The evening guest who won't have tea

Well, the sunrays are losing their pinch. And the moment they lose their hot potency, your skin pines for the warm kiss. Welcome early winters! Have been writing for my blog almost through the day. Was moving around to take a tea break in the evening. And here comes the guy, the bald Romeo who has shed his plumage. Hence bothered more about food than peahens. No spare chapati, his favourite, this evening. So I offered biscuits. He took a few unwelcoming bites. I tried wheat grains. Lo, here he is savouring his evening snack. Sad that he cannot have tea and be my tea party partner...

Some random non-offensive farts by the brain

There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliant, relatively swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our suitable share of tit-bits of truths from this sea to complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, self-consciousness, our perception of the things, our vision of the world and the people around.

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Women are humanist!! Almost perfect except one thing! Their humaneness crosses the zone of perfection and slightly touches an arena where bitchiness for their own sex starts in free flow. It is here the man's chance to appease his women opens up its welcoming arms. A man has to realise that it is more practical to say a few negatively critical remark about other women than millions of appreciating words about his woman!!

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In the burning whirlpools of the desert storm, some tears shed by a suffering heart vaporize and go high in the sky for rainy prospects. Don’t get senty guys, it’s just an airy oasis.

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Don't take victory for granted. She is a very choosy bride. She has her own, sometimes illogical, criteria to pick up the groom.

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A nuclear bomb undoes all other types of technical superiority in conventional warfare. Similarly, leaps in space technology will see a country undoing various technical superiorities in the hands of rival countries on land.

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To escape boredom, a man has to just extend his normal schedule; the same extension, which overlaps a woman's effort to tide over her boredom, turns her into a sinner.

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The best compliment for my book Faceless Gods was by my friend's six-year-old daughter. 
Struggling to hold the fat book in her small hands, and lost in the dense text, she gave the expert review, "Uncle has got a very nice handwriting."

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Truth need not be salted. Even in its bland form, it's more vocal than any well-peppered, politically correct, hypothetically safe and socially convenient cuisine.

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A day on the railway platform in a small town

A superfast trains rubles past without stopping, raising dust and many a wearied feathers. Rub of iron on iron. Pack of migrant Bihari laborers with their families descend from a not so swanky, classy train which stops at this not so illustrious district centre. Small people, they look all the same in their smallness. They carry huge sacks crammed with clothes, utensils, flour and rice--the bundle of dreams.

Linesmen are busy working on a section of rails. Vibrating sounds of hammer striking the rail chime through the cool air. Red cloth banner laid on the rails under repair, nearby a man in orange shirt, holding flags, red and green, is looking in both directions for trains on the rerouted spare tract in the centre.

Two students, going to Faridabad for exams, are fighting. Jhelum express is late. One of them is blaming the other for setting out late. The hoot of a fast train approaching. It's all rumbling iron. From the dense green foliage of the banyan by the platform number one, a squirrel is tik-tiking in some serious argument. A small portly woman clad in a dirty sari approaches the students. One of them gives her a coin and asks her to pray that they reach on time. If they get late, he will find her out in the evening and will take all her collection as a punishment. She is assured of the crowd where she can escape into anonymity, and shakes her grey, untidy, unwashed bun of hair in consent.

Platforms are a favorite place for those who have lost their minds—or who knows it is actually they who have regained theirs. A woman stares at a point for so long that you fear she will bear a hole in the ground. Smell of pakoras wafts with a pungent, oily fizz. The newspaper stall. A stationary kiosk. Under the footbridge on the platform, a shoe mender has his portion of the stomped world. Polish, wax bottles and soles define his boundary. A cargo train chugs past at a high speed which is surprising for her lethargic, old woman type bearing. The long trail of faded, beaten maroon cargo bogies raises a storm. Bored commuters, waiting for their passenger trains, look at it with jealousy.

Life seems on a mysterious pause before hitting the rails. Those who stay on the platforms rarely take bath, unless they get drenched by the rains--clothes, sweat, mud, gripe, spot and all--leaving them stinker than ever. A fat boy is standing, looking at everybody but still nobody in particular. They have their own world, those who have something to do with the functioning of the brain. Shouldn't call it malfunctioning, but ya definitely it works differently, taking them into a different world, unseen to the stomping majority around.

His bottom on a fertilizer sack cloth and knees drawn up to his chest, a man is taking deep draughts at a beedi. He is aged well beyond his real years. Looks 60, but don't be surprised if he turns out to be just 40. Poverty seems to be in love with old age. His gaunt features have acquired an unsparing penetration, a hawkish tenor, like he will jump into criminality at the slightest prompt.

And here she, he, o no he, she rather, both, comes. Many a heads turn. A boastful, proud hybrid, cocking a snook at the dirt cheap normalcy scttared around. The prince/princess of his/her world. She’he has carefree air, walking on two roles at the same time. Both males and females look at him/her with a strange curiosity. He/she moves with manly swag and feminine coquettery. The only emotion it creates in males and females is plain curiosity, even some traces of derision. Let's call him a he for convenience. He has a see through black, body-hugging top. His shoulders are masculine, in the manner these sway and swing with each step. Arms are also long, like a Greta damsels’ curvy one, but these are drawn tightly with traces of worked on muscles. He holds them like a lady of Grace. His chest is flat and would have passed of as a teenager boy’s prospects of a fulfilled manhood. He wears black track-pants having orange flowers on both bums. His legs move in a feminine rhythm. In rhythm with the swings of arms with elbows drawn in and forearms slanted out. Look from behind and you may think a slim female teen is moving. The despos may even get aroused. He is dark. His hair is also cropped midway through the length and style of a boy and a girl. Unlike, many transgenders who jump into exaggerated tones of sounding and appearing feminine, he has left his natural identify as it is, right there in the twilight, no light no dark, no shame no fame, nonchalant, lukewarm, impassive, self-absorbed. And he moves creating a wave like a snake-head creating a wavy ripple as it glides through the still waters of a lake. And most of them can't help staring, some even do with a mocking laughter.

The mother is there. Sitting like all the soot and grime has polished her misery to the extent of bleaching her bones. Her kurta and long skirt are soiled beyond the parameters of colour. Her dirty, torn at many places, dupatta is spread in front of her. A child, barely a year, is lying by her side. It is playing with a plastic cup, nibbling at its edges, touching it with its legs, taking its tiny tongue out. Wait, there is another baby, couple of months old at the most. It is packed, like it will stay safe during conveyance, only its face out. It is crying. She has put a bottle of milk to its lips. It cries anyway. Don't think she has enough milk in her bosom. A group of smartly clad college girls passes. The one with a backpack of books takes a moment out to look at the unfortunate mother. And adds to the coins on the torn duppatta.

And life simply moves on like it is doing around the globe and further into the deeper recesses of the cosmos.

The mammoth value of the small

If you can't so much as smile back at a flower's innocent, selfless offer of fragrance and beauty, I doubt your readiness and ability to laugh and roll in pleasure over the bigger boons of life. Learn to love and like the small-small charms of life. These are the building blocks which get you the largest palace of happiness and meaning in life. This palace of happiness never lies in totality. It merely lurks as the next milestone. We can never reach it. But along the way we can pick up little fragments of beauty, love and compassion which constitute the spirit of that palace of our dreams. So don't overstep a chance to light up your face with a smile. Don't miss a chance to bring the same curve of life on someone's lips who needs it. Happiness always was, and forever will, be defined by small things. The bigger things are just mirages lurking fakely over the horizon. They exist only to delude us so that we keep running and stampede over our little chance of happiness. So guys pick up your tiny fragments of happiness lying there around you. You don't have to run too far. Stay there. Smile. There are as many things in your life to be happy about as there are stars in the sky. But these are tiny, twinkling feeble with their ray of hope. These are not bombarding stars, dazzling the cosmos. Learn to love the tiny stars of your life, for they don't startle you. They just hold the tiny flicker of hope and happiness and well that's what life is. A small, hopeful, happy ray, gently twinkling, imperceptibly almost, for a journey from unknown to some vestiges of knowledge and awareness.

Honing the art of perfect 'doing': smart, suave and marketable

Need to learn the art of balanced "doing". But fall off the rope usually. Most of the time it's underdone, and the consequent target misses, falling off the mark, and more importantly the rumbling shadow of self doubt, reproach, frustration, helplessness and even cynicism. Other times, it's overdone, and its precipitous after effects, falling off the cliff with the overdrive, giving more despair than not doing at all, and resultant efforts to undo, to chip down the extra, and getting into a zone totally crazy beyond the extremes of overdoing and underdoing, landing in a zone where you no longer know whether it's a tragedy or a comedy. God when will I learn the suave art of just doing, finely balanced, perfectly nailed, expertly nuanced?