Songs of the not-so innocent

The glass walls of the office let him stare at the people on the other side. As a scene, it was not extraordinary. Neither were the people. People were after all, just people. The observer and the observed shared a floor, but they could have been worlds apart. After many minutes of observation, he understood. Perhaps. Those on the outside looked comfortable. He did not know them. He had no idea about their daily office lives, never mind the ones they led after leaving at the end of the day. But there was no getting around it - they just looked content. Confident. Cheerful. Hopeful. Like they knew they'd be able to handle anything life threw their way. He felt as aware of this as the people were unaware of him. They looked alive. He looked like he would never be. Song for the moment: For what it's worth - Buffalo Springfield

It never fails. Stress, frustration, angst, ennui, boredom, the stifling, never-ending pile of work... call it what you will. This amalgamated feeling will build, build and build. Sometime in midweek, when you're literally forcing one foot in front of the other out of sheer bloody-mindedness and fatigue, a vision will appear in your mind's eye. A pub, a beer pitcher, music, and the kind of friends with whom you can stay comfortably silent for any length of time and still call it conversation. Of course, at that moment, there will be no recourse. So you'll write this post and take solace in the past.  Song for the moment: Under the bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I can't think of many advantages to being a short person. If you are no good at sports, you tend to get bullied in school because you can't hack it as an athlete. If your social graces are awkward at best, you tend to get ignored in college for the most part and slink around campus like Gollum. Heck, there's even data suggesting that tall people get paid and treated better, right throughout their lives. So, the 'altitudinally' challenged get the short end of the stick, as it were. Which is consistent, I suppose. Still, there's one place where you'd think it might be beneficial to be small of stature - the Bombay local to Borivali during the evening rush hour. Look, this is no forum to debate the horrors of train travel at said time. In my previous job, I've taken trains in what is as the 'wrong direction' in Bombay-speak, so I didn't quite understand the nitty-gritties of the situation. My new job is in town, so I finally travel in the sam...

After swearing to lay off the sappy stuff on the blog, it was but natural that the last post would be swimming in that tripe. However, it has been shrugged off just as we're about to wrap up another year. 2011 started off at a stagger, collapsed a couple of times, got knocked out once and after a pick-up & dust-off, and a calibration of directions, began a steady jog-trot towards the finish. On the professional front, I gracefully parted ways with my organisation sometime around November. It'd been a decent ride and I would have continued there for a while longer were it not for extenuating circumstances. I took the opportunity to closely examine the idea of plunging into freelance writing, tried my hand at a couple of projects and learned that one needs to be fully committed to the experience and whatever comes along with it. I wasn't ready, so I interviewed and successfully have got another job in Bombay, a city which isn't done with me yet. I'll be starting...

The next time you hear "there's no use revisiting the past", take note. It is good, solid advice. Let me tell you what could happen, when you choose to ignore it. I've never been one of those blokes who'd give Charles Atlas or any of his brethren a complex. But the slightly slothful lifestyle brought on by working as a consultant for the last month, mostly spent working and writing at home, has taken its toll. A hint of chubbiness has started suggesting itself again, which is troublesome. The path to hell, or rotundity, is paved with vada pavs and other good intentions, so I haven't engaged in any urgently-required callisthenics. Having shamed myself enough, I decided to go for a jog today at the Pune University track. The University is where I spent two years at the Anthropology department collecting a degree. They were good years, marked more by normalcy than anything else. At that point in my life, normalcy suited me just fine. I'd been jogging a...

(Sorry readers. Stuff came up. Lost the thread of the post and then interest. Anyway...) Part 2: KS was in mental turmoil. As usual. His team had made it to the quarter-finals of the footy tournament, which made him happy. But, and there's always one of those tripping him up, the quarters, semis and finals would be played on Sunday; the quarters in the morning, the semis around 5 pm and the finals at 9:30 pm. This was the official schedule, which, in India and especially in Pune, can be summarily dismissed. Assuming the Sunday Boys made it to the final, it could safely be said that the game would begin no earlier than 10:30 pm. Therein lay the roots of our hero's turmoil.  Although he spends a shocking amount of time in Pune, KS is actually based in Hyderabad. Being the pain & discomfort loving bloke that he is, KS makes the torturous 12 - 14 hour bus trip too and fro pretty regularly. This was one such trip and he was to leave for biryani land on the 8 pm bus on Sun...

On following a football team over the weekend: Part 1: Writing about sport, about teams you follow or the ensuing action, can easily descend into nauseatingly superlative phrases and tired clichés. As a writer, is it possible to put yourself out there and let your head calculate objectivity whilst your heart hammers along with the drama? Reading Rohit Brijnath on the subject of sports-writing is an education, but I have to learn the practical lessons myself. So, I don't have an answer yet, just this post. As with most opportunities, this one came in the garb of an innocuous question - Tu kya kar raha hai? (What's your plan? / What are you up to?). It was Saturday evening; of course I had nothing to do. KS told me about a 5-a-side football tournament he was participating in and asked whether I was interested in watching his team play. He is one of my oldest friends and an avid footballer, having played for Shivajians Football Club in Pune for over a decade. In all that ...