Moving On

Life is non stop drama And the catch word is ,' Moving On.'

Today, we are smitten by our recent cricket victories. Tomorrow, we will be horrified by the Politics Of Scams. The Day After , we will be besotted, with a new social collaboration site to connect on.

Everyday, Someone, Something, New to love, to hate, to get obsessed with. Thakela nahi mangtha!!

And what of the past? Does celebration of nostalgia only have it's place, in regional movies by pseudo-intellectual directors? Is everything about the past , all about the goodbye? I don't have the answers, because I embraced 'moving on' with such fervour that I have lost the claim ticket for yesterday's baggage.

It may be an escape mechanism, i may be irresponsible. It's not easy, that's for sure! Yesterday, visits me everyday. In my dreams, the way i laugh, the values that mould me, the truths i believe in.

So, this is how i deal with it......

I forget my old circumstances, But I cling on to those lunatics who for some reason are still celebrating my birthday.

I dont crib about my lack or luck in life , But allow myself to laugh at the havoc that i have spread, whenever i have suffered from existential angst.

I let go of all my old loves, But whenever it rains , i relive those moist moments of Being, as verse for new poetry.

I forgive my past and all the people who never believed in me, Because though i wasn't born with balls,just look at the steel ones, they helped me craft. I laugh With,For, & At Yesterday

Because it has taught me to brew vintage wine from the grapes of wrath. What other skill is there worth learning?

Salut! To Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. To All Time For That Matter. The trick , is to Ride the circle , not Walk the Bloody line..

Summer Again

Still , silent summer
The noisy city bedecked with
silent motionless flowers
whose colour can only be described as
transparent blush
Lat summer i had time
time to notice the camel's bells
As it offered joyful rides
to the children down the road
Last summer i had time
time to write poetry on ashphalt
This summer i am
Untouched by the heat,
or by the victorious cricketing India
This summer i suffer
The patterns of every day work and life
I search the sky for one rain cloud
for dissent , for fury, for action
For release from this stillness
This encompassing quite of a summer
I search for freedom from
The Summer Of My Life

A Forewaring to my sister on entering the corporate world

My darling Puchus,
I am sure you are all agog and you have shopped till you drop for your new job.
Welcome to the corporate world, to the Dark Side Of The Moon
Today I am going to share with you some of the nasty truths which i wish someone had told me on Day 1....So Bite the bullet ..Here Goes..

1. Dilbert is not a comic ...it is the only version of the truth of our lives.There are no human beings left on this corporateplanet, we are all robots of process. We are employee numbers ,hardware tickets and meal coupons..and God has been replaced by an entity called the Corporation..which is a mythical beast lost in the future called The Cloud Platform.
2. The most important learning of your life will be -My boss is always right.Accept this truth and you will live.... better.So every time you are flogged, heaved over the coals and made to feel like vermin..remember He Who Does Your Appraisal , is your master and you shall know, no other master but him.
3. Your co-workers at any point of time or at all points of time are bound to be dismissive of your efforts, jealous of your intelligence, better at gaining brownie points with THOSE WHO MATTER.They will try to ignore you, failing which they will gossip about you, failing which they will laugh at you publicly and exhibit your weak points to their advantage. Don't get upset, GET EVEN.
4. Do not take on the responsibility of collecting money for birthday gifts and baby showers. Do not become a part of the Fun@Work organisation committee. People then tend to believe that you have no work at all and though on the surface they praise your efforts, deep down they will belive your useless, since managing time is not a quality which TRULY IMPORTANT PEOPLE should have.
5. If you want to rise quickly in the haloed halls of power, try and look terribly busy, bury yourself in process, write endless mails which position what a great job your doing and yes....make a lot of trips to the copy not coffee machine..mumbling to yourself.
6. Always use words like synergy, facilitate,teaming, and if possible deliver these words in a deep sonorous voice.People will start thinkingyou have people management qualities.
7. Looking the role is important. Being a great professional has nothing to do with getting the job done.Presentation, is everything. So go shopping instead of brushing up on content.
8. Build your own brand,market yourself, and dont enjoy anything that you do. When your truly miserable at your job and your smile has been lost to an expression of complete loathing for humanity you will find yourself doing rather well at your work place
9. Just like gender and sex are different concepts, so is a job and a career....if you want a career ...learn the job..master it, QUIT IT and become an entrepreneur like Pritha. Possibely then you may have a career.
10. And of course since i have failed miserabely at doing all of these things , you can always rely on me to give you moral and emotional support every time you get the Sunday Night Chills and the Monday Morning Blues.

Welcome my little sister to the Dark Side Of The Moon...and dont worry we Will Hold You Hand ,get you through your first appraisal and teach you the Dark Arts Of Survival In The Corporation.

Lots Of Love

Tina Didi

The drama of the domestics

Every ordinary day unfolds with it's performing players, the cook , the maid , the delivery boy.Meet the actors of I Nagar, a little woody nook in a busy, angry, cyber city.

THE EXTRA: An important player in every crowd scene
Babita , the cook cycles furiously down the road, with her lunch and her hanky clanging and fluttering against the handle bars . The reason why she is an extra in this everyday drama is because you will never actually catch her playing her part. Capturing Babita in any kitchen for more that 5 mins is an improbability. Before you can blink, she is gone. She is a unique professional. In this BPO city she likes to charge by the number of dishes she messes up every day. A little disaster package,a mini-caterer on wheels, whose only known ingrediants are chilies and karri putta. If you want to loose weight hire Babita.

THE ORDINARY MAN:A player who is the recipient of the chain of events launched by the protaganist
Every scene needs an ordinary man who cant quite wrap his head around the plot.
Door bells often ring with 'Sahadev-The Boy From Chapra'. A year back, this lad of the oily locks , used to peer out from behind his unruly fringe and gasp for joy when someone promised to pay him Rs 300 for washing cars. Then Sahadev was hired by a 'visiting fitness freak from international waters'. Instead of washing cars, the 3 footer's new job was to run behind the madum from 4 to 6 in the morning across 5 kms of granite city, carrying her water, fruits and possibly also offering a notional vestige of protection. Needless to say 'The Boy From Chapra' now sports sexy sneakers, designer tracks , a baseball cap , 2 mobile phones and a ear-ing. His madum has changed his style and aspiration quotient forever. Maybe one day when she leaves, young Sahedev will open a gymn and become Shay-The Fitness Guru.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC:The comic element who lightens up the play
Uma, the neighbourhood charwoman fulfills this role with great aplomb. Uma is convinced that she should be in hospital. Uma has recently discovered that if one complains of exhaustion one can be admitted to nursing homes and be put on drip. This notion of the drip coincides with all the death bed scenes that Uma has viewed in Kannada cinema and as she glides across rooms barely touching the floor with her broom, she plays the role of the tragic heroine, who is breathing her last , exempt from the drip. Oh Poor Uma!

THE HERO:Important , because he sells the tickets
Bappan , a guard is one such hero. He is a cut above the other guards who loll around in their blue and bluer uniforms staring at the surrounding houses. Bappan does not wear uniform. He differentiates himself by holding a day job with a medical laboratory. He is a fair , smiley, helpful lad who has successfully positioned himself with the building dwellers as a Man Friday and not a guard. He picks up a quick buck here and there by moonlighting as a house agent, a delivery boy, an electrician, a payer of bills. Bappan owns a swanky phone which belts out the latest tracks..and yes, sometimes he listens to Inglis music. The maids all swash just a bit more , giggle and chat an octave louder ,when they pass by the house which Bappan deigns to monitor.

THE OHER ACTORS: Important players who complicate the plot on several layers , lending the audiance unanswered questions to take home , and hence feel intellectually challenged!
The other actors in the drama of the domestics are the delivery boy , the drivers, the man with the Iron and of course the people who live in their little EMI castles.
The delivery boy is a lean, mean, efficient machine. He belongs to a shop called,' Top In Town', and is something of an ATM with plenty of ready change bursting from his pockets.
The drivers play cards and compete with each others on cutting edge petrol pumps, with the best bloated bills.
The Iron Man, trundles with bags of overflowing clothes ,which he burns, singes and spoils.
He nurses great contempt for the owners of the apparel, a miserable bunch of people whom he believes, have no right to complain about his work, if they are too lazy to do it themselves.
The people.. Who are the other people who inhabit this world? You catch snippets of them rushing off in the morning to their jobs and rushing off for weekend getaways when the week is done. Otherwise they remain a faceless, nameless, transient population..with little to show of their existence . If it werent for all the main actors, who service their world..who would know of their presence?
Except the squirrels on the trees, and the autumn leaves which are sometimes brushed away by an unknown hand, the pot with the wilting plant which is watered occasionally, and once the crow espied an arm flicking a cigarette over the balcony sill. Poof....
The play can carry on with or without them..

Single In The Head

A couple of days back ,Bobby Mc Gee , while singing The Blues with her pink bandanna, shared a new action phrase with me ,' SITH' or ' Single In The Head.'
It was a zany phrase , but as Pritha said , ' I just cant Wrap My Head Around It.'
So I began an exploration of sorts with SITH : A Case Study!
SITH-Is it just one of those American phrases which roll out smartly on our 'Getting There' tongues or does it actually connote, denote something more real?
When in doubt , ask God , and if the Holy Book is evasive about it and says fluffy things like:“Everything is possible for him who believes.” (Mark 9:23) and follows that up with a warning not to spend time writing about existential angst in office with-
“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”...........then the pilgrim must Googleth........ and for once Google was dumbstruck!
This is not a common event and it made me question the 13th commandment of modern history- The 0-1 logic must always work.
So when our second God, Google threw up ,'Single Head Embroidery Machines,' following by 'Head Of Household Filing Status,' in answer to SITH,we turned to our community , also called Facebook and posted ,' What is SITH?'
Everyone must have been playing 'Which element are you?' because only 3 people answered.
The feedback was vague and aimed to displease. Comments ranged from ' Hmm,Interesting' to 'Never Too Late' which might mean anything from ,
' You have made wasting time into a fine art form ' to 'Don't fret , Your not that ugly.'

The Face to Face Friends did a little BIT better -One Man About Town told me that,SITH meant, 'Being able to really roll the dice and play roulette with the women.'
Another friend recuperating from a bad viral bout (who is generally feeling that the adequate amount of TLC that she deserves is not being rendered upon her and she is already being asked to take up household tasks like , changing curtains, & putting clothes into the wash) cocked open a half closed eye and murmured,' Doesn't SITH just mean , being selfish?'
To understand what SITH means, I ask myself what does it imply?What are the perks of being SITH?
Simply , SITH is a spin off of the Descartes complex. 'I think , therefore I am' and in today's world this means,' The Only Rules I Live By Are My Own.'
I may belong to different social units, like a family, or an enterprise or the My Sofa Ur Sofa Club. I may play the roles of being a mother, a girl friend, a lover, a child..but i don't like to negotiate any of the rules which comes with the roles , deal with any of the expectations which come with the privileges of belonging to that unit.

Isn't SITH just another symbol of the virtual world which we have embraced?
When was the last time you had to actually invest emotions in a virtual acquaintance, isn't a virtual buddy just a click of acceptance on a sponsored page. ...?
If you want to be SITH you better like your own company a whole lot more than anyone else, because YOU CANT BE 'Single In The Head' when you are happy & 'Social In The Head' when the chips are down.....After a lot of thought i agree with my virulently viral friend-
Self Centered & Selfish that's what SITH was called when we were young..a time when women who are now known as accommodating were called loose :)

Surviving Delhi

Delhi. The City Of Djinns spooks me out completely.
Now that i have shifted base from the north of the Vindhyas to the south, i feel scared and threatened as soon as the screen in the airplane starts blooping and the arrow gets closer to Karnal, (Due to some unknown anomaly Kingfisher airplane monitors display Karnal much larger than Delhi)
For the last three years every visit to Delhi has been steeped in disaster, it is as though the city is angry with me and plans strange little spites whenever she sees me checking in. She almost behaves like a spurned lover!
This time in another misbegotten urge to hawk my IT wares, i landed in Delhi during the Wills Fashion Week. Like Jesus, Mary and Joseph I was spurned from inn to inn, and then the travel desk booked me into what they termed as a 'comfortable business hotel in the City Center.'
The problem is thay failed to specify the nature of business that the hotel was in .
On deplaning and rushing off to the promised paradise inn, i discovered much to my chagrin, that i had been booked into a hotel, which catered to nocturnal love of the most inconvenient nature.
Reeling from the shock , the peeling walls and the suggestive art decor , i called my booking agent and let forth a volley of gasps, squeaks and exclamation marks.
Unperturbed , the agent assured me that he would look into it. While i was making these calls, a consortium of waiters, receptionists and other office staff had formed a sort of circle around me. Then suddenly there emerged from this melee a short , determined looking woman who made an attempt to grab my bags.
I reeled back at this gesture. Without breaking eye contact the formidable lady took measured steps towards me as the crowd started closing in.
'What is wrong with hotel?' She asked me in a menacing tone.
'Well, nothing , really,' I said, shuffling and clutching my possessions closer.'
'I just don't want to stay here, if that is OK with you.' I added , still shuffling.
'And why note?How dare you book and not check in? Give me your credit card now! '
I was scared and the mob looked ugly. A mobile rang and i heard her talking to my travel agent , the gist of the conversation pointed to me, being a complete imbecile.
I heard her shout-
'I don't know what is wrong, I don't know why she doesn't want to stay, I think she wants to go stay with someone for free.' I tried to point out, that since my company was paying, i really didn't have an option.But she would have none of it.
She hung up , screwed her eyes, into little pin balls and yelled.
'Look here , you are not going anywhere, you have been booked here and you will stay here or else, I will call People.' The crowd inched closer. I wanted to burst into tears, but somewhere within me my Bengali roots of 'Run Rabbit Run' flowered,and without exchanging another word , i picked up my two red bags, espied a little gap between a head waiter and cleaning man sprinted and how...
I ran down the lane with this lady hurling abuse, and instructing her staff to hold me back, i ran as fast as all my overweight kgs would allow me , and rushed into the safety of the main road and a waiting cab.
But the day was not over , it was already time to hawk, and en route i begged an old friend for shelter and food. Alive but shaken, i went off to meet a motley crew of customers. In 5 star safety, my confidence and belief in self and city grew back. The hours sped by and soon it was time to return to my chum's home in NCR.
The 10 lane highways of Delhi , are as good or bad as any other capital city in the world but as soon as you inch towards the greater NCR section the roads immediately turn into minefields with rocks strewn on them. One such road is the Gurgaon-Faridabad highway, where i spent most of the night waiting with lorries and locals. 2 trucks had kissed each other and now lay in an emotional embrace while mountains of traffic piled up and waited amidst the debris. The police scurried to and fro, there was a lot of activity but ....not much movement .
We waited from 11.30 at night to 2 am in the morning. RJ's , mosquitoes, passing vendors, a half moon, a lot of dust, some ambling police men , other stranded flotsam and jetsam passed us by ,exchanging pleasantries and the latest status of the clearing operation. People behaved as though it was the most natural thing in the world to be stuck in traffic at 1 am in the night without any hope of delivery. Rampant abuse was hurled against the government, the roadways and intimate details of the governemnt's grandmother's misdeameanours was bandied across from waiting lorry to waiting Merc to By-Standing Police Man.
I would not have been surprised if food stalls had cropped up where we stood, tea and coffee vendors were already doing a brisk business. I cannot describe the sheer joy of the dawn breaking and me catching the plane back to the old home town.
It is no use telling me that Delhi has a persecution complex, that Dilliwallas are an aggressive lot because they have been beaten into becoming mini-mafia by centuries of invasion. I am having none of it. I am going to leave it to someone else to wax eloquent on the charms of Delhi and the Dilliwala. I am going to close my mind to the magical lyricism of Lutyon's courtyards,Mina Bazar, Karim's and Tibentan wooly winters.
I am going to stay goodbye to all that I once held as the Mecca of culture and intellect in India. I spent the three best years of my life within the hallowed walls of the North Campus but the sharp contrasts of Dilli and Delhi cannot be accommodated in my aging years.
As i stepped back onto Bengaluru and into a bright green Meru, i requested the taxi driver for some music.
' No radio Maydum.' he said , shaking his head sadly, as though it was his personal failing. And then voila .....he reached for his pocket, whipped out his mobile and tuned on FM, serenading me for the one and a half hour haul back from our 'built in the wilderness airport' to home.
I understand that such exacting codes of customer satisfaction cannot be delivered in any other city but how wonderful it is to be able to stay in such a polite, mild mannered haven.
If by chance, i had dared to ask for music, in a taxicab without a radio in Delhi(of course no such thing can exist in the loud sound corridors of the capital)they would probably have made me sing at gunpoint .....!
Needless to say, I like my Delhi second hand, like the old books of Darya Gunje ,...I want to experience it through the idiot box, in books and in my 'purani jeans' memory....as removed as possible from the reality that is CWG ki Dilli.

Identity is a stranger's cloak

Identity is a stranger's cloak. There are people around us who are losing their lives in their quest to establish their identity..their existence.
The ' new face of politics' looked sincere as Priya Dutt , Chandrasekhar(Junior)Muhammad Hamidullah Sayeed, Anurag Thakur and a flank of young Parliamentarians appealed to the youth of Kashmir for peaceful dialogue.
This made it to the front page of the Hindu.
In the next page the Prime Minster assured us that no political resolution would be passed until normalcy was established.
Normalcy, what is normal about India ?
While the Commonwealth officials finance their next 3 generations by ruthless, pilfering of public funds,appointment of dummy Australian marketing organisaions,dubbed SCAMCO instead of SPAMCO, the Orissa tribals find more wisdom in the directives of the Maoists than the official diatribe of the state.
What is the commonality between the youth of Kashmir, and the Maoists of Chattishgarh, AP and Orissa ..the youth have no future to look forward to and no one has the empathy of the 'Reality t.v enamoured' nation.
We who have escaped being born into a victimised state of socio-economic deprivation react to the unfairness of the system , by changing channels. The icing on the cake is the packaging of tv journalism. For example, 'The screen will hit you with poignant frames of impoverished adivasis in Orissa , malnourished children, accompanied by young girls who have been rescued by the police from indentured prostitution'....and then the ad frame- Voila!
The Newest, Glitziest Toyota introduced in the market.
This is the normalcy of India. This is the shame which we bear as our pride. We revel in our insensitivity.I believe there is much to learn from the people against whom the state is at war.
In their insubordination, they are building an identity, they own a value.
The Maoists want to launch,'A People's War' and cripple the state from within , establish a 'people's government' .Young Kashmiris have made pelting stones at the police a 'TGIF' (Thank God It's Friday)activity, but at least in the last twenty years they have been consistent in their resolve of demanding autonomy. Fragmenting or paralysing, the movements, the people within them have a face, a mission, a goal.
As we channel surf through all national misadventures , we the republic assert our democratic right to be divorced from the nation we live in. The identity of ' Youngisthan' is packaged in cola and self-serving ignorance. We might as well give up the hope of ever building an identity?