There will be blood... lots of it

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There's a show that airs on the History Channel called "History's Greatest Warriors" and in its existence as a program can be found irrefutable proof that the world will never know complete peace as imagined by John Lennon, at least as long as it is run by men. There is something about violence especially in its televised or dramatized version that inevitably draws us menfolk to it to like flies to clotting blood. Not that all of us are thirsting to get destructive, but we sure as hell want to find out more about it.

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Coming back to the aforementioned TV show, it pits comparable legendary warriors from different parts of the world and time periods in a showdown which history had unfortunately missed out on setting up. So we have a bunch of computer guys, martial arts experts and doctors coming together to analyze and ooh-aah over the devastating effect of the warriors' special weapons and techniques on a dummy which replicates the exact texture and strength of human flesh and bones. The outcome of a Samurai sword on a neck and a Viking axe on the abdomen is bound to be gory but I watch, transfixed by the spectacle. The icing on the cake is the final computer simulation where the two warriors square off in a spectacular fight to the finish.

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And it's not just passive spectatorship either! Often times, I find myself cheering for a particular side. I was overjoyed when the street smart American Indian warrior, the Apache overcame the Gladiator from Rome in a swift hamstring cutting and then jugular vein slicing knife move! I was delighted when the disciplined Japanese Samurai absorbed the power surges and then clinically dispatched the extremely strong but equally crude Viking. Crushed is how I would describe myself, when the Ninja got his backside handed to him on a platter by the Greek age Spartan. A recent episode when the former USSR commando, the Spetznaz taught a hard lesson in combat to the American Green Beret is one for the pleasant side of the memory bank. All of the preceding combat was of course virtual in every sense of the word but if there is to be such a war, I always would want to know what channel it is on.

Death in the afternoon

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Truth as has been repeated over a trillion times already is always stranger than fiction. A conversation over my desk phone at work on a hot day in May was just another example. No one could possibly imagine such a scenario and if you had read it in a story, you'd have dismissed it as just another author indulging in his much-abused right to creative freedom ignoring the requirement for a dialogue to sound real.

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It was post lunchtime and I was in the torturous state between much required wakefulness and all-too-tempting sleepiness typical to that period of the work-day when my desk phone rang and I picked up if only to take my mind off the survival challenge it had taken on. A sombre voice over the phone asked for Colleague 1 with whom I share my desk number. I looked around for him and he wasn't in the vicinity. So I asked Colleague 2, a very close friend and flatmate of his if he wanted to talk to the voice on the phone. Colleague 2 came to my desk and after a brief conversation on the phone said to me laying the phone receiver aside "It's from the Nokia Care Centre where Colleague 1 had just given his cell-phone for repair this morning. Guy won't tell me what he wants to convey and insists on speaking to Colleague 1 in person!"

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Both of us were naturally mystified by this secrecy and just the next moment, Colleague 1 entered the quadrant. We hailed him and he came up to the phone. He too talked very briefly before ending the call and he had a look of amusement mixed with wonder when he was done. He turned to us and went "Never had a call like this before! The guy at the service centre said that they were not able to repair the phone. For that they were sorry!"

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The only rational explanation could be that the Nokia Care people, like most of us, were brought on the most typical of Bollywood fare. Remember the innumerable movies in which the worried family/son/brother/sister/boyfriend/girlfriend waits outside the emergency room with the red light indicating that the operation was on, glowing? Then the doctor would come out, all serious and grim and the person/persons outside would rush to his side with a questioning look on their faces and we as the audience would already know what he was about to say, essentially "I am extremely sorry. I tried my best!" So it was with such appropriate gravity, that the death of a cell-phone was announced.

Arrival

Image by Manu_H via Flickr

I so wanted Germany to be the first foreign country that I visited. In a way, it was. My first footstep outside India was at Frankfurt airport, the home base of the Lufthansa flight I had taken from Calcutta. I enquired about a transit visa to step out in the land of Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Volkswagen as I was to spend 11 hours there before my connecting flight to Boston took off. But my plans were stone-walled by a tough looking German cop who informed me that there was no such permission available on such short notice. So back I went to the lounge and waited.

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It was night by the time I had cleared customs at Logan International Airport on the 21st of June, 2008, a Saturday. I entered into the Arrivals area and got myself a few dollars in change to use on the Verizon payphone kiosks. I had my aunt's cellphone number written down somewhere and to this day, I can't understand why I couldn't use that payphone to make her a call. It was just a regular payphone kiosk like any other in the world but I struggled to make it work. Seeing my plight, a cop tried to help me out but ended up thinking of me as yet another weird foreigner invading his country as the number I gave him wouldn't go through though it was the right number. I had no option but to hope that either my aunt or my cousin brother would sneak a peek into the waiting area and identify me among the hundreds of passengers biding their time there.

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A group of beautiful Latino girls were also in wait for somebody to arrive so it wasn't exactly a bad time to be hanging around. My attention then wandered to the complicated perpetual machine on display there with the rolling, dropping and leaping balls on a variety of mechanical contraptions reminding me that this was the city of MIT and Harvard. The arrangement kept me engaged long enough for my mildly familiar welcome party to show up. Over the period of the next one and a half years, they were to become family to me but right then I had had only a fleeting acquaintance with them back in Calcutta.

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I hopped into their car and as we drove out on the maze of beautiful, night time streets that is the Logan airport, Big Dig and Tobin bridge area of Boston, my mind was still absorbing the new sensations all around me, a new country, a new life. One thing in particular struck my mind even though later, I would learn that it was just my way of coping up with the wonderful sensation of being in a new place totally unlike any place I had been to before.

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I was looking at the traffic signals on the roads very closely and saw that when the lights went green, they were a solid circle of green even at intersections. In Indian road intersections, I was always used to green arrows pointing in all the legal directions that the driver could take. Here it seemed that everyone already knew where they were going on the road and in life. That was to become the most abiding if somewhat false first image of what the USA was amongst all the new things that caught my attention. A land where when the signal said "Go", everyone somehow knew where they were headed.

A bad day for dreaming

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My job is way too mundane. For whom exactly am I putting up with all this pressure for? If I were putting in so much effort on something my heart lies in, what a wonderful life and a wonderfully happy me, it would have led to! Do I really see myself doing this job or something of this sort till I reach the age of 70, sometime in 2054? Home to office and office to home, is there something more to life than this dreary routine? When exactly will the compensation I receive for spending the majority of my life sitting in a cubicle be just right? Can the value of my life be estimated by an annual package or should it even allowed to be measured in so gross a manner?

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All right, so who pays for the petrol in my beloved motorcycle? And the growing stacks of unread books that I keep ordering online? Year 2010 has already seen me do major trips to Himachal Pradesh, Goa, the Sunderbans and  a cross-India road trip, so wherefore did the money come from? Well, what about the Airtel broadband connection where I spend learning and writing about things in our infinitely interesting world? Remember the time when I had get back to work even though a week was left on my official leave just to while away the time and get back momentum in my life again? Do I not get to do all the things I want to anyway, without having to put the most basic of my expenditure requirements at risk by choosing an alternative career? Honestly, if this isn't the good life, then what is?

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It's a sinusoidal wave of questions with crests and troughs on my personal happiness index. Is it fair to expect it to flatline on the happier side of things? Who on earth is perfectly happy? Is there someone else I'd rather be? If life is a compromise and acceptance is the only way forward, then there is that one day when this truth shines out like a diamond in the dirt. End of the month. Pay day.

Rules of the road

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In case, you are planning to take a 2300 kilometre road-trip through the case study of unpredictability that is India in the company of your beyond-retirement-age parents and a permanently immature dog, here are a few handy pointers towards what to expect:

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1. You should accept for a fact that your dad has never been a fan of your driving and thinks that anything above 40 kilometres per hour even on the emptiest and widest of superhighways is 'dangerous driving' when you are at the wheel. However when he himself takes over the driving seat then the speed limits can be doubled or tripled because you see "He has been driving for close to 40 years now!".

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2. The roads of India have a tendency to literally shake up things every once in a while by putting in a huge pothole in the midst of kilometres of smooth road. Too much of a good thing is bad, thinks the Government of India. But when you are at the wheel and hit that pothole with a not-so-pretty clunk from the car's underside, an immediate reaction from your dad will be "You'll break the axle! What are you doing? You'll break the axle!" followed by further tirades about how you were totally insensitive to how a car needs to be protected from the vagaries of the road. A similar pothole when driven over by dad at the same speed and producing exactly the same sound leads to a loud clearing of throats, giggles on the part of the co-passengers and studied long silences on the part of the driver.

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3. Your mom will be the most cheerful of companions as long as the sun is bright outside and the scenery is something to remember. All calls on your never-out-of-tower-range cell phones will be greeted enthusiastically by her, telling everyone and their grandmothers about how much she was enjoying the adventure of this trip. But the moment, the engine starts overheating or the sun is on the wane or there are bad traffic/road conditions (as is a quite common occurrence on an Indian road trip), boy, will she give the male occupants of the car a hard time. "I told you we should have taken the train. My life is so full of people so who just can't behave normally!" will be an oft-repeated refrain which you learn to accept without retorting (that'd be suicidal on your part) for the period of time it takes to find a mechanic/find a hotel/find a clear stretch of road.

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4. You are not allowed to get angry and complain about the wayward human beings who invariably jump out onto the road when least expected and when the slowest of tempos, overloaded and blocking the road ahead, refuses to let you overtake. Any expressions of disgust will invoke a wise "This is not 'your America'! This is how India is and you have to adjust your driving likewise." from your dad ignoring the completely natural expression of bewilderment on your face on hearing the words 'your America'. So now in the eyes of your dad, not only are you a bad driver but also a traitor to your country!

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5. Hotels as a rule are not very eager to allow dogs into their rooms even if it is a tiny miniature dachshund like yours. When you finally convince a hotel clerk, after talking to his manager and the manager's manager about how well-behaved your dog is and about how she would not cause any trouble to other people in the hotel, as proof the dog will step out and pee right on a ground-level board where the hotel's name is displayed. You may hurriedly throw a fistful of sand to cover up this instance of misbehaviour but then later your normally quiet dog will bark her heart out and chase the room service staff out of the room when they show up. Good behaviour at home does not readily translate to good behaviour on a road-trip.

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This is only a sampling of expectations to have and there's of course the more memorable parts of making such a trip. These are times when you really forget that the whole purpose of making this trip was fun.