NOT Another Girl Story

 Sitting in the shatabdi doing nothing jst observing the gurl sitting opp me who is hot as hell. Now, for a change I thought I’ll notice these guys instead of the shrieking obvious. Now, for all those guys whose minds that have started racing should not believe that I, after 22 years of my life am coming out of closet or even remotely close. Sitting in the middle of these two gentlemen pretending that they don’t give a shit, the gurl is behaving jst like a girl of her hotness level should, ignoring and non acknowledging anything.  Its really funny to notice them. I’ll call the man sitting on the window as Man 1, nd the man sitting on the aisle as Man 2.

 Man 1 looks to be a perfect case of a middle class background who now has enough money to travel in shatabdi but  not without bragging in his town. He is unshaven, wishing against it, but trying to present himself with as much class as he can muster. I love small town guys they always try for everything they can set eyes on without bothering what all is ever humanly possible for them. He has been shifting uneasily for god knows how long now, nd I really feel for him. He is trapped in his tight jeans with his protruding features which he has been trying and adjusting for a while now. Rest of the tym he has been fidgeting with his golden watch which was probably given to him on his engagement. He has also gone to the bathroom three times now and I jst saw him coming to the seat and then suddenly return again as he saw the girl busy preparing her tea. I guess he didn’t want to disturb the her. There he comes again, standing beside the seat for what seemed like ages before the gurl finally notices him and continues with what she was doing. Man 1 realizes that she has not recognized him, ramming his small-town-now-big ego and exclaims ‘Madam, axe-cuse me’.

Man 2 is wearing a pajama kurta and has this journalist feel about him. He has decided in the mourne -ing that he shall be Mr. Cool-Handles this big firm guy. His phone has rung six tyms now with each conversation becoming more and more  fierce. The sentences I could make out were “mujhe ab aapko samajhna bhi nahi hai” … nd others like “Not 3, Not 5, But I want 3, u getting this?” He has asked these attendants all sorts of Qs like “Ye AC kyun kam kar diya hai?”…. “Yaar breakfast kab laoge”….. “Tundla chala gaya kya”… I mean hw the hell does it affect you ki tunda gaya ki nahi….. He has been hogging the charger point for a while now, nd as I requested for sm tym on it, he said that he jst needs it for 10 mins more. His ten minutes have come and gone but his screen cracked mobile is still charging away to glory. I smhw hate him more than Man 1.

But its all amazing and you can learn loads from it.  With a man juggling with different shades of his personalities and being uncomfortable as hell but still in some twisted way thinking that others wud luv it. Being someone you are not is a thing we all do everyday, in different ways and in different measures. It stems from a natural desire of being liked, appreciated, recognized and loved by all. And sometimes we end up acting stupidly when this liking, recognizing, loving goes really out of our reach. It creates this illusion that you think u have achieved, when you are even further away than where you had started. So it makes you believe that all of us are living in our own minuscule world (M-world) whose rules, actions, facts are decided by our own irrespective of how far they are from normalcy or reality. This minuscule world is different for everyone and when these worlds start combining in sm way, we experience relationships. Without the overlapping of these M worlds no matter how hard we try in our own M world we are not able to develop this connection with this person. Man 1 and Man 2 are no different from Man 3 or 4… but jst may be trying to expand their M worlds, may be a bit too much, but are still beautiful in so many different ways. 

The man who wrote the temperature

As I was introduced to everyone for the first time in the production plant I was taken to the Tunnel dryer area (referred to as ‘TD area’) As I shook hands with everyone there was this guy who was busy scribbling something. He looked up and saw me, he got up quickly and scampered to me and said ‘Sahab, Namaste, vo main temperature likh raha tha isiliye aapko dekha nahi’. The introducer meanwhile rambled on about the importance of controlled temperature in the TD which was apparently a big deal. I asked him, ‘kinte saal se ho yahan’. He beamed at me and proudly said ‘Sahab, 26 saal se main hi temperature likh raha hoon’, sounding as if he what he did was indeed the most important job in the whole world. I did not spare a second thought for this man then.

     As I became a regular in the plant, I saw him every day, his eyes always lit up when he saw me. He would always come to me and tell me about the problems he had in the TD the previous day and how he had solved it. I knew he was looking for recognition of his hard work and wanted to be in the good books of his boss (in this case me) as I too on some level did the same thing with my superiors. I sometimes wondered, what a waste of life, imagine the whole life spent just writing the temperatures. But he did this seemingly monotonous job for 26 years with full conviction and enthusiasm. This was his life, his identity, his earnings, his specialization, his purpose.

   Now, one fine day as I was sitting in the office I got to know that the TD had some problem and had to be shut down. I went to the TD area and automatically asked about him in a mood to tell him off about his carelessness. I was given a meek response by this person ‘Sahab, aapko pata nahi ? uska to kal accident ho gaya tha, aur aaj subah uska dehant ho gaya’ I felt like I was suddenly drenched in cold water. I looked around for a familiar face in the TD area and quickly realized that he was the only person I knew in the area and then saw the TD which was shut down apparently missing him too. The TD could not work without him for one day and there was everyone who had hardly noticed that he was no more. I felt this strange connection between me and the TD. I called a few people about what had happened, nobody seemed to have known and sadly nobody even bothered. I went to his house for the last rights, I saw his body, his face badly battered but with a mysterious smile, half expecting him to suddenly wake up and tell me ‘sahab, sorry main TD ka temperature control nahi kar paaya, kyunki saala ek truck ne mujhe kuchal diya tha’ I instantly came out his house where some people were busy discussing the score of the match they had to miss whilst they were here. I felt the selfishness of the world which was so brutal, so alarming that I felt cheated. All these people, I thought, wore a mask of goodness everyday but were inherently self centered to the core.

      We had a condolence meeting the next day. I could feel the unrest among the people who had to be here after their working hours. This is it, I thought, this is the world where you live in where nobody is bothered about anybody but them and the world was as fake as it could get. As I returned to my section through the TD area I saw some people assembling something on the TD which I found out was a small instrument that would beep when the temperature would be out of the defined limits. This is all what he did, I thought. The world did not even stop for a day to replace him and that too with a 1000 bucks gadget. His 26 years of work, all along, could have been done by this instrument. His life being so worthless in one way and so worthwhile in the other. I mentally saluted this man, this man who wrote the temperature.   

Photo...

I saw the photo. She looked all wet with her hair carelessly over her face, the sea surreptitiously trying to reach out to her and take her with it but she, like always being oblivious to the shrieking calls of the universe. The sea, as it came towards her turned a dirty shade of brown, but I don’t blame it as I don’t blame the people who behave in a similar manner, who may not be as honest.

      If I said she looked beautiful it would be an iniquity and a sacrilege but somebody once said “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”

   She kept the photo so that everybody could see it, I couldn’t understand why, when people don’t see what I see, when people don’t feel what I feel, when people don’t care what I do, when people don’t respect what I do when she walks so graciously on the sea coast.   

Titleless

Saw her at the dance class. As she entered the room, the time seemed to stop to take a look at the new entrant feeling obfuscated that they still had passages from heaven to earth. As she introduced herself to us it was as if she spoke from a pulpit to the plebeian class. I could see her skin practically radiating all the light that fell on it. All the other girls in the room shifted uneasily from the ubiquitous spread of her aura. With a winsome smile that reached her eyes and caught yours too, she had elegance written all over her. She was an ethereal beauty with a pellucid skin none less than a goddess, surprisingly, without actually knowing this and talking to us, mere mortals. Partners were chosen in haste by the instructor being oblivious to my burning desire to be partnered with her. He kept pairing random people together and as he pointed his finger to her my heart skipped a couple of beats, but alas, to my utter horror she was given to somebody else. I swore heavily under my nose. I thought she looked at me for a second but then slowly but intently walked towards the lucky bastard, who was busy pretending that he didn’t care which could have even mildly accepted had he announced that either he was gay or was nailing megan fox.  Partnered, I enviously gazed at them and was sure that they could never notch up to ‘a good looking couple’ as the boy looked to be a person who suddenly owned a Mercedes when he deserved only a Maruti. Then as the instructor came by again he seemed to have seen them standing together and instantly stopped. I guess he realized his mistake too. He looked around the room and then to my disbelief beckoned me. I stood rooted to the ground unable to decide whether this just happened or my sub conscious had got the better of me and was hallucinating. I walked to her, faster than intended and stood beside her. He instructor was satisfied, he looked at her then at me, my eyes screaming thank you without blinking. He gave a small nod as if acknowledging this.

       He instructed us all to hold hands and look at each other. I could actually comprehend the writers intend of the following lines.  “That moment when u are with someone and everything around you goes in slow motion, everything else goes blur and the only thing in focus is you and this person and you realize that this person is the only person that u r supposed to be with and in this one moment u get this amazing feeling and u are both happy and sad coz u feel so lucky u found it and so scared that it will go away.”

To be Contd….  

CHE SARA, SARA

(Resemblance of any character to any person living or dead is purely coincidental)

 “What will be, will be”. Now Mr. smarty pants, why show off using an Italian title?? Look, I am sorry, but its only because I really liked the sound of it. Although, I am sure had I kept it ‘carnival’ or ‘casino’ (also italian) nobody would have minded. As it is, I was due, after my last post which had a dismal title(A trip to govardhan).

I had read somewhere,

How to impress woman: kiss her, hug her, compliment her, love her, tease her, protect her, listen to her, support her
How to impress a man: Show up naked with beer.

So true… isn’t it?

I think when god made a man (I think man was made first), he thought to himself, enough of practice now lets get on with the real thing. I am also truly grateful to him that he didn’t propose a third sex, otherwise we would have sexually starved as I really believe that there are far too many good girls out there than the men who deserve them. You may have taken umbrage at what I just said (but …. Hey.. u can’t boo my opinion.) but I guess if you give it a second thought you may think likewise.

  Now, last evening, I was chatting with a girl whom I pretty much liked. Now, the boys reading this would understand, “pretty much” liked straight away (more often than not) means she was not all that hot or lemme put it this way that she was not “much pretty”.  But I liked talking to her, infact I like talking to all the girls I don’t know (or perhaps I do) why. I guess this is usual male psyche and very few man can be above these seemingly small and petty issues.

 Now my dad, entered my room and asked me “Do you want to come to Sharmas with us?” I, even, before the question could register in my mind said “No Thanks, dad gotta go hit the the gym”. He had already left. I guess he knows me inside out. Why the hell would I want to go to Sharmas. I hate these kinds of social situations, atleast at my age, where people ask you all sorts of questions and when you are tired of answering them then you are considered to be rude and immature.

Anyways, I had absolutely no intention of going before I overheard my mom telling my dad that “Nisha would also be home these days, if siddharth comes along he may not get bored”. For those of who don’t know, siddharth is my household name and yes Nisha was Nisha Sharma. As I heard this, my male mind went into 2X speed of finding out a way to go to the now all “interesting Sharmas”. I faked a cram in my hand and went to mom and told her that I won’t be able to go to the gym. My mom immediately then asked me “Then why don’t you come with us to the Sharmas”. Now, I knew she would ask me that as otherwise she would have had to prepare my dinner separately. I chuckled at my own genius and thanked god for me giving that one thing more than women (brains, in this case). Actually god gave us two things more than women, but sadly, only enough blood to run any one of them [;)].

   So as we reached the doorsteps of Mr Sharma, we were welcomed by a huge Alsatian dog. Now, one more thing, why do all homes with girls have dogs? It seems their father like to have that extra sense of protection from the animals who roam the civilized world[;)]. As I entered their house, a board on the wall said

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.”  -Helen Keller

The line on the board was like god had intentionally put it there for me. I was infact hoping and was being optimistic about quite a few things like Nisha would be hot, She would be classy and fun to talk, She would get impressed by me even when I was not classy and neither was I fun to talk, She would be single, She would say ‘yes’ when I ask her out. I knew it was a lot to ask, but we, as men, are born optimists.  

 Now, as I was served juice by Nisha, I just glanced at her carelessly to see how she looked as if I was not interested in her even if she came begging. I found that she was gorgeous. She had a fair skin, curly hairs, small but mischievous eyes. I found her too cute for words and had instantaneously fallen in love with her. I wonder, if girls after seeing a good looking boy fall for them at the same instant or was it just another man trait. She sat right beside me, where I could notice many a things with this side angle. [;)] I thought she was perfect. She had scored a perfect 10 on my hotness scale. I made a lot of surreptitious glances at her with each time getting more and more infatuated.

    She suddenly turned and looked at me. Now, there are a lot of things you would wish a girl should ask you. But definitely not “So.. Which class are you in?” Damn that Mach 3, should have been contented with the usual razor. My world came crashing down with all my confidence now in shambles. It took me a second there to regain my voice and reply with as hoarse voice as I could make “I just finished engineering and waiting for my joining”. “That’s nice” came the soft reply. Nice was the last thing that it was. Then, Sharma uncle called out for Nisha “Beta, why don’t you show Saxena uncle a photo of Tushar”. I wondered who Tushar was, hoping against hope that Tushar would turn out to be a relative of Nisha. When the photos were passed around, I saw Nisha stuffing a golden ring in the chubby hands of his fiancée Tushar. He was ugly.

  I longed to go back home and cursed myself to have come here and vowed never to go to any dinner party in future. After dinner, as we got up to leave I saw another board on their wall that said

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope” –Martin Luther King      

I could not help but suppress a laugh on the cruel and savage satire that god had played with me. We bid our goodbyes with Nisha calling out “bye Siddharth, all the best”. I called out with a meek voice “Bye didi”

 

 PS- I bought an electric shaver with a trimmer 

A trip to govardhan

Banal… I know … I know…. But I suggest you kindly read on…. Nd I am absolutely positive that it is a much better topic than say…. My favourite teacher or One hour at a bus stop…. (what else do ya expect man… this is my first post.. )

  Now…about the trip…. it all started when my dad had taken a month’s leave… He is one of those who wouldn’t want any of his things to go waste… nd his leave was no exception….. we had been to nainital just a week before (why manu why… why not write about “A trip to Nainital”…) and there he was… asking me… or rather telling me the trip he had planned to Govardhan (for those who don’t know…that’s near Mathura…and yes… it was the same mountain that Krishna ji used as an umbrella for the people living in braj)… nd all I could do was gawk…. Nd my father, I presume, took that as “yeah.. I would love to…. ”. I asked him “How long are we gonna stay?” .. nd again, I presume, he took it as “gee dad.. wow… how long are we gonna stay there”…I sometime wonder, how soon would I be old enough  to do as I please but I have this strange feeling that no one has lived that long…  

Anyways… the day dawned upon us… we had a long drive ahead of us… I was driving…. nd I was convinced that this activity would be the most enjoyable part of it all…. I had to take a right turn from the highway to travel 20km to reach govardhan… the road quickly turned from “okay….thats not bad by UP standards” to “man… are we on the right road”. The road (or was it?)...had myriads of speedbreakers which made me seriously doubt that each shop on the road had made its own speed breaker…. so that the people in the cars may have a second chance to look at them… My father was cursing the “godamn politicians”…. But I, on the other hand, am a firm believer that Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation [;)]… A politician is the one who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence after. … anyways… we were to stay in an ashram ..… the person at the desk was not one of those cheerful types…. I mean… Every busy guy is entitled to be a little rude… but some guys, I guess, just abuse this privilege.  I longed for my driving hours again… that would be three whole days before I could do that…. I felt a little guilty for not wanting to be here as a line by Sir Winston Churchill kept bouncing in my head. “I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

      We, had to have a nice night sleep, so that we could have fresh legs for the long, arduous parikrama we had to endure the ensuing morning which was conveniently, later told by my dad to be just over 20km, which would be covered in two phases- the first phase was a semi circle of 12km (technically not a semi-circle) and later the rest of the parikrama was covered in the second phase nd in the end he added… it would be better if we would do this feat bare-footed. Now, although it may sound as one, but it wasn’t a suggestion. I, who is regarded as the most sybaritic person who has ever walked the earth, meekly mooted the idea of wearing socks but was cloth eared by my family and when I tried to show genuine concern for my beautiful feet, it was met with a terse reply from my mother- ”If your younger sister can do it… so can you”. Now, I challenge you guys to think of a counter for this one… this sentence is virtually unbeatable… it seriously damages your man-ego with nothing possibly left that could help you here.

  Now, I am an agliophobic(fear of pain itself) person, but I guessed who isn’t, so I started the parikrama determined to find the point of such a pain staking journey where you start at a place and end at the same, considerably battered. As the sharp edged stones found their way deeper and deeper into my feet, I started to wonder if there ever were differences between a ‘bata’ or a ‘nike’. I looked longingly at the rickshaw where people were merrily and cheerfully doing their so called ‘parikrama’ and had a smug look on their faces as if they were doing the same thing as I was. I, then wondered why the hell did they even bother that much and why didn’t they complete it on their cars only. I had these feelings as I had long discarded the idea of hiring a rickshaw…. Why??... because I didn’t want any more of those “if your mom and younger sister can do it why not you?” and there I saw my mom walking some 50 metres ahead of me, completely enjoying it or it seemed.

I also saw many people very much into their seventies doing the parikrama as if they had come for their morning walk. I suddenly felt the guilt rise into my stomach and was determined to see this through, no matter what. As I walked with the new found confidence, I also started to notice a few other things that came my way. Now, there were some people, both old and young, who were doing the parikrama by a technique known as ‘dandvati’. I understand, your first thought after hearing about ‘dandvati’ would be the parikrama done with a dandi or a stick but it wasn’t the case. ‘Dandvati’ had to be done with a help of a stone, in which the person used to lie down on the road on his stomach and keep this stone as far as he could, he then used to get up, pick the stone and keep his feet at the position of the stone and again stretch maximum and recite “jai shri radhe”. Thus, effectively, the journey I had problems covering with my feet, these people were doing it on their bellies. I later learnt that they generally take 10 days to complete the parikrama this way. I was completely dumbfounded by what I had witnessed which would stay in my mind forever.

As we were doing this parikrama, one side was the great govardhan mountain on the other side were a variegated assortment of dharamshalas, temples, ashrams built with grandiose styles. They, I presumed, were places where the people doing dandvati stayed to rest before they were back on their bellies. As, one such ashram came, my dad beckoned us to come inside as he wanted us to meet somebody (a certain guruji) in the ashram. As I entered the ashram I saw a person doing dandvati, but instead of the one stone these people carried he had a bunch of stones with him with an idol of lord Krishna. I immediately asked my dad about what he was doing my father promptly replied “oh.. he is doing the lambi dandvati”. For a second there, I could not understand him, “lambi dandvati??.... how longer could it get?”… the normal dandvati according to my standards was already herculene task. My father encouraged me to ask guruji about it. As I entered the ashram, I forgot all about ‘lambi dandvati’ as I had entered an environment so pure and serene with the sounds of bhajans been recited somewhere. As we reached the ‘kutiya’ or hut of the guruji I saw the source of the bhajans was a place which had a large board that read “akhand bhajan”

    We had a small talk with guruji, he had a very kind face and when he spoke, he chose his words very deliberately and with a lot of patience, he was always zen while answering our questions. He told us about the akhand bhajan which continued for day and night without halt.  He later told me that the ‘lambi dandvati’ was similar to dandvati but had to be done with the help of 108 stones instead of the one. Here, the person would put these stones as he was doing a dandvati, with the idol in front, recite his “jai shri radhe”, get up take another stone from his bag and then repeat the exercise until all the stones in his bag lay in front of him in a heap. This was indeed one step for these people. So, effectively, ‘lambi dandvati’ was 108 times the normal ‘dandvati’ (so technically that’s 10X108=1080days). It took 4-5 years to finish in this fashion and it was not uncommon for people to die while performing this. Can you imagine for all the time we were in IT BHU, eating, sleeping, playing, studying, there would have been someone who would be engrossed in his parikrama with full devotion and love doing nothing but his parikrama. So after this heavy knowledge as I came out of the ashram I saw the same devotee doing his ‘lambi dandvati’, after about an hour we had stayed in the ashram, he hadn’t moved at all, only his heap of stones in front of him had grown a little bigger. I could feel a little warmth on my cheek from the newly found moisture on them, which I wiped before anyone could notice.

   I remembered something I read on a library wall

“Ability is what you're capable of doing...
Motivation determines what you do...
Attitude determines how well you do it.”

  I had learnt the meaning of each sentence separately today in a fashion in which I shall remember it for the rest of my life. These people weren’t the people who were made to do those things but there they were doing it as if there was nothing better, with a strong and positive attitude without a worry in the world as if a seraph guided them all throughout (or probably there was).

 I had experienced a parallel universe where people, used a different language with even the rickshawalla instead of usual “hullo”  used to call “radhe radhe” if we were in his way, here people did completely different things not worrying about their vanities or ambitions but involved in one activity that was of appeasing the lord. Here people were not bothered about the rest of the world although, they welcomed you if you came from it, with all their hearts (I have far excused the receptionist at the ashram we were staying) and help you get immersed in the holy water which washes away all your prejudices, hatred and jealousy and bring back the real you, the you which god had intended.

   As we were back on the car and I wasn’t driving, I had time to muse about a famous saying from Angel Kyodo Williams “The answer to having a better life is not about getting a better life, it's just about changing how we see the ones we have right now.”

My dad asked me about the trip to govardhan  I said it was one of the best I had ever had. He casually replied

“Tell you...you will forget.
Show you….you might remember.
Involve you...you will understand. “         

I guess your dad becomes smarter and smarter with your age ;)