the prodigal child

i have no reason to feel good about myself. what, pray, is my contribution to the society. yet another directionless human being, thriving on the feeling of entitlement. the next raise, the next el dorado of a job, the next palm full of star dust by my pillow, all that gliteratti...yes thats what life has become.. i read about this young woman, works in my big jazzy salt mine, who inspite of being an abandoned destitute, managed to educate herself, who though hails from an orphange herself, yet has a big heart of gold, sharing and supporting the younger girls who are in need themselves in the same orphange which she grew up in. i was in that orphange for a few hours in view to a mandate and sudden "do- good act" of my great heralded portal of work. when will i stop looking for wind beneath my wings but start being the wind for someone else... petty world, this world of mine, everyday i feel some more of good, whatever little, eroding and at a very fast pace. i am at the brink of losing all humanity, how can you blame me ...i only get to see some more sycophancy, some more obsequousness, some more malignancy. the same Uraih Heeps get it all, get it remorselessly, get it like a long promised entitlement. philosophy they say is for those who have time to think because winners dont...they are doers... mechanical doers, the next kill the next jugular...thats the thirst and these people i love despising need to slake it... its like an infection...it kills you if you go against it or adopts you to be the next progigal child...... is my dislike for these Uriahs a lingering stench of my failure or is it my cue to look for a dimension which they can never afford to offer me or further still is it a plain platform of feeling good about myself........

mitra sometimes u just drop by

Mitra, at times in moments of reluctance and unacceptance, I feel u draggin your lazy feet, almost screaming for being disturbed, standing behind. and i can sense ur nervous flighty self, oddly which has calmimg effects. i can hear u telling me- it matters or what? your funny hinglish!!! then u walk away, drift away. u have some thing to munch on i guess and u being the slow poke need to chew for hours...look at me, i dont even have the proprietary to be angry or irate as u walk away... its ur way, i guess??!!??

the tapri

he rescued an old flask, gathering dust, from a forgotten corner!!! and rinsed it. he donned his old straw yoga slippers, took a 10 rupee note, and slowly walked out the door. i was on my phone talking. i must have talked for 10 min and then he returned, sat down in the ricketty wooden Saharanpuri chain in the small terrace and sipped his tea. i came and rested my hand on his shoulders...he said he went and got some tea, made of tea powder from the tapri, a few yards further from our stark white apartment complex. he sipped it and i fell...well good somehow...simple things left simple

if only Siddhartha was here!!

i find it so ugly, so putrid. this vast collective feeling of negativity. everyone at the salt mine hate their work. hate people. hate the system. hate!! so much of hate my god! motivation is rock bottom. they all, i included, wait for the whistle to blow so they could move on. keep acting and keep eroding. somewhere in the personal account of a whore i had read how every act of paid carnal degraded the protagonist more, made her slump more, got her to a state of denial. i guess every time my brethren , i included, move for greener pastures, somehow unwittingly undergo the same pain, except instead of a man sullying a woman it is fate sullying us! sometimes despair seems to be too small a word to describe....... at other times it seems foolish to despair...anti-despair called hope crops up. ...and i want to believe in Siddartha more when in despair than when i conceive hope. if Siddhartha was here i would have asked ...why this despair? he would have smiled and said its a by product. we call it pain, god calls in cleansing, physics may call it balancing. whatever it is, it snaps ur thread of imagined flight and brings u back to the ground of reality....despair

Good morning!!!!

Some days are good days. Such days do not bring in their tiding some good news or some great gifts. They are plain good. Like hot chicken soup on a rainy, cold day. The weather just may play a part as well. It is salubrious today. But really at the core of such days lie peace. Bonhomie. A coming in terms with irregularities. Irregularities one faces from relationships or from the society or from one of the many fabrics of interaction that clothe our day to day living. Such days make one almost understand what Buddha really tries to tell. Understand what an old widow may want to teach. Understand the smile of a child woken from the sweetest sleep. Come unto in peace. Where forgiving is not an agenda because there is no dark anger. Such days nor want in their wake any apologies. You want to shrug off that huge baggage of guilt you carry along, that pretty dispensable abhorrent dead weight. You may have wished someone good morning and that person may have been sleep washed but talks to you from the soul and you feel good. Or it may be your spouse leaving early at day break for someplace in a jet plane and you wake up on wet morning to brew some tea for him, fighting sleep and the urge to cuddle back again. And sleepily kiss your spouse good bye. Or a good friend thrilled at getting some snacks and some basic food you cooked for her because she is a little under the weather. Irrespective. In small measures of give and take, some days are good days. Today is such a day!

Good morning!!!

Fixation: Part I

Little Washedup with Veena Chachi

When I first discovered that breasts held me captive, I was a mere lad of 7. Veena Chachi , my paternal aunt from Delhi, was visiting us in Bangalore. My mother, a harassed, young looking army wife, much raved and ranted of Veena Chachi's impending visit. After all, she was never pleased easily with orange squash from the army canteen or the regular samosas and talked too much. The fact that her two children were a little hazardous to my Mom’s dinner wagon of precious Siliguri crystals dint thaw my Mother much either. Veena Chachi belonged to a rich "South Daali" business family that traded in jewellery. She personified Dillipan so well : Lazy, loud, be-jewelled, shrewd and totally humongous that she almost looked like a beached whale. My petite, cotton sari clad, pearl string donned mother almost looked like a severe school matron in comparison to Veena Chachi . My two cousins, her two children , were little “Dilli-bubbas”: whining, competitive and destructive.. Veena Chachi had ample breasts that bordered more on being “obscenely generous” than on being “well endowed”. I am not too sure if I ogled at them too much, but I surely got to feel them a lot. Oh no. Not what you think. Back then the Pervert Quotient was very low in me, and I could not even imagine cupping, or should I say , arming them. It’s just that Veena Chachi petted me a lot, hugged me a lot and always clutched on to me. She would pluck me from my study table, tell her two impossible kids to “simmer down” and make me sit on her lap and talk for hours. That would ensure two things, first, her not having to help Ma in the kitchen and second, worm out dirty family secrets like if Pa drunk a lot or if Ma partied a lot or in any “Uncle” came about in Pa’s absence. She would drag me to the guest room, would lie on the bed talking, rest on one hand, turn on one side, keep telling her kids to simmer down like they were a rabbit stew and pretty soon snore away to oblivion.

And as she would sleep, I would cuddle up next to her to avoid her two bratty children. They always beat me up. Also this tactic worked well for me because Ma could not bulldoze me into stupid home work. And while she slept, Veena Chachi's big bosom would heave up and down, like gigantic water lions hobbling on the beaches. I would lie next to her, very close and would try not to look at the bright magenta brassiere that peeked out of her yellow top. I would wonder why Ma would wear those boring white ones. Occasional black ones but generally tame white ones. Sighing at the wonderment heaving up and down in front of me and confused at the difference between Ma's choice of lingerie and Veena Chachi’s, I would drift away to la-la-land as well

do the math floozie!!!

mba mitigates risk. u get a job. u get paid. become another coca-cola bottle, lady luck may appoint u a prodigal child and u may appear in CNN live or in WSJ or in ET, but hey its like the government bond. low risk low return.

i flirt with "what if i quit the rat race and write a book". that means i then go to Davidar from Penguin and see how can i get my book published. and well, wait, what then, I also walk in as another one to give him a run around?...he writes and publishes too. wont i be another threat. what am i worth to him really? and more importantly, then what do i write as my eulogy - consulting background, married and lives with her husband and money plants on 8th floor in Kondapur, Hyderabad? where is the Oxford? where is the Mumbai or New York? and imagine my "Blah Blah" titled book next to "Etc. etc." by Rushdie, Seth, Pamuk and Lessing...not to forget Huxley!! who will read me?

see thats why an mba....low risk low return...shut the gob and do the dhanda, like the great Cornflakes Toad!!!

It ain't easy no where, darling!!!

consulting sucks. especially if u are a woman. and a married one at that. office work gets endless. home gets tiring with spoilt spouses who become suddenly juvenile after marriage and maids not turning up. nothing else is so bad. or so i thought. till recently one of my maths faculties in my GMAT coaching institute told me her schedule of 18-hours day. she leaves home at 5.30 am and reaches back at 8.30 pm to find kids hungry and wailing and the husband on the computer playing some game. as she asks him why the kids went hungry, she gets a screaming match. she gets a day off a week. never a saturday or sunday and never off on a holiday. whoever said life is fair. yet day in and day out , so many of us GMAT aspirants try re-schedule timings coz we have some work threads to be taken care of. and she relents. just this morning with GMAT 4 weeks away I was hyper-ventilating, and she re-assured that with her around, things should be smoothe for me. i just hope she has that kind of a mentor too!!

da da da da...duh!!!

its morning half passed five. everyone's asleep. i just made some red tea. i added a cinnamon bark to it. i like it sugarless. i slide the terrace door and gingerly step out on the terrace. i breathe in the wet morning. the lazy "aama miah" rain in hyderabad is so refreshing. the money plant needs some pruning and i can only half heartedly blame my procastination. its so not in my list of things to be honest. i sip my tea and lean across the railing. in B603 i see Mrs Upadhyay. Bunned. Saree carelessly draped and a red bindi. the bengali shakha. in her 60's .lean and hard. she sits on the white garden chair, sipping her tea too. looking through the thick famed glasses. i guess the servant boy is not more than 12. he gets her something in a bowl. i see her setting it down on the little table hidden behind the unkempt foliage of her terrace. then she does something that enraptures me. a very normal act but magical. she un-buns her hair, loosens them, lets them lazily fall and cascade down. from this distance i cant see the grey strands, but i have seen her strolling around the apartment complex. there are ample greys. she dips her finger tips into the bowl and gently runs through her scalp. she oils her hair slowly. deliberately. my tea is finished. i need to go in as the day beckons me. i just found the whole act soothing. very different from my quick ministrations.

o jeeeeeeeeez..

i caught Ahem digging something. nose! i would and should have been grossed out. but i was not. why? i was enthralled by the expression of intense concentration. the utter bliss at locating the itchy malicious culprit, Iggy. Our digger did what i expected ... took out Iggy, looked at Iggy dispationnately, rolled Iggy between the fingers and let Iggy roll away on the soft carpeted floor of the mnc office space. till Miss Stilts passed by, perhaps having just crushed Iggy mercilessly under those profanely expensive shoes, smiled at Ahem, shook hands with Ahem and said " Good Morning"