Feeling like a wrong-doer, telling myself I’m not
Yesterday I went to
As we walked towards KFC, beggars ran from around the pillars, appeared from nowhere asking for money. Positively unsafe and chilling.
A boy of 14 or so was following us as we carried burgers and snacks to the car. It’s horrible when you have food and beggars around you. Ronny, a friend, dropped a glass of soft drink (KFC fix soft-drinks in really lousy trays for take-away) that began spilling contents on the road. In an instant, the beggars swooped and grabbed the glasses and desperately sipped the last few drops in the glass. How terrible could their situation be, living right in the centre of
Foreigners come from countries where the Government pays you if you are unemployed. At first they are shocked, and then they begin to share the Indian view of fate and destiny. Some ugly things have to be overlooked. Either you spend all evenings in
And then we hit home and guess what was on TV –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdrCalO5BDs
Auto ride
My mom and I approached the Noida auto stand. I needed an auto to go to
I’m running late. I hop into the auto. We are on our way.
Soon, he rips a tobacco sachet expertly, empties the contents into his mouth and lets the aluminium coloured plastic sachet flutter away from his fingers out of the auto on the road. The rest of the way, he spits on the road. A red-light is like a watering hole. At any moment you can see a few heads going down as men spit on roads.
As we go along, I see the auto driver has a long fingernail on his pinkie, a nail grown to half an inch. Scratcher. As I put on my dark sunglasses, I try to block out more than just the sun.
Amit & Tonk
Amit: Hey .. Don’t drop that plastic wrapper on the floor (of my living-room)
Tonk: Abbe, tere ghar mein chooha ghum raha hai..
(A mouse is scurrying in your house and you're worried about this..)
Amit: Yeah, but the mouse is biodegradable and this wrapper is not!
Look..
A conversational, a debate, vociferous explanation of close beliefs. Two people talking and one says “Here, I’ll prove it to you. Look at this coin (takes out a coin and places it on the bench). It was minted the same year I was born in.” We look at the coin placed on the bench, awaiting a theory to be proved, the coin to shine or jump and plainly speak out a truth that can only be seen in physical action.
A discussion ----> A promise …
An evening at Palette
Boris Neislony performed at the Palette art gallery, Delhi last night. And so did Inder Salim and Monali Meher. Boris’ performance was a puzzling one. What was this man trying to do? What was he showing? He played an audio cassette on a regular portable music system and then moved to the sounds. He didn’t move much, just a shoulder wiggle or the slow motion of hands or rubbing off something from behind his ear or drawing something from within him. The sounds seemed like a hurried conversation, the steel sound of someone drawing a sword out of a scabbard,
Chai Corner
Morning. 9:00 a.m. The sun is out. Groggy. Walk out of my bed, out of the door, beyond dusty verandas to the corner tea shop. Next to the tea-shop is a large iron gate, locked and barred. Office goers stand on the other side of the gate holding forward their thermos flasks like children at a school canteen. If somebody approaches the gate, all of them yell out helpfully "It's closed, it's closed!", trying to save the person a few extra steps even though he invariably comes up to the gate before turning back.
Ajit, a Bengali guy, mans his tea-shop in Shahpur Jat, a hardcore villainous
A white dog with a black eye patch saunters by. A brown mutt folds one forepaw over the other and stretches down. No begging for tidbits. He is a well fed street dog and has his pride. I get my tea, especially strong with less milk and lots of ginger, and I sit back on threadbare mats over stone blocks to blow it cool and sip it slow.
Picnic at Hauz Khas Monument
Woke up, rubbed my eyes
MJ: "Ahh what a nice Sunday morning!"
NG: "Let's have a picnic!"
Watched movies, Been to lounges
Been clubbing, seen plays
But so long since we
Picked a cane basket
Rolled a wicker mat
And had a
SunDaY PicNiC!!
Quick phone calls to 15 people
10 showed up
The closest oldest pals
Rainbow coloured sun umbrellas
Sports shoes and sunglasses
A happy party, we picked our way through Hauz Khas monument
Walking through cold ruins
Big heavy blocks of stone
Roomy domes
Narrow stairways leading to dungeons;
Throwing the stuff over a gate
And swinging a leg over over barricades
A hop and a jump and some scraping down
Not in the most elegant way
We continued our hunt for the perfect picnic spot.
Walking along a ghost lake
With egrets, bent trees and crooked branches
Forgotten floating boats
And murky green depths
A large lake reflecting the sun
And twinkling and blinking;
Walking along that lake
We came across a hillock
A decision point
A topographical difference to acknowledge and encounter
Up we went and on the other side of the hill
Were rolling lawns of green
We set down our basket and our badminton rackets and our mats and our umbrella and ourselves
Under a shady tree
Looking upon green lawns over one shoulder
A wide lake over the other
A compact monument looming above us right on the peak of the hill,
We decided it was officially picnic time.
Lathering, smothering bread with cheese spread
And fussing over snacks and dustbin bags and orderliness
The picnic began!
Nani in the Sun
A winter afternoon in Delhi, I sat and listened to my Nani, my grandmother. Both of us sat squinting in the sun, while basking in the winter heat like reptiles on lakeshores. She spoke of her childhood days, spent in Ambala and Roorkee. She said, “My mother would give me money to go buy books that we couldn’t afford. I read lots of books and all the copies of Woman and Home, a British magazine stocked in the corner bookstore at Roorkee. Out of 6-7 siblings, I had a music teacher who would come every evening and teach me ghazals and bhajans.” Nani is the kind of person who forgets surroundings when she is in temples, stands up and begins to dance and sway to music. She would spend hours singing alone. “We did plays by Shakespeare. My brothers and sisters would put up a curtain and jump up to perform with their parts. As the eldest sister, I would direct the plays. Days passed in those small towns playing badminton and carom and exploiting a box of water-colours. That was what life was about. The influence of Roorkee University motivated everyone to study hard and score well. I spent my time knitting sweaters I enjoyed creating. We concocted innovative recipes and pampered ourselves with ‘tasty-tasty’ food. There was a buffalo in the house and we would all have lots of milk and butter. We walked in fields, along canals for miles and miles. We would all climb the nieghbour’s wall and jump all over.” And then my Nani got married at 21. She was expected to handle domestic responsibilities and was aghast! So she worked reluctantly like a spoilt girl. Ha ha ha…!
Om Shanti Om in Cineplex Odeon
The movie suxx. Having said that...
Watching this movie, any movie was just the thing I needed after a long day and night's work and a tiring presentation that went off well. I looked up the theatres in which Om Shanti Om was playing across Toronto. Took a subway and dashed off to a distant theatre in unknown parts. My mind was mostly on the loveliness of my belted coat and the personas of strangers in the subway. I reached a large multiplex with multiple snack counters and around 9 auditoriums. Unlike the constant throng at PVR Saket, whether its Monday or Wednesday or a weekend, this theatre was ghostly and totally empty except for one guy who manned 10 ticket counters alone, and one woman who manned all the snack bars. The number of employees seemed justified considering that I was the only one there to watch a movie - in all the 9 audis.
I went into the theatre. The screen was full size. The seats were comfy. Lots of leg-space. No reason to avoid the theatre. I touched the screen on which they project the movie and saw what it felt like. I went and looked right into the overhead projector which was showing some meaningless routine promos. No one in the projection room. No one in the seats in the theatre. I tested 4 exactly similar seats for best ass comfort, before I settled on one. I put my feet up. A while later I bought some food and coke and ate noisily with my coat on one seat, Coca cola bottle on another, feet up. The nachos I ate cracked noisily in my mouth at the most significant emotional pauses in the movie until a couple came into the theatre to catch the film-in-progess. In fact, that didn't stop me. By then, I was the self-proclaimed King Of the place.
She said..
You know, I was talkin to this Dilli babe once.. she was talkin about her new bf.
She said "Humne ek doosre ko party mein dekha aur ab hum 'go around' kar rahe hain.."
