Jackie’s a very dear friend from Singapore. She’s an Indophile; she loves everything about India, unconditionally. I keep telling her that she should marry an Indian guy and move here. Maybe one day I’ll trick her into marrying me. Anyway, when I was in Singapore, she’d take me to eat to some choice places, and she once bought me heaven on a plate – sticky date pudding at Tanglin Mall. Aside from feeding me, writing professionally kept her (and still keeps her) busy. She often travels to interesting places and writes about them for a Singaporean women’s magazine called ‘Her World’. She sends me a copy every time she writes about India. Or about impatient, stubborn, immodest, unreasonable, stupid, ugly, unshaven, fuckwitted men with hairy legs and smelly feet. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something.

So anyway, she went to Kerala and man, she wrote beautifully about the place. She sent me a copy, and I kept the article to use as a ready reckoner when I go there.

But as I was flipping through the rest of the magazine, I saw them.

Two innocuous looking things, stuck to the page, protruding invitingly.

I touched them. Squishy. Nice colours, pink and yellow. I thought of taking them out. Shook my head. Shit, dude. They’re for WOMEN, for chrissake. Brrrrrrr. Shake your head. Did a girly thing, listen to Metallica to feel all bad-tempered foul-mouthed, manly-like again. And please, keep the squishies away. Sheesh.

The next morning, I had to take them out. I ran out of soap, and well, had no choice but to use those samples for Palmolive Shower Gel.

Oh. My. God.

I cannot describe it. Best shower I ever had. Lathers beautifully, fragrance is terrific, and you dont have to get down on your knees and hunt for it all over the bathroom floor coz it doesnt slip out of your palms when your face is all lathered up, like soap does.

So today, I went and bought myself a whole bottle of shower gel.

First after shave lotion, and now this.

I’m turning into a metrosexual, and its all Jackie’s fault.

Today, my father told me, for the umpteenth time, the story of how he and ma took my sister Gunjan to watch Sholay at Maratha Mandir, when she was just 1 year old. I know it word for word now, they had taken two bottles of milk – one lukewarm and one boiling hot (for later). Gunjan devoured the first bottle upon reaching and devoured the second bottle as soon as the movie ended. And between the two, she watched the movie intently, even as my parents watched her intently, expecting her to break out into one of those embarrassing irritating-baby-in-theatre crying fits. Which eventually didn’t happen. The story ended the same way as it always does, ‘Do saal baad main aur teri mummy vaapis tum dono ko Sholay dikhane le gaye. Wo teri bhi pehli film thi.’

That was 29 years ago. And everytime I hear that story I find myself imagining Gunjan as a one year old, sitting in ma’s lap; wide-eyed and open mouthed, staring agape at the screen. It’s not hard to visualise, because I have tons of pictures of us growing up. When we were little, she was the gawky looking one and I was the fair, cute kid. We swapped these physical attributes in teenage, but that’s a different story.

When I see my nephews today I find it extremely difficult to cope with how much time has gone by and how things have changed. There is so much I want to protect them from, but I know I can’t. My older nephew is the strong, silent type. He can talk utter nonsense and it will still make sense in a strange way. He’s very creative, a gifted artist. Like me, he’s a dreamer. And it worries me to think that he will have to fight very hard to see his dreams through. Even when he’s doodling aimlessly, or racking his brain on a math sum, or looking up at the moon in a dark night, I see the passion in his eyes, an earnestness that’s so strong, it’s overpowering. I see Life on his face, and I get worried coz I know that there is so much he has to learn and go through as long as his maturity is a work in progress.

The little one is the exact opposite. His relentless energy makes you feel that Gunjan fed him steroids when he was born. But even in his insanity and endless enthusiasm for everything, there is a fragility that unnerves me. Somehow, watching him slowly walk to his classroom, constantly looking back at me, left a bittersweet pain inside. Why I felt lost to see him walk all alone like that, why I cringed when he lost his footing and fell down, only to promptly get up, dust himself and walk on.

Maybe one day I’ll come to terms with being loved by them for being just what I am, their mama. Maybe one day I’ll come to terms with the fact that they will stumble and slide and fall and pick themselves up as they grow up. Maybe one day I’ll allow myself to let go of my own fears for them, and stop trying to comprehend the lives they will lead.

Maybe things will come full circle for me if they sat and watched Sholay with me, for old time’s sake.

Did you know that Calcutta airport has more toilets than conveyor belts? I guess baggage control is easier to exercise than bladder control.

A retailer in Calcutta has found a foolproof way to score with women. Sadly I was on my way to the airport and couldn’t stop and enquire further – all I saw was ‘Sunidhi Sarees … Here women never say no.’

The cabbies in Calcutta are amusingly inquisitive.

‘Pantaloon Gariahat kyun jaata hai’?
‘Dost se milne’.
‘Lekin woh toh ‘jama-pant’ ka dukan hai’.
‘Woh bhi lena hai.’
‘Vaapis kab jayega?’
‘Do ghante mein’.
‘Jama pant lene ko 2 ghanta kyun lagega?’

Another time, I was being driven to Kidderpore and I hit a patch of smooth road, probably the only one in Calcutta. Before I could quip about it, the driver quips ‘Yeh road ka neeche metro chalta hai’. Impressive, I thought. ‘Service achha hai?’ The driver laughed. ‘Arrey, Metro sirf ek cheez ke liye achha hai. Suicide karne ke liye. Jab dekho koi dukhi aadmi train ke aage kood jaata hai, aur phir poore din ke liye Metro bund.’

My return 4:45 pm Sahara flight got delayed and they put us on an Indian Airlines flight instead. There was this Ashmit Patel wannabe with a Riya Sen wannabe on his arm, who swaggered up to the Sahara check in counter just as I was walking away, and drawled in his Bengali-American-English-Swahili accent.

‘Myadame … yeh aircraft kyun posptone ho gaya?’
‘Technical snag, sir’.
He thought for a second and looked like he didn’t understand any of the three words.
‘So thell mee, what I and my girlfriend do till the next flaight?’
‘Sir you can have some refreshments till we put you on an Indian Airlines flight’.
He looked angry.
‘I will fly Sahara. Why Indian Airlines? I pay for Sahara, got Sahara ticket! I with my girlfriend will sit at that seats there and wait for the next Sahara flaight. Is that clear?’
She shrugged. He stomped off, chest out, head held high.
When I was checking in for my 6:30 pm IA flight, studboy and studgirl were sitting there waiting. The Sahara dolly told me that the next Sahara flight was scheduled to leave at 11:30 pm, and she had booked them on it.

Thanks to the rains, the fucking MTNL has connected someone else’s landline to my phone. Her name is Rupali, and she has the weirdest of friends, who call and ask me if I am Rupali. Er … do I sound like Rupali, I ask them. If I do, then Rupali has some serious problems. Maybe her (his?) parents hated her (him?). Maybe she’s just got a deep, manly, ‘fuck off I’m not interested in your credit card’ voice. Maybe she’s just got friends who are not well versed with sex implications of Indian names. Who knows.

So anyway, Rupali strikes me as someone who doesn’t get out very often, and someone who doesn’t have a cellphone. Nowadays my landline rings more often than it has ever rung. My cordless battery runs out faster. I am now aware of nooks and corners in my apartment where the signal for the cordless is strongest and weakest. And also the fact that the bastard on the 11^th floor below me can actually tune into my cordless conversations on his shortwave radio. That’s like, voyeurism for your ears. Not that my phone conversations are anything like THAT. Er, um. Ok.

Getting back to Rupali, she has quite a diverse group of friends. There’s some insecure fuckwitted guys, every one of them so surprised that a man has answered Rupali’s phone that he disconnects without saying anything and calls again, probably convinced that Rupali is cheating on him. Rupali’s a real player, a real man eater. I knew it from the start, she would break my heart. That’s what he’s probably thinking as he hangs up after mumbling an apology about a wrong number, and heads to the nearest bar to drown his sorrows.

Then there are the women. Each of them with sweet, cherry-pie tonal quality, with impeccable English and a dreamy strawberry voice, probably thinking that maybe this guy with the deep macho sexy ‘come to bed’ voice is a secret brother that Rupali didn’t tell her about. And she wonders why Rupali has been so possessive about him, if not for Rupali, she would be put out of her miserable single life. Does Rupali think I don’t deserve love? Does she think I am below the dignity that her brother and she command? Her brother, maybe yes. But her? I’ll never forgive you Rupali. I stood beside you when my brother dumped your sorry arse for the hottie from Holland in his call centre, and you hide your brother from me? That’s what she’s probably thinking as she hangs up after mumbling an apology about a wrong number, and heads to the nearest supermarket to buy family packs of ice creams and giant boxes of chocolate.

Come to think of it, Rupali doesn’t strike me as a very nice person. I’m gonna have to start warning her friends about her.

I have a whole stack of unlabeled CDs, ripped to wave file from mp3s. Sometimes I grab a random CD to listen to while driving. I like the surprise of not knowing which song will play. Its like radio minus the endless jabbering.

This morning, the CD player sang ‘Smiyai’ from ‘Kandukondain Kandukondain’.

When I was working in Singapore, there was this programmer called Ramesh working in the same organization. Wicked guy, great sense of humour. Ramesh was the seedha-saadha guy, I was the harami. Everytime a girl would walk by my cube and say hi, Ramesh would turn to me, smile wickedly and say ‘Fan club ah?’.

Ramesh used to drink Milo every evening around 4. Religiously. He would get up from his desk, look around to ensure that no-one was looking, stretch himself, and head to the pantry. He’d be back 20 minutes later, re-energised.

One day I was stuck with an edit. It was going nowhere, and I had half a mind of deleting everything and starting from scratch. Better sense prevailed and I thought I’d take a ‘Bandung’ (rose milk) break.

In the pantry, I saw Ramesh, diligently mixing his Milo. He saw me and smiled broadly. ‘What macha, editing today?’ I nodded and sighed. I sat down and got talking with Ramesh.

For the next one hour, Ramesh and I spoke about Tamil movies and music. We tore apart ‘Kandukondain’, discovered that we both loved ‘Gentleman’ and agreed that Rehman reached God status after his score for ‘Thiruda Thiruda’. And in an office where pin drop silence was the unwritten norm, no listening to music on your desktop without headphones, no talking loudly, Ramesh and me ended up singing ‘Chiku buku Raile’, ‘Thee Thee’, ‘Urvasi’, ‘Veerapandi Kottaile’ and ‘Koncham Nilavu’, amongst many others. The jam session had ended with ‘Smiyai’. I don’t remember what happened to the edit, I was way too happy to bother about it.

Today I was reminded of the mischievous look on Ramesh’s face as he momentarily shed all inhibitions, turned to a bewildered chinese colleague who had come in to get some Jasmine tea, smiled at her and broke into a song.

smaiyaiyaiyai magnet vizhiyaay manadhaith thirudi vittaay
oru centimeter pooththa punnagaiyil jeevan alandhuvittaay

It’s been four years and I have not laughed like I laughed that day.

Edit: Here's a translation courtesy oru macha. Now, i dont know tamil, i can just sing the songs.

like a magnet you are stealing my heart
just one centimeter of your smile changes my whole life.

(Insert bewildered look on chinese colleague's face here.)

She looked down and saw the suffering, the pain, the turmoil and the strife. She saw the poor who were happy, the rich who were sad, the handicapped who strived to achieve, and the lazy bastards who sat at home and watched MTV all the time. She saw the dogged determination, the resigned helplessness, the undeterred undying spirit and the hopeless monotony.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she thought. These fuckwits didn’t turn out to be worth the effort. She had given them the greatest gift of all. The gift of life, of freedom. These little arseholes were the lucky ones; they were the ones everyone up here envied because these idiots could do what they wanted. Anything they wanted. They could drink, smoke, get stoned, snort coke, work, slack off, achieve, underachieve, swim with dolphins, paraglide, read, listen, sing, dance, travel, have sex do whatever they wanted to.

And then everything went haywire. The nitwits ended up pissing each other off enough to bring it to this. Too much of a good thing was bad, she realized. Made a mental note of it, maybe I’ll get it right next time.

She could see it coming now. There would be a massive, impregnable cloud everywhere around. The seas would be red and the land would be silent. The plains and forests and flowers would be barren and brown. The silence would be deafening.

She sat back, lit her joint, took a deep drag and sighed. ‘I fucked up.’ she thought.

She asked for one more dance and i'm like yeah! how the hell am i supposed to leave?

Even at my worst, the most I’d smoke was 5-6 sticks a day. I started smoking pretty late by current standards, when I was 19. It was my first job in advertising, and I smoked partly under the delusion that it would make me - the youngest writer in the agency - look all cool and grown up and would help me blend in, but more to keep me awake while I was putting in late nights practically every night, and then attending 7 am lectures at college next morning. Used to smoke Gold Flakes at the time. Crap cigarette, but I didn’t know one from the other. Even smoked a Gudang Garam once. Yuck.

When I switched jobs to production, I switched to rollies. Late nights at edit studios or early mornings at sound recordings, rollies were always there to keep me wide awake. My boss used to wonder if I was smoking pot, coz I was constantly rolling. I had to assure him that I looked perpetually stoned not because I was smoking pot, but because I was overworked and an insomniac. Then I switched back to advertising and I pretty much quit smoking for 4 months, as part of an ambitious detox plan.

I started smoking in Singapore for two reasons. First was boredom and insomnia. And second was availability of Lucky Strike. It’s 10 gms of heaven on a filter tip. Alternated between Luckies and John Player blacks for a while. Stopped smoking JP blacks coz they were way too hard. Made Marlboro Reds seem like Phantom candy.

Towards the end of my stint there I was exhausting a good portion of all Luckies sold in Singapore. Tried really hard to quit, but just couldn’t. Came back to India, and started smoking Classic Milds. Sometimes I’d steal a Wills Navy Cut from my father if I was out.

It’s been 3 months since I stopped smoking, thanks initially to a throat infection because of … well … smoking. And then a warning from my homeopath.

The reason I’m writing all this, is that I just found a Cigar in my drawer. It’s called ‘Villiger Premium No. 7’, and I remember buying a few of them during a trip to Bintan four years ago.

One of them has survived.

And it’s sitting there, staring at me.