Something written a while ago

This was written after a particularly pleasant evening in the company of someone, who was just great company...

Although i may seem quite verbose,

This evening's incidents don't allow me to put them down in prose.

I stood in the distance,
apprehensive , defensive..

Hoping fervently that you can't read me as you do..
cause i am scared of you too..

Scared and ready to bolt..
not ready to let known the secrets that my heart may hold..

But you ..
But you were subtle and yet were bold, 
and ensured that i say out aloud all that i tried to hold.. 

that was not fair i judged  ..
and I came back and pledged..

Never be overt , be subtle..
don't say out aloud the ways of heart in a hustle..

Tried I , with all my might 
but could not put up a mighty fight..

for the eveing was one of wistful conversation , 
spaced out by comfortable, shared silences, 
no hurry .. 
no sudden urge to run..
a bit of misdirected humor and hints of annoyance 
hiding behind them sudden fits of laughter ..
although no jokes were shared..

soulful looks..
untroubled naps..
and of a rare feeling that for one evening,
the universe was just the way I wanted it to be.

The incident with a cat, a bench and a street lamp in the night.

Now this is a recent incident that I have to talk about, which involved me, a cat, a bench and a street lamp. Not so much the streetlamp except for the fact that it was just there.

 

Here I was waiting for a bus out of town at the designated spot. The bag on my back included my laptop, and change of clothes.. anyways where I am leading is that it was quite heavy. So I look around and there right under a street lamp, a see a bench which was empty and in spite of the rains all evening was surprisingly dry. It looked like a Godsend and so I crossed the road, and just as a swung my bag around and put it on the bench, out of the surrounding darkness, out leaps a cat and lands on the other side of the bench.

 

Now I am no expert on cats and their behaviour, but looking at the cat I could see that it was not a mangy one as you would expect a street cat to be, it was robust and graceful in its moves. A rather ragged brown in colour, it looked like a small puma. Like I said I am no expert on cat behaviour but her extremely hostile behaviour suggested that she harboured some ill feeling towards me.

 

So there she goes and starts pawing at the bench and mewing at me with her teeth bared, which led me to believe that this aforementioned bench was part of her domain and she didn’t like an intruder in her domain, especially as she looked like she needed one of those famous Cat-Naps.

 

But I was determined, “I am not scared of dogs now,” I thought to myself, “ so why should I back down from the cat , I know that it is hostile and I don’t know any visible signs as to when it will attack, but then I am ten times its size so by its feline logic it will think before attacking. True that ever since I have left college I don’t have the regular scratch marks, but not that I miss them anyways.”

 

The cat in the meanwhile sensed my hesitation and jumped on to the bench and there right next to my bag was the cat all ready to attack (according to me) and mewing and baring its teeth at me. Now I am quite brave otherwise but I know when I have been had and so I looked around. It was about 10 pm and no one was around to witness my retreat so I grabbed the bag and swung it around, and voila she was gone, she saw it as a pre-emptive strike from my end and had stepped back from the bench.

 

So we were at a stalemate, the cat and I, thinking about our next moves and at the same time trying to think like our adversaries. Now one thing here to tell my fellow being, its not easy to get into the brain of a cat and try and think what it was thinking.. ( all I could figure out was the world in a black and white, and a constant desire for tuna but nothing in terms of attacking strategies).

 

Not at this stage the story took an anti-climatic turn with the arrival of the bus and me having to rush it to ensure that it doesn’t leave me behind. As I turned around the cat had lazily taken its place at the center of the bench and I don’t think I was imagining this, was pawing me a goodbye.

 

But I have the cat figured out or maybe I will after a few more sessions of thinking like the cat when I will move past tuna, black and white, mouse , a hatred for water and getting wet. As for the cat, if you are reading this, “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE !!!!”. 

 

Waiting for the phone call.

While over the past few years the advent of mobile communication in this country has changed our lives to the degree where the phone has become an additional organ essential for human survival, it has also done an irrepressible harm.

The wait for that one phone call that you are expecting, waiting for, or fervently hoping for ( in my case all 3 but mostly the last one) seems like endless years of purgatory. Now I am not a religious man, but I think that looking at endless populace waiting at the gates of hell, God devised this ingenious idea of putting us ( or rather me ), through purgatory while I am alive.

Now this wait is more tolerable in the company of friends and people that you know and love, but if you are drifter like me, living a gypsy life out of a suitcase, a laptop and a series of cold, clinical hotel rooms, each moment of this wait seems like years in purgatory.

I am not even sure if I have done something to deserve this. I mean yes I do take the God’s name in vain, but that seems to be the extent of it. ( By the way, do the commandments of another religion apply to you even if you are unsure about your own). Some questions need better answers, or rather these questions can be better answered by some of you.

So go ahead and enlighten me, as to why a phone call from that one person, means so much that you sit staring at your phone almost willing it to ring. If I were to stare at my dinner so intently I guess it would have cooked itself. I apologize for the bad metaphor but at this moment I am not finding anything remotely funny.

By the way if you are wondering, the staring doesn’t help, I tried praying for a while, but like I told you I am not a religious man. Neither does chanting, Maori war dance, Sioux rain dance, chanting Ragas, holding your breath, pulling at your hair or staring at the clock ( that just makes you dizzy and makes you wonder about the space-time continuum and I am already too involved in this matter of universal proportions).

I am still wondering what would help, would calling her help ??? But then the rules of engagement, as explained to me by friends, state –

Do not come across as a Psycho
Do not call again and again
Appear indifferent
Showing that you don’t care about her calling helps

Not care about her calling ???? I mean who came up with these rules, certainly not someone who liked the other person, or enjoyed being in her company or talking to her..

Anyways .. too much said on the subject. While this may appeal to the sense of humor of some of you, kindly consider this – while you are laughing I may still be expecting, waiting or fervently hoping for the same phone call.

The Heart Break and Root Canal

Now this post is dedicated to people with whom I have had the most random conversations of my life and somehow those have been the best conversations of my life. Not the profound discussions in college on the meaning of life, not intellectual debates as to whether the Sub Prime crisis will affect the Indian Indices in short run, not even whether Lord of the Rings draws heavily from World War II.( which is very profound in its own way !!!)

So the other day I am sitting and talking to this friend and eating ice cream when it hurts like shit and I realize that there is a root canal treatment pending. The conversation takes arbitrary turn and suddenly I am in the middle of comparing my terrible root canal pain to the heartbreaks I have suffered and it got me thinking as to what hurts more.

“While a heart break takes away your power of thinking and leaves you a sulking, slobbering piece of existence that can be called only remotely human, a root canal doesn’t do that. And therein lies its prowess, now you would argue that it’s a good thing that you can think during the pain , but its always the imagination which leaves you faint hearted and hurts you more than the actual pain.

Your imagination is your biggest nemesis and if its an acute and active one like I have been cursed with, then every time that you would approach the dental clinic, every time you would see the drill in his hand, you would cringe and imagine a pain far worse than it actually is. Now that anticipation is worse than the real pain.

A real heartache takes away whatever little reason you have left (the rest was lost anyways when you fell in love), and leaves you with no power to imagine a life beyond that time, and so you could not use the effective tool of your imagination to hurt yourself more.

Root canal is also an effective way to prepare for future heartbreaks for try all you might; one lesson that I have learnt from life is that it’s never so bad that it can’t get worse. So while you are in love and unfortunately need to get a Root canal treatment done, you can look at it positively that having been through the same, you can face the impending heartache with much valour and can laugh in its face.. ( well you can laugh but the tears would still well in your eyes so ..)

Having been through both – A heart ache and A root canal , I have only one advice for my fellow being – Brush your teeth twice a day and floss, while it can only guarantee no root canal treatments in the future, it may also go a long way in keeping you love life intact ….”

Rock on – Keep rocking!!!

So now its not often that I watch a movie alone, leave the occasional movie at a film festival that none of my friends would sit through, so it was quite strange to watch a movie alone, but then I had heard so much about the movie that I had to watch even if alone and at an ungodly hour of 11: 20 at night.

So the movie follows the fast becoming clichéd narration mode of being set in the present, with occasional glimpses of the past that give perspective to the present. What is good about this movie is that these glimpses remain glimpses and do not turn into long painful episodes in themselves.

Movie is fast paced, with a taut script and crisp editing ensuring that at no moment does the audience shift in their seats. Farhan Akhtar makes a good acting debut with a restrained performance, the director in him showing direction to the actor as well. Arjun Rampal is his usual self, and fits the rock star profile, in a look totally inspired from Billy Krudup’s Almost Famous. However he looks wooden in majority of the scene which, like I said before is his usual self.

It’s Purab Kohli who steals the show with a natural performance with impeccable timing and lays his claims for meatier roles in the future. Luke Kenny in his acting debut performs better than expected of him. Shabana Goswami, who plays Debbie and looks every bit the harrowed wife of a has been rock musician, will get noticed in spite of a role that could have seen some more dimension.

Have to put in a good word for Prachi Desai, she looks good , acts well and did not need an item number to get attention of the audiences. I don’t think that can be said for any other actress making her debut off late. Definitely, someone to look out for in the future,

The music of the movie is a decent attempt at Hindi rock music, and keeps the movie alive. All in all, a movie that one should definitely catch up on, in spite of the predictable storyline for the good narration and overall decent performance by the cast.

PS : look out for the confrontation scene between Rampal and Akhtar. Straight out of Almost Famous, I believe the director Abhishek Kapoor has seen Almost Famous about the same number of times as I have. !!!!

oh .. Thanks to Atlee and Raghav reading their blogs inspired me to write again.. hopefully more frequent posts now..