Tears Lost In Falling Rain

2011-11-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

The End of the Line

Talguppa, a town that appears confused by its own name, gathered from the different ideas painted on the yellow station boards, lent us its serenity for a few minutes as we took the only train that makes the long haul to town through the picturesque Malnad region.

The trip to Talguppa was conceived out of a need to relive the erstwhile metre gauge romance that once played itself out amongst the forest and hutments of this rural line. Burdened with an unnecessarily long train, the locomotive rolled its way over the winding rails and overhanging branches, whistling not just at crossings but at everything in general as though in a hurry. Hurry, I can assure you we did not, doing the 100 kilometres in over 2 hours of old world railway travels. This line is diesel operated, a visual treat to the passer by, who haven’t seen a proper train on the line for over a decade now and the passing of the train is an event in everyday life. Even the shepherd wakes from his mandatory siesta to wave his staff in a hopeful goodbye.

The train trudged over the golden green landscape, skipping over the rails, barely shifting fallen leaves that settled on the ground in their final abodes, although at times it careened over bends as if searching for its tail. The locomotive drivers didn’t push hard, knowing that the empty train is just an extension of the solitude that invaded the countryside. Such idyllic surroundings, with the weather gods playing nice, and the perverse idea of sleep in the daytime penetrated the minds best intentions to gobble up the passing scenery.

During a moment of hard reflection, my concentration was broken by the shrill voice of a child and I half turned, to see what the commotion was, because it was almost as if a ghost had slid into the seat behind and screeched into my ear. Then, from the vestibule came another train, a train of school children barging along the aisle, a song on their lips, in varied states of completion, about a score of them and at intervals punctuated by portly school teachers. Undoubtedly a school trip to Jog Falls. They marched on, and turned straight back as though the world had just them in it, and all it needed, was for them to run and run like the wind. They created an awful din, and just when I thought that my trip of solitude was burnt to the ground, the line of pigtailed girls and excited boys disappeared into the billowing saree folds of the teachers.

Another idyllic lull followed, broken here and there by the hard braking of the locomotive and the strong smell of brake dust, although on a line such as this, there are no reasons to stop. We didn’t, and with a lurch the train picked up speed again, cruising through the dull day, cutting a swathe through the heavy wind.

Up around the bend came a station straight out of a postcard. As if, stuck, into the world while it was sleeping, the buildings seem lost in time. A face here, a limb there, a chicken sprawling on the dusty platform, a dog lazily brushing up his yawning skills and a sounder of pigs welcomed the train as it approached like an intruding stranger. It is not possible I think to generate a more serene surrounding even with the onset of the steel giants. Talguppa, whose only claim to fame, is probably the Jog Falls nearby seemed more ghostly than anything else. The signal masts stand sentinel to a timeless event, heralded by nothing more than the gentle tug of the brakes and the train comes to a slithering halt, bludgeoning over a dip in the tracks and then finally becoming one with the enveloping silence. A small cemetery at the corner of the station yard bore home the fact that this is a quiet place, destined for solitude.

The line man appears to be the only employee the railway here possessed, for he did everything from man the level crossing gate to switch points to de-couple and couple the locomotive and everything else in general.

Exiting the platform, one is dumped not into the badgering sleaze of the auto drivers syndicate, rather the gentle, swaying lull of a “Jog Falls Sir?” type of atmosphere where the taxi drivers are almost sure to know that you’re not going, yet it’s polite to ask. Step outside the station boundaries and a vegetable and fruit market is built around the arrival of the only train here. For a hundred meters on either side, the market stretches out under makeshift shelters with the produce neatly stacked under each stall with a paan chewing seller quietly eyeing business. The Western Ghats are still pure, and you can feel the cool breeze of the fresh produce penetrate the almost silent throng of people. We on the other hand, had no such time to sample the variety, but given the absence of food stalls on the platform or at any station en route, had to make do with a few oranges.

Everything here is reminiscent of the heyday of the metre gauge, the platform, the buildings and even the rails seem to say that they miss the good old days.

In a few minutes the train took on its only passengers who did the whole hog, the return, us.

The locomotive driver, although did not seem to like the local gate man much, for he noisily spat into his wireless set and reprimanded the dilly dallying of the gate man to shut the gate for the imminent departure. Such is the Indian mind, that the locomotive driver, himself chose to glide the train over the only level crossing in the area and saunter to a stop to conclude some business with the gate man while vehicles on either side did neither honk or even raise an eyelid to get things moving. And then with an impatient whistle and a rasping purr, the locomotive threw up a twirling cloud of smoke, lurched uncomfortably and sent the train hurtling through the forest at a trot in its wake.

The sun was in shadow and the few farmers out in the fields ran up to the line to wave their goodbyes. Then, the sleepy clickety-clack of the rails sent me into a reverie of old times spent driving through the region.

Then suddenly, almost like a whisper, I felt like I was spoken to, and sleepily I turned to note the advent of a beggar, but unlike his cousins in the cities, he was polite and quickly shuffled when I nodded my head in annoyance.

At one of the larger stations on the line, Sagar, the train took on quite a few people who were probably making their way to Shimoga for the evening. The train suddenly seemed to rattle with the high pitched blabbering of women and the excited screeching of children, overshadowed here and there by the authoritative blast of a man’s voice. How they managed to find and occupy one particular compartment is a mystery, but it is very Indian, and it appeared that the “reserved” status on the train between Shimoga and Talguppa is a mere formality, as is the case on branch lines. From here on, I slept, partly in annoyance at this unruly invasion and partly because I had been travelling continuously for the last sixteen hours. I awoke a few kilometres before Shimoga and was quickly reminded by the conductor that from this station on, the train became a “reserved” train. Try telling that to the locals.

Such is the beauty of the Indian railway, the rural branches, the ones away from the hustle bustle of the cities and towns that greatly exaggerate the already perforated pockets of oxygen and seemingly effortlessly melt the smells of unwashed armpits, uncombed hair and the sweat of the tropics into a pot of suicidal tendencies. This is the unwanted India, the unquenched thirst, the unbroken promise and the hopeful tomorrow. The line where time stands still, where the railway is still a welcome stranger, where the passengers are a theatre of dreams, where the train runs its own course and where the simple folk weave their evening stories.

For now, the sight, smell and feel of an old world railway line, lost in time, alive in a ghostly reincarnation envelops me and I must try and relive those magic moments before I ride these rails again.

2011-07-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

The Slow Train To Mysore

The train rumbled on through the night, the black smoke from the diesel locomotive at the head of the train painting a wisp through the moonlit canvas. Outside the train, black fields passed in uncounted minutes, the steady clickety-clack of the wheels and the occasional whistle of the engine lulled the senses of the train’s passengers to deep slumber. The overnight slow train to Mysore had wriggled its way through the tenements of Bangalore and was now well on its way through the dotted landscape of sugarcane fields and barren lands.

Ram, the tea-seller sat on the steps of the general compartment, his head bowed between his hands in a tired nap, with his tea container crammed between his legs. A half empty roll of plastic cups hung loosely from his arm. Ram’s wife had left him in the search for a greener pasture, as she called it and went away to another town. With her went all his savings and his belongings. All he had now was his tea container, about ten plastic cups and an over-shirt. Ram wasn’t unhappy even though his countenance suggested otherwise, rather he was happy, because now he didn’t have to go home to nagging, slapping and constant insult. He wouldn’t have to deal with his wife or her parents; he wouldn’t have to part with his daily earnings nor his dignity. Ram was in fact, for the first time in a very long time, at peace with himself. He stared at the disappearing ballast beneath his feet, and images of a life lived in shame flew through his mind’s eye. Intermittently, a stone would rear up and hit his legs, but Ram would just stare on, in an apparent stupor.

This was the night train to Mysore and there weren’t any buyers for tea on the train.

Most of the passengers who got in or off were regular peasants and small time vendors. Young lasses from the villages boarded the train at various points bundling their sarees in with their luggage into the already full compartment. But Ram had no eyes for them, for he believed he was one of those gifted men who’d find an already experienced woman. In between his intermittent fits of sleep, Ram thought of other women, and he felt a strange exhilaration and a longing for a real woman. He wanted her arms around him and not just her lashes. He wanted a woman to feel him and to respect him for who he was. In his dreamtime as well Ram dreamt of his mythical Sita, he dreamt of going home to a hot cup of tea and a rice meal, he dreamt of laying his head down on her lap and drifting away to sleep, he dreamt of the things they’d do when the rest of the family slept. Like the train he was on, life too seemed to be taking him away to a dream world.

The train rolled on, oblivious to Ram or any of its passengers, like a machine leading those searching souls ever onward to a final destination, with the answer as always, unknown. Here and there, the driver would let out a shrill blast of his horn, warning livestock and people by the line that here, in the open heartlands, life hung by a thread. Like Ram, the driver too was an ordinary person, a man of steel, dust and grime who had lived his life on the railway like his father and his grandfather before him. At the rear of the train, Hari, the guard, let out roaring snore after roaring snore, safe in the knowledge that this was the slow train to nowhere and nothing was going to get out of hand. His mouth hung open, and a few bugs of the night had a field day in digging out what they could off his tongue. Hari wasn’t married and didn’t care much for women, although he did care a lot for alcohol. Day in and day out, Hari was on the slow train to hell and he knew he wasn’t getting off it anytime soon. Hari was one of those men who didn’t think too much about life, he actually didn’t think too much of anything at all and he had found the cure for boredom and insanity a long time ago. He became a railway guard only because he knew he’d start on the slow trains and no one would need him to energise himself when an emergency arose. It was a safe bet, a government job and a daily staple diet. Hari didn’t hear the engine whistling, nor did he hear the wheels over the rails, all he heard was a deafening roar of silence.

The slow train had a mind of its own; it meandered through the moonlit night, romancing the moon as it danced through the clouds. Here and there, it’d stop at a signal or a wayside ghost stations with the distant green or yellow signal lights the only signs of life on the line. The train was practically one long bed, with a mix of people, insects and animals scattered throughout. In some coaches, goats were tethered to the berth handles and in some coaches; people seemed to have formed human pyramids. The smells that emanated from these coaches were mildly intoxicating and appeared laborious. For that Ram was glad as he had the fresh night air all to himself. In a few hours he’d be back home in Mysore, and he’d be back again the next day on the train to Bangalore.

Traversing the Cauvery bridge, Ram saw beneath him the sparkling flow of water between fleeting steel girders. The waters seemed to be silky smooth and calm, calling out to him in death whispers. He felt a strange sense of calm and sensuousness and he drifted into a momentary loss of time. The bridge appeared to be never ending, and Ram could still hear the vast empty noises of the train going over a hollow space. Time stood still and space seemed all around him, he felt himself letting go of the door handles, his fingers gradually slipping off their grip over the steel. He felt light, uncontrolled and unruffled. The wind tore through his hair and his shirt slapped loosely around him. Suddenly he felt as if he was falling, and in a moment he saw the silvery snake of the water below, the moon glistening in reflection. Ram thought he’d seen paradise, a land where troubles did not exist, where he was among equals. Then in a flash, he was back on solid ground. The steady thumping of the train on the tracks was back again and the night grew longer. Again he was lulled into a deep sleep by the rhythmic sounds of the wheel with the distant thunder of the engine and the wisps of diesel smoke that drifted by every now and then. Ram was once again the slave of this world. His mind fell to thinking of his neighbour, a well-rounded, loud mouthed, married woman. He had fantasized about her for many months now, but the instinct of self-preservation and cowardice left him with his hand for company. In a moment of uncouth carnal urge, he made a mental note to show her how he felt when he got home.

Through the fields that once served as a battleground to the legendary warrior Tippu Sultan, the night train rattled on, like an snake in an apparent daze, trudging through valleys and hills, steaming over bridges and harmonizing man and machine. Hari was still asleep, in his dreams, bottles of nectar floated by, him in a white suit, and the nectar oozing out of the bottles found its way into his open mouth. Somewhere in that sleep he heard a cracking bottle…

Where Ram and Hari dreamt, the train went, where they awoke, the train stopped. Such is the beauty of the night train to Mysore.

2010-10-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Goods Train

Trains come in all shapes, sizes and lengths. Not to mention colours. But there is one particular type that signifies the railroad, the engineers who work them and the people behind the scenes. This is the goods train. Those long, brooding, grumbling brown wagons of endless length, of wizened drivers and of sleeping guards. This is the goods train, almost like the unwanted son of the railway. A song without its chorus if you may.

The goods train is awfully boring to watch to the ordinary man, so often it gets cursed for its snail like speed and it’s almost snake like appearance, it gives many a motorist the nightmare of an ever closed railway gate. But to me, a rail fanatic, the goods train is the epitome of the railway. The dust, grime and glory all combine to make the running of the long goods train the most emphatic sound, sight, smell, taste and feel of the railway.

Winding its way slowly over the undulating terrain of the single line section, where the blades of grass are as lazy as the shepherd that walks over them, is a long goods train bound for the city of Bangalore. About an hour from its final destination, the train’s drivers and guard should be looking forward to time off and a meal at home. But instead they’re lazing around in their respective cabins, discussing the latest political potboiler of the Indian government and the latest Bollywood belle, sans her clothes. Why do goods trains and women without clothes go together you ask? Well the train is not a woman, it is a man…and men will always figure out a way to find women in the most unthinkable of times. What say?

Anyway, the grubby drivers, tired from their long shifts on the snail train, chew gutkha and spit it out of the engine window, without a care in the world. Thankfully for them, there’s no excited young child with his head stuck between carriage window bars that gets this full in his face. Instead, the stain is pasted for eternity onto the sides of the cabin, and like devil and daughter, they are now together for life. The drivers lazily pull out a magazine and begin to scan the contents, one with his finger up his nose searching for lost gold, the other with one hand adjusting the ever adjustable Indian VIP underwear and the other hand stretched out the window, perpendicular to the train, as if it was some left over thing that no one needs. The throttle is yanked forward, at full steam, the twin diesels roar into overdrive as they thud along the long steel rails with their load behind them. Working inside, the pistons fire like the insides of a volcano, spewing forth power and a surge which ultimately drives these wheels of steel.

The guard is in the caboose, at the very end of the line of wagons, with a lonely, brown and locked snake of life between him and his nearest human companions, 58 wagons away. All he has for company is last week’s newspaper that both serves as toilet paper and reading material. On the cover page, torn of any shred of dignity, is the belle in question, with her body spread far and wide at every angle possible, the way only a much touched, read and re-read newspaper can. Quietly, he scans once again the possibilities of the failure of the print media to recreate a wardrobe malfunction, and just as quietly resigns himself to the fact that his fat, ugly and disobedient wife will welcome him home shortly.

Nonchalantly, he garbles into the walkie-talkie, talking to the drivers in local dialect and enquiring, more absent mindedly that with any intent, how far away they are from the next station. Just as incomprehensible and illogical is the reply although the next station can’t be more than a few kilometers away.

No one wants to leave the serenity of the goods train, clanking its way noisily across the barren lands, snaking its way through the many curves and twists the line has to offer. The trees, boulders and winding roads all seem to will the train along, egging it one just one more mile, back to civilization.

Suddenly, with a great show of smoke, sound and sight, the train grinds to a halt. The brake dust settles over the belle on the newspaper, now covering her tattered saree in a fine film of silvery powder and she herself settles on the solitary commode that at the end of the train. A cursory glance out of his cabin tells the guard that they’re at a wayside station, on a loop line, undoubtedly waiting for a crossing. The crossing – that fatigued, wearied event that could happen just about anywhere, anytime and anyhow on a single line stretch is a welcome break for the weary drivers and their heavy bladders. Quickly settling the throbbing diesels into a hushed sleep, they jump off the locomotive and head to the nearest bush to spray it with the urine of distance. The urine has seen so much, been through so many places, if only it could talk.

In the far distance, midway through the loop line, on a platform the size of vegetable shop, the sleepy station master is just about trying to get across the goods train and onto the other side to wave off the crossing train with the flags in his hand. No help here, this is a one man station, a one man army. Even the dogs at this station are fast asleep, the thunder of the steel giants do not trouble their ecstatic dreams one bit. The only living things awake appear to be the monkeys up in the trees, but soon their enthusiasm of finding food on this train takes a nose dive, for a goods train is that hollow, empty bringer of nothing for them. Resigned to their fate, they take to a more lucrative past time…making babies.

The guard stifles a yawn as his wax filled ears distinctly pick out the whistle of an approaching train at full speed. It will be a few minutes before that powerhouse of diesel, dust and smoke comes roaring up the main line, making for its next stop without a care for the machinery beneath its skin. Moments of boredom pass, he walks up to the railing of the caboose, puts one leg up on the railing, lifts the tip of his trouser a little and proceeds to eloquently scratch the tardy, broken skin of his leg. This activity completed, his hand moves to his crotch, quietly first cradling his manhood and then scratching it in all its glory. He barely has enough time to wake up from this dream when the monster train on the main line is almost upon him like some angry, snarling beast of smoke, belching fury with every step and honking furiously looking for the flags that signify a successful pass. He pops the flag out, almost into the face of the driver of the passing train, who himself is half out of the engine with his hair covered tight in a shiny bandana. With an orchestrated honking of a million horns, the diesel passes on, with its mass of humanity all packed tightly into its carriages, with the lucky few in air conditioned coaches, into the unknown, the smell of the passing train lingers for many an hour.

Up ahead, the drivers wipe the mists of sleep from their eyes, sip water from their flasks and pray fervently for the “proceed” signal instead of yet another crossing or an overtake. Thankfully, the rail gods oblige and the goods train rumbles on, on its own journey, with no apparent destination with two short blasts of its horns, the locomotive rumbles to life, strains at its leashes to power away from this restraining load behind it, but makes its peace with man and machine, and majestically waltzes out into the mainline, with the goods train tearing at its chains and groaning under the weight happily, lazily and never endingly beginning that journey.

2010-10-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

Django, The Anglo-Indian Custard Apple Picker

I’ve always been an intrepid traveler, more so because I enjoy train travel, and train travel in India is definitely not for the faint hearted, let alone the sane.

Train travel often puts you in touch with the most interesting characters you could ever hope, or hope never to meet. Strictly speaking, I met one of these not while on the train, rather off the train on one of the most interesting trips I ever had, but that’s another story. This chap was a middle-aged, Anglo-Indian chap living in Bangarpet, a few kilometers from Bangalore and teaching English at a local school. He had a messy appearance about him, one you’d attribute to a beggar, dressed in torn denims and the universal Bata ‘chappal’, with a tooth or two missing, obviously at the hands of the better male at the local town bar and restaurant with a fancy name like “Bangarpet Paradise” or “Paradise Gardens” for sure, with the paradise and garden both being as elusive as the promised land. He had a long mane of graying hair, and looked more like one of those mentally imbalanced scientists who’ve spent a lifetime navigating the seas of madness and have come out obviously stoned from their exploits and such was my initial perception of this most unlikely personality.

The chap appeared as if from nowhere. Like an apparition, he crawled up the railway track embankment from the wasteland some distance away, appearing in a hue of sweat and blue. I was revolted at his very appearance and quickly checked my pocket for my knife which I always keep at the ready. Well, what a surprise I was in for. He did not want to commit suicide like so many of his friends, but rather slithered over the rails with a silken gait that belied his appearance and came over to me. He was most frighteningly friendly and courteous, even shaking hands with me and asking me varied questions about train movements. Not wanting to sound very knowledgeable or anything of the sort, I feigned ignorance and instead asked him a few questions about trains, and damnit!, the man knew a thing or two. Apparently he’s a regular traveler to Bangalore, as is the norm, as the ‘call-center revolution’ finds its way into people’s lives like the child they never wanted but love to have.

Of all things, he was looking for custard-apples amongst the trees that grew on one side of the railway line, custard-apples. Mind you, I came all the way from Bangalore to watch trains, nearly got bitten by a cobra and I meet this fellow looking for custard-apples. I might have thought he was a murderer or even a homosexual at that and I was prepared for anything except custard-apples. Now, the denim clad Django asks me if I’ve seen custard-apples anywhere here. Yes of course I have as I am most interested in these unique fruits and have come all the way to pick them. So I said ‘yes, they’re there’, pointing a nervous finger in the general direction of some trees that I hoped to god, bred custard-apples even if they were mango trees. He smiles, and at that moment I cannot help but notice the enormous gap between his front teeth and I inadvertently compress my face into a frown, but manage to keep my nerve. I’m telling you, you could shove a custard-apple or two right between that gaping hole without him having to unhinge his jaws to eat them whole. Anyway, his eyes are blood-red, whether from the effects of the local alcohol or from lack of sleep I don’t know, as I tactfully keep my nostrils closed as I do in most cases when dealing with such people. And then he drops the most used line of the decade…’I’m looking for a call-center job in Bangalore’. Another man, another forced job, another lie, another life, altogether he doesn’t know the fuck just where he is. But that’s the state that our country is in now, everybody, from the fruit-seller on the battered pavement, to the taxi-driver, they all want to be part of this revolution of the computer age. So I quiz him on his life, apparently from a seemingly happy life while the mines at Kolar were working, he’s now a teacher in Bangarpet, lecturing English to a classroom full of students who hope that this is what shapes their careers. Alas, how mistaken are they. I ask him why he harbours this dream of being employed in the city and the answer is as expected, and as tragic as ever…’that’s where the money is’. Sadly, this is the mistaken dream that a lot of us Indians are following, we’re forever hoping that learning English and a call-center job leads to healthy employment and so often, so many of us, are lost in that journey, to never arrive at the destination. More so for the people from smaller towns, these dreams are distant, not unreachable, but they’re a distant reality and it takes the most focused of them to achieve. And to those individuals, I raise my hat and glass for they are true Indians, sons of the soil, burning of the toil, reaching the stars they only read about. Slumdog Millionaire I hear you say?., not in a million years, the true beauty of resurgence lies within, in homes and huts where covered feet have never tread, where the only use of petrol has been to burn the unholy and where a commode would be used to sleep on rather than defecate on.

Suddenly he takes off across the railway tracks, inviting a series of horn blasts from the oncoming train’s drivers and for a moment, my heart stops. Is he, after all, just another suicide solution, another statistic? My heart is in my mouth as I wait for the train to pass and it seems like forever, is he on the other side or is he strewn on the rails? The train passes, and with it, the tension. He’s over on the opposite side, fighting like a dog with a shepherd who he insists, in spite of the latter’s vehement claims, has stolen all the custard-apples. It’s a sight, a shepherd whose life is around his sheep holding court against this fanatical, radical person who accuses him of fruit theft…I tell you, it happens only in India!

As I listen to him drag on and on about the losses the state has suffered, and they have with the closing of the gold mines, about how life in the slush and filth covered streets have changed from one of a family dinner over the duties of the day to the subdued whispers of the who ran away with whom. For a man who has lived his life dispensing duty in the noblest profession ever, a change to embrace the new world, a jump from a life of torn underwear to spotless shirts, from “chappals” to laced shoes, this man, he who looked like Long John Silver himself, brings home the ugly truth.

From the oil fired lamps of yesterday, that set up an eerie glow against the dark wilderness around, a few incandescent bulbs and even some LED’s spruce up the town’s frontier and in that passage of interplay of light from the old to the new, I see across the road from me, as if strangely welcoming home it’s lost son, the “Bangarpet Paradise Bar & Restaurant”.

2009-12-08T23:28:00.001-08:00

Human BINtelligence

Most humans I can do without. They are nothing but a disgrace to humanity as a whole and I’m not talking about politicians and world leaders. I am talking about the average human…and here’s a list of who and why:

The local colleague: because he / she blabbers in a regional tongue and consumes his / her food and beverage with a cacophony that closely resembles a malfunctioning flush tank;

The chauffeur driven woman: because her car holds up traffic for miles together while she fidgets with her bra strap and her driver’s too busy noticing that in his rear view mirror. Result: a barrage of abuses from other road users but just a snobbish smile from the back seat bitch;

The policeman: because his efficient handling of traffic ensures my bladder is at bursting point anywhere and everywhere;

The sob story person: those loser people who keep on and on about their sob stories should be collected and stored in a museum for the brain dead;

The plumber: because even though I set out a carpet of newspaper for him to walk on, he still insists on placing his garbage wrapped feet on my clean floor;

The electrician: because he wires plug points to multiple switches, wonder where his brains are wired;

The parking attendant: because with a parking space as wide as PA’s valley, he still insists I park my car in a space as far away from there as possible;

The relatives: because they keep saying that I’ve grown up…yes of course, do you want to see something that’s grown bigger as well?

In general, the average human being that I am privileged to come into contact with is a fool and a disgrace altogether. How I wish I could cook their brains and boil a broth for the world’s hungry. The average human being makes it necessary to irritate me as much as they can, to bring me to my knees. To beg before their ignorance that ignorance is indeed, bliss. How very fucked up. Take for e.g., the other day a pair of loving drivers on the highway crawling beside each other, one at 15Kmph and the other at 16Kmph and not an inch of space would they give. How I wish I could have tied one by his genitals while the other stroked it with a hot iron.

The average humans intelligence can be found everywhere….just like a dustbin…somebody please sponsor me to rid this planet of this scourge – brain dead slipper eating transgender pigs.

2009-09-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

A Sinner's Epilogue

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Today, as I stand at the gallows pole, I answer the questions that life has posed me. When I go, I go in the knowledge that at the threshold of my end, I have answered life and it's doubters.

Why did I commit murder you ask...but you do not question the death of innocent thousands that die at the hands of governments, that I suppose is a necessary evil. I kill because I am left with no option, I have no choice, and killing is my business and I kill in the name of honour. I am a mercenary, for the poor against the rich. I have only taken the lives of those who kill for false glory, and I stand by my judgement that to free this world of such vermin is my legacy. I gladly go to the gallows knowing fully well that the pain that a thousand felt at the hands of these few murderers are at least slightly avenged. I am a mercenary for the unarmed and the innocent, yet you condemn me to my death, then pray, tell me where is justice for all?

Tell me, should I forgive those who trespass against us? War and famine in Sierra Leone - tell me who sponsors this blood feud? Why do we watch the media glorifying soldiers in the Middle East? Are they not fighting a war that is not theirs? And in the end, when they return home, killed by a soldier who only defended himself, they are given a hero's salute...why? What about the orphaned child who picked up a broken rifle and used it to survive in Iraq?

Today I will be on national television, I will be a national disgrace and I will be condemned to hell by my own flesh and blood. I will die as I lived, by the sword, but will you care about me after I am gone? Do you know the truth of my life? Do you remember the thousands who die in Asia fighting governments? Do you know what it is to have shrapnel lodged in your skull, but you cannot die because no one is alive to pump in the last bullet? Tell me then, that why you've accepted that I'm a sinner while you let the blood-seeking so called warriors of peace carry on their massacres of millions?

When I go, I go in peace for I know I have written a book of the dead for the innocent, and their faces are all that give me salvation, for it is for the weak that I stand against the strong, for the myriad children decapitated in the name of national security, for those who stand at our borders and give their lives so that we may live another day.

So as I go now, question your government, people should never be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

2009-07-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Politics of Ecstasy

Why is that after a night of awesome sex the question is raised as to “what next?” Or, why even a question? Or why even a thought of a question? I did not sign a contract that says “have sex and answer me”…almost like have ten beers and don’t piss!...

But I believe that’s its some kind of phenomenon that even the most learned psychologists haven’t figured out yet…nor will they, coz when they end up having sex, they’ll probably ask “what’s on your mind”… A way better question than “what’s next?” .

I remember one particular affair, where the sex was cool, but at the same time it kind of fizzled out everytime a question would arise…”where are we”, “where do we go from here”, “what’s to come”….questions that actually get you to imagine ‘doing it” with someone else rather than the one you’re doing it with!...But I think its some “cool” talk, you know, like “whats up dawg?”…you’ve heard that before I’m sure!

Funnily enough, there are some cool answers that come to my head (you know which head I mean right?)…some of the answer’s I’ve blurted out are:
Q: where are we?
A: well if you’d had the brains to steal your dad’s credit card, we could be at the Playboy Mansion, couldn’t we?
Q: where do we go from here?
A: well, what about, you go to the freezer, and I’ll go to the nearest bar and find a chick who can’t speak English?
Q: what’s to come?
A: perhaps a marriage on Venus, if you can afford it, that is…and find a way to get there?...oh, you’ve got your head in your arse…sorry, might take some getting out of there…
Q: will you do this again with me if you love me?
A: sure, bring your friends along, the more the merrier right?

Why, oh why, do people need to complicate the simplest of things in life…start up, insert, download and shut down…the world runs on Google, Yahoo and the like…so where is reality? And oh, I almost forgot, some people haven’t ever seen an ice lolly being eaten have they?

Sex was never meant to be complicated, in ages past, it was a pastime, now it’s a talking point, a talking point that’d drive most men up the wall, we’re here to respect you and to be there for you, but not as a question and answer session. Didn’t you know that there’s an unofficial track and field event that is run by men who run away from “psycho-ill-logists?”…yeah, it’s a real Olympic event…no wonder the Greeks invented the “pole vault”…

Fine, I admit, I’m an opportunist, I found a weak spot, I hit it, and for unlawful carnal knowledge’s sake, I said I liked it. But it’s the case of what lies beneath that makes me wish that my manhood was a magnet attracted to brains rather than beauty…well that’s the weakness of man and he accepts it, at least he doesn’t ask “where do I stick it?”…

2008-12-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

Beast of Carpathia

Climbing higher into the mountains of ice
My blood is frozen and my body is numb
Deep in the Carpathians, forests of black mire
He comes like a phantom of fire.

Burnt at the stake his body and bones
Revenge, his mother of birth
Face of inhuman disgrace, a countenance hideous
Whispering into the western winds, chants of the blasphemous.

Religion, man and fate have torn his faith
Swearing revenge upon every living being
Once buried in crypts of frost
The beast is no longer lost.

Mighty warriors mauled by a talon
Forever in rivers of blood we must bleed
Gods of man no match for a god of death
Sharp is the knife under the sheath.

He will stop not until the deed is done
Burning bridges and forests of fire
He rises from depths unprecedented
Possessed by a demon so demented.

Through valleys of burnt trees and stones of death
The chase is on, and the earth is raped by storms
Beastial devastation, on the race of man his wrath
Carpets of wreaths litter every dark path.

A funeral sky is lit up in the circle of fire
A baptism of legend, a beast so vile
Taste of blood lingers on his forked tongue
By the madness of religion he is stung.

As I gaze at the reddened sky
Where ravens are ablaze in a thunder of flames
The Hellrider comes on the wings of the beast
Coming to relish a demise, everlasting feast.

Death riders on the darkest winds
The darkness shines through
Angels from heaven fall in funeral gowns
Evil upon the land tonight frowns.

I cannot escape the dark lord
My fate is sealed in a coffin of desire
My bones will condense to ashes of stone
And I pray then that they leave my soul alone.

In a gore filled lake they lay me to rest
Covered by the darkness that embraces me
I am not dead but have seen the end
To the depths of hell I curse their souls to send.

As my eyes burn and set themselves in stone
To mighty ravendark, the prayer of death
Save my seed from the grandeur of his knife
Plunge the afterworld into an eternal strife.

2008-05-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

Bangalore and its rural areas from a railway window

Sometimes the window of reality and surrealism is just a thin film of tint. Being a frequent traveler on the railways all over India, I have seen the outside world reflect its misery and hope for tomorrow on the same last ray of a dying sun.

Railway stations in India are always a paradoxical element of progress in various stages of its own life cycle. Progress need not necessarily be achievement of a preplanned concrete structure or the flagging off of a new train service. Here, more so in Bangalore, progress is a word that has long since forgotten its purpose.

Invariably you’d get yourself caught in a stinking mass of humanity, wrestling for an inch of space to rest themselves and their loads on your already sweating body. Its every man for himself and ever so often, every dog and cow thrown in. For this is India, where man, beast and everything in between co-exist in a harmonic state of disharmony. With bags strewn on every conceivable body part, and with early morning breath staring you in the face, you wish for a welcome moment of space.

As we slowly pull out of Bangalore, already running an hour late, someone pulls the emergency chain. As is the general apathy of the fellow traveler and running staff, no one really wants to see what the matter is all about. However, when this happens for a second time even before the train has left the platform, someone must know what the reason is. And a jolly good reason it is too – someone has managed to oversleep, with the train being late, and has only realized that their stop is about to pass them by. As is general custom and lackadaisical lifestyle, the perpetrators detrain at a speed that can only be matched by a government official signing official papers. In India, your business is everybody’s business and soon the folks who nearly went where they weren’t supposed to are surrounded by an eager horde of unemployed (for the time being at least) miscreants who will now recount this story coupled with horror and accusations over breakfast tables.

We chug on, into the cesspool that is Bangalore’s rural 'development'. Houses, stairwells, toilets, paths and roads all vie for that hallowed inch of space between the railway tracks and shelters. The social fabric of Bangalore's (and much of India's) rural areas are spread across the railway. Life takes on a different meaning beside the tracks. Mongrels, the breeds of which can never be identified, and little naked children bark and wave at the passing steel snake totally oblivious of the fact that as the train, clothed in paint and bluesy colours, rolls on as they roll over in poverty. The sights and smells of these shantytowns linger on in the passageways, as if to remind you and I of the filth that we can never leave behind. Does any government official even bother about these folks hidden behind railway lines and scanty roofs? Of course, not, they’d more likely be getting their fat rears licked by the powers that wished they’d be.

The early hours of the morning bring with it the most peaceful hours of the day – daily wage workers, the unemployed, the unemployable and the casual criminal all collect by the railway to go about their morning businesses and catch up with a smoke of the all encompassing beedi – the poor man’s cigarette, while the white man beside me looks at the passing filth in complete ignorance, all the while caressing his case of Marlboro.

The slums gradually give way to a searing mass of infected water, called a river for geographical sake and as the mottled hues of it’s industrial ingredients swirl away in smaller whirlpools of sewage, one really wonders if the WHO has even considered a trip to India.

It is common in India to have a railway employee traveling with you, in the same coupe or carriage and generally this gentleman would lead you to believe he owns the train. In this particular instance, a young girl, her mother and grandmother are accompanying this individual. Soon, all semblance of early morning peace and quiet is shattered by a shrill cry from the girl and spontaneous banter begins that wakes the whole carriage. Soon, kids from all over converge and begin their morning madness. It’s almost like all hell has broken loose. Soon I cover my head up in a pillow and pretend to doze. The little girl has soon to visit the lavatory, for which the preparations begin at the seat, something that gets my goat – we travel in air-conditioned coaches, use sophisticated cell phones and yet we act like Neanderthal man. This is passed on through generations – the grandfather and grandmother have a role to play in this episode, while the mother hides behind the newspaper away from disapproving eyes.

Being in the upper class coaches, sometimes has its merits. Thankfully, beggars are at a minimum, and those that appear are quickly shooed away by the attendant.

By the railway you see an enormous amount of plastic throwaways – bottles, plates, bags, etc. The railways in India is a garbage distribution system and I still wonder how, educated and culturally sensitive people can throw waste out into the open only because it’s not their backyard. Incredible.

At most stations you’d hear the ubiquitous calls of the hot beverage hawkers. Once on the train, they’re like a house on fire, bustling in and out with food hawkers following them with the smell of oil and fried foodstuffs waffling over, it’s almost too good to resist.

In the smaller towns, a bunch of kids make a filth strewn part of the land theirs, fighting over marbles or making do with sticks and stones. Some of the more enterprising ones, realize that a stone in the hand is worth a crack in a window. Promptly, forward goes the stone and crack! goes the window pane. Again, being the apathy laden type, the maintenance staff ensure that the train goes through its lifetime without having that window fixed, the general thought process being – its going to be broken again, so why fix it?

In the late evenings you’d find huddled gatherings of men and women with various attractions. Some medicine men, with deformed features from earlier heroics, ply their wares on passerby and the even slightly interested ones. One specimen, already missing a part of his nose and resembling a pig more than a human, swiftly whips out a kitchen knife and proceeds to push it into his eyeball, all the while drawing expressions of surprise and awe from his motley audience of sweaty, dirty, rag clothed passerby. His paraphernalia consists of some unknown quantities of things you wouldn’t want to know existed and soon he’s got a throng interested in his little circus.

At most places the railway passes just an arms distance from houses, so if you’re on the railway at various times in a day, you’d probably figure out the daily routine of a household. Dirty linen hanging out in public doesn’t seem to concern any one in particular, least of all the passenger who watches from the inside.This is Bangalore, the city that dreams about progress, but on that very path of progress lies its biggest nemesis – space for the teeming masses…

2007-12-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

A Circus of Cricket

Cricket stadiums in India arguably are cauldrons of emotion and chaos. Over the last few years I have noticed varied responses to the members of the all-conquering, albeit in the minds of the public, Indian cricket team. When a player makes his entrance onto the field, he enters something akin to the Roman Coliseum, bathed in dollar bills, sweat and grime even before he has touched the ball, for the weight of expectation is overbearing.

When Sachin Tendulkar walks in to bat, the country as a whole welcomes him, young and old, the rich and the poor follow every move of Sachin’s with alarming frequency just like the attention his abdomen guard gets from the master himself. There is no let up in voice nor hand, which leaves a lingering scent of smelly underarms all over your neighbour’s nose. Sachin is the alpha and the omega for Indian fans, the man, the machine, the fire. Whether he scores a duck or a century, which he’s finding rather hard nowadays, only Sachin can stand in line with the gods of today.

Watching Sourav Ganguly walk in or walk around, for it would be a Shakespearean error to say that he runs, is like watching the Wheelchair Olympics. A picture of constant and alarming chaos, Ganguly is a man whose guts don’t match the physical ability of one that is brave, sadly. But he is a leader amongst men, a cricketer born of fire, the passion burns brighter than before now. Ganguly is a comical aberration of fitness; if he falls and bruises himself he must leave the field on a stretcher to avoid further exercise. He would call it saving energy. Also, it seems like he doesn’t much like a virgin, given that he prefers to stay away from the new ball.

Yuvaraj Singh belongs to the maverick generation. An instant crowd puller, who makes women scream and their men fume, his fans are spread far and wide, just like those chasing his cannonball shots to the fence. He is a marauder and cares not for the gentlemanly characteristics of the game and in that lies his apparent charm. He’s electric and quite a humorous character as well, which serves a certain Flintoff right.

MS Dhoni, hereafter referred to as MSD, is rural India’s answer to SRK. MSD is an icon, more for his hair, or rather lack of it now. In his short career he has achieved success and has a vision toward the future, even if his batting technique at times is more suited to the Kerala backwater races.
The captain of a new India is a man possessed, thankfully of a willingness to win and a fine balance between expectation and reality, something that all fans in India woefully fall short of.

Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman are a connoisseur’s delight. From the moment they walk on to the field they have a single vision and that has served them well over the years. VVS Laxman’s lists of faults according to the public, are as long as his forenames, but is a testament to grit and weak knees. There isn’t a doctor who has found a cure yet for jelly legs. Dravid’s occupancy and concentration at the crease make you wonder if he’s ever been home. Love him or hate him, Laxman is the man who has continually been the saviour and that too, against quality attacks.

Indian cricket is one of the best managed circuses around, and notable to say that it’s the most profitable as well.

While on the topic of circuses, it would be worth mentioning that the circus that Pakistan calls a cricket team is lead neither by the captain nor coach, but by a ringmaster who goes by the name of Shoaib Akhtar. Shoaib is his own man and his own team, a quality that has perhaps equal pros and cons. Whatever the weight of his ego might be, it has taken a showstopper like him to throw some interest and glare onto the motley crew of cricketers that make up the Pakistan Cricket team.

Surprisingly, after the series against India, Shoaib Malik remarked that Pakistan were ‘competitive’…which begs the question to be asked as to which series was Malik watching in the dressing room?

2007-06-13T02:09:00.000-07:00

In Ice I Burn

Icy cold nights I reminisce
Warm breath of your love
Shred the daggers of cold
Stoked the fires of mine

Every sunrise brings your fragrance
Down to me on the brink
Letting the sun set
We are not one forever

Momentary glimpses of your face
Cloud my mind and twist my heart
I try to hold you but feel rain
Drawing you closer it's my pillow

Cannot bear to share all we did
With the other that seems to love
For me all that meant was your love
Now I don't believe in it no more

Where were you when I burned in the fires of hell
Did you walk beside and tread the charred coals
Did you kiss me softly where heat blistered my cheeks
Did you cover my feet with water to kill fire

This love is no more and just as every rose has it's thorn
So must every act have it's consequence
There is none that can take your place
My heart always belongs to you

You might not take it for it brings pain
And a future uncertain
But it's for you to keep and cherish
Just as I do your silken touch

Tears do no good nor justice
To have lost the world is retribution enough
To bleed when there is no blood left
To die when I have died a thousand deaths

Some nights are as cold as ice
When the north winds caress my craggen face
The white goddess arises in my slumber
And disappears as a vision of fire

When I think of you the river breaks
No bridge can hold its flooded banks
No dam can contain its course
As it bears deeper into the void of forever

I wish to hide behind the wall of sleep
To reach solitude eternal
But every day is wrought with memories
And no heart can be at peace

Everything has been taken and I am naked
Upon the deserts of Set
Burning in the blaze of a fiery sun
Awaiting the bite of the serpent

You are not here on this element
Another life awaits me in the afterlife
I will hope to my dying day Y
ou are the flesh beyond the vision

2007-05-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

Are we truly alone? – A Full Circle
Part 1

We are at the crossroads of extinction. The world is leading itself onward to the beginning of the end. We have reached the end of the circle of life. Look at the events of the universe, man was on earth barely for a moment of time, the dinosaurs ruled earth for a quarter of that time and they wiped themselves out. And with them went smaller creatures that weren’t fit. With them went the birds and the fish, the plants and the flowers. We are here now at the end of what we know to be our life.

As the hands of time move on so has the ammunition of a convoluted human mind. At the crossroads, there is not one that will stand to face extinction with pride, but cower in the darkened shadows. But death need not be proud, for it isn’t mighty as we think it to be. Death is the word religion has brought into this blind world. There is no word as death; it is a mere end…a window to what the universe was like countless eons ago.

A simple fact is that no man of the church, temple or mosque will accept that to be the truth, for it advocates that god did not create man. Which is in fact quite false, because if god is the almighty and the creator, then how is it possible that the human race, professed and prophesized to be the great masterpiece of the creator, can manipulate his own life form to produce another living being through cloning? If god indeed lives, then why do we have the power to play god?

The future is uncertain, but in the past are buried clues to the future of the human race. We face extinction just like the giants before us did – Neanderthals, dinosaurs, etc. We have entered the realm of science against the belief of faith. Faith can only bring us to the shores; it is reasoning that will set our souls on sail on the oceans of the unknown.

Why do we fear death and the afterlife? Is not man a rational human being where he can reason out that what we cannot see is not assumed, but this is exactly what the so called holy men tell us – beware and respect the unknown or we shall be damned in eternal hell. Hell does not exist, it never has, it never will, the only hell we shall ever know is the hell we live in everyday.

Science can explain the phenomenon of the gene; some would argue that god made our genes unique. If that were so, how could the human gene be fused with that of a chimp in an experiment? Is it not that god wants to maintain different species in their uniqueness and not duality?

We are a chimera. A convulted, polluted hybrid of disillusioned holy men and brave men who dare step into the realm of science and go against conventional religion. In the time that we have wasted being conventional, the scientific world has seen rapid development in cures for cancer, birth defects, gene cloning. If in the animal world, which are the primary species on planet earth, a tiger and lion can mate to produce a liger, why can’t man and gorilla? A far superior race of man-gorilla would be born. A blasphemy upon the holy books. But it can be done. There are no limits to what man can do with his own body. How can one say that god created us equal and he would be the ultimate power, when in our laboratories lie the very genome that can set the wheels in motion for a revolution in cloning? There are no ends to possibilities – today we can successfully mate a polar bear with a fish to produce perhaps a ‘pofish’. There is no reason why a scientist with the right kind of funding and support can see this project through. Just that there are a bunch of single-minded anti-development posers around who insist that a human life is a true creation of a god. Which we dispute every single day. What does man have to fear when he knows he can create his successor without having to traditionally continue a bloodline?

There is no god. Within our own bodies lie cells that can give birth to a hybrid race, maybe one that can match life on other planets. We are not alone, for if we were, why would we inhabit just one planet when the very instinct of any race, animal or human, is to invade and rule? Man still remains connected to his Neanderthal roots where he procreated with a wide variety of life forms and strange creatures were born, which remain fossilized and well hidden by certain countries to date for fear that religion will not mean the alpha and the omega to the believers. No man of god can outweigh the contribution of science in understanding the birth of various life forms. Science is the only way forward, and religion should remain an idealistic failure.

With all our success we still head into extinction, simply because we have evolved too soon and it is time for the earth to exact its toll on the human race. Tomorrow might see a hybrid alien-earth population or the moon shining and the sun darkened, water in the galaxies and deserts devoid of sand. Predators that once roamed the earth in hundreds shall return million fold to devour what is left of homo sapiens. We have come a full circle and life as we know it is about to end. Man is on the edge; the fall is endless and with it will go everything that this great civilization once stood for but lost sight of in battles of ego and power, the very human traits that killed them through civil war. Animals wiped animals out, man will wipe man out. The end is inevitable though the truth is hidden from mankind by the twisted nails of fate.

2007-04-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

1994 Pulitzer Prize: Kevin Carter

He photographed a vulture awaiting the death of a starving child in Sudan, Africa.

Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist.
The picture of the vulture stalking a starving girl is real and was taken in Sudan in 1993.
He was awarded the Pulitzer prize in May of 1994 for the picture.

Two months later he connected a hose to the exhaust pipe of his pickup truck and committed suicide.
His long time friend Judith Matloff wrote in the Columbia Journalism review that Carter was the kind of person who seemed more affected by some of the violent events he photographed.

She says that he would often return from upsetting assignments with bouts of crying, drinking, or using drugs.
She says that after he shot his Pulitzer prize winning picture, he "sat under a tree and cried and chain-smoked" and couldn't distance himself from the horror of what he saw.
He was criticized for not helping the girl in the picture and said he did not know what happened to her.

In his suicide note he said he was "depressed...without a phone...money for rent...money for child support...money for debts...money!!!!!"
He also said he was haunted by vivid memories of killings, corpses, anger, pain, starving or wounded children, and trigger-happy madmen."

2007-04-05T04:39:00.000-07:00

The day I and 30,000 others lost our Iron Maiden Virginity!

The Background

I’ve been a fan of Iron Maiden for the last 10 years. Ever since I heard the prisoner of the gallows crying out for salvation in ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ I’ve been hooked on Maiden, for the next ten years every single strain of their legendary music has woven itself into my soul. There can be no greater voice than that of the ‘Air-Raid Siren’ Bruce Dickinson and no greater music for the soul than that of Maiden. I must mention that I’ve been thrown out of class for reading the lyrics out aloud for ‘The Evil That Men Do’ and spreading the gospel of Maiden over the non-believers!

The Run-Up

Ever since the organizers announced that Maiden would be touring Bangalore, every cell in my body has been working overtime, every taste bud salivating at the prospect of watching them live, every moment of Maiden music leading to the imagination that they’re here, live, in front of my eyes!

And so the hallowed day arrives, March 17^th, in the lap of the gods. I’ve heard DP play a couple of times, and can only imagine what Maiden would be like. Every concert inevitably ends with whispers of who comes in next…and Maiden made the rounds, but who, in their wildest dreams, would have imagined that this dream would come true…a dream of mirrors!

The Concert

March 17^th, the Ides of March are upon us, the sun beats down relentlessly, and there’s a swarming serpentine queue of black forming at the Palace grounds…it isn’t to welcome a king or queen, or a royalty, it’s here, tonight that history will be made…IRON MAIDEN will be performing live in Bangalore. 25,000 screaming fans, from all over the sub-continent are here, in all shapes and sizes, colours and hues, ages. The majority is the die-hards, followed by those who are metal heads and there are those who’ve come to see what this phenomenon is all about!

No heat, no dust and no woman can move the multitudes from their positions. I am stuck in between a monster standing on my shoe and another whose armpit is in my face. But it is for a greater good…the greater good of all mankind and no evil that men do can beat the trooper in this battle! The heat is stifling and the air is humid. There is nothing called comfort. Hell and high water can be friends in such cases.

I’m not going to dwell on the opening acts because it simply isn’t worth the time, when Maiden is the cause for all the mayhem. It’s 35 degrees and cooled to about 32 by the time Maiden’s show is to come on. A barrage of 30,000 are at the venue, there’s no oxygen...all you can see is a sea of black, all you can hear is thunder in your ear and you wish you knew where you were. You could almost touch reality with your bare hands…ahh!! So close yet so far!! The gods are here, the legends, the living creations of a god so great that he gave us a lifetime of Maiden!

Brighter Than A Thousand Suns

The sun hides itself as the call of the Irons is unleashed, the beast within looms large. We are clothed in darkness. The stage is a cavernous black hole, with an assortment of special effects and spectacular lighting…for the moment all is quiet, death is on the road, we wait with bated breath. Not a sound is made, suspense fills the air.

I’ve been to the DP shows, the Scorpions, all metal that India has to offer…but tonight, the 17^th of March 2007, will be the one moment of my life that will make up all reason of even living this life. Tonight will be history!! This is the moment of reckoning, the bells of hell can toll no louder, the hounds of hell are barking at the cross, and tonight the Beast is upon us in all its monstrosity! Every moment has been worth its wait, every drop of sweat deserved to be shed, every eardrum that ruptured is back to life, tonight is the night I lose my Iron Maiden virginity along with 30,000 screaming fans…There is the Bullring at Johannesburg, the Eden Gardens at Calcutta, the SCG at Sydney, but when 30,000 insane Maiden fans hold their breath to scream you can imagine the thrust of the vocals when they emanate from the depths of every one of those lungs and fill the air with thunder that puts a maelstrom to shame! Imagine then, the magnitude of vocal thunder when they played to 300,000 at Rio in 2001!!!

We’ve waited fucking years for this to happen, me for 10, others for 20, some forever…this is the one single moment that the whole metal fraternity will worship and remember till the end of time, we’re in the lap of the gods, the holy sextuplet of metal, one third of the Holy Trinity of heavy metal (Dickinson, Halford and Tate) and here we are...the disciples that have never betrayed nor ever been betrayed, in palls of sweat and tears, in clothes torn and hanging, in pain and in anguish…for one show that the earth will never forget…

Out of the fucking blue comes a burst of red lightning!!..the lights burn red like a burning furnace, the strains of the intro are on and the screams of 30,000 rent the silent air, shredding every possible inch of free space…this is THE defining moment of our lives!

From the burst of red, a shower of yellow and white hits out and the drums begin…Nicko is on song and Maiden burst into ‘A Different World’…the screams tear my ears apart, I can feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing…it’s brighter than a thousand suns!!..

The diehards mouth the lyrics word for word, Bruce is a living god, and tonight his voice is like manna from the heavens upon the parched throats of his followers…to see a god in flesh and blood is salvation like never before or ever after!

I cannot tell you how loud the crowd were, right up at left center, here I am…with a vision of heaven in front and the lust of a thousand behind…crushed and bruised, broken and battered but with victory in my heart…

The band crashed through the opener with relentless perfection, note for note, H on guitar, Janick on guitar, Dave on guitar, ‘Arry on bass, Nicko on drums and the Air Raid Siren on vocals…perfection to the core. But, trust me, had Maiden come out and played Elvis tonight we’d have felt the same…Maiden is Maiden.

No sooner had the drums ceased on the opener when the machine gun bass of Steve Harris cannoned through the crowd with the opening bars of ‘These Colours Don’t Run’ and the crowd went wild! (A song about war and the feelings within, though there is an element of angst as Nicko says this song was probably written with the Ozz-fest incident of last year in mind when Bruce bellowed ‘these colours don’t fucking run’ out to a US audience when they threw eggs on stage).

Bruce on this song sounded godly, almost prophetic, with the chorus of the thousands to aid him, these colours definitely didn’t run…’For the passion, for the glory, for the memories, for the money, you're a soldier, for your country, what's the difference, all the same’…these lines floated through like a battle anthem…and you could almost feel that you were at war…

The backdrop on the stage was staggering, with barbed wire and plastic soldiers on the sides, and the artwork depicting ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’, the scene was truly stunning and captured the mood of the concert brilliantly.

Through the carnage came the rumbling lines of ‘Brighter Than A Thousand Suns’ and again, the gods had their fans in a daze…this song is an absolute masterpiece and the part where the battering ram kicks up from apparent sleep to melt in with Bruce’s growing inferno of a scream with the line ‘Brighter Than A Thousand Suns’ is absolutely mind blowing and you can actually hear yourself beginning to scream out in unison...

Most songs on this album portray emotions ranging from pain, angst, anguish to revelations and Bruce does an excellent job of crunching every ounce of emotion out of the song and delivering it with panache and dexterity. I can only stand open-mouthed and amazed at the vocal prowess of this man. With every climbing note you could feel Bruce being taken up into a flying saucer of lyrics and the tight guitars forming a complex spider web around him. Every note that he sang, he sang like he was preaching, it wasn’t a song…it was a performance, a performance so moving that the words interwove themselves into our hearts. With eyes closed, his hands clutching air and then clenching as he pulled in the emotion that hung in the atmosphere and simply delivered a stunning range of low and high pitched vocals that are worthy of his personal idol, Ian Gillan.

Three songs from the new album had whetted our appetite. I for one expected that they’d continue with the album, but this being their maiden appearance, thought as much that they’d mix it up a lot.

Bruce began to talk to the crowd and he explained that since Maiden had now paved the way for metal in India, India will get to see more metal bands coming in, and he captured the moment in a nutshell when he said ‘tonight is the night that makes everything different for India’…a mighty roar went up amongst the multitudes. Actually Maiden appreciated that not only Indians, but Sri Lankans and Nepalese had come in for the show.

Bruce then produced a statement that will go down in metal history as one of the greatest “we know a lot of you have waited 17 years for this to happen and some more, but I assure you, the next time, you won’t have to wait for 17 years, not even 17 months. We will be back here in another year”! Needless to say, the crowd erupted like Mt. Vesuvius!

He repeatedly stressed that this was a very important night for all of us, a night that was so special and groundbreaking that India would never be the same when it came to metal again! Long live Maiden, for the metal that you brought and the metal that you conquered!

The show hit a sad moment when Bruce paid tribute to Leon Ireland (lead vocalist of Moksha, India’s only band certified to play Maiden covers at all international concerts and the band that kept Maiden alive in India) who had passed away recently. A touching moment for all of us and a humbling one by way that an international act of Maiden’s stature even cared to remember a blood brother.

The Classics

Bruce then proceeded to dedicate the next song to Leon…the crowd went berserk as he screamed “wraaaaaaaathccccccchillllddd”!!! For a moment frozen in time, no one knew what hit them…it was ‘Wrathchild’ , the Di’Anno era Maiden classic, an all time metal classic! Here it was, in front of us, the galloping bass lines tagging with a trio of screaming guitars and that hedonistic vocal delivery reminiscent of the punk era…it was a blistering version of the song, one that quenched the thirst of many an old time Maiden fan, and I was beside myself with joy, this was ‘Wrathchild’…!!! Kick-ass and perfection personified! The crowd sang for most part, with Bruce’s vocals drowned out…well what do you expect when you unleash upon us a track like this??

Maiden didn’t let any momentum go down and barged into a supercharged version of ‘The Trooper’ and every one of the 30,000 egged on the Light Brigade in that valiant and famous charge. Bruce was brutal and sharp on this one, even sharper than the Rio version from 2001. He adorned himself in the red soldier’s garb and waved the Union Jack for all he was worth, there wasn’t a soul that didn’t stand up and shout for this one. An all time classic, and before you knew it he was screaming out the last lines and the song came to a crashing end with the guitars in ultimate harmony. A great performance, one of the very best versions heard live!

Back To The Future

Next up was the critically acclaimed ‘The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg’ also the single off the album. This is a very thoughtfully composed song and leads you to think as to whom Benjamin Breeg might be. The song is on the slower side, but is clothed in a heavy vocal delivery which sees Bruce ignite the fire within with an inspired heart to heart delivery. Very well done song, and sounded just like it is on the album. The emotion featured on this track was re-enacted in a mind-blowing manner by Bruce. Of particular note here are the brilliant guitar parts that are stretched almost to infinity and brought thundering back by the trio. Adrian Smith does a brilliant job hidden in the background whilst Janick is all over the stage and Dave holds his own, Steve, as usual, one leg on the monitor is bickering with his bass and Bruce has combed every single inch of the stage at a gallop, in step with ole’ McBrain behind the drums.

After this the band went into a religious sounding track called ‘For The Greater Good of God’ and the opening lines are wholly Bruce oriented with a thin guitar line making waves upon the air. His voice rung out into the dark night, high with emotion and feel and you could feel the words pulling you closer to the music. As he sang “A wolf in a sheep's clothing, or saintly or sinner, or someone that would believe, a holy war winner” in a timbre that was reminiscent of a voice at a mass. High on bass and tone and thick with emotion, the voice was pounded apart by a thundering mix of drums and guitars. A sudden shower of musical complexity rained down upon us and I couldn’t help but marvel at the expertise of these musicians. Sometimes we tend to lose sight of the brilliant musicians that each one of them is in their own right, each holding his own against the other. Such a concoction could only lead to Iron Maiden. This is a great track and is another war anthem that feeds the soul with much wanted thought.

Well that was it as far as the new album went. The time was right, the dust had just about settled, the arena was filled with applause, a quieter moment had arrived, only to be broken by a verse so evil that hell itself spawned this song…

The Notes of Fear

“Woe to you O Earth And Sea” droned the voice on the PA and all hell broke loose…it was time for us to embrace the beast, and each and every one of the 30,000 sang their hearts out to the devil himself, an act that would take us all to hell when our time on earth is done. “666, the number of the beast”…well there were beasts all around and Bruce didn’t have to sing one word, for the crowd knew every bit of this song, and the moment Adrian and Dave burst into the rhythm and lead section the crowd went wild, if going even more wild were possible…

“I’m coming back, I will return”…those haunting words remained in the still of the night and buried themselves in the hearts of all of us. The devil himself would have been proud of this moment!

In hardly a second Nicko had timed in the intro to “Fear Of The Dark” and there is no other sound as melodious, or as sinister as 30,000 fans singing the intro…suddenly the darkness was closing in around us and the hair on the back of my neck did begin to stand before Bruce launched into the song. As you all are aware, this song is a cult hit, along the lines of ‘Smoke On The Water’, and there was not a soul that didn’t know this word for word. In between Bruce clambered up the steel supports as the crowds were ‘ohhhhinnng’ themselves into the lead up to the last two verses. He climbed about 50 feet to take a look at this huge crowd and then slid back down. The energy these guys have is incredible.

As the song drew to it’s horrific close, the crowd were in raptures of disbelief…it was Iron Maiden’s Fear of The Dark that created a revolution for many, and here, the gods of all that is metal, threw it upon this blessed 30,000 in respect to heavy metal.

The unmistakable bass pounding set up the galloping ‘Run To The Hills’ which once again had the crowd as background vocalists. It was a pretty amazing version with the three guitars getting in on the chase very well indeed. As usual it was Davey and Janick running wild with H just at the tip of technical virtuosity. Ahh! Dave, Adrian and Janick…a mighty combination of genius, maverick and plain insanity!

The legendary “scream for me” then ripped out of the ‘Air-Raid Siren’s’ mouth with a humongous wail that screeched “screaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmm for me Baaaaaaangggaaaaaaallllloooooooooreeeeeeeeeeee” and all of us went wild with ecstasy. That is the one single greatest heavy metal rant of all time, the Bruce Dickinson signature, a legendary growl with a siren to end, the voice of a god had just torn to pieces any still air that dared to remain in the metal atmosphere.

It was time for the band’s anthem; the self titled ‘Iron Maiden’ and the band played this to perfection. It’s a good song, and the lyrics are bloody, but then…who cares!!!!

In between the music stopped and the stage came alive, with flashing lights and gunfire, a tank slowly raised itself from the depths of the stage and entered the battle arena. A huge cannon swiveled around and pointed right at us with the hatch opening to reveal an Eddie piloting the battle tank! A superb stage setting and a great stage show as well! Fire and brimstone all around, Maiden and the crowd on fire as the song erupted back to life!

As the drums settled and guitars returned to earthly levels, the band began chucking plectrums and stuff into the crowd and Bruce uttered his thanks…not one of the 30,000 moved an inch…where would anyone go when we knew that the encores were coming up!

At this point Bruce introduced the band, and I tell you there wasn’t any need for it, if required every single one of those fans would have gone up and rattled out the names with eyes closed!. The good part was when Bruce was to introduce himself…the entire crowd just screamed out loud as a fuck, BRRRRUCCCCEEEEE!!!!

The Encores

‘2 Minutes 2 Midnight’ was up next and the signature guitar/drum battle roared out into the night and we were wild with ecstasy. As the drum rolls blasted out and the feast began, thousands of heads swayed in unison, in a heavy metal meltdown, there was no mouth that was closed, no fist that wasn’t in the air, no leg where it was a second ago…the war torn affray of this song melted into us all and before long, we were part of the musical mastery of this piece.

Without further ado, ‘Arry and the boys launched into ‘The Evil That Men Do’ , a song that stands alone, a true masterpiece. The vocals are by far one of the most terrific, ranging from actual singing to a semi-spoken verse…”the book of life opens before me”…rings out with an evil twist as we “slept in the dust with his daughter”…if the devil were here tonight he’d know the evil that men do cannot be anything less than what he has done!

No Maiden show can be complete without Eddie! and Eddie roared onto stage as the crowd erupted, a larger than life Edward Hunter (a.k.a Edward the Great) graced us with his kingly presence...he didn't fight the Maiden guys but he did certainly show us that he's very much alive n rockin'!

Somehow in our hearts we knew the end was near, and however near the end was for us, it would never be as close as it was for that cursed prisoner in a cold cell that Maiden created their all time great “Hallowed Be Thy Name” around…the chilly lyrics resounded off the arena with a sinister and gloomy feel to it as the guitars tolled the end in the background and the drums ushered in a silent end. The prisoner’s last cries are rented out and strike a chord with the audience as Bruce painfully mourns and then breaks into a super fast cry to the lord to save his mortal soul...and when he ends it by singing those hallowed words “hallowed be thy naaaaammeeeeeeee”…there are 30,000 who have witnessed the end of that prisoner at the gallows. A stunning performance of the song, with an overwhelming display of guitars and drums, this is one spectacle that can never be extinguished.

Bruce bade goodbye with “this is very special, but very short” and as they left in a cloud of dust and haze, we hoped to god, that they will indeed return!

For an hour and a three-quarters we were in the laps of the gods, we ate their manna, we sang their praises and we said our prayers…this was Iron fuckin’ Maiden, live, in front of our eyes, in flesh and blood, in the grandeur and splendour as alive as alive can be and no mortal human being in that arena that night could forget the power and brilliance of their performance…it wasn’t a concert, it wasn’t a show…it was a timeless event, an extravaganza of sound, light and magic, and even today, I can’t believe I heard and witnessed those songs emanating from those guitars, drums and vocal chords…

I was there on hallowed ground, as every note wafted through the dust and grime, every tear worth shedding, every stone worth its weight, every bit of hardship was worth it’s pain…salvation came…and I was there! And there was not a dry eye left in the house when the curtains came down!

Up the irons!!

2006-12-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like screaming...

Sometimes I feel like screaming...just when the world begins to turn; meteors from distant cosmos come crashing down upon a burning earth like teutonic time bombs, supplemented with celestial disharmony. Life is a dream at times, at other times a pure nightmare. More often a nightmare than anything else. As my dreams begin to overlap a dream dreamt for me, as my heart begins to overrun my mind and as all reason begins to die in the face of a dreamt for me dream, a cauldron begins to boil deep inside of me. Nothing seems to be able to stop the pain and the frustration that begins to eat into my life like a parasitic creeper. Day after day, the needles prick deeper, until even the blood stops flowing. The pain is paramount but I'm numb. The blood in my veins begin to clot as all circulation ends in a never ending pit of burnt offerings.

As every ray of light shuts itself out one by one, like a tiger in the cage, my body begins to shake with rage. Anger is utmost, frustration builds like adrenalin, fueling a temper so great,never weathered a storm quite that malevolent. Control over emotions is lost against reason and suddenly all around is a battlefield and I don't waste a moment in raising the war-cry. Who stands for and who stands against scarcely makes a difference...a misanthrope enroute.Nights are filled with calming the nerves and a shattered brain, pouring alcohol down my throat in a desperate attempt to stand rigid. But at the end of the bottle, when all the liquid has been drained out, the answer stares out at me through the neck - this can only be cleaned out if I standup for what I want and what I think is right.

What I think is right for me is not what anybody else thinks is right for me. I'm letting generations of family down with one swift stroke of the keyboard,but at the end of the day, if everyone says they're looking out for me, then wouldn't they stand by me?Sleep becomes a laboured encumbered slumber, dreams I've forgotten what they felt like, my heart closes in on itself and builds walls around the people that surround me. Gradually the line between love and hate morphes into one large blurred line, with apparently no exit.It's at times like this, when man is faced with a dilema, that he turns to the spirits...strangely there is some form of calm when one thinks of a greater being without delving into religion. I believe, but I don't believe what others tell me.

The walls I've built grow higher by the minute, every word from another's tongue becomes another arrow that has buried itself in the wall...unable to get through. Reason is lost to the winds as I fall into the tempest. In the end it's all a chimera, but it's a real chimera, an oxy-moron, and that's how the walls build and begin to fall at the same time.Allowing myself to vent rage upon a ravaged heart and an idle mind, to let the anger ebb away, snarling and backed up against the wall, ready to charge at the slightest movement, a cornered beast, lookslike tales of the werewolves were true. No matter who, or what, can't stand in my way and offer help, it's because of another human that I am in this situation.

I love the emptiness that my inner rage gives me, the space away from the world, to live in a cauldron of self imposed madness and insane genius, often find that at these moments I am at my creative best.My only solace is my music - as I delve deeper into the other world, my parallel universe, where existenceis possible within one's realms of need. Nothing else matters, no one else seems to matter, selfish? most definately!...but only because I seek solance within my self...within the inner walls that no one else willever enter.Hurt that comes from your nearest and dearest, coupled with the knowledge that you're turning away give riseto a violent whirlwind of feelings, picking up and destroying everything in it's path.

Hanging by a thread I keep to the shadows, knowing it's time to lay low. But the moment the grey clouds lift to reveal another pieceof advice I snarl in defiance, in defiance of all that reeks of authoritorian tones; the path I choose is areflection of my thoughts, and I bear the risk on my shoulders and face the consequences by myself.

Everyday we live for a bitch called society, a group of hypocrites, a group of self lauding scums of the earth,where in a moment they fall upon you and revere you as god, the moment you turn away they're like carrion eaters, clawing away at what remains. Society's greatest evil is society itself, where individual thought patterns are lost in the haze of a group of 'idealistic' or 'realistic' thoughts, and somewhere down the line of generations, somebody is going to snap, and to drastically revert from the direction another has taken. That's where I am, at that cross road, with a world calling back to me; but I will walk on water, on fire and on thorns if I have to prove that I want something bad enough and I'm willing to shut out the rest of the world to get where I want. What matters most to me, is what I can realise only now, not when I'm in the evening of my life, when there's nothing to look forward to.As the hands of time tick on, I'm wandering the maze that is my mind, and hoping to sight the best way out for me, and summoning up all the courage to let go of a societal glare.

2006-09-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

Blood and Bullets

He lies in the mud and rain, guts and blood. He calls for his mother but she never comes. The water washes over his torn body, like a soothing balm over certain death. He is a soldier and this was his life.

His vision is fragmented with moments of brilliant flashes of light and dark bursts of yellow. His brain is shutting down. His nerves fail to register pain. The world is black. The rain drips into his mouth and out the holes in his throat. Rivers of blood drain down the broken body.

His cries have long since died. The end is near. He begins to feel numb and hollow. He mumbles out desperate cries to see his mother but she cannot hear the final words of her only son. She cannot see his final tears dripping blood and sweat, she cannot hold the cold hands torn from the skin, she cannot brush back the mangled wire that is now his hair. She cannot stroke his soft cheeks like she did back home. Memories rush in with the numbness, and the soldier feels warmth in his heart. He clenches his teeth against the final pin prick of pain.

Buried alive in the sands of gore amidst the battle ruins and bullets, the air hangs heavy with the stench of burning corpses and torn guts. The fog is a perfect cover for the sleeping dead. They will never awake to a sunrise of orange and yellow. The rays of the sun will warm the bones thay sacrificied for a human, in his reason against another human.

A lone soldier bends over the crumpled body. He calls out to god to take the dead in all their glory. The flag covers the bloody apparition that was only minutes ago, a living person with breath in his nostrils and courage in his heart. A vulture circles above, in readiness of a fest that is fed and bred by man himself.

He walked the earth with a reason in his mind and love in his heart. In the burning fires of summer, in the frozen oceans of winter he walked the land of war and he fought the fight he thought was right. Beyond every moment of fear he had courage. The courage to take a bullet meant for another. The courage to walk the line of blood, tears and barbed wire. The courage to tread the ground littered with parts of the dead, the muck of fluids, blood and water. The courage to stand up and kill his own flesh and blood in a moment of truth.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, ten thousand at a time, they face adversity everyday. Enemies and friends are no longer divided. The war for what is right will never be won. The war for religion and power will always lose the war for humanity.

Facing death, he questions his faith. Will he smile at the face of god? Will he curse the moment he met his maker? Will he question god of his destiny? Will he feel desolate and deprived of not having one last look at the woman that bears the womb that he arose from? Will he hold that against god and the country that he believed in? Will he curse mankind for this grizly death? Will he curse the day man was created? Is god coming to take him in his own hands to the paradise that he prayed for? Will he walk forever in fields of gold, bathe in rivers of milk, sleep in pastures green, drink eternal wine? Or will he rot in the heathen remains of a burnt out hole, like all those before him who believed in heaven and hell? Is there after all no promise of a paradise, but instead a promise of dungeons of death and eternal rot?

As the last raindrop falls onto his ashen face, the last whiff of life is carried away by the breeze that carries the stench of fear, death and blood for a hundred years.

His eternal bed is adorned by a cross in a cemetary that even the dead fear to trod.

2006-08-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Orange, white and green...India everyday

India is a land of fields, rugged roads, bullock carts, huts, flyovers, indigeneous cars, swanky apartments and shanty towns. India is a country that lives on the edge. In the cities and in the villages, everyone lives a life of tragedy. Middle class, upper class and lower class mingle with each other on the thin strips of tar that we call roads, but none of them look at the other with any degree of familiarity.

In no other land do you find mass following of such epic proportions - India follows the muscle and the skin show of Bollywood with an intensity never seen before. But where Bollywood is a nosey-parker game, cricket is a religion. Actors such as the erstwhile Rajkumar, Rajnikanth, Amitabh and the like command mass respect and following. In any town in Tamil Nadu, you will awake to blaring loudspeakers that scream out hits of Rajni, and autorickshaws will have him splashed over every square inch of the vehicle. God alone knows how they are able to see through the collage of Rajni's arms, legs, face and other body parts and how they are able to hear above the din of his film songs. It is heartening to see so much of hope in the lower strata of society, the hope that Rajni has given them and the light that they believe he has shown them, but the downside is the 'fanatic' fan following experienced in the neighbouring state Karnataka. Upon the death of Rajkumar, the city of Bangalore was rendered a ghost town, slippers and stones littered the streets, fires burned in the midst of concrete and the police were hopelessly outnumbered. Life came to a standstill. Respect for the dead has never been more misrepresented. How can riots be a mark of respect for an icon?

Riding in a train through the countryside, you will see villagers and cattle sharing the trackside spaces for their ablutions, without an apparent care for who can see them. Life goes on. What has to be done has to be done, no matter where, how and when. The beauty of life in India is such.

Give an Indian faith and he will reach the stars. Give him hope and he will remain loyal. Give him money and he will sin. The land of beggars, robbers, cops and businessmen follows one mantra - the show must go on. Resilience in the face of adversity is the country's strong point and something that one should respect.

This is a land where the Government has shamed itself ever so often, yet the people haven't staged a coup. As long as there exists a highest chair in the country, who really cares who sits in it? But crib we must, admonish the chair we must, trust we must forego. A country so torn between a hope and a belief. Belief in each Government is the same - they can't do much for the poverty stricken and the rich never get enough either. Hope is the ever present search for the missing political messiah, the chosen one - when will he lead us to the promised land? The ever raging debate.

In rural India, we still travel by bullock carts, still draw water by pulley from wells, still sleep on cold mud floors, still live under thatched roofs and there is one universal factor - the belief in the Almighty that brings us sunshine everyday.

India is a land of paradoxes. Paradoxes that are the very lifeline of this country. Take for instance, the suburban trains in Mumbai - they are the preferred source of travel for thousands of businessmen, hawkers, chefs, police, nurses - in short, the rich man, the poor man, the poorest man. It is life on the edge, a push and a shove and you're at your destination.
The beauty of rural India is second to none, yet the poverty is striking. The huts melt into the background of green and brown, when night falls no one knows where they are.

Mongrels and cattle are the warriors of the rural race, they fight tooth and nail against every conceivable disease, they bear the burden of a bread winner, they bear the burden of a suicide case. Life must move on everyday. Who stops to think?

Hawkers are myriad, the food they sell is said to be oily, unhealthy and bacteria ridden - do we care to make their life better by providing them with better oil or cooking utensils? A fraction of us who use their services do not care much about the cleanliness. What is cleanliness in a city sprawling and bursting at it's seams? How many of us juggle roadside food and five-star food with the same relish? Only a true Indian!

In a land of sadhus, saints, sinners, suits and rags we are a true India, born of dust and bread, burnt under the golden sun, baked in the fortune of the soil and balmed in the falling rain. A country united in agony, divided in faith. The divide between the rich and poor will always remain, call it fate, kismet or whatever you may - we all sail the same ship - only in different waters.

2006-08-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Dad

My dad was someone who always did his best for me. I really won't ever understand his love until the day I die because that's the way we are.
I had the honour of being his first born son. It was a great pity that my dad worked so very hard to make end's meet that I never got to spend too much time with him. But my memories are pretty clear.

I always remember my childhood with my dad as a bits and pieces one, simply because he was always working real hard.

When I was a kid, I used to crave for flavoured milk, and to this very day, I remember that every Friday evening, my dad would put me on his bike and take me a couple of kilometres down the road to a shop which sold that flavoured milk. It was one of the few places that you could get those drinks 15 years ago. And I remember it was imported from the Gulf and cost him a pretty penny, he never flinched. I never knew what it cost until I began to read price tags.
I used to look forward to those days every single week. Hugging him close on the bike and holding onto him as if all that mattered was him and the bike. I can still smell him so clearly.

All those years ago, he taught me about being a photographer. I still remember the big and heavy cameras he used to use in those days, and the click of the shutter and the quick rustle of the leaf on which an insect sat still resonate in my ears.

Once in the third grade, I'd won a prize at school and headed to the function. When I got there, I realised I needed to wear white socks and not black ones. In all his hurry my dad rushed me home and changed my socks for me without ever uttering a word against me because I was late. Strangely, that's about all I remember about that particular day.

He worked really hard those days, I never knew what he did, but when he used to go to the sites, he used to take me along. I was really small then, and a lot of the equipment scared the shit out of me. But I remember him as this great figure standing in the midst of mud, stones and people and directing the workers.

So many times, he'd come home dead tired and leave before I awoke. On holidays he would play his favourite Deep Purple and Dire Straits records and that's how I picked up on my music taste.We used to stay in a pretty middle class house. He had his office in one of the rooms. Every day he would dress up impeccably in a clean white shirt, and head across the house with his briefcase. I would look up in awe at the man that I wanted to be.

Another dear memory I have of him was of the time when the Babri Masjid riots broke out. Our house was stoned and we saw the police firing at the mob. It was unsafe to stay there. So when curfew was lifted for two hours each evening, he would quickly take my younger brother and I to our grandparent's house and quickly return home. I would wait with bated breath for him to make that call saying he'd reached home safe.

As time wore on, his business interests differed from our domestic, so he moved to other places and visited us on holidays and other occassions.

Sometimes, he'd take my brother and me out for a movie. I still cherish those memories, the simple time with dad, just the three of us laughing away oblivious of the others in the theater.

I don't get as much time to spend with him as I'd like to these days, and we both have very hectic schedules. I miss him a lot and I want to go back in time to the days when I slept by his side, on his outstretched arm, I knew it would have hurt him the entire night to keep his arm outstretched but never did he flinch. I want to go back in time to those rides where I sat behind him on his beloved Jawa and rode the roads like the hard rocker that he was.

So many memories of him, so many memories of the time spent. He has taught me all about being a gentleman. For me, no other man can be as perfect.

Over the years, we've become different men, and our work keeps us away from each other for long periods of time, something that we need to live with every moment now. Our interactions are now limited to a bottle of rum over a dinner or so whenever the opportunity strikes. Cheers Dam!

2006-07-02T21:32:00.001-07:00

A 12 Minute Walk Down Avenue Road

Avenue Road used to be one of Bangalore's landmarks. It still is - but it's more of a moshpit nowadays.

I had to ferry certain relatives to this area on Saturday, which happens to be one of the busiest days in the City. I looked upon it as a challenge and an experience to walk down this ever-crowded road without being overly affected by the state of it and it's inhabitants.

Avenue Road houses a myriad saree and material shops, I'm not getting into the descriptions and nitty gritties of these because it's not my domain. I will endeavour to remain focussed on my thought.

We begin our walk at the SBM end of Avenue Road. The road itself is hardly 15 feet wide and the footpaths, though at least 5 feet wide, are curtailed to a breadth of 2 feet or so, courtesy of innumerable footpath entrepreneurs.

In the first 3 feet, there are vendors selling magazines of any kind and in any language. They don't hesitate to shove a few papers in front of my face with the customary "only 5 rupees saar" roar that resonates thunder in my ears! The ensuing momentary blindness ensures that I nearly trip over a broken tile and only a circus act balance keeps me from meeting the floor face to face.

The next few feet are strewn with duplicate copies of novels and books - the latest and the oldest - all available for one-third the cost of an original. The next few metres are liberally splashed with a mixture of water and sand, past which I cross with a hop, skip and jump only to find myself having to choose between an Olympian leap across a wheelbarrow laden with brooms and garden tools and an overloaded auto rickshaw with a bum poking out...at that moment, male or female I am unable to judge...somehow I manage to place a leg on either side of the wheelbarrow with the sensitive area of the male anatomy bang in the center of that wheelbarrow with the brooms upside down and fervently praying that the brooms do not go any higher!

With the wheelbarrow leap world record under my belt, I resume my brisk pace and am greeted with a sea of humanity all going in the opposite direction. This means I am treated to an precedented volley of shoves and pushes that ends with elbows in my face. Upon a cursory glance at my feet, I find that various brands of sandals and chappals interspersed with dust are splayed across my sneakers...
To my right is a vendor making bondas in a vessel of boiling oil...tasty but will end with a long romance with the toilet for sure.

The first 5 minutes of this walk largely comprised of the local small business crowd - small time vendors and hawkers and general government office going public. The road becomes symbolically narrower as the crowd morphs into a collection of labourers and state department workers. I pass a mother with a child on her shoulder, the kid's head brushes my shoulder with force and leaves a generous amount of vermilion on my shirt.

There's an old man dressed in rags with rivers of perspiration flowing down his body as he drags a wheelbarrow burdened with building materials. He is bent over and all he can see of the road before him is a patch of emptiness. All around me vehicles are honking in a symphony of cacophony and motors are buzzing all over the place in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Common man on cycles, a middle class man driving a car, a man in a chauffer driven car, a lame beggar supported on one leg, a pregnant woman in the middle of the road, a cow in all the melee trying to butt its way past the never ending trail of traffic...my line of vision is a galaxy of hands, legs and different body parts!

The heavy dampness of the air now sinks its way down and I'm ensconed in the 'smell of bylanes' - a concoction of unknown ingredients.

I pass a temple juxtaposed between the shops which stands out as a larger building in this maze of wood, concrete and paint. Most of the buildings are old, with a new coat of paint. Somehow, in all the colour of banners and neon signs, there is a quaint feeling of the old Bangalore that springs up suddenly. A glance at the upper echelons of a structure reveals that the building was erected in 1860, and was an estabilishment of repute. The woodwork is almost crumbling, but there sems to be hope yet!

Each shop seems to have its own identity, even though they seem to sell the same things, there are shops that are about 10 feet wide and there are some that extend inwards as far as the eye can see. Old bespectacled men sit on mattresses and await the next customer at a jewellery store - these are the old fashioned stores of yore that still do business in the traditional way. Darkened interiors with a lone bulb fighting the battle of evermore. Step out of the shop and you find yourself almost run over by tyres and feet of all sizes.

While I'm ambling along looking at the interiors of these buildings, I am rudely subjected to a sandwich of sorts between a wrestler arguing over the phone and refusing to budge and a burly woman with a thousand shopping bags finding resting places between my legs and flailing arms. I shut my nostrils for fear of inhaling the fumes of this pan spewing machine that is the wrestler...and the hot breath of the woman behind breathing smoke and fire whilst trying to shove her way past...

On the other side of the road are a mother and her two teenaged daughters, quite cute I must say, but definately not Bangalorean. The elder one has short hair with the hair parted right down the middle and the younger one long tied hair. Well endowed and well blessed-:). Most likely from the far north as the salwar style suggests. This is a sea of humanity - all religions, all castes and all creed are part of this intoxicating plethora of societal harmony.

A couple of young kids, aged about 4 and 5, catch my attention. They are beggars, but the youth in them is inspiring. They run about without a care in the world, chasing each other across dirty, stagnant water with dead flies and mosquitos, sand and stone - all barefoot!
Their clothes are of particular interest - the younger girl's upper body is covered in a black shirt that seems a tad too big for her and her lower body is adorned by jeans held together at the waist with a rope!!! She is a picture of unbridled joy in a poverty stricken world, all of three feet tall and with a bunch of unwashed hair flying all over the place. She runs about in circles chasing her elder sister. I wonder how she got those clothes, and I must say, I haven't seen a better dressed beggar!

The elder sister is clothed in more traditional attire - a skirt and a top. She trips the younger one and she falls over in a heap on the hard ground, but is up and about in a second with her nose running and her eyes fuming at this humiliation...such innocence in their forced world ridden with broken dreams, broken hearts, broken homes and broken bones.

A family from Gulbarga have come down to shop for bangles and the sort. The family consists of a father, mother, daughter, son, uncle and aunt. I gather from their conversation that there is a wedding in the family. The son seems bored with the shopping, but the women are at home bargaining and trying on stuff. A wide range of emotions emanate from the father - first of excitement, then a conservative approach toward the goods to be bought, then an 'oh what the hell' kind of look, then a 'get on with it' look and finally a nod of approval that suggests that a good amount of his savings are disposed of as well and there's not much he can do about it. In the meantime, the son receives a phone call and immediately informs a relative of this painstaking business, making sure to talk in a hushed tone so that his father's ears' do not pick up the lack of excitement in his voice. The uncle has confimed tickets for the entire family by the evening train, which I know of as he has informed all and sundry about it, and with the load of baggage, it seems they are not quite bothered about the time factor and will go straight to the station. Imagine this truckload of women, tugging along plastic bags and other baggage, with their purses strung in between and one hand trying to hold up their saree's and petticoat's to avoid falling over and the men with bulging stomachs and loud talk carrying luggage in a Sly Stallone style...they'd be better off in a luggage compartment...

It has been a ten minute walk thus far and I have managed to see most of Bangalore - except the really rich, snobbish people. Why would they walk the smelly, crowded, dusty streets and bylanes of Bangalore when they can glide across the aisles of Harrods?

Our destination is arrived at 2 minutes later, the building beside is marked 'Abdul Careem and Sons, Estd 1870'. An old spelling of the name Kareem for sure and a classier one perhaps.

It's been a walk of 12 minutes...that's it. The heavy scent of road work, religion, drink, food, cooking oil, dust, tar, smoke, fake deodrants and the unique labourer smell linger on my clothes.

2006-06-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Slipper on the Road

If you were to pay attention to a lone slipper on the road it may raise a question to the effect of 'why'? And 'how'? At least that's the way I look at it.

Everyday on the road, I come across at least one such example. Usually the slipper or shoe is turned upside down and lies forlorn as if longing for it's companion. Everyday I see a different size, shape, colour and foot. I wonder how that slipper feels, all alone on a cold hard surface, with it's face down on the tar. Sometimes the top is flattened by the weight of passing vehicles.

There can be very few explanations - it might have dropped off a foot of someone on the footboard of a bus, hanging on for dear life and sacrificing his footwear so that he gets to his destination in this rat race or it might have been used as a weapon in a riot by some ridiculous soul whose sole intention is to create more confusion in a world of chaos or sadly, it belongs to the victim of a road accident. This is indeed most often the case. Sad but true.

I wonder what that slipper feels when the wearer wears it no longer. How would it have been to be part of that foot that no longer walks? How would it feel to be cast aside from the owner and while the owner has received attention, it lies unnoticed on the road?

The slipper has seen it all. It saw the vehicle that eventually caused the accident, it felt the muscles in its wearer's body tighten and then collapse. It is the one true witness to a fatal accident. It remembers being thrown across the tar as the vehicle hit its owner head on. It remembers sailing across the road in a manner reserved for debris.

Unfortunately, it's memory can serve none - not the grieving family, nor the perpetrator of the crime, nor the police, nor the doctors, nor the museum authorities, nor its manufacturers. Though it's manufacturer could take away this specimen and conduct an analysis on how it withheld the impact and what damage it suffered. The manufacturer could easily use this as a marketing strategy. Why not? Often, the lone slipper is the last known survivor of the horrible crash. But who can elicit a reply from a slipper that could actually take the guilty to the gallows? If man has indeed progressed as much as he boasts he has, why can't he make a slipper talk? After all he can make cars break Mach 1 can't he?

The poor human cannot use this anymore. In most cases he is dead. Death is strange. It leaves behind a lot. It forgets things like a slipper. After all, of what use is a slipper? But then of what use are clothes anyway? If death were ideal everything should die along with the person.

The lonely slipper watches a million people pass by, not one of them pick it up or even move it to the side. 99% of people go right over it. If only it could feel pain. But then again, why should it feel pain? What crime has it committed? It's just watched a human die. That's pain enough don't you think?

Who will give it company ever again? Is someone going to place another single slipper by it's side so it can live out its days in joy? Is someone going to take it home with them and wear it till the end of its days?

The rain washes over it with all its might and force. The wind dries it with its gust. The sun bathes it with warmth. It holds immense truth and a horde of feelings. It holds pain, frustration, guilt, martyrdom, helplessness, unbelonging, loneliness. It is all alone against the world. Once brought in to serve the world, it serves now as a carpet of bother. It is the focus of ridicule and an object of a dog's attention. A cow may eat it up one day.

Surely, in the world of road accidents, if one could talk to a slipper pain, misery, grief and guilt would be a little easier to bear.

2006-06-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

Velu

Velu is 35 years old. He is married to the cousin of his mother. He hails from a tiny hamlet near Tuticorin in South India.

I first met Velu at a construction site quite a few years ago. I was no more than 12 years old at that time and I really did not understand Velu's ways.

Velu works in Bangalore as a casual labourer. He earns his daily wages and lives in a non-descript hut by the side of a drain in East Bangalore. When it rains, Velu and his family are forced to take shelter at a shop or a nearby house, but never venturing inside the shop or house. They fear they will not be taken in. Well, he is right.

Velu took a liking to me as a kid, I used to keep hitting the ball into the site where he worked and many a time, the game interfered with his work. But Velu always smiled and invaribly threw the ball back. Velu gradually became my friend, but a very different kind of friend at that.
When I returned from school, I would look forward to that game of cricket and Velu calling out and throwing the ball back at us. He never remonstrated or said anything that scared us.
Most times I'd go to get the ball back and I'd be in close contact with Velu. At those times I never knew what that strange smell around him was due to. I asked my father, he himself a veteran of the construction industry, and he told me that it was liquor. Of course, being 12 years old, I was still too young to know what liquor was.

So I thought that all labourers smelled the same. The innocence of a little boy who cares about nothing else than his bat and ball. Why should he? He is just 12 years old.

Velu had these bloodshot eyes and a voice that dragged on eternally when he spoke. I thought there was something wrong with him, but never asked him what.Velu would stagger around the work site at times and I felt he'd fall any moment. But somehow he always heaved that brick up high over his head and set on his way, unsteadily.

As time went on, we moved out of that house and I did not see Velu much except whenever I visited that area. In a year the consrtuction too was complete.
I met him quite by accident around four years ago. Velu had thinned so much he looked like a refugee from Rwanda, the horrific images that we saw on television clouded my mind. For a moment, I just stood and stared at him. His eyes had retreated deep into their sockets and they stared out like little red orbs from a deep black hole.

His skin clung to his bones and he could barely walk. He clutched his back in absolute agony and cried out to God to save him from this misery. The next moment, Velu was upright, and it looked like God had indeed heard his prayers. But in a few minutes he was back to his agony. I wondered what was the matter with him.

Apparently this had been happening for over two years now. I asked him why he never went to a doctor. To Velu, the doctor held no promise and he had no faith in modern medicine. All Velu believed in to cure him or his family from any disease, a fever or a fatal one, was God. His faith in God really moved me. Velu told me that when his father died, he had knelt by the body for two whole days in the hope that he would rise again.

Velu said he'd rather die in this condition than ever enter the threshold of a clinic. To rely on a man from the upper caste was blasphemy for him. He did not want the world to think of him as a useless person who couldn't work because of a few problems with his frame. After all, he was Velu, the man who carried tons of bricks on his bare back everyday, for the last 15 years wasn't he? And just what would a doctor do? Prick him with an injection and tell him to shell out Rs 20? That's barely what he gets in a day. He dismissed my words with a final wave of his hand.

At the end of a hard day's work, Velu went to the local bar and had his peg. He could never do without that peg. I thought he was a drunkard. But later, I understood. Velu, turned to drink because that's the only time he ever could turn his mind away from the pain and weight of his life. Velu had a million things to think about - his wife, his family, himself. He could barely make ends meet. He ate three meals a week, and his wife four.

His wife never breathed a word to him about his alcohol addiction. She understood that all Velu wanted to do was provide his family with a decent standard of living. He never turned to crime. He beat his wife up in a rage often, but she took that without a word. At the end of it he always regretted what he did. He plunged into prayer after that, imploring to God to give him the life that he wanted and to give him an ounce of happiness. But it never happened. Velu never lost his faith though. Ever.

Even when he buried himself in alcohol, he never lost faith and he cried out to God in every language he knew, thanking him for giving him life for another day and asking him to provide an answer to what he seeks.
He never cursed God nor his fellow humans in any capacity for his shortcomings in any way. As far as I could see he was a gentleman.

His life never changed. Not those 12 years ago and not to this day. He works the sites the whole day and his nights are taken up in drunken snores. But Velu is harmless. Alcohol has burned him up inside, much like the troubles of his life and his frustration that he hadn't been able to overcome them.

He belived that God alone could save him, and if not, it was his destiny. So many people had told him that prayer and faith do no good. He has no money, and is God really going to throw down coins on him?

Twice every year he made a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Tirumala. He walked up those seven hills, bowing his head on every single step and uttering the sacred mantra. Even in this frail state he climbed those hills.
It is a test of his faith, he says to climb those hills. And he would have done so even if he were on his deathbed.

I don't know where he is now. I hope he is still breathing.

2006-05-29T23:44:00.000-07:00

I am a nomadic paradox

I am a nomad. My existence is paradoxical. I eat,sleep and drink in the same house everyday. I sit on the same chair at work everyday. I look at the same blasted screen everyday. I take the same road to and from work everyday. But I am a nomad. And I roam the world in my head; searching for a perfect answer to who I am, what I want and why I want what I want.

Life for me, has always been a riot. There is colour of every hue, pain of every degree, unparalleled joy and mixed emotions. I do not complain about my life. I've lived everyday to it's best, and yet I've achieved nothing. Because I can't find myself. There is eternal confusion in this mind. Influence of peers, parents, friends, acquantainces take their turns at my mind. There's a chasm of activity in that one moment, where a decision takes forever to form.

What I want today is to travel the world on my own, with a backpack, a camera and no money. Money is an end to happiness without guilt. You can be happy with money, but never without guilt. I want to lie in the still waters of the Baltic, climb the mountains of New Zealand and live the rest of my life in the African bush. But, its a paradox. Can I leave this comfortable life behind with a warm bed, a warm family, a plate of hot food? Yes I can, but for how long? Don't I need money?

Today, I earn a salary. I have a respectable job at India's number 2 IT company, I am a free man. I've torn myself free of the shackles of education, but yet I want to get back to studying. I am a free man as long as the road leads from home to work and back. But am I really free after that? What comes next? A jump to a higher position, a salary hike, a new job, a new car, marriage, a home of my own, a family of my own? Is that what I want? Is that what truly makes a man happy?

I don't know. Right now I want to be as free as I can, I don't want a commitment, I don't want the troubles of a relationship. I want to be free, I want my space to roam the lands of my dreams, I want to be a millionaire. I want to be a simple man. I can't be both, or can I?

I work in an office that has four walls. To be free I need to resign. Would I do that in this rat-race world? Who'd give me the money then? Where would my next pitcher of beer come from? Banks don't provide interest free loans for beer do they?

Evolution of man has gone horribly wrong - Adam never reported his daily activities to God did he? Adam screwed Eve, but is that the reason why I have to report to another man today? Is that why my life is confined to a chair and a computer between 9 and 7 everyday? When those hours can be made productive tilling in the fields of my beloved country? Is there conviction in what I do everyday? Yes and no!

There can never be one right answer. To every lifestyle today there is a paradoxical situation. I want to quit my job to be able to travel all I want. But if I have no job - I have no money, and no way to travel. Where does this injustice end? Why does man have to conform to what society has construed as a 'path of life'? Is there no God that can help me find the way? After all is it not said in every holy text that a man should be free to do what he wants?

Where is this country today? In the age of reservations and quotas, where are the people that want to do well? We have dumbasses in our Government who make these 'people oriented' decisions which lead to mass agitation and destruction of the work cycle - how can the nation progress when no one is working? Not that the nation has anything to be proud of right now, what with the Jessical Lall murder case, the Volcker Report, the Mahajan murder, the sorry state of the cities in the Monsoons, etc. There is nothing to shout about. Then why are we confined to four walls and a chair, working our asses off for the benefit of someone who's on his last legs? Is it all really worth it? - Yes! and no.

Life goes on as a paradox. There's a balance between the mind and the heart, between prosperity and poverty, the rich and the poor, between births and deaths - these balances can never be tilted. If it ever does so it would be a perfect world.

A perfect world would be our necropolis. If we follow history we would soon be destroyed. There will be no human race left. There will be no planet earth. This world can never be perfect, the people in this world can never be perfect, all the land in the world can never be enough, the waters can never be adequate, the mountains can never be high enough and man can never be satisfied. In a constant war with himself, his surroundings and his Maker, lives man. There is no way out.

When I realise these things, I wonder why I was ever given the gift of thought and realisation. Why I was ever encouraged to do what I want, why were the senses given to me? Because it doesn't make anyone truly happy. Everything we see, hear, touch, smell, feel is mixed with emotions - there is sadness and there is joy. On one side of the road we see a shopping mall, on the other a slum with naked children running about. They are happy, are we?

Every man fights within himself, but there is a greater meaning to one's life. If one can detach himself from the tentacles of society and live in confinement within himself, he would truly be the master of his destiny.

To find satisfaction man needs to know what he wants, and find a means to attain a balance between what he wants and what the world wants from him. It is an eternal paradox, but one that can never be bridged.

2006-05-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

Auto Krishna and Boutros Boutros

It is the middle of a blazing hot summer and everyone except those working are on their summer vacation, the rest of us grind away in the dirt, and there appears to be no hope...

Auto Krishna is driving his Bajaj '2000 cc' down the famed Cavalry Road at a leisurely, but backbreaking, pace of 60 kmph. Behind him is Boutros Boutros, a middle class gentleman from the middle class area of a middle class section of the middle of Bangalore. Traveling with him is his beautiful middle class wife, Reena Boutros. She is wearing a sleeveless blouse and is quite pretty to look at, of course Boutros Boutros is too busy making money to notice she's got lovebites on her neck..not that he'd notice anywhere else...

They wind down Brigade Road Junction at breakneck speed - Constable Koodi has not much to say, he lets a lil' winder out from his rotund backside and burps in unison as he releases a bit of body manufactured gobar into the already polluted atmosphere...and he farts again to acknowledge the fact!..dirty ole' bastard... in fact he's so self involved that he fails to notice that Auto Krishna is still running his auto on petrol & that Boutros is busily chatting away on his latest Nokia cellphone.

It is midday, Reena Boutros is feeling the heat, apparentntly it isn't only Boutros's Honda City that is overheating, but he is too busy digging gold out of his nose to notice. She huffs and puffs, Boutros won't use the AC, he wants to save money to buy an extra pack of fags.
She pulls loose her blouse and lowers it, Boutros doesn't even notice, but a couple of teens on the footpath have got their first view of Bangalore's famed Silicon Valley.

Boutros is a bank officer at Standard Chartered on MG Road. He has availed of an 'overworked' leave today, to be with his wife, though he'd rather be stuffing his face with chicken tikka in his favourite haunt with his potbellied cronies. She doesn't give him a chance though, and he's pressed into service to go shopping.

Auto Krishna has a load of two ravishing women - one a Chinese national, and that we realise from the fine tuned ass, and the other, a tantalisingly curved and well endowed Indian international from Dubai. Auto Krishna is an 'all rounder' - he converses with his local passengers in Kannada and his international clientele in English. He claims to have driven Rahul Dravid around for practice, though in reality it is hard to understand why Rahul would have bothered packing his abdomen guard and helmet back into his kit - such were Auto Krishna's driving skills.

The two vehicles find themselves at Sreeraj Lassi Bar. Mouths drop open at the sight of the delicious ice-creams and lassi, but a cursory feel of the wallet jolts everyone back into their senses. Auto Krishna curses his luck.

Boutros's tongue hangs out as he stares left, Reena Boutros thinks he's salivating at the sight of her, unfortunately it's the continuation of the unspoken war between a woman and a middle class deranged husband. Life goes on and she drops her blouse further. A crow on the electric pole erects one of himsef.

Auto Krishna (AK) begins to make conversation with his passengers, the chinese chic has nothing much to say except 'straight hoogu' and the international indian remarks in a pseudo american accent 'please do not talk to me'. Of course our pal, AK has seen enough of this kind of species and he doesn't give up easily. He adjusts his spare parts and belches out a chewed-to- death betel leaf. A cry of disgust goes up from the backseat.

Boutros Boutros (BB) is dozing off, but he finds himself at Thom's Bakery corner. He smells the aroma of freshly made samosas and pastries & his juices begin flowing. The Honda joins the group of jobless cars and drivers parked outside East Bangalore's landmark. Reena Boutros pushes her seat backward and prostrates herself at a degree that equals the tent in the leering doorman's pants. It seems like everyone is on heat...

BB is inside Thoms. Meanwhile, the chinky and the international indian have decided to get a Bacardi Breezer. AK stops his Mercedes at the corner with a screech and associated noises of trying to uitlize a failed brake. He utters the words 'baga banni' and resorts to watching the perfectly shaped backsides of the two women. Father Abraham who passes him and witnesses the spectacle quickly outlines the sign of the cross. AK is unpertrubed. Such is the slimy nature of an auto driver and his female charge.

BB performs the inhuman task of buying 10 pieces of Black Forest and another 10 samosas. He proceeds to consume 8 of each before he leaves the building. The remaining 2 pieces of each item are to be shared between his wife, his kids and his pet. Not a bad ratio, one would assume.

AK watches as BB waddles out of the bakery with his catch, more of which is plastered around his unshaven face and unkempt tummy. Reena Boutros is awoken from a deep slumber of her affair. She licks the cream off the pastry with her luscious lips and the tongue proceeds to dry off the remainder and the cake has disappeared into her shapely chasm. No such grace of consumption at the mouth of the obese Boutros.

He backs his car out and races away, Reena Boutros answers her lover's SMS's on the cellular. Boutros is least interested - his meal requires the attention of the pot.

AK spots his diamonds exit the Bakery and he makes his move. They're carrying two large packets. In a swift motion of trying to help them, he launches out a dirty hand that picks up the bag from the international indian and brushes across her boobs...she lets out a startled cry!...meanwhile the short chinky has seen this performance and drops her bag. She lets out a war cry and slams her knee into AK's spare parts. AK is stunned, and all he can utter are curses in his native tongue, which none can understand. The chinky is the hero of the day, the international indian wastes no time in calling up her international indian boyfriend in Shivajinagar and informing him of the events of her outing. The chinky doesn't receive a word of thanks in return and is considering showing the international indian a thing or two...
AK profusely apologises in any dialect he is capable of speaking with his family jewels in protective custody.

BB is on the way home. Reena Boutros is dropped off at a theater - Boutros is too busy thinking of the international indian and the chinky to notice a blue Swift that his wife gets into beside a 4 foot midget named Hariprasad Devakrishna Kumaaraswamy.

AK is told to shut his mouth and drive the girls to their apartment. As soon as they reach, a host of chinky chic's boyfriends rush out and swarm AK. Of course, the ensuing argument does not lead anywhere as they all speak at the same time, and critically, in different languages.
The fight is solved the minute the heroes realise that the women have long since left them and gone up to the apartment. BB accompanies them in the lift. He stares at the figures beside him and the chinky smiles back...it is time for the opening of China Gate...

The end of another afternoon in the life of Boutros Boutros and Auto Krishna.

2006-05-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Footplating the Madras Mail

Actual Journal Date: Circa 2004

My childhood was filled with the sights, sounds and smell of the railways. I stay in close proximity to the railway lines that traverse Bangalore.

In the 80's all trains were diesel hauled, and the beasts of steel would charge by in a column of flying dust and blaring horns as they hurtled past Bangalore East and the railway gate...I remember standing at the gate every afternoon to watch the twin WDM-2 class hauled Brindavan Express from Madras and the Karntaka Express from Delhi blaze by in a rainbow of colours...

My favourite trains were the Brindavan, Karnataka, Madras Mail and the Udyan Express.

Fast forward to the year 2004 ! I am in my 20's..but still smitten by the railway bug...the rails have changed, the locomotives have changed, the coaches have changed, but the charm remains...

Ten years have passed since the Bangalore-Madras line was energized (electric traction) and the trains on that sector have replaced diesel with the quiet and handsome electrics.

Tonight I am footplating (riding in the driver's cab of the locomotive) one of Indian Railway's most prestigious trains, a train that has stood the test of time, retains its amazing run times, is a Railway Board monitored train and is manned by A-Grade (top class) loco pilots.

She is the 2658 Madras Mail. She was hauled by steam, diesel and now electrics all the way to Madras, 361 km down the line.

The honours of hauling the 24 coach train lies with a modern day WAP-4 AC locomotive, painted in the blood red livery of its class. This is a 5000 hp beast, handsome and sleek, capable of speeds in excess of 150 kmph...however on IR speeds are limited to 110 kmph. This is a state of the art, electric locomotive that is changing the face of rail travel in India. After Europe, the US and Japan, we are the most advanced in Asia in terms of railway technology.

At exactly 22.45 hrs, a melodious twin tone hoot from the low-tone / hi-tone horn of the WAP-4 is sounded and we are off from Bangalore City (SBC). My good friend, Mr Jeremiah is the Chief Pilot tonight, his assitant Mr. Murali. The bright beam cuts a path through the cloud of insects and web of tracks as we exit the station. We proceed at a leisurely pace of 50 kmph till Bangalore Cantt (BNC). The halt is for 5 minutes and soon we have the proceed signal (green). Phillip notches up the loco immediately and as we pass the Tannery Road underbridge we are doing 95 kmph. We cruise past Bangalore East (BNCE), the ITC railway gate, Kalpalli Cemetary and Byappanhalli (BYPL) at 95 kmph. The loco is in top condition and effortlessly leads the 24 coach, 1000+ tonne rake over the rails...

As Krishnarajpuram (KJM) is passed the drivers settle down, the Mail is given priority and we overtake freighters and passengers at alternate stations. We are still doing 95 kmph, there is no need to speed up - we are well on time.

Soon at the outskirts of Bangalore, we are bathed in darkness, and the clickety-clack of the wheels is all that we can hear outside...there are no vehicles, there is no pollution, no population...the world is asleep...

The assistant calls out 'proceed' as he sights every signal a km ahead, and we race on...time is on our side tonight, there are no untoward stoppages, incidents, or caution orders.

We pass the fields after Whitefield (WFD) bathed in an eerie glow of moonlight and lights from the train...most passengers are fast asleep. In the cab, we keep vigil. We are scheduled to arrive in Madras Central (MAS) at 04.30 am.

It is past midnight, the land has passed in a distinct blur of black and yellow, deserted stations are passed at 100kmph, with the station masters dutifully waving the green signal as we blast past.

We are now in the Mulanur Ghats where we are greeted by pitch black surroundings. The night is still, nothing is moving in the forests. As we wind downward we cut power and coast down the ghats. The tracks twist and turn and it's a roller coaster ride...

At 1 o' clock we slow down as we enter Jolarpettai Junction. The town here has grown around this magnificient junction. This station lies at the foothils of the Yelagiri Hills, where the famed hunter, Kenneth Anderson had once hunted the man eating panther. I have made a few visits to this particular hill, and once you climb it, you acquire an unheralded view of the surroundings, and at night it is even more beautiful. The scene is chillingly reminiscent of his tale, wrought with fright and eeireness. But there is that touch of solitude and peace. But that is another story and will be told at another time.

At Jolarpet the main lines from Madras to Bangalore and Coimbatore separate. As we glide in from the Bangalore line, we are joined by the Kerala Express headed to New Delhi on the adjacent Coimbatore line and the two trains glide side by side in the same direction and stop simultaneously. It is a sight to see two trains run together in the same direction, the headlamps of the locomotives bathing the surroundings in front in bright light.

Jolarpettai Junction (JTJ) is quiet at this hour, with most trains just halting for a bit and a crew change. The daily commuters have gone home, the night is filled with long distance trains arriving and departing within minutes from each other.

We stretch our legs on the platform and take in a fresh breath of air. It is time to leave now, and we move out quietly. We are now on the 110 kmph section and Phillip wastes no time in notching up the loco and we are doing 110 kmph in absolute comfort. Tea is poured from a flask and a toast is made - to the past and the future...

There are a couple of neutral sections here, where we are required to lower the pantograph and raise it again in a few metres. This is achieved with minimal fuss and the loco does not even complain. The speedometer controls us at 110 kmph and we do not face a 'red' signal.

We pass a host of trains going toward their destinations, and there are a host behind us - so we need to clear each section as fast as we can, following us are the regular priority trains such as the Yercaud, Kerala, Blue Mountain...

The Kerala Express is closely following and any stop for us means we are both going to be delayed, however we face no such ill-luck. We arrive at Katpadi (KPD) bang on time. Here, as always, we meet the Cape - Bombay Express which has a halt for over 2 hours, so that it arrives at an earthly hour in Mumbai. The AC locomotive is detached for that train here, and a diesel is attached as it takes the branch line from Katpadi to Renigunta(RU) via the holy town of Tirupati (TPTY).

We steal out of KPD as per schedule and are soon hitting Maximum Permissable Speed (MPS) again. The run is interspersed by yellows here, and we slow down and pick up speed again with eaze. We approach Arrakonam Junction (AJJ) ahead of time. Here there is a turn off from the main line that joins the Madras - Bombay line beyond Arrakonam. This is the route that the Kerala Express will take, and therefore it will reach Renigunta Junction (RU) before the CAPE-CSTM Express. We are halted at the 'outer' signal of AJJ, probably because there is no platform to accomodate us. All it takes is 5 minutes before a late running Alleppey Express is cleared from the platform and we are sent in. This is Phillip's hometown and he can't wait to get back to bed!

We have an extended halt at AJJ, probably to allow a freight to move to the next section.
The horns are sounded, a couple of notches are tapped and the loco hurtles forward with the formation in tow. This is an extremely dense section, with heavy freighters and locals running every inch of available track, competing with the usual slew of expresses and mails. So it becomes critical that we clear all sections in the time provided, else we would hold up trains behind. The same applies for the train in front.
This section requires consant attention as the lines keep breaking away into 4 and back into 2 every few kilometers. We pass innumerable freights, of all kinds - coal, ironore, containers, normal freight, empty freight, steel coils, etc - all headed by the 'Rambo's' of IR - the WAG-7 and WAG-5 locomotive class.

We are now approaching Madras and the air has become humid. It is still air and we sweat lightly, even at 4 am in the morning!. We charge through the suburbs of Madras, passing stations and bridges in a blur. Soon our nostrils grudgingly breathe in the stench of the Buckingham Canal!...and unmistakeably we are in Madras!

At exactly 4.20 am we cross Basin Bridge (BBQ) Junction and find ourselves allotted platform 7 at Madras. We are greeted with the smell of fish and the humid air hangs heavy.
Phillip brings the train to a halt at exactly 4.25 am. The logbook is updated with the necessary details, the pantograph is lowered, the locomotive is switched off and the drivers disembark.

Bleary eyed passengers are greeted by equally bleary eyed relatives, the luggage vans are unloaded and the Mail is soon empty.

The Mail has made yet another nostalgic journey, bang on time, without any hassles, she has brought her passengers home to Madras.
Tomorrow, she will be bathed, and at 22.30 in the night, she leaves to Bangalore as the 2657 Bangalore Mail.

2006-05-24T02:52:00.000-07:00

Drunken Nights...

Actual Date: August 2003

Reminiscing on the good 'ole days of binging with the boys..

A handful of mongrels are all I see on the dark potholed road, reminds me of the skin on the back of a T-Rex..all these thoughts can only form when under the influence of the Bangalore famous 'Mayuri Gardens' alcohol..

The world seems very friendly tonight - albeit the dogs form 'the world'...friendly in their chasing the wheels of my bike over sand and stones, as the roads in Bangalore are quite 'tarred'.
The moon looks inviting, bathing the myriad specs of dust in its pale sphere of light..

It has been an eventful night of drinking, amongst the shambles of a shed that houses the main 'bar' and the rickety old chairs that sway to the rhythm of a faint breeze..

We began at an earthly hour of 5pm, with the welcome drink consisting largely of lager, and a generous helping of lemon chicken. There is an interesting story of this amazing lemon chicken which I will tell later...

There are 6 of us as we cross the threshold and into the palace, or rather, gardens, - 3 of the female category and the other 3 of course, men.
The lemon chicken weaves a trail of craving, all caution, etiquette and morals are thrown to the wind as the poor dead chicken is attacked from all directions by a motley collection of sharpened forks, broken forks, half-forks and a lone spoon..it is gobbled and another plate is hurriedly called for..

Beer follows beer, and the eager chatter turns into a long drawn battle to end the word and hopefully, the sentence..the war is, as usual, won by English literature as mouths turn their attention to the LC (lemon chicken).

I won't say too much about this particular LC episode, in the event that the one reading this, falls in love with the perpetrator of this brilliant plot..again!
Well consider the LC a catalyst to a couple, who have no way of proclaiming their love to each other, and in 'the moment' as many a great author has described, those feelings are realised through a complete consumption of that damned chicken..it is only left to the imagination when I say that a piece of chicken was eaten, simultaneously, from either end, by the two ingredients of that relationship...and the rest is history..literally.

Well the time has come for the female contingent to part company with their esteemed colleagues as it is nearing 'be-home, girls' time and so the men are left alone in the world of Johnnie Walkers, Peter Scot, Kingfisher's, Foster's and the like..

This is when we are joined at the table by 3 more men, whom we know as friends. Handshakes are the order of the day; as none can make the effort of standing up and embracing..

As time goes on, it nears midnight, and this is before the 11pm curfew days, frantic phone calls from respective residences come through akin to calls being made to dear ones on an ice bed in the Antarctic..replies are in the monosyllable grade, as a sentence would allow one to get carried away...

As the bill is paid, with no idea of what the actual amount is, one by one the boys realise the Herculean task of rising up from the bowels of a plastic chair..and lo! and behold! the band has managed to rise and clear the first inch in unison.

As we exit the building, one of us is knocked aside by a mighty gale (read: unsteady body due to insufficient consumption of alcohol) and promptly disposes himself on a lone pot, containing an undiscovered species of plant. Understandably, the waiters are distraught at the destruction of this grand specimen and whilst the rest of us are engaged in disentangling human hair from the plant and remains of the pot, a minor scuffle has ensued..

As in all great battles, there is one hero and one moron, and the Battle of Mayuri was no exception..the great TT plays the part of the moron here with the heroes being the rest of us, trying to compromise with an alcoholic mind and the power of money..

No one can come to a definite conclusion on why the pot was where it was, but the common consensus is that we should reimburse the owner of that particular pot. Thus as we nearly parted with a few notes, we imagined that the incident was over..

So much for thoughts! - our moron, picks up an argument with the waiters on the pot being at fault, (it would have taken an MPD affected criminal lawyer to win that case for us) and a long drawn argument in 4 languages - English, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi erupts..

Words are not what we are best at at this moment, so we make us of our God-given limbs, that is, our moron makes use of his, but he is traded punch for punch and very soon, we have an approximate idea of what Mars looks like (on the side of his face)..

As the melee continues, there is a group of us who feel the need for fresh air, and so we leave the bullring, and are greeted with a posse of our moron's cronies who have been notified of the Battle and await further instructions from their currently battling for face General. The final instruction is never heard....

15 minutes pass and sanity is restored, it appears that a compromise has been reached between the remains of the pot and the mysterious gale that started it all - we are free to go..

As my lone headlamp picks up the mongrels in its beam, I wonder how such evenings of fun and frolic end up in epic battles of man, his alcohol, his mind and a third man's point of view of the entire episode...