Sleep seeps into my eyes
The bitch, how I missed her last night
As I toodle between yawns and sighs
A blanket comes and covers my eyes
Oh, how I dreamt of that long lost girl
That pink necklace with a singular pearl
That misty night, the boat in the lake
The call of the wild, and me lying awake
And then I see a light in the dark
I get ready for the enemy's attack
But then I saw that it was her
Hey! Fighting beauty was not my knack
We made love till early dawn
And then she slipped away, a white, serene swan
I woke up too late, and I woke up alone
My eyes seeked her presence, but she was long gone
And then I heard a shrill bell ring
I woke up wit a start, my head still on wings
The classroom was empty, once again I was alone
My sole companions were my notebook and my phone
NOTE: Writing poems is not my cup of tea. But this was actually written in the classroom last term during a boring lecture, just to keep sleep at bay as the concerned prof. used to feel very offended if he caught someone sleeping in the class
Monday, June 25, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Paper Boat
The clouds looked menacing in the distance. The hills that normally looked like blue sentinels guarding the bustling city of Guwahati were already hazy, meaning that the rain had begun there. The needle of the odometer of my trusted bike edged towards the 90 mark as I raced against the clouds and hence the rain, hoping to make it to my home before the rains caught up with me – more so because when it rains in Guwahati, it pours, for days, sometimes weeks.
My earliest memory of the monsoons is that of making paper boats and placing them gently on the puddles outside my home. We used to live in a small town called Bongaigaon then as my Dad was posted there. A really small town a couple of hundred kilometres away from the capital city of Guwahati, its only claim to fame being home to a huge tea estate and, later on, the hub of most Bodo insurgencies.
Many an afternoon had been spent egging the boats to make it to the other side of the puddle which was wide enough more me not to be able to jump across it at that early age of 4. I also remember the snails that would come out in the open, the sound of the toads that would croak for the whole night, for consecutive nights in the nearby marsh, and the horde of insects and other living forms that would come to life after the rains.
That was two decades ago. As I remember those days, the pictures in my memory look like snapshots from another age, a black and white movie of Satyajit Ray perhaps. Last year, I was driving from my birth place in Assam to Guwahati after meeting my ageing paternal uncles and aunts – a distance of 300 kilometres. Something on the way made me take a small diversion of 30 kilometres that took me to Bongaigaon. My first visit to the place where my initial years were spent in 15 years. Like everything and everyone around us, the place had changed as well. All the roads were paved now, and a great deal wider. The people seemed to walk on the roads with a purpose. A number of new shops had come up. And yeah!! It wasn’t raining. I drove slowly through the street on which the house was where I used to stay. It was shut down, and the small field in front of it looked like it had not seen a trim in six months. I stepped out of the car, opened the iron gate and gingerly made my way through the field, careful not to step on any snakes or scorpions. Even though the walls and the doors could do with a fresh coat of paint, I could see that the landlord had changed the colours – from green walls and blue doors & windows to light yellow walls and brown doors & windows, which meant that my chalk drawings on one of the doors was gone for ever. Suddenly I felt a sting at the back of my eye balls and could see my vision blurring. I knew that this was probably the last time I was standing there. I was about to leave in a few days for my MBA course to begin and I knew that my career would take me places, but Bongaigaon certainly didn’t figure in that list of places. I wondered about my little friends – with whom I used to play in that very field – where must they be now.
I got back into the car but still kept thinking of those friends. And of all the friends that I have made since then. Not been in touch with many of them since years. Is life really like a train journey and friends just co-passengers who get down at their destinations, never to be seen again? Gripping the wheel, I gazed into the distance lost in such thoughts when suddenly, without warning, the heavens opened up. And something made me make a paper boat using the photocopy of the car insurance. I still have that paper boat with me, it reminds me of that unplanned trip into memory that June afternoon in 2006.
My earliest memory of the monsoons is that of making paper boats and placing them gently on the puddles outside my home. We used to live in a small town called Bongaigaon then as my Dad was posted there. A really small town a couple of hundred kilometres away from the capital city of Guwahati, its only claim to fame being home to a huge tea estate and, later on, the hub of most Bodo insurgencies.
Many an afternoon had been spent egging the boats to make it to the other side of the puddle which was wide enough more me not to be able to jump across it at that early age of 4. I also remember the snails that would come out in the open, the sound of the toads that would croak for the whole night, for consecutive nights in the nearby marsh, and the horde of insects and other living forms that would come to life after the rains.
That was two decades ago. As I remember those days, the pictures in my memory look like snapshots from another age, a black and white movie of Satyajit Ray perhaps. Last year, I was driving from my birth place in Assam to Guwahati after meeting my ageing paternal uncles and aunts – a distance of 300 kilometres. Something on the way made me take a small diversion of 30 kilometres that took me to Bongaigaon. My first visit to the place where my initial years were spent in 15 years. Like everything and everyone around us, the place had changed as well. All the roads were paved now, and a great deal wider. The people seemed to walk on the roads with a purpose. A number of new shops had come up. And yeah!! It wasn’t raining. I drove slowly through the street on which the house was where I used to stay. It was shut down, and the small field in front of it looked like it had not seen a trim in six months. I stepped out of the car, opened the iron gate and gingerly made my way through the field, careful not to step on any snakes or scorpions. Even though the walls and the doors could do with a fresh coat of paint, I could see that the landlord had changed the colours – from green walls and blue doors & windows to light yellow walls and brown doors & windows, which meant that my chalk drawings on one of the doors was gone for ever. Suddenly I felt a sting at the back of my eye balls and could see my vision blurring. I knew that this was probably the last time I was standing there. I was about to leave in a few days for my MBA course to begin and I knew that my career would take me places, but Bongaigaon certainly didn’t figure in that list of places. I wondered about my little friends – with whom I used to play in that very field – where must they be now.
I got back into the car but still kept thinking of those friends. And of all the friends that I have made since then. Not been in touch with many of them since years. Is life really like a train journey and friends just co-passengers who get down at their destinations, never to be seen again? Gripping the wheel, I gazed into the distance lost in such thoughts when suddenly, without warning, the heavens opened up. And something made me make a paper boat using the photocopy of the car insurance. I still have that paper boat with me, it reminds me of that unplanned trip into memory that June afternoon in 2006.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Meter Down
I have a strong dislike towards riding autos since a long time. I have always felt it to be an unnecessary indulgence. However, the illegible routes written in Kannada on the public buses coupled with a new found sense of laziness made me take the seemingly easier option more than a couple of times, specially on weekends. The auto rides would go on to form an integral part of my memory of the last two months here in Bangalore. And here are a few reasons why.
Auto rides in Bangalore can have an ending as surprising an O Henry short story. A ride from BTM to my sister’s house where I was put up would cost me anything between 32 to 50 bucks. “Strictly by meter sir.” But the fact that surprised me the most on each of the auto rides was that I always managed to reach home unscratched. I had the reputation in my engineering days of being the safest rough biker in college, but often the manoeuvres of the auto rider would often have me gripping the rods in front of me tightly and tightening every single muscle of the body in anticipation of that inevitable crash.
Auto drivers in Bangalore are also wont towards striking off a conversation with the passengers. Often I had to sit the entire stretch from Banashankari to Silk Board, with the driver blabbering away in incomprehensible Kannada, and me just murmuring haan or nahi, (yes or no), the choice made absolutely at random. On some unfortunate occasions, I would encounter a driver who knew a little bit of Hindi. Unfortunate because he would expect me to make proper comments rather than the random yes and no.
One day, while I’m keeping a close look at the meter, trying to determine if its running too fast, the autowaala’s voice breaks my concentration. “I want to have a job. A proper job. A helper in the canteen of an IT company maybe. I am not getting a girl to marry. Everyone rejects me. Even though I earn more than what a helper in the canteen of an IT company does, no one wants to marry his daughter off to an autowaala.” His last sentence confirms my fears about a rigged meter. But the mention of my favourite topic for discussion (marriage) gets me distracted. “Why do you want to get married? An extra mouth to feed, maybe a couple more in 3-4 years. Spend the money that you are earning on yourself, and enjoy life.” The autowaala replies something inaudible amongst the multitude of sounds of the traffic outside, and I know better than to ask him to repeat.
Another day, an autowaala asks me my salary. Not sure what to answer, since my sister had warned me against auto waalas who “take you to deserted places and then rob you at knife point. It happened to a software engineer last week, you know”, I flick open my cell phone, excuse myself and call up an imaginary number again and again, with an expression of disgust at the jammed network of Hutch that evening.
My sister’s warning actually turned out to be a source of amusement in the auto rides where the drivers turned out to be reserved. When not shutting my eyes at the view of a fast approaching Volvo from the other side on a collision course which the driver averts with a deft left-right of the handle, I imagine the auto waala suddenly stopping the auto, flipping out a knife and asking me for all my valuables (“they take your ATM card, will make you reveal the PIN and then withdraw all the cash, you know”). I would then plan out the exit route (lesson learnt after reading “The Bourne Trilogy” years ago – Rule No. 1 - Always plan your exit route) The exit route planned would depend on the physique of the auto waala. Since all the auto waalas in Bangalore, and I dare say Southern India, sport a commendable paunch, my favoured route of exit was always to run away as fast as possible as soon as the auto made an unscheduled stop. I often still wonder why that unfortunate software engineer who got robbed last week didn’t think of the same plan. Ah! He didn’t have a sister like me I guess, who could warn him off.
Auto rides in Bangalore can have an ending as surprising an O Henry short story. A ride from BTM to my sister’s house where I was put up would cost me anything between 32 to 50 bucks. “Strictly by meter sir.” But the fact that surprised me the most on each of the auto rides was that I always managed to reach home unscratched. I had the reputation in my engineering days of being the safest rough biker in college, but often the manoeuvres of the auto rider would often have me gripping the rods in front of me tightly and tightening every single muscle of the body in anticipation of that inevitable crash.
Auto drivers in Bangalore are also wont towards striking off a conversation with the passengers. Often I had to sit the entire stretch from Banashankari to Silk Board, with the driver blabbering away in incomprehensible Kannada, and me just murmuring haan or nahi, (yes or no), the choice made absolutely at random. On some unfortunate occasions, I would encounter a driver who knew a little bit of Hindi. Unfortunate because he would expect me to make proper comments rather than the random yes and no.
One day, while I’m keeping a close look at the meter, trying to determine if its running too fast, the autowaala’s voice breaks my concentration. “I want to have a job. A proper job. A helper in the canteen of an IT company maybe. I am not getting a girl to marry. Everyone rejects me. Even though I earn more than what a helper in the canteen of an IT company does, no one wants to marry his daughter off to an autowaala.” His last sentence confirms my fears about a rigged meter. But the mention of my favourite topic for discussion (marriage) gets me distracted. “Why do you want to get married? An extra mouth to feed, maybe a couple more in 3-4 years. Spend the money that you are earning on yourself, and enjoy life.” The autowaala replies something inaudible amongst the multitude of sounds of the traffic outside, and I know better than to ask him to repeat.
Another day, an autowaala asks me my salary. Not sure what to answer, since my sister had warned me against auto waalas who “take you to deserted places and then rob you at knife point. It happened to a software engineer last week, you know”, I flick open my cell phone, excuse myself and call up an imaginary number again and again, with an expression of disgust at the jammed network of Hutch that evening.
My sister’s warning actually turned out to be a source of amusement in the auto rides where the drivers turned out to be reserved. When not shutting my eyes at the view of a fast approaching Volvo from the other side on a collision course which the driver averts with a deft left-right of the handle, I imagine the auto waala suddenly stopping the auto, flipping out a knife and asking me for all my valuables (“they take your ATM card, will make you reveal the PIN and then withdraw all the cash, you know”). I would then plan out the exit route (lesson learnt after reading “The Bourne Trilogy” years ago – Rule No. 1 - Always plan your exit route) The exit route planned would depend on the physique of the auto waala. Since all the auto waalas in Bangalore, and I dare say Southern India, sport a commendable paunch, my favoured route of exit was always to run away as fast as possible as soon as the auto made an unscheduled stop. I often still wonder why that unfortunate software engineer who got robbed last week didn’t think of the same plan. Ah! He didn’t have a sister like me I guess, who could warn him off.
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