Songs of the not-so innocent

As a kid, watching my grandpa slice a mango was the definite highlight of many a summer evening. Talk about simple times! Back in the early 80's we lived with my grandparents in Bombay. My memories of that time are compartmentalised into special events; the colour of the candle on my 2nd birthday, watching my beaming mum wheel a red cycle through the building gate & slowly realising it was for me (I'm pretty slow that way), helping my grandma make vadaam for the year, the smell & colour of salt and chillies mixed with aavakaay in barani (porcelain) jars, the buzz around the house during Diwali and Avaniaatam ... It was a different life; one with games of chor-police , yellow plastic bat cricket, The World this Week on the telly and of course, mangoes in summer. My grandpa being the patriarch of our mob, would take on the very serious task of buying, cutting & distributing mangoes. A strict disciplinarian with generations of tam-brahmness behind him, he would appro...

In two diabolically hellish weeks at work recently, I was often left staring at the laptop screen, dumbfounded. It'd reached a point where anything I did was wrong and even doing nothing was chastised in language that was vitriolic, to say the least. Remember the scenes where a group of people surround a guy and proceed to beat and kick him down till he's forced to curl into a ball, hoping to avoid further punishment ? By last Friday evening, I had reached that figurative foetal position. The same few thoughts kept circling around - Why was every molehill being turned into a mountain ? Why was I putting up with this aggravation ? What was so enamouring about the job that I was shouldering so much invective & stress ? Heck, why didn't I just quit ? I had no answers. I do remember being surprised at how much fear was coursing through me and wondering what I was scared about. It was just a job, right ? So, why didn't I believe that ? To get my mind off the shitstorm, I...

After 2 years and countless bus trips, you'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now. Sadly, like a plethora of guys out there, I'm a sufferer of what is called the 'Empty Seat Agony' syndrome (ESAS). I didn't stand a chance, really. Sufferers of ESAS are generally guys who are implicitly aware of the vagaries of Fate & the sinister machinations of the universe. Raised on a special diet of awkward social situations and an instinctive understanding of self-pathos, we're stuck in the limbo of the great evolutionary game. Usually well-read, of above average intelligence, cynical and/or pessimistic, we possess a sense of humour that is devastating & self-depreciating. We're not loquacious, know the meaning of the word 'loquacious' & of course, cannot (possibly will not) dance to save our lives. Dance, in the ESAS world, is a random flailing of limbs and we cannot be convinced otherwise. In terms of looks, the word most likely to attach...

(Much has, is being & will be written about the 2nd of April 2011. This is my sentimental contribution.) I am 28 years old, the amount of time a nation waited. It is a nation of sufferers & cynics, a country where it is easier to be corrupt than to be a good person. A place which makes it hard to simply and truly wear a worn out heart on a scuffed sleeve and wait for joy. Think about what experiences an inherently religious nation has to go through before the idea of 'belief' mutates into something that must be constantly tested. This is the same country that voluntarily chooses to fall in love with a team sport in which 11 men have ample opportunities to fail individually. A sport hosted in arenas that have plumbed the depths of human decency. One who's administrators are, collectively, about as criminally incompetent, indifferent & selfish as a group of people can be. This is a place where a nation's passion for a sport constantly fights a bloodied bat...

It was the perfect day. He wasn't completely sure what that meant because it'd been a while since, well... Many phrases whistled through his head but the one that fit, the words that felt right were - he'd felt alive. It was like unwrapping a gift and finding something incomparably better than what one was expecting. The rare times when an explosion of giddy joy left one speechless & breathless simultaneously. That perfect, first kiss. The day combined the vibrancy of all those moments and all it had taken was one phone call. Thing was, it was a phone call from HER. She was in Bombay. To meet him. She'd been to the city many years ago on a short trip, but like most out-of-towners, Bombay had scared the bejeesus out of any possible return trips. Until now. So it began - the perfect day. She didn't remember anything good about the city and he, in his social hermit role, had not seen much of it in the two whole years he'd lived there. That wasn't ...

The two usual suspects sat slumped at a corner table. The repose that hung around as they occasionally sipped beer and spoke suggested this was a routine event. The truth, however, was far more painful. Professional ambitions, personal realisations and other matters had conspired to put about 4 months and 1000 kilometres between their pub sessions. The casualness had been replaced by a sense of occasion, which was irksome, but somewhat ignorable. The music was not. They'd come to this particular pub because the beer was good and the music, mostly rock, was what they needed. But they were no longer regulars, so neither could understand when the place had decided to turn into a country-western stall. One of the guys even predicted the entry of some bloke in a 10 gallon hat, which would probably not have raised a murmur. Nobody of the type showed, thankfully. There was only so much a cold brew could stave off. What was also odd was the theme of the conversation. It had been a year...

For the Suppandi, Shikari Shambu, Kaalia, Tantri and Chimpu in all of us:   For a kid, moving abroad is a peculiar experience. You are aware of the gravitas of leaving behind coddling grandparents, friends and every other familiar sight, sound and smell. Yet, at that age, you're unable to express any of the sadness and dread in a coherent way. Even as you struggling to come up with anything that won't get you punished for 'being a nuisance' or 'in the way', the move is already over. One minute, you're waking up to the smell of filter coffee & 501 soap and the sounds of grandma grating coconut while the cooker whistles merrily; the next minute, you wake up because of the oppressive silence, don't see a fan, don't recognise the smell of carpet freshener and are introduced to the terms body clock, jet lag and dawn. And Ovaltine... *shudder*. So, what is a kid to do when he realises that classmates don't stay in the same neighbourhood, ne...