Invisible Ideas

My mind
reads like
the open canvas
of a New
Word Doc.
Barren blankness
spread out thinly.
I rummage through
the recesses
of my brain
and hack hard
at the keyboard
without a flow
of thought.
Stream of
Consciousness
is a dwindling
brook with
spurts of water.
Little winged
black birds
dip into this rivulet
and splash across
the parched screen
with a voracious
appetite for
vocabulary.
Strung by the
invisible chord
of syntax
and the unused
facets of grammar,
they cluster
in seeming
randomness,
forming syllables
in a sharp
unbold typeface.
The birds are
backspaced
while other
clusters are
pasted elsewhere,
flapping wings
to stay together
as a whole.
Forced to migrate
from a different
starting point,
they fly across
with meaning
on their backs.
But where
the heck
is the damn
punchline?



* For imaginary garden with real toads
** An attempt to parody one's own style

Our Inexplicable Love for Gadget-Squealers!

It’s amazing how you look back at your lot when you’ve looked away for a bit. We Indians are obsessed with little inventions that can scream, screech, shriek, belch, beep or cheep (like listening to your neighbor yell at his wife down the street wasn’t enough!).

Let’s put us in an analogy. We are to small squawking devices like the Japanese are to a camera trigger. What is it that makes our Indian gene so hyperactive when we see a little machine at arm’s distance?

Hitting the honk button for the 7th time in a row will not take you anywhere! If you stopped playing ‘snake’ or 'angry birds' (or whatever else you use to twiddle your thumbs) for a bit and dug your face out of your phone screen ever so often, you’d notice that the light is still Red. The odd chance that it is Green doesn't justify your need to go palm-happy on the steering wheel. You don't need a degree in math to count the five cars between you and the open road!

Ditto for calling the elevator shaft to your assigned floor. It’s a mechanism with a set trajectory that sometimes does have a mind of its own. But it's not a wish-box! (Stop looking for the I-live-at-the-Empire-State-building pity vote!) Contrary to your continued expectation, poking and jabbing at the little arrowed button will not make it appear out of nowhere. Tried and Tested.

And thanks for making me jump out of my skin with the 4 continuous ting-tongs outside my door. Yes yes, getting my daily dose of packetted milk at 6:30 in the morning ranks very high on my emergency list! (I agree, you’re concerned that I might develop osteoporosis in the future, but 4 doorbell alerts? At six-effin-thirty in the a.m.? Like seriously?)

Going by this list, I would’ve easily concluded that we’re a lot that's just always in a hurry. I won't discount that completely, but on careful speculation, I know it’s more than that. As much as we try to hide our li'l secret, we just love gizmo-induced sounds! Period. So much for cheap thrills and vulgar joys.

How else would you explain the need to download annoyingly loud sms tones to your already busy phone! Isn’t the cacophony of conversation doing its bit for you? Why would someone, in their right mind, wish to endure listening to a baby bawl or a cow moo endlessly if they didn’t secretly love being sadistic? It might seem like fun the first time around. But when you get a string of 30 sms with the same baby crooning for help, I’d want to thwack the little thing and put it to rest!

Grah!

Clap Clap!

Have you ever hated someone so much that you just got up and started applauding as soon as she got done with her act?
(No no, I'm not particularly talking to you, oh nominee-for-the-best-actress-award-who-just-sat-there-clapping-for-the-winner.) I know how you feel, but I'm referring to a whole other gamut of emotions here.

I never thought I could have so much hatred. So much animosity. So much anger for the female form.
But when you get up everyday at 3:30am, and start applauding aimlessly in the dark, you know you can't feel very appreciative. And when two mosquitoes decide to play join-the-dots on your body, you know you want to show feminism the finger.

I'm just this close to wishing that there was someone who'd gas those bitches in one big mosquito genocide!

Mosquitoes! Those vicious, ruthless, blood-sucking monsters that leave itchy red mounds of ugliness on skin, are ALL FEMALE!!

Apparently, they look for a smooth surface on bare (freshly waxed?) skin and meditate on landing quietly hoping that you're either asleep, numb, dead or too thick skinned to care. They whisk out their proboscis and stick it into you (erm...this surely doesn't sound very lady-like now). And while you're too busy focusing on sleep, they burp on your blood and hi-five to the other bitches on the number of Bloody Mary(s) they just consumed.

And for what purpose? Erm... for the noble cause of being a Mother.

Waiddaminute! They need MY red blood corpuscles, to nurse and raise a new swarm of pests who can come back and bite me on the bum? Again?

I'm telling you. One way or the other, children are EVIL!

Rickshaw Ride

When your motor skills are slightly challenged and you have trouble with hand-eye coordination, you should instantly understand that - Driving is not for you.

But people sometimes behave like I love being called an imbecile or something. "Come on, now! How hard can that be? Driving is the easiest thing on the planet."

That's as good as yelling at a dyslexic kid about the difference between bar and bra. (He's probably too young for both in any case!)

Besides, if you have an internal GPS as warped as Moses in the desert, there's absolutely no incentive in overcoming this handicap of being a wuss behind the wheel. With a stroke of luck, if you've figured how to change gears while you foxtrot on the accelerator and clutch, you've probably forgotten where you wanted to get to in the first place.

To add to the mix, if your direction sense sucks, the last person you want clarifications from is someone from Mumbai city. My people are cool and all, but if there's one thing that I just don't understand, it's the fact that when it comes to directions, they can NEVER get themselves to saying "I don't know."

In fact, I think when Christopher Columbus was asking people to guide him to India, it probably was that lone Mumbaikar on his boat who jumped to the occasion and grabbed the role of playing navigator. ("Let's go straight," I believe were his last words.)

But I don't blame that guy alone. Clearly he's been raised in a city where official signposts beam at you with the profound confidence of a broken compass. Imagine my horror when I spot a bottle-green signboard in Khar West that reads Go Straight for Mantralay with no distance indicators. That's as good as telling me, keep going straight and you'll reach Bangalore... well, eventually.

Let's see, so here I am with all the permutations and combinations of reaching WhereTheFuckAmI land.

I promise to meet this friend for rehearsals on a Wednesday afternoon. "It's the second bungalow on Chapel Road, Bandra West. 2:00 pm. Don't be late!" she warns, knowingly.

I hop into a rickshaw and mumble the necessary keywords to get me to my destination, and continue to multitask with a sandwich, the cellphone and a book in tow.

We maze through millions of cars, buses, 2-wheelers, 3-wheelers, and dodge over the little hindrances in our obstacle race including THE divider, a bicyclist (who are they anyway?) and a cow's oblivious tail.

Through this chaos, I sit there beaming, cause it's 1:45pm, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm going to be there, On Time. Phew!

We reach Hill Road and I'm mean't to direct the driver behind the Indian 3-seater from there.
"Bhaiyya Chapel Road likha hai." He looks like he's going to call my bluff, and presumes I'm not from the city. He's lived in Khar-Danda all his life apparently and is convinced that I've got the address all wrong.

He defies me into asking someone on the street.
"Chapel Road?" "Chap-pill Road" I scream from the other side of the street, when a soft-drink stall owner points straight ahead towards a forked path.

A couple rights, lefts, u-turns, lefts, straights and zig-zags around the corner, someone suggests that I'm not even in the right part of the city. "It's probably in Malad," a passerby assures, again pointing straight ahead, towards Mantralay. Grah!

I look at the rickshaw guy through the rear-view mirror and charade my way by saying:
"Arre bhaiya, wahaan par sab bungley hai. Address mein Bungla #2 likha hai"

He parks the rick on the side and asks me to show him the address with the air of a veteran detective. Something dawns on him, and he looks mightily pissed with me. Grumbling through the traffic he takes me via a by-lane and points at a dilapidated signboard with 'Chapel Road' in clear letters.

"Kya Madam. Kaayko shtyle maarta hai? Chappal Gali bolneka na, seedha seedha," he says, waving his slipper in his hand.

I wasn't quite sure if he was still in the mood for playing charades there.

And I didn't wait long enough to find out.





Photo Credit: CNN

Soap Saga

This one isn't so much about telling a short/shot story as much as it is about commenting on one. 

And so I digress...

Indian television serials make for mass devolution (which is actually putting it very lightly. When, in fact, what I actually want to say is that making, acting or watching any of these shows is the quickest way of becoming a neanderthal). 

Agreed, this isn't a 'eureka' moment of sorts. Even a monkey with half a brain and no patience would know that it would be worth his while to count the grains of sand trickling down an hour glass instead of trying to follow a non-existent plot on prime-time. 

But then again, I confess, I fell for the old-boy charm of a popular yester-years baddy, MB. So going against my grain, I decided to watch the show. (I mean, how bad can it get, right? Worst case scenario, I could just drivel all over tall-dark-and-handsome and then wipe off the spittle).

Neanderthal Alert!! 

Fancy-pants-80's-bad-guy-who-shot-white-pigeons-for-a-hobby now plays a shy 45 year old virgin doctor who, I'm guessing, doesn't even strip while in the shower. 

And to make a predictable antithesis on 'opposites attract,' is a hyperactive, size 10, glossy haired, I-never-wanted-to-go-to-med-school-cause-I'm-so-cool twenty-something intern whose main purpose on the show is to make the virgin slash voyeur realize that he also needs to jerk off every once in a while!

The pace of the plot is a whole other thing. In the time that it takes the impatient, half-brained, Indian-soap-watching monkeys to evolve into human beings; our virgin doctor might have mustered enough courage to tell his lady love that he is now ready to see her lady parts from afar.

MB, we actually liked you in your bad-boy roles. Not because you were like the guy my mom warned me about. But more cause back in the day, you came up with the most memorable one-liners that set it in stone that a guy and girl could never be 'just friends.'

Now you're just old and creepy, and trying too hard. If you want to justify being a virgin at 45, you've got to take acting lessons from Steve Carell. 

Note to MB: This has been the toughest half-celebrity picture search EVER!!. I have an impression to maintain here. It's not easy when I call you drool-worthy and find every other image that looks like you'd fit well under the 'beware of absconding rapist' tag. Please Google yourself and see!  

The Voiceover

From washing gravity-challenged curls in cold water and stepping out in the blazing sun, to applying curds on the scalp and sitting under the air conditioner. From eating unbranded hand packed sickeningly sweet fluorescent candy, to gorging on 4 germ laden ice shaved golas on Juhu beach. I'd done it all!

This wasn't an I-will-test-my-immunity (or stupidity??) contest that I was trying to win, or a suicide diet to look pretty at death. Nor was I getting paid to conduct research on popular ways of contracting pneumonia.

In my defense this was, in all earnestness, an attempt to retain a 'husky' voice.

As retarded as it sounds, do you have any idea what it means to get complimented on a borrowed voice tone? Especially when 'normal' means that the inherited vocal chords vibrate only within the soprano range, and being 'excited' means emitting ultrasonic sounds that can only be appreciated by cats, dogs, and screeching bats?!

Thanks to common cold, phlegm, and the entire army of waterworks, there was hope. Let alone the fact that I now looked like Rudolf on Prozac, carried three packs of Kleenex in my bag, and couldn’t tell the difference between nutri-wheat-crackers and cardboard - I sounded perfect!

The cell-phone was ringing. The hottie-with-the-long-sideburns had his name flashing across the touchscreen. Dashing for another Kleenex I went through a quick round of the sniff-snort-cough-cough routine. Stomach tucked in, chest pushed out, I looked like someone in dire need of the Heimlich maneuver.
But the hottie couldn't see all of that now, could he?

The phone was answered in under five seconds.

'Huh lo-oh...' I teased. The femme fatale had just walked into the voice box.

I breathed out a wry smile, and continued to look like death. But it didn't matter.

Cause Jessica Rabbit had finally agreed to do a little dubbing for Ms. Swan.

Age Rage

If there's one thing that has triggered the mass fuck-up of the human race, it has to be the day when one klutz woke up on a Tuesday morning and decided to bracket people by the number of candles on their birthday cake.

Can someone please explain what would caution for age-appropriateness in behaviour?

So let's get this straight. You plonked out of your mother's womb - You did what you had to (or just slept for the most part) - 364 days rolled over, and then wham, everyone and their uncle stared at you like they were waiting for you to deliver on a magic trick. Well if it was one trick and they'd get over it, I'd even bother trying to ace it. But year after year, the expectations just get crazier!

This is where I realized that attempting to grow an extra organ might seem to be a lot more easy, but matching up to age-appropriate expectations is a whole other ordeal.

"Oh he's one already, and he isn't walking just yet!"
Why bother? Even if he prepares in record time, he won't be able to run the marathon next year.
Seriously, STOP obsessing over youtube videos of one-year-olds who can bob their head, waist and leg to Shakira. They're NOT normal.

"She's thirteen and we're praying that she gets her first 'period' in time."
In time? For what?
Be sure what you pray for. If she's ready to get her period, it's her body's way of also telling you that she's ready to have sex. This one can potentially fast forward you to grandparenthood, if you will.

"I can't wait to turn 18!"
Aah... cause NOW you're an adult. You can drive without your fake licence. You can also vote, elope and get married. Be careful on the outlaw side of things though. No more juvenile courts to save your sorry ass!

"21, woohoo!"
Clearly, you've just developed the skills to handle and hold your alcohol overnight. Now if you could cooperate a little, I'm trying to get you to vomit outside the car.

"Sullen times, babe! It's the 25th. Quarter-life-crisis just decided to bite me on the bum!"
True, presuming you're going to live to be a 100-year-old hag. If you're not meant to live a day over 60, then you're just 5 short of reaching your mid-life. Need more vodka?

"Three-Oh! You'll need Jeetendra's tabs to keep you going through the day!"
Jeetendra's been 30 for the past 30 years. It just dawned on me that they were trying to target my dad and grand-dad with the same pill!

Oh and then we have the un-missable (if that's even a word) classics that everyone's subjected to in one way, shape or form.

"You've reached marriageable age..."
"At your age, you should be changing diapers, not jobs!"

Really? So hang on a second there.

How come we never hear:
"You've reached the age of wanting to kill all your children?"
"It's okay, you're in the age of falling out of love."
"You'll be a nymphomaniac between 33 and 35. It's the age, they say."

See, if everyone could just accept that some of these anomalies are age-appropriate too, we'd stop freaking ourselves out so often!

But as people get older they like to skip over some of these specifics...

So that you can tie the knot, share a bed and bank balance with someone (how can you be so selfish and have the whole bed to yourself?!?!), become fat and have babies, just so that they can come back to you and ask,

"Oh, she's turned one!?! Has she started walking just yet?"

Sadists!

A little dash of Amreeka

You know what it feels like to give that usual smile to your paani-puri waala down the road, right!? Of course you do! Didn't we like totally like accommodate like this-is-what-the-next-gen-should-know kinda jazz from Family Guy and South Park? Aren't we in the world of Simi selecting and simpering over pubescent celebrity men in true cougar town shows? Haven't we often felt like Central Park was just a couple blocks down our street?
So then you know what I'm talk about, right? NO?!?

See, I thought we were doing everything the American way - where it's perfectly normal for a bus driver to greet you with a chirpy 'good morning', and for you to wave back without ever stopping to wonder if he's going to hijack the bus to molest-station.

"That happened in the late nineties, early two thousands...!!" I tchah-tchah'ed to myself all along the way. India's changed a lot since. What with FB, Twitter and the whole gamut of worldwide people on the computer screen, we sure have adapted well now, haven't we?

And so I went to the same old paani-puri waala who I'd visit regularly on my yearly sojourns to Mumbai.

With a mouthful of spicy gol guppas, an almost runny nose, and a sentence punctuated with appropriately slurp-ish sounds, he seemed pleased to have found my appreciation for his culinary skills.

"Hellooo Maydumji. Kaise ho aap? Aajkal aap dikhte hi nahi ho" he managed to mutter through his permanent smile in one uninterrupted breath.

I exchanged the usual pleasantries and made small talk, until I touched upon a seemingly personal question.
"Waise, aapka naam kya hai?" I asked, wondering if his name would reveal a little about his roots.

The habitual smile dimmed behind his glorious moustache. He focused on cracking the epicenter of the next puri with absolute concentration, and coyly revealed "Prem." 

I almost choked on the gol guppa in my mouth, and the spicy paani felt like a shot of wasabi streaming down those nostrils.
"Prem Dayal" "Prem Dayal Shukla," was repeated in quick succession which, if said with a little more panache, would've passed off as a good local impersonation of the classic 007.

Beaming ear-to-ear his annoyingly white, symmetrically toothed smile had returned to his oily face. Putting two extra puris on my plate, he casually asked me the same question.

Oops! Spurted it out in a matter-of-fact manner. How often does one go to their favourite street chaat corner with an alias identity in mind? Okay, I said it! The local paani-puri waala knows my name.

So what? It's not like he can do much with it. It is the American way. It's cool to know people on a first name basis.

So what if I now have a creepy looking picture of a 'Shukla' requesting to befriend me on Facebook!

ShotGlass gets a little Facelift

So I have strayed away from what you'd have expected otherwise.
*guilty as charged*
*insert an air of defiance*

But I've come to realize that my shot-stories are now beginning to look like doppelgangers of Rakhi Sawant - ill-timed, obnoxious and fake! So those little spurts of random imagination that seem to come together from la-la land have been handcuffed and thrown into the boot of the car.

What does one expect, you ask?

There will be moments of uncontrollable verbal diarrhea where I will vomit on your front porch and all over your shoes... but for the most part, I will try to keep it short.
(As Calvin {of Calvin & Hobbes fame} says:
"As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.")

Digression: What's up with squiggly brackets, huh?! Makes me think of BODMAS in math class!
*throws up again*

Coming back to our old charm - as much as you may deny it, I know you secretly love those skimpily-clad-implant-induced-item-number girls. So every once in a while when Rakhi does make an appearance on this blog, be nice and give her an applause!

Inside Out

I smiled at the morning light that peeped
through unwashed, mud-stained windows.

Super sunbeam peeled through stubborn grime
and landed on the fourth marble tile from the left.

The crummy dirt-rimmed patches of nastiness on glass
made a mosaic of uneven polka-dotted shadows.

And my white little pariah in the spotlight
was a dalmatian gaining enlightenment.





Photo Credit: My dear friends, Ashwini & Kunal

All I Want is for You to...

Surprise me with custard apples in April

and snowflakes in Bombay's November.

Find me a flawless orange maple leaf

and ink my back with a black sea horse.

Sing to me with made-up words

and recite about love in a foreign tongue.

Cajole me into wearing fuschia silk

and tie up my hair in an unkempt braid.

Touch me without touching me

I wish to bathe in your warmth.

Spoil me for I can be spoiled

by nothing and everything.

Hold me on the brink of life

and breathe harder when I miss my breath.

Take me back to that little girl

who believed in flying with gossamer wings.

How Fruitful Was That?

In the orchard of excellence, the fallen peach was graded a scoffing 'F' for her behaviour.

Well-ripened and unabashed she lived by her will.
And plunged to a splattering death close to the family roots.

Unlike her perfectly plucked sisters,
who were last seen in the old man's commode.



Photo Credit: Designer's Terminal #66

Scratch Scratch!

Stars are proof that the guy up there has an itchy scalp and a severe case of dandruff.

Can someone at least tell him that he shouldn't dare to wear Black!!

The Best place on the Planet!

I live in a city of quirky coexistences and visual oddities.

Where else will you find a Maserati and horse-led tuk tuk sharing road space before a street light, a street urchin with a smart phone, and a cab driver with a degree in Mechanical Engineering!

I ♥ Mumbai!

Gape, you Ape!

He gave a full-toothed yawn to reveal Mumbai's skyline on his lower jaw.

STFU!

If you claim your life's an open book, then why do you only narrate from those dog-eared pages?!?!

Amazing People

I'm quite amazed at how dedicated some people are to their thankless jobs, like this sari-draper at this local ethnic-wear store.
Despite having to dodge between 4 women, constant tantrums, endless trials, and the possibility of not making a sale; he folded, pleated and did the whole nine yards (literally) with a smile on his face!

Dawned in Mumbai!

Surreal Sunday!

The axis hasn't jolted the Earth. The sky hasn't lost its blue.

But the sun has indeed risen from another side...

Keep Walking...

Crisp cold wintery morn with a wind chill in every alley. Busy feet stomp around at a practiced pace.

Some strut, tap or click their heels. Others amble or swing to balance their gait. 

It's only Monday, sweetheart! 

Keep walking...

Glide away, Bitches!

With a blade-thin strip of shiny metal wedged into the center of each shoe, they glide across in concentric circles.

Ice skating is a fun sport, especially if you sit to snigger outside the snow rink!