The War.

The way back home. It lead to the proliferation of negativity. Why do I attract so much of shit into my mind? As if my bike skids over the road/ I run into a truck right into its ass?

May be that's what too much of solitude is doing to me. Should I term it as loneliness? There is, my friend, this thin line of ice between solitude and loneliness which is finely crafted and is supposed to be delicately maintained from breaking. Its breaks, its going to take away the rigidity of your backbone along with it.

I just go around with pursed lips, zipped earlobes and ripped thoughts. May be I am letting the female parent of mine to look over my shoulders right through my scalp, into my some 1400 grams of meaty shit and doom over me, to cast her shadow, to overlap mine. No offence.

The endless cynicism that runs in the blood of deprived 60s' kids is infuriatingly nauseous and promisingly depressing. The way the adulterated kids now look over their literal kids erupts a suspicion that there's something insanely and wholly wrong with the generation altogether. It generates the same dubiousness in both the generations involved in the underlying crime scene, which is never exposed by the infected paparazzi busy shooting the skimpy bikini shoots of Kim Kardashian.

The grown ups curse their littles during their morning meditations, the adolescents rip off their predecessors during the late night alcohol streaks. But the time between the two schedules of a day, slides off unknowingly to both of them, stuck in the timeless loop of constantly trying to prove to the vice that they are actually treading the right path.

The same happened with Hanif, similarly with Anurag and is right now happening adjacent to you, yes! listen through that costly coated wall of yours! there's a battle been waging. Between the everlasting cynicism and the never ending hope.

There you see, my friend! That timeless, epic battle that was ever fought and still being fought, which intimidatingly promises to break the dawn tomorrow as well.

   

A crushed corn.

That's a far away village in Punjab. It is enriched with fertile soil, fertile enough to cultivate almost everything that's sown. It is called Shapoor. A village once filled with people who were content, happy and everlasting.

Its 6.00 am now. That's too late for any villager to cuddle his blanket and sleep. So Rudra Singh woke up; in no haste, but with a sense of anxiety, a little tension at his temples & made his way to attend nature calls.

Its a big day for him. His relentless, untiring efforts which lasted almost for half a year are going to pay off today. He may pass or fail, which is still uncertain. It is the day on which he's supposed to pluck the ripen corn sticks off from his field, load them up, travel a good 250 miles to reach Ghanpur, where the market yard is set up. He need to auction his download, sell it for a profit which is usually sufficient enough to buy peanuts barely,  or at least to reach the break even price. No profit - No loss: which leads into another half year of just survival. To get back what he invested, along with his forgotten patience, unnoticed sweat & an endless hope.

By 7.00 am, Rudra is ready to plunge into the field to start plucking. He had the typical Indian villager's breakfast of starch. All that he can afford now is that. Hopefully, that can change in a day. His idea is to finish  loading the crop into a truck before its noon & start hitting the road so that he can reach there by late night, do a sleepover & hit the market yard early tomorrow, sell off what he's got as early as possible before competition intensifies, & make a come back to Shapoor at the earliest.

He reached to the steal box in an old cup board which served its purpose of a safety locker for generations together, his father's & forefathers'. He counted what all he saved in this year. It ended up at 6,000 rupees; which is exactly he's supposed to pay to the truck's owner to send it with him to unload his load at Ghanpur yard.

He let out a deep sigh, forecasting a day filled with hunger, hard work & hope - laid ahead. He is hoping for a decent pay off.

He could have sold the corn right here in Shapoor but the reason he chose to take the pain in going all the way to Ghanpur is his hope for a little profit he could possibly make. He's a man with a wife & 2 little, lovely kids, with strong wish in their eyes that the time of a year has come when their father would buy them new clothes & some barfi. He's a family man.

By 12.30 pm, he's done uploading stacks of corn into jute bags. There are 100 of them. 60 rupees a bag & he'd crack the break even. If he makes somewhere around 80-90 a bag, he'd be moderately rich; rich enough to buy rice for at least next three consecutive months. His chest expanded with hope, as he looked the road ahead. He dozed off somewhere in between.

The truck came to a sudden halt jolting which shook Rudra from sleep. He rubbed his eyes, opened wide to see its dark. Ghanpur it is.

He got down from the truck, looked around to find some water to wash his face. He eventually did & cleansed his face.

He checked his weary, torn wallet to see if he could find any coins to feed his belly. Unfortunately, he didn't. He sighed as he expected the empty lips of his wallet opening itself to his face to mock him. He drank a jug full of water, leaned himself against the last pillar of the market yard, slept off waiting for the dawn to break.

It being summer, the sun broke into lives of Punjab very early in the morning, & it is gleaming sharply through the closed eye lids of Rudra, which eventually opened after 8 hours. He looked at the skies with clinched eyes, slid a smile across his lips, hoping for the best.

In an hour, he's in the yard with his 100 bags placed in front of him, shouting aloud their quality & price. His voice echoed energy, he looked consummated with hope. A couple of hours passed by & not anybody seems interested in his corn. He started to grow nervous, impatient and ironic. He could see that he & his efforts aren't going any where.

After 3 hours, a man came by, with a bag tucked safely under his arm. He was chewing beetle leaves & his mouth is thick red. As red as Rudra's face. He is spitting out the beetle extract once every minute. He seemd so business minded, cunning, smart enough to rob off framers like Rudra for unbelievable & deceivingly cheap prices. Farmers are stabbed in India.

He approached Rudra with a splenetic smile, which is sure enough to say that Rudra becomes his first scapegoat to open his till today. Rudra couldn't care less. He asked what Rudra is quoting & a skeptical Rudra yelled out '90 rupees a bag'. He laughed as if he's gone mad which is driving Rudra mad now.

'30 a bad or nothing. You see there's no other corn seller in the yard other than you. Corn sucked this season. You did a mistake by choosing it & its too late to rectify. Its a costly mistake, you see', he said in one go.

There is a terrible silence & an air of tension between the two. That man is checking his mobile phone with his left hand, trying to pluck something out of his infected mouth with a toothpick with his right one. For a moment, his two kids, their wish filled faces, his wife's involuntary stalk when he reaches home & the silent question her eyes shoot - all such things flashed across his brains. He didn't say a thing. That man took Rudra's long silence for approval. He smiled & yelled out for his boys to carry the load to their truck. He placed 3,000 rupees in Rudra's hand & walked away.

Rudra removed the folded kerchief which has been tied around his head all this while ago. He wiped his forehead & the kerchief drenched itself in the freshly wiped off sweat.

He sat down, leaned against the same pillar to which he did the last night. Numb, motionless, dumbstruck. Darkness slowly scampered. Lights went off in the yard. Ghanpur fell silent. As deafeningly silent as a graveyard.

The next day, his wife & his kids walked back out of a graveyard. Silent & hopeless. Rudra's cremation was done by the 3,000 rupees. 

The joy within.

It is a normal day of a typical pre-summer month. Krushik is toiling hard enough to cope up with the sweat induced out of his seat & trying to come up with an article to meet today's deadline.

He then sniffed the comforting odour of first rain of the year. Odour of the mud which is ready to take its first bath. Within minutes, climate changed as if it never knew what & how a subcontinental summer is like. He turned around in his chair to stare through the window. He noticed the invariable habitat getting ready to embrace the first drops of the season. For some strange reason, his eyes brimmed a hope that he's about to witness something magical. He smiled at his own exhilaration about little niceties.

In no time, it started to drizzle which tool nearly 20 minutes to let some one call it a 'heavy pouring'. Krushik's heart is overwhelming & there's a huge gush of happiness in his heart which is being restricted by a barrier called 'work place's composure'. His heart is somersaulting with joy. For no reason to you and me, for some reason to him.

It may look amusing to some of us by the way Krushik is letting himself getting connected to the changes in the nature. We generally rule them off by quoting normalcy. However, he seems to be in no mood of being bothered that we are not bothered by his reason of being joyful. But we're actually frowning our foreheads a little.

He discovered the hidden child in him. The unbridled joy that follows a conscious process of unlearning has wrapped him in its arms now.

He must have arrived at a conclusion that life is a comic play with subtle niceties, here & there, now & then, visiting us. Only to unveil the truer us & immerse ourselves in the purest joy of living such moments is all we can actually do.

30 minutes and a friend found.

Every relationship should have more or less friendship in it to survive, they say. I've always been a disloyal, unreliable friend. Be it with anybody. This one is about a newly found friend of mine. Thirty minutes is what he gave his ears to me & I found a comforting listener in him. I know him for 24 years but never as a friend.

I was kicking myself in the mask of self agitation & that is when he came to my rescue. I have been asking people just to listen to me, neither advice me nor suggest me  nor hit back with presumed experience; not even go back and recite their own past. Everybody failed. He didn't.

He just let me cut loose the self imposed barriers of restricting myself. I spoke, spoke & spoke for 30 minutes. Not even a cough from his end did disturb me. He simply listened.

In the end, he smiled and logged off.



He happens to be my father - my newly found friend.

Virender Sehwag. - The destructive genius.

Every Indian cricket lover (of course, every Indian is a cricket lover); especially of the test cricket is now celebrating the latest world record of ton on a debut by Shikhar Dhawan. And also the support from the other end by Murali Vijay is too remarkable to ignore. Well & good.

People with ties to their necks, microphones to their shirts, sitting on single legged stools in the box seem relieved from the anxiousness of discovering the proper replacements for the Fab 4: Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar. The first 3 guys finished first & are enjoying the passive involvement in the game by turning into critics and commentators. The last one still feels that he has a little more cricket left in him. He's known for his sleeplessness until he achieves what he desires. So can we wish Sachin a sound sleep only on the day he hangs up his boots.

Alright. We forgot him who bridged the generation gap between today's heroes like Kohli, Dhawan, Pujara, Raina etc & yesteryear's legends like the Fab 4. A minute into the thought & the name gloriously flashes on your mind. - Virender Sehwag.

I am very happy after knowimng that Shikhar Dhawan has come like he had never come although his entry marked on the ousting of Virender Sehwag.

I didn't start this one to analyze the game of Sehwag as there are at least half a billion on the globe who do that succinctly better than me.

This is a quick tribute I am paying to the star who drew crowds to almost-forgotten test cricket in India; post Gavaskar, K. Dev's era. And now, he is on the verge of being forgotten (may be ignored?)

Innings of Dravid, Laxman, Sachin belonged to educated sections of the country. Here, I am not undermining the crowd pulling charisma of either S. Ganguly or S. Tendulkar neither am I underrating the class of Dravid or Laxman.

When there is a group pf butchers, butlers, pot makers & post masters of a village, if they gather at the richest guy of the village's house to watch a test match, the credit totally belonged to Sehwag.

He was questioned about his mental stability to build up a sustainable test career. He wiped out that question with a classic 195 against Australia. His technique was questioned. He hit back the suspicion in style with a demolishing 309 against Pakistan. He who once was a laughing stock in the commentary box later made the same people in the box yell like 'you can't set fields for a shot like that.' He whose patience levels were suspected to survive in test cricket emerged out to be the only Indian batsman who scored a triple century - TWICE.

Sehwag is a genius in his own league & conveniently humane enough to overlook the fact.


I was told that once there was Gundappa Vishwanath. Now there is (was?) Virender Sehwag.

He sang aloud about tomorrow

He got drunk twice yesterday. He woke up with a sore throat, terrible neck & a full stomach. The last night's beer is still safe and fresh in there.

Rather than letting his parents catch him drunk, he himself told them that he did & for the first time, he hardly was bothered about their reactions. Many things have been running on his mind & so he didn't want to take up the additional cautiousness of pretending sober.

His name is Ashish. He lives with his parents. He is 27, single and working. All he does in a day is he goes to office, tries working, comes back, eats and sleeps; only to wake up to repeat what he did the day before.

Yesterday was marked as an off for him. He spent the first half of the day in helping somebody & the second one in helping himself with few beers; which was long & extended till 11.00 in the night.

He somehow realized he's not being swift in his thoughts, nor words neither movements. The saddest habit he has acquired recently is talking to self. All he does while drinking is to ask the bar tender for a pen & he scribbles his monthly budget over a tissue paper. He runs through the written budget over and over just to feel reassured.

Last night was different though. He made an effort to retrospect & thought what really would make him smile and young again. He couldn't figure out a thing or two. He sighed and gulped down the last drops of beer. He came out slowly from the bar & started driving back home.

He was driving back into reality & it strangely gave him a hope. The hope for life; the hope for a better tomorrow. He now is more convinced that it can't get any worse. He just realized that he had hit the bottom & if there's any motion left in him, that should be only upwards.

He smiled to himself; increased the volume of the song which sang aloud about the hope for a shiny morning by a squeaky voice. He smiled, yet again because of the coincidence.


He slowly drove back home.

Saturday's cynicism.

Its saturday. There's this mid year's weekend euphoria that's slowly picking up its boom. The places of modern day fun like resorts, sports bars, movie malls are slowly filling themselves with fun deprived souls.

There is this guy who works for a firm. He gets down from his car 45 minutes after he's supposed to report at his office. He slowly pulls himself out of his car. He manages to gather himself to one piece, gets to his desk and logs in.

Nearly 5 hours pass by & he palpably feels the suffocation of saturday's work. He walks floundering out of office, picks out a cigarette,, smokes it very leisurely. As the cigarettes breathes its last breath under his shoes, he goes back into office to find his boss. He clearly puts it across to his boss that he's in no mood to work and seeks a mid day off. You are your best judge, say his boss.

He gets down from his car at a nearby bar, which is already filled with people. Beer mugs cling & smoke rings evolve out of their mouths. Everybody looks engaged & happy.

He manages to grab a 4 seater for himself. He orders for a  beer & an ashtray. He observes his surroundings which consumes 5 minutes & the beer is placed on his table.

He slowly opens the beer, pours it down into his mug; starts sipping beer and a cigarette simultaneously.

4 mugs of beer, 2 hours of time & he seems done. Even if he's not, his wallet seems done. He looks around & he fixes his gaze on a guy carrying crates of beer from a container into the bar.

He keeps watching the guy right from the entrance to the refrigerator & this happens for a couple of times. The third time, the guy accidentally drops a beer crate onto the floor which silences the deafening music of the bar.

The guy seems helpless & very sorry for himself. The bar manager approaches the guy & declares that the cost of 12 beers will be deducted from his salary & the guy is pleading  the manager not to do so.

He walks away with a helpless smile past the manager & guy who are in a discussion which would cost the guy - a month of his life.

All he could do is smile wryly.