22 Jan, 2009... onwards...

I am not a person who remembers birth dates of friends and family, not at all a thing to boast I agree, but one dear friend of mine is Durgha Murugesan and her birthday falls on the 22nd January.  I am talking about this day because this date, of the year 2009, happened to be one memorable day of my life, not in a good way I tell you.

The morning felt nice and good.  I, as I used to at that time, reached office early in the morning, around  7.45 AM.  As I walked out of the rest room to my ODC, I realized my dear little mobile, that was just a 2 yr old toddler, was not in its usual cozy cradle, a little side zip in my hand bag. Though I am known for my clumsiness and carelessness, I have lost really valuable possessions only once before, in that case, a pair of floaters from lotto, and that was a theft, nothing much I could do about it you see.

So this came as an unbelievable shock.  I knew these things happen but never really thought it would happen to me.  EVER.  I mean, losing a mobile, is NOT a joke, even though it was always a subject of my friends' joke that I never bought any of those fancy and/or costly mobiles, you see, it was a 2600 Nokia basic phone, an improvement relatively (I used a Nokia 6530 earlier, the blue screen one, an object of sentiment for it was the first mobile phone in my family, my bro used it before me, a service of 5 years, before I Reluctantly replaced it, only when it's battery died, even then after having a huge debate in my head as to whether I should try and fix it but gave up at the end - blame the peer pressure...)

So I thought the day was bad, adding to the uncertainty and mental chaos, for I had been tagged to a new account and was to be interviewed and monitored for a while to be given a roles in a project (basically about to be given work) . As I went here and there around the campus and on the immediate roads off the campus of my company, to try and find my mobile, in vain, trying out various theories and canceling them constantly, I was quite exhausted mentally and of course, you guessed it, UPSET.  Still I tried hard, called up the bus depot, tried to trace the bus and in fact dropped in to the office and inquired, if there was some miraculous way I could retrieve my little one (what was I even thinking, I used to commute by Govt. Transport).

This was followed by my blocking my SIM card and obtaining a Duplicate SIM, no problems here.

But my troubles had just started, I realized soon.  I had to withdraw some 6K for I was going out of town and had some things to settle and some big expenses.  I went to the ICICI ATM, at my office cafeteria (while I had an account with HDFC, not an unusal thing).  As my luck would have it, I only got a receipt for the transaction and a poorer bank account, but NO Cash!  When I saw the money refill guys, whatever they are called, my exhausted mind illusioned me into a moment of joy and relief (refused to let my reason be heard) and led me to them, asking if they could somehow just verify that the money was still there and hence just give it to me, nice and smooth.  SOMEHOW! For I really needed that cash, else why would I choose to take it right there, from a different ATM? (Just across the road, a few meters, I had the HDFC ATM, for you see, the amount of running around and procedures involved in reverting the cash becomes exponentially reduced when it is an intra bank problem than in an inter bank issue). 

And so it began, a series of running around (for about a month or more), not to mention the nice soothing advices I had to hear from the ever caring and ever doting Family, for my carelessness.  Grrr!

This was followed by getting caught dozing in the room where we were supposed to be learning and interacting - after a tummy full of lunch and a sore mind!!!  Oh, ya and the new duplicate that SIM I had got - it wouldn't get activated due to server issues, for the next two weeks when I was away, usually done in less than 24 hours.  HA!

Well well well... So on the 22nd Jan 2010, I thought that once I get to office, I would observe two minutes of silence for my beloved mobile (I took a real long time to get over my sweetheart) and to thank my life for not giving more days from hell, like that one.  A little nag that started two days before "the day"as to what if I lost something this time too, peeked its meek head with a glint of mischief in its eyes, and I shhssd it clutching my mobile tight in my palm. 

But well, I lost my new ear phones, much to the delight of the little phantom and my dismay, in the very same fashion! - Left behind in the bus.  I couldn't believe it.  This time I knew the sequence of events that led to it and cursed myself even worse, for I had been on the improving scale for the past few months when it came to my carelessness.  And that the pair was new! (Oh, did I not mention that I had lost the ones of my new mobile (in the bus!) just about a couple of months back? Looks like this new phone has not found its soul mate earphones - blame the Paulo Coelho books-thoughts in my head, they seem to have influenced my little mobile that interacts a lot with, well, my head)
So after a lot of cursing, muttering, running out of and into, the office, in just a space of 5 minutes, being called back by the boss, I was only grateful that it was not something worse (I was determined that I would not take my laptop to office, for earlier, the little evil phantom in my head kept stealing looks at it when it thought I did not notice, but you see I had noticed, and till that morning acted like I had not and at the last minute - much to its disappointment, left it back at home.  HA! Will fight till death, you little rut...)



So that is the legend of the 22nd January.  Hope it doesn't continue, at least, doesn't worsen... I believe it will not, for you see, I seem to have lost my ear phones and done such careless things even on the other days... :P I shouldn't have added these lines, it actually nullifies the whole object the earlier paragraphs, but couldn't resist... :P

Declaration: I am not suffering from Schizophrenia... :P

the traffic... the panic...

I was standing at the crossroads looking to my right at the approaching vehicles and to my left, the traffic signal, awaiting it to turn red, so that I could cross to the other side of the road along with the few others beside me. But when I looked to my left I had to take a second look at the signal, for it was blank. I was not sure of the technicalities of the working of a traffic signal nor do I ride a two wheeler (my wicked alter ego: “snort nor drive a car of course, you don’t even know to ride a two wheeler apart from a bicycle”) so was not sure if it was normal for it to go blank for a sec or two, for the other pedestrians seemed to be unruffled by this.


I kept looking around. I had a sudden fear that one of two things would eventually happen, either the vehicles open to go, will keep going without realizing and/or the other vehicles would also move, and there would be an accident, a huge traffic jam and at the end of it all, I will either be an accident victim or be stuck up at the spot till all the chaos clears. When all this was running on my mind, I was parallely looking around to check the other signals and found to my further dismay that even they, weren’t working. Now all the funny stupid mocking self that always seems to show up when the mind is presented with a disturbing situation, just to ease out of it probably, suddenly stopped in its track. I was missing something. The traffic was moving all right, there was no chaos and to add to my confusion the vehicle flow in the direction that were on, stopped to let us, the pedestrians, cross as well as the other vehicles move. Now I looked around to check all the traffic signals, they were still blank. After having crossed I paused and looked around. Then I saw, much to the consolation of my reasoning ability, reassuring that I had not slipped into a bizzare dream in a stupor at the signal or even worse slept off standing at the zebra crossing and had had a night mare, there was the traffic cop... ;P


PS:  I know, I know, when you read it, it feels like a long time before I realized what was going on but try putting on the thought stream that flows in your mind in a space of 2 short minutes and see for yourself.  ;P

The Beard, the pale fair skin, the foreign sound to the Hindi...the FEAR...

There enters a man with a slight, grizzly beard and a dull fair skin, slightly colored (that is a very Indian way of saying not the usual black/brown colored) eyes and you instantly recognize the unmistakably Islamic look about him.

He is in formals with his work laptop slung down his shoulder and shiny shoes intact with the regular - office going joey look on. But he is on the phone and is talking in what sounds like a varied form of Hindi or, is it, wait a second now, Urdu/Arabic? Now the nagging something at the back of the minds of the post 26/11 Indian bus crowd starts to manifest into an inexplicable, obviously biased fear. IS HE...?! CUD HE BE ONE OF THEM?! You try to avert your eyes. But you do not succeed in dragging your minds away as you did your eyes. After a lot of determined efforts, you control your mind enough to just let your eyes dart back to him “occasionally” on their way to “spotting/recognizing/processing and transmitting some other visual stimuli to your brain". But the mind goes on. If you are generally not the paranoid kind it starts to lose its fear/seriousness after you have gotten comfortable with the sight of him being “harmlessly” there and it sort of becomes a joke thinking up possibilities of how “he would blow the bus up or you point your finger at the “terrorist-in-the-regular-joey-disguise” and goof up when he turns out to be a normal citizen after all. And then you proceed to laugh at the extremely hilarious Russel Peters joke that ends with the buster line “I am just listening to my instructions” with every minute detail of the expressions he accompanies the line with that adds a whole new dimension of laughter to it.

Hmm... Weird mind and its weird jokes... And oh ya, the weird and hilarious Russel Peters... ;P

PS:  I am completely aware of the fact that not many people reading this blog might agree with the line of thoughts described here but well I just had to imagine... Please no offense, my islamic/pro islamic friends.  I am not "Islamo-phobic".  I was in fact educated in a Islamic institution and am very grateful to the community for the awesome food they provided me with then and the great set of friends not just in that school but otherwise too who I am still in contact with.  This is merely a sarcastic note to all those people I have met who seem to be completely biased and even sometimes violently irrational when they need to judge a person especially when it comes to islam.

Note:  Guys I wrote this one like ages back - of course post 26/11 would have conveyed it - but was just clearing up my blogs and saw this one was still a draft.  Then said y not?  

A few lines I wrote when I thought what would I say when I actually meet... May be this, may be not...

When I thought my life had drained out
       When I felt like a saint in an emotional turmoil

When I thought I had lost my last chance
       When I felt like a lost wanderer

I found you...

When I resigned to the fact that I'm alone
       When I had finally settled (for a) into a single skin

When I reserved my romances aside
       When I had decided to give up trying

I found you...

When I thought I'm probably better off on my own
       When I felt like I'm better when left alone

When I wished the world away
       When I drowned my soul in the shadow of my self

I found you...

When I had found the courage to run the road all alone
       When I had got around the idea of me, myself for eternity

When I convinced my heart to confide in none
       When I talked my tears into giving in to gravity (read: not expecting to be caught...)

I found you...

The bridge, the cliff and the gorge...

I was scared too... there was the cliff in front of me...  A narrow gorge...
A slender pane of wooden bridge connecting the two...
The depth below was appalling
I had to walk there without any support or railing...
I was standing there and looking at it with all my concentration trying to swallow my alto phobia and vertigo...
There was a rush and enthusiasm which was helping me, for I knew I had traveled far and wide to get here.
A journey no less taxing than the one I am faced with, may be even more...
There was the land I had wanted to reach, stretching vast, just across the cliff... My destination and may be even destiny, I hoped... For if it was the latter I am sure I would reach it, no matter what I believed...
But then, the crowd behind me were catcalling and jeering...
In the hopes of making me stay back, and not take this risk, they could not afford to lose me... The irony of it, for the means they were employing were not good, not good at all...
I had to take a deep breath... Before going on... But in all that stillness and silence, I could hear their taunts clearly...
The land across is foreign, ur mission inappropriate for a person of your potential, you would never succeed in accomplishing it, let alone crossing the bridge...
You don't even have a walking stick to balance you just in case, let alone a railing on the bridge...

That made me pause... The words were slowly trickling in, percolating into the gaps called self doubt in my made up mind...
I started to have second thoughts... Damn, I thought...
I should have bought a stick on my way here, like all those people who did...

Slowly I looked at them... They were threatening, pleading, staring, but always keeping a distance... But I was blind then, blind to have noted that distance, that give away... I could have done it... Damn those little gaps...

Now, I have turned back and traveled far... Traveled parallel to that cliff... I still see it... There are so many such bridges here and there... Waiting for me to take it one day... Still I have not bought myself a walking stick... But I know, it doesn't matter... I could have done it without it...

May be one day... May be not...

Incomplete - 7

I like the sun on me...
I like the drizzle of the rain on my face...
I like the breeze on my hair...
I like the warm of the fire...

I like the pale of the moon light...
I like the shade of a lonely tree...
I like the chill of the ground i squat on...
I like the still of the sand and earth...