How things can suck you in & you strive to stay indigestible.

On the last day of the first month of the New Year, I'm coming up with this piece. 2013 took its toll in teaching me Self Indulgence. Everything else was bred by the self indulgence. Rationale, reason & logic.

It's so amusing i,m unable to pick up words for this piece. I guess i maybe too sucked in by professional writing & the personal side almost turned dead. I have gradually imbibed all the virtues to be an acceptable person. Though I place myself at a convenient distances from the virtual herds of people fighting among themselves for attention on the internet, I figured out 'how much' connection seems sufficed.

There is this arguably strange thing that the universe throws at you; a little unambitious people call it Destiny; I am one among them, as a matter of fact. It seems like it defies the laws & leaves you naked; testing your mettle.

Being bred in an industrious environment, I believed 'Striving' as an elemental virtue that demonstrates one's character. Because of aging, like it did what it usually does to men, I've become unassuming; and the change in definition: I believe its 'hanging around' that truly tests one.

I barbed about the smart, had problems with personal success. I no longer do. When there's a hot mug of coffee placed in front of you & somebody's saying words behind you, I nurtured the capability to press things (words) remain behind.

The little consciousness that aesthetics deserve, I devote; though not more that what they deserve. I can take it now when somebody quotes a rosy line from a long forgotten movie though it seems inconsequential.

Like a jinx, I am writing this & my pen seems to cooperate only in breaks and pieces. No petulance, mind you. I scribble. It resumes its flow and I write.

While pressure to make peace with peers is overwhelmingly consuming at times, I somehow manage to stay intact. 

Ek 'Aam Aadmi' ki Jeeth

This is the first time I am trying to dab on the ongoings of the national polity by treading the path on which I have never been. An amateur analysis with a glint of hope for a better country down the lane. 

Though every self-proclaimed neo-Indian has acknowledged the birth of Aam Aadmi party by Arvind Kejriwal a year ago, very less prophesied his and his party's such opulent official entry into the Vidhan Sabha of the nation's capital.

With 28 legislative assembly seats under the party's belt now, a lot can be credited to Mr. Kejriwal but not the whole. It is the movement he has envisaged and succeeded in trying to take it to reality that is more intriguing to talk about. 

I am typing this piece right after enrolling myself as a member of Aam Aadmi Party through its website. Never before have I reacted so impulsively following the trend that caught up with millions. I have always been in a notion that mainstream sucks. Blame Gangnam Style, Kolaveri, Apple to name a few.

It is the pompousness of transposing a silent movement into a political party by allying with the intellectual (or untreacherously thoughtful?)sections of society in the Capital that gave way to such welcoming results in the recent polls. 

What drew my curiosity is Mr. Kejriwal's unflinching conviction to his party's manifestos which are very tailor made for each constituency. Aam Aadmi Party is redefining the way how to prepare a political party's manifestos. The hope lies ahead in realising the paper work in the coming times. 

Anxious days are ahead for the people of Delhi who dumped AAP with a mere difference of few hundred votes in more than 14 constituencies. Had it won at least 8 of them, Mr. Kejriwal would have been breathtakingly busy now formulating his new government's top slot agendas for the next 5 year term. 

The reason for the possibility of holding elections again in the Capital is the apprehension of both BJP and AAP to seek support from other parties to form the government. A lot of people spoke, wrote and debated a lot about BJP ever since its birth, so I am confining my discussion to AAP here.

Being a toddler in the political circuit with an age of few months, AAP stayed resistant to the political lures and perks because it evidently stands on the pillars of selfless, committed and importantly change-driven people.

One nod from AAP takes forward the process of forming a coalitional government in Delhi but the nod is what AAP is far away from and intends to stay that far away. That nod could even make Mr. Kejriwal who comfortably won over the standing Chief Minister of Delhi Mrs. Shiela Dixit in her very own constituency, the next CM of the capital. 

If we sitting in opposition and demanding answers from the rulers would solve the longstanding problems of the society, we would very much like to be the opposition, said the celebrated convener in a press meet recently. That says it all. The part, as for now, has arrived for change. Power seems irrelevant. 

When we are talking all this, the convener and the Mumbai wing of the party are busy in formulating Mumbai's manifesto of the party by addressing the local issues unattended hitherto by local blitzkrieg like Shiv Sena and Congress. 

It is too early to celebrate but it is worth a punch of fists in the air by a common man. This is palpably his victory in the fort of the country. How I wish it spreads epidemically to other provinces of the infected country!

A hero: Found & lost.

As per my previous post, it's now evident that an ordinary man is my hero. It has not been 2 days I wrote that piece & I came across an epitome of the ordinary man. This is his tale, unheard hitherto, unseen & overlooked.


With the doldrums caused due to the slippage of a certain happening into uncertainty on my personal front, I need a boost to uplift my spirits. For years, there has been only one way to do that & it has been the combination of smoke and tea.

With some newly discovered music that safely settled in my ears, I walked to the tuck shop. With one string out of my ears, I asked for a smoke stick & a cup of tea; grabbed them & slowly trudged towards a bench made of cement slabs for people to leisurely sit on and smoke. 

I occupied one which was safely inclined against the tuck shop's wall & he occupied a wide slab which is obtusely inclined towards mine.

Some nice fusion piece was playing in my ears while smoke slipped through the hollow conduit of my throat. Initially the fine combination of post-lunch smoke, hot tea on an early winter afternoon and nice music added to the beauty of the scene.

He was unaware of my presence. He had his head peeked down into the cup formed as a result of crossing his hands around his pulled-up legs.

Sheer melancholy rose between us, still silent. The music slowly got fainter as it its player seamlessly shifted onto a hollow bamboo stick from the saxophone which I deliciously heard till I found him. My left hand involuntarily raised itself to my lips to affix the stick & removed it within half a second & my throat did rest of the task. My right hand helped me slurp the tea who's taste or heat I stopped relishing till I found him.

He slowly lifted his head from the cup of his hands to turn away from both of us. He dabbed his pair of slippers with two thumbs of his feet. Those slippers were a poor imitation of a big brand in Indian circuit. It was evident that the fact didn't bother to find merely the last place in his thought list.

He moved his right hand along his belly with a disturbing grimace in his face. His shirt ruffled with his touch & settled with greater folds.

The initial picturesque & its comely contents turned into callous presences with one such grimace on his face. It spoke of many things with no words. It spoke of foregoing; it spoke of endless compromises. It spoke of surly lampoons he had been through. Yet his face bore eyes with hope in them. It had temples with sweat droplets trickling down on his ruffled shirt. They shone with a strange faith in better future. 

He walked away when the muffled music was returning to its vigor in my ears. I stroked my hair & dusted my trousers when I was on my feet & saw him getting onto his moped.

He placed his right leg on his bike's kick rod, stopped for a while in patience to transfer any energy left in him to his right leg to kick the rod and ignite his bike.

He eventually did & rode away. 


He was an ordinary man. My hero.  

The fallout of a lunatic

There is so much that goes into being an ordinary person. Being a common man seems a seamless task but under the veil, a basket full of eccentricities & weird, yet not-uncommon traits lie silently. Amid the pandemonium of such things, its highly admiring to live the life of a common man. 

I believe every man is a lunatic inherently. The crazy demon inside every man breaks out more or less often; credit goes to compelling scenarios & their complementing persistence levels.

However the fall outs are rather intriguing. The world & its writers are busy weaving stories of rising up when the tales of falling out always remain unheard; deliberately at times & equally inadvertently at the other.

Take me for instance. I can clearly see myself shedding off the virtues of 'a-boy-next-door' to turn into 'a-boy-who's-alive-apparently'.

I am very happy keeping to myself though her untimely, irregular intrusions add a strange joy to the happiness of being left out by choice. I keep drooling for more of her before I realize its been a day I met her & life slowly etches onto the path of chosen confinement, yet again.

I walk lazily towards the tuck shop round the corner at work places for post-lunch smoke, sometimes accompanied by John (my newly found acquaintance {takes few more beer mugs, nicotine stubs & time stabs to be labelled a friend}). I take in a puff, expel it away when I catch him staring at me. I look away to find a lonely man holding a cup of tea between his thumb & forefinger of one hand while a cigarette burns in the other.

He is visibly attentive to what we talk but comfortably isolated at a distance of 2 meters. I see myself in him. I stare at him while he peeks his head away to blow out his bout of smoke; so I turn back to catch John staring at me. 

The cigarette like a dying man slips out of my hand to hit the dust only to die under my shoe. I stand up. John follows me; trudging our way back to office.

Didn't you see the fallout of a lunatic a few lines ago? 

I belonged there.

A god five minutes of bargain went into convincing the auto rickshaw guy to invade the proclaimed 'old side' of the city at 10.00 in the night with me riding pillion.

The chariot moved forward. It entered the lanes of an avenue which is comfortably far from the high road yet it managed to possess the charm of life.

There was an inevitable gloom on every shopkeeper's face & it took me a while to decipher a common cause for those discrete phenomena. One with a horror - stricken face; other with a hopeless one and so on. I turned my heard away in helplessness to find a young boy commuting in the opposite direction with two buckets of water held in his hands firmly. He was dabbing on ground which propagated his motion forward.

I was travelling on the road which stood as a gulf between inevitable melancholy on one side & a fast pacing hope on the other. I bent down a little to pick up the dropped lighter, pulled out the last cigarette from a day old pack, lit it, blew off & asked the rickshaw driver to slow down & drive at a lesser speed.

I knew I belonged there. 

The invisible burglar.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I thoroughly lived through my coffee breaks at work & my drives up to workstation & back home. The reason was simple. I was im-mobile. The pseudo, crispy term to be devoid of a mobile phone. And thus devoid of the strange, inconvenient sense of being connected always.

When one of my hands is immersed in my lunch plate, the other is safely rested on my pocket to feel any possible vibration of a text or a call. The mobile phone safely sleeps beside me despite my father's warnings that mobile must be far off at night to avoid its consistent emission of radiation. That's 'cause I don't want to miss her call.

A little insight opulently knocks it all off. Where is this taking me? I don't read as I read till a month ago. I never make an attempt to write. Comfort of instantaneity seamlessly replaced yearning for quality.

On top of ensuring connectivity & occupancy of the universal set of information out there, it just makes life shabby. I mean the mobile phone. I mean for me.

The core emotion that drives every pursuit of technology is restlessness. It can make more sense if I say impatience. When optimists see that as an advancement, I, being an Eeyore and a man of realistic melancholy, see that as a burglar that robs away my space.

I want to go out with her for a day without our mobile phones & I am shot with looks like I'm wanting to be a Nobel laureate overnight. Status updates are frequent that unsettling tidal motion of seismic waves. Pictures are clicked to obtain 'thumbs u' points rather than to save them & revisit them fondly in memoir. 

A day without mobile phone - A day well lived.   

Hearts says NO

Its funny to observe what money does to one. I have a classic example which is very personal and I wouldn't want to to quote it here. But yes, moneys trips you endlessly & its likely to be very non hungry like. You are hungry, you eat an opulent meal. It ends there. For once. For the next half day or one. But what money does to one is contrary. The more you consume, the more you turn hungry.

First things first; I am appalled by the gruesome things money does to blood ones. It just builds unseen walls between people, reality obscured & truth silently fades away. When one has money, the earth seems paradise to live on. Each rupee slipping out of your account adds to the increasing apprehension to live. Finally, there comes a phase where the natural joy of being alive gives way to the inconvenience cos' of materialistic discomfort.

Libraries are replaced by virtual carts already. Shelves of local deli already transposed into thumbnails on websites. Human relations are quantified largely. The amount of money pooled in to save a relationship stands as an unfailing testimony for one's love towards his loved.

When there's a positive side of saving lives with money, there's a dark side of building them as well.

Talk about me. I write this piece eschewed in a comfy revolving recliner. I couldn't (or wouldn't?) have done that if I were a struggling writer searching for undecipherable feelings to be articulated. Money brings in the adequacy in necessity. It shouldn't be left o itself to go & conquer the abstract.

I stand on the end point of the thin line that separates the purpose of money into two: Necessity & Luxury. Extrinsic forces are pulling me towards the latter but this time, heart says no.