Meanwhile..

Mr.Stranger wakes up to a flash of lightening...a lazy look out the window..its raining. Thirty minutes later he is off to work. Its a Limo-taxi...super comfort...zero decibel ride..with the only sound of some meak volumed 90.4 FM stereo and the click of the wipers at the edge of the windshield. Its 6.15 am and still dark...the street lights coming thru the windshield...polarized by the droplets. Soon the shades of the night will be lost to the twilight. And soon the day will be lost in a blink. This choice of the early-to-rise life has taught him the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Amidst the shaded glow of sodium vapor streetlights...he still feels a discomfort in the smooth embrace of the bucket seats of a limo-cab. Meanwhile, on another side of the globe, Shotgun Vilas drives back home after a day of work. He is living his American Dream. The GM car, the Gucci Shirt, the planned vacations, the unplanned weekends, edeals on iphone, Thanksgiving Sale...hidden grief and strife...packaged in a Walmart Life. He wishes to sip a beer before getting to his house chores...before dinner...before he goes to bed. But the beer can wait..atleast for the next couple of days..until he hits the friday. It is this wait that keeps him motivated towards his choices. Long ago he used to sip a chilled beer at 6 am in the morning...and now he chooses not to remember this part of his life. Back home in Mumbai, AsExplainedbyaJunkie moves his lazy ass from his bed to the kitchen for his occasional blues penguin walk...contemplating..and more importantly..articulating some new antidote from the mixbag of issues gathered from his scattered life...and at the same time searching involuntarily for some morsel to chew on... He has managed to keep his life to the simplest form and is still clueless about the cause of his dissatisfaction at this hour. Fully knowing the futility, he lights up another cigarette and ponders on. His posessions area at a bare minimum..mostly because maintenance of posessions is not his forte...and a bar to his wants that would puzzle Sigmund Freud. But then again...even Shotgun Vilas' persona would baffle Freud. Around the same time, in a lesser known town of Madikere, in the picturesque district of Coorg, Bomanna wakes up to the thunder of a ligthening strike nearby...only that it is the 23rd time this night. Its been a rainy week in Madikere. Even the Dussera celebrations were not blessed with a dry spell. His vacation of a little over a fortnight has been plagued by bad rainy weather. Even his trip to Bangalore was eclipsed by dark clouds and continuous drizzle. It puzzles him that it was raining in Singapore when he left there a week earlier...and its been raining ever since he landed in his hometown. For a moment, in the dark space in front of his drowsy eyes this night, he thinks that its raining all over the world. God has strange ways. There are a million lives stuck in this moment. Meanwhile...

Choices and changes

Its a fine monday morning. For a change I wake up early at 6.30 am. Its been drizzling since an hour. After an hour of morning chores and lazing around I am struck by a thought that I cant recall the source of...I think it was AsExplainedbyaJunkie...that gets me thinking. When we were young...there were infinite possibilities to our lives. You could choose professions...a new one each day. Probably the Doctor's Set that was a gift from Uncle J kept you longest at one profession during those juvenile years. You were a Kapil Dev at bowling and a Gavaskar at batting...and well....nobody liked fielding...Maradona at the midfield...and Boris Becker or Agassi even when u never played tennis. You were Aamir Khan after you watched Qayamat se Qayamat tak and Salman Khan after Maine Pyaar Kiya....probably Amitabh Bacchan after Shehenshah with the Rishte-mein-toh-hum-tumhare-baap-lagte-hain style whenever you were in a fight with some other kid from another section at school. The only choices required were choosing notebooks and pencils and crayons and sketchpens....bats...balls...shoes...etc.. But then a point of life comes when you choose a college...a coursework...better college....exams...subjects...etc..And with each successive choice after this point....you limit your possibilities. With each further choice, you are further away from your Boris Becker...or maybe Federer. And then you meet Rentboy who doesnt wish to choose...bcos there's heroin...sensational. You were confused about how things have changed over the years and how nothing is as it seems...that were meant to be a part of the system and a Floyd or a Doors song will just hit the spot...expressions that give you some room for your situation. Your words find representation on celluloid with Tyler Durden coming over with his Project Mayhem...phenomenal. And you swear by every word that comes around by the artists of the beat...rock n roll connects to your soul...dreaming of an alterego living it out in Woodstock 69. At the same time you need to carry on with your life...choose more coursework...get a job...explaining to your friends that you are not cut out for this shit...limiting your choices to the bare minimum...your anger for the system...the betrayal of dreams...the loss of a prayer.....denial. And then one day you are hit by death. The death of a friend...a brother..and for a long moment there is a silence.. there is no anger here... no choices... a lot of questions...no answers.. just unfathomable....death. As you try to get a grip....the anger sets in...it alternates with sorrow...the music ceases to be anything more than entertainment. Some of the words fail...and all that is there around is a lot of what-ifs. Which brings me to the idea of choices and possibilities... when someone dies....his loved ones are all hit by the what-ifs. for him...there are no choices to be made....and hence infinite possibilities. Every single person close to him contemplates these sets of infinite possibilities and the realisation of their failure brings about further grief. From the point of his death, each year on....the time and the choices made by the loved ones takes them further way from the event ...reducing the no. of possibilities ...and after a long time all that remains is a speck of memory...of the loss of a friend. - In memory of Manas.

Achan's dream and Dreamersdrone...

This must have happened when Achan's God stopped thinking. Since HE didnt need it anymore, he gave his brain away too....well atleast the better part of it. A hardworking Proletariat belonging to a state with Marxist ideals was blessed with a baby boy. 17 years later... The boy had to choose a career and Achan thought of the brightest options...and since God had long stopped thinking...the boy followed suit. He was to become an Engineer. 4 years of tedious labour at one of premier institutes of the country....Achan felt secure. As the year's went by, Achan's understanding of the situation became better and his insecurities grew...but the boy had become wise in his ways....and if he had learnt anything in those 4 years of university education....it was how to maintain a near-incognito status.. While in college, boy had a passion for all this beautiful....and all things that foster connections....to name a few of his interests - women, works of literary geniuses, internet, porn and cell fone network. The former was a mystery and the latter he learnt to understand and treasure. The boy had made great attempts at sowing seeds for a brighter future, when he would step into professional life...by keeping in touch with a lot of young women but always failed to understand their needs...Up to date, there has been only one unbreakable bond between the boy and someone else....his cellphone. Donot be naive in presuming this particular NOKIA to belong in the material world. The function's of this fone once elaborated will personify its existence. It is Achan's only means to put some sense into his Son's ears. For the boy, it is Achan talking to him and the moment the fone rings, the boy shudders. It is also a way to send short messages across distances...and sometimes the boy has dared to send certain text to a certain Miss that would take him another lifetime to utter. It must be noted here that this fone has shown what the words 'Never Say Die' mean. The shelf life of all things....ALL THINGS....in the boy's life is not more than 15 days. Anything that lasts longer requires due respect and honor and all those things attached with the word - Legend. This fone has been in service for more than 3 years now. Sometime last year, catastrophe had struck and I had thought that this was the end...but no...it was a brief period of 3 months...when the fone was in coma....after which it Came back to life as soon as it was given a new battery. A flap fone lost its life in the most cruel way in this span of 3 months - it was decapitated. May its electronic soul rest in peace. The boy learnt to play the guitar....bought himself a guitar...a beautiful acoustic guitar priced at a whopping Rs.6200/-....the first time it broke was after the 14th day...this falling short for its LEGENDary status. An unsung hero because he never made it. The boy has a string of failures with women...which neednt be elaborated and it can be boldly said that the entire Bollywood will be put to shame if a biopic is ever made with the necessary masala.

The boy has successfully become the Agastya Sen of the Corporate world...his activities include - going to office at 11.30 am....sitting there for as long as he is entertained by the internet. Work only when the job needs to be saved...Among the highlights of the day include checking the blogworld for latest updates by dreamersdrone and the best friends. Also logging into Orkut to check for better photographs...

On weekends he likes to avoid fonecalls from home and spend time with some friends...thinking about past. Last weekend he was spotted at a Dandiya Raas standing and staring at the orgy of festivity in front of him....yes he is one of those young men who like to watch....because everytime he tried to move...he was pushed away. And Achan waits at home worriedly thinking....much to his own dismay.

A tribute to the bold force within Achan to keep up this battle.

A tribute to a cell fone which could stand a nuclear holocaust.

Subah Ho Gayi Mamu..

morning....8.30 am...monday... or is it a sunday...i hope it is... yesterday was a sunday...cos the day before too was a holiday....that makes it a saturday... a little nap won't matter...its 9.10 am....and it is definitely a monday... to office......bikes, cars, volvo buses, more bikes...some chick ona scooty..hmm...another bike.......office...breakfast...email...timesheet...hi....bye...good morning...how was ur weekend.??...wats new?....didnt see u for a while....oh...the training in bombay...hmm..how did it go...??...@#$@#%#>..more gibberish...!!!!! i can see that my no work has been delegated to me for the day....i have time to pass....7 hours more..try harder...and smooth it shall go.......a motive....spice in life....!!!!!!!!. ......a search...women.....cell fone...sms....and wallah!!!!!!! hey princess....how r u? hows college treating u?how was ur mock cat? hi...y do u call me princess..? college is fine... 225 questions this time in mock. did u write it??yes i did. i call u so cos u r a princess...hehe!!.. hows work?fine. did u go to the inxs gig? no..didnt get passes...did u go? Nope. so...wat else??? have a nice day!!! same to u!!! .................................................and thus my day is lightened by the mild entry of few sentences from a college going hot bangalore chick...and i begin to think....am i happy or am i happy...?? i donot care for all the shitty conversation that i just had....they donot change anything... there is a procedure in UNIX...the command BEGIN...resets all the environmental variables...now i know that the term ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES are a tough set to comprehend..but a little attentionto the efficiency of the word BEGIN in such a system can be very rewarding... it is only after i type BEGIN...that i can actually start working on a particular UNIX session.,..bringing the same analogy to our system...a resetting of environmental variables can help... diversions like the conversation - so beautifully illustrated particularly for ur understanding and my liking -given above....are sometimes....u might say...necessary to get ur mind off things....off things that bother u on a monday morning....if such an act actually works....in our hindu ideology...we call such an act -- a good omen.....now if you all believe in what i say....reply back...and even if u dont......just reply back....amen!