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‘Almost There’ in a loop

You know what comes at you faster than light? Deadlines!

You sprint to the train station, almost miss it, quickly skim through the headlines in a desperate attempt to absorb the state of the world that morning, scramble at the colossal mess of a backlog you had left for yourself from the previous day, catch up, fill yourself in and freak yourself out, refuel at the coffee station and do it all over again!

At the end of it all, you cajole yourself into doing it just today. Just once. For the last time ever! “This is going to be the last day I work instead of sleep”, you tell yourself with the romanticism of convincing a shy girlfriend. And, occasionally, as you are almost there, a friend calls you to tell his sister is getting married… you brim in joy and celebrate in unison! And as you’re away revelling, there’s something blooming on your desk quietly through the night… more backlog!

And then again… you scramble at the colossal mess of a backlog you had left for yourself from the previous day, catch up, fill yourself in and freak yourself out, refuel at the coffee station and do it all over again!

Your Song Today

My blog, to me, is like a sound-insulated recording studio torched from the inside with the inferno of music orchestrated by my ego; some times, laced in a comforting hum of a lullaby; some times, with myriad interludes of deafening war cries and other times, with some very odd notes that don’t really strike a chord. And every melody, sublime or brazen, every one of them, is trying to answer the same question every single day…

When some iconic amendments scratch out dogmatic stigmas out of the society by drawing rainbows on social networks that fill many discriminated lives with colors…

Or when your stereotype precedes you anyway.

When you use your progressive head to think of something really stupid and work it out magnificently to yield nothing…

Or when you are just mucking about the whole day, and sleep with the guilt of not doing anything.

When it’s paycheck day..

Or when you lend your to-go order to someone holding out “Will do anything for food” board at the traffic lights.

When someone makes you a grand meal and an awesome coffee.

Or foot-long.

When someone you still love left.

Or when someone you left still loves…

When you haven’t embarked on your ambitions yet

Or when you embark on your ambitions and yet…

… It’s that same question every day.

So what’s your song today?

Happiness is…

I can’t remember the last time I jabbered extensively about life, over writing a lab record. I can’t remember the last time I read tinkle in the upper birth of a rusty two-tier train. I can’t remember the last time I had filter coffee in that steel tumbler.

Either these happy little things just tucked themselves away into the warm, far end of time or.. Or, well, I just have a really bad memory.

But sometimes you just feel happy remembering these endearing things. And what stirs up a decoction of these emotions from deep within is what, in my utterly rudimentary opinion, is magic.

After the roar of cheer settled, he asked the crowd that grew up with his music..

“Would you come to listen to my music even when I am very very old?”

The cheer broke decibel records to forge the answer.

I thought I’ll never do this, but well…

Happiness is watching Rahman perform!

Dated June 12, 2015.

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Yellow Boxy Things

Remember this conversation?

Hello

Hello!WhereAreYou?IAmAlreadyHere

Hello?

Hello!!CanYouHearMe?

Now I can. Where are you?

IAmAlreadyHere!WhereAreYou?

Home.

WhyDidn’tYouStartYet?AndIDon’tHaveCoinsComeQuickly!

Whose number is this?

I-AM-Beep-CALLING-Beep-YOU-Beep-From-Beep-OUTSIDE-Beep-I-DON’T-Beep-HAVE-Beep-COINS-Beep-Five-Beep-SECONDS-Beep-LEFT-Beep-COME-Beep-FAS..

Coin boxes!

Remember those little yellow boxy things that were hung at every paan shop which was sort of the sixty-second telegram of the phone family? The only handy phone long before we added i’s to the phones? Long ago when we travelled in rusty busses and didn’t bother wearing dad’s old sandals when we went out? Remember? Remember!?

And the fact that I used boxy things to describe them makes me feel like there’s a vocabulary-sized hole in my head. Otherwise, how could all those GRE words have drained out?

Why is pizza called calories now?

How come the coins and bills replaced words and laughter?

Why do a few of my friends have little things with them called babies?

How the *profanity* (fuck, I meant) did the alarm not go off to really wake me up to 25?

Hold on, life! That’s a lot of change!

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it’s just like the coin box days, only, things somehow seem to have juggled places. Perhaps we are just living a sixty-second lives in our very own boxes, keeping ourselves busy minting coins? Just curious.

O good respite, where is thou?

There are some who grope for words in air, and then there are those who type “word synonyms” in google. I tried both. Nothing was intense enough to describe the reek that castrated my nostrils today when I got out of work. Someone forgot to take out the trash. But I wondered for a while if any of it could be because of the bull shit that people give you.

One day, I will smirk back at you with the same evil smugness that you’re doing it with today, you crappy world!

I promise.

Thoughts homebound

I stuck my cheek to the window to look at the train curve around the intersection. I remember I used to do that as a kid, with my brother. Two little heads squeezing against the red window bars to see how long our train really was. Back then, that was the most important piece of information that we had to know.

And the home-bound train arrived at its destination at 7 am, and the two kids went home with pretty much bar-like parallel dents on their cheeks.

Hyderabad is the only home. Then. Now. Always.

The whole conversation with a soon-to-be-mum Persian colleague of mine earlier in the day replayed in my mind  as the sub-urban train glided past the cubicle dwellings. She narrated reminiscent anecdotes of her time back home.

“In my city Tehran,  I always had a connection with the city; a sense of belonging”

Money was scarce but there was enough trust to have ten-rupee debts at the local shops where I bought tennis balls to play cricket out on the streets. I knew, by heart, all those corners where cops waited for unlicensed drivers. I was friends with all the fast food dabba walas. I even knew which street dog lived which street.

“On the way home, in Toronto, I could just hop into a jazz bar and relax over a beer.”

After I got down the college bus, I emptied my pockets on pani puris, then scavenged my bag for more money. And counting the coins, I went to the next bandi – the board read: ‘Sugar Cane Juice – With ice -Six rupees  Without ice: Five rupees’

“I miss the friendships…”

We sneaked out of the house 2 o’ clock in the night to eat biriyani. We  copied home works from an already copied copy. We covered for each other when we went to meet our girlfriends. We lent money to each other and never got it back. Made mischief. Fought nastily. And still remained friends. 

“…and all the love.”

Amidst the boisterous local crowd in the RTC bus, I stood holding the handrail and she, my sleeve. She giggled every time the bus braked and the inertia flinged her against me. Then in the night, after we went our ways, I snuggled into the scent of her kurti that still lingered on me. 

Then, a computerized voice announced the stop, and the sub-urban train stopped by one of those cubical dwellings, which I called home now – seven thousand miles away from where that word really meant something to me.

No big deal just three words.

We were so hungry. We were foolish to have biked all the way. But it was totally worth it!

This is where, on a summer afternoon, this man stood up and delivered a monumental speech. He told the world…

‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’

So I want to tell you three words today. No big deal just three words.

I was here.

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Aside

A Prequel to my Grad Walk

Graduation during BTech was radically straightforward than in Master’s. There was only one step – to graduate.  But that was three years ago –  when I didn’t know how to fold a tee shirt or wash a plate.

So there I was, amidst the Malboro mist, sipping ice tea from a coffee mug. In 1522’s patio, the lights lit up delightful conversations about a myriad of things, mostly girls, especially ex’s. During more sloshed occasions, someone would try to jump off the patio in a jagermeister-induced longing for their ex. But this time, it was a more sober setting where my roommate reminisced about how much he liked doing laundry back at his hostel. Well, I am sure his wife would see a potential market there. The only thing I ever liked doing back in college was girls. And boy! After that, the easy parts just disappeared like MH370.

I remember how culture shock in a new country came in the form of a new room for me, when ISA dropped me at an apartment whose insides were basically a wreckage from an inter-galactic war that raged several eons. In the spaces between those debris lived four roommates of mine. Illegally. So that was just the start of Master’s.

Then you realize, there are certain rules you live by. Weeks are the time periods that occur between your cooking turns. When you hear a knock on the door, the first thing you do is to hide your comforters. And there are things worse than home work – cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and other chores plus home work.

And the Texas weather, of course, is like mood swings of an eighteen year old. But the worst weather, though, is during the debt seasons. And you have it all over the place. With the school, banks back home, banks here, friends back home, friends here, you name it. So many things go down like mercury levels in Antarctica – your bank balances, GPA, relationships…

Damn. Breathe. Breathe!

Oh no, hold it! You still have to get a job, don’t you?

Geez! It’s D minus about two weeks now and it’s still that race where I have to claw my way to the finish line! I guess I see a point why my roommate reminisced so much about days when he just had to do his laundry after all!