The great big ruse

This past weekend, I was at my aunt's place and in the midst of a commercial break for a cooking show, the conversation took a dramatic turn for the serious. We (my aunt's family and me) talked about the fallacy that is democracy. Democracy we said was what kept a smile on our face as we basked in the notion that we were at an equal level to the Prime Minister, while the powerful and the mighty robbed us blind. What after all is a vote? Will it make any difference at all to the massive forces that shape the grimy underbelly of every democracy as politicians make a wonderful show of the importance of the common man every 5 years to ensure a life of comfort and easy pickings for themselves over the next 5 years.

Democracy seems like a joke, an exercise in worthlessness and misplaced self-importance. Self-importance or the much maligned word 'ego' is central to the idea of democracy. It is this insane belief that one vote can determine who sweeps into power and proceeds to fulfil his promises that makes villagers from the furthest villages brave the sun and forgo a day of work just to line up at the polling booth. We the educated are really busy sneering at such simple mindedness. These are the times when I feel that knowledge is a really bad thing. When we learn too much and begin to see the world in its myriad shades of grey, the cancer of cynicism gnaws away at the last remaining positive gut feelings. We the supposedly 'educated' elite rapidly lose sight of the fact that one is a crowd, in fact one is an army.

Democracy is fuelled by the unlimited power of a man's dreams. Dreams which say that he is one and equal with all his fellow men if not better and is a stakeholder in all that he can see. The dream is misleading all right but that is the greatest gift that could be given to any man, the ability to dream. Not all may be able to flesh out their dreams in the end, but it's their possibility of becoming true that make democracy such a beautiful concept. Much as I hate Ayn Rand, there is one thing on which I'll have to agree with her. There is nothing more spectacular than a man standing his ground all alone, oblivious to the world's insistent pressures to conform, intent on his craft. Democracy is the only political system that allows every man a genuine chance to reach into that glorious part of himself. If all the world's merely a stage, democracy sure brings along the best freestyle performers.

And I try, and I try...

I find myself in this kind of a bind all too frequently. It's been a week since I returned from my first visit to California and my first glimpse of the Pacific. My head is swimming with images from that trip, my ears have recorded the unique soundscapes and my fingers are literally swelling with all the tales that they want to type out. 

But that's where the problem lies. I'll probably need another blog just to get down everything I want to about San Francisco and California. It's always like that for me when I return from any place that has long been on my wishlist and has now swamped my senses. It was like this for Benares too when I returned with a thousand vivid situations for my writing to exploit and all I have on record is a single paragraph for my blog. A similar task beckons tantalisingly again and I find myself overwhelmed once more by the magnitude of what awaits me. As I psyche myself upto the point when I actually write something about what has been the best trip of my life, make do with the extended album of images from the link below!

http://picasaweb.google.com/anuranjan.roy/SanFranciscoTrip#slideshow  

Salvation through chicken

It would be one of those dreary winter evenings of Kurukshetra. I would be ambling my way through the brick passages to the mess as slowly as possible. That's because I knew that the dreadful combo of oily sticky 'bature' and paltry 'chole' awaited me. Then I would catch a glimpse of Suman a.k.a Baba-ji emerge out of the darkness into the patch of light cast by the volleyball floodlights clutching a plate topped with masala from the mess. That'd bring an extraordinary spark of life in me. That'd mean "Chicken night".

You see, Baba, my pal and Mechanical batchmate from Nepal was our resident chicken expert. Indeed he was probably the only one in our college gang that could tell a knife from a frying pan. We were indebted to him for the infinite number of times that he had saved us from death by inconceivably bad mess food.

I'd follow him, a rat to his Pied Piper, right to his room and find the rest of the gang already salivating at the prospects of what was to come. I wouldn't even be pissed off at their not informing me, because there was an unwritten rule : "Where there is chicken, there is Roy" and so they'd know that there was no way I was going to miss any event that involved chicken. In all fairness, I was the only guy who'd actually lend a helping hand to Baba, unlike the others who used all the time in which the chicken was cooking to take pot-shots at Baba for his "inner woman" and stuff on those lines. There was a solid reason why he was called Baba. It was because like the weather of the Himalayan kingdom from where he had descended unto Kurukshetra, he was always ice cool and impervious to the multiple prongs that my gang tried to poke him with.

As the chicken slowly absorbed the taste of the masala and gained its fiery character stoking the furnaces of our hunger, we'd beg Baba to go easy on the spices. We even managed to swiftly deposit half of his estimated chicken masala outside in the bushes once or twice for the sake of our young lives. But Baba had to have his own way of getting back, so he'd always end up making something that would literally smoke our brains out. We took what we got and we loved it huffing and puffing though we might be.

The top competitors for the title of "Prize hog" would be me, the skinny rag from India and Rajeev, the chicken incinerating monster from the Pacific nation of Fiji, thoughtfully nicknamed "Fiji"! All possible damage done, the gang would sneak out onto to the two chairs and beds kept outside in the common verandah. There we'd sit passing a measly Navy Cut or two around and gaze at the stars in silence. Not that any of us was in a poetic mood at all, it was just that we were stuffed to the gills with chicken and rice and our thought processes were already stewed in Baba's masalas. Now that all of us are thrown out to the farthest corners of the world, we do fall back on the memories of these nights as the epitome of what college was to us. Back then we were just a bunch of guys stuck in the moment, stuck in it together, not exercising their minds at all and therefore intensely at peace with the world.

A curiously happy day

Never ever thought that I would write such a post, but I have to speak of the first time that I actually liked a day of work at the office and that day is today. The day starts normally enough with the cab impatiently honking its horn in front of my apartment buliding as I curse myself for the umpteenth time for not being ready on time. I stagger into office crushed under the weight of the long list of jobs that I have to get done both in and outside the office before the day is through. By the time, I have blundered my way only through about 2-3 of them, it is time to head out of office to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Taunton to apply for my American driving license. For a change, the cab comes right on call, an indication that things are looking up. I land up in the RMV office and the documentation process goes like a breeze. That is one big furrow off my forehead. I am one step closer to my simple wish of renting a truly American car like a Mustang or a Jeep, and driving down these smooth, broad roads that seem to pepper America which are absolutely begging to be driven on and fast.

Next stop is the manager's office for the apartment where I live. There are a number of legal agreements which needed to signed and the fellow has shown no inclination of picking up the phone. So I have to skip out of office to deal with him in person as my office hours are the same as his, and I couldn't hope to find him on an holiday. Turns out that the fellow's office is locked, and just when things were about to get sour, I call an alternate number to find my problems solved on the phone itself. The sunshine seems brighter by the minute. As I wait for the cab to show up again, I sneak into my flat and fix myself a peg of rum with sausages. Now I am really happy.

A hurriedly sipped peg of rum later, the cab shows up and zips me back to office on an empty road. I catch no traffic at all! That's a good omen again. I get down from the cab to run into the prettiest blonde in our office hanging around outside the entrance to the building. She's all alone and seems bemusedly tolerant of my gaze. The peg of rum may have had something to do about it, but when a pretty girl doesn't cold shoulder your insistent stare or feel uncomfortable about it, it makes you feel good. And so good I felt!

Then into office, and from meeting to meeting, job to job, everything falls into place. Every appointment kept and significant progress made on each of them. A trip out to the back of the building with the regulars for a smoke turns out to be a laugh riot, and I re-enter with an unnatural pleasantness on my face. By the end of the day, I have accomplished more out of what would be a 4-5 hour workday than in the past 10-12 hour workdays that I had put in. I am astounded at my efficiency of my performance and at the satisfaction that I feel at this accomplishment. Maybe the mid-day peg of rum is actually an unnecessarily derided solution for success and happy office days!

The agony and the ecstasy

It was a Monday morning somewhere in March 2008 when I was awake at 5:00 in the morning. Mondays are never the most auspicious of days to begin something but "The Telegraph" was holding a short story writing contest and that day happened to be the last day for submission of entries. I was at my writing desk forcing myself to do something that I had consciously avoided for years now. The effort was on to write fiction and the last time I had tried that was in class 2 or 3 when I wrote a story about an elephant and a monkey. On further inspection, I found rather striking similarities between my story and the famous lion-mouse fable. I was bitterly disappointed with my effort and that put paid to any intentions of my writing fiction for the next 15 years or so. Any story that I put down seemed to ring too much of this movie or that novel for my liking.

Now in the course of working my dreary office job, I realized that fiction was still a wonderful outlet for the cobwebbed imagination. It would be impossible to shake off the influences as they defined who I was and how I thought but I could at least focus on minimizing their effect. Writing fiction would be playing God in the confines of my mind. Now that's fun! I would imagine multiple situations and characters as I walked around town day-dreaming but I could never find a strong enough reason to actually get going until then. So with the pressure of the impending deadline on my mind, I set to work with a pen and a notebook aiming to wind up before setting out to office.

With a couple of hours of work, I was thrilled with what I came up with. A story about the loneliness that engulfed an employee when he was the last person to leave office on a daily basis, was on the paper. It was a situation that I had had a personal experience of multiple times and for the first time in my life, I was really pleased with what had turned out on the page. Everything about the story seemed to be perfect; the tone, the compact length and the focus on the protaganist's state of mind. There was a spring in my step as I entered office and a cheerful mood enveloped me through the day. I planned on sending it out by e-mail in the evening from the office itself, once I was done with my office stuff.

It was already late evening when I first felt the shock. I felt my shirt pocket for the folded sheet of paper on which my story was penned and my fingers found nothing! It had probably fallen out in the canteen during lunchtime when I had pulled out my handkerchief to wipe my face. I abandoned all work and searched for it like a madman, even taking a sly peek into the dustbin at the washroom in the desperate hope to find it. But it was gone! The truest piece of writing that I had ever penned down was now in some trash can rotting with the garbage.

I had the story all mapped out in my mind so I could've put it down on paper all over again, but I was heart-broken. My shoulders sagged and a bitter taste invaded my mouth. I know from personal experience that authors think that every story that they have written is a literary masterpiece until it is reviewed by a more unbiased reader than its creator. However, in this case, it was not even about winning the prize. It was about bringing this great expression of my thoughts (at least I thought so) out onto the world irrespective of whether it was liked or not. It probably wouldn't have won the prize anyway considering the odd faux sounding stories that did eventually win. But the disappearance of something that I had created with so much intensity, hurt like never before. The joy that I felt at its inception was being paid for equally in measures of pain. Now whenever I sit down to take another shot at fiction, I find myself haunted by what had happened the last time I had tried it. But I know I will return that way again if only for the sweet feeling of satisfaction while the piece of paper was still in my pocket. No matter how many times the paper falls out of my pocket.

Now that is a similarity shared with the game of emotions called love. Stub your toe; curse and lament and swear against indulging in it with all your might. But you'll return time and again with the indefatigable enthusiasm that this time it's really true and this time it'll really last.

From sunrise to sunset: Prologue

India is not a small country by any standards. When you are talking about traversing the width of India from the east coast to the west, in a heavily populated nation like ours, it is more variety than anyone can stomach. Fortunately we are here to discuss only two varieties of consequence today. One is the Gujarati variety that originated in the west of India and have since has thrived around the whole of India, and the Bengali variety that has originated on the east of India and has done likewise. And those are the parties involved in another Roy family marriage spectacular, the marriage of my very own cute but exasperatingly domineering sister called Riti/Chadni. On why it took me this long to get going, please consult the paragraph "About me" to the right of this blog. Suffice to say that I have at least begun and barring another severe attack of laziness, I hope to wind it up too within a few short episodes.

Like I said, you would have to follow the sun across India as it shone down upon my sleepy eyes in Calcutta to the curiously blue Arabian Sea near Dwarka where the story ends to be able to follow this marriage. A love story spanning exams, cities and states awaits the attention of my keyboard. In starring roles apart from the guilty couple of Abhijeet and my sister are good samaritans like Dada's buddy, Shiladitya and Rahul, my college buddy who shouldered the burden of a sister's marriage pretty handsomely. I, in the meantime, had a jolly good time putting my already specialized outsourcing skills to good use. I was always there for the photo-ops but that's about it. Marriages are always epic occasions and great fodder for the casual, observant mind. Before I begin, a big thanks to everybody involved for helping me to slip through the one marriage I was really supposed to work for, in a similar fashion.

Good, clean fun

Anyone reading my posts on my hostel times could be forgiven for thinking that all we did in college was to slosh ourselves out and stumble our way through. Drinking was an unavoidable pastime mainly due to Aristotle's age old declaration that "Man is a social animal". Consequently when a friend felt that a peg or two would help his cause of celebration or despair, it was absolutely rude to not join in. But all things put in perspective, it was only a minute portion of the fun in hostel life. Most of it was only childish fun initiated by blokes who were tasting their first, juicy morsels of freedom.

Carrom in the common room was a social hub as on-the-spot teams waited their turn on the single carrom board while taking jibes at the skills of the playing parties. There was no point in being gracious about your rival's shortcomings because there was no way on earth that your favour was going to be returned when bad times came calling for you. No sir, under the yellow lights over the board which mountains of powder could not smoothen, it was every man for himself alternating between being part of the jeering mob or being the victim of it. I speak from personal experience of having committed the most sensational fouls at the most critical times in RECK carrom history and the memories of all the reactions around me are hardly nostalgia inducing. The audience always wanted their bit of fun, by hook or by crook. But the malice was never intentional, it was a way of life at the RECK carrom boards.

Rumours especially of the previous semesters results being out were another way of stirring up a quiet night. Sometimes an actual surreptitiously printed Word document from the Hostel I-Net centre complete with marks and roll numbers would find its way on the walls of E-Block, while sweaty browed toppers and borderline cases (Read the rest of the world) would bring the house down on their verification pilgrimages to the site of crime. Powercuts just after or during dinner hours at the mess were when the boys hostels would really swing into life with the hum of a thousand unseen voices jabbering away in the night. The jokes would then seem funnier and the laughter had to be louder.

Infinite hours would be spent on the torn netted chairs at the 'khokhas' during and after class hours mulling over a cup of tea and the rare feast of kings, Maggi-half fry (basically a Maggi with a poached egg on top) with the stimulating company of a smelly buffalo and the flies buzzing over its dung. The cool darkness of the room would conceal a dozen odd eternally single guys lusting after the pretty heroine on the PC screen (Ahem! In keeping with the topic of this post, I speak right now of good, clean popular movies. Hey, they have pretty heroines too, and don't tell me that we didn't see enough of these movies too!) Swear words would be shouted across verandahs in the most jovial of spirits and news of a big action movie playing on the common room TV would bring crowds of all varieties and spirits tumbling into the chairs fanned by very effective coolers.

It was a weird world that we lived in for 4 years and there are countless other tales that would illustrate our paradoxical existence. It was complicated and rough, yet not at all unpleasant. We hated that life then as much as we loved it. I for one could never decide which emotion to stick to!