The Metamorphosis

"Arey Sir, aapki mom aayi hui hai na"

"haan"

"aapka to cigarette/ daaru sab kam ho gaya hoga"

"haan"

"achha hai na sir"

"haan"

I was chatting with D today when this little piece of conversation i had earlier this week, came to my mind. I was bitching as usual about missing my colony room etc. when D said

"u are an employee and u are a son, u are not u"

it felt so apt, this piece.....

all our lives, we are sons, students, employees, husbands, fathers, society chairmen and if lucky enough to survive, grandfathers.

when do we become ourselves....are we even allowed to do that?

Reminds me of 'We the people'....

P.S- Currently unable to collect all my thoughts and bring them out-  will be continued....

 

  

The Ludlum Bullshit

Something written a long looong time ago....just thought would be apt for the moment. Had to bribe a policewallah to lodge an FIR

"

Funny ain’t it….as some of us Indians who’ve grown up reading Ludlum or Tom Clancy or for that matter any B grade author who talk about spies, espionage, under cover agents, covert operatives come to terms with the stark reality that stares in our face today…..

Jason Bourne, one of the more famous Ludlum characters, is an under cover CIA agent, part of some Treadstone or Blackbriar program…..gets attacked by amnesia, is one deadly assassin and is wanted by police all over the world. Wherever he goes, people follow to kill him…which they don’t..because he’s that good.

Can u imagine our very own special undercover agent Jaikishen Burnwal (a very pathetic degrading of Jason’s name)….who has infiltrated the ranks of any of the trillions of jihadi outfits and succeeds in killing their top man. Then, he runs all over the world with fake passports, huge amounts of cash deposited in numbered SBI or UCO bank accounts which freeze if you are unsuccessful in opening them in three attempts???

The very simple reason is you can’t. Because there isn’t any Jaikishen Burnwal who is out there risking his life to save us fools. Although you might find countless Jaikishen Burnwals (JB…just to avoid typing this typically Indian looooooong name) at the traffic signal chewing gutkha or smoking a bidi…probably taking a hafta from the panwaala and thinking that he would get biryani for his wife today.

Why only Ludlum, take Hollywood movies for example..The Recruit, James Bond series, The Bourne Trilogy, The hunt for red october, or any other spy-action movie for that matter. Agreed, most of it may be the writer’s vivid imagination but there must be some fragments of truth in it? Why can’t we assume that atleast there’s an undercover agent in atleast the local municipality if not the ministry of defence.

The people who join the police or the CBI here, do not join to fight crime. They join so that they get a government flat, a fat pension package and countless other perks. There are no undercover agents. Who would want to be that when you can lead a normal life just sitting in the office gobbling up samosas and leave the office at 5 p.m.

 "

Just Lyrics

Meri raah bhi tu, mera rehbar tu

mera sarwar tu, mera akbar tu,

mera mashriq tu, mera maghrib tu....

saahib bhi mera, murshid bhi tu...

tere bina ab main jaoon kahaan?

a stanza from the song 'rangrez' of the movie 'tanu weds manu'

people might find this to be a ridiculously unknown song and i might be christened a hipster

but even 2 years after its release, i love this song. 

it also happens to have a  much more profound effect when i'm drunk. 

is it that i miss someone or that i have no one in my life is pretty much a debatable question.

Back In Black...

So.

It’s been more than a year since I edited this page. What has happened with me since then??

31^st December’ 2011- Awesome party at my place!! Had about 8 people in my small room all of them drunk as pigs and dancing….an event, the awesomeness of which has never been repeated since.

January’ 12- Delhi and Gwalior Trip-

Some guy’s marriage. The only reason I went was D and Chatur. And meet them I did. But the immeasurable pain and boredom of the preceding 4 days was enough to make me hate Delhi forever. And not to forget the ‘grand’ scale of the wedding….the tonnes of food wasted….made me want to throw up.

March’ 12- Ezra’s wedding

This was a great trip. For the first time I was actually participating in a marriage. Night time drives in Hyderabad for the first time. A full fledged old city’esque wedding was beautiful. And on the way back to pune, I lost my 15k phone.

Sharad’s visit

There is something about this guy. Everytime (and I mean EVERYtime….) I have met him since college, I find him more and more suicidal. I try helping him and give up by the end of the visit. The January pain was revisited and considering that this visit lasted for almost 10 days…I almost needed a rehab.

June’ 12- Trip to Gangolli.

It’s always discomforting for me when I have to visit that place. Somehow, it reminds me of a place stuck in 19^th century. The only giveaway is the mobile phones and dish TV connections. Imagine there is only one road- called the main road in gangolli which shows up on Google maps. There are more temples than cigarette shops in the tiny village on the west coast of India  And that it was June added so much more…I literally begged for the days to pass.  

August’12-  Dhruv, Chatur and Mudith at once

In an occurrence rarer than MMS ji speaking, all four of us were together.... for the first time since 2007. And mudith’s entry was the most magical. I cannot forget that phone call in the morning…’ raat ko aa raha hu…airport lene aa ja’ . D exercising his authority over me the previous night and throwing up at EG made me realize, how much I love these guys. Unfortunately, the last night got screwed up. Got a fresh look at things I should have long foreseen.

October’ 12- A wedding and a 6 day holiday

Quite a happening month. The wedding itself was not a highlight. But what succeeded the wedding is etched in my memory. It started raining at 3 in the morning. Ezra, imran and I left in a car thinking how to reach my place. And I was aching for smokes. And then, just like a godsend, appeared a chaiwala who was open at 3.30 in the morning and in the heavy rains. From there we went all across the city to Barkas just because Imran had heard of a place which served Haleem at 5 in the morning. The 6 day holiday included an ass-numbing trip to lavasa. A lot more happened here that I came to know of later…

December’ 12-

December 9^th. The date which I feared and loathed the most….had arrived. And I had my brother for company.  And much thanks to him I did nothing ‘stupider than usual’ as I had planned.

December 31^st- a largely forgettable day with a night I wish would forget. The moral of the story running in the background all this time was clear.

PS- Just tried writing something after a really long time. Couldn't think of anything else for a start.