Homeward bound

After 7 months, an incredible adventure comes to an end. A country that has dominated popular culture for reasons good or bad has become even more familiar from first-hand experience. There are a number of untouched destinations that I'd have loved to brush upon but I'll have to save them for another time. San Francisco, with its windswept beauty is definitely at the top of the heap from my first visit to the USA. The sparking orb of energy that is New York city comes a close second. And in general, the real thrill of exploring a foreign country lies in finding out how folks are entirely different but at the same time exactly alike too. But it's time to go home.

It's time to go back to the bustling crowds and the chaos, where peace and quiet are like distant relatives known only through a family photo from 20 years ago. But all the turmoil is cut off on the outside. On the inside, my mind will be at the greatest possible peace. It's a sense of belonging that completely swamps all other ill-feeling. I guess that's why they call it home.

Monster fetish

A major landmark in the most ordinary townscape of Bharuch was Panchbatti (literally meaning 'Five lights'), an intersection where 4 different roads met at a roundabout. It was the only location in town briefly deemed busy enough to deserve traffic lights. But that misconception of popularity persisted only for a couple of months. The municipality decided quite wisely to re-instate a bored looking cop at the intersection to oversee any traffic misbehaviour at the roundabout leaving the signals unattended and unwanted. Right next to Panchbatti stood our favourite haunt from our school days, the cinema hall Relief.

Class-mates from all sides of the town would find this to be the most convenient of meeting locations and besides this was the cheapest of the lot in our town's cinema halls. Right opposite stood "Basant", the shady, run-down theatre which ran B-movies with their usual  innuendo filled names and provocative posters. Each of the titles were a hot topic of discussion and amusement amongst us friends. But finding out the title was where our courage ran out. None of us actually dared to cross the road and investigate the story for ourselves. We were content to be on this side of the road at Relief Talkies where 'our' kind of movies played.

Relief was earmarked for all the Hollywood movies that ever came to Bharuch. All the most bloodthirsty creatures and action heroes to have come out of any studio in LA made a stop-over at this corner of small town Gujarat. And keeping in mind their clientele at this halt, they all spoke chaste Hindi! It was an experience that was extremely sidesplitting and aggravating at the same time for us the convent educated lot who supposedly had a better grip on the Queen's language than most of our fellow cinema-goers. It was inevitably entertaining in one way or the other. If you haven't seen Samuel L. Jackson deliver a rousing speech in Hindi and then promptly be bitten in half by a super-intelligent shark, you've really missed something. 

All through our school years, starting from early adolescence, this cinema hall would be central in our planning. Parked motorcycles would be our conference rooms as we would plan out the rest of the evening, debating whether it would end in front of the milk shake stall at the railway station or on the grass of GNFC colony lawns after a short burst of cricketing activity. The conversation would taper away whenever an attractive girl swept by to pick up flow again only when she was out of sight. Then it'd be time for the show to begin and for us to enter the dark confines of the hall. It'd be time for an entry into the world of rampaging dinosaurs, lovesick giant gorillas and nubile blondes brought to life by our voluntary suspension of reality.

"I am a believer"

"I am a believer. I believe that there is no point in thinking different because every new idea possible has already been thought of. Of course, there is no sense in going off the beaten path. Is everyone else a fool to stick to what has already been proven to work? Why take a risk when it is known that by playing safe, a life of peace and comfort is ensured. When others say that something is not practical, they must be correct. Surely they know more about you than you yourself do by virtue of being around longer. Passion will not feed a hungry stomach they say and the taste of adventure will turn bitter as soon as you step outside the comfy confines of regularity. Walk with the masses because there is safety in numbers. The restlessness bred by familiarity is only an incitement for you to step into the mine-field of uncertainty and depression that a 'unconventional' career is. Smother your dreams under the very pillow that you envision them on. Don't try to fix what ain't broke."

Read that aloud and tell me if you've ever sounded more stupid to yourself. In case, you are still having difficulty in putting enough faith in your castle-in-the-air ideas, give it one more go "I am a believer..."

Radically unique

It was only the 2nd day of 2009 when I walked down 53rd street between 5th and 6th avenues in Manhattan to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I was under the illusion that I'd be among the handful of people who'd so early in the year want to be in a place whose very name carried the sound of obscurity. MoMA when pronounced right sounds so French-wannabe and elitist, and like everyone else I denounce the elitists while secretly aspiring to be among them. The delusion of being among the last few cerebral inhabitants of this planet was duly shattered when I found a million odd people (Well maybe not, but as good as a million to me) already in the queue to get in. The company that I work for has a corporate art program inside deal going on and for the first time I found myself in an advantageous position thanks to my employer's clout. I walked past the line through the glass doors of the museum only to find that the tickets to Van Gogh's "Colours of the night" exhibition had already been sold out for the day, my primary reason for being there. 

Dejected I dragged my feet over what to do for a little while and decided to give the rest of the stuff in the museum a go. Of course, there were the regular stars like works by Picasso and Monet, and of the popular 'pop art' artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Yet there were some works of 'art' whose only value was in their explanation, which seemed to want to extract a meaning out of the most ordinary of things. An artist scrawls "I'll make no more boring art..." a number of times on a blank sheet of paper. It is framed as is and put on display. A Japanese artist stencils on a series of postcards sent to his American friend during his travels "I WOKE UP AT X:XX AM AT XYZ PLACE" and it becomes an art exhibit! An exhibit called "Lung" is a high tension steel wire strung across the ceiling and threaded through hundreds of flattened Marlboro cigarette packets. Go figure! A pink surfboard like object is at an angle to the wall and it is supposedly the bridge between the real world of the floor and the imaginary world of the paintings on the wall. Ahemm... isn't that profound? There was this film of John Lennon just giving a spaced out look into the camera for a total of 4-5 minutes, apparently a contemporary film masterpiece by Yoko Ono that deserved an honourable display at the start of the music gallery, God only knows why!

Not that there was nothing worth seeing in the museum, in fact there was a hell of a lot to see. The display of tiny portions of a bomb blast scene by a Lebanese artist, each portion a tiny box in the centre of a large white frame reminded of the ripping apart of lives by a single bomb without going into grisly detail. A 4 minute film by a Romanian artist called "Deer-parture" put a wolf and a deer together in a white studio. The wolf doesn't even attack the deer at the end of the film, choosing to lie down instead but the crowd that built in front of the exhibit each time shines a light on our voyeuristic tendencies. It's like everyone was hoping to see the deer being brought down and would not want to miss the exact moment. Some amazing cover photographs for Esquire magazine were in themselves worth the visit. 

However the question that still discomforts me is whether I really liked those things or did I pick a few odd ones out of the lot because I wouldn't want to sound like a village bumpkin unable to appreciate the higher experiments in art. My mind goes back to a favourite Sunday strip of Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin enters the scene in a snow covered landscape claiming that all art has become meaningless, form and structure serve no purpose and signs the landscape itself offering it to Hobbes, his pet tiger for a million dollars. Hobbes seriously considers the offer and then goes on to say that he'd have bought it only that it wouldn't go with his furniture. Then comes a disappointed Calvin's killer line:

"The problem with being avant-garde is knowing who's putting on who."

A year to go underground

At exactly the moment when 2008 turned to 2009, I was in a NYC subway train headed towards Penn Station. My friend and I were running way behind schedule for our plans to get to Times Square to find out for ourselves what's so special about a lighted ball dropping a few feet.  Our co-passengers in that carriage were lost in sombre thoughts with likewise expressions on their faces. Much as we wanted to spread the joy around, we found that we weren't quite up to the task. There was a cop in our carriage as was in all the others and on the streets above just to ensure that the New Year revelry didn't get too boisterous on the unsuspecting. Anyway as it turned out, the cop would've had to pull out a gun to force our fellow riders to celebrate. We quietly shook hands amongst ourselves and that was that for our New Year celebrations.

As per the popular notion, it seems that I will be spending the remainder of 2009 riding underground trains or at least being underground since I'd entered into the year that way. But if that were true then it's nothing compared to the deal the folks having a ruddy good time up in the streets were getting. They'd have a year of killer hangovers and regret filled late work days ahead of them. Luckily for them and for us, and also for our unenthusiastic brethren on the train, the 1st of January is just an overhyped media monster. Some of us willingly buy into the hype and others look at it with biting disdain. It doesn't really matter where you are or what you are doing at the very second when the clock strikes twelve or so I think. It's still the same 365 days that lie ahead for you to pull up your socks, and to castigate yourself for not doing so during the earlier 365. Or be like me and poke fun at those who make a big deal of the 1st of January while actually a teeny-weeny bit distressed inside at being a ship without a functional compass. 

Tied together

YouTube as everyone knows is a wonderful new (relatively speaking) outlet for people who find creative expression in multimedia art. However one of my favourite videos on YouTube is a rather simple one which I stumbled upon while looking up for John Denver's "I am sorry".

Try searching for "ukulele - I'm Sorry (John Denver)" on the YouTube search, and it'll come up with a simple, bare-to-bones video. The camera focuses on a ukelele and the hands of the player (a guy in Yokohama) singing "I am sorry" and you can see the snow falling in the background through a window. What I am really fascinated by is the number of elements the video brings together with this one single creative exercise.

Consider this: The very much 'country' song seasoned with the bitter-sweet taste of nostalgia is written by a genius raised in the lap of the Colorado Rockies. It is being sung by a person who is cooped up at home during a snowstorm in Japan, and feels in exactly the kind of contemplative mood required to strum this sublime song. As the snow piles on, the delightful instrument that he cranks out his tune on is right out of Hawaii, each pluck endowed with the sunniness and the good cheer of the Pacific islands. To add to the mix, here I am, an Indian working in America, missing my home just a teeny-weeny bit and finding vague comfort in a song which is essentially sad but one that makes me happy simply because it reminds of times past spent listening to it.

It's a brand new year and I still am confounded by the levels of hatred and sadness that brew on our pretty little planet. Here's to the hope that this year, we'll move closer to seeing the common sense in accepting that we are all tied together in the most curious of ways.

Time squeeze

Another year wraps up for me and most of the world. For a measly number of 365 days, my year has seen quite a flurry of activities, each one intruding upon the next. However not all of them were value added activities which is my major grouse. In fact, most of the hours were swallowed by subsistence activities like work and sleep induced by working too hard. 

Hours that could have been spent writing, reading a book (criminal neglect on that count), watching a movie (did watch many, but still yearned for more), indulge in my footloose fantasies (again did indulge in so many of them nevertheless thirsted for more) or just laze around without having the sword of an pending highly uninteresting task poised over me. I can never really come to terms with how boring office life really is. The same old problems to be tended to by the same nauseating fixes ad infinitum. I don't say that I need a new kind of situation to crop up every day, but what irks me is the level of apathy with which I look at both the problems and their solution.

As it turns out, I waste a lot many hours daydreaming about travel and writing during my office hours. The end result is that I spend a lot more hours at work than I need to, which gives me less time to daydream and write after office which in turn sets up the daydreamer theme on my mind when I am at work. Talk about an especially vicious 'vicious circle'!

A practical solution to this seems to be squeeze in more time per time: add more seconds per minute, more minutes per hour and more hours per day. That'd put an end to Calvin's problem of "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want to!" for good. Waste time till I am bored of wasting time and want to get back to the aching monotony of work. Then again borrowing from the mouth of a 6 year old again "It's only work when someone makes you do it."

I can't foretell what 2009 has in store for me but I nurture a tiny hope that it'd be something exciting. Something like the childhood tales of being pushed into a secret garden of wonders with the walls sealing behind me and where the only way is to move forward, all senses tingling, right into the heart of the adventure.