A lot of what I do is a lot meaningless than a lot of what I want to do.

Truth makes for poor writing. Truth is banal. Truth, nothing but naked truth, is unglamorous. Truth is, even, plain boring. Dress it with half lies. Embellish it with turns of imagination. Garnish it with inventions. Then you have compelling writing and reading material.

A twist or a turn, a judicious omission of a word, person or a place, a creative addition of a romance, relation or ritual all go a long way in engaging a reader’s attention.

What I have written so far is plain boring because that is the truth. Your attention wanes from this page like that of a lover long into the murky world of love. What would appeal to you then? A discreet show of skin perhaps. A leg or two on the side eh? Let us see.

Let us see in our mind’s eye a setting of a café. Let us call it a Leopold Café, complete with bullet holes through cracked glass and in corrupted cement. The café is replete with foreigners, jaggery for terrorists, with a smattering of well heeled Indians- more citizens of Bombay than of India, really- through out. The foreigners are poor but have fairly over tanned fair skins and fair skins are a brown man’s weakness. They are given preference over the natives when it comes to finding a table by the maitre de, who is not even remotely matronly. But that is Bombay, with its in your face brutal honesty.

Never mind. We await our turn outside, ogling the frequent stream of well dressed, well heeled women, making, no, snaking their way through the cramped pavement most of which his encroached by sellers of curios, antiques of dubious antiquity and cheap, silly, pseudo ethnic wear.

We are given a table at an undesirable location where the breeze wont reach and the waiters bus every ten seconds past the table at peak time. We waited for long and are thirsty. We order a flask, which is not a pitcher and is definitely not a burette by any stretch of imagination or even a glass cylinder with a glass cylinder within which is usually used to store dead snakes but is without the dead snakes, of beer and are given piss-warm draught beer. The cylinder within the cylinder surprisingly has ice cubes in it to cool the beer. And there are no dead snakes, if you notice closely.

Conversation veers around office, colleagues, inane topics, we zone out until an overly drunk yellow chap who by the day turns into a monstrous marketing god, starts asking obviously drunk questions. What would you feel if you wake up one day and do not see the tall, fair and handsome girl sitting next to you? Truth compels me to say I would be disappointed I would have to pay the full cab fare. Bor-ing. What does that say about me? Am I too money minded not to appreciate the beauty around me? Am I too lost in the lust for lucre not to if not lust at least look at the lookers around me? Such being the doubts that would arise, what would a writer have done in such a situation? Remember, I already mentioned that romance is in the ambiguity of truth.

Romance of reading and writing and their root, imagining, is ever an escape from reality. What if, if only, things would have been so different, almost as if, just then etc fill the lexicon of that romantic unreality. Conversations around water coolers and coffee makers center around cute interns. A respite from the reality of work. And only that.

When did it ever happen that a dream really turned into reality?

When did ever a flight of fantasy land safely in the land of practicality?

The fool wanted nothing but the best of him. So he holed up in the cave called routine and did not venture out for years. His skin turned yellow and waxy, his eyes grew hollow and glazed, his hair grew whiter and thinner. Yet he would not see day light. He was afraid of mediocrity. He was afraid that mediocrity would manifest in himself. And he was afraid others would notice that streak of mediocrity running across his works marring what little beauty his feeble mind would dare impart to his writing. But that was the fool.

He found no reason to write. What would you write about the dreary daily life dramas of divorce and stint changes? What would you write about the utter unfairness of expectations. Then cut the tether and go free young calf. You have been fattened far too much to be of any use as a sacrifice. Your fat has has grown lumpy within you, festering hopes keeping it ever on a boil.

Who cares? It is all a lie in the end. The utter most heartfelt plea or a pledge of true love is a lie. I know lies. I have an instinct to detect lies. If all were well I should have been the human lie detector. All lies would have been caught and probably my nose or my eyes would have flashed red or green in utter simplification of truth and falsity, the speak easy manner of indicating right and wrong. How convenient.

Alas! I am no lie detector. I am too naive to be a lie detector. My naivete stems from an irrational trust in the human nature not to lie. How about half truths? Now you are talking politics my friend. That is not my strong point either. So is not diplomacy. Exasperated, she asks, "What are you good at, then?"

Trick question friend. If I tell you what I am good at, you may infer what I am not good at. Too much of a face loss my friend. I am never not good at anything. It just is not possible. It is I. It is I who you are dealing with. I am too full of myself to be contained in myself. Like blood sausage stuffed too tight in the intestine casing. Let out some blood. Lose some sleep. Fail few tests. It will not matter. Your degrees are probably not worth the toilet paper they are printed on. A toilet paper would have been more useful. Cheer up, cheer up.

Put a lid on it. Come on worms, crawl back into my mind. There is some brain masala yet to feast on. Lots of it.

I was busy with life when life passed me by.

I am lost if I am not in constant dialogue with me. Between interminable phone calls with supply chain characters I find myself at railway stations awaiting local trains to whisk me away and to work, manoeuvring narrow streets covered with dog poo, dodging murderous motor cyclists hell bent on blasting those on the street off of it with a little help from their motor horns.

I will then be a mechanical man and rip out the red and green wires of vocal chords of the motor horns. I will then be the god man cracking coconuts of beliefs on the heads of believers.

I will shake off the cancerous growth of humanity and skewer the stupid little birds which would not listen to reason or even the language of love.

Wait.

The books I read, not many , not any good, not even bought and owned, they are the brushes. Artists, they fancy themselves writers, use those brushes and paints and colours, their own embellishments, to paint new pictures with words and publish new paintings. They are commissioned works of art, a whoring of skill. Poof.

I used those brushes to dust the layers of ignorance. I was eager, almost frantic, to read. Reading was not exactly banned in my house but it was not encouraged too. The blight of ignorance of parents gets imposed on children in the name of discipline. Teach not discipline, teach wisdom to your kids, parents. You will have taught them to live than let them be lost when the outdated notions of discipline can no longer be applied.

I brushed away the dust in secrecy. Book within book. Social studies hiding abridged version of Around the World in Eighty Days. Biology giving shelter to Famous Five. I derived a thrill, akin to self gratification, in reading those books.

Lorry, colours and Malwani cuisine

Bombay is hot, humid and dusty. The road to Kalher village via either Mankoli naka or Majiwada was a wide dusty path beaten by the worn out tires of monstrous lorries.

Speaking of monstrous lorries one is reminded of Telugu films of late seventies and early eighties starring, usually, Chiru, Venkatesh or Balakrishna, in which the lorries acquired a character of their own, playing such pivotal roles in films as assassins of on screen relatives of the protagonist or would be assassins of the hero himself. The stock shot then was that of a close up of the radiator grill of the lorry, much like the snub nose of a squat, dim-witted, awkward bully ill at ease with himself and the world, being in his elements only on the grim and pot holed desolation of state highways, squinting through two excuses of dipped head lights, burning rubber as if salvation lay in molten rubber and metal scorching the asphalt. But that was then. Lorries evolved over time, both in Bollywood and in Tollywood. Gone was the angry young lorry of old, a rebel without registration. The lorry of digital age is more a backdrop for romantic interlude for the hero and the heroine, catching up on an intimate duet, having a good old roll in the hay, as much as Censor Board's decency definitions would allow to be shown on screen.

Lorries then have come a long way. I happen to see even imported ones, not just Tata Motors or Ashok Leylands but also and even Volvos.

But that is between Bombay and Bhiwandi and all the irritation that comes with the traffic and the weather and the unavoidable sea of humanity.

Life did not seem so irritable on the western ghats though. The ride on a bike back from Mangaon to Mhasla and on towards Sriwardhan was through ghats so green it seemed too monochromatic at times. Until I chanced upon the Arabian Sea on the way to Borli by a beach side road. The waters were purple, green and muddy brown and coupled with a partly darkly cloudy and partly brilliant blue sky, the monochromatic sameness of the bright green seemed like the final piece of a colourful jigsaw falling into place.

Hmm, that last sentence does not much sense make. Never mind.

Malwani cuisine was very well appreciated. Kolambi and pomfret were on my menu all the while. Bombay duck melted in mouth when tender and fresh off the sea at Sriwardhan and bony and dry when ordered from an eatery at Powai. The catch of Bombil attracted a flock of sea birds and sea faring kolis waiting to auction it.

More on Malwani and Mejwani some other time perhaps.

The concept of India, the idea that is India, is a difficult idea to comprehend. On top of it, the idea that people of many different tongues, religious beliefs, food habits and regional idiosyncrasies can coexist under the umbrella of a unified nationhood is a baffling idea.

I had a refresher of that idea only the other day, on the Independence day. I ordered food over phone from a slightly shady restaurant on the way to Kanjurmarg station. The gentleman who runs the show at the restaurant wanted to know what I wanted. It had been many days since I have had a decent full tandoori chicken, so I expressed my desire for the same. The gentleman replied saying, "Sir, yahaan pe sirf Indian aur Chinese khana milta hai." I managed to contain my irritation and asked him under what cuisine would tandoori chicken qualify? To this he had the ingenuous reply that tandoori chicken is a punjabi dish.

But of course. If what we eat were another qualifier, a layer to which we can drill down to gather similarities and distinguish dissimilarities, we are as many nations as there are mouths to feed and tastes to discern.

If Punjabi cuisine can not be considered 'Indian', I am guessing no other cuisine too would be fit to be called 'Indian.' In which case, what remains of the 'Indian' cuisine? I am not disparaging the restaurantwala, for everywhere in Mumbai and elsewhere in other cities in India, cuisine tends to get clubbed under the broad headings of Chinese, Punjabi and Indian, with an odd 'Contenental' making an appearance at hill stations or other touristy areas. My issue is probably with the semantics. It is probably a cyclical reference. If India is an amalgamation of states, and each state has a unique cuisine, then there is essentially no such thing as an Indian cuisine.

There will be days

There are days when you just do not feel tired. There are days when you are dead beat. There are days when you can not stop smiling. There are days when it is impossible for your lips to curl in the shape of a smile. There are days when you do not feel lonely, even at an ungodly hour at some forgotten suburban railway station, on some forlorn, dimly lit platform, in pouring rain. There are days when you are lost and all alone in a packed local train at peak hour on a bright, sunny day.

There are days when work is just work. There are days when work is worship. There are days when people are just assholes. There are days when people are brothers of your very soul. There are days when you can not stop talking. There are days when you are at a loss for words. There are days when you are in Brihan Mumbai. There are days when you are in Kolsewadi. There are days when you are stone sober in Sports Bar. There are days when you are punch drunk in your own room.

There are days when you are irritated because of international messages. There are days when you just crave for them. There are days that drag on for a week. There are days that last but a minute. There are days when you take birth. There are days when you die over and over again.

The truth about love is there is no true love. It is all self love. And if a profit and loss statement were drawn for all the transactions carried on during the course of a love, the sum result will always be a loss, the parties involved clearly proven losers.

Ordinariness and the King of Pop

If we had the requisite amount of fluidity, we would all be flowing on earth, in the easy, liquid motion manner of MJ. We might have been moonwalking, high on some moonshine.

But then we are all rooted to earth by the inexplicable force called ordinariness. Like gravity, it pulls us all down. While we should be soaring or floating on other worlds, thin and lighter than the very air, faster than the very light, freer than the very gods, we are bolted to the ugly reality of our existence. We wake up and go to sleep in the same mind numbing sameness of fashion, in the life sucking predictability of routine. And we degenerate into the indistinguishable, unremarkable, primeval goo called 'the ordinary.'

In any given situation there are the actors, the observers, the props, the principals and the peripherals. In any given situation we have a choice to be any or many of the above. What do we choose?

I am unabashed. I choose to be an observer most of the times. What is the purpose? Can one with a predilection to be an observer be an actor? Or vice versa?

The writer, the imaginator, the creator, the artist is an eternal loser. Their purpose is served in description, in imagination and in art, all a reflection of the world, the actors and the situations they witness.

In a randomised list of some2000 odd songs, of all songs, I get to listen to MJ's song 'Will you be there' first. Considering that I was particularly remembering the genius of dancing, song writing and music making in general, the coincidence is not entirely lost on the author. MJ is there no more. But the genius lives on. He was a defiance of ordinariness that unfortunately descended into weirdness. But the genius will live on.

'In our darkest hour
In my deepest despair
Will you still care
Will you be there
In my trials
And my tribulations

Through our doubts
And frustrations
In my violence
In my turbulence
Through my fear
And my confessions
In my anguish and my pain
Through my joy and my sorrow
In the promise
Of another tomorrow
I'll never let you part
For you're always in my heart.' -Lyrics, Will you be there, Michael Jackson (1993)

When I see this picture, I am at a loss for words. Every picture has a story to tell, so it has been said. What story does this picture tell?

Let us take stock of the stakeholders. It is a standard MBA practice, to identify the players, their motives and recommend actions based on the analysis of the situation. We call the exercise ‘sit anal.’ Sit anal signifies a great constipation of ideas masquerading as analysis and a toilet level attention to hygiene factors like grammar and punctuation.

There is the obvious old man in the frame. Who is he? A moral police, as my comment sought to insinuate. We will see.

There is the invisible authority which proclaims its dominion over the subjects by the edicts it passes with the simple and succinct signature, ‘By Order.’ In deed.

There are the actionable items themselves in question, the couples. Who are the couples?

What is the area? What is prohibited? Why is it prohibited? Who prohibited?

But first the old man. The Old Man is the human presence in my photo. I framed and cropped the photo so that he is to one side of the picture. Very well. What is he doing? In his day to day life, he may be just another Uncle Hangal come to Dadar beach to eye the love struck teenage, middle class nymphs. Or he may have been a component of the couples whose presence is expressly prohibited by the order, in his own heyday. He might have brought his lady love to that very spot, stole a kiss or two under the wan sunlight, promised the moon and more to her if she only let him touch her once, and even kiss her once more. May be he was serious. May be he was under hormonal impulse. May be, even, he was in love. Who knows? He could have been a lover or is a social and cultural values, national traditions upholding vigilante waiting for examples to be made of.

Or he may be a gentle hearted grand dad watching over his kids. Or a man at the end of the rope because he could not get a seat in the Virar fast local. I do not really know. I did not care. Would not care. All that matters for me is that he was present at the right spot, at the right time, doing the right thing, that is, looking forlorn and lost.

Then there is the authority. Who called it an authority? Who gave it an authority? I see the electric signage lighting up at railway stations. They tell the time at which what train is expected to arrive, the destination station, the number of compartments and whether it is a fast or a slow local. And people believe in that electric display. Does belief confer authority? But is it not how religious and spiritual authorities come into being? They sneak in through the unwatched alleys of blind faith. What if the authorities themselves are couples? Who would prohibit their gathering then? It would be a hypocritical authority, like how all authorities tend to be. When is an authority needed? Why is an authority needed?

Saawan

Life is beautiful, in spite of the loneliness, in spite of the lack of soul searching conversations. Life is beautiful in itself when I can see the mid day sun playing hide and seek with flashing white clouds, when the sky is so crystal blue that one longs to gaze into it hopeful of seeing one’s future, when the moody gray clouds make their presence felt with a drizzle. Trifles like oppressive humidity do not matter. Trifles like a lack of someone to show the heart warming interplay of light and shadows do not matter. I saw the sights, on a slow local from Kalyan to Kanjurmarg and I was incredibly happy, after a real long time. I love what I see and what I smell and what I hear and I love what I imagine. I find contentment in myself and peace with my surroundings. There is no sight more lovely than a hillock and a saddle painted in mild browns and thick greens have its complexion accentuated by clear sun light and dark shadows cast by heavy rain clouds. One can forget the madding crowds, the unnecessarily severe humidity, the absolute loneliness and even the ever present hunger. There are elements for my company and they are enough.

I remember the sights from foreign lands and from my travel to places in my country. Nostalgia enhances the colours, saturates the emotions. Perhaps I should have talked more to that Italian girl. Who knows, I would have been on my way to start another political dynasty! Perhaps I should have understood that Singaporean girl and attended her Karaoke session. Who knows, I would have made the Glorious and Exalted Nation, the Supreme Country of People’s Republic of Democratic and Unified Secular, Socialist, Capitalist, Communist and Super, Ultimate Tadepalligudem as modern and efficient as Singapore!

Life is lived between one unfulfilled desire to the next. Life is one excitement of a teased heart to another. And such is life, the sun and the clouds, the trees and the hills, the rivers and the seas, the beloved and other ladies

Water and Spirituality- Thoughts in a Bar Over a Drink

When you strip us all of all layers of fancy clothing, the masks of paints and creams, age defying or at least skin toning, when you burn through all the unnecessary fat and the ego shields, when all appearances are laid bare and every pretence exposed, when we are left in all of our primal nakedness, what would be the unit of commonality binding us all? Would it be the redness of our blood or the whiteness of our bones? Would it be the underlying fears of minor embarrassments or the overarching fear of death? Would it be the milk of kindness and humanity or the poison of love? What is the standard unit for us humans? With what, or whom, have we been benchmarked?

The Holy Bible says we are made in the likeness of God. Not many crore gods, but a god.
Would it matter if we are made in the likeness of another god? Now that is blasphemy according to one religion. It is not, according to another religion.

We are made of water to a large extent. Water, we have been taught as children, takes the shape of its container. The question then arises, what are our containers? Who is our vessel? Are circumstances our containers? Are our parents our containers? Or, even, are our skins our containers? In which case, would it not make us as tight or loose or as white or black or as smooth or cancerous as our skins are? Then our existence would be defined by the thickness or the thinness of our skins. Then, not only beauty but also life would be skin deep. Destiny would lie in dermatology. Such silliness of our thoughts!

We are made of water to a very large extent is what our science books taught us. Yet, we can go for days without food but can not survive without water for long. In other words, we need to consume ourselves in order to live. What a pitiful condition!

Water can be clean or unclean. It can be holy or unholy, because, after all, cleanliness is holiness. No? It is next to godliness. It begs the question, is holiness equal to godliness?

What is holy water that dehydrates my body? What is intoxication that desiccates my soul? If my spirituality is forced to go dry in a draught of lack of spiritual nourishment, what use is any quantity of holy water or bodily juices? What use the intoxication and flesh's passion?

If, and if, are they too a route to salvation? What use my questions? What use my reverie in the sports bar in the midst of throbbing 'music' and mood lighting and couples in amorous and flirtatious mood?

Engineering in Bombay Locals

The Bombay locals are 9 or 12 compartment magnets on rails. They sweep up millions of iron filings from the platforms every three or seven minutes and dislodge them at places they wish to get off. For a boy or a girl of any age, magnets are wondrous things. It is the potential in them, the magnetic potential. The boys and girls are magnetic dipoles, the yin and yang of cosmic energy, mangetic energy if you will.

Traffic on the foot over bridge at Dadar railway station is an incredibly complex example of fluid dynamics. Near the walls of the bridge the liquid velocity is zero, as people either hang onto the railings, waiting for potential soul mates to arrive or are obstructed from moving by the hangers on. Velocity is the highest at the centre. People flow in seven or eight discernible layers in the tube, each layer's flow runs counter to the neighbouring layer's direction. The people layers are miscible. The flow is set in due to the gradient, differences in concentration which in turn is a result of the differences in density at both ends, ie. the western and central lines. There is a major tapping near the booking office and pressure tappings in the form of a parallel, smaller foot over bridge connected to the central foot over bridge.

It is a fool's game. Count the stars as they fall to the ground in a climax of activity hitherto absent from all their life. It is a fool's game, nothing but a fool's game. While the enthusiasm ebbs away, life supplanted by the resignation to life, a life time is spent in denial, in a parallel universe.

The enter key does not work, all inputs are primary. To be passed on to secondary.

While all else fails and falls to the ground, it is the song of hopelessness that soars above middling aspirations in a disconcerting symphony of a series of disappointments.

All life is a quest for meaning, a life time is a search for closure.

Identity is sought, recognition is craved for. Niches are what we seek to carve. We might as well dig a tomb out of the rock faces. And bury the past so that no malevolent spirit pursues, in the dense concrete jungles, the lost soul of a city dweller.

Why such darkness? What cause for this lament?

Was not Bacchus meant to loosen merry tongues?

A beach is an interesting place. Or may be it is the people who come to the beach who make it interesting. In which case, does it matter that the people themselves be interesting?

For the past two months, my routine involved a jog on the beach every morning. Except for a week or so when I woke up just late enough for the sun to rise and assume a position in the sky from where he beat down on all of Chennai mercilessly, even at 6.45 A.M. The purpose of these morning exertions was ostensibly to lose hundreds of kilos of body weight. But what with the convenience of phoning in a pizza and paying for it by meal coupons 'borrowed' from IT engineer sister, the whole song and dance of running on the beach early in the morning in my sexy shorts showing ample, hairy legs came to naught.

I gave up the pretence of running eventually. However, I had to account to the powers that be for the roughly fifty minutes that I was supposed to spend running. So I devised an ingenious way of accounting which should place me plumb in the middle of the pantheon of creative accounting geniuses: sauntering up and down the beach takes up exactly fifty minutes. Once I was introduced to the guilty pleasure of sauntering alone on the beach, I took to it like fish take to the water, which water practically lapped at my feet in the form of improbably airy and delicate white surf.

Cutting onions, Culinary skills, Bindulu

So, what gives?

I am in Chennai, living from one power cut to another, sweating my sweet life out and generally philosophising over a heavy dinner which invariably includes fried fish. Deep-fried fish that was well marinated before it was deep fried. Marinated in a marinade made of secret ingredients thought up by yours lovingly. Piqued the interest there? I know. Let us just say that guavas are not a part of the marinade. Yes, coffee is a part of the secret ingredient marinade.

The upgradation phase of my culinary skills had to be put on hold. Two months at home and I thought I would get all the recipes KTed from mom. Fat chance indeed. Kitchens are conflict zones. When two great cooks have to work in the same confined space, the resulting ego clashes put to shame the fires of the gas-fired stoves and the pressure will be much more than a Prestige pressure cooker can handle. Women are intensely possessive of their space and kitchen (feminists may disagree) is definitely one of their spaces. And my penchant for breaking glass bottles and knocking over vessels and sprinkling salt and coffee powder all over the kitchen floor did not necessarily help my cause either. Let it be said then that instead of rustling up dishes of authentic Andhra cuisine on his own, yours truly has been largely relegated to the very minor and slightly insulting role of (an auxiliary) kitchen helper or, in other words, an onion cutter. Men being like onions (or are ogres like onions?), the incredibly layered, nuanced and textured psyche finds solace in slicing and dicing and cutting and chopping. But there are only so many ways an onion can be cut and the whole ignominy of decreased station is silently suffered, the poignant, tragic tale unraveling before one's eyes, which in turn are filled up by pearls of tears. A bit like crying in the rain, I guess. The heavenly aroma of onions fried till they are golden brown makes up for the tears shed and the perceived slights suffered.

Whatever happened to the kattipeethas of old? Nowadays I see all chopping boards and food processors and Japanese steel knives only. Whatever happened, even, to the bindes? Bindes, not to be confused with the dots of different colours worn on womens' foreheads, of old that are used to store water. Bindes made of different metals. Bindes which when filled with water drawn from the village pond or from the well and well balanced on the heads of women are the very essence of Teluguthanam. Or the accumulated wealth of wisdom that found a way to plug leaks in metal bindulu by applying a lump of wet chinthapandu. Times indeed have changed.

Farewell to the Charade

I went on a ten day trip to the Himalayas, came back sun burnt and graduated from Wimwi. It was needed to cleanse myself of the airs I acquired doing mba-studies.

Only after the plane took off from the Ahmedabad airport and made one gentle, sweeping arc over the city, scorched and shimmering a few hundred feet beneath, did I say good bye.

An event got over.

But frankly I did enjoy certain parts of the diploma program. And none of them are set in the first year. The exchange at a university in Canada was fun, so was the summer internship. 

The Himalayas were a solid wall blocking even the clouds, white as they were, like the snow that capped the peaks. I felt like hurling myself at them, climbing over them and an intense curiosity as to what lay beyond that wall, took hold of me. May be in due time I will see through my own eyes the lands, the backyards of the gods.

I am neutral now that the student part of one's life is done. Ordinarily the feeling one usually associates with such events is either that of elation or at least, of marked relief. I am merely neutral.

I suspect I have lost the faculty of being surprised or being happy. While I walked up to the chief guest of the convocation to receive the post graduate diploma in management, I put on a plastic smile, of course, for the photos, I was entirely devoid of feeling. Was I happy that the two year grind got over? Was I sad that the student life got over? Neither of the feelings were present. I am becoming increasingly difficult for even myself to comprehend.

But I sincerely wished, upon some reflection, the presence of those that should have mattered, at the occasion. For, the degree, encompassing everything beginning with the admission and culminating with the convocation, was primarily the reason and the result, for and of those that should have mattered. I acknowledge the sincere prayers, the fond wishes, the (now) silly dreams- they were at once fulfilled and had become irrelevant, over the course of these two years.

How fast the time flies! How fast the tide of one's life changes!

While two years ago I was sure of what I and my life would be two years later, now, I am entirely clueless. I lost, and I think I am reasonably sure in my assessment, my compass, my direction in life. (Not career-wise, though).

There has been a challenge to my beliefs, my miserable little world I painstakingly constructed out of few sparse beliefs. My belief system had been sorely tested and I am still grappling with questions the answers to which I have no hope of finding in the near future. I am, to put it succinctly, lost.

The fight is still on. And I think I will reorient myself soon. It was a loss nevertheless, a lasting loss.

How could I even imagine, in my most addled state, the turn of events that finds me questioning a lot many things I assumed and believed were incontrovertible truths?

Vacuum

So what does one do post an intense mba education and faced with two months of utter, total, absolute free time sans academic tensions and responsibilities?

It depends. Classic mba answer, but really it depends. Depends on the person I guess. I feel empty. Not the first time I feel empty. But this emptiness is unlike anything else. Days upon days of free time. And no motivation whatsoever to do anything. Tacked by a colourful pin on the notice board right in front of me are little paper notes containing among other things lists of places of historical significance in Ahmedabad I wanted to visit, ideas that I think should be written down before they disappear from my memory, address of a friend in China to whom I promised to write a snail mail some months ago, lines from a wedding invite and my new year resolutions. All the notes in themselves are actionable causes. Sample the note which reads '"Idea #1. Dating/friend matches on I-pod (accessory)." Cryptic as it is, it is inspired by an article I read in the technology section of the NYT. It is not a direct lift off, of course, but a modification of the original idea and which I think has the potential to take off (as in be a financial/popular success). I did not elaborate on the idea. Perhaps I should. It is tacked to the board by a bright, cheerful yellow pin and is at eye level. The note is tantalising in that it only gives so much and nothing else.

I am faced with an enormous vacuum right now. Perhaps this is how it must feel in a limbo. Lose track of time, days and the purpose of life. Leading an existence a notch below that of 'intelligent' human being's. An animal's existence, I was going to say.

Movies, books, music, computer games, chai with friends, dinners with friends, library-nothing seems able to hold my attention. I think I need a game changing mood changer. An engagement with the target audience at an extraordinary level. Ordinary things are no longer engaging. And I need this game changer fast, before I implode from inaction. This is energy that needs an outlet, a force that needs an action.

Colour Pink

I do not have an ipod. I do not own an iphone either. In fact the only 'i' thing I constantly deal with is myself. I-self, I guess. It is not that I am technologically challenged. Far from it, in fact. It is not even that I am unstylish. I am stylish in my own way. ( :-) ). It is just that I did not get i-touched. In marketing parlance that would mean I am not in the target segment for Apple.

Colours are in integral part of our life. My favourite colour is green. I like it subconsciously. I think it stands for life (as in being alive), progress, innovation and prosperity. It signifies a certain fullness and wellness.

Today is Holi. People play with colours on Holi. While it is quite reductionist, I think the concept of Holi is best explained by the word 'colour'. More specifically 'gulaal.'

This time however there seems to be very little of the all pervasive pinkness in the campus. There was enough pinkness last year to warrant a post (Paint it Pink). Perhaps the triggers are all gone. Last year's post was triggered by the sight of a pink dress (was it a chudidar or kurta or what? I do not remember) a certain someone wore. And then I started seeing pink everywhere. On the ears and under the nails of pink-eared management monkeys. On the stairs and in the tunnel. On the walls and in bathroom sinks.

It feels good. It never felt good. They go to tourist sites, fibre plastic mock ups and plaster of paris models. They go to 10th pass models and their meaningless enactments and tribal dances. We seek. We hunt. We do not get distracted. We want to focus on business. We do not want an employhment. We want a deployment of people.

But you must excuse me

But you must excuse me. It is the inhibition. Not the prohibition. It is the exhibition, of emotions, of a certain degree of defiance. It is even the defence, of cherished values, not necessarily shared. No one, nothing can hold us back. The world is a revolving, the skies they are falling. We are free falling. There is no end to this fall.

The stars they are revolving, the solar systems they are awaiting. The pointlessness of life calls, we see no point in not replying. The typing goes on, I am sure sense is made. Crushed glass and few evaporated vapours are the only testimony to spirits that were lifted, to the imagination's tongues that were loosened.

Mail boxes wouldn't allow me to mail my angst. Intelligent questions stem unintelligent answers. The ten thousandth reader finished reading this. Congratulations.

Another Post Now.

Another post now.

I am a travelling salesman. I do not know where I want to be. But right now, all I want to be, is all I want to be. You look at the face in the mirror and see the bloodshot eyes of me. But right now, all I want to be, is all I want to be.

They are lyrics. Of a pointless gult song.

Transposed on to the life of a freshly minted MBA graduate.

Couple of assignments remain, but we can fraud. We frauded our way all through engineering and MBA, what more effort is required to sustain it over the next one week?

February has come to an end. Placements have not. Who cares?

I do. I sense the pathos, the despondency, the dejection. It is mine as much as it is theirs'.

We are all in the same boat, the MBAs, we are in a sinking boat and there are not enough life jackets.

Such is the irony of life.