Life has a funny way of coming round in circles. Some parts go missing inevitably. And some new pieces take their place. But the more the circle completes itself, one can only sit back and admire how things seem to find their place in the puzzle. Recently I read a book that movingly talked of retrospection, what the memory chooses to remember and the feelings that they evoke. Today the topic seems relevant.

Looking back at the year I can pick out more incidents that underscore this theme and why I have a weak spot for it. I remember flying into Delhi late one October night as the city prepared for Diwali. As I peered out of my cab speeding through the deserted streets and the winter tinted breeze gave me goose bumps, being accustomed to the temperate climes of the beach I had been living by, my thoughts settled on how with each passing year my life seemed to have progressed. To have moved from where it was and found a new spot to settle down in. Nudged forward by some inevitable force. I was happy to be in Delhi. And not Calcutta or Bombay or Bangalore, the other cities I know relatively well. My heart warmed on seeing houses decked up in lights in the dark night as I could almost feel the warmth inside the houses I saw. A new home awaited me.

Reminiscence once again broke the familiar pattern of life; old friend and I met up as the year drew to a close. College days and other insanities were relived over a few happy hours our money paid for in a mall. And today, again, I look ahead anxiously wondering where I’m headed (quite literally). There is absolutely no certainty to gather comfort from. And despite the reassuring circles completing themselves and familiar pieces coming back to fill in the gaps, there still is unrest in my head. 

Bum bum bum bum

I’m worried that being the bum suits me very cosily. Imagine now- B-school grad turned beach bum who feeds dogs and drinks tea in shacks. Whereas fellow graduates are investment bankers who write books on the greater meaning of life and make the world spin on its axis.

Oh, the shame!

To save face and sound wise I shall quote Stephen Fry on his school "The best thing about having gone to Cambridge University was never having to deal with not going there".

Was having a very meaningful and important discussion with a friend a few days back. The kind of stuff b-school grads normally talk about y’know. Earth shattering things like the depreciating rupee and the euro zone crisis and the general economic outlook when I suddenly decided that there should be an annual prize for being lazy. Businessweek’s list of The Most Promising Bums of 2011.  (They have a list of “hot” growth companies. HOT growth? Reaaally now? I think I want some hawt growth company myself.) And no, if you think just sitting there and doing nothing would qualify you to be a contender, hate to break it to you, being a bum is no easy job. You got to be one mean ass deep thinking bum.

Life has the weird quality to wear you out with too much activity and with no activity. I have friends (actually, make that “friends”) who are either working way too much or are losing it watching the paint dry. I belong to the latter group. It’s something I do really well. Grumble. Grumble about sitting on my bum all day staring at the crab hole in the sand next to my table at lunch and throwing little morsels of food at its inhabitant who scampers in and out to pick up my generous offerings to eat in the cool confines of his crab home.

Sunday night: I get a drunk call from friend2 who quit his job thinking he’d start something by himself. Fountain of sympathy that I am I send all sorts of jealousy vibes. Biyatch! Drinking on a Sunday night! Do you know how much we gotta work to earn our money; you think am just sitting by the beach and doing nothing, eh? Friend2: Dude, I just realized that I’m way too lazy to do anything by myself. Big mistake. Quitting job. Awkward silence.

Quick thinker that I am, I immediately change tracks to plan on become successful bums. Yeah, you need a plan for this kinda thing. You think making that Businessweek list is easy? So then we get to discussing a post he made on a blog we had going a few years back. And I ask him why he suddenly made a new post 3 years after we got forgot the blog. Response: I was dead bored. Me: So that’s the way you took revenge on the world for boring you? Take that! Bitch! Does it hurt now? Huh? Huh? How’s THAT for boring the shit out of me. You wrote a blogpost? Response: Yeah, felt way better.

So here I thought, maybe I’ll do the same. Take revenge. You just read complete crap for about three minutes. Three minutes of your life lost irreversibly. You’d probably regret that missed orgasm (pity, pity) on your deathbed cause of this post you just read. Now doesn’t that feel nice?

Been living by the beach for about a month and half now. Being a bum is the true calling. B-school grad turned beach bum. Bravo!

Dug up this song from a cavernous 20 GB folder titled "Music" from my computer. Absolutely love the man and his lyrics. They have nothing but the plain quality of being true.



"Now I leave the party early at least with no regrets,
 I watch the sun as it comes up, I watch it as it sets
 Yeah, this is as good as it gets"

Beachin' it

Am back on the road again. No not homeless. Umm... well yes, homeless but not literally “on the road” in rags etc. I realise I love being by the beach. Every beach town I’ve been to has a similar flavour, colour and smell. Afternoons are awash in relentless sunshine that’ll scald bare feet if you attempt the daring walk on sand routine. Even the most crowded of places - abuzz in the evenings; stalls lit with hissing gas lights selling everything from shells and hangings made of shells that make clacking noises in the wind to fried fish, balloon wallahs playing flutes to draw attention, toy parachuted figurines shot up into the sky which float down amidst crowd catching the fancy of kids- are absolutely deserted. Instead you’d have a few makeshift sheds made of dried coconut branches bending over in the breeze and a couple of cows grimly chewing regurgitated food on infinite loop. The colours would be the beautifullest blue contrasted with the brilliantest yellow. And from far it’d be like a picture in bright sunshine; a battalion of  puffy white clouds stretching into a brilliant blue sky, the sea glinting below and the surf breaking into white foamy borders.

.............

I have a secret superpower. I can talk to the sea... sush now!

I have full conversations every time I swim. Mostly chest thumping bravado before a wave comes and drowns me out. But I love the sea. Today we had a nice battle going. Initially she was all welcoming and let me in rather warmly. But as the sun begun plumetting down the sky, hiding behind dark rain clouds in the horizon far away, the sea got temperamental and began rolling sideways. And I hate that. I hate it absolutely! Especially since I’m alone and my bag with my change, towel, slippers etc. is lying on the beach and I need to keep an eye on it. And the bloody sea will keep pushing me away further from the spot. Damn you sea!

Naa... still love you baby. Tomorrow I shall get the bike and ride off 20 kms, 30, 40 kms southwards. There’s a forest and the road goes by the sea with Casuarina forests lining the road. And there’re a couple of rivers where bike and I can rest. And I’ll take my book along and a little rum. And I shall roast myself up in the sun. Nice and brown. And swim in at least 3 different points. Damn! Now is when the forgotten plans of cycling down the coast resurface. It’s been sitting in the head for too long. And after the little mountain cycling done in Himachal a few months this plan was supposed to have neared execution stage. Corporate slavery be damned. 

Reading has returned in spurts. Ian McEwan is new brilliantness. Thanks to girl who referred him. The man depresses the shit out of me with his complete supremacy over the language. It’s his superpower, to unearth unexpressed thoughts, feelings and put them into words. The stories maybe plain and simple, but the feelings running every character dips in, are spelt out with an incredible ease. Also, I just finished Curious Incident of Dog In The Night-Time after years of being asked to read it by dear fraands. Depressed me again. I tend to get quite affected by anything that comes across that innocently. I remember being rather tender after reading To Kill A Mocking Bird when I was 12 and Jem was 10. And I loved football too and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to break a hand and not be able to play. I can’t imagine that even now, I mean I played with a broken hand early this year in Lucknow. Full covert operation to cut cast since doc refused to remove it before big game. Just. not. possible.

And it’s been about 3 months since I’ve kicked a ball. The last time I did, the knee ligaments gave way. Year of no-football it has been. Must be one of the rarest years in the Chinese calendars.  

Am currently returning to my unfinished stash of Saramago books bought on an inebriated afternoon from a Bandra book store. I always write the month and place I purchased a book from in the top right corner of the first page of every book. It captures a memory for me. Every time I open any book of mine (30 degrees maximum allowed; it’s a quirk I shall explain later), the top right corner tells me where the book was brought from, if the day was cloudy or sunny, who I had met earlier in the day and where I went after I bought the book. All from the place and date.

Have also pre-ordered my Murakami. Am a little miffed about the popularity he’s generated now. Where’s the charm in discussing him any more playing truant from work sipping coffee at the office vending machine? Where?

The blog turns out to be a little inconvenient for me, with sudden spurts of disconnected paragraphs. I wish I had a long log book to write in continuously without bothering about any flow, any connection.

....

This post is futile. All 896 words of it. Doesn’t help with the distraction. And I keep hoping that Diwali comes and time stops. That firecracker would always light the sky. And we’d be frozen, caught in a moment forever.

Sea ya.

I never thought that I'd have excess of travelling. And I'm rather unprepared for this minor mutiny within the head each time I think of packing my bags again and moving tomorrow. A few weeks back, while in Guwahati, after dinner and an extremely tiring day as I was walking around in my hotel room searching for my tickets out of Guwahati the following day, I was accosted by a thought that struck me harder than I'd expected: I hadn't lived in a house for over 3 months. That every where I went was a place I paid daily rent to live in. For 3 months I'd been living in hotels and guesthouses. And it made me feel like a privileged homeless person. Maybe I was extremely eager by then of the week ahead. The week that was to be spent in D city. And now that the week is past, it's incomprehensible to me how in a quiet unsuspecting sort of way it has grown on me and taken me prisoner.

And now, knowing what it'd be like, and not day dreaming of what it maybe like, it's even harder to accept this constant "git your ass moving" routine. I long to be 'home' soon.

..............

I'm done packing. I have songs in my head. A shower, fresh change of clothes and off to the station. By night I'm by the sea. Again, I have it built to be something in my head. I recall the last time I took I solo trip to the sea. Somnath temple by the Arabian Sea. It turned out to be a trip of exceedingly violent images in my head. The furious sea and the temple on the beach. My imagination was bettered by reality then. That was the other end of the country. Westernmost almost. Tonight I'll be on the eastern coast of the country. And I can swim in the sea, and turn all black, roasted by the sun, and body surf. Blues be off now!

Where I'm in place A, but baggage handling misplaced my thoughts and they're still in place B

So I've been traveling in excess of late. And there couldn't be worse things than early morning/late night flights. (Yeah, you maybe thinking this to be a subtle way of trying to hint at my jet setting lifestyle; It's not a hint, it' s been spelt out to help you with your supreme ability of picking up hints. You're welcome to keep your thoughts. And it's my blog.).

Am currently in Guwahati. I walked out to get cigarettes in the morning. The Brahmaputra is across the road from my hotel and the mobile trolleyman with cigarettes was parked under a tree on the banks of the river. In an instant, the view flushed my mind clean of the sediment of thoughts settling in from last night. I'm given to over thinking. Anyone who's known me intimately would know of that. I'm superbly adept at building complex thought architectures with the intricate construction that requires one to assess the need to have an ice-cream. Wow, I do sound like a plastic mba overselling himself.

Guwahati's a pretty city. Me thinks 2 months in R has prepped me to find any city beautiful. But Guwahati is truly blessed. The mighty Brahmaputra and tiny forested hills dotting the fringes of the city could bless any city. There is something about names and dialects that when encountered by the ear whip up old memories resident in deep recesses of the brain. Stirred up from a foggily remembered childhood, the memories flavour the experience and change it from a novel one to one with a background.

Tomorrow I fly back to home base. Day after morning to another town by the river and by night into the capital. Puja's will be spent in the capital and it'll be a first. It's good to have firsts, especially good when age slowly makes tiny etches on you and youth slowly walks to the back of the room. And yes, it'll be like being home. For the first time in 4/5 years.

.....

I'm terrified. Of scaring you away with these scars I've picked up along the way. Paranoid Android.

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy

I'm wilfully trapped in a song going in loops. I want to borrow the words and use them. Like a car, sit in them and drive around the feelings surrounding me.

There's a little bit of gloom in the corner of my room, peeking at me from behind the chair. I look away, staring into my computer listening to my song. I pretend to ignore Mr. Gloom frantically waving for a lift. But he lingers in my rear view mirror, in the back of my mind.

It's raining outside and I don't like this weather much. 

Books I've been reading and associated thoughts...

The reason for this post lies with the beginning of my next book: The Hungry Tide. Actually, I was planning on buying this book as a gift for a friend’s birthday and now in retrospect ( 200 odd pages later) it seems I should have opted for this than for two other non English native speaking authors.

After having been swept away by the epic magical fable of Macondo by GGM (yes, I read 100 Years only now! And I wonder why? Maybe it has to do with the fact that LiToC didn’t impress me much when I had borrowed it from a senior in college and had to return it rather abruptly.)  I wondered if Mr. Ghosh would stand up to the mystical village of Macondo. I am a little extra judgemental, critical, cynical of authors of Indian origin. The very few I’ve read have generally tended to write about identity, family ties and culture... largely having been part of the diaspora that experiences these crises frequently. But Ghosh had been impressive through his skilful execution of radically different genres through Calcutta Chromosome, In An Antique Land and Shadow Lines.

I picked up the book yesterday and 200 pages hence I have spent a half my time googling and google map searching the whole Sunderban archipelago. In his afterword he cites the influences and people the story is loosely based on. On googling Annu Jalais my first reaction was that I was looking at Piyali Roy. The short cropped hair, the wiry frame. Just that Piyali Roy in my head is a little shorter than Annu Jalais in the jpeg image. Marichjhapi (I'm making this into a separate post), Francois Bernier and Annu Jalais’s studies are ALL clawing away at my limited attention simultaneously. And the background of the tide country, the delicate relationship between man and his lethal predator all converge together teasing my curiosity into a frenzied madness.

I have been to Sunderbans, a huge family outing on one of the many grand get together that are the hallmark of Bengali families. My uncle, on his once-in-two year visits to India in tow with 3 children and my kakima, is the lead character of these shows, taking it upon himself to force everyone to come for these vacations. My childhood is littered with memories of 18 people crammed into my grandmothers flat making plans simultaneously on where to go and what all can be done; everyone pushing their own agenda. So yes, we once happened to agree upon Sunderbans, and set off on a bus from the city to Gosaba. Other than an accident our bus was involved in, that trip would be remembered for a string of mishaps and of course a tiger sighting claimed by my mother and aunts. We firmly maintained it was a mud covered wolf/dog they had seen, too disappointed to admit that we missed seeing the great and elusive RBT. Otherwise, for me and my cousins those 3 days on a tourism dept. launch/ferry was more of running around mad and occasionally listening to tiger stories from the boatmen.

But now, reading this book and living just a 100 kms away from bhatir-desh (tide country); reading about Francois Bernier, of his travels in this dark corner of the world some 300 years back is just too cruel on my imagination. The thought of it chills my bones, the sense of adventure fills my body. Just like stories (actually fact, rather than fiction) of Heyerdahl’s crossing of the Pacific and Shackleton’s doomed Antartica expedition. Phew... who can dare say that I’m getting older!