A twelvefold path to Famedom aka Arundhati Roy's celebrity status

Of late, life is beginning to get a little hmm…stagnant. Work has been a bit slow and all the adrenaline rush that I seem to get nowadays is from running up the stairs. Rather expected- because when one is despairing endlessly for an incomprehensible degree () in an obscure field, one is too preoccupied with life’s miseries and unfairness to care about personal ambition. Once the degree lands in ones hand though, one has nothing much to be miserable about. But then, together with the lack of abject despair, comes annihilation of all illusions of fame and glory that had driven one into the dreaded path of a graduate student’s life. So one gloomy Sunday afternoon, my personal counselor, Lord and master gave me the mantra of re-birth. I have been told that I should re-look at my aspirations, re-evaluate my goals in life and re-chart my life plan. That and the soporific aftermath of a scrumptious meal prepared by the Lord and master set me thinking.

I know I want to be famous and I don’t want to wait too long. Opportunely, that very day, I chanced upon one of the most reputed voices that represent the spirit of those fortunate millions among us who do not think before they speak. Case in point: Arundhati Roy. Instantly, everything fell in place. I decided to look into the path to success and fame she had taken as my inspiration. What of science you say? Well, that’s MORE exotic than being a half-graduate of architecture isn’t it? Although me having received my degree as opposed to her bohemian skew of having forsaken it midway might act against me. Nevertheless, I made a game plan and it goes like this.

Step # 1 of passageway to glory – Take the most controversial film of your day and “thoda twist karo”. Rules – none. Just use patronizing, cynical and mocking tone and talk about “the state”. If possible, add a few “C” words. In her case, she thought that Sekhar Kapoor “misrepresented” Phoolan devi . Get all the free publicity that you can ever muster. Trust me, in the long run, this will do you so well, you will actually gloat about it in later times I swear!

Step # 2 of passageway to glory –Be photographed with contemporary icons of Indian writers in English the likes of Rushdie and Anita Desai before your first work gets published. Look here for the date of the photograph (May 30, 1997) and here for the date of first publication (9th June, 1997) Make waves with the highest advance ever offered for a book by someone who had no claim to literary fame before (save the phenomenal advance). In short, know your market and your media well.

Step # 3 of passageway to glory – Write your little autobiography embellished with the most “playing to the firang” themes of child molest, forbidden romance between a “lower caste” guy and an “upper caste” woman, death of a child and subsequent guilt and of course the quintessential backdrop of communism. And you might just get lucky and win the Booker (1997) for the one work of fiction that you have graced humanity with, despite what anyone might think about your book. It greatly helps that you are Indian woman who is not a hopeless Hindu (what about me then, you ask? I can always claim to be an agnostic, can I not?)!

Step # 4 of passageway to glory – Immediately after you win the booker prize announce that you might never write fiction again, that you are exhausted and that you have "nothing more to give". I bet I will love this part – After all, I haven’t known much of pepper creepers and rattle snakes that rub themselves on rocks! Continue giving interviews and talk about how people keep comparing you to famous writers (In her case, “It's not just Rushdie that I'm compared to. There's Garcia-Marquez, Joyce...and Faulkner. Yes, I'm compared to Faulkner the most. But I've never read Faulkner before!” )

Step # 5 of passageway to glory – Take to an “NGO” issue and no matter whether you truly understand the implications of say, building a dam, or not; just scream your throat off and man- will the world stand up and listen! Come on, you have just won the booker! Doesn’t matter what the environmentalists think of the publicity you give them – they must be knocking mad!

Step # 6 of passageway to glory – Get involved in every issue that grabs headlines. Scream. Believe in nothing but your language. Hate everything under the sun – globalization, war, nuclear weapons, dams, privatization, fundamentalism (but only the non-obvious types, someone who bombs the Indian parliament is not a terrorist for heaven’s sake, don’t you know?!), George Bush, Indian government. Scream.

Step # 7 of passageway to glory - And when people tell you are muddled up, tell them that while you are entitled to your opinions and can scream them off India’s rooftop to let the whole world know about the ugliness of the system. Surely, no one who condemns you or your arguments can possibly be 1) morally conscious 2) right 3) intellectual 4) non-bigoted and hence no one but you has any claim to expressing ones opinions on everything under the sun. When people tell you that your opinions are not informed, are shallow and are even factually incorrect, you say.... “Oh, I didn’t make that mistake, it was just wrong sources that I quoted from?” And btw, you should also claim that they are all jealous of you – because, who knows, they might be thinking that you are just "some pretty woman who wrote a book." (In all honesty, I don’t know how I could muster any courage to say that- me who cannot even look into the mirror without wincing. But hey, you have to do what you have to do. Collarbones or no collarbones).

Step #8 of passageway to glory – Take up every prize that comes your way no matter that one of them is sponsored by a government that is a key ally of the US (Australia) in its war against terror about whichyou just cannot and will not stop screaming. Scream and refuse to take the desi awards though because, it stands for the Indian government.

Step # 9 of passageway to glory –Scream that you want to go to jail. Talk about egalitarianism but when you actually are jailed, pay the fine rather than spend the time in jail with others who have been arrested together with you for the “cause”

Step # 10 of passageway to glory – While you are screaming, do keep a watch on the media in the west to which you play. You should always gain their attention, no matter what. You may cry and rant and rave and give out oodles of information about how the establishment is out to get you jailed, when all you have done is to defy the supreme court of your country. Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. They are jealous of me. They are afraid of me. I am too clever for them. I have too much money. I look too beautiful. I can’t substantiate many of my rants against the bloody establishment. They hate me. Oh they hate me because…India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs.. .

Step # 11 of passageway to glory – Announce that you will write fiction again, after all.

Step # 12 of passageway to glory – If no one stands up and takes notice of your re-entry into fiction, scream. Take up the most controversial matter of the time. Remember the mantra? Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. Add a new horror this time around - the hindutva movement ( Even the hardcore paki-philes have been driven to cry out for freedom from India into Pakistan simply by the Hindus, who else?)

By now, you would have no chouice but to have made it to the headlines of a thousand newspapers/websites. Millions will applaud your courage and vision. And you will be a woman, my daughter! While I try my newfound 12-fold path to glory, you guys check these out..

Royisms: handy quotes to famedom

“No, I don't feel responsibility because that's such a boring word”

“I thought, thank God the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone’s taken money, imagine if they had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more frightening“

"When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a tiger in the Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs” htm
“If you live in America or Europe it is almost impossible to really believe that another world is possible. Over there, anybody who talks about life beyond capitalism is part of a freak show, they’re just considered nuts and weirdos, going through teenage angst”

“I went there and became a mad molecule floating around”

“…Purana Qila, which is the Old Fort, which houses the Delhi zoo. And it was really from there that — and, of course, it wasn’t a public meeting. It was the caged animals and some caged CEOs that he addressed. And then he went to Hyderabad, and I think he met a buffalo there, some special kind of buffalo..”

“I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever”

And finally, the killer stroke!

“I don't see a great difference between The God of Small Things and my works of nonfiction. As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was. My whole effort now is to remove that distinction”

My wish list for India’s 61st Independence Day

I wish

· That there is no dearth of food, shelter and relationships in all our one billion lives.

· That all of us, who belong to the land by dint of ancestry, birth, love or merely by affiliation, learn to see beyond the immediate ‘now’ of time. May we see beyond the wounds of a hundred years ago and arrogance of the current economic surge; beyond the age when India dominated the world’s trade into the future that will be of our own making, on our terms.

· That we live, work, prosper and play beyond the boundaries of caste, religion and region while respecting them and that we all are treated equally in the name of law regardless of caste, religion and region.

· That while we prosper from the land of 'snake charmers' into a land of a billion opportunities, we retain our ability to chose our lifestyle; that no corporate gurus or fashion mongers tell us how to eat/live/dress/walk/live and die.

· That we hold our heads high and speak out our mind without fear of offense to any power and yet we retain our warmth in our dealings with other countries.

· That our media which uses 95-99% of its print/visual space to ask the “why” question and only the remaining to the “how” question, reverses its trend.

· That the current generation of thugs/thieves/scam mongers/ film or television stars/ wastrels who make a career out of politics stay out of it for at least five generations (after which, it would be welcome to have someone who could provide us with some entertainment on the Loksabha floor like ahem.. a certain governor in the US). I wish the same minds that help MNC’s make billions of money come together to help us reap the true benefits of democracy.

· That we learn to teach our kids to follow their dreams and not ours and we may have many Bindres

. That people like me (thanks to the very Indian education system that we can’t stop cribbing about) who have secured a slightly better lifestyle than most others back home in India don’t forget to give back.

Who better than Tagore to articulate the wish?

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Happy Independence Day, dear fellow Indians.

Pleasurable pain

Since the time I discovered one of the most touching voices I have ever heard , I have spent countless evenings letting his velvety voice caress the wounds that I have carried (self-inflicted or otherwise)-to the point of addiction. Who would blame me once they know what Jagjit Singh voice can do to one’s soul? Last evening his voice revealed to me anew the pleasure in re-visiting some moments from the past. This one, a ghazal true to its form (apart from the form and meter of poetry, one specialty of the ghazal is its subject- invariably, unrequited love) is written by Nida Fazli -remember Hosh walon ko khabar kya in Sarfarosh? Rarely do lyrics, melody and rendition come together this way to break your heart. Listen to magic from a new compilation -Audio biography.

Yun to guzar raha hai har ik pal khushi ke sath,
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Each moment that passes flits with happiness
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Rishte wafaein dosti sab kuch to pass hai,
Kya baat hai pata nahi, dil kyun udass hai,
Har lamha hai haseen, nayi dilkashi ke sath
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Kindred, intimacy and friendship, I do have them all
I know not the reason for this melancholy of my heart
Every moment entices with novelty and beauty
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Chahat bhi hai sukun bhi hai, dilbari bhi hai,
Aankhon mein khawab bhi hai, labon par hasin bhi hai
Dil ko nahi hai koi shikayat , kisi ke sath
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Serenity, Desire and a fascination for life, I have;
These eyes do dream and these lips do smile
And my heart holds no grievance against another
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Socha tha jaisa waisa hi jeevan to hai magar,
ab aur kis talaash mein bechain hai nazar,
Kudrat bhi meharbaan hai dariya dili ke sath,
Phir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

The vision I had of life is what it turned out to be
What makes my gaze restless then?
Nature has been as compassionate as it is magnanimous,
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

Yun to guzar raha hai har ik pal khushi ke sath,
Fhir bhi koi kami si hai kyun jindgi ke sath.

Each moment that passes flits with happiness
Why then does life feel a little incomplete?

How do you recognize an Indian?

Yes, it was yet another of those e-mails that claim to have comprehensively captured the essence of an Indian. But the check list (36 items on that list, mind you, so the guy who came up with it did have a sense of the relative complexity of the task) that got passed around in this morning’s e-mail irked me big time. And it didn’t help that this was a Monday morning. And that I ran out of milk and cereal and that the ATM machine was kaput and that all horrible things happen on Monday. So, I wrote this rebuttal. Let me know if any of you agree.

“…

Let me do this, if only because this is a soporific Monday afternoon and I can’t seem to be motivated to think about this week’s experiments. For every generalisation about India/Indians, there are a million exceptions (or more –remember although the Indians invented the concept of zero, algebra and geometry, they aren’t that keen on statistics).

Shashi Tharoor (former undersecretary general to the United Nations and a very well renowned author on India) said "India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype”.

So let’s see how many of the following will hold true if we look not at the stereotyped immigrant Indian but at the cross section of Indians from across the country/globe.

1. Everything you eat is savored in garlic, onion and tomatoes – There are at least 40-50 million Jains and Brahmins in India for whom garlic and onions are forbidden. Most south Indian preparations have no tomatoes. But I swear that I will die if I have three consecutive meals without either one of them.

2. You try and reuse gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminum foil- I am trying to think of a exception beyond me but then, that’s tough. Besides, that’s what the entire world is doing at the moment – recycling. We were just doing it when it was terribly unfashionable too.

3. You are Always standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the Airport- It is true that Indians have a penchant for good things in life that includes food and dress in general. But there are 313 nomadic tribes in India that translates to about 60 million people who roam around with their entire set of belongings in a bag.

4. You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think it's normal –It is imperative to arrive late to a party in most Asian cultures. Don’t mistake a Philippine for Indian based on this one!

5. You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp -This is the land of e-mails and web chats. Postal stamps? Lets see – that was ten years ago! See point 2

6. You recycle Wedding Gifts , Birthday Gifts and Anniversary Gifts- Wedding gifts, I agree -what do you do with 20 coffee flasks and 50 pressure cookers? But Birthday gifts? Is someone smoking grass?

7. You name your children in rhythms (example, Sita & Gita, Ram & Shyam, Kamini & Shamini.) - In bollywood films. Yes. In real life? Come on! You have to be a poet to name all 8 of your kids in words that rhyme. Remember 1 billion?

8. All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names- this is true of Punjabis and Bengalis and suburban Americans-(firangs not the Indian immigrants) -honey, darling, sweetie etc!- as far as I know.

9. You take Indian snacks anywhere it says 'No Food Allowed' – most of us would love to. Which person who has grown up with at least a thousand choices for snacks wouldn’t when the only snacks you can buy at the movies is popcorn and taco and the rest that smell and taste of nothing but MSG?

10. You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house- Time goes around in cycles for most of us. This means that I can be standing at your door after lunch and who knows I might be invited back for dinner if I hang around long enough?

11. You load up the family car with as many people as possible - There was an ad for ambassador car in India. “Adjust kar le yaar”. The idea being -What’s a car for if it is not for people? You don’t pay to carry air do you?

12.You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch – I cannot think of a single person I know who does this. Yet every novel written by/about immigrant Indians speaks of this. I wish I could sneak into Jhumpa Lahiri’s home to see if it is true.

13. Your parents tell you not to care what your friends think, but they won't let you do certain things because of what the other 'Uncles and Aunties' will think– See point number 12

14. You buy and display crockery, which is never used, as it is for special occasions, which never happen – See point number 12

15. You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table – See point number 12

16. You use grocery bags to hold garbage – Again a single great truism about India is its inability to throw things away. This is why we attracted over centuries muck of all sorts from the Turks to the Hans to the firangs. We simply are unable to throw them away and so we “recycle” them- see where the English language got us for example. The best of the bookers belongs to an Indian-born who had simply recycled the language!

17. You keep leftover food in your fridge in as many numbers of bowls as possible – Another great truism but for the fact that about half of the billion odd people don’t own a refrigerator.

18. Your kitchen shelf is full of jars, varieties of bowls and plastic utensils (got free with purchase of other stuff) – because whoever has a kitchen, should use it to cook. And Indians in general don’t like to keep stuff in the condition in which it is bought. It is a great assault on our creativity you see.

19. You carry a stash of your own food whenever you travel (and travel means any car ride longer than 15 minutes) – see point number 9

20. You own a rice cooker or a pressure cooker -See point number 12

21. You fight over who pays the dinner bil-It is wrong. You see most people simply don’t understand the internal rules of an Indian society. You pretend to fight over the bill but ultimately, you know that the one with the loudest voice pays. So the fight is just to explore the aural and vocal capabilities of each other

22. You live with your parents and you are 40 years old. (And they prefer it that way) –All of us prefer to be spanked once in a while and who better to do it than your folks?

23. You don't use measuring cups when cooking- Measuring cups are for amateur cooks. Not for all those who a) don’t own a cup b) never cook in their lives c) know how to cook

24. You never learnt how to stand in a queue – One must know the spelling of a Q to be able to stand in it. It is absolutely imperative. One simply won’t stand in a Q if one doesn’t know how to spell it. Got it?

25. You can only travel if there are 5 persons at least to see you off or receive you whether you are traveling by bus, train or plane- Apart from the fact that about half of the billion odd among us have never taken the bus/train or the plane, this is absolutely true.

26. If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel proud to spread it at the velocity of more than the speed of light –Makes me wonder if the one who has written this watches desperate housewives at all? Or any of the thousand other American soaps? Because, if one does, one needn’t even ask if this tendency of middle-aged women is limited to the subcontinent.

27. You only make long distance calls after 11 p.m – The era of STD/ISD booths was history some five years ago what with the boom in current operators. Last heard, India is the third largest market of tele-communications next to the USA and China. It costs –get this- one rupee per minute to make calls across India today. Incoming calls are no longer charged in India (they still are in the USA). 11 PM? Wake up!

28. If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight – Yes this is true in most cases unless 1) your mother never cooked when you lived with your parents 2) your parents are vegetarians and you don’t mind relishing all parts of either the sacred cow/forbidden pork or both 3) you have married outside your region/state/country

29. You call an older person you never met before Uncle or Aunty' – And so do Singaporeans, Japanese, Thai, and Chinese…

30. When your parents meet strangers and talk for a few minutes, you discover you're talking to a distant cousin – We all came out of Africa remember? And so we all are cousins –welcome to the universal cousin-hood!

31. Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls – You are talking of our great-grandfathers sir? Most Indian parents are comfortable using a cell phone/computer/google talk and skype too. I think you missed a point here. In general, Indians don’t believe in whispering. We are loud- now that would have been a truism, if there was one. Not “being loud on the phone”.

32. You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty – This is bang on. Also, we don’t use the same shoes that we walk on the roads, cafes, bars, toilets and whatever else with in our home and on our sofas and beds. Plus, Jhumpa Lahiri’s parents must have suffered from Xenophobia of firangs who don’t wash their hands after visiting the loo.

33. It's embarrassing if your wedding has less than 600 people – Get this straight. Most Indians are weak hearted and only get married once. Plus, how will you manage all those rituals by yourself? So, yes, this too is bang on.

34. All your Tupperware is stained with food color-It’s the fault of the Chinese. Can they not make steel Tupperware for heaven’s sake?

35. You have drinking glasses made of steel- So did the rest of the world when steel was a rage. And try breaking an Indian’s habit. Btw, it is fashionable to have wine glasses made of pewter, so please!

36. You have mastered the art of bargaining in shopping- I would have held on to this belief that Indians are great at bargaining had I never visited the south-east Asia. Now, I know, we are not the best. But admittedly, we are better than most. That is given that almost half of the one billion among us exist hand to mouth.

You needn’t look at all this to identify an Indian at all. There are two unifying qualities of all Indians – irrespective of which strata of the society we belong to which easily betray us in any company.

We are a bunch of nonconformists. And we love to argue.

So, there!

To be or not to be...doobe doobe dooo

It is impossible to remain sane for five years in this land of tiny women as an Indian woman who is not anorexic. Take it from me-I have seen it all. You can walk into a store even the most expensive, reputed, branded (and all such adjectives) one but the XL they carry would only fit your arms and not your waist. Total strangers can see a muffin your hand in the lift and start off pleasant conversation of how impossible it would be to “lose those pounds that these muffins give you”. It is generally accepted in this society to call a woman fat if she is a little more endowed than say the breadth and width of a mosquito bite. Of course, this has it perks. Like when one goes shopping in India or Europe and the salesgirls refuse to let one even touch the L size.

Unfortunately in today’s global village of a world, home is where the job is -I am doomed to live here. After careful deliberation for five years, I decided to lose weight in order to “fit in”. Since I have not been on a Sex and the City diet of blissful anorexia and because I simply can’t stand the lead actress in that series, and because V desperately needs his money to be spent, and because I have secret sadomasochistic fantasies, I signed up for a personal training program in a gym.
As expected, it is hell. Here is why:

1) My personal trainer, let’s call him GG, looks like a Greek god
2) GG has not an ounce of fat on his entire body
3) GG told me that my BMI and body fat (and what-ever-else that has ever been invented to make an overweight person feel miserable) are nothing but horrendous and almost hinted that he is very surprised I didn’t die a decade ago. This for paying him so much money that it hurts!
4) My muscles have not moved in three decades, what with me being teacher's pet and all in school - I could always get out of the "PT" class by smiling at our trainer and telling him about the latest quiz/essay writing/debate that I am attending and how important it is to sit in the library (that I would read totally unrelated fiction in the library is an aside only meant for trustworthy ears)
5) When my muscles refuse to move, GG shows me what his can actually do and that almost releases murderous/suicidal intentions in me depending on which time of the month that is.
6) I sprained my ankle on the first day when he made me stand on a- get this- wobbly ball, nothing less

If the training sessions are my practice for being in the place that is destined to be mine in the afterlife for all the innumerable sins I have committed in my life, the changing room is the antonym of seventh heaven. Loads of models and wannabe-models swarm the place and one should just see to believe the looks they give me and another Malay lady of decent proportions.

What keeps me going? I fantasize that if my sadomasochism does pay off, soon I will be on the other side of the death-by-skinny-model-looks-wall. If it doesn’t pay off, hell all these skinny people just don’t know how to enjoy life. I mean what’s life without chocolates, muffins, cheese, parathas and loads of carbohydrates? If this doesn’t work, I promise I will start a world-wide-counter-skinny movement. Watch out!

Taking Umbrage, yet again

The terrorists struck again, the states blamed the centre again, ope-ds have been written on relooking at the "root" of terrorism again and as ever, and there have been articles on how life goes on in these two cities. Being as we are in alien lands, whenever the news of a bomb blast in an Indian city is aired, thousands of us are gripped with anxiety. And then relief: thank God, it wasn’t my city. And then anger: but why Bangalore? Why Ahmedabad? Why Jaipur? Why India? There are discussions and ruminations as I am sure there are in India. There are explanations to be given to concerned colleagues who want to understand if the Muslims in India are as “bad” as they are elsewhere.

How can I answer this? I who went to a catholic school where more than half of us were Muslims? I who grew up in a Muslim majority city and would look forward to the Id as eagerly as to Diwali? I, who had always had friends that were not colored Muslim or Christian or Sikh by my parents? All I know is that those who flew those planes into the towers were not born and brought up in the US. That however, is not true in case of many behind the bomb blasts in India, Muslim or otherwise. And what causes them to erupt once in a while in demonic anger that compels them to burn, blast and destroy living, walking, normal people like you and me on the street who have nothing to do with their angst? I don’t know.

All I know is that when that happens as regularly as it has been happening nowadays, one part of me is desensitized. One part of me is depressed. Another part of me just wants to ignore it. But an overwhelming part of my being roars in anger. Anger at the mockery of the government that we have elected. Anger at the world at large for largely ignoring this (remember how many days we were subjected to images and discussions on the London bombings in July?). Anger that there is no one who would issue a war cry on behalf of all us against this putrid form of human emotion. Anger at my own helplessness and that of our useless wimp of a prime minister who has sacrificed his spine at the altar of the lady in a cotton sari so-far-away in her attitude and outlook to the murk that has befallen us all. Anger that the so called moderates among us just play the blame game. And that the world seems to fall in darker and deeper despair. This independence day, when the PM talks of sovereignty, I will be angry again, I know.

What does sovereignty mean if we cannot take any action against the very people who inflict this upon us?

Telusa Manasa?

“Many are the days that pass in mirth, in the quiet calm of a fresh engagement with life after eons of apathy. Many are the nights that yield passion if only driblets of what the all-encompassing ocean that it once was. Many a moment when I actually smell this world, when I truly see the colors in it, taste the simple joys of a meal in the moon light, walk down an unknown road in yet another alien land, dream a new dream for the years to come, read a line without thinking of what you would make of it, even look at life in the face for an undaunted minute or two. And then all it takes is a tear drop in the eyes of a child sitting in front of me in a bus, for this yearning to come back. As if it never did go away. As if all these years without you are but dreams. “

This is what I wrote after listening to this rather obscure telugu song, (God, was it really) ten years ago! Those were days of dreams and the shattering of dreams seemed rather romantic and inspirational for an aspiring writer.

telusaa manasaa idi ae naati anubandhamo
telusaa manasaa idi ae janma sambandhamo
tarimina aaru kaalaalu edu lokaalu cheraleni odilo
virahapu jaadalenaadu vedi kannesi choodaleni jatalo
Shata janmaala bandhaala bangaaru kshanamidi

prati kshanam naa kallallo niliche nee roopam
bratukulo adugdduguna nadipe nee sneham
oopire neevugaa praanamee needigaa
padi kaalaalu vuntaanu nee prema sakshigaa

ennadu teeriponi runamugaa vundipo
chelimito teegasaage mallega alluko
lokame maarinaa kaalame aagina
mana eegaadha migalaali tudileni charitagaa

Today, when I listen to this, I can only think of how fragile and beautiful the relationship portrayed in this song is. I feel ridiculously protective about the woman in this song (I don’t remember much of the movie but for the fact that she dies immediately after this song, utterly tollywoodisque).

For some reason, I had an urgent urge to transliterate this song last night. Have you ever felt this way about things as you age? What you take for granted in your formative years seems fragile when you are older. You don’t even feel anymore that death and old age cannot touch you anymore. Is it this feeling of being mortal or actually the lack of it in your younger years that make one yearn to be youthful forever? Is this why first love, college, friends of early years and the home you grow up in always yield nostalgic pleasure because whatever happens in your later years will never match up for the sheer abandon and total lack-of-inhibitions of the years of the yore? Telusa, manasa*?

From whence this proclivity, would you know, my mind?
Of which lifetime past is this bond, would you know my mind?
In an alcove of myriad lifetimes of togetherness lies this golden moment
Which neither the six seasons, the seven worlds nor the tempests of separation dare touch.
Your image it is that rests in my eyes every moment,
Your friendship it is that walks by my side in every step of my life,
It is verily you: this very breath of mine, this very life of mine.
And it is your love that will witness my love for you through the cycles of time.
Be thou the debt that can never be repaid
Be thou the jasmine creeper in the fragrance of accord
If times change, and with it, the ways of the world,
let this story of ours remain endless and unchanged.


* Manasu is loosely translated as mind/heart but is more fittingly described as an intension or a desire and not a visceral organ (as in neither brain nor heart). I left it as mind for obvious lack of creativity.

Greece...

The very name conjures up so many images. Marcedonia, Helen of Troy, Zeus, Athena, Sparta, Zorba the greek, olives, Alexander, Socrates, Plato, feta, Miceaneans, Minnoans, Baklava, Acropolis, Greekuveerudu (!), I could go on. And I very well intend to. For now, let this picture speak...

A New Remedy for Jetlag

Picture this...

You are jetlagged, have overslept by atleast 5 hours, are groggy eyed and in desperate need to get out into the real world. You think a dinner by the riverside and a crisp english movie (not the drawling amriki ones) would do it.

The dinner is fine if a little on the spicy side.

Now for the movie. You get your popcorn and coke, you get the tickets and walk up the stairs and you are looking forward to sinking into the inviting seat, armed with your nicest pashmina to ward off the evil aircon, dreaming of the little gamble you are up for in that bag of "mixed" popcorn, when,... they actually tell you that "food and drinks are not allowed in this cinema"?!

You nod and walk on obviously having misheard them - I mean, a movie hall which doesn't allow popcorn inside? Where exactly are we? Red meets green? But no, it is not a dream after all. They insist that you throw the "food and drinks" off or "have them before you enter the hall". You plead and you threaten but eventually, you actually throw away your popcorn, water and the coke.

You are sober now and in the eternal enthiusiam of a jetlagged dumbo, you look forward to listening to the "crisp" english. Only, you cannot hear a sentence through because the audience is laughing. Wait a minute, you want to catch the joke too? .. no they insist on laughing. A Church, someone singing and a priest who is saying...BAH! You miss it again. Whats wrong with your ears? Why dont you catch the d**n joke? A 17 year old guy is talking to a career girl after his first ever and he knows that she knew he lied about his age when he says" thanks for having me". The audience bursts out in peals of laughter.You feel like one of those dried up ones who never will find fun in life ever again. Silently you pray that someone will tell you secretly why they are laughing. You wonder if you are in a freak show. You wonder if you are watching a Korean movie which you mistook to be an english one. After the mentor tells her student of her two-year old kid who died of meningitis, a poet and his mentor stand still and watch a skylark amidst breathtaking surroundings, you hear them laugh again. You give up and just start looking around. A lot of people are munching on one thing or the other from their copious handbags (that should teach V for not buying me a huge Gucci). That's it. Your jet lag is demolished.

I woke up completely by the end of this movie. I loved the movie (its called the driving lessons, if you care to know) so will probably go buy a DVD someday.

But guess what? I found a new remedy to jet lag.

Watch an english movie in this movie hall.

Which one you ask? Come on!

Mocking, Mediocrity and Ms. Azmi

It is when mediocrity aims for excellence and for lack of obvious talent or inclination, assumes the cloak of supremacy by mocking others as mediocre that smoke starts erupting from one’s ears. Don’t ask me what in the world made me watch “Koffee with Karan”. It must have been this ex-colleague of mine who mocks it all the time but nevertheless doesn’t miss a single episode (perhaps because he gets enough ammunition from it to mock all Indians, by extrapolation naturally, in front of me). Or perhaps it was the boring, pouring Saturday evening when the only other refuge would have to be the packed shopping malls of the great sale. I chose to blame it all though on my curiosity to watch the man of words- Javed Akthar and the woman whose substance has been touted over and again by our media (oh God indeed!)- Shabana Azmi tackling the monster of cliché- Mr. k..k..k..kkkkk Johar (his use of phrases like “do you all..” is just stupendously smoke evoking, need I say?).

Before we move on though, Disclaimer #1) I am not against feminists, nor against people of any gender who wear ethnic stuff and imagine themselves to be the torch bearers for the rest of the masses simply because they can talk what they want and yet get away with it with no practical impact what so ever (are you thinking Shoba De? don’t even go there).What I am against is pretention. And that has been bestowed in abundance by some quirk of fate to all three of the people on the set. So I kind of knew that I would be enraged by the end of the show when I sat down with my coffee to watch it (why watch it you ask? I was curious if I would catch Koffee Karan drinking from his mug of whatever-he-has-in-it. Okay?).

Disclaimer #2) Let me also clarify what I mean by pretension. This is an art form that all of us possess inherent talent for and most of us practice in our daily lives to a certain extent. However, like say lying to your spouse about the cost of your 20th pair of shoes or feeling greedy about the 5th Samosa, this can only be tolerated to an extent. Each one has his way of looking at the limits for tolerance but once a person tries to emulate this image of him/her that has been conceived and nurtured by self, I draw the line. Or the media bred monsters who lecture us on everything that they don’t believe in would have made the “normal” among us extinct.

You ask what’s my grouse? First things first. I was absolutely stunned by KJ’s question – “Sometimes has the presence of mediocrity ever upset you?” (don’t even get into the grammar part of it OK? Just accept it that most of the Bollywood stars speak pidgin and not English). But what followed was even better. 'Well I was doing a special appearance. It was a three-day part and I went on the sets and he was a south Indian film director who was ready with the scene. I told him, I need to ask you a couple of questions and he said fine. So he said “Madam, she’s mad!”, so I said, ‘What madness does she suffer from? Is it psychosis, is it schizophrenia, is it neurosis?’ and as I asked every question I saw him becoming paler and paler and he looked completely shocked and he said, “Madam, just play filmi-mad!” So I said, “What does that mean?” and he said, “It means nothing madam. It only means that you laugh HA HA HA HA and then start crying! That is filmi-mad”.

Ma’am we all know you have a degree in psychology but then it must be your failing memory that made you list cause (schizophrenia) and effect (psychosis) as two different “kinds of madness”. And where exactly was your aversion for mediocrity when you do a three day stint in a south Indian movie? I guess the lure of south Indian bucks made you temporarily inane to mediocrity. I have some advice for you – absolutely free of cost – just one south Indian to a north Indian - If you want to be seen as an intellectual, you need to:

1) Have some grey matter

2) Use it and not just imagine that you are using it

3) Be consistent in your attitude to life (it is either paisa or non-mediocre art ma’am not a path that leads to either as it suits you)

4) Stop changing your opinions every two seconds (to one of those pseudo-intellectual questions: What would you do if you could ask Sonia Gandhi to change one policy or something on those lines, she first answered that she would demand that slums shouldn’t be evacuated without providing alternative accommodations for the slum dwellers. And ten minutes later, she wanted to “change” her answer to –I would like to have the right to information/freedom of speech or some such s***t)

5) Stop pretending to be what you are not (intellectual)

I am pretty sure once you take this path of enlightenment; you shall find your goal – that of evading mediocrity. In the meanwhile, perhaps you can perhaps remind your man of words some of the stunning poetry that Gulzar has bestowed Indian cinema with – poetry with real emotions and real words and not recycling of a vocabulary of less than a 1000 words – ishq, mohobbat, zindgagi, dil, pyar, et al (no matter how much you adore the Americans, this is simply not an area which would beg emulation!). Because for the life of me, I cannot understand how he aspires to have written not a “tujhse naaraz nahin zindagi”, “mera kuch saaman” or “o saathi re” (and a zillion others) of Gulzar but a “beedi jalayle”?!

Oh, can I add to the list?

6) Aspire for greatness and you might even reach somewhere close. Otherwise, you will continue to generate smoke from the ears of one woman who at one point in her life (sadly) had thought of you as a sensible person

7) Read Indian history

8) Phew!

My take on the global food crisis

I have been away for a while so might as well start with what has been catching widespread attention in the media (the great gender versus race debate not withstanding) -Global food crisis. I have been racking my brains and trying with my short sight to divine between the lines of the famous and the infamous but haven’t yet figured out if there is a shortage of food worldwide or not. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to prove the World Bank wrong- I do believe that global food prices have risen 83 percent in the last three years and I better believe that there is an acute shortage of rice in this part of the world. V and I made two trips to little India in the past week to get one bag of rice for twice the usual price. Yes, we have started witnessing the much talked about rationing and hoarding of grains. The part that I haven’t figured out yet is whether we are in a situation where in the world demand for food has already surpassed the production yet, have we reached the Malthusian line yet?

I have read reports that quote the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) saying that the world cereal production was a record in 2007 and is expected to hit a new record in 2008. But as the world cereal consumption has been slightly faster than production for seven years, the world stocks have fallen to about 400 million tonnes. Ok that makes sense – we have low food stocks.

Why do we have low food stocks? That information too was not that difficult to come by. Apparently, higher income among the growing middle class of developing countries such as India and China has played a major role in generating a high demand for food. This piece of erudite information from the respectable President has been thoroughly derided by many scholars Indian and otherwise. Some of them went to uncover the “real” culprit – increased demand and enhanced subsidies (by the US who else) for bio-fuel raw materials such as – yes- wheat, maize, and palm oil! The lesser sensationalists among them have also pointed towards other causes for this rise in food prices: climate change (inducing change in rainfall patterns and in some cases such as Australia causing long periods of drought), falling dollar (commodities being priced in dollars, any fall in the dollar rate will increase prices), protective government policies (about 40 countries including India have curbed food exports to control domestic prices), speculation, falling productivity of the agriculture sector (diversification of agricultural lands, poor irrigation practices, diminishing returns from overused land) as well as high oil prices that make it expensive to use petroleum-based fertilizer, operate farm machinery or to transport agricultural products.

I have also read plenty of op-eds and the likes on the consequences of this global food crisis which have already led to riots in places like Haiti and Pakistan and will push almost one sixth of the world’s population below the poverty line. In short, if left alone this “silent Tsunami” is going to wreck havoc in every part of the world. Pretty scary prospect.

And yet, I haven’t yet read any analysis of what the current situation is in terms of demand and supply. I haven’t found for example anywhere that I tried to look an analysis of how much food stocks we have, how much are we expected to have to not fall below the Malthusian line of catastrophe. In other words, if say by next year we have persuaded the 40 odd counties to give up the export bans/duties and have managed to get Mr. Bush to slash bio-fuel subsidies, would we have sufficient for everyone to eat? I cannot for the life of me believe that no one has done that analysis. Clearly, someone did but no one is really interested. It goes on to say how information is managed in these supposedly utopian days of information sharing. Everyone is out to put the blame on each other and pontification seems to be the order of the day in the media of today.

Well, I have vented my bit of fury into the cyber world. I can still afford the rationed rice that we are able to buy here. Would that be enough then? What can we as individuals do to decrease the burden of increasing global prices? I think I can definitely and effectively prevent people that I can influence from hoarding. I can also restrict the amount of food that goes to the bin whether it is in my kitchen or in a restaurant. I can stop complaining about the rise in food prices because, I can afford to have two meals a day as opposed to millions in the world. I can certainly try raising awareness among some of my ignorant acquaintances who think the issue is “blown out of proportion by the media”.

Will that change the world? Perhaps not – but hell! Who would have predicted a couple of hundred years ago that the small change man made towards industrialization will lead to today’s situation of global warming? Remember, the butterfly effect?

Of truth and fiction and of love

Yesterday morning, over a sleepless, “don’t-want-to-go-to work” Monday morning’s coffee, I was reading a story written by P.S Narayana in a telugu magazine. Once in a while on my grocery shopping forays into Little India, I induce myself into buying this magazine as a much deserved nostalgic trip to the world that I was born into but invariably, I end up feeling abysmal about the quality of the reading material in it. I do know about the abundance of telugu sites on the www but I don’t enjoy reading online so much as I enjoy reading a book or a magazine or even a desperate printout. V laughs at my quotidian bouts of enthusiasm about the language and dismay about the current trends in my homeland but that doesn’t stop me from buying this magazine. I also doubt that one of the reasons I cannot afford to not buy it is because of the fear that I might miss speaking to the one telugu speaking person I know in Singapore- the magazine store guy!

But for all my snivels about the current trends, this story was one of those little gems which make life seem beautiful. Remember literature of the yore? Where beauty is extolled without drama? Where leisurely descriptions of the place, people and the events are more important than the “plot”? Where the grammar of the language does not matter as much as its lyrical cadence? This story was truly one of those although I doubt it will be perceived as “literature of the yore” by many. I was so thrilled that I tried searching online for this author in vain. Here is how the story goes - A tamilian by birth, Tambivelu came to a small town in Andhra Pradesh with his mother when he was five and lived there for the rest of his life as a lorry driver. When informed of the death of someone by a friend, he goes all out to ensure that she gets a decent funeral. He being a married man, one is almost deliberately made to believe that this certain someone might at one point have a romantic connection of some sort with him, given the intensity of his feelings for her which were very perceptively portrayed by the author. He remembers the little things that she had said – that he shouldn’t consume “zarda pan”, that she craved for an azure saree with white dots (which he buys for her as a final gift before the funeral), that she had at one point remarked on the piety in being cremated near the Krishna river ( he dutifully ensures that). It is only to the end when his aide, who cannot keep his curiosity to himself, probe him that he blurts out the fact that he was married to her. And that they had spent five beautiful years together after which, she had chosen to be lured by someone else into a life that eventually turned out to be in dregs. The story has hues of almost all human emotions that you can conceive of but all painted ever so carefully that they don’t over whelm you –magnanimity of human sprit, affection, gratitude and the lack of it, lust, friendship, spiritual belief and above all, a love that has no boundaries. I don’t know where you could find it, but if you do come across it and if you happen to be able to read telugu, read it. You might just fall in love with love once again.

Was it then just a coincidence that the very day I had come across a story of yet another facet of human emotions? Only that this time it wasn’t fiction- but real life. A software guy working in Bangalore had murdered his wife because he had supposedly “spied” on her PC and found her to be having an affair with a colleague. After this, he committed suicide. It might sound morbid but I couldn’t help thinking of the similarity in situation between the protagonist in the story above and that of the latter. One chose to forgive and move on and yet with the same tenderness of heart that had loved her in days past, bid her a final farewell. The other chose to wipe her memories out literally. Who knows what went on in the mind of this guy when he was smothering his wife to death?

But could it be the same love? Or have we all finally reached this stage where instant gratifications have taken over every other parameter of our existence? Love- now, Justice-now, everything- now? Or is fiction, as always, an idealization of the human situation? One that we aspire for and truly yearn for: but it eludes us because we are not made for it?

Dr. Greed

An Indian doctor in the US is accused of being Dr. Greed who “violated the basic norms of medical care by authorizing re-use of syringes, fast-forwarding procedures, and running an assembly-line operation -- all with an intent to make more money” by local media. As is expected, there is an outburst of considerable outrage from all corners of the society; specifically from the community of foreign physicians “who have worked and fought long and hard to establish a good reputation”. Let’s not get into the details of how valid these accusations are and whether they were thoroughly investigated yet or not.

A very disturbing line of thought in this article was that he was a “reckless physician who cut corners to increase profits although he was already a multi-millionaire”. My first thoughts on reading this were, how can we be so hypocritical? Why are we bent upon calling the medical profession the noblest? Why can we simply not accept the fact that just like some of us have it in us to become graphic designers or artists, others have it in them to become doctors or surgeons? Simply because at one point or the other in your life, you might be vesting your life in one of their hands doesn’t mean that they have to be put on a pedestal with lofty ideals. What is wrong if doctors make money while practicing their profession? Is it wrong that some of the biggest MNCs in the world are the giant pharmaceutical companies? Is it wrong for an IIM graduate to get an unbelievable sum as his starting package? Or that despite his billions, Mr.Mittal is still bent on making more money? If this is not wrong, I don’t see why a doctor should not aspire to make money despite being a millionaire. It is another thing how he chooses to make it.

If these allegations are right (and I am guessing that they are) then "Dr.Greed" has indeed committed a crime. But please can we not have yet another hackneyed sensational article that judges on the basis of whether it is right or wrong for a doctor to have profits in mind? Let’s try to look at the matter only from the perspective of what was right or wrong on professional terms in this case. And all others.

Science and us

What is the aim of science? It might sound odd coming from someone who makes a living out of it but sometimes I do wonder what the aim of science after all. No, this is not a “science versus religion” sort of question that has popped into my brain. I am trying to look back on my modest experience in this field. I just am trying to make sense of what I have been unable to make sense of yet.

Take for example, the 1000 genome project which will eventually sequence a small proportion of about 1000 human genomes with high accuracy. Among the populations whose DNA will be sequenced are Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigerian, Japanese in Tokyo, Chinese in Beijing, Utah residents with ancestry from Northern and Western Europe, Luhya in Webuye, Kenyan, Maasai in Kinyawa, Toscani in Italy, Gujarati Indians in Houston, Chinese in metropolitan Denver, people of Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles, and people of African ancestry in southwestern U.S. It sounds fantastic and there is obviously a wealth of information that we can as scientists garner from such a study.

But wait- before you consider the ethics of this study -let me assure you that these people will be anonymous and will not have any medical information collected on them. In fact, “the scientific goals of the 1000 Genomes Project are to produce a catalog of variants that are present at 1% or greater frequency in the human population across most of the genome and down to 0.5% or lower within genes”. In lay man terms it means, by the end of this study we will have a capacity to look at variations in a particular stretch of DNA across different populations. So what will that information mean? If I know which sequence variation is associated with say diabetes in a certain population, I would be able to better predict your risk of getting diabetes if you happen to have that sequence variation AND if you happen to belong to that particular population. I know the smarter ones among you have already figured there is a missing piece here. If you collect no medical information, what inferences can you make about the variations apart from say frequency of these variations in a given population? None in this study. So what’s the point? - It is a pilot study. This will give us the opportunity to build capacity to do cool stuff that I just mentioned. But wait, the reason they won’t be collecting medical information is because they haven’t figured out the ethical issues yet (I think).

Ethical issues such as: should I be charged a zillion dollars more by my insurance company because I happen to be an African with a particular variation which has been shown to be associated with (say) diabetes in 80% of that population? Or worse, will I never get insurance? More than that, will the doctor be required to tell me even though I am asymptomatic that I can develop this at one point in my life? If he does, how will I survive? If he doesn’t, is he being fair to his profession? You get the picture. We don’t know at this time whether such problems will manifest in future. What we do know is we don’t know how to deal with them if they arise. And don’t get me wrong here; I think it will really be invaluable in understanding and hopefully finding treatments for a number of diseases. But here we have a group that is equipped to open this pandora’s box. Is the very essence of science this impartial observation? One that doesn’t look at the consequences of the observation? Let me know if any of you have a clue. In the meanwhile, I am praying that Gujarati Indians in Houston are genetically far removed from other NRIs.

Hazar rahe mudke dekhi kahi se koi sada na aayi

There was sunshine, waves and the deliciously salty humid heat; there was wind like there is nothing but that and sands that gleamed like diamonds under the cloudless sky.There was fragrance whose colour was white and a person whose name was love, friend, guru and God.

There were jasmines and music, tropical forests under the moon of August. There was the aura of home and smells of eons begone. There were tears of passion and tempests of gloom - all of which would dissolve in the embrace of one person who was love, friend, guru and God.

There was poetry in words, in a touch and a smile or even a mere glance. Majestic operas in a fleeting caress;the mystery of birth and the glory of death reveled through each moment spent with love, friend, guru and God.

And there were lies, betrayal, hurt and mockery. There was death in the name of life and no life beyond that death. There was no element that was not afire; no ounce of mind, body or soul that did not yearn to disappear in the all encompassing flame of desire. There were the torrents of monsoons and the fires that threatend to destroy the world.

A wild flower; a Mango plucked from a treetop in a thicket; fear of snakes and the thrill of sheer abandon. There was worship, there was peace. And there was life in the company of love, friend, guru and God.

One day, God was pleased with my worship. Saying "No more cycle of births and deaths for you my beloved because you have arrived at the very heart of this creation", He broke the charm of life.

Now there is silence - all encompassing. And of feelings, who can say?

Another shot

This is yet another shot at capturing the mood of my favorite city. Mid day in May.

Hyderabad Blues!

This not-so-perfect photograph of a not-so-perfect-yet-the-best-place-on-earth is my favorite.

Does racism exist?

Long long ago, in a beautiful city of castles, rivers, universities and foreign army camps, there lived a student- alone, struggling to survive in the land of an alien tongue, in quest of her niche in the big bad world of logical abstractions (go figure that out). One day, she surprised herself and another of her loner friends with an Indian meal she packed for lunch. Here's the scene:
Gorgeous sunlight pouring in from the windows. The views outside?
Wisps of white in the azure sky,
Swans fidgeting with pieces of bread in the nearby river,
Students walking with cold coffee and ice creams in their blissfully warm hands,
Two ladies sitting at the table in the pantry;
One of them - an Indian and the other was from eastern part of Europe (never mind the nitty gritty - just need to know that eastern Europeans are somehow not European enough in some people's view).

Enter, the boss.

"Hm.. the whole pantry smells spicy!"

(Me..Gloating inside!..)

"Hey....don’t eat the rice, you will turn brown you know?!"

(Me...Still giggling. in sheer shock)

Aeons later, when I think of this scene, I still smart. Not that I feel humiliated or feel the need to have got back to him with an appropriate answer at that point. No it is not about not having retaliated. It is about the paradigm that still holds true. You can say whatever you want to the Indians. They won’t make a fuss about it.

When I read the controversy about an Indian "racially abusing" someone, I must say I was laughing. Not to say that Indians are not "race conscious" - how many of us know our compatriots who would bend backwards to appease those of the fairer skin? But please, give us a break will you? We can’t think of racism sir (we do think a whole lot of other things though)- after all, we Indians come in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colors.

Oh, and you can’t say everything you want to an Indian. Not anymore.

A snow covered mountain

I am the mountain that is forever capped with snow.
No sunshine can ever melt my coat of ice
No wind can blow these whisps of white away
nor can any storm ever wash off this aura
From summer through the howling tempests of the autum,
I remain untouched and aloof.
..Watching from high above,
the mean hearts of men.
Laughing at their prodigality-
Laughing at their platitudes-
Laughing at every scene that occurs in human lives
which I had seen being repeated..over and again
through the ages;
Laughter and tears;
anger and fear
how long have they been playing
this very act again and again?
Will they never tire?
I am the mountain, a mere block of stone.
Life from here looks absurd in this repetitiousness.
How do you feel ay man?
Do you feel at all?
or does my snow cover your memory too?

(P.S: all these "poems" were written in my teens when life was at its best and so was existential angst.- for whatever they are worth, I decided to put them up here)