It’s hard to imagine that just last weekend, I did a quick Bangalore-Chennai-Mumbai trip. Was it really just a week before? Shit man! Feels like it was last year!

Last Friday evening, I flew to Bangalore and straight away hit Hard Rock Cafe. LoLy and Taploo joined me. And Taploo and I drank till we felt good about life. LoLy couldn’t drink as much. She had to drive. And cops in Bang are hyper when it comes to Alcohol testing. We crashed at her place. Except that I crashed like I was not going to get up ever again. While she and Taploo made dinner and all that. Of course, I never got up to eat it. When I finally did get up, LoLy was busy crashing. And when everyone was finally awake, we hit some random theater to watch Pipli Live. We were about 20 minutes late but we liked the movie anyway. Funny movie. Good movie.

I went off to see Mintoo chacha after the movie. He had a baby boy few months ago whom I hadn’t yet seen. Aakarsh. And Aakarsh just did not find me aakarshit enough I guess. Because he just did not smile for any pic. Except for one millisecond – which I actually did capture (just one of the thousand shots). And then I took a bus to Chennai.  I was in Chennai the next day morning. Sunday. Independence Day. And Chennai smelt the way it has always smelt.

Tiwari was to come and pick me up and all that. But the bastard kept crashing. So I went to insti instead. He finally called up while I was on my way to IIT. I asked him to come to IIT as well. And when I asked him to do that, it felt like a moment straight out of 3 iditots. Except that Tota wasn’t around. And no Chatur as well. I guess a brief pang of nostalgia hit me very strongly the moment I entered the IIT gate.

Tiwari and I attended the morning ritual I-day ceremony hosted by Diro. And my God – we still have the same diro – and he looked and spoke just like he did when we had first seen him seven years ago. Convocation! Long time! Brief pangs of nostalgia kept hitting me that day. We ran into a department prof as well. He was happy for me. And for Tiwari. And were were happy for him. People in India are usually happy on the morning of 15th August. LOL!

Since Tiwari lived close to IIT, we returned to insti later that evening. I wanted to meet Lux. I dragged Tiwari along. Lux made filter coffee for us. And we chit-chatted. Nn joined too (Nn and Lux are a couple – Nn had taught me thermoD in my first sem). He told us that Bhand was likely to pass out this year. And we all chuckled together. ‘English’ was the language that connected different parts of India during the British Raj – it was the link language. In IIT Madras, Bhand is the unifying factor.

We did some night photography in the campus and when we returned to Tiwari’s place  later that night, I got myself hooked to Indian Idol Grand Finale. For the past few months, this show had been our favourite Mon-Tue 9-10 pm pass time in the Gandhinagar guest house. And our only pass-time actually. I was happy to see Sriram win. Though I must say I wouldn’t have minded the award going to Rakesh as well. I could not sleep for the rest of that night because there were just too many mosquitoes. So it was with an unnecessary night-out that I finally left Tiwari’s place. Early in the morning. For my US – visa interview. The real reason I was in Chennai anyway.

There was the typical hoopla poopla – queue, frisking, waiting time and all that. But the actual interview didn’t even last a minute. The three of us got a 10 years businesss Visa to US – Hanuman, Singa and I. I worked from my Chennai office that day. I called Gaya for a lunch get-together in a nearby Subway. It was great to catch up with her after about two years. We had acted together in a stupid short-film that never got completed. The trailer had been good though. And since it’s been two years I think it is okay if I declare this publicly that I had kind of crush on Gaya when I had first met her (take that as a compliment if you are reading this Gaya ). Except that she wasn’t single then. The good part is she is still seeing the same boy. I love couples like that – they remind you that it’s indeed possible!

Tiwari and  I caught up once more at the Chennai airport. He works at the airport. No, he is not the guy who asks for your id when you want to enter the terminal. But LOL – it would actually be funny to have a friend  like that as well. Anyway. Yeah, so Tiwari is working on the expansion of the Chennai airport. And after eating idli and all that with him, I flew to Mumbai. Subbu lives close to the aiport these days. He came over and we booked a taxi to Firang Pani. I had already asked Chutki to come over. She arrived in a few years time. And once again, we drank till we felt good about life. Chutki presented me a rakhi when were about to depart. And some pastry too. And I was so happy I finally met her.

So that was it. Last weekend! Extended weekend if you think about it. And how has it been ever since I flew back to Ahmedabad on Tuesday morning? Sit and work. Go and attend meetings. Work after the meetings. Make phone calls to US and Canada during the night. Reply to business emails – day and night. Coordinate with a million organizations. Find time to do research work in between. And time to write new proposals as well. Sleep if possible. It had never been this crazy. I could not go running a single day after coming back. Finally at  03 AM on a Sunday I have the time to write a blog. My God! Heh – funny life. And in two week’s time, this funny life will keep me away from India for about a month – would be traveling extensively in North America. Have fun folks!

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Two days back, I came to Patna. I reached in the morning and I ran in the evening. This is the route that I ran. Between that, I also submitted a proposal on behalf of my company – the real reason why I was sent to Patna at the first place. Between that, I also had time to play with Anshu.

My baba (grandpa) has a house in Patna (the dotted balloon in the linked map) along with chote baba (his younger brother). The two houses are inside the same campus and only a staircase separates them.  But there are two separate gates – you can use either of them to reach the staircase. Baba’s house had been locked for the past six months because baba-dadi had been staying at papa’s place in Deoghar. So when I reached Patna, I stayed with chote baba all day. And I played with Anshu, my cousin. All it took to get the shy fellow talking were few chocolates. And my camera. I clicked his pics like crazy. And he posed like crazy. And then he also clicked some. And he did a good job I must tell you (are you reading this Ali?). And then I bid him good-bye to hit the road.

As I ran I remembered a lot of things. The St. Karen’t school bus-stop. What was my bus number? Z7? Z9? Some shit like that. The National Seeds Corporation, up till which I used to run from  my house. Only for some time when I was very very small and mummy still lived with me and Subbu and Sweety in Patna. And papa used to work in different towns. To come back on weekends. Till one day Papa took mummy and Subbu and Sweety to his place forever.  I was in seventh class. I was left in Patna. I was told that there was no good school at papa’s place. It didn’t matter for Sweety who was in class V or Subbu who was in IIIrd. But it mattered for me. I was in class VII. And I bought this logic. And for most of the time after that, I stayed with baba-dadi whenever they were in Patna and with chote baba-dadi when baba-dadi were not available. Mintoo chacha was my best friend in the house then. He had a Hero Puch. And I had a retarded sky blue coloured TVS Suzuki which I started riding once I reached Xth class. The bike was fourteen years old then. And Neelabh and I had a hell of a good timing riding it. I sold the bike for 3,000 bucks when I left Patna after Xth.

As I ran I noticed a lot of things. So many shops in Patel Nagar were still there, just like the way they had been ever since I had known what shops were. The shop from where I used to borrow comic-books at 50 paise per book. Khusboo general store from where I used to buy pens and gifts and very rarely – a cold-drink (one cold-drink in a month was a luxury). Even St. Albert’s, my school before St. Karen’s, was there in Patel Nagar.  I remembered the Bengali girl Ratna who lived close to my house and with whom I had a massive fight once in class III because she had borrowed a book called ‘100 natak’ from me but had returned it with missing pages. I remembered wading through water-clogged streets between our house and the school during the monsoons with Ratna, her small sister and Sweety, dressed in our sky blue shirts and navy blue pants. I never spoke to Ratna after our fight and I wonder where she is now. While I moved to St. Karen’s in class IV, she continued with St. Albert’s and we lost touch.

Baba-dadi and papa were to arrive in the evening. When I called them up to ask where they were, papa told me the train had been stuck in some station for over one and a half hours. And then my phone got discharged. And for the first time in its life – the charger stopped working. So I had no clue when baba-dadi and papa would come. Chote baba-dadi went to sleep. I kept waiting. I found Sweety online and asked her to call papa. She said she didn’t have his number. I felt like telling her papa must be so proud of her. I didn’t. I just asked her to call mummy and take papa’s number from her.  It took her half an hour to do so. Finally when she called papa, he told her he was about to reach home. Soon he reached home. And baba-dadi. It must have been about 12 in the night. I was seeing baba-dadi after more than an year. They looked frail. And weaker. And sadder. Exhausted. They had been in a train for about 11 hours when it should have taken less than six hours. Welcome to Bihar.

I hadn’t asked chote baba for keys to his side’s gate because I had thought baba-dadi would have keys to their side’s gate anyway.  Dadi did have some keys with her but she could not find the right one. So after wasting lot of time in the middle of the night trying to enter the house, we had to finally wake up chote baba. He opened his gate. And then everyone  could reach the staircase.

We climbed up. Chote baba went back to his house. I told him I would shift to baba’s. We opened baba’s house. It was full of dust, litter and dead roaches, rats and lizards. And there was no water because the water pump had stopped working. We were in a dirty house. But this was also the house where I had grown up – where I used to have a room of my own – and a table  with three drawers covered with Boomer stickers – a red jute carpet – dark curtains – a sofa set – a million magic books – the ICSE books – sketch pens – a blood-soaked Valentine Day card – portraits – sketches. It always feels special to be in the house where you have grown up. Even when it is full of dead lizards. We were a family. Three generations. We slept inside the dirt house and felt good about it.

I got a bottle of ‘Minute Maid Nimbu Fresh’ for dadi in the afternoon the other day and she liked it so much that she asked me if it had ‘alcohol’ in it. It’s just nimbu pani dadi. I assured her. And if you really think about it, what is life but nimbu pani. Relish it. And remember it. And once in a while, write about it.

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Tota was in town for Haileo’s marriage. Personally, for me, that was the best part about the whole affair. To have him around gives back to me all the lost days of IIT – especially the fist few years. There is a kind of friendship where the soul connects effortlessly. I think that applies to Tota and I. You don’t have to talk about anything when the soul connects. You just have to be around each other. And you feel better. And full of life. You keep singing songs in chorus till your lungs burst. And the lungs never burst.

Every time I see Dhee, she appears bigger. May be this applies to every small child. Dhee is a small child. And she is adorable.

I took up cycling again about two weeks ago. I have this gut feeling that I would get to peddle quite a bit in a foreign land. Soon.

I know it’s a random post. To render it randomer, let me throw in few caricatures that I made today. Because Subbu wanted them. And if you are into praying and all that, please pray that Ma-kali gets well soon (she hurt herself yesterday in an accident).

PS: Characters in this post described here.

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I find it funny to wish my parents a happy marriage anniversary. I find it funny because it is difficult to imagine that they hadn’t been together since eternity at the first place. In any case, my life didn’t exist till they got married – so wishing them a happy marriage anniversary is almost like talking to someone about the Jurassic era or about the Indian freedom struggle – you know these existed, but you can never really feel what they were like. So I find it funny but I wished them a few days ago anyway. I wished them because Sweety reminded me about their anniversary. And then dad told me, there was nothing to celebrate about without his children around. And then I thought I would sigh an aww. I didn’t. I just told him we had just met in Hyderabad and we shall keep meeting like that from time to time.

The anchor in the pink outfit on the Indian Idol stage in Himalaya mall yesterday was dressed in a pretty body-hugging dress. Her bum jutted out. Guys look at bums of girls when the bum juts out. Bum bum bole, masti me dole. LOL. That was sick. So I kept looking at her bum till I got bored and then I kept looking at the crowd. A mild brawl erupted near the weak barricade festooning the stage. Some dhishoon dhishoom and all that. The Indian Idol folks kept singing anyway. And soon even all the fray and stuff died down. And we got bored of the singing as well. So we left the place. Bali and I.

I have been feeling imprisoned since quite some time now. Nothing really gives “immense” pleasure. Chutki kinda sensed this when I spoke to her for like an hour day before. Chutki has got a nice job in Mumbai and I feel good about it.

Talking about Mumbai, I am planning to be there on 24th of July. It’s a Saturday. I have my birthday on Sunday. I am planning to throw a party and call everyone who cares to come -  Tota, Maina, Sadhu, Chutki, Til. We will eat, drink, sing and dance. I will grow old some more. I will feel good about life. I might feel out of prison for a day may be.

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I am kinda doped you now. Right now. As I am typing this. tick tick tick. They call it the side-effect. The drug is Cephalexin. A dermatologist prescribed this for me so that my chin could get rid of a grotesque puss-oozing wound – around which now lie scattered a million more small pimplish type yuck-max mounds. I don’t know how much help Cephalexin has been (my chin is as fucked up as it has been since the last few days), but I do know I am getting mad with its side-effects. Let’s quote Wiki on that:

Side effects from Cephalexin include – but are not limited to – diarrhea, dizziness, headache, indigestion, joint pain, stomach pain, and tiredness. The drug can also cause yellowing of the eyes or skin; red, blistered, swollen or peeling skin; unusual bruising or bleeding; decreased urination; severe cramps; confusion.

Every day I think of giving up. Every day I swallow the pill thinking – what the hell. Everyday I wander around in a fucked up state. And to top that, I was caught up in the middle of working days staying in a place where there is no distinction between office and home. It feels stupid to take leave here till you drop dead – which I did kind of – Wednesday afternoon. I even smsed Hanuman that I was taking a day off. You can’t crash in office and get paid for it. May be you can but you shouldn’t. Whatever. May be I was too doped to simply crash off.

I don’t watch football and all that. But the dope effect combined with Bali and Ali’s super enthu for FIFA kinda dragged me into it. There is nothing else I can do anyway when my brain goes all boom except watch TV.

Bro is doing some pseud-giri by creating dezains.com and emailing everybody that “dezains” has “hired” Vatsap. LOL. I have already received few “WTF” messages and I can’t help smiling. Bloody bro doesn’t even agree to pay me 200 bucks per caricature. He can bloody well lick my ass in that case. Unless of course he can find a software to create 80% of any caricature so that I only need to touch up.

Shit I am feeling pretty good after having written so much after ages. I guess I should blog more often in that case. At least as long as I keep swallowing Cephalexin. Reading On the Road these days. And kinda feel like dying more often than not. It’s a weird kind of sadness. Or may be just this dope thing. Shit. Bye.

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It feels weird to say so, but I sniff death around the corner. The cool thing about writing such lines is that if the writer indeed dies, the readers shall be forced to wonder about the strong premonitory abilities of the writer; while if nothing of the sort sensed happens, the readers wouldn’t remember about what was written anyway.

I had purchased a book named Snow in February this year. I finished reading it only today. And now I want to go to Turkey. To Kars specifically. And live their for some time. Till I get bored. As always. Until then, I will probably read about Turkey some more. Until then, you might like to read some of the quotes from the book – though I must admit that without the context in which they have been used, they might not depict their real meaning.

‘There are two kinds of men,’ said Ka didactically. ‘The first kind does not fall in love until he’s seen how the girl eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she’s angry with her father, and what stories people tell about her. The second type of man – and I am in this category – can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.’

It might not happen in the first instant, but within ten minutes of meeting a man, a woman has clear idea of who he is, or at least he might be, and her heart has already told her whether she’s going to fall in love with him. But her head needs time to decide what her heart has decided.

Ka new very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents.

…there are women who can’t resist a man who believes in nothing but love.

But there’s not a coward in the world who doesn’t dream of the day when he might find himself capable of great courage…

…people who seek only happiness never find it.

‘A woman doesn’t commit suicide because she’s lost her pride; she does it to show her pride.’

‘Women kill themselves because they hope to gain something,’ said Kadife. ‘Men kill themselves because they have lost all hope of gaining anything.’

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