the Yogi and the Schizoid

the Yogi and the Schizoid are connected by madness.
While the yogi is the master of his madness, the schizoid is its slave.

When?

When will it take me?
and drench me to quench the thirst?
Till there is a 'me' in the thist,
the thirst could never be quenched.
thirst is fake.

and so i want to take a knife and
stab myself in my throat
but out of my fantasy
i create my thirst
and look out for oceans and seas to drink

and thru the fantasy i create a voice
which forces my stabbed throat to speak
and when the throat refuses to open up
the mind does
and when the voice becomes unbearable
i bang my head on a rock
thinking the voice comes from the head
i bleed might bad
but still the sound keeps coming..
from where?
and when wil it stop?
when?

An arrow into the air

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."

--- Longfellow

 

 

The Duo

I loved this article. made a nice read.. it's a great sunday.. life is gud.

good steak..

"Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak."
-- Woody Allen

36 chowringhee lane

 

i had a stupid thought today(as most of mine turn out to be, nowadays)..
why not cut the tongue? so tht i culd move out of tht dichotomy.. and could keep quiet for ever..
but.. cuttin the tongue makes u mute but not silent.. they r different.. yea, they are..
it shld evolve.. and thn, u will arrive..
and am bloggin abt this shows tht am not yet! and now am thinkin of a suitable title to this post! sigh!
am nothin but this attention seekin whore!

is death a choice? but pretending to be dead definitely is. its kinda kool.
so, i hearby declare tht i am dead or rather, hereby i declare am Dead already and so this dead man's declaration is therefore invalid.. but your highness, i plea to reconsider your decision and accept this declaration as either legal or valid or both.

so i can write filthy stuff abt some b-skool and no one can sue me.. can quit givin a notice period of 12 minutes and 32 seconds.. need not repay my mortgage.. could escape frm all the reductionists who tag me with freudian symbols.. need not hcnge my orkut profile or foto evry 3 days.. need not upate the currently readin booklist..and me not scrappin back might not be considered as an act of chutzpah or disrespect to err frenship.. it would be far far simpler.. if each one pretends to be dead already.

chutia.. am drudging into pointless posts for the past few days..

no choice

am tired and i want to sleep.. sleep a sleep with such overfilling fullness..

why does the mind keep talkin? why can't it shut itself?yea, shuttin down happens in blotches..for a few hours or days.. but i tread back to old ways..and once into it, how badly i want to move outta it? how badly i want to move out of a conversation.. but why initiate it in the first place.. why? why this dichotomy? whn i keep quiet for sometime, i dunno wht to do with all the overflowin, screamin energy..so i initiate a talk.. a frivulous one, that. and whn i do, it keeps tellin me to shuddup..to shut the fuk up and go back.. but once into it, it takes time to go back...why shld i keep reminding me of myself? why cant't tht i stretch across into the zonals of awareness without the need for constant tickling..wht shld i do? wht the hell shld i do?

no choice.. till the fruit is ripe enough.. no choice.

Mouni

this body is a vessel..full of untapped energy..
the more i go in, the more i realise its overbearing presence..
which could be tapped thru silence..
and so i tried silence..
but it is no ordinary skill which could be acquired..
i tried supressing my thoughts..
but silence is no supression of thoughts..
i tried to be still..
but silence is no being still... its so fast tht it looks still..
but slowly i felt tht energy swerving up and down inside..
its increasin vigour ..each passing day..
until one day, whn there was so much enrgy..
tht i dunno wht to do with all of it..
it was too much for me to hold onto..
and so.. i strted releasin it.. wastin it..
indulge in mindless talking.. futile debates..
talk talk...
talk talk fukin talk...
till ur fukin throat dries..
immerse urself in all the pettiness, in its most magnificient form..
hold onto to something.. be its patron saint.. distort ur perceptions.. delude urself..
and in the process, try n justify ur existence, which is otherwise meaningless..

'Why, Mr.Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?'
'Bcos I choose to!'

Choice.

"Choose life..Choose gud health, low cholesterol and dental insurance..choose your friends.. choose fixed interest mortgage repayment..Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home......"
Ah..

talk.. till there is no one to listen..
talk..till there is no one to listen to...
and at last, whn ur decayed and desolated..
and whn the heats of loneliness hits you like the mid-May Sun..
Masturbate.
masturbate till it bleeds..
till ur feet aches.. till the calf cramps.. till you could feel the nerves crushing down..
till you could jerk off without imageries..
till you could do it with nothin on head..
till its empty
till it fades to black
or dissolves to white
till there is nothing..
till there is no I.

and at last, whn ur sapped of the last tiny tinges of enrgy left..
try and evlove the silence in you..
and tap them once again..
but this time, you would knw wht to do with it.
Amen.

 

What Is

What is bliss?
Is it a state?
or its absence?

Rouvdram

 

 

 

where is the vodka?

 

 

On Gandhi

"One sticks one's finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is : I stick my finger into existence - it smells of nothing"
--- Soren Kierkegaard

First things first.Dear Mohan, Wishing you a very happy b'day.

Perception is a very dicey thing. But, how many different perceptions of Gandhi are there? A Marxist's perception of Gandhi is different from the Socialist's perception of Gandhi, which is again different from the Dalitstan's perception of the man. Infact, a Gandhian's perception of Gandhi is drastically different from another Gandhian's. Martin Luther King's Gandhi is different from JC Kumarappa's Gandhi. E.F. Schumacher's Gandhi is different from Meera Ben's Gandhi.Very few individuals can leave behind such a diverse imagery of themselves. Beyond all those visible imageries might lie something which could be the essence of the person. But instead of moving beyond the man, instead of understanding his essence, we either deify him or spit on him. Or do both, simultaneously.

Whenever I think of Gandhi, almost immediately, involuntarily, I start thinking of Tolstoy. Tolstoy resurrected as Gandhi. Jesus resurrected as Tolstoy. Soon, their individual figures and images fade away. What I see is the silhouette of a person. A very tortured man. With so many idiosyncrasies. The biggest challenge they faced, the *one* thing which made a motley fool out of their otherwise extraordinary personna is Sex. Whatever little fulfillment Tolstoy got out of his writing, out of his spirituality, he lost it to sex. Atlast, he ended up seducing his wife's sister. And we are all aware of Gandhi's repulsion towards sex after his father's death. Yes, that's understandable. His almost lunatic faith in Chastity etc. A bit kiddish, maybe. But whatever he did to Meera Ben? Unacceptable. But beyond these little falls, beyond these oddities, or rather, along with all these oddities put together lies the greatness of the man.

To me, Gandhi is not about Ahimsa. He is not about Brahmacharya or vegetarianism. He is not about Salt Satyagraha. He is not about Quit India movement or Non Cooperation movement. My Gandhi is not about any freedom struggle or any movement.

My Gandhi is a political seer. An economist, to be precise. When Nehru and Patel looked at the world from an arbitary vantage point, he walked into the forests and went into the huts of the villages. His understanding of human problem is much more deeper than that of these Cambridge educated pandits.

When Nehru focussed on solving the problem of production, Gandhi focussed on the problem of consumption. This, to me is the single-most differentiating factor between the two men. To put it very simplistically, to produce something you need raw materials. And for this, you need capital. And using the capital you invest, you buy raw materials, set up your factory and start producing. Sometimes, the market controls your production and sometimes, you manipulate the market by playing around the demand-supply eqns. And you start making some income. But you make sure that the capital you invested intially is intact. Once the income is eating up your capital, it is no income at all. So any businessman always try to separate his income from the capital.

So, once we produce more, the problem of production will be solved. There will be no scarcity etc.. and everyone is happy. The producer. The consumer. The merchant. Everyone. That's the way it looks from the outside. But there is one little assumption we make here. An assumption which could be understoood and decoded only by a pure, unassuming soul like Gandhi. The assumtion is, when you invest captial to buy raw materials, what you actually buy is Nature's irreplacable capital. And when you end up producing more, by investing more capital, which is again used up to buy this irreplacable capital of Mother earth, you end up eating a large part of this irreplacable capital, which no one takes into account. Afterall, Man does not experience himself as a part of Nature, but as a conqueror of it. And end up consuming a major portion of this irreplacable capital. Remember, an income which ends up eating your capital is no income at all. In this case, it is not *your* capital that your income is eating up. Instead, this capital belongs to each and every person residing in this planet.

To him, Civilization is not in the maniacal increase in the *wants* but in acheiving fulfillment in whatever little we have.Gandhi's idea of self-containment sounded so moronic a few years back. Post-modern times, those. emphasizing on little celebrations. about free flowing beer and vodka and finger fish. about the circulation of money etherizing one another. But the essential difference between a Philosopher and a Visionary seer lies here. A visionary looks beyond his time and looks directly into the root cause rather than staring at the cosmetic cause and ending up with a quirky solution. A visionary seeks permenance.

United States, with almost 1/4th of our population consumes as much as four or five times more energy than we do. And most part of it is not consumption is not industrial in nature. Blame it on their Dishwashers and X-Boxes. A few years back, I could during college I could sleep very well in my sweaty, heat-dripping room. And them I bought an A.C. And now I could never imagine sleeping without turning the A.C. on. This body is so self-sustaining, when left to the basics. But when we start appeasing towards pleasure, things turn weird. I just don't have an answer. I am just another victim of these huge economic cycles of time.

What I love about Gandhi is in the way the looked at 'work'. When Nehru was so obsessed with the Russian model of development, Gandhi said it would never work. Any system which dehumanizes work will never work in the long run. Dehumanizing work is not related to machinization or industrial revolution. Gandhi liked the tractor. Though it is a machine, it is used as a tool by a farmer.The farmer uses the tractor and ploughs using the tractor. At any point of time, the tractor never controlls the farmer.

Fulfillment is the word. An ordinary man seeks fulfillment through his work. His work is his spirituality. He finds himself and the world through his work , which consuumes major portion of his life. This form of fulfillment is possible only if the machine's we use is compatible with the man's need for creativity. By this way, he seeks fulfillment. Gandhi saw work as a form of direct communion with God. He saw it as a way of enriching one's soul. And if one is fulfilled and satisfied with the work he does, then his mind is not preoccupied with other evil thoughts. So he was against any form of work which dehumanizes men.

Gandhi believed that in any large system, in any large factory or corporate, the people who are at the bottom most will be crushed with such dehumanizing work, which would make them handicapped, both figuratively or otherwise, for ever.

Today we see that happenning. Slowly. Inch by inch.Every passing day we move further away from the man. The soul-crunching, spirit crushing work we are doing nowadays in the form of selling insurance and credit cards to old retired granny's in the US. bug fixing and customer support. The depressed insomaniac call centre agent. The eternally pissed off Software developer. And their un-ending tea time discussions about office politics, bad bosses etc.. Project Mayhem. All these, leading to dumb calculating attitude towards life.

This vision of forecasting things, this deep love and care towards the enrichment of an individual is what makes Gandhi a Seer among the Statesmen.

We speak of Gandhi-giri and its relevance today. I see young and yipeee journos deconstructing Gandhi and his values. They rate him as a failure. 'His Quit India movement was a failure, his round table conference failed, his talks to avoid the partition failed, he failed as a father and as a husband . And his philosophy is too impractical', they say.

I don't know. All I can say is that one cannot rate him through these absolute terms of success and failure. Maybe he failed. Even Jesus Christ failed. But what a worthy failure they all were.

And whenever I see Tyler Durden shouting, 'Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place....', I am reminded of that *half-naked fakir* spinning his wheel in peace.

Kattan Chaya

It’s been two weeks now, since i returned from Kerala. Everything seems like a distant dream now. All those greeneries and canoes and karimeens. I wanted to write about it on the very same day I returned back from Kerala. I wanted to write about every single place I visited.. And about every person I met and every chaya I sipped. But I couldn’t do it. Work, Late nights etc.. Zillion excuses. Maybe, that’s for the good.. Whatever remnant now, whatever little which escaped the drudgery of work in these two weeks is all that is worth writing about. Which will stay on. Like an eonian dream.

This is not a travelogue. As a whole, this is not about Kerala either . This is about me. And about the little time I spent on the streets of Kerala.

I never traveled alone before. In fact, I almost never traveled at all to anywhere. Except to a select few cities due to training, work. etc.. During school days, I didn’t have a chance to travel with my family either. No, it’s not that I loved traveling but did not have the chance to travel. Nope. Just that I had no idea about it. My mind was preoccupied with something else. So, one day I wanted to go somewhere. Don’t ask me why. Tumultuous times will make you take such decisions. Will push you inside out . Whacks and Wallops you. Will bring out and introduce you to someone within you who is not you. And sets you out to explore things. And when you go on, on your own, what you end up exploring is not just the things you see outside.

But to my disgruntlement, my dear boss cancelled and postponed and cancelled and postponed my leave application I lost hope. With anxiety and fury fluxed together, I vented out everything in one big email. And one fine Wednesday, he granted me leave for the very next week. So much for going on a vacation for 5 days.

The next morning I rushed to book my train ticket to Trivandrum But every single train was full. Reason? Onam. I got waitlisted. And it never got confirmed the next day, till the very last minute. Anxiety again. That terrible feel of acids boiling inside the stomach. Restlessness. And all of a sudden, a miracle. Or something similar to a miracle. Some 30 odd ticket got cancelled all of a sudden, and voila. This little journey began, thus. With just a one way ticket to Trivandrum

Dear reader(are there any?), I apologize. I have this inability to explain things in short. I could have very well skipped the above parts. True, it doesn’t add much significance to the actual traveling I did, but I see some loose threads.

--------------------------

I amaze myself. For the past many many months I was trying hard to get up early, around 5’oclk. Everyday started with this little failure looming over the head. A little head ache with images of me stopping the mobile alarm and letting it snooze after every ten minutes and stopping it again to let it snooze all over again. Until this became a habit. Almost involuntary. But to my astonishment I woke up at 5 that day. No alarms. That too, after sleeping on that narrow, cranky side upper birth.

I went out and sat on the steps along the entrance. Dawn was nearing inch by inch. Train was moving very fast. Everything looked panned. Houses and birds and Coconut trees. And then, suddenly, there was this change in the sound and in its rhythm - Thadak thadak. was accompanied by the taal of a vibrating metal bridge. And out of nowhere, I saw a river. Wide wide . wide wide. And a canoe. With a bare-chested man in his lungi standing on top of it with such balance, piercing the shallows with his thudupu with such precision. And coconut trees on all sides. Cutting across eons and eons of time and stretching into the infinitudes of space. It was all misty. So full of mist.

Later I came to know that it was the Periyar river. And then, after a short while , there was Kaladi which again sent in some shrill into to spine. For a split second. Came and vanished. Panned shots of houses and lamp posts and wires and then suddenly vast vast stretches of the river with a milliard coconut trees. All this, within 3 seconds . And then once again panned houses and stations with a station master waving his green flag. Who’s playing this stupid hide and seek game with me? And then, after sometime, Vembanad lake. And after that, Ashtamudi lake. Suspend disbelief, I kept saying to myself. Every time when the Thadak Thadak got slowly changed and unified in harmony with the vibrations, I geared up to experience a haiku.

Where else one could see a Fishermen’s association screening Herbert Spencer’s “Darwin’s Nightmare”, followed by a discussion on the film? In Trivandrum, you could.
The look of the city strangely reminded me of Trichy and Namakkal. Maybe, it’s due to unregulated traffics and narrow roads. Or maybe, it’s because of the cheap food. Had my first dose of Kerala food. Gulped half a dozen Parottas( spelled Porotas there) drenched with gravy and a karimeen. Yumm. And had this juice called “Sharjah”- boost mixed with banana pulp – which is probably the thickest drink in the world. Took me 20 minutes to finish the whole glass. Halfway through, I bet every person will abandon his futile attempt of sucking the juice using the straw and start consuming it directly. But it was yumm.J

Chitra art gallery had lots of paintings by Ravi varma. The man’s sense of light and shadows and his usage of colors appealed even to my otherwise- ordinary-senses. There were a few paintings by Roerich and many other people from Kerala like Satyapal and KCS Panicker . I was familiar with the works of KCS before. He was the founder of ‘Choolamandal Artist’s Village’ , in Chennai – one of the very few places in TamilNadu which supports sculptors and painters.

Then, I loafed around the bazaar near Padmanabaswamy temple. Went into a Margin free store. How do they manage without a margin? And there were hazzar number of studios dealing with Digital arts in Trivandrum. ‘We also do non-linear editing’ read one of the billboards.
And I found a good library with lots of books related to Advertisements, Photography and Digital arts near the Main bus terminus. Tamil songs were played everywhere. Kamal Haasans new cop flick was running packed houses. I wondered why.

I wanted to go inside the temple, but the fear of wearing a mundu kept me aside. Instead, I went to the Palace museum near the temple. Is there a science behind the construction of these Kerala style windows? The way light slides in between the horizontal wooden grills and lightening up the whole room!!!!

Went inside the Kalari Sangam and watched a few people practicing Kalari. There was a lady. Foreigner. She was practicing it with such concentration. I turned back and saw a stunning photograph taken during a Kalari performance, where a person was frozen in air, 15 feet above ground. Matrix Reloaded anyone? Thatched roofs, Pali, Kalari, Kung fu. Buddhism? Is there a connection? Kalari and the other martial artforms like Karate, Kung fu are based upon the same principles – breath control.

After roaming around the streets of Trivandrum and after a few rounds of Sharjah, I left for Varkala via Attingal. It was almost mid night when I reached Varkala. There was absolute silence except for the sound of waves crushing in. I went up the cliff and started walking. Silhouettes and shadows of coconut trees. I sat there for some time, till the cop asked me to go back to my room. Which reminded me that I need to find a room to stay. But all hotels and lodges were closed. There was this hep hotel belonging to the Taj group, which was open. But the charges were high. I decided to go loafing around. And then, miracle again. Someone from behind called me and offered me a room nearby to the beach real cheap .

The next day, got up early and went to the beach. Surprised to see so many Poojaaris around. Later, found out that this beach is also called “Paabanaasam beach’ . Perform the rituals, chant the mantras as recited by those poojaaris and take a dip And voila! All your sins will be washed away. That song from the movie Mahanadhi came to my mind.

I strolled across the beach, saw the fishermen getting ready for their day. Climbed on top of the rocks, slipped down a couple of times. Nothing happened. Settled down on top of a rock. Felt slightly dizzy. Green algae looked beautiful. So did the Brown mud. So did the black rocks. So did the dead white, snow white foam. Even more, black rocks surrounded by green algae. Even more, black rocks surrounded by green algae over brown mud. And, black rocks surrounded by green algae over brown mud crushed by the white foamy waves. Muy bonito. Indeed.

Shabt. We generally equate shabt with chaos. But listening to the shabt of waves… harmony. I sat there for some time and then got up to take some snaps. Stepped over algae. Slipped again. Almost broke my lens. But again, nothing had happened. Can you feel it, dear reader? That gigantic life-force protecting all of us, ALL OF US.. you and me and the fishermen on catamarans amidst high tides. Cocooning and enwrapping us against our every slips, which we fail to notice most of the time. But I fail to understand why the same life force that protect us also from our little slips also swallows thousands of men and women and children during tsunamis and earthquakes. My understanding is limited. And it is blocked by logic. Shaded with prejudice. Colored with pride and vanity. Sipping Cinnamon tea, I watched the waves gushing in.

I left to Narayana Gurukulam. I had very little idea about the palace and the movement. It looked like a very serene place. I bought a few books and set out reading. There were so many parallels between this movement started by Narayana Guru in Kerala and the Dravidian/Rationalist movement started by Periyar in TamilNadu. I bought more books written by Nithya Chaitanya Yathi.

Almost hundred years ago, when Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala, he called it as ‘a lunatic asylum, a mad house of religions’ . Almost every other place in India was rotten with castes and
community should stand eight feet apart from a Nayar. Some communities like Nayadigal belonging to the Kuravar tribes were not even allowed to come out in public. Sometime later, Vivekananda met a Dr.Palpu in Mysore. Palpu belonged to Ezhavar community and was the first to become a doctor in that comunity. However, the Rajas of Travancore refused to offer him a job just because he was a Ezhava. So he went to Mysore and found himself a job.
When Dr.Palpu asked Swami Vivekenanda if there could be any kind of a solution to the prevailing evils in Kerala. Swami answered, ‘The only way to unite people and to remove the hatred and venom ingrained in their hearts would be possible only through spiritual means. Through a spiritual movement headed by a Guru. Is there anyone like that in Kerala?’ .
Dr.Palpu went back to Kerala. He came to know about a person called Narayana Guru and established Sri Narayana Dharma Paribalana Sabha (SNDP).

Since then, much has been spoken and written about Narayana Guru. And his miracles. For me, he is much more than a miracle man. The modern history of Kerala, the gradual shift to modernism starts with Narayana Guru. This new uprising of Kerala in various streams of art – be it literature or cinema – could be single handedly attributed to this movement and also to the successors of Narayana Guru – Nataraja Guru (who happens to be Dr.Palpu’s son) and Nithya Chaitanya Yathi .

Be it Mahakavi Kumarana Aasan or be it Ayyapan - one of the champions of social reform in Kerala or K.Damodoran – a Marxist historian or CV Kunjiraman – one of the pioneers in the field of publishing and small magazines – they were all students of Narayana Guru and were involved with him at one point or another. Each one of them individually brought in a renaissance in their respective fields. Nataraja Guru and Nithya were equally vibrant individuals as well.

To me, it looks like one gigantic tree with so many branches and sub branches, each one of them supporting one another and giving the rest of us the much needed shade and thereby, protecting its own roots.

Now, Sivagiri is a very politicized place. Like every other mass movement, it got lost and beaten up by the mediocrities (There was this saamiaar I accidentally met there, while taking photographs .He kept asking me about the price of the camera, about the auto fare, about the room rents etc.. “Nammaku Chennaiyil oru ashramam undaakkum’, he said flickering his eye brows. I ran away). But that doesn’t undermine its contribution to Kerala in anyways.

T.K. Madhavan, Kerala’s leading freedom fighter and one of the students of Narayana Guru started an agitation in Vaikom for the eradication of untouchability . It was centered around a Shiva temple in Vaikom. Another person hailing from one of the small towns from TamilNadu joined in the agitation. He was later hailed as Vaikom Veerar (Vaikom Hero). His name was E.V. Ramaswamy aka Periyar – the founder of DK party and the rationalist/atheist movement in TamilNadu.

If Narayana Guru’s movement could take a large part of the credit for the spiritual and cultural renaissance in Kerala, then Dravidian movement could take the whole credit for the spiritual and cultural bankruptcy prevailing in TamilNadu. I have a lot of respect for Periyar and for the Dravidian movement. By far, it brought in an uprising whose scale is just unimaginable and unmatched elsewhere. I respect your ideals. I salute your dedication to it. But the problem is with the dialectical method they chose. Dialectical. Dialectical to the core.. Aryan x Dravidian. Brahmin x Non Brahmin. Rich x Poor. Oppressors x Oppressed. Tamil x Other languages.

Comparing this with the method chosen by Narayana Guru – he never used any dialectical reasoning and argument of this kind. He never asked the Ezhavars to revolt against Nairs or other upper castes. Instead, he asked them to educate themselves. And he said, the rest would follow automatically .He never tried to provoke people. Nataraja Guru termed this as the method of an Absolutist (Absolutist here does not mean totalitarianism). The differences we see between the two states is primarily because of the methods they chose to follow. The lewd kuthu songs we see in Tamil films now is just another extension of the philistine method of hitting poor Lord Ganesha with slippers to show the contempt against the Aryans/Brahmins and thereby, provoking ordinary people.

I left the ashram and visited the near library of Nithya Chaitanya Yathi. The more I read his books, the more I got attracted to the man. Then, went to Sivagiri. Loafed around for a while and went back to Varkala with some loose threads still hanging around.

Had a shower. Took some rest. Then, went up the north cliff with my camera bag. Evening sunlight casting gold. I saw a lot of phirangees. One was reading the German edition of Amitav Ghosh’s Glass Palace and writing something, sitting on the edge of the cliff, pen cap between the edges of her teeth. Another gang, playing their guitar. And doping.

I walked further down and I saw the sun casting it’s giant shadow and dancing on the sea. The gradual change in the tones and hues of light is marked by the shift in the mood of the place. I could smell more marihuana. And the subdued, weak sound rising up from the strings of the distant guitar and filling in the entire place. That doped man plays it very well indeed. Like all other doped men. Free from the burdens of self and the emptiness left behind by vanity. I dismissed all my futile attempts of taking a photograph of the sunset.
Sunset painting the Sky with infinite tones of yellows and oranges .
And Vodka. With orange juice.

I felt hungry. I realized I didn’t eat anything the whole day except for the couple of butter biscuits I had that morning along with Cinnamon tea. So, gula. Gluttony time. Pasta with sea food topped with extra mayonnaise. Mousse. Tuna Fish. Sweet lime Soda . Was afraid if any Kevin Spacey was behind me. So, stopped with that. Laid there for sometime hooked on to Mozart. I felt happy. Real happy. After a long time.

Next morning, I went back to the North cliff. Stood on the corner and saw the entire stretch of the beach. Started walking. For how long, for how many miles, I don’t remember. Down below, I could see the entire stretch of shore longing for the waves to crush them. And waves. And waves, hugging them with such love. Like a mother.

I kept walking. I wish I could speak a word or two with Nature. But I could not. So, I kept walking. I realized no medium of self-expression is better than Walking. It is the purest manifestation of self. Thoreau was not blabbering some gibberish. He made all the sense now. I kept walking. Towards the fishing hamlet. And further down. I saw a couple of fishermen standing on top of a Catamaran and the sudden rush of high tides disturbed their balance. And then, another huge high tide, they fell down. The catamaran turns topsy turvy. They recover in no time and chase the catamarans. High above them, there was a bird with long wings flying across the sea towards the horizon with elegance. A coconut falls down from a nearby tree. People sitting in a group sipping hot Kattan Chaya. What a spectacle is all these. What a magnificent world they must be knowing? I kept walking.

I left Varkala immediately. I don’t know why. I had more space for few more Sunsets and for few more rounds of Vodka with Tuna Fish . But I left. Didn’t felt sad. I know I will come back. Soon.

I didn’t have a travel plan. I didn’t even have any must-visit places on my agenda. Infact, I didn’t have any agenda. Caught a train and went to Kollam and roamed around after after drinking a Kattan chaya with bondas and Baalekaayi bajjis. Went to the Boat jetty and bought a ticket to Aleppey. Phirangees everywhere. Realized I am the odd one out on the boat. Rest all, phiraanges. From Germany, Holland, Spain, Polland, UK. Everywhere. I felt like an intruder.

Slight drizzle on my face. Ripples on Ashtamudi. And on my mind. This place makes me swell. I became a kid all over again. Baggage free. I tried counting the coconut trees as the boat moved along.

Let me confess. It is really hard to lose yourself amidst the beauty of backwaters when you are surrounded by 15 curious bikini clad women(well, almost) questioning you all the time. Still hard, if you are seated right behind a gorgeous pair from Spain who kept smooching every now and then.

It is not a very tough task to differentiate between traveler and a tourist among them. Tourists expects the best of the comforts and settles down for nothing less. Why is this chair so narrow? Why is the food overcooked? But that girl is not a tourist. I know. Long lost eyes. She was listening to an eclectic mix of Eric Clapton and Led Zep and Nick Drake and Beatles and Mozart. I overheard the music spilling out of her earphones. You need a fine ear for that, lemme tell you.

She was from Poland. Touring all around Asia. Been to Tibet, Nepal, Delhi, Varnasi and now to Kerala. On her way to Amritanandamayi ashram. She said she was very disappointed with Varnasi. Is she disappointed with the place or is she disappointed with herself for not seeking what she wished to seek?, I asked her. Maybe, she said and smiled back. Cute. She wanted to go to Shirdi and asked if I had any idea about Sai baba. Sai Baba! No baba, I don’t have much of an idea, I said. I lied. Actually I had. But I didn’t want to thrust my opinions. Let her find out herself. She asked me if I could recommend any other guru or ashram . Recommend? That’s not any cooking recipe to recommend, I murmured to myself. Stay for a week or two in Royapuram or Kasimeadu Kuppam and you will get enlightened, I resisted the temptation of telling this to her. Ramanashram in Thiruvanamalai, I said and I excused myself from her.

Somethings will happen only in the due course of time. Like a ripening of a fruit It is impossible to prepone certain things. When you try to engineer the ripening of that fruit, then it ceases to be a fruit .It becomes a fake fruit. I know I am angry with myself and not with that girl. After all, we were traveling on the same boat.



Kettuvalloms. Fishing nets. Birds. Children running alongside the boat and asking for pens(I came to know, thts their hobby. Collecting pens from tourists. A bleeding heart throws away his Pierre Cardin pen, thinking the kids were in need of pens and asking for pens outta poverty). Houses on both sides of water. If you want to visit your neighbor, you need a kettuvallom. Women washing clothes and hitting them hard against a rock rhythmically.
Won’t it get torn off, asks one phirangee.

Lunch in a nice restaurant on the middle of backwaters. Olan and Avial And Sarkauppaery and Puliyinji and Karingaly Vellam and Fish Fry.

Twilight. Birds whispering among themselves. Even the wind was whispering. I could see young women lighting up the candles inside their huts. I was floating inside this huge impressionist painting. More candles. More reflexions. The next day is supposed to be the main day of celebrations of Onam. Children and women were arranging flowers for the Athapookalam. Everything looked beautiful. Even my forgetful past.

Allepey. Alapuzza. Even spelling the name of the town sounded beautiful. A-la-pu-zza.
True, there is beauty within every syllable. But hidden behind all this beauty, there is also itchy ugliness dancing with its hair set all loose. There lived a Thooti somewhere here along with his son. And there lived a man who immortalized their lives. Alapuzza, the hometown of Thakazi Sivasankaran Pillai.

Being an outsider and coming from a neighboring state, the one singular thing which I admire lunatic ally about this state, apart from its greeneries, is the general state of affairs in the field of literature. Apart from the vitality of their writers, it is the reading habits of the Keralites and the support they give to their writers and the admiration they have towards them makes this state very special. Any ordinary Keralite would be familiar with the works of Basheer or Thakazi or Zacharia. If at all he hasn’t read their books, at least he would be familiar with their names. In TamilNadu, people hardly know the names of their writers, leave alone reading their works. When SundaraRamaswamy (a wonderful Tamil writer) died last year, most of the leading tamil magazines wrote nothing about it. Few magazines had it in the form of a box news with all customary details like his date of birth, where he lived, how many kids he had etc.. But in Mathruboomi, it was the editorial.

This culture is something adorable. In TN, we too have some small magazines. Selling around 300-400 copies. But Mathruboomi has a circulation of 1.5 lakhs. O.V.Vijayan’s Khashakinde Ithikaasam came via Mathruboomi. Which is something unimaginable in my state. A magazine like Mathruboomi would hardly have 500 takers. In the late 70s and early 80s, there were translations of Kafka and Camus in it. And discussed structuralism and existentialism much much before those words became familiar to the mainstream media of the north.

Once again, I go back to the starting point where this renaissance began. Some say it is mainly due to the Rajas of Travancore, who themselves were learned men and encouraged people to read. They patronized their artists, but their patronage is off different kind. Like Ayilyam Thirunal Maharaja Of Travancore’s patronage to Ravi Varma. But again, this kind of patronage is extremely restrictive. Remember, the same Raja’s refused to offer Dr.Palpu a job, on caste grounds. So, I would say, this culture mainly started after Narayana Guru – the beginning of the modernism phase in Kerala, cutting across all the caste barriers. So did the modernism phase in its literature, starting with Kumaran Asan(who happened to be one of the students of Narayana Guru) and then to Vaikom Mohammad Basheer and Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai and MTV and VK Narayana Kutti and slowly moved towards its post-modern phase starting with OV Vijayan’s Khashak and with Paul Zacharia’s ‘This is my name’ and off late Ramakrishnan’s ‘Alpha’

Comparing it with contemporary literary scene in TamilNadu, there are so many brilliant writers and poets like Sundara Ramaswamy , Jeyamohan, AsokaMitran, Athavan, Pramil, Devadevan, La Sa Ra etc.. but there are not many publishers and no popular magazine is ready to publish their workss. They find it too heavy. I remember reading Charu Nivedita saying, ‘If my essays and stories got rejected in Kumudam or Ananda Vikatan, then I will send it to Mathruboomi. And I know, it will get published”

I left to Ernakulam from Allepey through a crowded city bus. Found a cheap hotel to stay. Had a shower. And started roaming around MG Road. Almost al the shops were closed by 10 o clock. Ate in one road side hotel. Porattas and Beef curry. One little beef piece got struck in between my molars.

Next morning, got up early and went to the Boat Jetty. The day of Onam. City still sleepy and waiting to celebrate the day. My ferry boat arrived. Not much crowd. ride. Got down at Willingdon island. I could see a huge cruise standing right opposite. I had never seen such a big one. I wished if I could take a closer look at it from nearby. I wished I could go in a Canoe instead of a motor boat. Then ,went around Willingdon island. Then, to Vypeen. Then to Fort Kochi. Went around to and fro in those ferry boats. Like a teenage kid. Almost spent 20 rupees over thse rides( ticket prices at 1 rupee and 75 paise) From Fort Kochi, I went on a ‘Junkars’ , which was like one mini cruise. Small tempo lorries, autos, bikes, cupboards, goats, cycles, people… everything could go in.

‘Endha saarae, neengal photographero?’ asked a person and without giving me a chance to reply, he continued ‘logathilae ella problethukum kaaranam yaar saarae?’ , I was blinking. Such a difficult question. From his clothes I came to know that he is the in charge of maintaining that Junkar.

‘theriyilla’, I replied. I mastered the art of speaking in Tamil and making it sound like Malayalam( actually it is easy. Speak Tamil very slowly and softly. And on occasions, stretch it a wee bit. And in between, add words like Cheta , Evide etc..) .

‘America dhaan kaaranam saarae. Naanooru varusham munnadi Vasco Da Gama enga vandhu namme adimai padithinaan. Athe samayam, Columbus America poonan. Ange Sevvindiyarae adimai padithinaan. Sevvindiyarana theriyumoo saarae? Red Indians. Avagaalae konnu konnu pottan. Ipo adhe America kaaran matha naadugalae adimai pathuraan’

‘Saarae, you know, all other problems, ellam avanaalae dhaan saarae. You know, ladies problems.. Fuking problems..”, closes his fist and jerks it a couple of times in front of my face.. “..fuking problems young boys are facing… athuvum avanaalae dhaan’. And starts explaining about the Devadasi system and compares it with the practise of prostitution and its commercialization in America. Hmm. I kept noddddding my head. Suddenly he gave me a blank card and asked me to write my name and address, “Chumma, oru friendshipku dhaan”. ‘Endha peyaru Abdul Sayud. Naan Jamat-e-Islamiyil irukeen.’
Sounded very fishy. Should I write my original address? And then, some one called out his name and he went into the motor room reluctantly murmuring ‘naari….’.

Once a journalist asked Verghese Kurien what is preventing him from starting a dairy farm in his own state, Kerala. For which he replied, ‘Too many Malayalees!”. There were a few images and words which recurred again and again everywhere across Kerala.
EMS. Che. DYFI. CSI.. PJ Joseph(ofcourse). Along with these, that bare chested, mundu clad men sitting in groups and drinking Kattna chaya with the omni present Malayala Manorama in hand. Or Mundu clad men sitting in groups under the shades of a tree or next to railway tracks or behind tea shops or along the shores of backwaters and playing cards. I don’t know if Vergese Kurien is right or wrong. I have read some of the stories of Paul Zacharia about the sheer chutzpah of load lifters who demanded money for the work they never did. My stay is very short and my sample size is small to come to any conclusion. Maybe, it is the awareness any normal Keralite has and the conscious effort he puts in to avoid himself getting exploited(Eg Coca Cola bottling plant incident). Maybe it is sheer laziness. Maybe it is due to some kind of neurosis which leads to an inability to accept change. Maybe it is all of this. And much more.

Another striking aspect I found among the people in Kerala is their humor. Self-depreciating, sometimes. Depreciative of their politicians, on other times. I don’t understand much of Malayalam, but language is no barrier in understanding humor. There was this auto wallah at Fort Kochi pointing at some magazine’s poster of PJ Joseph and made a few hand gestures and the entire place broke out in laughter. Keralites say that any Malayalam writer will start writing only after writing a joke or two on EMS. Some of the EMS jokes were very popular among the communists too. Same case with EK Nayanar.

There are a lot of cartoonists in Kerala. Infact, there are separate magazines for cartoonists. I have read somewhere that parody has some long historical connections with Thullal paatuand and Saakiyar Koothu and this continues even today in Kerala in the form of Cartoons. Some of these cartoonists went on to become brilliant writers, like OV Vijayan. But all that’s fine. Hailing from Tamilnadu, what I cannot take is this. K.P.Kesavamenon, the founder of Mathruboomi, gets parodied in Mathruboomi itself. Kairali TV never forgets to start its day without parodying Mammoty. And ahem, Mammoty happens to be one of the directors of Kairali.. Imagine Karunanidhi getting parodied on Sun TV. Nope. Chup Chup. Umbachi Kanna kuthidum.

And what is it with Mallu women? Why are they all so beautiful? I fell in love with each one of them. Ah.

In Ernakulam bus stand, they were playing promos of this movie called ‘The Don” starring Dilip and directed by Shaji Kailas. Slickly edited with lots of staccato cuts. Looked unlikely a mallu flick, which usually dealt with subjects like a hangman’s dilemma or a father’s anxiety over his lost son during the time of emergency. I never had the opportunity to watch many Malayalam films. Of the very few films I saw, I loved Piravi by Shaji N Karun. It is very sad that in the city I am living, I could get Fellini and Majid Majidi easily, but it is tough to find films of Ramu Karyat or Raghunath Paleri or Padmarajan or Bharathan or KG George. If someone knows a decent DVD library in Chennai with the movies of the above mentioned directors, kindly kindly let me know. A zillion thanks to you in advance.


Went to Mattancherry. Visited the Dutch Palace and the synagogue. There was a lovely book shop next to the synagogue which had a lot of travel books. I bought Waswo.X.Waswo’s ‘India Poems’ and thought of reading it on my way to Edapally, my next destination, where I heard is the Kerala History Museum.

I went to the Boat Jetty at Mattancherry to go back to Ernakulam and I thought of catching a bus from there to Edapally. Suddenly some one called me. A old man. I couldn’t understand what he said. But through his gestures I understood that he was asking whether I am interested to go on a ride in his small thuduppu padagu. Wow! I always wanted to go in canoes. I obliged. I asked him to go near the harbor so that I could see those huge ships. Probably, this is the closest I could get to the sea. I was overjoyed. Kept pressing the shutter button at almost everything I saw over there. Floating Beer cans. Paper boats. Paint tins. And I felt something wrong. My sharp ear picked up that slight moan. I felt the canoe had slowed down a bit. I turned back and looked at the old man. He was actually gasping for breath. His face was full of pain. I felt horrible. On this Onam day, I made this old man gasp for his breath, just because I felt a ride on a Canoe was exciting and romantic.

I tried to dismiss such thoughts which made me uneasy by counter arguing. Like, stop pitying and stop acting like a commie or like a bleeding heart…. or something like.. fuking stop feeling good by pitying. This is their livelihood. Respect it. You are not any fukin messiah etc..
But however I tried ,still that itch remained inside.

‘Ethra Rupayee?’ , I asked after getting down from the canoe and thought of giving in more money than he quoted so that I can continue my travel problem free.

‘Thambiyinda Ishtam’, he said. I kept pressing him to tell an amount so that I can fukin pay him and fukin get out of the place and travel back in peace. But that bugger refused to quote an amount.

‘thambiyinda ishtam’, he kept telling till the very end. How much should I pay him, dear reader?Just How much? I paid an amount which is far high in accordance with my middle class sensibilities. This is not out of pity. This is not done to feel better off myself. Infact, this does not have a name. ‘Money should etherize’, Sartre said once. For once, it did.

The old man paced up and went before me in a hurried manner. He went around a bus and went inside a toddy shop. Oh, all this hard work just for a drink? Is he going to burn his all his hard earned money along with his liver in toddy? Anyways, Have a good time, Happy Onam to you. I laughed at my own foolishness for giving him lots of money. I walked back to the boat jetty.

‘Thambi’, voice from behind. ‘ 10 maniku oru bus ingae varum. Adhulae neengal edapallyku pogalam’ . I felt like getting slapped one hundered times. The old man did not go to the toddy shop to drink. He went in to enquire regarding bus routes, since I mentioned to him sometime back while riding in the canoe that I am going to Edapally.

‘Thambi, appo naan varen’, he said, walking back towards his home. Do not call me a thambi once again. This thambi is a parasite. He will make you clean his shit. He will even walk over your corpses, if there is a need. Do not call me a thambi. On the bus to Edapally, one of Waswo’s poem read like this…

“
……..
Should I let an old man
pedal my fat white ass
through the streets of Jaipur?
Is a bicycle rickshaw
Thrillingly romantic,
Sweetly nostalgic,
Or unbearably sad?

I must be honest.
………..
”

Onam celebrations were slowly beginning to show. Near Durbar Hall, a man dressed up as Mahabali was waving his hand up and down and shouting Happy Onam. I reached Edapally and found that the Kerala History Museum was closed that day due of Onam. It was hot and sultry. I slept all my way back. Mahabali looked jaded and was sweating like a pig. He didn’t wave at me, this time.

I wanted to have a Onam Sadya. I wanted to stay in Cochin for one more day. I wanted to roam along the Marine drive. I wanted to eat fresh Fish Peda and Kappa Meen curry strolling across the shores of Fort Kochi. I wanted to take more photographs of Cheenavallays .I also thought of going to Durbar Hall to watch Theyyam performances. I also wanted to go to Thrissur and then to Kalamandalam. But I didn’t. Stemming out of depths of the stomach, there was a primordial sound which was pleading before me to move out of all these. And thus, I landed up here. Thekaddy.

Went to Theakaddy via Kumily. There were lots of churches on the way. DYFI was holding a meeting. The bus stopped at Kottayam for dinner. I wanted to go to this little place, some kinda little cave in Kottayam, where Telephone operators and people working in Telephone department meet together and talk. And what do they talk about? Topics ranging from Doestovesky to Darwin, Sankhiya Upanishads to Sufism. I read about this place through the essays of Jeyamohan, who happens to be a regular in these meets.

But there was an internal scheduler inside me and its preferences and priorities kept changing over the course of time. The curiosity I had when I first landed in Trivandrum 5 days back was slowly dying. The bus started from Kottayam and the remaining part of the journey is hard to put forth into words. I started to sleep and got woken up by the sudden splash of a waterfall on my face. From then, till kumily, the whole ride was an experience in itself. Do you understand me, dear reader? Do you understand the intensity behind these words? A musical experience, it was. All the little music I had heard so far.. Qawali, African, Hindustani, Western Classical, English and Tamil… Nathaswaram and Cellos… Contrabass and Tabala and Shenai… They were all playing together at fukin Ghastly ghastly scales.. Eminem and Mark knopfler and MS singing together to the music of Mozart and Ilayaraja and Nusarat Fater Ali Khan.. I was growing mad..and mad and madder… I bite my lips till it swells like the petals of a rose..



Periyar Wildlife Santuary. Misty eerie morning. I spotted an elephant with five legs. I spotted a bird which was meditating. Should have clicked it seconds before. But the boat was travelling very fast. This birdie, it sits like this, still, for minutes together, praying and preying for its fish. Sits still to avoid any movement of shadows on water. and then, once it spots a fish, it flies straight up into the sky and plunges into the water like this -- /

Trekked around the mountains. I kept walking aimlessly. Me was standing at this reasonably-tall peak near kumily. And zooming in with my telefoto lens, boy, it did look colorful. how will it look like from the above? what does He see? how many colors? how many hues and tints and tinges and tones? how many shades of grey? 23? or still more? And more importantly, what lens does He have?

From there I took a bus to Munnar. Somewhere inbetween the stops, the person who was sitting next to me got down and another guy sat next to me. I didn’t notice this for a long time. And when I accidentally turned back, I saw a beauty. A little baby girl with green eyes was sitting on his lap. She was holding the shirt of her father as her grip and was looking outside the window with such awe. Everything looked new to her. As a Ceaseless, Unending Wonder.

When we were born the world looks new to us and we look new to the world. Everything looks fresh. And as time progresses, we lose this freshness. Slowly. Unaware to ourselves. Soon, our face gets shattered with bruises. As days move by, bruises shape up our face. The baggage we carry along with us leaves a hump behind. And this transition, this loss is what we call as life. Looking at those green eyes of that baby girl, I was reminded of this poem by Eunice De Souza on Cats.

"that stare of perpetual surprise
in those great green eyes
will teach you
to die alone"


Munnar was flirting with beauty.

Walked around the tea estates. Went to Pallivasal falls. Then, to Rajamalai. Huge rush in Rajamalai. Came to know that kurinji has blossomed and so the crowd. Except the fact that it blossoms every 12 years and is very hard to find, there was nothing special about the flower. It looked ordinary. Like any other flower. But what is wrong in being ordinary? How do I know it is ordinary? What is ordinary? This is like a little game played by Nature by making a perfectly simple, ordinary flower to blossom once in every twelve years and thereby making it a special one. All flowers are beautiful.

Next morning, I took a bus to Top station and started walking from there. Mist. Mist. Everywhere. Tea factories on foreground. Coughing out dispersed smokes in blue through their chimneys. The subdued tranquility of the place was slowly disturbed by the single shrill of a distant bird. Deep and distant. Then a sharp screech. Then another. Followed by another. And it grew louder and sharper. Scrreeech. Screeeeeech. Until one hundred screeches mingled together into an unbridled harmony.

Blue smoke gathers pace and slowly mix with the Mist. Brahmanandam Parama sukhadam Kevalam…You pot smoking God. Will you allow me to share your ganga? Can I roll you a joint? Nyaanamoorthin Dwandaadweedam thirubanareetham In return, can you drench me with your cosmic visions? Tat tvam asiyaadi latchyam Eaagam Nithaym Vimalam Achalam Sarvadhi satchi bootham..

The running commentary stopped for a while.

I don’t remember much after that. I remember that I missed the last bus at Top station. I vaguely remember that I didn’t get tensed up at all, but rather had a couple of cups of cardamom tea and hitchhiked my way through vans carrying milk cans and pillion riding on vegetable trucks and Goods carrier. I remember getting lost in the forests near Devikulam. .I remember watching those mists swallow the entire three mountains within split seconds,as I sipped few more sips from that glass filled with sugary Kattan chaya and rain droplets falling inside the glass. I was standing 20 kilometers and a few thousand feet above, drenched in rain , as my auto getting punctured just an hour before my departure from Munnar to Chennai. I remember that I ordered for one more glass of Kattan Chaya with extra sugar.When you
remove youself from the burdens of vanity and pride, there is this momentary realisation. Which whispers softly into your ear, 'never ever be afraid'

Just like the dialectics within a society, just like the dialectics within a country or within a family, just like the dialectics outside you, there are dialectics inside you as well. I realized this wholly during this little trip….

Restlessness. Insecurity.
Will my ticket get confirmed? Will I get a cheap room? Did I lose my ticket somewhere? Is the ticket in the left pocket or in the right pocket? Is my purse still there? What was the name of the lodge I stayed last night? Whats my room number? Do I have enough money left? Will I get a bus to that place? Is this autowallah trying to cheat me?

Delight, joy and Small pleasures.
Like drinking hot hot cardamom tea on the misty mounts of Munnar , sipping in Kattan chaya and reading the newspaper in Fort Kochi, or Cinnamon tea on the cliffs of Varkala or biting and lickin’ little pieces of home made cashew chocolates during the bus journey to Kumily and sipping in water from the bottle, thinking that its still hot, but instead, its chill sends a shrill up the spine.

Frustration, Nothingness, Banality, Confusion..
When the Kerala history museum was closed. When the planned journey to Thrissur clashed with the desires of the subconscious.

Curiosity, Happiness arising out of an understanding.
When I read for the first time about Narayana Guru. And when I was reading books written by Nithya Chaitanya Yathi.

Peace.. Letting fate take its course.
Trying to be a control freak always mostly to banality. The best thing to do your best and allow the rest to take its course. Like all those hitchhikes and pillion rides after getting lost in Munnar.

And beyond all this, there is a word. And that word is Ha:
Awe. Surrender. Silence.
That all-embracive Silence. Arising out of those ancient temples. Behind those seers and saints. Behind those misty mountains. And waterfalls. And waves.. And forests and lakes And coconut trees……….

“Nirpaar nirka nilaa uzhagil
niloom ini naam selvomae !
Porpaal oppam thirumeni
puyangan alzvaan ponadikae!
Nirpir! Ellam thazathae
nirkum parisae orupadumin!
Pirpaal nindru Paelz kanithaal
perutharkariyen Perumaanae! “

-------------

It’s almost six hours now, since I started writing this piece. Without any break. Tunred out to be pretty big, even by my standards ;) . I feel a little elated now. No, by no means I am trying to say that it’s literature. It is full of grammatical mistakes with visible difficulties in sentence construction and structurally, a bit hollow and weak. But I feel immensely satisfied. And I also feel a bit funny now. Looking back at all those crazy excuses I kept giving myself for not traveling like lack of companions, lack of money or time or both and drenching myself with my own thought pukery filled with self pity and loneliness..

After all, all you need is a backpack. And lots of love for this petite little life!

Resurrection

 

If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? -- Jack

 

Fly Away Birdie

  

God's gift to mankind

is a fixed-interest mortgage loan.

Let there be more...

.....light

Looking Back

Angst

'And then i elbowed her. no, jus an accident.really.believe me .'

Another Saturday night.

We were at the the same old pub, same table(good panoramic view) in the first floor(Stags upstairs,Sir) listening to the exploits of Abinandan. I was posing as if I am not listening and not very interested and redoing these over and over again- sipping the vodka, watching the football match and staring at the girls dancing in the ground floor.

It felt good to think that I hate coming here every weekend and burn money to listen to such crass. I felt that I don't belong here. I promised myself every other week that i would never come back. But then,I know..I was only fooling myself. Actually, i liked it.loved it.Vodka.Rock.Vodka.Psychedelic Lights.Hookah.Rock.Vodka.Girls.And Girls.Ah. What more do we need? I feel I am cleansed of all the litter the corp. world had left on me over the whole week. And as always, there is Abinandan - the official titillator of our group. Let me tell you, he is a genius when it comes to titillation. Ofcourse, I know that most of his exploits are not true. And worse, he knows that I know them too. Yet, we continue this amusing Saturday soap opera of ours.

'Hoo.Ho.Ho.Hooo.Elbowed where? where where where?'.That was Narain.

If there is one person who could demolish the tiny bits of decorousness,diginity and other faecal matter left in out gang, then he is the man. Ruthless. Real name- Narayanan.

He was my classmate till 7th . Used to wear big glasses. And brought that giant sized Faber Castle scented rubber. He would never give that to anybody. Except to me. I used to borrow it by giving him one rupee. And erase something on the paper of my notebook just for the heck of it and then smell that little portion of the paper all day.Whoaa. The high that gave! Even weeks of burying myself in marijuana couldn't beat that. And all my other lesser mortal classmates used to smell my notebook. i felt like a demi-god. Him GOD.

Black and White memories. Life was simpler then. His dad got transferred to Delhi, he completed his schooling, engineering etc. in Delhi and now he works for the same firm with me. But no thick glasses this time(surgery,laser).Long hair,colored etc. When i asked him about that scented rubber thingy --'saalae,don't say rubber. means something else'.Hmmm.Like that.

His embarrasement is his real name, I know. whenever he tried to act to smart with me(especially in front of girls) I call him using his real name and he shuts the fuk up. Well, I do know a trick or two. But then, he is a nice guy. In a way, he is like me. Pampered.Frustrated. Never had a chance to be independent. And now, with all this new found job and the illusion of freedom that came along with it, he is full time into flirting.

And unlike me, he's honest. Doesn't pose.

I finished my drink .And thought of leaving sooner than the usual time I used to. Abi was still going on and on . But i thought i had enough for the day. i mean, that's enough for the rest of the night. After this, i used to go to my room all alone .

All i did while driving my bike is to visualize all those fake exploits of Abi and play them in one infinite loop and then go to room and jerk off. thts all tht i wanted to do. With every passing stroke, I could feel the fumes coming out of my nose. fumes of despair.anger.self pity. hot hot bloody hot. And then, I felt like smudges of umixed colors floating inside a painting. transported into another realm. another sphere.And then,sleep like a baby.

At the end of the day -- all tht matters is a good orgasm. And some sleep.

"Sriram, Waitoh. Am also coming. drop me near Jayanagar'.hmmmm. fuk. So this time it's going to be different.Narain wanted to leave too. since he didn't bring his bike and he stays nearby to my place, I got to drop him.

And then, the worshthest thing happenned. Kaushik wanted to leave too. he have his bike and all that, but he keeps talking during the ride. i hate it.he is a fake.pseud.he is like me. i hate him. and i knw eggsackly what he is going to talk. Awfully repetitive.it's going to be either about Heisenberg or Nietzsche or Camus or some stupid pseudo philosophy - which i DETEST right now and all i need now is a nice shag .And then he would say something real bad about Abi, label him as a pervert and attach some freudian symbols, that he is struck in the anal phase or Abi's ID or Ego or Whtevr is not fully developed and he suffers from some arbit disorder or complex( usually oedipal, cos that's the most scandalous). All this, after thoroughly enjoying getting titillated for free. Puke.Just Puke. WHat is not fully developed is not Abi's ID but Kaushik's somethin-else.I hate it.One need not thank Abi for the wonderful, life-saving, sanity-prevailing service he is rendering evry saturday.Atleast,one can keep quiet. whtever. Kill all these self-righteous bastards. Castrate all such preachers.

I tried to avoid any sorta conversation with kaushik and kept a safe distance from his bike.narain was on a high, rapping eminem. traffic jam @ 9 30. Long live Dewegowda! An auto wallah screeches his so-called brakes and scares the living daylight out of me(oh fuk with all these *living daylight* kinda texts. i want to shag and it's no good time for writing eloquent prose with such stinking similies. Err. Btw,Is it a simile?).

In front of us, there is one huge bus of some IT company struck in between a coupla lorries. and then this autowallah is behind the bus. some kinda deadlock. no one could move an inch for the next ten minutes.

It's time to listen to Kaushik - the architect of New B'lore, and the socially concerned-intellectual.My bad time. 'In IITs we need to introduce this course called traffic engineering. I say, make this a serious science. Analyze the traffic patterns at various places of the city and re-design and rebuild the infrastructure accordingly than just blindly building one flyover after another'.

Wow! B'lore traffic problem solved. NRN & Azeem bhai,listening?

Jared Kaushit Diamond, the environmentalist --'Gosh. all these lorries must be banned inside the city. look at them. monstrous. and look at the amnt of smoke it releases. fuk,we are having a minor bhopal gas tragedy here. am sure they had filled the tank with arrack'.

he stops. and then, looks at me for some approval.

i keep staring at the slogan written on the auto. And there was this moron in his Pulsar behind us continuously honking.

'Lol(yea, he said lol), inhaling the smoke from these lorries plus traffic jam on a satuday night with a honking idiot behind = existential angst'.

his fukin pseudjoke. i faked a smile. not bcos i dint wanto hurt him and all tht, but it jus dint matter to me and was no big deal to fake a smile. he's happy. me's happy. evryone happy. The eND.SHubam. and then, i can go home and masturbate in peace.

"Exitence What? what did you say?'.Oh no. Tht was narain. he was happily humming Eminem until now.

"angst." "what?" "a-n-g-s-t."

" wht the fuk does tht mean?"

"an acute feel of anxiety. unspecific, philosophical anxeity. about your place in the world or about personal freedom and a lot more"

he smiled again.smug smile of snobbishness.boy-oh-boy. he must have felt like Sartre now.

" hmm. nice. angst.a-n-g-s-t. rhythmic. will remember that"

Thankfully the traffic cleared. Kaushik took the right.Adieu.Hope you have a good time jerking off thinking of your Simone de Beauvoir. Still it would take 20 mins to reach my place. there was this strange sound coming from behind . from Narain. i couldnt hear what it was cos of the strong wind blowing against us. am sure it is not eminem. and i listened hard. narain was in the process of making his own song. not eggsackly a song but he was pronouncing tht word 'Angst' in 100 different ways and making up his own song. It was so full of angst. aaangst aaanaaagggstttt annnnnnnngst.ssstttt. unbearable. all these distractions reduces the intensity of my visuals and thereby weakens the session i am going to have. Sunnavabitch Kowshit.

"chooth. stop it" he went on..
Anngst. Anggst.
"what are you trying to do?"
Angsttttt.AAAngst.

I ignored him for a while. Small trick. Usually, after drinking, people want to prove a point - that they are drunk and thereby do some crazy things like these to grab attention. the more you attend to them the more they act like assholes. so if you ignore them for a while,the get bored and then shudup.

but fuk, my trick dint work. the more i ignored him, the more he raised his tone.he was really on a high. He then tried to recompose the song into something else. People who have the vast n rich experience of watching soft porn movies exported from kerala could easily visualize what i am talking about. That background score during love making scenes. bakgrnd score? moans. AhAhAhAhnnngst. AhAhAhAhngst. He was trying that out now.

"asole. stop making tht sound or get off frm the bike'. Though I was acting tough anda all that, there was this mysterious laughter stemming from somewhere inside me, which was very happy to find someone else who is as pissed off, as frustrated as moi. Such a loser.

He got himself promoted to hardcore. monologues.oh-my-gawd. screams. I had no clue how to stop him. he was at his loudest. people overtaking us are amused. they must have thought that we faggots are making out on the bike.

We were around 3 minutes away from another signal and in case if i am held up there and in case if this bugger keeps moaning when the bike stops and when everyone is silent, then thts going to be fukin embarrasing. So I wanted to stop him doing that. But he was at his best. aghhaa.. angsssangsngstt. ahhhhhhhhngst.

'Okay, you are freaking out. agreed. stop it'
ngs ngs ngstttttttt. ah ah ah ah angsttttt.
'Agreed.Agreeed. You are a freak. Stop it'.
angssssss angsssssst
'You are ecletic.You are eccentric. Stop it.'
angstangst.AHHHHHHngst.

We were nearing the signal.

"narayana.i read somewhere tht people who are obsessed with making such sounds are sterile. so, to compensate that sexual unhappiness, they go verbose.they like talking dirty. they like phone sex.they like cyber sex. cos, they couldn't do it in real. there was some statistic regaring this in TIME a coupla months back....?"

he stopped . it worked.
' you mean to say tht since i am shouting like this cos am an impotent?'
'not impotent. sterile. they r diferent'
'whtever.' 'no .but, they r different'
'fuk you.basturd. only people like you care to know abt the difference . cos u want to know under category you fall.Not me. You think you are this liberated guy but fuk you, fuk you. you are not. You don't become one just by watching subtitled films or by reading some abstruse book. you and ur inhibitions. I was just enjoying myself. fuk you.i have seen it all. and i dont need ur certificate. it is only you who is desperate.desperate, but acting as if U had fuked 23 females.'

'wookay,wokay Narayanan iyergar. Greek gawd, you are. One thousand bows' we crossed the signal .

I managed to shut him up. I won. But what he said, it did hurt. A bit. Nope. A lot.

The roads were clear.We dint talk much after that.i dropped him at is place. He blinked his eyes, patted me, smiled a little smile and said gud night.

Still five minutes to my room. stray dogs are having their time.group sex. the roads are empty. one flickering street light. i took the left to the main road. it was empty too. suddenly there was this urge. to do something. took both my hands of my bike for some time. and after that, some wheeling . and after that, drive along from end to end diagonally in the shape of S. another signal. Fiat Uno next to me.Couple sitting inside. and i dont take the street to my place.instead i loaf around. felt like going for a drive. and all of a sudden, there was this scooty pep with two gurls behind me. Hmm. I turn back and look at them for a split second and then turn back cos i was afraid that they might think of me as a bad guy.i couldnt see them properly.

narain was right.i am this inhibited hypocratic southie. turn again.this time,slowly.sexy.i slow down. i let them overtake me. both of them looked stunning. and then, outta nowhere, i got this courage to go and speak with them.. heck, am not this typical inhibited southie. I AM NOT. What abt asking them out.'You look very pretty. can we meet tommorrow somewhere?'.To any of those girls. maybe, to tht gurl sitting behind. Yep. i will. am not tht guy Narain was talking about.

Acclerate. Go near.and thn slow down again, Rehearse. 'you look very pretty....'. Deep breath.

i get close them. gurl sitting behind is starrin at me. fuk.come on. words not comin outta my mouth. suffocating.she is starring real hard this time. i choke. she mistkook me for a hooligan. she is now telling something to the other gurl and gives an ugly glance again.shit. This is not going to work out.

One more time.I acclerate .overtook them and then slowed down. Turned back.Come on. Open up. Open up. I somehow opened my mouth. But something struck inside my throat.A frog. I choke.I don't know when i swallowed it.

And then, I Shout at them. 'Angst.Ahhngst. Ahhhngst'.
Like an animal.
Like in those soft porn movies.
Like the way Narain shouted.
Finally, the frog goes inside.

And then i went driving down the street at a crazy speed without turning back for the next 5 minutes . And finally, i got some courage to turn back to see if they r coming behind or if any police patrol is following me.

I take a U turn . Fuk fuk fuk fuk. What have I become. Take the right. Such an asole . Coward. Fuckin low life. Fake.Loser. fuk fuk.Take the Left. fuk fuk fuk. FUCCCK. I shout at the top of my voice and all i get back is my echo. from every single corner of the street. that echo. is it mine? whose voice did it echo? whose shadow am i?

Gardens on both sides of the road. A drop of tear sitting right at the edge. Chill night wind. I close my eyes. Two straight lines on my face. Breath.This moment. That's all that I have. I am alive. this very moment. Amidst every single thing that goes inside. this gigantic life force that keeps things moving. i feel i am part of it. part of that wheel. not just as a cog. but also, as a cog. the cog is the wheel. One hundred thoughts. Unstructured.Beyond the spheres of expression. A new feel of vitality.I break free, I am at Peru.I quit my job. I am at Machu Pichu. I close my eyes. Am at Haiti.At Istanbul.At Teheran.At Morraco.At Konark.At Aluwa.At Chattisgarh. Here.Now. Breathing in and out. This very minute, am completely free. free from all the illusionary bonds which weighed me down.free from self pity.and hate. and loneliness.and desolation.and solitude. I felt the freedom I never had, which I always had but never knew that i always had. What do you call that? Ananda? Bliss? Sense of being? I don't know. Happiness, maybe. Yea, I felt so happy. I had never been so happy. Just for a minute I felt I had the whole world inside me.

Just for a minute.

I take the right which will take me to my room.i feel my shirt pocket to ensure tht i have the room key.i promise myself that i won't go to tht damn pub again and am not going to jerk off tonight. Heck, am not going to jerk off from now on. Am really not going to.

I Opened my room. Turned on the lights. Scattered newspapers.Bundled up mountains of unwashed clothes.Stinking Socks.Hot underwear hanging on the arm of a chair.Semen stains.pestiferous bedspread with a brown stain in the middle which looked like the map of Africa.

Heat dripping in from the roofs. Drop by drop. Into the floor.Into the pores of my skin. Into everywhere.

My room.Stenched with the smell of urine and vulnerability.It was empty. It was inviting.

I switch on the television.

Muted Racquets

Sometime back, when I was in highschool(8th stnd, i think), I used to go to this ghastly little place to play tennis. Where a psychopath joined as our new tennis coach. Like a zillion other things I did every year,which never really took off after awhile, tennis was the flavor of that year. And since I already started playing with the likes of Agassi and Pete(and even won a few .In tie breakers.Five setters.Nail biters), I really didn't mind that maniac.Cos i was in a different zone altogether.

I used to practise in court no.2 along with three other boys. A plump n chubby guy who used to huff and puff- who couldn't play for nuts, but could effortlessly recall the winners of all the grandslams since 1970, a skinny guy from Canada with his bastardised accent and a sleepy little third standard kid.

That third standard kid was studying in third standard(!) in one of the *hep* schools of the city.One of those schools where they go on a excursion to Andaman(for us, it's always Vandaloor Zoo.), where they have miniskirts as uniforms for gurls. And where moi and mera pals used to go once in a while disguised as representatives and flagbearers of our prestigious skools for elocution or some inter skool culturals etc, but never participate in any of the events and go loafing around the place. Around the cafeteria. Or the gurls dorm. And droooool .


Everyday that third standard kid used to come in a C-class Mercedes Benz. Fast asleep. Spittling in his shirt. His chauffeur used to wake him up by grabbing him and pulling his collar .He used to blink like a goat and then carry his racquet,water bottle, bag and reluctantly walk towards the tennis court. He looked like a meek military wala carrying his field gun, riffles and other armaments.

It would take another eternity for him to unzip the racquet and get into the court.By that time, mr.psycho will get real angry and starts throwing tennis balls aiming at his butt or head. The kiddo never used to react to those. He would just walk in at his own leisurely pace.

Usually, he used to stand in front of me. Residues of sleep left in his eyes. half closed. blinking. sadness written all over it. he couldn't stand erect. Couldn't grip his racquet properly. The racquet on his hands looked like one huge Gathayudha. His hands used to shiver. and when he played, it reminded of clog dance. Not even clog dance. Looked like some drunkard dancing on the street. Mr.psycho loves to punish him. jolly good time those, for him. 20 laps. Or 150 situps. Or 15 rounds of pushups.

The coach might shout at him, whack him, call him names or hit him with his racquet - No reaction. Numb. He never talked with us either. We used to bitch about the coach during our breaks but he never joined us. He kept sipping from his water bottle. drop by drop by drop.

That kid was our amusement.
Our temporary sanity.
Our saviour.
Heck,we got to save our asses too from the coach and that is possible only if there is someone who is a bigger goof-up than us.

Once I stood near the side court and watched him practising his forehand.Coach was at this cruel best, volleying him around 6 balls at the same time. the kiddo too was at his sleepy best, hitting the ball all over the place.to every single corner of the other court. And then, suddenly his racquet slipped out of his hand,flew away and swerved at an almost impossible angle and the butt of the racquet hit my scrotum. I fell down holding onto it(not the racquet) and sorta blanked out.Not eggsackly blanked out, but just that i felt as if my balls were coming outta my mouth. I recovered after some time and needless to say that i was embarrassed and all that.

Coach was screaming at that kid. Whacking him off with that racquet. Little gratification for me, watching him getting whac whack whakced. But then, I wanted to play this grown-up, tough dude and so thought of asking the coach to leave that kiddo. I went near him and at the same time he called out my name. I thought he would ask me to take some rest or better, even ask me to leave for the day. But anticlimax, asusual. He started shouting at me too. 'Why the hell were you standing near the side court?Don't you know that you were supposed to stand near the baseline when someone else is playing. GO. 10 laps, both of you'.

10 laps, my foot. I was already limping and was afraid that one of my balls could have been broken into god-knows-how-many. But then, he is the coach and you cannot speak up against him.

I was hitchin and hobbin until I saw that kiddo in front of me. I furiously ran towards himI kicked his butt and expected him to bounce back. but as usual, no reaction. i was real irritated.and then, i saw the way he ran - eyes half closed, hands on his hips,gimping, as if someone is pushing him from behind and forcing him to run. that stupid anger and everything faded away. heck. poor kid. forced into all these stupid grown-ups mess. Sprinted near him and asked him to stop. Told him, since we are at the other end of the ground, far away from where the coach is, we could walk for a while and once we get to the other side, we will start running and by this way, we could easily finish the remaining laps. Thought of teaching him a grown-ups trick or two.

we started walking. 'does it pain still?', he asked. 'Oh.nope. never.not at all. am alright'. oh ,i was still playing that tough guy , but actually i was feeling my scrotum every 30 seconds to spot if there is any wreckage.

he stopped, bent down, and was looking at somehting lying on the ground. and then, picked that from the ground. Some little packet. Looked like one of those Oregano or Chilli Flakes packets they give as freebies along with pizzas.

'hey, put them down', i said, modulating my voice into base. my chance to play big brether.

'you know what is this?', he asked me.

'some packet man. it's dirty. u better put that down.'

'It is not some packet.It's grass'

'What? what grass? idiot. this ground is so full of grass everywhere and you are calling this little filthy piece of plastic packet as grass. U must be crazy man.'

He looked straight into my eyes .Smiled at me with all the tenderness in his heart.. He looked Hermit-like. God-like. laughing at his cosmic joke. he smiled again, turned back and ran away.

Almost 10 years now and I still couldn't forget that smile. And those half closed, muted eyes.

Nose

Dawn.half opened eyes refusing to open up further. why should i trouble them when i could see. yes.i could see. seee.eeeeeeeeeee.

inhale.i inhale as much as i can. never knew the whole world could go in. In,into the nostrils,first. Then, into the crinion. into the forehead.and then,into every where. into every single hair and whisker and tissue.

half-floating half-flying like a soap bubble.

fragrances which images can evoke.images which fragrance can evoke.

the color of smell.

surf excel.coffee.newspaper.agarbathi.vim bar.petrol.Tangri Kebab. Reshmi Kebab.Eau de cologne.bus stand toilets.hospital toilets.office Rest rooms.Disposed syringe.Blood soaked cotton.LPG gas.Solder.Kerosene. Paneer Butter masala.Mysore Sandal Soap.Holy Ash.Shit.Cow shit.Bull shit.Elephant shit.my neighbor's dog shit.unwashed underwears.Barbie dolls.Teddy bears.GI Joe.Zafrani tikka.Chill breeze.Fur.Cricket balls.Wooden Racks in University Libraries. Neem oil.paperwallah's sweat fused with the newspaper's ink. Lentils.Cardamom. Cinnamon. Jasmine. Wax.Government office cupboards. Armpits.Lead. Soil.Soil before rain.Soil stenched with Urine. tissues soaked in semen.Sea breeze with Pattani Sundal. Cubicles.Fart.Kappa meen curry. Satin.Vodka.Nailpolish.Drainage coalesced with Sunsilk shampoo.Chai.Neck.Women.Liquidators. Cardboards. Varnish. Saw dust.

I could see. Strokes of umixed colors. Like pangs of subdued pain.Like bursts of unforeseen joy. Like music.Like love.

When sight seeked the orb,
eyes felt the grave
and brows danced to its drums.

LongHorn

I believed I opened the window
and liberated it
from the confines of its hinges,
but little did I know
of the windows
it opened within me.
a window within a window.

On the road

I sqeeze into the bus and was relieved to find out one window seat unoccupied. I spot a familiar face sitting nearby. Some small talk. Bitching about work,boss etc. We both cribbed for a while. VISA processing got stalled. No hike.No promotion. No scope for growth. Worries.Grief.Distress.Desires.

I turn back and open the window.

Men in bicycles. Men in bikes. And their tiffin boxes.

Kids in uniforms.Lunch bags.School bags.

Working women. With their files, hugged to their chests.Their hand bags. Faces blotched with talcum powder.

Engineering College kids with their drafters.And lab coats. With that uncertain look on their face. Standing in a queque and boarding their bus. An year back, I was standing there awing at those huge cushioned IT company buses and hoping to find a seat in there.

Sales reps. With their leather bags. And tie.

Beggars.And their crotch.

Clumps and clumps of people waiting in the bus stand.

Fellow comrades. With their ID cards and T1 mobiles and laptops and iPODS. With that unwarranted chesty look.

I sink back. Close my eyes. I feel the movement. Of the bus. Of everything. Of its rhythm. that symphony. the giant orchestration.

I open my eyes. I see Bright bright blue sky. And its reflection on the puddle.

I see Sunlight hugging the streets.Sunlight dancing in the lake.

Red red soil.Blood red. Footprints. Tyre marks.

It Drizzled. A tiny droplet of rain dribbled on the lens of my spectacles. I took my hanky and cleaned it. Another drop fell right onto the center of the lens. I smile and I give up.

And then,watch the sky.And wait for the rainbow to happen.

Soil smell.Rain smell.It skreiked into my nostrils and bumped with my brain.Like Cocaine.

I fade out.

Urchins screaming in joy and jumping into the pond. One even tried jumping over the buffalo.And their chasing mother's. That bare chested guy ,brushing his teeth, laughing at all this, with foam dripping down the corner of his mouth reflecting the intensity of happiness.

Life booming on the streets.

In another 5 minutes, I will be getting down from the bus and stepping into the litters of my everyday corporate life.

I wish the bus moves on. on and on and on.

Eternizing this very moment.

Waiting for the messiah

I am standing at the bus stop, waiting for my everyday bus to arrive. Neck twisted slightly to the right,eyes staring at the direction from where my bus arrives.I turn left and see my colleagues, five of them, doing the same.The bus might arrive anytime. I have been boarding at this bus stop for the past 6 months and still i don't know any of their names. I got to ask them.Maybe,tommorrow.

I turn back again and keep staring in that direction. The bus might arrive anytime. My neck pains a little and so I look straight at the other corner of the road. I see sunlight dispersing under the clouds and the beams passing through the branches of a tree, dissecting like an arrow, coating the leaves with Gold.

The bus might arrive anytime and I might miss it, if I let my mind wander like this. Standing on my toes, I stretch out my neck, this time a bit longer, and stare again in that direction of the bus.

The light has gone. And I keep staring. Into eternity.Into nothingness.I wait and wait for that bus to arrive.