A Prisoner of the Ruins at the Crossroads

January 24, 2008

Life being a very puzzling phenomenon, sometimes you come across circumstantial snares, sometimes you come across circumstantial rosebeds.

In my case, I have found myself walking voluntarily, involuntarily, into the trapping cleft, to be caught by the leg and brought down crashing in the dust.

The falls have been so many that now I no longer blame destiny or fate for my crash-landings. I am myself responsible for my crash-landings. It is me who has spoiled the script.

Maybe I have forever overestimated my calibre and skills, my capabilities, thus making the blunders of aiming for higher goals which are naturally, fundamentally beyond my capacity to achieve. Such egotistically carried-out pursuits become futile, as has been proven in my case.

It is me who has written all the lines of my script in a wrong manner. My assessment of myself is grossly skewed, hallucinated.

So naturally, I find myself surrounded by the broken shards of my half-built, unripe palaces. There are big heaps of rubble and rubbish, masonry work scattered around me.

I am imprisoned by the rubble and ruins of my immature pursuits.

A prisoner, a stark prisoner who has lost his identity among the ruins—the ruins which he has built around him.

A prisoner of the ruins.

That is what I am.

I just cannot see beyond my rubbish, garbage mounds. With every endeavour, I add to the filth on the peaks already littered with stones and rubble.

When will I reach the height, the peak of foolishness, in order to start doing things like the other people are doing? Even the so-called very dimwit people whom teachers in our class found not worth anything, even they are playing so smartly in the game of life as to have set up very nice economic bases.

So I find myself staring at the crossroads, puzzled and unsure about which way to go.

If I happen to focus on one thing, then these other options appear and tease me that they are more suitable. But just when I shift my focus to the appealing one, the nearer I move to it, the more butterflies titter in my stomach, and by the time I reach the option, it changes its shape and size to the extent of being totally unrecognizable.

In my entire life, I have never faced such a puzzling situation.

The dilemma stares with a cold, disdainful glare in my face.

Can't make much of the situation.

I know that from my own calibre's point of view, I will usually benefit from a job in publishing. But I don't have any experience, even though I have the skills to be a very good professional in the publishing world.

So content writer is the only option that seems viable as far as making a job opening is concerned, and still hoping against hope that maybe there will be a job option which will pay me just like a government officer and will give me an opportunity to use my full potential.

But I seem to have lost out on time.

Most of the people who are into such jobs start straight away after graduation. So that is the main problem here.

ELI Research, Faridabad, has contacted me several times over phone and through mail. It seems they are genuinely impressed by my portfolio, even agreed to think positively about my demand of 40,000 per month.

Just a few minutes ago—it is around five in the evening—I got one more call from them, saying they are really impressed by my CV.

The HR gave me another call.

This time she was really disappointed after hearing my hesitant, fumbling words meant to inform her that I will be out of the country for a few months, because the plan with Babu Bhai for an Africa visit seems to be now taking proper shape.

Now this means no employment opportunity as far as this company is concerned, but it seemed to be a very good company doing research and all this.

One more good opportunity gone down the gutter this time.

The indecision has been created by being tethered to the business commitment. Since all the preparations are now in their final stages, I don't have the heart to even just, you know, go to ELI Research just for the sake of it.

These are the cruel times.

Morality, ethics, friendship—all become drags in your march to boons and benefits.

How I wish that I could either get a very nice job allowing me to give my best, the vast amount of knowledge that I have gathered in almost a decade of my civil services pursuits, or get into some business opportunity that enables me to earn quite well, so that within five years I can help my family as well as make an economic base that allows me to go into writing later on.

The Obsolete Swimmer and the Two Streams of Survival

January 18, 2008

Earlier there was almost no choice for me. Haryana Civil Service, HCS, appeared to be the end and beginning of the world.

But following the principles of bad politics, Mr. Hooda still did me a favour. He untethered me from this painful peg in the ground.

In one sudden, surprising, off-balancing strike, he got this dog's bone—which can't be chewed, can't be thrown away—out of my bleeding jaws.

Though thunderstruck by this injustice, yet it was relieving in the sense that from now onwards no sham play of justice will continue, and the fact that justice is the ever-obelizing courtesan of the powerful politicians is proven clearly for all to see.

This jolt was rewarding in another sense as well. Its boiling, furious waters forced the wormy myself out of the archaic cocoon.

So, frowning with pain, bleeding body, I came out under the mercilessly glaring sun of exploding realities.

There was no make-believe, pseudo-sense of getting my job through the presumed uprightness of the judiciary at the apex level.

All I was required to do was to get into the hurtling waves of the mighty stream of survival as an obsolete old swimmer.

But I have surprised even myself in tackling the first waves crashing in my face questioningly.

In the month since that hyperactive crash-landing, after that three-year-long futile fight with the help of imaginary judicial wings, I have created two opportunities for myself: that of a content writer with the web portals providing software solutions, and that of a business adventure in East Africa.

But it seems too much for my historically choiceless self.

I am in two minds. In the seesaw battle of these two choices, their gleam fluctuates intermittently, making one or the other appear attractive.

Me, Sandeep, Sajjan, Anil and Shekhar have set up the system for the scrap business at the painful cost of our meagre resources, and just when the movement for importing iron scrap from Djibouti landed down, we find ourselves running out of money to start the export-import cycle.

I went to Ludhiana to meet Babu, who had purchased our first iron scrap container. I was able to convince him to invest in order to provide an ignition spark of capital.

Babu and his brother-in-law, in turn, appear to agree to visit the place to take stock of the material and offer us some terms of partnership.

So, as I have written earlier as well, we are planning to visit Africa.

I took Babu and his brother-in-law to the embassy for their visa processing.

The Embassy of Djibouti is situated in the semi-attractive surroundings of Bhikaji Cama Place, near Safdarjung Enclave and Vasant Vihar.

It is a small, two-storeyed block without the usual hustle-bustle of visa seekers. The flag lies limply.

It is eerily quiet in the reception hall. Two ladies, the younger behind the computer, the older at the table dealing with visa procedures, do their work in a relaxed manner without being pursued by the tactically lolloping tongues of foreign-visit-aspiring applicants, like you have in the embassies of developed countries.

As you open the heavy wooden door into the reception hall, you can at the most expect to meet another visa seeker there on the sofa.

The Djiboutian national sits in his usual aloofness and sense of loneliness. He is a handsome, dark man. He ponders over the magazines about his country and spends his time silently.

Between Old Gods and New Dreams: A Lohri Day in Delhi

January 13, 2008

It is Lohri today, the festival of North India, especially the Punjabi community. The festival is celebrated by lighting the torch of warmth, goodwill, joy and fervour against the freezing gusts of winter.

Wished Happy Lohri to Babu, Seth of Ludhiana.

Maybe the destinies of my poor group and his are linked. We plan to leave—me, Babu, his brother-in-law Inder and Shekhar—for Djibouti to explore the possibilities there, if everything goes okay.

My final round of interview with Netlink Digital Energy, Gurgaon, did not go well. From what I had done in the earlier rounds, I had gained immense confidence, which made me bold enough to demand a salary of fifty thousand.

In having so much courage, I surprised even myself. After all, only the IT people demand such figures.

Maybe at the last stage they were only planning to break my confidence so that I could be convinced to settle for a lesser figure. But the way I carried myself during the interview quelled any such action before they could even think of putting up any such effort.

I defended my salary on comprehensive grounds, covering right from professional acumen to philosophical overtones, singing lullabies for my quoted figure.

Now these days so many educated fellows wander around, and since business-to-business writing for web portals involves a prosaic, general, straightforward world of boring write-ups, it can be easily done by any averagely intelligent postgraduate or even graduate.

They can have a couple of eager, cringing, cooperative fellows for my salary, or even three or four for the sum that I quoted.

So most probably they would not have me. In any case that doesn't make any difference. 

After having gone through this drill with a successfully run portal, I went to New Delhi with Shekhar to get a yellow card for him. The yellow card is issued against yellow fever and certain other diseases after giving vaccination for the travellers bound for travel to African countries.

So we went to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, but it wasn't RML's turn to issue vaccinations that day. They said we could get the injection at NDMC on Mandir Marg.

Since we had enough time till 2 p.m., we decided to spend some time at the famous Birla Mandir and Saint Thomas Church on the road.

Now Birla Mandir is a big shrine complex, its yellow and reddish-violet domes shining brightly under the bright rays of the January sun.

Under the open glare of the sky, by its outer wall, you see the locker racks for mobiles and shoes, just as you take the broad, marble-paved flight of steps to the shrine facing the main gate, you see foreigners coming out of or going into the foreigners' visitor room.

On the deliciously cool marble floor, you walk with a superimposed sense of faith and sightseeing as a tourist.

In the front hall, a well-bejewelled and decorated couple, Radha-Krishna, welcomes you with beneficent blessings and cosmic love.

On the inside, you see balconies; pillars are numerous in number. On the walls you have bas-reliefs involving mythical scenes, comprising famous personalities from the world of myth, legend and religion.

Below are written commentaries, the sutras and their English translations, to allow the light of religion and faith to spread far and wide.

In the adjoining dharamshala and Gita Bhavan, you see devotees-cum-visitors thronging the pavilions.

The temple complex is worth watching, but somewhere deep in your heart you find that something is lacking.

Absent is that anciently intricate, ornate, multidimensionality-revealing sense of art and aesthetics, which was so famously carved out by numerous unsung artists during those pensively long-drawn-out hours, during those slow-paced, easy times in which our temple architecture came to acquire the rich folds and forms it is famous for.

So in modern temple architecture, you don't feel that soulful beauty, the intrinsic, basic, inherent beauty.

Modern man can only polish and varnish the outer core of stone. He can't go inside, can't penetrate deep to make the particular piece alive with the devotion of his blood and sweat.

So modern temple art is just a copy, Xeroxing, a gross imitation of the past.

You do not feel that unblemished harmony, balance and unity among different parts of a temple or temple complex.

Just a few blocks away, Saint Thomas Church stands grandly, unpretentiously, even sadly, as if brooding over those busy colonial days.

This red-bricked, long structure stands peacefully. Made in 1931, it saw sixteen years of British rule. The turret at the far end tilted, so a few metres of it had to be dismantled.

There was a quaint silence as we entered the gate and walked down the cobbled length of the wide yard along the length of the church.

The old caretaker, his other attendant and an old female servant eyed us approaching them with a bagful of mixed feelings—anxiety, suspicion, even curiosity—as I sought permission to go inside.

The caretaker waved to his attendant to open the back door by the back wall of the sanctum.

We entered the small room, parted the curtains and saw the long rows of pews.

The closed door at the other end dimly looked down the aisle.

There was pin-drop silence inside.

The fine wooden benches were as intact and compact as seventy-odd years ago. The sanctum, bearing the altar, cross and other offerings, was ordered, clean and peace-giving.

By the entrance door at the other end, there were prayer-book racks containing small-sized hardbound books.

But now it is a silent place.

God's image reposes in silence.

"Only on Sundays we have a dozen or so visitors for the prayers," the Christian caretaker mumbled with slight sadness.

But then, among Christians, the faith quotient is falling dangerously. The church now stands like a relic of the past, except on Christmas Day perhaps.

By the side of the church, St. Thomas School was buzzing with activity.

Bright-faced, energetic preteen girls in their school jerseys and skirts, scurried around the main gate with the agility of a unique type, like little squirrels—happy, curious, full of energy, full of life.

The most interesting and visible parts of their bodies were their full feminine legs. It was surprising to see them with such sturdy legs, even though most of them were just girls around the years of puberty.

We also got an opportunity to travel in the Metro.

Now this really is the pride of India, looking ultra-modern, clean, high-class.

Earlier I had doubts that the ever-jostling crowds of Indians would play spoilsport, but the Metro, its stations and escalators have been set up in the image of the Goddess of Cleanliness, and surprisingly the Indian crowd, which never goes by rules, follows the rules of smoking and cleanliness once inside the fabled precincts of the Metro station.

Metro rail is so user-friendly. You have screens showing the arrival of the next stations. There are verbal messages informing you.

Inside, people stand with decency.

All this is due to the high standards of order, facilitation and cleanliness put in place by the Metro staff.

It is just perfect, so perfect that people feel ashamed of putting a blemish on it.

So it runs ahead, chugs ahead, taking Delhiites on the paths of prosperity, career, ceremonies, get-togethers, dates and much more.

On the Tarred Road Between Job and Business

January 3, 2008

Now, to give a clue to how much puzzled I seem to be between making a career in business or seeking a job, I set out right on the next day after the interview in Noida for a business trip to Ludhiana.

I travelled in a car, a friend's car, on the National Highway.

Travel is pretty perspective-creating these days. It is, after all, the massive drive of development, constantly being upgraded, broadened, to add more and more economic vitality, to make it flow through the country's body.

Mechanized layering of tar and stone-crush is now very easy, so they do it more often. The road-making equipment and machinery have risen in the ranks; they have brought in new machines. So road-making and repairing have become much easier now in comparison to earlier lazy road-rolling days, and it takes less time as well.

So this Grand Trunk Road has become the high-speed corridor.

Now fast-speed cars, SUVs, public and private carriers go along thundering—easily, irritably, noisily, silently—all along the highway.

On both sides, you see a massive buildup of enterprise and business. Mammoth flyovers and bridges now provide an inescapable monotony, as if the National Highway would never have borne a different look at any period in the past.

The finger line drawn by Sher Shah Suri during medieval times has now become almost a living, growing, throbbing, tarred biological corridor, which has its own soul, perhaps even beyond the control of mankind slipping over its wheeled surface.

Ludhiana, the industrial town, is spread out like a large open-cast mine of labour, struggle, profits and gains.

It is a big city, like a big, irritable, slow-paced chariot of mammoth proportions. The mighty Sardars pull it along, possessed in a lighter, adventurous way.

Since it is a major place for scrap dealers and iron works, if you are not that energetic in your market manoeuvres, you tend to stick to any average, tolerable guy in the market instead of hunting around for better sources.

We had sold heavy metal scrap to Mr. Babu in the past.

He is a lighthearted, silently calculating young businessman, and I was successful in getting him interested in the business opportunities in Djibouti.

He has agreed to visit the place in order to see the chances of working with us in the form of a partner, and I think after some time he will fly with me to have a firsthand experience of how we are managing there.

Being a very clever businessman, he first wants to see our setup there, and he also knows that we are simple people, so seems to have some plans up his sleeve.

When our container of scrap iron landed in Ludhiana, we simply reached his scrap yard because somebody had referred his name. Since we were new to the trade, we could not bargain, and we got the average price.

But when the container was opened, he was wonderstruck because it was such heavy scrap, including heavy machinery parts and engines.

In fact, there were even heavy machinery rims of tyres which could easily be used here in India after painting.

So after that, he has been giving us some importance.

He knows that we are at a place where there is profit.

So I am happy that I have been able to gain his trust.

He has never travelled outside India, and if somebody who has never gone out of the country agrees to visit a poor country in Africa, that means he has started to trust you.

It seems to be an achievement.

Let us hope that we soon go to Djibouti with Mr. Babu and take him around on visits to various scrapyards, so that he gives us advance money, assured that he won't be losing it and that we won't run away once he sees our setup firsthand there, so that we can start a kind of business cycle.

With his advance money, we can pay the scrap owners there and bear the cost of cutting, loading and shipping.

And once the containers reach here, for the next lot again he will send us some advance money.

So this is what we expect.

As I sat with Mr. Babu in his posh office, almost as a partner, as a business owner, it gave me a very strange feeling that only yesterday I was there in the poor suburbs of Noida, in another plush office, but there as a struggling job seeker intending to join as a content writer.

So when I look at it—my destiny being stretched in two directions—it is a strange feeling. I don't know what am I seeking really. Seem to have lost the way during those hard days of civil services competition. 

The Corporate Lighthouse and the Boatful of Strugglers

January 2, 2008

New Year resolution also containing some tidbits regarding earning something, and driven by this pull, not satisfied with the way things are going at the business front, and despite knowing that I won't be taking this job and instead would be focusing on the scrap iron and used-oil business, still I went to Noida to attend the interview for a job for which I had been called—the post of content writer with a web portal for business-to-business writing, called B2B writing.

The company was IndiaMART, situated in Noida, Sector 8, B1.

But before that, let us talk a bit about Noida.

All the developmental gears have been put into place in this Delhi suburb. Most of Uttar Pradesh is still poor and impoverished, yet here the real estate business, corporate houses, business moguls, shopping malls and multiplexes provide something to a poor state to look forward to—the days of prosperity.

So it works as a kind of lighthouse for the impoverished hinterlands to look up to and be guided along the waves of development and growth.

Massive concrete pillars for the Metro project stand as a new mountainous artery to throw new life, mobility and enterprise into the city.

Coming back to the web portal, it is ranked among the first in the business, with an annual turnover of 19 crore per annum.

But the little dusty, half-stone-crusted, half-dusty bylane leading to it is dotted with pinching realities on both sides.

It seems to be the industrial section where they are operating this service enterprise. It certainly is situated in one of the poorer sections of the city.

You have meat shops on both sides, carcasses cleaned and trimmed for cooking vessels and meat lines. The air is thick with the feel of meat. It is even stinking.

Small tea shops with their rickety, shaking benches, poor people having their luxurious sips.

Tyre works and automobile repair shops have their customary greased, dirty working staff. Since it is cold, people pile up leftover tyres, putting them on fire to have some heat in this cold. But the thick black smoke makes the air unbearable.

Rickshaws roll over the uneven, uneasy paths.

People walk around, lost in the bitter struggle for survival.

Amidst this impoverished scenario stands the three-storeyed building of IndiaMART. Its yellow colour, in one way exaggerating its business, money, enterprise and well-off people, and the high walls around the main rectangular block try to keep off the real world from the world of business and enterprise, created by skilled people with the help of faith and endeavour.

Registering my entry with the security at the gate, I got my interview card, put it around my neck and entered the pleasantly furnished ground-floor reception hall.

Miss Rosie, the plump, young, energetic receptionist, in the company of a sleek, sophisticated companion, entered the hall filled with job seekers with a feeling of corporate authority.

Like all other successful private enterprises, this place too was devoid of the sickening, stagnating, strangulating government work culture.

Here you grow fast, perform highly, and if you will not do that, you perish.

There were plenty of young, energetic guys and girls, who flutteringly carried an air of hope and passion, which further carried the institution aloft on the path of progress and profits.

Against this background, I felt like an old, dispirited, energy-sapped person.

In the interview, though I performed well; yet it was a shaky performance.

The HR had understood my position.

She asked for my salary expectations. I said 30,000 plus.

But why would she have me if they can have young, fluttering energy at around half of this amount?

I have been asked to wait. Most probably, I won't be selected.

But I don't feel the pinch of it because I do know that even if they call me, even for 40,000 rupees, I will not join.

In fact, even if they offer 50,000, I don't think I will be able to convince myself to join because the priority now is just our business, which is putting up more and more challenges.

Then the question arises: why did I come here?

So that means I have lost my path somewhere and need to sort it out.

I need to sort out the thing.

And it means it turns out to be just a step taken to come out of boredom, to beat the pools of gloomy, depressive clouds around me, to get an outing.

So, all in all, it seems to be an outing.

And once you see so many people struggling in poor corners, struggling humanity on the roads in urban cities, you somehow don't feel cheated.

You feel that you are sailing in a boat full of similar people.

The Topper’s Crown and the Poet’s Mirage

Sad, Retiring Memories

On the first day of a new year, I sit back and look into the past.

The days after my matriculation have tragically swooned and swirled away. I must have passed through these fifteen years without knowing or being fully aware of myself.

Two years at S. M. Hindu Senior Secondary School were strangely undefinable, indefinite, directionless and excitement-free. Adolescence in me was severely subdued by the harsh fact that I was no longer the topper, the coveted position I had gotten used to in the almost competitionless environment of my class in the village school.

In fact, during our ten years of studies at the village, we were the same bunch of kids who grew up enjoying ourselves in the class. Once I established myself as the academic peer, it became a sort of convention to accept me as the first one in that bunch of thirty-five to forty odd kids from rural families where education was never given the kind of serious attention it deserves to fully blossom the petals of an academic flower.

There was no fresh influx of talent because the children from the neighbouring villages were equally poor academically and equally rich in childhood flirtations. So that left me as the topper till matriculation.

But the topper's crown was rattled severely at the town school.

In fact, during these two crownless years at the senior secondary school in the town, I enjoyed myself as if relieved of the burden.

Our teachers at the village school were all good, except at studies. They talked well, managed personal relationships well, thrashed and beat well, joked well, told interesting anecdotes quite well. But when it came to real studies, the poor fellows performed really badly.

So in school, we just passed our time sitting, talking, fighting, bad-naming the teachers, getting beaten, etc.

Now non-medical subjects at the senior secondary level demanded understanding, not cramming, as I had got used to doing to emerge the topper in my poor class. I had to cram because there was no real teacher to explain anything. So the only alternative left was to cram things straightaway, even if they hardly made any meaning.

But in the city school, amidst a new academic culture, I found myself within no time amongst the backbenchers.

But then being a backbencher has its own set of advantages as well. Because the onus of performing like a top-notch star is no longer on you.

You are free.

At the most, the teacher chides you sometimes or gives a dejected look at you when you turn crapper despite the best of his efforts to make you understand a particular thing.

Those were completely mindless days. I just allowed myself to be waylaid by the directionless wind of ignorant times.

A school is, after all, a school. You ought not to be unduly serious on its account. So it was a welcome extension to the school days at the village.

Like a balloon, I blew morosely, waywardly in four directions, and one such foolish circumstantial gust of wind carried me to the institution of dotards, the Jat College of Sonipat, for graduation.

Now, it was an institution which was as far away from education as is possible for a college to be within the limits of retaining its place in the UGC ratings.

Here the young, erratic, wrestling types, mostly Jats, got admissions only on account of being poor scorers and almost illiterates despite having senior secondary certificates.

Anyway, it was a boisterous place.

In winters, the students played cards, smoked beedis, told the budding tales of their romances, lying on the lawn. It had big rooms, the college, with long rows of benches. But during the class, only two or three rows of benches could be seen occupied.

For most of the students, coming to college meant a hearty, boisterous chatting session on the precincts, and then, while returning, following their love interests around the city streets to the bus stand. They squeezed the girls in the crowded buses. It was the most interesting incentive for coming to college for them.

The other was saving their skins from breakneck labour in the fields back at home.

Since I wasn't this type in any sense of the term, I felt like an alien in the college.

Here even the faculty looked like a bit more refined version of the students.

In this way, I had made the first and the most fatal mistake of choosing such an institution for myself. So the career prospects were surely to be dented, and these were dented, as the coming times would prove.

In the name of career, I had, in my senior secondary class, attended an SSB interview for the coveted NDA.

In the countryside, even stepping stones, the first ones, fetch you respect and publicity, as if you have brought heaven on earth.

So I got bouquets in hugely misplaced euphoric disproportion to my achievement. People treated me as if I had become a commissioned officer.

But at the SSB Bangalore—by the way, it was my first long-distance journey by train as well—I felt like a tiny frog out of its dirty little well for the first time.

The first thing with the SSB is that you are forcibly taken in by the urge to speak English even if you have not uttered a whole sentence of English in your life.

So there were many of my sort trying their hesitant, shivering, obstinate tongues at the imperial language. Though I surprised myself by being able to speak a few sentences while in leisure time with the other candidates, the effort and endeavour were too puny to carry the lurching cart along the road on which the shiny, convent-cultivated, fluently whizzing linguistic vehicles of status moved—the kids of senior bureaucrats, senior army officers and rich families.

Right from the start, I knew that I wasn't there to give some real challenge to some would-be big officer. Rather, I was there just to fill the ranks.

So after doing my shy, hesitant, immature, unripened fruit of duty, I came back to my little sleepy place, and the poor fellow croakers croaked.

They never had any doubt in my abilities—said that I had been unjustifiably done in by a corrupt environment. Some even went to the extent of saying that my calibre was of such a high degree that the army could not have digested it.

So I should go for the IAS.

Once this thing had been put into my head, I allowed the graduation years to roll over my head unproductively.

I will become a civil servant, I decided.

So I remained at home, went for self-study, read extra things beyond my graduation syllabus, and performed just to the level of first division in the exams.

But the glorious sun of civil services shone illustriously. It very dexterously removed any specks of shadowy doubt from my conscience.

After graduation, I appeared for two more SSB interviews, but I entered the selection centres with a hugely relieved self, basking in the enlightened feeling of superiority and benevolence that I was here just for an outing.

This feeling very easily quelled any suspicion or doubt over my true capabilities which could have arisen in the wake of my miserable performances in the interviews.

I forgot to mention one thing—a poetic thing.

While I took the first tottering, uncertain, shaking steps on the precarious path of civil services, the poetic bug infected me.

One day, I came across an advertisement about a competition in The Times of India, put out by the All India Poetry Association. The winner was to get an excursion ticket to England. The competition fee was rupees ten per poem. One could send as many poems as possible.

And then the poetic lava accumulated over the years erupted without any rhyme or reason.

Every human being's posse of emotions is special in one way or the other, mine being no exception.

To be frank, I had never read poetry seriously, not even the poems in the English syllabus during graduation. Yet I had, right from the beginning, profound faith in its ability to carry the intangible, vague, mystical, mythical load of your cravings, passions, ecstasies and agonies in its lyrically briefed, silently smiling, subtly weeping lines and words.

So without caring for the styles, forms or format, I let loose my chariot of poetry at a hurtling pace.

I wrote around fifty poems.

I called them poems just for the fact that while writing them, I felt like a poet.

Those stanzas seemed to convey deeper meanings which I could never have expressed either in talk or prose.

I liked those free verses in the sense that their free space and flexibility allowed a whole lot of emotions to be briefly concised in a stanza.

It is just like plucking out flying wisps from the perturbably changing, speedily spaced, impermanent world of dynamics.

Nothing is permanent in poetry.

You can very easily glorify something in one poem and criticize it like hell right in the other, without being dragged into contradictory discussions, because everybody accepts the fact that when you write a piece of poetry, you are immersed in that moment. What you were, what you say or do later, has no meaning at all.

Though the fairy-like kids born of that instantaneous impregnation of some creative instinct by emotion—these flower children—have a permanence.

They glimpse like stars on the distant horizon, on the dynamically unflinching base standing at the high pedestal. The lighthouse is standing on the rocky outcrop, throwing guiding rays around the treacherously lolloping storm waves against the cliffs.

They provide solace, sympathy, succour to some lone struggling man with his boat in the darkishly crazy waves.

Their magical rays travel over the ruffled, wavy surface and seek out some eye, some heart which needs that companionship.

Such is the beauty of poetry.

This slim, fair lady has maternal, maiden, lovely powers well beyond the contoured proportions of its fair, sinewy body. Its breasts have enough girth and milk to allow the hungry child to suckle nourishing milk; it has enough charm to allow lovely kisses. It can take many different hues, colours, motivations and realizations in its arms.

So without caring for the exact parameters of conventional poetry, I allowed myself to be taken along by the wildly hilarious fury of this gushing, gurgling river.

And what do you expect of such pure emotions? You find and fondle them right there at the top of the facts.

So I entertained all hopes of winning the prize and going to Europe.

But as all such hopes are bound ultimately to be shattered, I didn't win.

I thought I had been cheated. I thought that the draw was not fair.

I wrote an angry letter to the society and asked them to send me back all my poems, including a ten-rupee note as the value for return postage of my submission. I also demanded that they act in a poetic way befitting the status of a poetry society.

Mr. Kaul, the society's secretary, sent me a letter.

With anticipation, I opened it, but what did I find inside?

Not a line written in response to my aggrieved onslaught.

He had returned my ten rupees—not complete, rather torn into halves.

No accompanying letter.

Just the value of my materialistic paper turned into a torn ten-rupee note in two pieces.

Two halves of a ten-rupee note. What a response? 

Maybe, in a fit of poetical fury, Mr. Kaul responded in a free-verse manner.

His reaction shows much which no amount of verbal philandering or behavioural gesturing can explain.

And I accepted it as a befitting reply to my unnecessarily raising a storm in a teacup.

But my engine of being had been put on the poetic rails.

I called myself a poet.

Even during the present hard times, when the soft language of humanity has almost lost its war against the sharp-edged hoot of materialism, fascination amounts to decency.

So, lost in the shine and sheen of my defeat, I typed free verses.

I thought, acted, behaved like a poet.

Writing something can get you addicted. It surely does. Addicted to the thought of getting published, like chronic addicts, writers and poets go to any extent—even to the extent of doing injustice to their economic as well as physical being—to see their work in print.

Publishers, the hounds of the trade, prey upon the soft rabbits. They have their clever ways of exacting money, exploiting these sentiments.

Blinded by the same sentiments, I was robbed of rupees 72,000 by the clever, foxy manager of the Minerva Press, India branch.

I acted like a sheep, he like a butcher.

The consequences I should not even mention, for they are too predictable.

The result being that I had stabbed 72,000 rupees out of the already famished pockets of my poor, weak, retired pensioner father.

It was a grossly ill-planned and illogically carried-out plan.

Indirectly, it meant that the foxy, wily Sardar had cheated me of my money.

But then every price you pay fetches you something in one form or the other.

I had my reputation soaring in the local area, in the countryside. The kind of society, the illiterate simpletons I am a part of, finds it one of the greatest achievements to be published—provided you keep the secret from them that you had paid for the publication.

So at least now, I and my family played our cards well, forgot about our money, and basked in the countryside glory of praising words spoken by illiterate mouths, rolling their fingers over the glossy-bound slim volume of my poems.

Mending the Shipwrecked Boat: A Battle into the New Year

December 30, 2007

Sajan Pal is back there in the exotic chaos in the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti, and I can visualize his innocent puns and attempts at fun at the cost of the giggling maids there; Sandeep with his typical Casanova approach to life; and the slow-paced life over there in stark contrast to what we see here.

It's a completely different world out there.

I have to take care of our business affairs here for the time being till I return, and Sandeep probably will come back to India for some time to spend time with his family. So we are thinking of planning it in rotation: two of us there and one here.

Now, coming back to the situation here in India, thankfully, a hugely, mammothly ungainful year is on its deathbed. Today is its penultimate breath. Tomorrow will be the last one.

Well, thankfully, the year 2007 will die, but not before giving me a big bouquet of disappointments. Most of it has been ungainful, except the time in Africa, where life is experienced in a different, slow-paced dimension, as well as the few dollars that we have saved after bearing the high cost of living there and managing business by greasing palms at every step.

The rest of it seems to have gone almost in loss—ungainful.

But even with its mercilessness, it plagued me straightforwardly. It did not play hide-and-seek. It did not encounter me stealthily. All it did was in utter, cold, unflinching disdain and mercilessness.

How did it do this?

Well, by laying bare all judicial pretensions of justice, fair play and uprightness at the apex of our judicial system.

Why did I wait for three long years for this thing?

Thank God I have this African business venture in partnership with my friends to put in the face of the critics who might say that I haven't done anything. But still, alongside this so-called business, I have been hoping for justice and for availing what I truly deserve—my HCS post.

And for that I have been pinning all hopes on the judiciary.

The reason is that I had absolute faith in the system of justice at the Supreme Court level. But as it has turned out, it is just a central-level version of the state-level judiciary.

Otherwise, how can the annayaymurti dishonourably and criminally neglect the plight of a hundred job seekers who are hopelessly pitted against the mighty state?

I now see the state as a mighty sabre-rattling agent, subduing puny foot soldiers like me and my batchmates.

Once again, the urge to go to Bastar to have my little share of justice myself arises, but what can a poor, frail writer of still poorer words do to entertain such revolutionary sparks deep inside his heart?

The simpler reason for turning a blind eye to such glorious ideas is that I am afraid to die. The forces will easily kill me. And there won't be slightest noise against it. 

I know that I will be wiped out like an inconsequential speck of dust, like a little worm, if I am brave enough to go to the Naxal areas and become one of them.

I am thoroughly a pen soldier, with body battered and bruised, with weapons and shields lying in the dust, with hands lacerated and in no position to wield even the pen now.

So I am left with no alternative but to stand silent like an uncomplaining, mute sheep and then, in all humility, honouring the constitutionalities of the mighty state, start on the work of restoring the storm-wrecked little boat of life, now lying in the sand, upturned, its planking disarranged, its bottom moth-eaten.

Though this work is infinitely tedious, I have decided to go along with it, even though it means gulping big sips of humiliation and enduring pinpricks from the justice-seeking conscience.

It is perhaps still easier to carry such a load of your wreckage to build another boat, to sail off in the same sea of your doom, rather than beat your chest standing on the shore and challenge the mightily surging waves.

Those who think that they can challenge the fury of these waves might be right in their own ways, but given my fondness for what I have left, given my weakness and fragility, given my fears and inhibitions—given all this—maybe I am also justified in forgetting about the sin against me and not harbouring any thoughts of revenge against the mighty enemy, for doing so would be sheer foolishness.

If hideous Hooda and his Italian-posturing lady master have stage-managed a wrong, it still only represents, in my mind, a wrong done by the state. But since the state can never be wrong, it turns out to be no wrong at all.

So now I have started focusing more on our ragged, jagged business venture in the exotic chaos of East Africa.

I hope destiny will finally give us tiny bits of luck in the form of little opportunities that will help me in mending my shipwrecked boat of life.

The sea monster heaved it and beached it on the humped shoal of its constitutional back, and then tossed it like a puny slingshot against the sheer rock face.

Thrown against a rock, broken, I limber back to some sheltering grove, hoping this time my little wormy path won't wrongly cut across any politically shiny superway.

How good this country would have been if the type of politics being perpetuated hadn't existed.

It would have been blissful to have a political class which does not put unguarded, puny, weaponless foot soldiers in the position of having to guard themselves against the warring factions among the politicians.

Because very rarely does a political shot go on to hit the political rival directly. It kisses the poor flesh of some poor citizen, pitted, jammed in between the mighty, heavily guarded foes.

So they have their heavy political potshots, breaking many a poor head.

Let them enjoy this bloody game.

The time will perhaps come when the wormy, bleeding swarms will arise en masse to push back against all the surrounding charioted parties.

Yet it is too optimistic to think of such a revolution in our current setup, because the evil cronyism now carries a huge chunk of the upwardly mobile middle class on its pampered back.

And these neo-super units are too obliged to join the poor ones. They, in fact, enjoy the prospects of having their own types of potshots against these filthy, impoverished fellows.

They are the check dams which will prevent the river of agony from going out of control.

The exploiters are strengthening the flood banks.

In all probability, the river of agony will remain tamed.

Now I have learnt to live with my pains—pains in the soul, pains in the conscience, pain in the head—going round and round in a vicious circle, one giving rise to another and vice versa. It is not even clear which breeds which one; all father one another.

Though it is usually discomforting to have such pains always nagging, gnawing at your existence, I would be really happy to have them as long as I live, provided they don't wipe me out completely.

I am fighting it out all alone amongst them.

All alone.

My weapons and shields consist of self-derived and self-supported beliefs, willpower, negation of certain realities—a well-managed package to erect a model of pseudo-reality in which I manage to believe myself surviving at an average level.

But as time grows old and circumstances change for the worse, which I have reasons to believe surely will, the army, the agents of pain, will multiply like termites to eat the tree of my life.

I know that the odds will turn in their favour.

But what can you do under circumstances over which you have no control?

I will just do what I can manage.

I will continue with my battle.

Painful and taxing as it is, it has its own excitement and pleasures. I am not sure. I am not aware of lesser or greater pleasures, for there are many in both categories in comparison to my own.

But my little kits of pleasures and huge bundles of pains constitute the identity of my being.

It is a bloody battle ahead, and I am preparing for it.

I certainly will lose portions of myself in the bloody, unsparing battle.

Well, God bless me!

The Launchpad of Dreams and the Amoeba of Life

December 27, 2007

India started the Boxing Day Test on a very positive note, bundling out Australia for just 343. Though it is a decent score by all standards, but when it comes to Australia, which is a class apart, the scores deemed decent by other teams are found to be below par by the mightiest team in the world—a team which is a class in itself, which sets its own parameters and raises its bars of excellence in every department of the game.

Pitted against such a marvellously organized team, all the other teams in the world hope to salvage some pride by making the Australians sweat harder for their victories. You find some solace even in a defeat against the Kangaroos if you make them exert extra pressure for their victory.

In this matter, our Indian team, carried valiantly by our legendary veterans and exuberant youngsters, has rubbed, heated, argued, slanged and close-shouldered with the number one team in the world. We definitely lack in some skills in comparison to the Australians, but of late we have been trying to make up by getting aggressive, sometimes unnecessarily as well, on and off the field in order to reach nearer to the victors.

Kumble, the knight captain, leading from the front, flummoxed the batsmen, took five wickets and bundled them out for a total which many would consider well below Australia's strength. So, at the end of day one, the Australians looked circumspect. Indians looked well pleased with their achievement.

But all this euphoria was very short-lived.

They struck back with a vengeance. Though the Little Master, during his fluent 62, provided some glimpses of hope, like a pack of cards the wickets fell once he was back in the pavilion. India today got out for the paltry score of 196.

So, at the end of day two, the customary smile is back on the Kangaroo faces, and back are the glum faces which, unfortunately, also look customary on our players' faces—on the captain as well as his brood.

And as I have been writing these diaries from September, October to this time, taking time out from our Djibouti venture, I have also been taking care of business affairs here.

Apart from writing these diaries, in the night I went to IGI Airport, the launchpad of dreams and destinations, to see off Sajjan Pal on his way to Djibouti by Ethiopian Airlines, scheduled to depart at 2:20 in the morning.

The departure lounge was buzzing like a beehive, and here, as a rural man, even after having multiple experiences of entering the posh lounges at airports, I get a bit apprehensive about standing as a misfit—a commoner in the midst of all those classes which are customarily thought to throng airport lounges, classes superior in money, manners, looks, clothes and whatnot. Against them, you find your rusty rural self just a poor and pathetic figure.

But these are mistaken apprehensions, given the boom and burst in the Indian economy and the consequent unfolding—the supreme unfolding of the petals of international interactions at the individual, group, institutional and state levels through business, education and cultural activities—times are changing. Rapidly. 

Now airport lounges no longer speak of a class bastion with their refined, reserved attitudes. They are, on the other hand, lively places of common people with upwardly mobile dreams and aspirations.

There are noisy crowds humming with uncontrolled gesticulations. They are dressed in their customary colourful finery. They talk and walk around freely, bump into each other, love to push the baggage trolleys, love to ogle at beautiful air hostesses. All in all, most of them are common people like us. You don't feel like an alien object among them. You feel a part of that lively throng.

You see many eager, desirous faces on the verge of tasting the skies for the very first time. Their family members troop around, fully drenched in the airport feeling of being special, shedding genuine tears for the coming months and years of separation.

Then there are seeds of class amidst this throbbing mass. They seem to be losing their class colours in all this hullabaloo. They know that this place no longer belongs to them exclusively, so they surrender to fate.

Taxis and cars arrive with full, eager force before the glass-fronted departure lounge. For every prospective passenger, there are many on board. It buzzes almost festively.

The electronic signboard showing flights—on time, delayed, check security—draws constant beams of eyes.

In bright royal-blue-coloured business suits and skirts, the air-hostess staff of a Western airline descended from a luxury bus. A dog played with them; maybe it came by the hotel bus with them.

They were plump, healthy females, full of life and courtesy. Their shiny, well-massaged, moisturized legs shone under their skirts. The dog, standing on two legs, its paws in her beautiful hands, tried to lick her rosy cheeks. I am sure there were many in the crowd who must have felt envious of the dog for bearing such luck as to be fondled by that beauty in royal blue.

One of them even flirted with the handsome-faced, small-featured and slightly built luggage boy of the bus. She even gave him a lovely pat on the cheek and a lovelier word of bye.

When a place becomes the hotspot of middle-class masses, you find chaotic streaks requiring the lawkeepers. So here as well, your attention is constantly drawn by the shrill whistles blown to direct the taxis and cars to drive away quickly after seeing off their wards. For the stubborn ones, challans are issued.

But go to any nook and corner of India, even the most luxurious place, and you are somehow made to realize that there are still masses—impoverished masses—many, many rungs below the upwardly mobile airport-lounge mass.

These are the poorest of the poor, the porters who take the trouble of easing the load of some super-rich who might not have the intention or strength to fetch a trolley for a few yards and put their baggage on it.

These poor, beggarly masses all ambled in one or sprawled on the porch before the glass front of the esteemed roof opposite the departure lounge.

Poor, hungry people, clothed poorly, treated miserably by the circumstances of life—in their torn shawls and chadors, shivering, their bodies curled up under the lashing of the cold, their knees against their bellies.

They were lying almost heaped up against each other to garner the human warmth available in one another, while the world around them, on the brightly lit stage of high-flying dreams and soaring destinations, went on with its aromatic excitement.

The milky-white world was trying to remove shadows from around, trying to undo the shadows in the nooks and corners of the airline passengers and their wards.

But all this dreamy hoopla threw its unwavering, unshadowing rays on the sleeping common mass—the amoeba of life.

The distorted, contorted, misshapen cluster of limbs.

The great rays of light failed to penetrate the fragile shell of this amoeba, the poor creature of the sea of hopes and riches.

It goes on all through the night, flight after flight, well into the other day, when the sun reclaims its lost ground. The soaring, roaring world never gets tired of its hectic speed, of its business, of its ever-flying hopes, of its glitter and clamour.

And once the real passengers enter the gates, leaving behind the mass, it appears as if they have gone into a different world.

Old Bachelor Boys and Their Changing Tides

Old bachelor boys are free floaters. They are swayed in four directions by the petty waves of circumstances, emotions, sentiments and changing winds.

Unlike the poor familywalas, who are anchored to their liabilities, tensions, pleasantries, problems and issues of children and other relations, they are voyaged instinctively by the circumstantial gusts.

I have two uncles belonging to this free-floating category.

Sometimes it can be very annoying and taxing while coping with the tsunami-like surge of their reactions, both sympathetic and irritating. But that is what being a free floater is all about.

They might lead you to the brink of craziness sometimes. For example, on occasions when, unjustifiably, you are standing vis-à-vis their relations, your relation with them is shaken precariously, because they—what else do you expect from the free floaters?—shake and sway, creating ripples around, splashing the cold water of anger, and sometimes real, unpretended hate as well, in your face.

You are left gasping for breath.

But such instinctiveness on their part should not become a lasting block of your heartbreak with them. As it stands, nothing is permanent with them.

Next time, you are sure to be drowned in the sea of sympathy and kindness. Their voices will be choked with real pain at your loss. Tears will surge in their benevolent eyes.

How can you escape being swallowed by the big tidal waves of this genuine emotion?

Such are my uncles, Uncle Jaisingh and Uncle Satbir, and such are their reactions, belonging to both ends of the emotional spectrum.

Though often problematic, it is worth savouring that emotional cocktail in the company of old bachelor uncles.

Christmas Fog and an Unhealed Wound

 December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas.

The real winter is here because we have the first foggy morning of the season—a shivering, exciting gift from the great charitable Jolly Santa.

Today, the twilight sneaked a peek through the silvery-grey, moonlit swathes of fog. Wispy waves of fog ride chillily while the great festival is celebrated all over the world.

Snow-white beard, red cap, furry coat, bag of gifts on the shoulder, reindeer sleighs—the great character symbolizes so many nice things for Christian children all over the world.

If not in the countrysides and small towns, at least in the metropolitans, the festival is celebrated with equal fervour by the new urban class, internationalized in its attitude.

“Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell” now sounds familiar from the lips of kids of all religions the world over, and it is good. After all, the children belong to all of humanity.

They like to dress up as Santa—the grown-up generous kid. Innocent flirtations, hilarity, fun and frolics.

*****

Moving on to other things.

Tomorrow, the Boxing Day Test is starting in the summer-charged atmosphere of Australia. I hope Sachin doesn't miss the three-figure mark this time. I hope he has had his fill of nineties now and will oblige us with a century further.

Recovering from the great injustice inflicted by the Honourable Supreme Court, and not even getting the time to lick my wounds, I have started to look for alternatives in the face of such gross misuse of state power.

Mine can be a classic case of turning into an anti-establishment element, but I know that in that case I will be accruing further losses because the state is too big, those in power too incorrigible.

I can write; I can't fight.

Even if I have the slightest iota of respect for myself, I should go to Bastar to join the Naxalite movement to have my little share of justice myself.

Looking at the ways in which the mightiest arm of justice was twisted into confusion by the still brawnier and more muscular strong arm of politicians, I do have genuine reasons to feel that there is no real justice under the current setup.

But it is a futile complaint because I don't have the strength to take even a single step against this wrong done to me and my batchmates by the state itself, using the dagger of constitutionality.

The way the case went in the Supreme Court, I have very strong reasons to believe that the Italian iron lady, being prompted by her chief crony in the state, had definitely something to do with it. But she will definitely have her cup of woes. Fates change in politics. Just wait and watch. Bigger political lions will settle scores for common people like us. 

The myth and cult of the Nehru family will be eaten by fast-spreading termites let loose by Mayawati for all the socially, economically and politically depressed classes. She had given enough cuts in the recent Gujarat elections to Congress and will slowly, slowly eat away the support base of the family which has, for the last sixty long years, kept the idol of the Nehru family aloft on its frail shoulders without getting any remuneration.

Curse to Congress. That's what a wounded citizen of India can do. I hope it's not illegal to vent out one's frustration against injustice. 

When the Cold Nanny Lost Her Teeth: Winters, Smog and Supermosquitoes

December 22, 2007

Winter solstice, when the sun shines over the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, far away from the Northern Hemisphere. Right there it shines overhead in the southern part of the globe to vent out its summer fury, and here it signals the pleasant fury of winters.

But of late, during the past two decades especially, the cold nanny has further lost its teeth. The winters have been checkmated by global warming.

Thus far, we have not had a single foggy day. Now, what are winters without the real fog?

Though there has been fog in Delhi, it is carried on its tepid back by the nuisance particles of pollution, and it is smog, which disrupts airlines and further wreaks havoc with the lungs of Delhiites.

Here in the countryside, a new breed of mosquitoes—the supermosquitoes—has cropped up, which still plagues our sleep. Even though the minimum temperature raised its freezing sight to three degrees Celsius one day to wipe out the remaining bloodsuckers, but they still remain.

Since the villages don't have a running sewage system, the latrine pits dot the area. Mosquitoes have now found new breeding grounds in the covered latrine tanks. They keep in touch with the outer world through the gas pipes, slipping in and out of the stinking corridors.

These new-age mosquitoes, big and black like houseflies, courageously carry the banner of their stinginess through the nights. They have chiding sneak peeks at the noses of villagers sticking out of quilts. They bite, have heat from the breath, and dance away to glory.

Many are now forced to keep their ceiling fans on at slow speed to ward off the nuisance.

All in all, the mosquitoes have become an all-year phenomenon.

The Road to Prosperity: Wheels, Rockets and the People Left Behind

October, 2005

The district road looping around our village has always been busy. Earlier, it was busier with noise than with the rhymes of smooth traffic. It was famished for two decades and cried for tar, like a thirsty dying man pining for a drop of water in a desert. It was terribly pockmarked, and the chassis, bodies and windscreens of trucks, tractors, as well as two- and three-wheelers, rattled over it.

It was a noisy, jingling affair, like a long serpentine toy, one of those jingling ones which the kids enjoy so much. The vehicles plied over it almost cursingly.

But the commencement of this new century has brought a smooth, less corrupted, less adulterated layer for the road. Advancement and fast speed demand a smooth asphalt layer on roads everywhere in India.

There has been a boom in the automobile industry: cars, cars, more cars for the upwardly mobile, then motorcycles for the lower middle classes, then mopeds for the lower classes.

The road is now busier than ever in negotiating the frictions: the dangerous propensity of rubbing shoulders between the lesser privileged and the more privileged, between cars and motorcycles, between man on foot and the hurtling metal machines.

The road now carries an added vindictive, progress-bound, revengeful, competitive air of adding more wheels under the bottoms of progress-aspiring people; adding more and more wheels to become the centipedes of the fast track, the beaters, the victorious, the triumphant czars of the new century.

The lower-middle-class couple riding on a bike, the compatible wife holding the child in one hand and the other holding the bulging belly of her husband, along with bags and packets of shopping, and the load of immense expectations and desires, goes with dangerous speed and risky nearness to accident through the spaces between big cars and trucks.

The small cars cast enviously angry looks at the big cars. The motorcycles stare at the Marutis. The Marutis give jealous daggers to the Hondas.

It is a breakneck pace. Boosted by jealousies and complexes. 

All hurtling at a furious pace to reach some unsparing life in the concrete jungle.

But this contrast between the haves and have-nots is mounting with the propensity of unsustainability. There are numerous ant-like labourers, road workers, beggars and peddlers along these serpentine paths of our progress.

It is a dangerous proposition indeed.

While the paddy, grown to full height, shows signs of yellowing around the lower end, and grains in the crowns have rice in their womb, the dangerous proximity of rising ambitions of the latter aspiring combatants goes hooting, hurtling, buzzing with blazing horns along the road, across the fields, and in cities too—in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Faridabad.

Hopes and prosperities are rocketing up with sheer vertical force.

The rocket fuel shoots up a tiny, minuscule section along with their luxurious apartments, mega malls, multiplexes, cars, computers and aircraft into the higher orbits.

The launch pad, however, is surrounded by a barren, bemoaning field crowded with masses craving for even the basic faculties of life.

The launch pad's platform is but a tiny dot on this vast, horizontally spread-out sea of deprivation—slums, rats and rodents, labour, poverty, crime, prostitution, beggary, butchery—a sea of gloom around the tiny lighthouse of prosperity.

Shadows of the shining minarets cast crosses of suffering, compromise and helplessness over the shadowy, grassy network of the teeming majority.

They look high into the man-made sun, heaven, stars, galaxies. They come in between their eyes and the real moon, which is still higher.

Crammed under this man-made cosmic world, they have lower gods, lower heavens—not needing hell, for it is around them already.

They love it for being so near, with its glitter and sheen, enough nearness to make them jumping monkeys trying to touch some finger to the bright adornments hanging down from the rich ceiling.

They hate it as well, like tiny live rogues in a sizzling hot pan.

For this inverse gravitational force makes them just helpless, puny tools, see-sawing between the earthly and manly gravitation.

Rates of property have boomed through the ceiling.

The real-estate business—the rocket—with each scheduled or unscheduled launch, makes countless souls almost crawl out of their skins to stick to it. If not able to get a seat inside, then at least to stick to some nut or bolt on the hot, shiny exterior.

Still beyond, in the famished hinterlands of states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Andhra and Odisha, the Naxalites are having potshots from too far a distance, too far for their medieval muskets, at the spacecraft of capitalism. It is like throwing darts of mud at a massive stone—ineffective.

The ideology seems almost craziness, a futility which will result in death only. They don't seem to have any future to me. Futile exercise. 

The people of the high-five class—I mean those who have climbed several profit-making rungs on the corporate ladder and thus are entitled to fill up the Page Three sheets in newspapers with their bloated, tiny world of ultra-modern gossip, fashion, house decorations, holidaying, sex and alcohol—these are exquisite people who have now started to name their younger ones after the names and characters from India's scriptural past.

The aerial view from the pedestal of their achievement is increasing in scope. In letter only, missing the spirit. They cling to ground through a few museum-kind old names, which glitter with their mythological sheen. It arouses many visions in the eyes of art curators and antique dealers.

So the great and glorified trail -- an entire tomeful of the scriptures, epics and mythological mystics -- is cut, trimmed and packaged in the form of a word to shoot the glittery, glorious future of the rich kid.

The greatness, obstructed, cut and preened to be put in an encasement, is presented to a soft, mushy life. Cut from its glorious chapter, the word is fitted into the ultra-modern chapter of a kid's book, where the only reason for its not being lost is that it is outlandish in the linguistic field where English, the mighty warrior, calls all the shots.

We have Vedanta, Harsha, Yudhishthir, Yashaswi, Dushyant, Sanskriti, etc., etc.—the names, the title heads to whole bale-fulls of mysticals of the past.

If somebody says, “What is in a name?” then he has a chance of being in the line of some indiscretion, because such names are the pallbearers of a whole era, a whole tome, a whole mythological milieu.

Stuffed inside the whole mass lies the attractive word, now living as the rich title of some innocently spoilt life.

Well, the days now have acquired a deliciously cool tinge in this late autumn. In mid-October, all the monsoonal wetness, summer's furies, winter's cold clasp, spring's helpless urge and desire—all appear to be lulled into a sort of unheeded dreaminess in which time certainly flies without any drags, if not disturbed by our seasonless breakers—that is, human intrigues and wars, ranging from the streets to the worldly stage.