# 38 - Short Story - Kalu

It was the last class of the day, and Sauvik struggled to stay awake. He regretted picking the front row to sit on instead of his usual second last - he forced himself to focus on the whiteboard.

 “Kalu” - he thought he heard someone whisper from behind. He was about to turn around but better sense prevailed.

“Kaloooo, move your head.”

“Abey oye kalua, shift your desk naa slightly.”

This time he recognized Vivek’s voice.

He was wide awake now, and looked ahead at the Professor, trying his best to ignore the voices coming from behind.

“Acha okay sorry, Mr. Fair and Handsome, I said sorry na?! Now move your desk to the left.”

Muffled laughter from the back, few of the girls had now joined in.

Sauvik waited for a few seconds before moving his desk, hopefully, they would stop bothering him now.

He knew that he was dark, but to be told of the fact every minute was uncomfortable, it probably would have been alright if the words being used were as decent as “dark”, but people were coming up with new synonyms and prefixes and suffixes every day, ranging from Kauwa to Alkatra, and he was fed up, and these guys had shown no signs of stopping.

The jibes stopped for a while, and Sauvik had almost dozed off again when Manoj from the back whispered.

“Andhera, arre o andhera, thodasa right ho jaanaa, board dikh nahin raha hai.”

Manoj was loud enough for the professor to hear, but the old man let it go.

Encouraged, half the class laughed this time.

Sauvik silently swore, it wasn’t actually about looking at the board, it was about giving him a hard time, and trying to elicit a few giggles from the girls.

It wasn’t as if Sauvik hated these guys, in fact, most of them were his friends, but even during normal conversations, his ‘friends’ would find ways to bring up his complexion every now and then, he had become a laughing stock, the means for people to show off their creativity, how good they were at coming up with new names.   

He hadn’t minded it initially, after all, most people had a nickname, he had even thought that it was a sign of his growing popularity, that he was going through an initiation process of some kind, painful…yes, but temporary.

But years had passed, and it was only getting worse.

Sauvik recalled the initial semesters when he was just ‘Sauvik’; not ‘Kalu’, not ‘Alkatra’, and definitely not ‘Invisible man’. 

And of course, he thought of that fateful day when Yash had called out to him as ‘Kalu’, that day had changed everything.  

How can I put an end to this? Sauvik thought.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the bell rang and the professor, almost as relieved as Sauvik at the classes being over, quickly departed.

Sauvik was about to leave too, when he heard Pankaj, who was staring out the window and talking to no one in particular, “look at the clouds, almost as dark as Sauvik.”

Unlike the others, Pankaj wasn’t a friend, they had rarely spoken in all these years, and that too because Arnab used to invited him to their room.

Something snapped.   

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY BHENCHOD?”

The classroom went quiet immediately, everyone stared at Sauvik with their mouths open, some possibly entertained the thought of a fight.

In a flash Sauvik was standing before Pankaj, his hands rolled into fists. Pankaj managed to lift his own hands defensively, painfully aware that no one would come to his help if Sauvik was in a mood to get violent.

 “I..I…just said your name.”

“BHOSDIKE..DO I LOOK LIKE A DARK CLOUD TO YOU?”

Sauvik had never sworn like this in college, being especially mindful of his language in front of girls.

But he didn’t care now.

Pankaj adjusted his glasses, and with the resignation of a man prepared to get beat up, provided the best possible response.

“But everyone calls you far worse things. Especially your friends, you don’t react like this. All I said was your name.”

The bastard was right.

Arnab meanwhile tried to take Sauvik away from Pankaj, “Cool down bhai, people are staring.”

Sauvik pushed Arnab away, “I am not doing anything. Besides, he is right, when your own friends treat you like shit, how can I blame a guy I don’t care about.”

Arnab stood embarrassed, unsure of how to react. Pankaj breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Sauvik’s attention had been diverted. Vivek whispered something to Sauvik, hoping to calm him down, but Sauvik wasn’t in a mood to shut up.

“I am making a scene? What were you doing when you called me Blackie in front of everyone? Oh, I am sorry, you were trying to be funny, weren’t you? So I am trying to be funny as well, I don’t see you laughing.”

Sauvik paused for a second. Suddenly becoming aware that none of the students had left the class. He felt his rage subside, replaced by a wave of sadness.

“Leave it yaar. It’s not your fault. Maybe I am an easy target. I can’t threaten or force people to stop calling me names, that’s not in my control. But there’s one thing I can do. I can stop being friends with people who get a kick out of making fun of me in public. I thought being friends meant being accepted for who you are, and things like complexion don’t get in the way. But – “

Vivek tried to interrupt but Sauvik wasn’t done.

“Shut up and let me finish. Maybe I’m stupid, but I thought friends are supposed to be there for each other, to support each other during the tough times, but you guys, my so called friends are the ones who have been giving me a bad time, all these years. You know what? Fuck you, I am proud of my complexion, I don’t care what you think of it, but calling me names and making fun of me to make the girls laugh is not something that friends do. I didn’t have a say in choosing my complexion, not that I would change it anyway, but I do have a say in choosing who I am friends with.“

He took a deep breath and picked up his bag, on the verge of leaving, he turned around to look back at Vivek and Arnab, and spoke loud enough for the class to hear.

“Think about it guys, I mean it. If you make one more inappropriate comment about my skin colour or call me names, I am not going to talk to you anymore.”

With this he was finally done, he stormed out of the class and hurried back to his hostel room. Slamming the door shut, he bolted it, knowing that his roommates would soon be there.

He headed for the loo and stood in front of the mirror, he took a good, long look at the face staring back at him.

A face that was angry, hurt, and betrayed….but more importantly, dark.

He took out the fairness cream he had bought a week back and carefully started applying the cream to his face.

The damn thing was supposed to show results in two weeks time. 

Image from here.

# 37 - Days of our future past

My Saturday morning was ruined by a notification from Google – my Gmail account was a couple of megabytes away from exhausting its 15 GB limit.

Back in the day when yahoo chat was cool and people wanted to help out Nigerian princes, I survived on a 6 MB mail limit, but that was more than a decade and a half back, and I, the man behind critically acclaimed email IDs such as devil_ethan_hunt / superbatman007 & of course kanishka_cool_stud, had grown accustomed to not deleting e-mails, all thanks to Gmail's seemingly infinite storage.

But my luck and inbox space had finally run out, and I knew that I had to re-visit a ritual that I hated, deleting e-mails.

As far as I could tell, there were two options I had, delete the locust-like irrelevant e-mails that were small sized but came in such numbers that they couldn’t be ignored, or, delete the heavy emails that were less frequent but took up way too much space.

I opted for the latter, figuring that it would take less time, and accordingly searched for old emails that were more than 2 MB in size.

An hour later, I had to admit that I had made the wrong choice.

THIS was a gold mine.

This was a trip to a time and place that I had grown out of. This was a revealing account of who I was at one point of time, and while many of the mails were cringe-worthy, it wasn’t always just me.

A batchmate who is quite respected in law-firm circles had an email ID that probably could be used to blackmail him now. If you thought kanishka_cool_stud was bad this was closer to, say, tanhaboy_16.

And there were the emails and chats.

References to Orkut, email forwards (when was the last time you received one, the non-work kind?), and GIF files touted as the latest tech, it was all there. So were popular songs of the year mailed to and received from friends.

Obama’s Cadillac and George W. Bush jokes found their place alongside conspiracy theories about Saddam and Osama. Stephen King and RL Stine books co-existed in peace, and surprise of surprises, I found out that I had actually sought out the twilight series.

I also found some of my projects and dissertations from college; my wonderful choice of topics ranged from the concerned ‘Energy Laws in Ethiopia’ to the sublime ‘Politics, Technology, and Corporate Governance’.  

My faith in the education system restored (let’s just say the projects got the marks they deserved and not what I needed), my search through 14.995 GB of culturally, historically or aesthetically significant emails resumed.

The deeper I delved, the more I realised that I had little in common with who I was a decade or so back, it seemed as if I was a different individual altogether, not just the superficial things such as taste in music, movies and books, I was actually a different person entirely. Things which seemed crucial at one point of time didn't matter anymore, and the past me would have scoffed at some of the things which now hold importance.

Not just 10 years back, I seemed to have evolved changed even from who I was 5 years ago.

Some things, of course, stayed the same. The sarcasm, the impossible sleep cycle which would have driven lesser mortals insane, the ability to incorporate filmy dialogues in routine conversations, and last but not the least, my never-ending quest towards achieving excellence in the field of awesomeness.

Okay. These emails couldn’t possibly be deleted. They were artefacts from more innocent times. So what if they contained humiliating details such as the time I almost threw up on a friend after having one too many, and more disturbing details like the other time a friend looked like he would throw up on me and proceeded to do exactly that.

Needless to say, good times.

I got thinking about the time before Gmail, before kanishka_cool_stud and indya.com; way back to the golden period that was the early 90s.

I am sure you have received/forwarded that popular WhatsApp message that glorifies the 1990s, and maybe you have seen those click bait articles as well:- “Top 20 things that every 90s kid will get....we bet you still miss #3!”

Ahh, to speak of the days when the Indian cricket team was known as the Wills Indian cricket team, a time when it wasn’t beneath the middle class to travel by train in non-AC sleeper class, a period when the Khans were actually young enough to play college kids -  a time when arithmetic problems involving distribution of mangoes  (or apples) amongst Ram, Rahim, and John usually led to the foregone conclusion that they would each end up with the same number.

A time when life moved at an easier pace.

Ironically, even in those days, the present always seemed tense, and the past, whatever little of it that did exist, seemed magnificent.

So do we actually visit the past through rose tinted glasses, or were the past days actually better?

Or is life getting progressively worse?

And there’s the fourth alternative that made me panic during exams:-  ‘all of the above’.

Studies tell that we are living in the most peaceful period of history, and contrary to what you may believe, crime and violence are at an all time low (even in Delhi, yes), life expectancy and literacy rates have never been better.

So why in Manoj Kumar’s name do we feel that ‘the times they are a-changing’, for the worse? In spite of the statistics and the conveniences associated with modern technology, why has it only become harder to find genuine moments of peace and happiness?

The obvious answer seems to be that life tends to get more and more complicated as we age.

As a kid, my only priority was not pooping in my pants, and in the unlikely event of that occurring, successfully hiding the fact; my measure of success was based on and equalled to not shitting in my pants. Literally.

I was a successful kid.

On most days anyway.

Education starts assuming more and more significance as the years roll on, along with friends come peer pressure, and before you know it, life loses its simplicity. With increasing number of things that matter, our success rate is bound to come down.

 I remember immediately after my Geography paper in class 10^th finals, I picked the textbook up and flung it as far away as I could, ecstatic that I would never have to study the subject again. Problem solved.

If only...

Geography was gone, but Calculus & Trigonometry had taken its place. No Ram, Rahim or John to give away clues this time. In comparison, Geography now seemed meek.

Life was so much easier five years back, we think, and we think that every time a new criterion that is supposed to be important is thrown into the mix.

Our careers, our personal lives, our health, our hobbies, our duties as citizens, the compulsory requirement to have an opinion on topics ranging from same-sex marriages to Open internet ....the list goes on and on.

No wonder going through my old emails made me nostalgic, life was far from perfect those days, but at least we had lesser number of things to worry about then.

Well, if there’s any consolation, it’s not always going to be like this. In 45 years or so, just as suddenly as things had once become important, the same things will start to lose their meaning - we will be too old to be concerned with our general appearance, our annual bonuses will stop being important, what others think of us will start counting for less and less.

Until one day, when the definition of success reverts to our ability to not soil ourselves.

Can’t wait.

Image from here. 

# 36 - Movie Review - Raees (2017) - Watered down booze

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Mahira Khan.
Directed by: Rahul Dholakia.

A bootlegger in Gujarat with a flair for business wants to scale up his operations, but an honest cop, competition, politicians and restrictions imposed by his own conscience stand in his way.  

Masala movies form the backbone of the Indian film industry, they promise entertainment and cheap thrills - unapologetically. And while masala is aplenty, you know good masala from the rest.

Raees had built up expectations from the moment it was announced, SRK may have become King Khan thanks to his lover-boy roles, but box office numbers aside, it's whenever he plays the anti-hero or dons the role of a character of questionable motives that he really lights up the screen.

Yep, no one plays the bad guy as well as SRK, and after a string of not-so-successful-films; this one definitely seemed like the one in which SRK was revisiting the kind of roles that had made a star out of him.

SRK mouthing one liners that became catch-phrases even before the release, Nawazuddin playing the cop out to get him, a critically acclaimed director.....this had good masala written all over it.

Unfortunately, it's just another film that everyone will forget about in two weeks time.

There's a very good movie hiding in Raees somewhere, but it's lost in the layers and layers of chaff.

Like the central character, the movie tries too hard to be too many things at once, so we have a bootlegger for whom bijness is bijness, and bijness is supreme (no he doesn't say that in the movie, not in those many words), but wait, the second law of bijness keeps his villainy in check, bijness is supreme but no bad act allowed. 

Ahh, a criminal with a heart of gold.

The movie does start off well, and the younger actors do a fabulous job, but it was as if someone told the maker mid-way that the movie won't work because of certain issues.

Issue 1: Lead character too evil.

Solution: Enter second law of bijness.

Issue 2: Lead character still too evil.

Solution: Okay, for every bad thing he does, let's make him do two good things. Keep a count.

Issue 3: We have to cater to an audience who want to see SRK romance.

Solution: Write up an unnecessary romantic track.

Issue 4: SRK's character appears too real, don't forget, he is a star...

Solution: Insert tacky action sequences giving SRK the ability to dodge bullets and defy gravity.

Issue 5: Umm, possible controversy because of riots scene in the script, and the other thing as well...

Solution: Just mention the words in passing.

Issue 6: No Sunny Leone!?

Solution: Get Sunny Leone.

....and so on.

The result is a dumbed down version of a movie that caters to everyone and yet, no one.

The closest thing to a redeeming factor is Nawazuddin, he is getting typecast, but still manages to make the most of a one-dimensional character.  

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub too is typecast as the best friend/sidekick of the lead and doesn't leave a mark.

Mahira Khan doesn't have much to do but does look her part.

And Shah Rukh? He shines in a few scenes, but they are mostly restricted to the first half, his performance crumbles as the storyline progresses. Perhaps under the weight of absurdity. We looked forward to seeing him play the quintessential bad guy, instead, he gives us a hotchpotch performance that does disservice to his abilities as an actor.

A word about his gait. There's a very odd walking mannerism that he first displayed in Don 2, maybe he thinks it makes him look tough, but right now all it does is remind us of Dev Anand, not for the good reasons.

Raees does have its moments, but they are too few and far in between, and by the time the movie's ended you end up wondering if Kaabil would have been the better decision.


RATING: 2/5

Fun Fact about the director: You probably know that Rahul Dholakia has won the national film award for the movie 'Parzania', but did you know that his first movie was the Jimmy Shergill-Kim Sharma starrer 'Kehta Hai Dil Baar Baar'? Neither did I.

Images from here and here.

# 35 - Short Story - The Dark Tower

There was nothing particularly interesting about New Shakti Tower in Andheri East, at least during the day it was as ordinary as a middle class residential premise could be in a locality bustling with commercial activity.

Thousands of people crossed the seven storey building without bothering to take a second look. Not that they were supposed to, in a city where the age old adage about time being money held particular importance, New Shakti Tower didn’t merit a second glance.

No one took notice of the building simply because it didn’t appear any different from the tens and thousands of other structures that lined the city; people of all ages, sizes and shapes came out in the mornings and heading out somewhere, presumably to their respective places of work; in the noons the building wore a deserted look, nothing unusual about that as well, and in the evenings, just before sunset, if someone would have bothered to cross-check, the same group of people who had left earlier in the day - returned.

Day in and day out, the same chain of events repeated itself, nothing unusual at all.

Except of course the fact that there were never any lights on in the building, not even after the entire batch of people re-entered their homes – that bit was odd.

In a city that never slept, the fact that there existed a tower, seemingly occupied, the residents of which were used to living in complete and utter darkness once the sun went down was anything but normal.

It wasn’t as if no one noticed this, but being situated in a commercial part of the locality, the office goers in proximity had little inclination to wonder about the oddity of New Shakti Tower.

Occasionally the passers-by did look at the building and talk about it, they sometimes wondered if it was an abandoned place, while travelling in groups in the evenings, it wasn’t rare for an individual to comment that the place looked haunted, but that was about it, their curiosity about the dark building never lasted too long. The fact that there were no reported incidents of criminal or paranormal activity in the area definitely helped, and New Shakti Tower continued being unremarkable, at least to the discernible eye.

***

There are some perceptions that manage to get stronger with the passage of time, with or without cause.

Take for example the popular image of an average government employee.

Mr. Narayan Bhosale looked the role alright, he was a middle aged man of medium built, everything about his salt & pepper hair, droopy moustache, the paan stained teeth, the sandals that looked like they would give away at any moment - screamed ‘government employee’, which he in fact was.

The bit that didn’t match into the popular perception was the fact that he was an extremely hard working man who had made a name for his honesty, but little else.

His co-workers and superiors despised him, and he had spent most of his career being shifted from one government department to another, a fact in which he took a certain amount of pride.

After asking too many questions in his previous posting as an inspector in the Public Works Department, he had been reassigned as an officer in the Municipality where his job involved doing little more than sending notices to people owing property taxes.

The ones at the helm probably thought that Bhosale could be contained by a mundane desk job where he had limited scope of interfering, but they had underestimated him.

Within a week of taking charge, Bhosale had managed to send out more notices than his predecessor had done in the previous year; if his job involved pushing pen, Bhosale was determined to be the best pen pusher there was.

Himself a victim of corruption, Bhosale took personal interest in identifying people who tried to misuse the system, he wasn’t powerful enough to cleanse it, he knew that well, but he was determined and annoying enough to make people who tried to override the structure squirm.

One winter morning, digging through the records, Bhosale managed to stumble upon a fact that seemed too bizarre to be correct.

It was with respect to one particular society. 

What he initially thought to be an isolated case of default turned out to be anything but that, his records showed one defaulting occupant from the complex after another, and the final tally turned out to be forty two, precisely the number of flats in the building.

This had to be some kind of a mistake, Bhosale thought, it couldn’t be possible that all the flat owners had colluded to collectively dodge property tax.

He summoned for his clerk, and after patiently waiting for twenty minutes for him to show up, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Grumbling about the state of affairs, Bhosale reached the record room and started searching for the dues of previous years.

It took up almost his entire day, since the files were neither numbered, nor kept in their designated place, but Bhosale eventually emerged with a trolley full of record books. He piled them on his desk with a thud and dived headfirst into pages and pages of previous years of records.

By the time he was done, he was convinced that he had unearthed one of the biggest scams to ever hit the country, not in terms of monetary value, but purely on the basis of the ease with which some people were taking the government for a ride.

For the last five years, not one inhabitant of New Shakti Towers had been paying property taxes.

Krishna Apte, a colleague of Bhosale’s, had been watching him for a while, thus far, silently.

“Bhosale ji, looks like you have found something very interesting. Care to share the details?” Apte asked, leaning from his desk; his curiosity spilling over the thin partition board that separated the two men.    

Now, while Bhosale was a hard working honest to god man, he was aware that his kind was a rare breed, and three decades of government service had taught him to tread with caution whenever others showed interest in his work, especially when the man concerned worked at the same post as Bhosale did, and was at least twenty years younger – sufficient evidence as per Bhosale that his climb had been through less than fair means.

“N-nothing much. Just found a paper that I was looking for.” said Bhosale, for the sake of greater good, white lies were inevitable at times.

Krishna Apte wasn’t convinced, and to the extent the partition and his eyesight permitted, he attempted to take a look at the said papers, but realizing that his activities were eating into lunchtime, he left, hoping to continue with his probe later.

Bhosale sighed and sat down, wondering about his next course of action.

As per practice, he should have sent out notices, 42 of them in fact, one for each flat in the society, or, of course he could bring this anomaly to the notice of his superior.

But what good would that do?

Bhosale already knew what would happen if he pursued either of the options he had before him, sending out more than twenty notices to occupants in a single society meant approval was needed in any case, so he had little option but to discuss the matter with his superior.

A little voice inside his head that almost never spoke up chose this as an appropriate time to make an exception.

”If you keep doing whatever you have been doing, you shouldn’t expect to see different results.”

He was surprised at how bitter the voice was, but found it difficult to disagree.

“Of course you can point this out to your boss, let him praise you within the confines of his cabin and then watch him get promoted for identifying a major instance of tax default. You can go home to your wife and kids and whine about the prices you pay for your goodness, hoping to be pitied, but knowing fully well that they hate you as much as the others, if not more.”

“That’s not true”, Bhosale found himself speaking aloud; and realizing his act, looked around immediately to check if anyone had seen him, luckily everyone was away for lunch.

The voice, which was definitely not his conscience speaking, enjoyed Bhosale’s embarrassment, it sneered and went on. “Look at you, pretending to be upright and different, but so concerned with what others think of you. The truth is, you know that you are mediocre, you know that you don’t deserve the things you hope for, and in order to fulfil this self-prophecy, you keep doing things that in your own head rationalize your meaningless existence.”

“What should I do?” Bhosale murmured, looking at the silverfish laden files before him.

“What you should have done long back. Take matters into your own hands. Claim the credit you deserve. Make some name for yourself.”

“But how?” he found himself asking, but the voice didn’t reply this time.

Bhosale slouched over his desk and put his head down.  Closing his eyes, he wondered about his life, what he had achieved so far.

He was an honest man with middle class values who followed the rules, but what should have been his praiseworthy qualities, had become his curse. In this day and age, his attributes were not only unappreciated, they were discouraged.

He questioned himself whether in all these years had he displayed courage in sticking to policies, or had he been a coward for not breaking the rules.

He didn’t know the answer.

But he had made up his mind.

***

Bhosale left his office earlier than usual that evening, and instead of Malad, he got down at the Andheri station.

It was a long walk, and when he reached the locality, he had trouble finding the building; no one seemed to know it by name, and after a number of false leads, he eventually stumbled upon New Shakti Towers almost by accident.

Now Narayan Bhosale had assumed that only the rich, famous and well connected could have gotten away with such an outrageous act, but when he saw New Shakti Tower, he was forced to admit that his theory had been flawed.

‘Absolutely ordinary’ he muttered. This was definitely not the kind of place where the rich lived.

While it wasn’t falling to pieces, there was nothing remotely new nor tower-like about New Shakti Tower. Certainly not the kind of place where you would suspect to find 42 families evading taxes.

It is the middle class salaried people who religiously paid taxes.

 But there were other peculiarities he noticed.

No guard, no gate, no cars, no lights.

Seemingly no occupants.

The sun had set by then, and as he stepped inside the complex, the dusk swooped in, with only the faint lights from the streets and the sound of traffic reminding him that he was in a living, thriving city.

Bhosale hesitated for a second; when he had planned on meeting and talking to the residents, he hadn’t exactly foreseen this.

And then with the same boldness that he had lived with for all his life, he entered the building.

He fumbled to find the doorbell on the first flat on the ground floor, and when he did find it, he wasn’t exactly surprised when no sounds emanated in spite of his repeated presses.

“Koi hai?” he asked, unsure if anyone would answer him, and no one did.

He knocked on the door, and unexpectedly the door swung open.

Without much thought, Bhosale walked right in.

It wasn’t still completely dark, but his eyes took some time to adjust until he could see anything.

He made out the shape of a sofa, a table, a bookshelf; some other furniture. The flat didn’t seem unoccupied.

And then he moved his gaze upwards and froze.

What were those things on the ceiling?

There was one right next to the fan, another at the very corner of the room, and another next to a tubelight that had probably been never switched  on.

Before Bhosale could react, the thing at the corner of the room climbed down like an enormous spider, dropping to the floor noiselessly.

Bhosale opened his mouth to scream, but his voice had vanished, a barely audible muffle emanated. The thought of fleeing didn’t even occur to him, he couldn’t feel any part of his body.

The thing stood up, but Bhosale already knew what it was, or at least what it resembled.

It walked up to him, barely inches away, and even in the darkness, Bhosale could make out that it looked exactly like a human being.

But not quite, there was nothing human in its smile, nothing resembling the living in its pale, grey eyes.

***

On an average, forty people go missing from Mumbai every day, vanishing without a trace, never to be found again.

Bhosale’s name had been added to that useless piece of statistic.

Not many bothered about his existence, and not many were troubled by him disappearing; life went on as usual in Maximum city.

But if someone were to attempt to find Bhosale, it wouldn’t be that difficult at all.

He leaves New Shakti Tower in the morning, and returns before sunset.

Everyday.

Maybe, just maybe, even you have met him, probably seen his face in the crowd, or walked beside him on the busy streets.

Or at least something that resembles him. 

Image from here.

# 34 - Dhoni - the man who kept calm and carried on

I have never quite liked MS Dhoni, how could I? I am a ‘Dada’ fan, and in all honesty, you can’t possibly like Saurav Ganguly and Dhoni both (hear that whoosh? That was ‘objectivity’ going out the window).

One look at Dhoni in his debut match, and you knew that the man didn't belong.

From the clearly-pretending-to-be-John-Abraham-hairdo to his less than elegant approach to batting, who would have thought that this man would survive in international cricket, let alone be captain in a couple of years. 

Dhoni may or may not have played an active role in the (early) ouster of Saurav Ganguly, it doesn’t matter, because it’s clear that he did play a part in it. This is Indian cricket after all, unless you are a certain Mr.Wall, if you are the captain, you are the one who calls the shots.    

I remember the die-hard Ganguly fans discussing how every dog has his day, and Dhoni was having his, how his time would run out, sooner rather than later.

And we said the same thing when he won the Asia Cup, the 2011 World Cup, the Champions Trophy, and oh yeah, the IPL too.   

Before we knew it, he had surpassed our beloved Dada’s record of being India’s most successful captain.

We switched to a different tune now.

‘Only succeeds in sub-continent pitches’

‘Where are the quality bowlers?’

 ‘His average is high because he bats too deep’

‘Scared to come up the order’

‘Won the world cup in India, that doesn’t count’

‘How ugly are his shots?’

It was probably after his retirement from tests, that the enormity of what he had done fully sunk in.

Captains don’t just step down and retire, not in India at least. They grab on to their place in the team as if their lives depended on it, unlikely to give up the position unless pried from ‘their cold, dead hands.'

Of course, there were players like Gavaskar, Kumble and Dravid who quit the game on their own terms and while on a high, but that’s as big as the list gets, and to be fair age was not really on their side.

As much as I hate to admit it, it was under the captaincy of MSD that India truly became a cricketing giant, Dada may have initiated the process, but it was Dhoni who saw it through.

Before Ganguly, we played our own brand of calypso cricket, that Pakistan continues to endorse; individual brilliance – yes, highly entertaining – yes, results – meh.   

It might seem like a distant memory now, but people actually wondered why cricketers like R.Ashwin, Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja were being given chances; cronies of Dhoni, we smirked, but just like Joginder Sharma in the 2007 T20 World Cup final, Dhoni’s faith in them has paid off. Imagine the Indian team without Ashwin now.

He has the luck of the devil, that Dhoni.

'I make this expression look cool.'

Whatever and whoever he touched, seemed to turn into gold (Ishant Sharma being the notable exception).

Sure, his shots had the subtlety of a bull in a china shop, his ‘helicopter shot’ was basically what kids of our time would informally call ‘aankh bandh karke bat idhar udhar ghumana’. He didn’t have the charisma of Ganguly or the style of Azhar, and while he is quite comfortable speaking in English, he does say things like ‘I think the people in Chennai they just love me.....when I used to go out biking at night, whenever I used to stop in the red light areas and all, they used to always come up to me and speak to me in Tamil, so, I think they really love me....’ Yes, he did say that, and I am guessing he was talking about traffic signals, and not.....whatever else. Have a look, skip to 3:23.

But all that aside, when faecal matter hit the cooling device, more often than not he would see the side through.

No matter how high the asking rate got, he didn’t break into a sweat. Dhoni's self-assured appearance didn’t reek of arrogance, but it was as if he didn’t care about the consequences. He somehow managed to do the impossible, whether as a finisher or as a captain, there was little semblance of logic in his strategy, but he somehow pulled off those crazy moves, be it with respect to that Jogiinder Sharma plan, or promoting himself ahead of Yuvraj in the 2011 World Cup final.

The 2011 World Cup victory ensured that Dhoni's name would be written in permanent ink so far as cricket was concerned, and his achievements, on paper at least, had overshadowed dada’s. 

What was worse though was Sachin saying that Dhoni was the best captain he had played under, such a clear jibe to the prince of Calcutta! 

Unfortunately, Dada himself was prolific in his praises for Dhoni, as if he had forgotten the role Dhoni played in finishing off his career. 

But we couldn’t forget the humiliation. For every dig targeted at Dada, for every joke about his fielding abilities, for every inch of ink space devoted to his weakness against the rising delivery.....vengeance was due. Sure, the wounds were old, but as the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold.  

We bided our time, still confident that Dhoni’s luck would one day run out, it always does.

We waited for the opportunity. We marked the Dhoni fans, and the people who had made fun of Ganguly, our time to get back was nearing.

And then much to our dismay, he retired from tests.

We wanted him to be kicked out of the team, not retire from the format on his own.

So, the waiting game began again.

And now, just when the talks of making Kohli the limited overs captain were threatening to emerge  – Dhoni does this.

What the hell? Who steps down from captaincy like this?!

It looks like he has once again pulled it off, choosing to let go before being forced to.

And even as I sit here disappointed, upset that I won’t get to make those Dhoni jokes that I have been planning all these years, I have to admit, with this announcement Dhoni has finally mastered the art of the one thing he lacked inside the field; ironically, it's the same skill that Dada displayed brilliantly on the ground, but nowhere near as good off it. 

Timing.

# 33 - 17 things to do by 31st December, 2017, or before you die (whichever is earlier)

It’s that time of the year again folks, the time we look back at the year that was, and wonder, “what the hell just happened?”

And then we look ahead, hoping that the coming year will be better.

I had decided that new year resolutions weren’t my thing long back, and had focussed more on the outcome than the means, in fact, it was on the 26^th of September, 2006 that I had decided (yes, decided) that 2016 was going to be my year.

I would own 2016.

I would be rich, famous, and most importantly, happy.

It was my 10-year plan, and as you might have guessed, things didn’t really turn out that way.

Never the one to give up (my PT teacher would disagree), I have decided to postpone joy for a year, and be a bit more detailed with what I want this time, and while at it, I have also decided to make your new year resolution for you, because all of us want more or less the same things from life, right?

So, here goes, in no particular order, the things you (and I) must do by 31^st December 2017, or die trying.

1. Reasonably restrict vices. Don’t stop because people tell you to, stop because you want to.

2. Write more. All of us, no matter what profession we are into, need to write more. Be it personal diaries, letters, or legal notices. The tragedy of the 21^st century is that the most writing we do is on WhatsApp – not a good idea. Writing is cathartic, liberating, and tells us a lot about ourselves. On a personal note, ‘the great Indian law college’ novel that I have been working on since 2013, needs to be finished, before memory fails and before it becomes totally out of sync with the times.

3. Get a six pack.

 It was fine when Salman, Shahrukh and Aamir sported those washboard abs that you could probably grate cheese on, but now with Bunty from my housing society flaunting it, six packs, like PayTM and online shopping, has truly turned mainstream.  So hop on the fitness bandwagon, before you’re left out.

4. Read at least 25 books this year.

Note: Femina, Filmfare, Cosmopolitan, Tinkle, Champak, Maxim, etc., do not count as books.

5. Accumulate enough knowledge on House of Cards, Game of Thrones, or whatever movie/book/TV show/flavour of the season that everyone is raving about, OR, improve acting abilities so that you can pretend to be ‘in with it’. Else, be prepared to listen to lines such as “WHAAAAT? YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ________?”, or the more disturbing “You should die already.”

6. Read more. Because saying it once isn’t enough.  

7. Accept the ageing process. Gracefully. YOLO/YODO are all fine, but we can’t still look 20 when we are on the wrong side of 40 (not speaking about myself here). We need to accept this fact and ignore commercials featuring movie stars who have gone under the knife and are paying for the botox sessions by endorsing creams that claim to reverse the 27 signs of ageing. Thirty signs that you’re bullshitting, I say.

8. See more sensible movies. Gunda, Deshdrohi and Snakes on a Plane are amusing once in a while, but the trouble with watching too many bad movies is, before you know it, you start enjoying them, like really enjoying them. You forget that you started out poking fun at these kinds of movies, and you know you’re in trouble when you actually start wondering how Mithun da is going to be able to match up against the formidable and ‘always open’ Bulla. Another sign that you’re in deep shit is when you unconsciously start humming ‘gutar gutar’.

9. Search for the extremely good looking singles in my area that pop-ups on my browser keep telling me about. Seriously, where are they?

10. Get more people to read my blog. If you’re reading this, spread the word. [Promoted point]

11. Chuck that smartphone away and go to sleep before 12 midnight, at least on weekdays.

12. Get better at writing, table tennis, and quizzing, in that order. <Insert your own non-work-related hobbies here>

Note: ‘Surfing the net / Watching TV’ DO NOT count as hobbies. How do you get better at browsing the internet, by getting a better broadband?

13.  DO NOT FORWARD RUMOURS BEING PASSED OFF AS NEWS ON WHATSAPP/FACEBOOK etc. There’s a reason why newspapers and websites dedicated to news exist. So quit the temptation to forward messages that talk about GPS embedded chips in Rs. 2000 notes, UFO sightings in Jhumri Telaiya, and 30 feet tall humanoid skeletons. And while at it, stop forwarding and sharing “if you do not pass this message to 20 people you will die” or “comment with Amen” posts.

14. Ignore Kamaal Rashid Khan (KRK). Like Deshdrohi, he was fun for a while, but now it’s just sad. Your time deserves better.

15. Learn something new. Remember the time you bought a guitar to impress your crush? And how you abandoned it the day you found out that it was your face that was the problem and not your lack of guitar playing skills? Well, it’s time to remember the guitar and forget the girl. Dust it off and learn how to play it. Studies show that learning new things keeps the brain young. And maybe, just maybe, your face might have gotten better since then.

16. Learn to let go. To hell with the past, there are other (hopefully better) things to come. Accept who you are and what you want to do with yourself. You are not your job, you are not who your parents/spouse/children want you to be. Stop bothering with what other people, no matter how close or important, think of you. You are the star of your movie, don’t let the secondary actors take away your screen time. Accept the fact that following latest trends, and forcible listening to the Billboard Top 20 do not make you cool. The traditional definition of being cool still holds true. Cool is not giving a damn about what others think of you, cool is about not pretending. So stop keeping a beard just because they seem to be in vogue. Okay, maybe I should cross out #3, I am still cool, baby! Okay, #5 too.   

17. #Abandon #Unnecessary #Hashtags #That #Serve #No #Purpose #Period

Don't be like Meena boy.

That’s it, boys and girls. I hope you have enjoyed reading this list. May we stick to our resolutions.

Happy new year in advance people, let’s own 2017.

Image from here.

# 32 - Why I write

Why do I write?

Why is it that I bother to write on topics ranging from Ra.One to Blackberry phones, knowing fully well that only a handful will be interested in these subjects?

Why do I bother to religiously paste the links to my latest post on Facebook and Twitter aware that only 15 percent of my Facebook friends and 1 percent of my Twitter followers will bother to click on the links? 

And no one, absolutely no one will ‘like’ them, unless they are feeling particularly generous, or of course, the finger slips. 

Why do I spend time writing short stories (or for that matter, blog posts) even when I know that my odds of getting published are slimmer than the chances of Mithun Chakraborty’s onscreen sister surviving the length of a movie, or Nirupa Roy not getting widowed within the first half an hour of an Amitabh Bachchan film, or Shahrukh Khan not getting the girl, or an auto driver giving you the change for 2000 bucks?  

Okay, you get the drift.

As with all of life's questions, there's a short answer and a long answer.

The short one:

Because I need to matter, goddamnit. I need appreciation and recognition - be it for my writing, my work, or for my still intact hostel record for the longest number of days passed without having taken a shower – recognition which obviously I am yet to find.

The long and more specific answer….well, there is no one single answer. 

I write because I need to collect all the pent up anger, disgust, humour, regret, sadness, happiness, and other assorted feelings; and then mix them all up and smash it against a wall, watch the green, gooey stuff splatter and feel somewhat better....but that feeling is short lived.

Then with the audacity of a three-year-old who has been drawing his masterpiece on the interior walls, (or perhaps been collecting dog poo from the streets) I feel the need to show it off.

"Look what I did, Ma.” 

And that’s what writing does for me. 

Because, like that old saying about a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, the writing only makes sense if it’s out there, available for people to read. 

I honestly don’t really care for the facebook likes (okay, maybe a little), any cat picture or a post on politics could do that, but as long as you are clicking the link and reading what I have written, I am happy.

I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s earlier movies, and my favourite is ‘The Prestige’.

There’s a line in the movie, and I seek your permission to cite it, well not really, I am the one who’s writing, so buzz off or stay with me as I quote from the movie.

‘Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. 

The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course...it probably isn't. 

The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. 

That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".’

What a great line! And I think that the quote is appropriate not just for magic, but for all things creative. Be it a piece of music, a movie, or a story. 

The quintessential story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

The beginning is where you show your deck of cards, something ordinary, something or someone that you and I could probably identify with.

And then, enter the conflict -  an event, a person or even a decision, who or which comes in and turns the mundane into the unexpected. 

But life seeks balance, a kind of resolution, and we follow the story to find out what will happen, how will it all end – because everything that has a beginning must have an end.

But of course, not all stories end with a clear outcome, some leave the reader wondering about what actually happened, they aim to confuse, or leave the ending to the interpretation of the reader, think ‘Inception’, or the ‘Lady, or the Tiger?’.

The ending is important because this is what will stay on with the reader, this is what the story culminates to, and no matter how exciting your premise is, how real your characters are, or how pacy your writing is, if the ending doesn’t satisfy your reader, it will all come down to nothing.

Now I have been blabbering on for a while now, and while I had started off with why I write, I have gone on to discuss the elements of a short story, anyway, coming back to the reasons.

The motive for writing will, of course, be subjective, there are people who write and the nature and content of their writing are too personal to share, or they simply don’t feel like sharing. There are noble and talented beings who write because they simply love writing and it comes naturally to them. 

Unfortunately, I don’t belong to this category. 

Words don’t come easily to me, I am not one of those people who can form coherent plots from one line of prompt, grammar remains a concern, and I have a limited vocabulary and resort to right clicking a word and choosing ‘synonyms’ more often than I would like to admit. 

It is a painful, frustrating process that more often than not leaves me wondering, why am I doing this, what’s the point of it all?

But when I do manage to finish a piece, the effort seems to have been worth it, not only because I have expressed myself, but because I have managed to create something out of nothing. 

Almost godlike.

Dance, puppets, dance!

There is no one single answer to why I write, but unlike the other things which take up my time, be it games, movies, television, combing my hair etc. – I have never, ever, regretted the time I have spent in writing.

And, that’s a good enough reason for me.

P.S. In case you are wondering, the record for consecutive days spent without having a shower:-  50. What can I say, it was a really cold Delhi winter.

Image taken from here.