A Leaf in a Book

I saw them coming, both very solemn. So many couples passed me by, but there was something about them that caught my attention. I was feeble, I was counting my days, I couldn’t do much but observe. They stopped slightly ahead from where I was. They got off the bike, and then the man started quarrelling. Without prelude, without warning.

He started throwing his limbs about, his gestures rude. She stood there, looking at him. I could only see them from a distance, couldn’t hear anything. But it was not very difficult to imagine her imploring eyes. The agitated man spoke –shouted- for a long time. She tried sometimes to say a word or two, maybe trying to reason with him, trying to tell him, but he would have none of it. He alone spoke, accused, shouted, threatened. Then, abruptly, he just took his bike, and drove off, leaving the girl there. I thought I could make out her feeble attempt at calling him back, but of course, to no avail. She stood there, looking after the biker vanishing in the distance. I could only see her from far behind, black top, blue jeans, jet black hair falling over her shoulders.

I realized that my time had come. That this was what I had been waiting for. It hit me, all of a sudden, at the very last moment of my life. I had found what I was supposed to do in life. I had found my purpose in life. The purpose that I would give my all for. The one thing that mattered above all else. I had waited, wondered, all my life. I had wondered, what difference did I make? What difference did I make to the survival of a tree full of green leaves? Why did I jostle with the others for my share of the sun? She would be none the worse for me! What was I doing here? What was the one thing that I could do, that no one else could do, better than me? What was the one thing that would define me, my life? I wondered, and I had thought that I would never know it. But I knew it then. In that one moment of revelation, I realized what I had come into this world for.

I had come to rub off the tear that I knew was rolling down the girl’s face, right then. I gathered all the strength I had left, and, finally, broke free. I landed in a gust of wind, and was flung towards her. Just when I was a foot above her, the wind left me, and I drifted down. I saw the beautiful, innocent, sad face, the deep, aggrieved, despairing eyes, staring into the distance. And I saw the tear drop, gliding, in silent complaint, down. I twisted, I turned, and I landed on it. I soaked it in.

She put a shaking hand on her cheek, lifted me up in her palm, and looked at me. I breathed my last. My life was worth it.

Akon in an Auto

Many an experience I have had in an autorickshaw in Kolkata, from the life-threatening to the embarrassing to the downright unpleasant, but never quite like this one.

I had been returning with my girlfriend one night, from Kankurgachi Pantaloons to Baguiati, Kolkata. We took the usual auto ride to Ultadanga, thence went looking for the next auto that would take us to Baguiati. It was late, so we were'nt expecting to get one easily, albeit we weren't exactly worried about not getting an auto. Fortunately, there was this autowalla right where we got down, shouting "Baguiati! Baguiati!" at the topp of his lungs. With the practiced eye of fishing out a prospective passenger, he glanced at us and immediately asked, "Kothai, Baguiati?" ("Where to, Baguiati?"). I had only begun to nod my head when pat came the terse fare-statement: "Dosh taka, bosun." ("Ten rupees, get in."). Of course, the usual fare is 7 rupees, but since it was late, and since he would be taking the wrong side of the road on the approach to the 24x7 kilometre-long jammed Keshtopur crosssing and thereby saving us at least fifteen minutes and a lot of general irritation, he demanded 10 Rupees more by right than by defiance. In we got, and off he went. There was room for two more passengers at the corners of the little front seat that rests on the single front tyre, and which he and I were already sharing, my girlfriend having occupied the last vacant part of the two-and-a-half seater back seat where there were already two people sitting, so he started rolling in low gear, without relinquishing the use of his lungs. Even as he drew beside a pedestrian, the latter asked, "Baguiati?" and got back the "Dosh taka" reply. The pedestrian walked away with a huff and a puff, shocked by the exorbitant fare, and our autowalllah muttered under his breath, "Go hang from a bus then, and reach home tomorrow!!"

Then he shifted the vehicle to third, and was just releasing the clutch when he found a colleague looking for passengers to the airport. As is the custom between every group of autodrivers, which are always close-knit, he slowed down to exchange a little bit of banter. "Babbah, to the airport, this late??!!" The other shouted back a reply, then our man resumed shouting, "Airport! airport!.. err.. dhatteri airport bolchi..(duh, what am I shouting Airport for!?) Baguiati, Baguiat!!" I couldn't help but laugh out loud, and he very good-naturedly joined in, saying, "Actually all this while I had been making trips to the airport, na.. it's still not gotten out of my system yet..!"

So off we went, the usual drill of passengers getting off and on, and all the while, he was trying to slap his unresponsive stereo into playing songs from his plugged in usb drive. And all that while, I had been dreading his success in that effort, fearing another bout of that high-bass music that sets your very bones vibrating, until you feel your heart's rhythm is getting affected -- a disturbing trend that has become fashion amongst Kolkata autodrivers lately: the louder and crackier your beats, the cooler your vehicle, and, by extension, you. At last, my good friend succeeded in extracting the beginnings of a beat or two from his sound system, and, after the initial trepidation of 10 seconds, I was completely bowled over.

For the first time in my short Kolkata life, I found Akon singing "It's beeen so long.. na na na na" from the very well balanced speakers of an Autorickshaw, and the driver miming the words, and swaying his head to the beats!!

My 10 bucks' worth of a ride had been more than worth it!! Thank you, Kolkata.

To the best brother one can ever wish for.

My brother has given me an iPod nano. It's the sleekest, most stylish gadget I have ever seen.

He gave it to me on the 20th of September, which was when he arrived home from America, and I let it lie in my shelf without configuring it or installing iTunes. My friends saw it and went green with envy, saying it's not fair - everyone should have a brother or sister who should go to America to bring you gifts. And then one of my friends said, iPods come with Bose headphones, don't they? Man, you're so lucky! Have you listened to it?

I said no, not yet. Everyone was taken by surprise. "What!", they said, "you've had it lying there for one whole month and you haven't even configured it yet!" I said no. After all, what special would be there about Bose headphones, I thought. How different would it be from, say, the headphones of my mother's mp3 player? Then one particular friend started pestering me to configure it and listen to the godd*** songs. I finally got fed up, and got down to configuring it.

I loaded a few songs on to the iPod, connected the headphones, and played Chhaiyya Chhaiyya from the film Dil Se.

I listened, mesmerized. It was as though I had suddenly warped into the very studio in which A.R. Rehman was recording this classic. The world disappeared, and I was floating in an unseen sphere of reverberating music, oblivious to the clock in my room which showed three thirty a.m.

I realized why my friends had been pestering me. It was the most complete music experience I've ever had. Everytime I connect the headphones to my ears, I am transported to a misty heaven of bliss, drifting on a river of sublimity that is sound.

Which is why I don't listen to it often. Because you cannot have enough of bliss. Because the rarest things are not meant to be common. Because I must give it the respect it commands, and not turn it into a time-pass device. Because I did not realise what a thing my brother gave to me.

These pics are taken on a Canon Rebel XSi SLR camera, which, too, my brother gifted to me to encourage my hobby of taking snaps. That is in addition to the Canon Powershot A 720 he gave me earlier. And that, is besides the innumerable other gifts he has given me time and again, like, say the Dell Inspiron.

I know how shameslessly materialistic this sounds. But...

Not all is bad....

We complain about our "system" so much. We say that corruption has eaten into the core of every government institution in India, hindering their proper functioning. We say that there is no work culture in state agencies, riddled with partisanism as they are. We all know about the "sarkaari karmachari", who arrives at office at 11, has tea, gossips, then sits at his desk at 12, then goes for lunch at 1, dozes through the afternoon, then asks for a bribe to sign a document submitted to him in the morning, and goes home at 4. We all dread the police that, come Pujas, go out hunting for helmet-less bikers, stopping them and asking them to pay a hundred rupees if they don't want trouble. We all know about the TTEs in trains, and how forking out fifty bucks saves a man caught smoking from being officially booked and paying the hefty fine of two hundred and fifty Rupees.

My experience of the past few days have compelled me to think a bit differently.

While on my way to college the other day, I saw a lady trying to cross a busy road with her baby on one hand and a heavy bag in the other. Then I noticed a policeman approaching the lady. He went up to her, took the bag from the lady's hand, and escorted her across the road, stopping on-coming traffic in one direction at the busy junction. Once across, he signaled for the traffic to resume plying, and went about his business. I was part of the way which was not stopped, but I couldn't help but look back at what was happening. It felt good.

Last Thursday, I had a bank demand draft to make, on which depended my getting an application attested, on which depended my sending the application by post. And my getting the demand draft made depended on whether or not my friend got hers made, because the one she already had, had a few mistakes in it, and I couldn't make mine until I knew if the corrections had been made on hers. My friend rang me at about 12-55 in the afternoon, telling me that the mistakes in her draft had been caused by the Indian Overseas Bank itself (from where she'd got her draft) and that, on asking them about it, they admitted their error and promptly had it corrected, rather than asking her to get a new draft made. Well, I had been waiting for her call at the local State Bank of India branch. The moment I got the call, I filled up the form and went up
to the counter. Now lunchtime at the bank had started at one, yet here I was, standing behind two others at the draft-counter, five minutes past the stroke of one. I had little hope of getting the draft made before the second half, in which case there was no way I could send my application by registered post the same day. To my pleasant amazement, the lady at the counter accepted the forms from the three of us even while she was munching away at a piece of cake, stamped the forms and sent them for approval at the next counter. Within fifteen minutes I had the draft in my hands. I thought of Ma, who had told me that getting the draft made would take at least a half hour, so make sure I made it to the bank with enough time to get it done, because once lunch-hour started, then my draft, if in processing, would get stuck till the second half.

I drove home, entered my friend's and mine draft numbers in the respective application forms' soft copies, took a print out of each, then ran off to college to get them attested by our Registrar. The whole process of getting the application forms attested took all of two minutes, which included submitting them to the academic section for the stamps, getting them back, going over to Registrar sir's office, and him putting his signature on them.

By the time I had gathered the rest of the documents, put them in the envelopes, written the address on them and sealed them, it was twenty past three. My mother called me again, asking me when I would come home. I told her that I had yet to go to the post office to send the envelopes by registered post. Immediately, Ma said, "Are you dreaming? You won't get any work done at the post office after 3, and by the time you reach most people will have gone home. Do the posting tomorrow, come home now." But I had other ideas. I had been having incredible luck since morning that day, and I decided to push it a bit further.

Off I ran to the post office. When I entered, I saw all of two people outside the counters, and the first thought that came to mind was that Ma had been right, I should have listened to her. If there were only two people outside the 15-odd counters, there would be fewer behind them. However, as I approached the first counter, I saw a man behind it. He was in charge of the stamps-counter. I asked him whether or not articles for registered posting were being accepted any more for the day. He told me to go to counter number 10. To counter 10 I went, and found myself behind one of the two people I had mentioned that were outside of the counters. The official at the table asked for the envelopes, I forwarded them to him, he weighed them on the electronic weigh-scale, stamped them, stuck a computerised receipt on them , and gave me the counterfoil. My envelopes had been accepted for registry. My counterfoil bore a time-stamp of 3:42 p.m.

I am not saying that the first paragraph does not hold anymore. It does, and very much so. But something, somewhere, has slightly changed. And changed for the better. State-run banks, facing fierce competition from private banks, have improved their efficiency and performance. The postal system, if only for sheer survival, has brushed off some of its infamous lethargy,
and the police are actually doing some good work for a change. The Asansol Railway Station, which used to be a dirty, congested place by day and a shanty at best at night, has now become a picturesque, well-lit railway station. The jam-packed, overflowing parking lots have been spaced out and pushed back a hundred yards. There is a dedicated car parking lot where cars are
neatly arranged over a spacious area, as opposed to the place being congested with randomly parked vehicles. Sulabh complexes have come up in erstwhile stinking public toilets. The Asansol Bus Stand has been constructed in an orderly fashion, platforms, public announcement system, rest room, hotel et al, and it does not encroach on the busy Grand Trunk Road any more, causing traffic snarls even in the not-so-peak hours. The G.T. Road itself has been re-laid with excellent materials, making it a one way and reducing the congestion of traffic. The disorganised, filthy hawker's stalls all along the G.T. Road have been relocated to a dedicated market constructed for them. In their place have come up three-storied well-built market buildings, giving more scope for the buzzing economy of the hub of commerce that is Asansol to flourish. Traffic signals are followed and seldom broken, buses are not allowed to stop anywhere in the middle of the road, the pavements have been relaid with concrete, and the drainage system has improved.

My faith in government has been renewed. I believe we have a responsibility to take the good work forward by wearing the helmets, not littering the streets and following traffic signals and parking rules. I believe that there is still a lot of work to be done, and we can collectively do it.

Nothing

A day spent doing nothing. I am often left with a strong feeling of non-accomplishment at the end of a day. A feeling of having done nothing, accomplished nothing, read nothing. No constructive work, no deed to speak of. A full 24 hours have passed, and it's almost as though I've just stood at one place, watching the wheel roll past me. I've done nothing about it. I haven't ridden it, haven't even climbed up on it or made the effort to; I haven't even tried to push the wheel on its way. A nothingness, a void at the end of the day. Nothing has changed from yesterday. 

Yet I've done all my daily chores. I got up on time, got ready, went to college, came back, slept, watched some television, played a few small computer games, read a few lines of a detective story, had my dinner... and what? What did I do? When I ask myself that question at the end of the day, I am left with an answer that matches my mood, my feelings and my state of mind: nothing. 

The simplicity of it terrifies me. Because nothingness is the void, the unknown. I fear the unknown. A listlessness that inspires a morbid fear of dying from stagnation. Added to that is the time factor: if time appeared to have stopped, and me having done nothing, then probably the guilt wouldn't be there. But here I'm painfully aware of a day and a night having whizzed by, each hour screaming "MEANINGLESS!" at me. 

This is when studies start appealing. If anything, they're a sure shot answer to giving shape to shapeless minutes. They're an excuse to keep your mind occupied, rather than let it spend the whole time trying to figure out how to spend the time. Knowledge gained is a deed accomplished. That void starts to lift. The darkness inside starts to fill with distant rays of light. A hope tingles, purpose is found again. You start clawing your way out of the tangle you're in. The jungle suddenly appears friendly; the mountain, not so forbidding after all. 

Test

Why is it that as exams draw close one's inclination to study wanes out more and more, and because one is not studying, one's panic increases. It's a vicious circle. You don't feel like studying, so you're not studying; because you're not studying, you're panicky; more you panic, more you don't feel like studying; more you don't study, the more you feel that you SHOULD study, and that makes you even more panicky...and on and on and on it goes, until suddenly the exams are right on top of you, and you're caught in no man's land. 

You sit for the class tests, when you feel that you should spend this time studying at home making up for the semesters which are around the corner. But even as you think so, you feel that even if you'd stayed at home, you wouldn't've studied anyway, so what the heck. Yet, sit for the class tests you must, and you're not prepared for them, because you've been trying (unsuccessfully) to prepare for the big exam at large, and not for the class test in particular. So you toil through the agonizingly slow duration of the class test. You write a few uncertain lines of an answer to a particular part of a particular question. Then you lift your pen off the paper in order to ponder over what could be witten next without sounding outrageously off the mark. You read what you have written. You re-read it. Then you read it again. No, nothing suggests itself, no logical sequence of sentences dawns on your mind, nor any hope-inspiring insertions. You stare and stare at the question paper, you try to glare an answer out of the printed questions, but they're stubbornly and determinedly set against you, they won't suggest a hint, they won't budge, they're stones mocking back at you. 

Suddenly you realise that you've not written a word for a long time, and that has attracted the gaze of the invigilator on you. Hurriedly you bend down on your largely vacant answer sheet, and busy yourself in appearing busy writing, as though some bulb has suddenly lit up in all its glory in your mind, and you're trying to spread some of its glow on your answer sheet. After scribbling (or pretending to scribble) a few incoherent words, you look up to see if the invigilator has shifted her attention to some other hapless friend of yours. If she has, you take a sneak peek at your closest neighbour's paper, in the hope that his paper would provide the words of deliverance you so desparately need, only to find that same action reciprocated by your neighbour to you. However if the examiner hasn't taken her glance away from you, you have to resist the temptation to keep staring at her beautiful face and quickly transfer your gaze to the ceiling, pen in mouth, crease on forehead, contemplating in all sobriety what you've just written; then, with a meant-for-examiner-to-see shake of your head, you go about making corrections and lessening the glow on your recently lit answer script. 

The examiner finally looks elsewhere, and you try once again to glean some lines of rescue from your surroundings, immediate or otherwise. You  look over people's shoulders, ask them what's the answer to that or this, psst psst your friend two benches across from you, but are only met with shrugs, countenances as helpless as yours, and "I don't know"s. The one or  two that are scribbling away at full steam don't have the time to look up, let alone act as saviours.

Philosophy dawns on you. Old phrases of 'all (read most) sailing in the same boat' and 'sufferers in a commmon cause' come back to you. You feel smug that you belong to the majority. You don't want to be a part of that inhuman little group who study all year, come prepared for every test, and ask for and fill page after extra page, while you can't fill one half of a sheet of the four you're initially provided with. ('After all,' you wonder, 'don't they have some feeling for us mortals?') You write your name very nicely and carefully on your answer sheet, copy a question or two word to word to fill up the remaining half of the sheet you've written your miserable incomplete answer on, color up the o's and underline the technical and important sounding words on the question paper. You stop staring at the letters on your question paper and start counting them. 299 in total. 299 printed characters. That's some feat. 

All of a sudden you realise that it's been some time since you checked the time. You look at your watch, and voila!, time's almost up! You look around, and are relieved to find similar faces of elation all around you. The writomachines are still scribbling away, racing against time to complete the paper. You wish wickedly that may none of them finish in time. The examiner declares it's time, and you feel a sadistic satisfaction watching her snatching away the answer scripts from under the pens of some of the i-have-more-to-writes begging her to give them an extra minute. You self-righteously think that they've been provided enough time, and the examiner is correct in taking away their answer scripts. 

You come out of the hall, and find one of your friends boasting to another, "D'ya know, I have attempted 4 marks out of the twenty in that test!" The other says, "Pooh! Pooh! I've attempted two and a half, and half of that is guesswork!" You catch up with them, and say, "Okay, which of you two geniuses can tell me how many printed characters were there in the question paper?" Silence. Both your friends have been taken off guard by this extraordinary talent, and are speechless. After an eloquent pause, you enlighten them: "Two-ninetynine!" You're greeted with 'wow's and pats on the back. You head home gloating in an unprecedented sense of accomplishent.

State of Affairs

An 11 year old girl was set on fire in Jaipur. She was told not to wear lipstick by some neighbouring person whom she called ‘uncle’. She defied him, put on lipstick on Friday. The uncle, in a fit of rage, allegedly molested her and then poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. All because she had defied him, and put on lipstick. The girl suffered 90% burns.

A seventeen year old girl in Madhya Pradesh was set on fire by two local goons. She had earlier complained that these two were harassing her. They took their revenge. They forced themselves into her house when she was alone, and set her on fire.

Mr N. D. Tiwari calls Ujjwala Sharma an unchaste woman. He says he was her paramour. Because Ujjwala Sharma had an illicit lover when she was married, that makes her unchaste. And the fact that Mr Tiwari was in love (nay, lust, I would say) with a married woman, the fact that he carried on his affair knowing that Ujjwala Sharma was married, tells us what a pure character he is. If he is so sure that Rohit Sharma is not his biological son, why does he refuse to submit to a DNA test? Is he afraid that the cat will be let out of the basket? Does it not occur to him that by refusing to undergo the test, he is putting himself in a perilous position in the public’s eyes? Doesn’t it occur to him that many will ask, Why not undergo the test? Mr Narain Dutt Tiwari is a four-time chief minister.

Mr Monserrate says that his son is innocent. That his son never sexually harassed the girl he is alleged to have. That his son is being made the victim of a political conspiracy. Then he dares the Goa police to prove that his son is guilty. The police say that they have sufficient evidence to book his son. He knows that. Yet he dares the police to prove that his son is guilty. What is he thinking? Possibly, “The police have got proof so what? I’m a politician, therefore I’ve got, or I will have better proof!” Yet his son is nowhere to be seen. The police have issued a look-out notice in Mr Monserrate’s son’s name. But mind, his son is innocent. And then, part of the concluding lines of his interaction with a Times Now reporter:

Reporter: Finally, Mr Monserrate, where is your son?
Mr Monserrate: He is here.
Reporter: What do I make of that? Is he in the house?
Mr Monserrate: He is very much here. Make what you like of it. He is very much here.

Mamata Banerjee is very concerned about the 2000 odd farmers whose land was allegedly taken forcefully by the West Bengal government. She wants their land returned, never mind that a major part of that land is now un-arable. Oh, and the 11,000 others who had willingly given their land for the factory, and who have been left without land or livelihood after the NANO project was pulled out, are no concern of hers. Apparently.

Be careful if you are going to Mumbai, and are not a Marathi. You might we walking down the road and suddenly find yourself being clobbered by goons claiming to be Raj Thakre’s followers. So what if you had only come to Mumbai to take a competitive exam? This is Maharashtra. Biharis, North Indians have no right to be here. Period.


What kind of world are we living in? Whom are we choosing as our representatives? Are we going back to barbarism?

Post Script: I recently returned home from Haridwar to Asansol by train. My family and I were in a second class sleeper coach. We had, as our co-passengers a group of people, the males among whom were talking actively about some apparently local political issue. I may be wrong, but they seemed to be associated with local politics, albeit to what extent, I can’t say. In the evening the train stopped at Lucknow station. One of the men got down with some bananas. Standing on the platform, he peeled one, and threw the skin of the banana right next to him, on the platform. And then another. The group got down at Kiul station in Bihar, the next morning.