The bargain

The thing about beauty is that it is ethereal – familiarity with joy soon translates into the placidity of the mundane. For something to be truly beautiful, it must excite, and at the same time, destroy.

A work of art is born in fire. Have you heard that before? I have a dim memory of a poem I read sometime in school – it was something to do with the god Pan making a flute out of a reed; the underlying message, or so I was informed by my teacher, was that for an artist to be born, or for the creative spirit to be unleashed, the channel must first understand the nature of pain.

It’s an odd thing, creativity. Mostly it comes and goes, in flashes and sparks, which hold the promise of incredible beauty, and at the same time, are heavy with the darkness of shared pain. Occasionally, though, there is the brief moment of utter possession, the madness of true creation. That’s the key to it, though, madness.

An artist – and by that I mean one who is possessed by the creative spirit from time to time – understands the basic, most fundamental fact about art, and emotions. Every yin must have its yang, and in the same way, every work of art – that which gives us joy – there must be a corresponding level of sadness. Usually, this comes directly from the artist himself – the torment of his soul is what allows him to see true beauty long enough to capture a faint ghost of it.
To truly appreciate a good meal, you must be hungry first. To develop a passion about something – be it a sport, or a book, or a profession, or a way of life – you must first feel the emptiness of its absence. In the same way, for someone to truly appreciate beauty – for him to be able to call on it at will – he must first go through the agony of not having it.

In the words of George DeChirico – “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits; logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realm of childhood visions and dreams.”

Beautiful. I wonder what price he paid for that understanding.

I have miles to go before I sleep

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Permit me to introduce myself.

My name, as with a number of other details about me, is of no immediate consequence. I am at present 21 years of age, 22 in a matter of days. At present, I have studied three and a half years in undergraduate institutions; nevertheless, I have just completed the second years of my BSc. I have extensive experience when it comes to writing, since at the tender age of eleven I was convinced that I was god’s gift to the literary word, and therefore, spent the subsequent ten years painfully extracting coherent sentences from the depths of my brain. Read the last sentence again, if you don’t believe me – painfully is the word, trust me on this.
I have, so far in my meander through life, worked at two newspapers, a construction company, and a library. I have studied science and biology at the ISC level, a year of engineering and computer science at the undergraduate level, and two years of economics, also at the undergraduate level. In short, I am a well read know nothing. Nevertheless, I persist in my belief that I have something to say about life, and therefore, chose to inflict my particular brand of fluff and feathers on all those unfortunate enough to happen across this page.
Now, my mother, a saint in dragon’s clothing, fed up with trying to cajole me into doing something with my life, recently decided to approach matters from a slightly different perspective. Gone were the day where I could laze in bed as long as I wanted (or, at least, as long as I could ignore her irritable commentary) – waking up one morning with a cup of coffee being forced down your throat is enough to make you wary – leaping out of bed is now standard dogma when one hears the dragon’s approach.
Recently, as you would know if you’re a returning visitor, I started on a two month long internship with a bank. It didn’t sound quite so bad when I head about it the first time – air-conditioned office, comfortable chairs, unlimited Internet access – who would complain? Unfortunately, I didn’t count on the new spirit invigorating my mother in getting to my father as well. The result? I have to make my own way to office everyday. Again, not so bad, you would think. Well, you be the judge. Here’s my average schedule for the day.

7:00 am – Put alarm clock on snooze.
7:05 am – Put alarm clock on snooze
7:10 am – Ears prick up at approaching tread, leap out of bed and dash to bathroom
7:30 am – emerge from bathroom, having bathed, shaved, and put on monkey suit (shirt, pants, tie, belt, socks, and shoes)
8:00 am – Having eaten breakfast, leave home for bank.
8:05 am – Reached main road near house via cycle rickshaw. Have first smoke of the day, have interesting conversation with driver. Begin ten to thirty minute wait for bus heading toward AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), getting progressively more worried as clock approaches 8:35
8:40 am – Traveling in bus/Tata Sumo, heading toward AIIMS. Trying not to get toes crushed by obese, sweaty gentlemen who (inevitably) I am crushed up against because there’s no space. Being 5’6” is not a good thing, as people assume that the seat wasn’t taken, and react with great surprise to hear squeaking noises coming from under them.
9:00 am – With luck, have reached AIIMS. Spend a couple of minutes hoping for another bus to arrive, to take me to Connaught Place, barring which I have to go and get scalped by an auto rickshaw driver, who wants a hundred rupees and my first born child to take me to work.
9:15 am – Arrive at work. Go around the corner to a convenient panwari, to buy my pack of smokes for the day, and my daily half litre of Pepsi. Take first sip, smile happily, square shoulders, and march into office.

Between nine fifteen, and when I leave, there’s no exact set routine for the day. I work primarily with three people – M’rora, Tortoise, and the Wall. They’re all really nice guys – they helped me get settled in really well, always asking me if there’s any help I need, or anything of the sort, really great guys. Unfortunately, they’re under the impression that I actually WANT to work, and therefore take every opportunity to thrust obese and obscene looking files at me, pausing only to rattle off a line of meaningless gibberish before trotting off back to their terminals. “Hey, just run these MFAs past the BRG will you? And while you’re at it, pull a D-SIT off the GBASE, and correlate it with the BCA. Thanks!”

M-effing-A is just about right.

12:15 pm: Leave office, run to McDonalds. This is the only time that one can get a meal and a seat in the same visit. Every other time finds this place filled to the brim with visiting hippies, complete with requisite dreadlocks and tattoos, random smelly men from various offices, and stargazing couples. I swear. There were these two sitting next to me once, doing the whole dove impression, and feeding each other French fries. Very romantic location to choose, I must say.
12:45 pm: Return to office, begin dodging work once more. Rather, since the work that I’m expected to do is mostly formatting, with a little bit of light research on the side, it’s easy to keep two windows open and write while I work.

Somewhere around 6 pm: Leave work, covered in sweat, full to the gills with Pepsi, lungs black from frequent smoke breaks - which are actually taken to return calls - certain pretty women (you know who you are, if you’re reading this) insist on calling or missed calling, or sending me messages that say ‘Call’ in between particularly exciting bits of number shuffling (not that I'm complaining or anything, there's a particular one who's rather interesting, actually. If she'd only return calls once in a while, like she promises to).
6:20 pm: Finally have found a bus, or an auto rickshaw driver who’s prepared to be reasonable about the fare, heading back toward AIIMS. Aroma of sweat now enhanced by a faint miasma of Eau De Petrol Fumes.
7:00 pm: AIIMS once again. Buy bhutta, convince squatting-man-with-less-than-perfectly-opaque-loincloth to put a little more masala on it. Board bus for mehrauli. Make sure not to fall asleep on bus, as the DTC seems to let its drivers choose the route they take. Any turn is potentially on the route, and therefore, an alert mind, quick reflexes, and good stamina are essential. Unfortunately, I have none of those, so I have to compromise by sitting behind the driver and bawling into his ear when his fancy takes him off the route home.
7:20 pm: Mehrauli. Almost there, just one more bus…which is the one that’s never there. Compromise by finding some sort of transport heading to Haryana border, haggle with driver, offer him a smoke as a bribe to be reasonable, finally convince him that I’m not a millionaire in disguise (tearing at hair and pretending to be an out of work student works particularly well, thankfully I have a lot of experience in that particular role).
8:00 pm: Haryana border. Almost home. Frantically call friends, threaten them with severe psychological trauma if they don’t pick me up and drop me home.
8:30 pm: Home. Mauled by over affectionate dog with severe halitosis.
9:30 pm: Eaten dinner, had bath, met family, endured usual inane questions about whether work was fun today. G-BIT! D-BASE! BCA, for god’s sake, BCA, you miserable bats!
10:00 pm: With friends, who insist that I have just one drink, c’mon man, it’s just one, we haven’t seen you all day, you never spend any time with us…
2:00 am: Not sure who I am, or where I am. Quite thoroughly sozzled.
4:00 am: Finally reach room, change, collapse into bed, make attempt at reading a book that I started a week ago, and am still on the first page of.
4:30 am: Asleep. Passed out, more like.

Yes, yes, I know. My life sucks. Two and a half hours of sleep a night, ye gods.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop complaining.

Back to work, I suppose.

The persistence of life

The problem with the gene pool is that people keep on widdling in it.

Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that the species best suited to the environment would be the one that flourished the most in it. Therefore, in wide, open grasslands, crocodiles wouldn’t stand much of a chance. For that matter, gazelles wouldn’t do too well in swampy areas either, but that’s another story.

Humans have gone beyond such trivial nonsense, it seems. With the advent of medicine, hell, with the beginning of science, we’ve consistently been increasing the chances that a weaker species/specimen would survive in a hostile environment. There are thousands upon thousands of cases where a baby that would otherwise have been stillborn was saved by medical technology – c-sections, infant incubators, whatever. And that’s an absolutely fantastic thing for the mother – I can only imagine how much it would torture someone to lose a baby even before it was born.

Medical marvels aren’t just limited to unlucky babies, though. In thousands of cases, people on the brink of death have been brought back from the edge, coaxed back into a semi-life. With enough time, healing, treatment, and so on, pretty much any sort of problem can be solved. My question, though, is this.

Is it right?

It seems to me we’re taking away a very basic right of all creatures – the right to die.

Now before the more excitable of you start leaping about and screaming bloody murder, let me explain myself.

I think it’s fantastic that we can save so many lives these days. The pain that someone goes through when they lose a loved one is simply unbearable – my dog died in my arms, and that was bad enough that I wouldn’t even want to consider the thought of losing someone who I’ve actually talked to. However, do me a favour. Re read the last sentence, and tell me who’s going through the pain. The person (or animal) who’s moving on, or the one that gets left behind?

We’ve come to the point that we simply cannot control our emotions – they become our yardstick rather than intellect, and rational thought. Yes, I know, it’s pretty obvious that I’d change my tune in a second if it was someone I loved on the brink – I’d be hysterical in my efforts to prevent it happening, but nonetheless. It’s an emotional thing.

Let’s take an example.

Suppose there’s a man, who’s been in a terrible accident. One of his legs is mangled beyond repair, and one of his arms as well. His ribs have been broken, internal bleeding, loads of complications. The doctor tells you, his relative, that he can be saved, but he’ll lose an arm and a leg, and will probably not have too many years left to live – and while he does, he’ll have all sort of trouble, chronic pain, breathing difficulty, the whole nine yards. Given that he’s also unconscious, and that a decision has to be taken, and quickly, what would you do?

Say you save him.

He’s alive, but barely so. His leg is gone, and one arm as well, so her has to learn new ways of doing everything – from tying his shoelaces, to driving, to cutting the top off a boiled egg. His active life is gone, and so, for that matter, is his independence – until he’s managed to create a new way of life for himself, he’s utterly dependent on someone else. His life isn’t that long, either – he hasn’t got much time left to do what he had planned. He’s constantly wracked by problems, breathing difficulties, muscle spasms, generalized pain, and so on – his life now revolves around medications to treat his body. Then, there’s the psychological angle. He once was a whole human being, and remembers that time all too well – unless he’s an extremely stable person, personality wise, he’d be completely destroyed – imagine the thought of waking up one day, and only having the use of one arm and leg, and to be in constant pain, for the rest of your (short) life.

And you made this decision for him. Because you would miss him if he were gone. Hell, it’s not your daily battle to fight, is it?

Death isn’t much better, to be sure. Your life ends there and then. The only positive thing you could say about it is that it isn’t a lingering one.

At the end of the day, it should be HIS decision.

It’s a knotty problem, that’s for sure. You can’t ask the person what he wants, since he’s unconscious. You cant say let him go, since what if he wanted to live? You can’t say save him – well, not without some thought – since it’s a pretty sad life you’re consigning him to.

If it were me in that accident – well. Surprising as it may be, bring me the hell back, and find out the number of the truck that hit me.

The perfect storm

The latest in the scientific news, live from New York! A new strain of phobia has appeared! WEATHER PHOBIA!

Err…what?

Yes, you heard right the first time. John Westefeld, at the University of Iowa has recently documented a study in which he claims that perhaps one in five – twenty percent, ladies and gentlemen, one in five people in the USA suffers from ‘weather phobia’. This new disease apparently is characterized by panic at the thought of storms – not the regular, healthy type of worry that makes people stock up on provisions, or board up their windows, or whatever – but actually renders them incapable of helping themselves while under its influence.

Now look.

I’m sympathetic to peoples worries and fears, I really am. I listen to people when they tell me there’s something that’s bothering them, and I usually try to give some sort of positive advice. So here’s my advice to all you Americans afraid of the big, bad, weather.

Wear a nappy. It wouldn’t do to piss your pants every time you hear thunder, now would it?

This one's for you, Bro

I woke up today, and felt like shit, cause I realised that my best friend wasn't there anymore.

I’ve known this chap for two years now – not an indecently long amount of time, not by a long shot, but long enough. In the past two years, we’d met almost every day – and done absolutely nothing. That was the great part of the friendship – the capacity to sit every single day, and constantly bitch about not having anything to do, and still enjoy it enough to do it again the next day. And we had an absolute fucking blast doing it, too.

Looking at the two of us though, you really wouldn’t imagine that we’d be friends, let alone best friends – hell, almost brothers. We’re different from almost every perspective you might choose to look at it from – he’s 6’4”, I’m 5’6” (we made a strange pair walking down the road, I can tell you that, and there’s not one picture of us standing that has the both of us in it – unless it was taken from a good distance away). He’s the quintessential party boy – there’s nothing he enjoys more than a loud, writhing, gyrating scene with bucket loads of booze flowing everywhere – while I’m more of the sedate scene with a bunch of good friends chilling on someone’s terrace. He never bothers to think about what he does (hell, he’s never even heard of foresight, or for that matter, hindsight), while I usually wind up not doing a lot of stuff for the simple reason that I cripple myself thinking about it. He plays almost every sport imaginable, and he’s pretty good at most of them too – I guess having the reach of a mutated gorilla can help you out in these sort of scenarios. I, on the other hand, will pretend aloof disinterest in every sport, usually because I suck at them – or maybe that’s just more of my crippling thoughts. Interesting.

Anyway. We’re unlike as two peas from different pods, is my point. But something clicked.

In the past two years, we’ve drunk ridiculous amounts of alcohol (one of our favourite party games was to try and drink the other under the table, which usually resulted in everyone getting mad cause we’d finished all the booze), talked endless amounts of nonsense (there will never be another to match his brand of bullshit. Honestly. He once convinced a guy that we’d only played one hour of snooker, even though we’d been there for five hours). We’ve utterly destroyed the self-confidence of any number of fools who crossed our path; we’ve established a reputation in college as the root of all evil – anything that went wrong was automatically attributed to us. Even if it happened in the women’s loo, for god’s sake. We were once blamed for the electricity going, by an overexcited teacher.

We’ve been in four accidents, one of which reduced a three year old Ford Ikon to a pile of smoking, twisted metal. I think he still has the picture, too. Fun day, that one.

At college, we followed each other’s footsteps diligently, which usually meant that we wound up going in circles most of the time – and I don’t think there’s another pair of students who’ve been thrown out of class (especially macro) quite as much as we have.

What can I say?

Well, here goes.

(I know you’re not going to read this, you illiterate fuck, so it doesn’t really matter how much I insult you. And I get the feeling that you’d be a little disappointed if I didn’t describe you as a monkey with it’s arse on fire.)

This one’s for you, Bro.

I first met this chap some eight years ago at my cousin’s birthday – and trust me, it was hate at first sight – duly reciprocated, of course. When he was smaller – that is to say, about as tall as I am now, his face hadn’t quite grown a chin yet, so it seemed that his head bore this unfortunate resemblance to a cough lozenge. It used to piss him off quite a bit, having me yell, “Yo, the cough drop is here!” when he walked in. He, of course, with a dint of much thinking (he looks like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone when that happens), soon came up with an acceptable retort. Cough Drop and Shortarse were born that day.

The next time I met him was at college, ITM to be exact. Our reactions were pretty much identical – “What the fuck are YOU doing here?” pretty much summed it up. Unfortunately, since ITM is where you go when you don’t qualify for anywhere else, there were few intelligent people around – people like us, with the brains, but with no drive whatsoever, resulting in a lack of results. I wouldn’t quite say that we were forced to hang out with each other, but for some reason, we decided to – by the second morning, we were cheerfully bunking class, secure in the knowledge that no one would care, and regardless of what we did, it couldn’t be quite as bad as actually attending class.

One week later, the Group was born.

The group – as that is what we were known as – consisted of four people - me, him, and a pair of surds who were known as Paji, S’dar, Surdy Paji, or something equally ridiculous, depending on mood and weather conditions. Thus began two years of absolutely rocking fun – our reign had just begun.

There wasn’t one party, or a drinking session, or a card game, or a snooker game that we didn’t dominate right from the start. For starters, our sense of humor was in perfect tandem – one would set up the poor bastard we’d chosen for the day, and the other would land a blistering comment on him (There are about fifty odd desks in ITM that we decorated with marriage announcements between these two chaps that we particularly enjoyed heckling. ‘GK Weds Prasanna Jain’ is a particularly famous line, at ITM). Secondly, the both of us are extraordinarily cocky buggers – it’s a common sight to see us defending completely indefensible positions, and getting away with it just because we refuse to agree with the other people.

We’ve done so much in the past two years, that it just wouldn’t even do justice to it to try and list what we’ve achieved (or, alternatively, destroyed beyond repair).

I remember once he told me while we were driving around – dude, you suck at driving. Being the arrogant chap that I am, I immediately flared up, and an interesting discussion developed on whether or not his ancestry contained howler baboons from the African jungles, and whether or not I resembled a snapping turtle. At the end of it, though, I realized that compared to him, I DID suck at driving – and so began my education.

Did you know that the best way to take a turn at high speed is to start it tight, and drift into a wide turn? Or, for that matter, if you start a 1.6 litre Opel Astra in first, rev straight up to third, then down to second, then up to third, and stop at fourth, you’ll reach 110 km/h faster than a 2.0 litre Honda Accord? That, and a whole lot of other really, really twisted stuff. He’s an interesting chap when it comes to cars. Just don’t let him drive yours.

Dude, I’m rambling.

And there’s no point to this. I already remember all the good times – which was pretty much all the time.

I’ve never met a chap who’s as blessed as you, boy. I’ve seen it happen; luck rides on your shoulder. Nobody walks into a card game with 50 bucks and leaves with 2500. Consistently. Nobody routinely races a shitty little Santro against a Honda or a Toyota and expects to win. Nobody who looks as fucking uncoordinated as you should be able to play a 100 point break on the snooker table. And nobody should, after eating six McGrills, get up and say, “Dude, I’m hungry.”

Fucking Arsehole. Take care of yourself, fool.

Goodbye

Zinedine Zidane.


FIFA Player of the Year 1998, 2000, 2003
Golden Ball winner in 1998
European Player of the Year 1998.
UEFA Champions League MVP 2001


Rest In Peace.