more to do with my inherent disliking for subcontinental summers. Unpleasantness of broken skin & the unconsummated desire for chai form the flip-side though.

Yet another winter is is in passing, with normalcy. This diary is only one day old in its existence but it has found its way into my list of looking-forward-to things. The list has no other things.

I am writing this with a sense of urgency but I'm actually enjoying this urgency which my life has not experienced in quite a few years. I like the way in which time seeps from under the notebook in which I am writing this. 

Diary - Day 1

It has been a banal Monday so far. No remarkable happenings that will make me remember today in the days to come. This piece is nothing more than a starting point to the promise I've made to myself to reembark on writing: this time as a craft - in a methodical and auto didactic fashion.

Well, afternoons are deprived of motivation that mornings usually contain. They are uninspiring and so, they seem long than they last. Let's not talk about evenings because I usually spend them in retrospection and hence, self-retribution. Like I had to quench my ego when someone said something nice to hear about an absent somebody - I pitched in to prove myself too (An incident that refuses to leave my memory and comes atop me every night to put me to shame).

I've read quite a few number of books in the recent times. Running a blog post with 3 liner reviews sounded like an exciting idea initially but you know, excitement bites the dust when its cause wears off in its age. So, like many writing ideas, the mini review thing also took a backseat in my head as one of the remnants of a receding enthusiasm to try and adopt new, healthy habits.

As I've mentioned that this piece is the starting point to a promise made to self, I don't want this to be extinguished before it can make its due journey.

Hope to see you again tomorrow, against the pallid white backdrop.

Water puddles

It was a rainy weekday morning. As clumsy as it can get, the city was enmeshed in the incoherent bawling of its people on the roads. As someone opined about the city once with a sigh, everyone rushes past the others and no one makes it in time.

There was a clear, tacit hierarchy & its associated condescension within the city's traffic. A luxury car driver looked down upon a mere hatchback's owner with contempt that was bred due to the former's repudiation of the latter's possession of a car. Same was more or less application to the duos of car-bike, bike-cycle commuters.

Small puddles of water came into being on the roads; sometimes concealing hungry & dreadful manholes beneath them, but most of the times the puddles had deeper throats than one anticipated and created problems for vehicles and their owners.

This guy in question was already later of office. Let's call him Giq - going by Guy In Question. An auto rickshaw sped past Giq like most auto rickshaws do in India; conveniently throwing fellow commuters' safety for a toss. Wile speeding past Giq, one of the rickshaw's tyres landed in a puddle and that splashed water onto Giq's bike. His trousers also received some painting.

Giq cursed the rickshaw driver explicitly by making obscene gestures too; but his shouts only acquired a sense of disjointedness and incoherence - losing their meaning to the cacophony of the traffic around.

The spattering only made Giq's rest of the journey a bitter experience; until he was just a U-turn and 100 metres away from his office. He stunted a jerky U-turn with another water puddle waiting for his rear tyre to be dunked into it like a basketball.

With that dunking arose a spatter of water that landed on another guy who was making a rather controlled U-turn. His right side of the bike looked like it was artfully smeared with wet chocolate while his face looked like that of a soldier's who crawled on a wet marshland in Indonesia dodging bullets.

Giq thought it wasn't going to be just bitter but would instead turn to be resentful with a possible altercation with the Indonesian soldier.

The other guy gave an amiable smile to Giq which reflected the reassurance of empathy saying, "It could happen with anyone on a bad day" and drove on.

The auto rickshaw driver found his way to bring his auto to a halt right beside a stupefied Giq, looked squarely into his eyes and sped off nonchalantly, avoiding another big water puddle with a dexterity only seen in Indian auto drivers. 

Darkest Clouds with Silver Linings

There are these pangs of despair that teeter between pointlessness & ennui. The two extremities are poles apart (or do they just seem like that? doesn't the former precede the latter?). But isn't it the strangeness of human mind to bring 2 unrelated entities and try to stitch them together with a thread made of human experience?

I sit there, passively lending one of my ears that faces the talker who blows incoherent lumps of words into me. I zone out - literally. It feels as if the talker is saying something that I try to fork out from the crevices of my brain but the space called 'grit' is busy fighting the pointlessness of all of it.

I'd resort to a very cliched maxim here - even the darkest of the clouds have silver linings. They do. Amid such chaotic bouts of striking pointlessness, all that helps me in hanging in there is a faith-filled patience. And it always has paid off.

A synergy of ambition and optimism emerges from each of those dark bouts that breathe in the necessary fuel to go on about life. It could be lending my ear to a welcoming piece of music or a spectacular line from one of the books I read at such times or an insightful offering by one of the regular stops I make on the internet.

Of course, the need to be heard is always there. Incessant that, indeed. Blow back all the gathered melange of thoughts into an ear that sucks everything in & spits out a 'hmm' here and a reassuring smile there.

In such vulnerable moments of that need, I am increasingly finding ways to be more than a man I already am. To deserve the ear I desire.

All in all, through those sporadic fits of existential despair, I am struggling to keep my feet planted. One day, the despair recedes and the firmness of my feet will remain resembling a tree trunk that has been tried and tested. Or I at least hope they will remain.  

Discovering the Material

It has been a few months short of two years that I met this men who hails from my father's extended family. That meeting had been long due but like long dues usually jinx - the meet wasn't fruitful. I couldn't get him to talk about his life except for a few stares he threw into nothingness when I broached topics privy to him.

Nonetheless, I chose him as the material for my first attempt at long fiction. I have been able to empty a few drops of ink but things got stuck beyond those few drops. I have known it by my heart that unless I closely examine his life for a stretched period of time, I cannot bring the earnestness to the story. Neither have I been able to afford the time to travel to that village, stay there for a while and spend time around him (blame the corporate half of my life).

They say traveling is remedial. I have always been skeptical about the remedy traveling offers to ailments of human mind. My traveling found its ignition key a few months ago & the engine hasn't been turned off as yet.

There's this drive I took to Bangalore recently. The trip was all about gala and friendly yapping with old pals. However, the drive back home was remedial to the disease I had been suffering - called "Inadequacy of Material".

A series of thoughts cast some light on my own life, which has been under sheets of inadvertent obscurity for long now. My life has gathered enough incidents, which smudged & smothered with paintbrush called Fiction, can be retold. This occurrence of material from the most unexpected vertex got me thinking.

Conviction - that's all it boils down for me. My story. I have been in the front seat of the ride that chiseled, with twists and turns, through a spaghetti of incidents. That leaves me with the utmost conviction to tell my tale. I know why the characters behave the way they do and precisely the way they emote.

That man from my father's family has taken the backseat ever since but only for now. Surely one day the world will read about him. But for now, let me whistle that quote by Oscar Wilde - "Given the man a mask, he'll tell the truth."

Material Discovered.

Inside the refugee's heart

He stepped off the tube to find 20 different faces with 20 different sets of features that represented 20 distinct races. He came from a place of war to a place of existential battle.

 

His soul would not forget that sight. It was going to have a lasting impression on him. He adjusted his bad that slung to his shoulders & wearily scurried out of the train station.

 

There was a red headed destitute staring into him from afar at the corner of the long pathway that led him out of the train station. Only a year's savings that amounted to a few hundred dollars in this country stood between him and the red head from sharing the brotherhood of destitution.

 

He wandered aimlessly to find a place that could let him call it his home. He had long gotten used to the idea of shifting places to escape bombings. But this was different. Here he didn't know where his search could marginally end up.

 

He ended up at a drab burger joint with bland walls to have his first meal in two days. Having come from southern Africa with poorly bartered local currency, he pulled out a wad of notes to pluck out a five dollar bill to buy a steak roll.

 

The wad did what a wad does. It drew a bunch of young thugs - this led to a melee between him and them. One of the thugs could eventually grab the wad from him & dashed out of the burger joint. The swarm let him loose and the thugs ran behind their partner to have the wad apportioned among themselves.

 

The feeble yet resolute legs of the man chased down the wad grabber & yet another brawl began. This time, outside the burger joint - out in the open.

 

This caught a patrol officer's attention who was patrolling close by. He, alarmed and flummoxed by the brawl, pulled out his .45 mm revolver and the bullet found its new nest inside the refugee's heart.