Modern Times!

The Parody.

"...dekho toh...ek hai jise life mein kuch nehi mil rahi hai...ek computer training institute mein part-time naukri karta hain...weekend mein coffee-shop?..use yeh puchho toh woh kahe "..yaar sochna parega..zero income hai yaarrr!!!.." ....whatevrrrr!!!..."

"...toh dusri taraf aur ek hai...jo ek achhi MNC mein settled hai...monthly net income toh kahi 50-60 thousand k as-pas hoga-hi...come on yaar..sab ka waisa hi hota hai...use bhi wohi milega shayed...kyun..thik kahan na main?...... phir bhi uski life mein kitna problem hai pata hai...? Sunna chaho gi...toh suno......."
.
The girl won't marry him.
Err..sorry! Rather, the girl's dad won't let her daughter marry him.
..aaa...DAD?
"Yeah dude! DAD." And you believed i am talking about modern times, right? :-) Well, surely, the joke isn't on me! :p
.
When this guy was introduced to the girl's father, a flurry of questions.

"Where do you work son?"

"HP. In Bangalore."

"Happy...in life?"

"Yeah....!?!"

"What's your work schedule like?"

"I leave for work around 7. Return? well, it's usually 10 or 11 at night....depends actually..depends on work in office...."

"..!!! You get to work at 7 and return home at 10..? 11...? Well, how much does that make? That means...you stay out of your house for 14 hours a day!!!!!!!!"

"Yeah...why?"

"And how much are you paid son?"

The guy wonders, ehh..is that a decent question? okay, excused..!

"..what i receive is somewhere around 50."

"50...????"

"..hmm."

"Now..i have a question son! You see, i am also a professor. i work in one of the reputed colleges of Calcutta. I have done my Ph.D. I have had an extensive experience in teaching...am still going strong, you may conclude! But...even i don't get so high a salary! Do i get it? No. Then tell me...why do you get it? i mean ..don't take offence...but what does the company see in you to pay you so high a salary?"

Frustrated to whatever extent you'd imagine, the guy still acts decent, and calmly proceeds to give a reply.

"You see. There are lots of factors. But the basic thing is....the company believes that today i have got a high energy reserve....which tomorrow i won't be having! i mean.. not as much as i have it today. So the company obviously believes in extracting as much work out of me as possible. If they pay me 50 thousand a month, it definitely isn't before they beileve they have made me work hard enough to rake in atleast one lakh to the company's treasury! You get my point?"

"..hmm. So how many hours, do you think, you'll be free for my daughter?"

"..err..pardon."

"No. You almost don't stay in the house. so...how'll you be able to take care of my daughter?"

"When did i say i want to take care of your daughter?"
.
.
.
Needless to say, further talks did not ensue. or even if they did, they didn't bear much fruit...!

The guy though was later found soliloquizing.
"...sara din boss ki baat sunte raho...! arre tum ye nahi kar rahe ho...woh nehi kar rahe ho....woh assignment complete hua? jao..abhi complete karo! sham paach baaje se pehle ho jana chahiye!
Woh uthne ko kahe to utho..baithne ko kahe toh baith jao..!? beer peen-a ko maana kare..toh mat piyo! aur agar beer peen-a ko kahe..toh piyo!! saala..kyan life hai yaar?? upar se..? yeh shadi ki baat..! aur kaun? ....woh bachhi ki baap!?! behenchod saala..."

Heh!

Modern Times! :-)

P.S. After this incident was narrated to us by CKS sir, me, Yash and Sagar burst into hysterical laughter! after we could reasonably collect ourselves, all we could conclude is "meyer baap is tottal complex khawa party..!!" :-d

Together means To-get-her..? :-)

A change will come about. It's inevitable.

When i left school, i was sure that it will. Though, not sure how? "..er..what change..?" So i just wrote, "That the faces we say 'Good Morning' to, will change..!"

S. When i first looked at you, didn't feel like looking at you twice. Didn't like canteen girls!

...but soaked in sweat, when we emerged from the BCR, it was the same face! gossiping. looking coy!

...to start talking..well it just happened..? or..did you make it happen? :-) Well, i don't know. i 'knew' it though..!

But for the second question to be.."/What's the difference between 'like' and 'love'..?/", the face really did have to matter! I looked on. Then I started getting involved.

With that coyish smile, you replied "..aa..well...i don't know..!"..."well..u asked me that?.....haha..ha ha ha...!!".../and you continued...

"There was this poem, you know,..."

"You are English Hons.?"

"ya."

"You write?"

"I write a diary."

"So..what do you write?"

Blah. Blah. Blah.

S. i know you had lied that day! Excused though! :-)

Days passed in a frenzy of activities. Debates. Table-tennis. Carrom. Birthday parties. kaora... In the haze of it all, just one thing remained where i was always used to seeing it. And it would always seem to ask "are you free now?", though the poker-faced "i am free now" would already be conveyed by the stupid boy..!~ ;-)

Infatuation?!

You may say so. i will agree!

For, maturity is something that eludes every boy before a certain time. a certain age. before certain incidents actually take place in his life. before he's actually put on the 'hot seat' of taking rational decisions in his life!

And before that happens, sooner or later, he sure is greeted by his friends with this typical Bengali catcall...."Tottal 'lattu' hoye gachhe re!".......

And how i hated being that? :-d

Though S. i would never forget that Ashtami night. on Shyambazaar metro station platform. The clock close to striking twleve at night. For...

when two trains from opposite directions rush in, and you are most likely to board either of them, and it's then that you don't...

...that you just keep sitting in those chairs...keep waiting...you want the crisis to pass...the moment to pass...for the very next.../ counting the beat...and neither of you leaving the place.....

and you see the trains start moving out of platform just like they had entered...

...leaving the two of you alone...

...that moment...you are left 'speechless'....!

You look around you. find no one else. You look at the other. and you start searching for 'answers'. For a momentary lapse of reason!

.

.

But it's when you don't start searching for answers. You don't feel you had lost yourself the moment earlier, at all. you rather feel you are doing that now! :-)

That moment is one of a lifetime!

You decide between 'like' and 'love'!

Indian Roads.

Indian Roads. A fascination...

...the speedometer ticking the 120-mark...the scorching sun...the mirage created...the mirage lost...till you find a lonesome tea-stall...if any at all...amidst a sea of sand...dryness...cactus leaves...The Road To Jaisalmer.

..."Saab-ji...sherbet?! Rooh-afza?"...Three to four glasses... "Aap log Kalkatta se aye hon?".."Punjab achha laaga?"....In the summer months...with the loo in your face...and severe dehydration...anything but....!! Still, The Road To Chandigarh.

...curious faces...urchins..looking at you "amazed"...as if you belong to a different world.. but you try to approach him...he darts away...running after a tyre..."playing his game"..a stick in one hand...

..and of faces that say "I am tired..i want to run away..and i WILL run away to Mumbai"... serving tea, roti and dal-makhani to truck-drivers...morning, day and night. No sleep. Ragged clothes. and wretched lives!

and they become 'helpers'...sitting day-and-night beside "one of the most frustrated sections of Indian society"( as reports say )...the truck-drivers! nothing to live for. a home that perhaps existed. a family that could have seen the light of day....if only his wife would be spared of her humiliation by the storks and the ravens!

From a life of entertaining drunkards by midnight and tourists by day....

...to a life behind the 'windshield'...of meeting faces that run races past him on a brand new Scorpio. 'Helpers' do they actually become...;-) Just give him the steering-wheel once. preceding with a bottle of country liqour. and he'll know how to be sucksesfull in life..."..not really giving a damn as to what you mean by success..and how you spell it."

An accidental birth. no name.

.

an unwilling child-labourer by day. a dreamer by night.

.

Mumbai. I know not how. I know not why.

.

Getting high on the highway. And finishing lives..just like that.

You integrate the picture over a thousand faces. And you know what life on Indian Roads is. all along it. A fascination?

What a fucking joke!

Why The Cow Gives Milk?

Whenever you set on to do something...it must be clear to you why you are doing it...and also to some extent..."to gauge its ramifications".../
So..when i set down to write in this blog...i do ask myself.."What is the purpose?...why am i writing here?" And to delve into a more vast blank script with the question.."Why write...at all?"
Well, Shashi Tharoor had to say (quoting Sir George Bernard Shaw) that "I write...for the same reason a cow gives milk: it's inside me, it's got to come out, and in a real sense I would suffer if I couldn't. It's the way I express my reaction to the world I live in, see around me, and try to imagine."
So..do I write pretty much for the same reason too?
Well...sometimes. But a greater motivation lies in the fact that I love to see my thoughts getting reflected from this screen. To articulate my feelings, and then to read how I actually feel. For only when I am writing, I am in the grip of my 'subconscious' mind...an entity which otherwise eludes me. And I am, in a real sense, inquisitive about how day-to-day life is shaping my subconscious.
And i, in a real sense, will be interested twenty years hence to look back in retrospect as to how i used to think, to write and to feel when I was in my college-days at the age of twenty!
For, through all phases of your life, you do not remain the same 'individual'..! Trust me...it's true!