| Sunday, October 29, 2006 |
| Fade. |
There's a stack of souvenier/memoir t-shirts I have.
There's the one that the great Anil Mehta wore on the dumbass 'Vaseline' shoot years ago.
There's the one that Angela gave me when I left Singapore.
There's the one that Jackie gave me when I left Singapore.
There's Ajit Wadekar's team t-shirt from India's first cricket tour to South Africa after the ban on them was lifted.
And then there's her Metallica concert t-shirt, which she said was way too big for her, and she wanted me to have it.
It came out accidentally tonight when I pulled out one of my nightshirts.
The t-shirt has faded. But the memory just won't.
Its ironic that my bottle of Johnny sits right next to it.
The Johnny tries to make me forget, and the t-shirt makes sure I'll always remember.
You're a God
And I am not
And I just thought
I'd let you go. |
posted by n.g. at 02:40
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| Friday, October 20, 2006 |
| Happy Fucking Diwali. |
I don’t particularly enjoy Diwali. In fact, I don’t like it at all. Ditto with Holi, and all of our festivals. It’s like one mono-progammed ritual that we’re supposed to follow year after year after year because our grandparents did it and their parents did it and so on and so forth. Blind. Go buy tons of sweets to gift to people who you know will not eat them, because there’s just too much sweet lying around the house to eat already, and all of it will go waste, but you can’t not gift, because then the person will feel bad. Blind. Do a puja and ask God for the same thing you asked for the previous year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and wonder why it’s not just magically happened to you yet, because you asked, right? Working towards getting it isn’t part of what our forefathers taught us, so we won’t do it. Blind. Wait in serpentine queues at supermarkets to buy stuff for the puja and assorted other stuff so we can try and use Diwali as an excuse to convince and appease Gods and clients. Blind.
When I was a child I pretty much felt the same way. I never questioned why though, because it didn’t seem the right thing to do because everyone around was doing it. I always wondered why though, at around 2 in the morning on Diwali day when there was a thick cloud of smoke outside, and all our windows were shut coz both my mother and I had breathing issues, and when someone would frantically call and tell us about some apartment that burnt down somewhere because of a stray firecracker, or some uncle-aunty would show up dressed in so much silk that I’d feel sorry for the gazillions of silkworms that sacrificed their lives for the fucking sods. I never asked, but I’d always wonder. Why? Is it because we understand the spirit of the festival and want to truly celebrate it? Is it because it’s so called family tradition, whatever that signifies when brothers backstab each other and dignified well placed individuals bring up their rascal offspring on a healthy diet of toxic television and material waste and ill-treat their own parents into pathetic submission behind closed doors, while they use this festival as an excuse to gamble for hours on end? Is it because we have to outshine, outgift, outdress, outspend, and out-firecrack neighbours and friends? Blind.
I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. All I know is this just doesn’t feel right. In all these years, it never did. It feels conformist and submissive and meandering and unnecessary and irrelevant and fake and a waste of time and misappropriation of global wealth, and I dread the arrival of these festivals – Diwali included, every single year, for this very reason. And to add to it, some dumbfuck tv channel tells me how Celina fucking Jaitley is planning to spend her Diwali, like that’s the universal truth that will finally make me whole. Shah Rukh Khan is plugging Diwali like he glugs Pepsi and he’s asking you to buy everything from cars to computers and get fabulous Diwali discounts. You can get everything cheaper this time of the year, right from underwear to Uranium. Manufacturers have made sure the traps are laid. The neighbour told me how they had gone shopping for a ‘mehnga wala tv’ today. Put all of it together, all the money that all the levels of middle class in India will spend during this one month, on gold, gifts, clothes, household stuff, ipods, mehnga wala tvs, dvds, cars, and whathaveyou. And add to that figure what the upper crest will spend. And when you arrive at that figure, which will probably be somewhere around the annual fiscal deficit of the country, you’ll know why I keep dissing the increasing consumerism that our exalted country is breeding. Our souls are being sold one ridiculously inconsequential freebie at a time and we're actually bargaining the price down. We’ll buy an Indian brand because it’s cheaper and we’ll insist that we’re being Indian and buying Indian, but we’ll groan and moan when we have to stand in respect of the national anthem before a movie, and worse still, look all bemused when the guy ahead behind or alongside us is singing it instead of fiddling with his mobile or rummaging in his popcorn box or trying to grab his girlfriend’s boob. Blind.
So yeah, Happy Diwali. Whatever the fuck that means to you. |
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posted by n.g. at 18:54
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| Tuesday, October 17, 2006 |
| Anastasia. |
Five years ago when she would sit at her desk and furiously fire away at her sketch pad with her pencils, I had thought she was a kid fresh out of college, experimenting with her art.
Last night, at the Fourth Floor Art Gallery at Kitab Mahal, I put a pink dot on a pointillisme of the great Miles Davis, created by Mihika Barthakur. Maneesh had already put one on Jack Nicholson. It wasn't tough to decide because it was down to either Miles Davis or Al Pacino, coz most of the other paintings already had pink dots on them even before I got there. And almost on cue my wonderfully gifted little bachcha came around, dazed from all the adulation and hugged me, and together we cried.
Dreams can come true
Look at me babe I'm with you
You know you gotta have them
You know you gotta be strong. |
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posted by n.g. at 08:07
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| Saturday, October 07, 2006 |
| Little by Little. |
A couple of days ago I was driving to Vandu’s house, and had just turned into her lane when a reckless driver almost slammed his Maruti 800 into my car. I did the usual, asked him if the bhenchod road belonged to his bastard father. But instead of apologizing, and it was clearly his fault because he was cornering at high speed without bothering to be careful in case someone was turning in from the main road, he gave me that look and said two words.
‘Ja, Ja.’
Now, usually I’m a very patient person. But maybe this time around, it was the aftershock of the accident a few months ago when a careless woman knocked my car in the rear and sent it spinning out of control - an accident that almost totaled my car after I just about managed to avoid mauling a few pedestrians - and this time around, I completely lost it. I reversed my car, forced it into his way while he was making his escape, went over to him and after saying some things which are best not replicated even here because my little sister reads this page, I slapped him. I opened the door as he started to lock himself inside, and I pulled him out and I slapped him twice across his madarchod face. And then I wiped my hands on his shirt, and slapped him again. Then when he started to peek at my license plate, I asked him what he wanted my registration number for, and I slapped him again and asked him to get the fuck out of my sight before I slapped him any more.
What bothers me about this incident is that I just cannot imagine myself in a fistfight anymore, I couldn’t before and I can’t now. I haven’t hit anyone in years, the last street fight I had was way back in college. Sure a lot of brawling happens and bad language is spoken, but that’s only a part of daily life. It is very, very uncommon for me to come to blows with anyone, simply because I just don’t think any matter merits violence towards someone else. I used to, once upon a time, but not anymore.
Maybe it’s got something to do with what’s going down in other aspects of life right now. I’ve always been one to enjoy the journey more than the arrival at the destination, but there are some journeys that even I hadn’t bargained for, and maybe that’s what’s getting to me and making me the person I am not. And today, something D said suddenly triggered off a thought process and it struck me, that maybe if I’d only stop looking so hard for some things, they would come to me of their own accord.
Four more exits to my apartment
But I am tempted to keep the car in drive
And leave it all behind. |
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posted by n.g. at 00:47
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Name: n. g.
Home: Bombay, India
About Me:
this fire is burning and its outta control its not a problem you can stop its rock and roll.
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