Thots

Success is doing what you want to do, most of the times.

Is it ok to steal the crutches in the jootaa-churaayee when the dulha is lame? If yes, where do they hide them? The traditonal mithai box is of course ruled out here.

Never kiss a gift horse in the mouth.

If they have a world record for the longest hair around the nipples, or in the armpits, I don't want to know it!

Before cutting the crap, do you have to blow out the candles first?

Tremors

I wrote about a horrible dream today I had had some months ago - the face of an old estranged friend, dead in the dream, and features screwed around a bullet entering the eye (I think I had seen a gruesome encounter picture in the papers that morning). Recalling that dream did not make it easy once I got up from my seat at around 1:45 AM in a silent and empty 3-bedroom flat. The fact that to enhance the imagery, I had been looking at images of people with their faces full of lead did not really help.

I collapsed on the bed, and realised that my hand, resting on a knee, was shaking. In fact, the bed was shaking. Some years ago, I had what can only be called a fit, a singular case, but I have never been sure of these things since. Something like sitting in a train and watching another move and the doubt whether it's us in motion (rather, the train we sit on) or the other train.

I pulled my jeans (an unfortunate habit I have if attacked by some monsters hiding under the bed) and stumbled outside. The building silent and eerie in its whitewashed emptiness. I touched the edge of the balcony facing the lift and felt the tremor again. Again, I was not sure.

I started climbing down the stairs, and found a couple standing with a child on the landing below my floor. The man, bare-chested, and wearing a vesthi or a pajama (I don't remember), started telling me about the dangers of using a staircase (so it was an earthquake!) and I walked back to my room, shutting three doors in between.

O, to see a face in these godforsaken empty hours.

2 states and 1 UT

After a long time, I am reading - or rather trying to find some time. Every day, for half an hour, I read, aloud for most of the time, McEwan's Amsterdam and Banville's The Book of Evidence. It reminds me of Carlin's grandfather (I think), whom he spoke of, who wrote all of Shakespeare to savour him all the more.

It was McEwan's Atonement perhaps more than any other book which triggered my reading five years back. I have heard some people associate these novels with cold intellectualism but it is the bungling and erring human element which more than anything underlines them. Of all the mediums, literary fiction alone has the power to capture to the finest detail the almost invisible littleness of moods and whims, the stray kindnesses, the random cruelties, the imagined offences, the memories of beauty (I lift this phrase from Amsterdam) which make us more than the grand milestones of even the good (auto)biograpies.

Talking about books, apparently Chetan Bhagat is now onto his fourth novel - sure to stay on the top of the charts for a few months.

With the pace with which he is churning books (where does he find those eight hours?!) and the rate people are reading there would come a time when all the bookstores will only be filled with CBs and all the gRls and boyZ wLl b hnGng arNd thr, drooling from the end of their mouths. It will be a time when the show with the highest rating would be Rakhi Sawant picking her ass, Salman Khan's movies will be considered too arty and KJohar will be up for the Dada Saheb.

The synopsis for the book, 2 States, goes like:

Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married.

In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl's family has to love boy. Boy's family has to love girl.
Girl's Family has to love Boy's Family. Boy's family has to love girl's family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.

Luckily I was wearing my shades as the flash of genius and wit nearly blinded me here.

Actually, there are still more steps, CB.

Girl's family runs a video store. Boy's family pierces nipples.

Girl's papa is a closet homosexual. Boy's mama is klepto.

Girl's papa rapes boy (in a Union Territory). Boy's mama steals the used condom.

Girl's family films the rape. Boy's father buys the video.

Girl's mama shags the boy's father as he watches the video. Boy's mama steals the VCR.

But...

Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.

Though the girl insists on playing the male lead, using a strap-on dildo.

The novel ends in the evocative and romantic scene of their wedding night. The girl takes a woeful look at the ripped O of the boy (pictured poignantly as lying on his back and spreading his hairy legs, the red welts where the brute had gripped and pinned him still showing, for the girl), clucks her tongue and shakes her head; the beautiful mane the boy had first seen in the second chapter, and described as a mass of silk curtain ( another original CBian metaphor), bouncing lightly on her shoulders.

'Well', she reaches for the strap-on, 'I am sorry for what my father did to you.' Strap-on in place. 'You should have seen what he did to my Sanskrit tutor.' The girl edges to the bed and the boy, his eyes widening in horror brings his legs back together (too late!) and pleads in sobs. 'But know what -', the girl grips the boys legs and tears them apart, 'It is too beautiful a hole to let the turds have it alone.' The girl pushes and the boy howls.

And they lived happily ever after.

A treat

Yesterday, a colleague of mine got a promotion. I got to know of it in the evening when I caught up with him reading the letter.
A couple of years ago, this very person, a silent chap, had bought a car – his first I believe – and just like yesterday, I happened to be standing in the parking lot when he was taking the possession. I saw him take the possession awkwardly, an embarrassed rictus in reply to the effusive delivery person in the lookout for some baksheesh, and then walk away.
A couple of days later, I caught up with him and asked him if he’d celebrated that night.
‘No.’
‘Did you tell (I realized I didn’t know anything about his family or whether he lived with them) anyone?’
‘No.’

Yesterday, it was already late evening when I caught up with him. This guy is pretty senior and was actually working on a surprisingly junior role and hence the promotion was more like a correction.

‘So what are you planning to do?’
‘Nothing’, he shrugged.

Since he had to leave early, this time, I made him drive us to the nearby market and share a plate of momos.