AnS - Part VI

Sayanee could not sleep that night.

Khyati thought she might be pregnant. At first she had sounded devastated, but in the course of their conversation, Sayanee started sensing some bits and pieces of excitement peeking out from behind the old cumulonimbus. There was this thing about her. She made even the biggest of catastrophes seem like a badly dealt game of cards - at worst.

Ashutosh didn’t know yet. Khyati would break the news to him only if it turned out to be true.

Sayanee sighed and turned around in her bed, certain that would be of no use. Love? Does it really happen like this? Perhaps. Or maybe it is just an inability to deal smartly with sunken investments.

The next day at office, Sayanee mostly found herself whiling away time. She ended up making plans with her college friends for the evening. These were people who she had been extremely close to and they had managed to retain it over the years - it helped that they were all in Mumbai.

Bandstand - one of the most beautiful places in Mumbai. The rocks, the sea, the sunset. If you want more - the cafes and within the radius of a kilometer - the numerous eateries. The three of them had spent many an evening there - eating bhutta, walking along the promenade, looking indulgently on at couples in their little nooks - couples that probably lived with ten others in a two hundred sq feet hole, couples desperate for a little privacy, for the romance of being able to hold hands and cozy up.

There was a gentle breeze that evening. The sky looked foggy as usual.

“So Sayanee, kyaa haal chaal? Tu toh yaar milti hi nahi hai aaj-kal.” Complained Nimisha in her characteristic nasal drawl.

“Work Nimisha. You know how it gets.”

Jigna made a face and turned towards her. “You work too much darling. How is Aunty?”

“Haven’t met her since quite some time. Spoke to her day before. She seems okay.”

“How is Suyash Jigna?”

“He is the same old boring thing. He wants to get married ASAP”

“So? Kitni saal takk latkaayegi use?” Nimisha laughed.

“Abbe chhup. Shaadi and all is scary man.”

They all laughed. Typical Jigna. Never before had a gujarati household faced as much trouble as the Pareeks had with Jigna.

“What do you think Sayanee? Mera boy-friend hota toh main toh abhi ke abhi shaadi kar leti.”

“Tu toh kar hi leti. So what are your plans Jigna? Heard you were planning to write the CAT?”

“Yea man, let’s see. What about you? Abhi bhi wohi - aage nahi padhna chahti?”

“Kya karna hai. I am happy with the way life is going. I like my job and my colleagues. I like where I am living. I like my room-mate. I have my friends. More than enough.”

“Get a boy-friend first. And it’s not going to stay like this forever.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Colleagues will leave, room-mate will move on, friends will get married with the first chimp they see, like our dear old Nimbu here, or die frighteningly early in a far-away bear-infested jungle, in search of the all-elusive romance of life , like me.”

All three laughed. The sun was looking like a giant orange on fire. The rocks were glinting - like black gold. Sayanee loved these times they spent together. The three of them had it just right. The masala, the madness, the candor - just right.

They walked into Barista by the time it got a little dark. After plonking themselves into chairs, Jigna looked around, gave a little start and waved out to someone. A man walked over from the adjacent table.

“Hey Jigna! Fancy meeting you here! We were talking about Bandstand just the other day.” He was tall, extremely tall, well over six feet. A giant really.

Jigna chuckled and introduced him as Leo, a guy she went to classes with at the CAT coaching institute.

“Are those your friends? Why don’t you people join us?” Said the ever-sociable Jigna.

Sayanee groaned inwardly. This Jigna was just too outgoing sometimes. She stole a small side-ward glance at Nimisha, who incidentally was staring at her shoes. Ah, for all her ‘boy-talk’, Nimbu had always been the shy one.

Two more guys came and joined the table. A round of introductions followed. Saurabh - chartered accountant in the making, interning at a Consulting company. And Amanpreet - working at a Media planning agency.

It took Sayanee a few seconds to place him. He was sitting there, looking a little uncomfortable. Both recalled their last rendezvous, aboard the crowded local train.

They sat silently for sometime. There was something about him. He looked pinched. How do you say it, anguished perhaps? Permanently.

“So where do you stay?” He ventured uncertainly.

“Andheri. Sher-e-punjab.”

“Haan, maine aapko Andheri mein train par chadte dekha hai.”

He had a strange accent. Not typical Delhi, but it left a taste of the North, especially after he stopped speaking. Like notes in perfume. The more obvious and volatile ones hit you first - leave you confused and then the subtler and heavier base scent registers, after the fickle ones have wafted away.

“Yes. Maine bhi.”

“Wo main us din hurry mein tha, isliye aapko thoda sa dhakka maar diya tha. I hope you are not angry.”

“Arre nahi, don’t worry. Locals mein toh normal hai.”

She smiled at him for the first time. This guy was like a child, a lost bewildered little thing in this crazy city. He eased up, visibly.

“You two know each other?” Jigna interrupted her own vivid account of the time she had followed around a co-worker for a week because she suspected him of theft, to butt-in.

“Not really. We took the same local train once. I almost didn’t let him get-off.” Smiled Sayanee.

Yes, life was good, she mused. The job, the colleagues, the home, the room-mate, the friends, even random strangers on the train. There was a calm and effortless way about it right now. Like the peaceful waters of an afternoon sea taking its siesta or the fishing boat floating gently along on it - sails down.

The Love-Hate

You
Miss her
But never want to speak to her
Ever again

She
Understands you like a dream
She also abso-fucking-lutely brings
The devil out in you

It
Is not love not hate
It is that crazy-dysfunctional-mutative human curse
I like to call the love-hate

AnS - Part V

Mumbai is bursting at the seams. There are 15 million people, maybe more, that call this city home. Everybody has a story. The raaste ka mochi - he sits there stony eyed, 200 meters from the next one, sews-up your errant shoe expertly and sullenly demands Rs 3 for it, the auto-driver - an arrogant breed, he nonchalantly dismisses your pleas to take you to your place of work (which is unfortunately neither too near, nor too far) in the same breath as the bomb-blasts, aiming to maximize his daily-wage-earning, the secretary - part of a fiercely protective gang, she marks her territory on the train and in the office, is immaculately coiffed and harbors strong sentiments on loo-usage and her boss’ antics, in that order.

Everybody has a story.

Khyati met Ashutosh over chat. One of those Yahoo messenger chat rooms. It was no accident she was spending so much time online those days. She was working on a digital marketing campaign for a youth deodorant brand.

Ashutosh was just one of those random pings, and somehow they hit it off. It helped that his chat id was not Loveforyou_82. Also, that he was 27 and had a successful textiles business. They chatted back and forth over a period of two months and towards the end of it, she found herself sharing most of her daily struggles, agonies and successes with him. He was always very patient and reassuring. Enough premium cannot be put on these particular qualities in a world where nobody has the time to stand, let alone listen.

When they had decided to meet; she had been a little nervous - this was just not her thing, but the date had gone exceedingly well from the start. He had turned out to be this tall nerdy-looking guy, with great hair and an engaging smile. He was, of course, bowled over by her. She was what you would describe as in-your-face sexy. Not just the way she looked, even her personality - spunky and loud.

Numerous dates - after-office-dinners, late-weekend-night-coffees and eventually, breakfast-in-bed-mornings - later, he had told her that he was married.

One always has a list of Dos and Donts. In times of crisis, they are as impotent as the erstwhile minister for homeland security.

Khyati had screamed and ranted. His defense was clichéd - trapped in a loveless and joyless marriage, she being the only thing that kept him going any more - the usual. Khyati was not the sort of person to get influenced by sentiment; but she did.

We are an optimistic race. We are an egoistic species. It’s one and the same thing.

When Sayanee returned from Europe and learnt about these developments, she was stunned.

Love has many forms - it heals, it makes better people out of us, it gives us company; it also sometimes makes us so blind, we don’t notice that the landscape has changed, the grass grows a bit thicker and the birds chirp no more.

Say it I will

Conflict is a natural state of being. We are designed to be perpetually courting conflict. The same philosophy extends to complexity and pain. If there is no pain in his life, man will invent it. Happiness is much desired, but once achieved, is like an unstable substance that quickly reacts with something to become dilute, impure and a shadow of it’s glittering self.

Misery is stable, conflict is staple. From these, stem stories of great bravery, compassion and love.

One of the greatest ironies of life. Disharmony harmonizes.

The Romance

Hazaaron Khvaahishen aisiin ki har Khvaaish pe dam nikale
Bahut nikale mere armaan lekin phir bhii kam nikale

Hazaaron Khvaahishen and each one special. Beautiful.

On a tangent, or perhaps not. I love the romance of not knowing what you want to do in life. The ideal is to live each moment with grand ferocity and grander passion. Way leads to way.

A man who started out as being a sound technician at the local radio station. Then got enlisted and worked as sound engineer in the navy for a bit. After the war, went to University and after graduating, joined a travel and tourism company, in-charge of designing and executing marketing campaigns for holiday destinations. Did well. Was sent to many exotic and far-flung locations to build campaigns there. Left the company. Started a consulting enterprise of his own. Struggled. Persisted. Built credibility. No job was too small. No job was unimportant. Many years, projects, magnificent successes and Herculean mistakes later, he was traveling the world - imparting the pearls of his well-earned wisdom to some-keen-eyed-some-not-so-much students.

Do we belong to the generation that demands us to know exactly how life will turn out? Where all B-school forms have questions on ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’ goals. Phrases such as ‘logical reasoning’ and ‘clarity of thought’ are bandied about. Where you are not only expected to know where the yellow-brick-road of your life is leading to, but also to change the course of that road to lead to your, well, long-term goal.

Yes, we live in those times. And it has its moments. But I yearn for the romance of not-knowing. And I revel in it.

I started my walk at the foot of the hills
With a mellow sun for company
The undulating landscape had me arrested
I never realized when I left behind my narrow confines

I saw new kind of birds
And tasted strange berries
I danced a bit keeping time with the spring
As it made its way down somewhere, to the sea

I met other travelers, some were old
They all gave me beans
For every bean that made me feel funny
There was one that filled my dreams with music

It was a strange walk
And when evening came
I didn’t know where I was
I knew I wasn’t the same

Of all my great adventures, this was the greatest
Because the journey was as beautiful
As the knowledge of having reached someplace
Even more breath-taking than what I had set out to

City Lights

Last night Chennai took my breath away. I belong to the school that thinks that nothing can beat the aerial view of Mumbai, with all it's glittering lights and their shimmering reflections in the sea.

Till I saw Chennai. Nay, beheld Chennai. Chennai is vast, it has roads criss-crossing it's body like conductor on a giant Printed Circuit Board, and those roads have traffic on them. Thousands and millions of tiny pin-pricks of red, yellow, green and blue.

How does one hang-on to such an image for posterity? To invoke it when one needs to feel beauty and grandeur? Like Paris from the Eiffel, only better.

I am very peppy this morning. Barack Obama is home.

AnS - Part IV

When Sayanee got home - the apartment she shared with a woman she had met by chance in her early working days in Mumbai - she was in high spirits. She had dropped by Oxford Book Shop on her way back and picked up a couple of PG Wodehouses and a book of plays by Oscar Wilde.

Reading was a passion, ever since childhood. From the Famous Five she had picked up at the age of 8, to The Joke she had recently finished with; reading gave her an alternate world inhabited with characters - some strangely abnormal, some abnormally familiar - but nonetheless, all of them holding a special place in her fictional universe.

When she entered her two-bedroom flat in Andheri East, it was in complete darkness; Khyati, her flat mate must have got late at work. Khyati was a marketing executive at a consumer goods company and sometimes her work-hours, unlike Sayanee’s own, were inexplicable. She switched on the lights, happily dreaming about the books she had picked up, when the door to Khyati’s room opened and she came out -

“Hey! I thought you were at work. Why have you been sitting in the dark?”

Closer examination led her to ask, “Have you been sleeping?” as she realized that Khyati was wearing pyjamas and looking decidedly disheveled.

Khyati just stood there and it suddenly struck Sayanee that Khyati’s eyes were red and puffed-up.

“O my God! You have been crying? What happened?!” Sayanee exclaimed as Khyati started crying again, softly at first, apparently not for the first time that night.

A little bit of background here. Khyati’s father was a retired Major-General and hence she had spent most of her young life traipsing across the country. After such an unsettling childhood; at 18, she had found herself in a state of complete confusion regarding what she wanted to do, quite unlike her father. Out of a lack of any major passions she had done a Bachelor’s course in Arts with Media and Communication as specializations, from Mumbai. During the course she had realized that she had an eye for art, a sense of reading-between-lines, and somewhat of a head for numbers. She got into an advertising agency and after having worked there for six years, the last of which were as Account Executive, she crossed over to the other side of the table and joined her client firm as the Manager of a brand.

She had found her calling in life, and even though Major-General Khurana didn’t understand what his youngest daughter exactly did for a living, he was relieved that she had found it.

“What the hell happened Khyati? Did Ashutosh say something again?” Sayanee was wracking her brain for things that could have gone wrong. Work? Naah, everything seemed to be in control there. Family? Hmm, she would have told her immediately had something gone wrong on that front, no need for melodrama there. It had to be him. That Ashutosh. He was the only part of her life that stuck out like a sore thumb. That Ashutosh.

Traps

She walked in rage
Of people who followed
Useless rules and mindless traditions

She walked in disbelief
Of people who didn’t have the courage
To reject what their hearts didn’t agree to

And then she stopped
With a sense of foreboding
Her trembling mind spat out to her

It wondered what you say to one
Who binds herself in noose-tight cords
Of sky-high expectations

Who won’t give room for mistakes
To be at odds with that home-grown philosophy
that once made her a rebel

Poll

Am I verbose in speech?

AnS - Part III

Sayanee swam with the current.

When she was a baby, her parents had died in a car crash. Her aunt had raised her. She was grateful for that. And not much else.

Her father’s younger brother - her uncle, had also been in the car. He was found unrecognizable after the accident that had claimed three lives and left two more languishing in that special place that is reserved for the bereaved, for the rest of theirs.

She had heard that story many times, in bits and pieces, from different people. It all boiled down to the same thing every single time. She could see it in her head. Her father had been cruising at 120 kmph -- in the wrong lane -- on the highway -- after dark. He had seen the fifteen-tonner coming down at him five seconds too late. She could see it all too well.

Her aunt had never made her peace with it. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. It is difficult letting go of a life that you are shown a glimpse of, and which is then rudely snatched away due to another’s mistake.

Sayanee swam with the current.

A docile child, she was a late talker, a late walker. Content to just sit around and dimple, her aunt didn’t really have too much trouble with her. Fed on a diet of barbs and constant carping, she grew into this reserved adolescent, who didn’t have too may friends. She would have turned out to be painfully shy and debilitated, had not her aunt deigned to send her to an engineering college in Pune, around four hours from home. That had been the turning point in her life. Living in a hostel, she had discovered bonding and friendship, mischief and joie. The shadow that she had been had materialized into a real person. A person who felt needed and loved.

She hardly went back home. And when she got this job with an Indian IT company, she was thrilled. They were paying enough for her to be able to pay back loans which weighed heavy on her soul.

She liked work too. Her client was a top American bank, a retail and credit-card company and in no way insulated from the current crisis. The credit card market, although mature in the erstwhile land of plenty, was facing a period of slump with consumerism at an all-time low and defaults at a historical high, but the company thankfully had enough going for itself in the Latin American, African and Asian markets, where the business was still nascent and economies more robust. She had spent around six months of the past year in Europe; her memoirs had mentions of 40 odd cities where she had left her well-traveled footprint.

As she stepped off Churchgate station that day, she was in high spirits. It wasn’t everyday that she got a chance to come to this part of the city - with its sea, surf and legendary restaurants. She was fond of Mumbai; like a chameleon, it was so different now than what it had been, or what it has seemed to be during her growing-up years. This realization enervated her; she felt like she had moulded Mumbai to her taste. She felt content.

Thought for the day

I chose career over family; I'd rather my wallet have stretch marks.

Not my thoughts. I read it somewhere.

Btw, today is 'Global Handwashing Day'. I am even wearing a band on my hand saying so. Washing hands can save lives, since they are the most exposed part of your body. Some 3.5 million children globally lose their lives every year to diseases which can be avoided by simply washing hands. So do wash.

Er..use Lifebuoy. Handwash preferably.

The dying

Hadn’t been all velvet
No bed of roses
The landscape lay strewn
By the carcasses of intentions, good and evil

But as he walked every morning
There was thunder in his stride
And a storm in his soul
He knew he was blessed

He knew he would be great
And a good man too
Love would be his
He knew he was blessed

And then one day
The dream died
He cried
Stomped out under the ugly sole of truth

It was not to be
His life would be marked by mediocrity
And the domestic squalor that merits no poetry
Hope fled, life bled.

AnS - Part II

Their eyes met in that crowded local train and each thought rather uncharitable thoughts about the other.

Why is that woman in the general compartment? Don’t I have enough trouble pushing my way through men that I now have to battle women too!

Why is that man staring at me so obnoxiously? Had the train not been pulling out of the platform, I would have been spared this compartment full of lecherous idiots!

He had to get off at Parel and she grudgingly allowed him to make his way through the masses of flesh, he scowled at her momentarily before moving on. After alighting, he was glad to see that his shirt had not suffered much damage; it would do for the day. He wouldn’t have to change into the spare one he kept in his desk-drawer at all times.

Parel station and the world outside it, is quintessential of the diversities that Mumbai is famous for. It is a sea of grocery shops, farsan and sweet houses, pan-beedi ke dukaan, unhygienic restaurants and roadside sellers of combs, stationary, vegetables and cds. And then start those corporate complexes with tall sky-scrapers, housing some of the best known media and advertising agencies in the country.

Amanpreet made his way to one of those complexes, marveling once again at how people in this city had the patience to sit in their cars while traffic crawled along inch-by-bloody-inch. Who were all these people and why had they chosen to be in Bombay? Perhaps, like him, some had come to make a mark in their chosen professions; like him, most were stuck in the never-ending agonies of commute; unlike him, maybe they were satisfied.

Not that his job was the absolute pits. He got to meet top media bosses and executives and the mandate was to treat most of them like shit. Well, that is how the power equations in this industry worked. If your client was powerful enough, channels queued up to accommodate its latest campaigns and advertisements; if not, then you were the one doing all the running from p-to-p. He had sat in on many a meeting where some guy from his firm would start to bargain rates with a channel and it was fun to see how far he could stretch it. That part was cool.

He often got depressed when he thought about his family back in Dehradoon. Dehradoon. Not as ruskin-bond-esque nowadays as one would imagine but close enough. Bougainvillea creepers, blue winding roads, red brick houses, the slight nip in the air.

Screeeeeech. Rudely jolted awake, Amanpreet quickly crossed the road before the driver who had ground to a halt to avoid hitting him could say much. Lyrics of a popular song filled his head as he walked casually on.

..Zara hat ke zara bach ke,
Yeh hai Bambai meri jaan.

AnS - Part 1

It was peak time. The 8:23 am local from Virar to Churchgate was brimming over the top. Andheri station for one was at bursting point. People rushing helter-skelter - students, bankers, hawkers, government servants, secretaries, fisherwomen, professionals - After death, it had to be the Mumbai locals - the greatest leveler.

They met in a crowded first class compartment.

Amanpreet was a 23 year old, working in a media planning firm. After graduating with a degree in Mass Communication, this had been his first job and he was hoping, not his last. What’s the deal with the client being always right anyway? Those servile buggers at his firm would send the earth circling around Jupiter if it brought so much as the shadow of a smile to the powers-that-be. But then again he thought, it was difficult to make that shift he so desired. He noticed how deftly the fellow selling key-chains in the adjoining ladies compartment packed up his jing-bang in a matter of 5 seconds and thought morosely that the guy at least had the satisfaction of knowing that he had mastered his work.

Sayanee was 25 summers down, and as she described herself - an Engineer and a lover of the English language, perhaps not in that order. She was working in the IT industry and quite enjoying herself. Her clients were fun-loving people and there was some chance she would get to go to the States before the year was up. The current financial crisis had made things a little bleak for the industry, even the company she worked for, but her department was well-diversified; with on-site ranging from Dublin to Delhi. Well, as long as she got a good salary and loads of opportunities to travel, was there really another purpose to life? Naah.

Mumbhai. Yes, selling key-chains is somewhat of an art here. Dotting the rather over-crowded landscape in a ladies compartment, these tough kids carry what looks like a cumbersome and precariously balanced jumble of key-chains, earrings, hair-clips and other such fast-moving-ultra-mass-consumer-goods, but come a station, and before you can utter even one expletive at the person standing unhelpfully in front of you, they have the whole thing packed and the notes pocketed.

Mumbhai. While there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip, there isn’t any other damn place in the world that will give you the chance to drink again and again and again.

The Waters of Cologne

I was watching DDLJ for the umpteenth time and was struck by the fact that had I been watching this movie for the first time, could still have fallen in love with Raj. Truly the stuff of evergreen.

Our next trip was to Northern Germany and Netherlands. In Germany, we were to go to Köln, Düsseldorf and then onto Berlin. However the building came crashing down even before the foundation stone had been laid. A day before we were set to leave for Köln, somebody luckily took out the tickets and checked, thus illuminating the fact that they were for the wrong date; and even as we were standing there, looking at each other in dismay, the train we did have tickets for was pulling out of Gare Montparnasse.

Anyhow, it turned out okay. We did reach Köln, through a series of change-of-trains and night-long journeys. I do not remember all the details now, but I believe Hamburg was involved in some way. I remember having an early morning breakfast at Hamburg station, waiting for the next connecting train.

A little bit of history about Köln, because not only do I strive to entertain the reader, but also endeavor to educate him. Köln is the German name (Cologne being the French one) of the 4th largest city in Germany, after Berlin, Hamburg and Munich; it is also one of the oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 38 BC. It lies by the River Rhine and interestingly, Eau de Cologne means The Water of Cologne; since a couple of Italians set shop there to sell this preparation made of herbs and what-not which Napolean could not get enough of.

We only had a few hours in Köln. As soon as you step out of the station, there lies its famous Cathedral. This imposing Gothic structure once held the title of the world’s tallest structure, before Eiffel and many others arrived on the scene. Legend goes that in spite of being the object of several aerial bombings in World War II, this Cathedral stood tall and proud in a largely flattened city.

The station area had enough excitement surrounding it. There was an open space, with tourists milling around, the market-place started almost immediately and of course, there was the Wailing Wall. The Wailing Wall is a series of paintings, drawings, poetry, newspaper clippings, gory and inspirational messages - from all over the world, mostly pertaining to the Second World War, but also showcasing a bit of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It tries to promote peace in this crazy crazy world.

We walked into the market, so much exciting stuff was up for grabs, and for a change, it was quite inexpensive too. I bought a beautiful shawl and some kitschy jewellary. We even went into a bar and drank a little and then stood by the riverside taking pictures.

One thing I must put down here, the people of Köln were very happy to see us for some inexplicable reason. Everybody kept smiling, waving and greeting us. It made us also very happy. Incredible how happiness and cheer are so infectious.

The evening kept getting more and more picturesque as it descended into night - The silhouette of the gigantic cathedral against the skyline, with the dark and mysterious river at its feet; a thread of bright yellow street lights lending even more glamour to the scene, their reflections bouncing off the onyx waters.

A Kodak moment, to be frozen in time, in my memory.

Outpouring

I think I know it
And then it gives the classic slip
My mind is a flurry of reasons, a jamboree
Churning out image after image

There I lie, crucified on the cross of reason
That is me behind the clouds, like the sun after - spreading light and wisdom
I dive into the ocean and bring back pearls
Yet I laugh like a hyena lurking in shadowy depths even Satan would not cross

I don’t look back
Whatever else I do
I do look back at times
And resolve it shall never be the same

When the dust has settled
When the battle is over
When the soldiers are dead, or gone home
When the medals have been pinned and the songs have been sung

That is when I pick up my sword and examine it close
I wipe out the blood, remove the tassels
It either shines like the North Star or
Crumbles in my hand like shattered glass

The Eternal Divide

This stint, has been such a refreshing change from Sales, I can’t stop marveling. I am in Mumbai and therein lies the biggest difference. I actually have a life. I meet people over weekends and engage in other pleasurable activities. Who would have thought?

Another whopper is the way people at office are.

A little bit of background first - I am working with the global team for Rin - Radiant to be precise, as it is called the world over. The first few days entailed going over material to understand the laundry habits of consumers in India and Thailand. I am now in a position to state, to the second decimal, ki junta apne kapdon ki dhulai hafte mein kitnein baar karti hai.

Moreover, my office is in Andheri and I live in Andheri. I must be the first human in the history of this great city to take less than 1.05 hours to reach work everyday.

So cut to the present. People at office - they are the complete anti-thesis of your threat-toting-invective-spitting Sales guy. They are chilled-out. They need to be. It’s a thinker’s game. Not much time to think in Sales. You can’t be creating great propositions when your team has to do 15 crores in 7 days, with a couple of bandhs coming up, a Big Bazaar Maha-bachat sale happening, topped with some random Mela - selling jaali Sunsilk and Fair n Lovely, that too - Ek lo toh Ek free. To add to that - the product that contributes 20 percent to your turnover has escalated steeply in price and the brand that literally pays your salary, by virtue of having the highest gross margins has lost its earlier consumer-acceptance. Aag lagi rehti hai bhai Sales mein.

I know I am getting abstruse.

So anyway - these Brand guys - they are the ones responsible for developing the brand. They sit and have serious discussions about whether the next communication should have a sasur-bahu angle or a bachha-and-his-dog angle and the psychological impact of each on the average consumer. They talk about fragrances and mixes and consumer blind tests, they talk about launches in Pakistan, Bangladesh and South Africa and telecons with people from five countries joining in; but at the end of the day, they keep their sanity.

Case-in-point -
Sales - He-who-must-not-be-named told me - You must work on weekends. And there is no need for sleep beyond 6 hours for a trainee.
Brands - A guy, of a similar designation as the aforementioned HWMNBN, exclaimed - Work on weekends? No way. Enjoy, party, get sloshed and if you want to know the names of some good places, just give me a ring.

They don’t want to grill us. They don’t want to kill us. It feels strange.

Wild Wild West

The details are getting a bit hazy now. It is going to be a year soon. I am talking about my travelogue. So let me resume my Exchange Escapades, lest they become a distant memory which I am able to recall no more, except with the blurry wistfulness with which one remembers the best times of one’s life.

Yes, I do remember them like that. I also remember them as being trying and taxing; one of the most life-changing phases in my life. But like I had said once - more on my personal life in my autobiography.

So here we were. Back in Brest after our first trip to Austria, Southern Germany and Slovakia. We had made some friends and went out partying with them. At least I did. With these two Indian women - the Ruchis - for what can be described as a ‘girls’ night out’ in Yankee parlance. We went pubbing and I decided to throw caution to the winds. When was I going to get the chance to get absolutely mind-blowingly-deliciously-debauched, in a place where no one recognized me?

A disc in forenland is a place to hook up. I had a ball, dancing like a lunatic on jail-break.
It was crazy, wild. More than alcohol, it was the thought that I could do whatever I wished that intoxicated me. Although I realized during the course of the night that social conditioning is stronger than one assumes it to be. I could not cross the line. I realized I didn’t want to.

Towards the end, I got strangely depressed. None of those people I had danced with, or spoken to would remember me beyond the stupor of their hangovers. I would not remember them either. Where were the people who really mattered?

Lately I have realized that your adolescent notion of invincibility is actually something else. It is part-fear-part-denial. One grows up.

Hey - do you believe in rock ‘n roll,
Tell me, can it save your mortal soul,
..And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Grey

Yet again I am in a train. I cannot remember the number of times I have packed my bags and ‘checked-out’ in the past 3 months. This kind of life is exciting, but also tedious. I hate lugging bags around. If only technology could make compression of matter possible. Or, maybe I could learn to travel light.

It has been long since I blogged. And there are infinite reasons. One could be that I don’t have enough to say. Could be, but isn’t. The real reason is that I have just too much to say.

This train chugs from Amdavad towards Mumbai. Mood - Grey. Skies - Black. On a tangent, have to get used to police dogs on platforms and in the trains. People milling around like normal, but there are these dogs to remind you that the pendulum swings far east.

Just finished reading that book - IIM to Gangjdundwara. Can’t believe it actually happened. The Epilogue is one of the most moving ones I have read in recent times. Do we ever really value experiences enough, until it is certain they are never to happen to us again?

I wish to do so much with my life. And yet in the quest for bigger things, we miss out on all the little things we could do to make a far-reaching impact on maybe - one person’s life. On the other side of this talk, lies the cynicism - why should all of us be striving to make a difference? It’s all just beauty-pageant-mumbo-jumbo anyway. Is there really a higher purpose to our existence, or are we here, as one of my dearest friends used to say - just to procreate?

That dearest friend is no more. In body, he is - somewhere. In spirit, he left me long ago. Or maybe I left him.

I want to freeze every memory in my head. I want to be able to summon them at will and relive them at leisure. I don’t ever want to go away, to lose touch, to not speak everyday with the people I do speak everyday with at this point in my life. I want every phase of my life to continue forever. Yet, I want several phases happening together. I want to be able to switch at will. Like Alt + Tab.

Is there a little of the tragic hero in all of us? Is there a little bit more in some than in others? Are all men born equal? Are some more equal than others? Is it competence against compassion? Is competence absolute? Is compassion ultimate?

The mood remains grey. The grey of a rainy day.

Devnagari dalliances

Man is malleable and ductile. While metal may have to be hammered into sheets and drawn into wires; man does not need to be subjected to such extreme measures. Teleport the quarry-worker into the mine-shift and within days, he shall be shielding his eyes from the sun.

Take me, for example. I caught myself thinking in Hindi the other day. It has only been over a month and a half that I started spouting Hindi, albeit like a broken fountain at the beginning - eloquence would come in bursts, followed by brief struggles that were attempts to translate complicated stuff into what is, ironically, my mother-tongue. Now - I even count in Hindi.

I am not trying to sound hip here. It’s just that I love the English language. Although I did very well at Hindi in school, English was my passion. I read my first real book when I was eight and never stopped. What I like about the language, I guess, is its universality, its vastness, its reach. I have access to so much more of the world because of it. Also, I imagine Hindi as a prudish old gentleman, a preacher of moral rectitude, his fiction often mired in tragedy - like Premchand. English is PG Wodehouse and Albert Camus; Enid Blyton and Harold Robbins; Ruskin Bond and Alistair McLean; Sidney Sheldon and Shakespeare.

Topic Change. About the Aarushi-hatyakand - the media-fication appalls me. What must those eight-year olds watching these murky proceedings be thinking? For a kid, completely enamored with her equally-doting dad, it must have come as a shock that fathers can be suspected of such evil. (I am not saying I believe he did it, I am just saying that even the suggestion of that must have been a perspective-changing experience for a child whose imagination would never have, otherwise, suggested such a possibility). Kids tend to magnify their unique little troubles. I hope parents are being sensible enough to shield their children from this blitzkrieg. I hope it’s possible to do so.

Pseudo-intellectual moi

Today I saw Amitav Ghosh being interviewed on some news channel. Barkha Dutt was conducting it, and the audience mostly comprised literature professors. I have not read too much of him, only ‘Dancing in Cambodia, at large in Burma’, and that too, when I was very young. I do remember that it introduced me to Pol Pot.

He is from St Stephens’ college. So are Shashi Tharoor, Kapil Sibal, Natwar Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar to name a few. I am not just dropping data, I am mighty impressed.

My curriculum-vitae reads funny - an Engineering degree in Telecommunications, a two year stint in IT (which had as little to do with Telecom as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya has to do with Godliness) and then the MBA which led to what I believe is my calling - far truer than any other - Marketing and perhaps, Sales (Sales is like the martinet-general, once schooled by him, you are never the same; but a good soldier, after having received his war-stripes, moves on.) I still have to make my mind up about that.

This post is meandering. What I really intended to do is mull over what I would have been had I not stepped into the glam-n-glitz of engineering (I suffer from intellectual snobbery, being an engineer is like page-three glamour for me :P ).

I have this theory - the life-is-a-canvas theory. I thought it up one day and was strangely proud of it. I tried to tell a few people, but they only laughed. One of my greatest achievements in life has been overcoming the fear of being ridiculed. So here it is - my life-is-a-canvas theory - for public consumption.

Internal Vs External. Self Vs Fate. Ability Vs Circumstances. Imagine a canvas - many-textured, loha at some places, satin at others; many hued - black and white and the entire range in between; glittering glimmering like a star and then again, dull as grey - imagine such a canvas. And then imagine yourself as an artiste. You daub at times, paint in broad strokes at others and bloody throw the damned pot of paint at the infuriating canvas on occasion. You change colors, you change themes, and you even change brushes. Some paint well, some don’t. Sometimes you paint well, but not always. The painting that you finally see emerging is your labor of love, no doubt, but not entirely as you had imagined it inside your head. Sometimes, it is better.

There it is - my theory! Hah! Although, it’s no E=MC^2, I bet Einstein would not have laughed.

The Silver Lining

I woke up at 7 and looked at the watch - actually the mobile; haven’t been using a watch since the past year or so. My 10-year old time-piece conked out and I don’t want to replace it with just any junk. One doesn’t upgrade a long-faithful 14” Onida for a 22” one; one goes instead for the high-definition plasma ‘experience’.

So anyway, it being 7 am on a Sunday morning, I switched-off for some more shut-eye. But my brain being the sort of villain it is - started shooting me red-alerts only an hour past. It knows. It knows that sleeping late on a Sunday is not the sort of luxury I can enjoy right now. As I was discussing with a friend the other day - Education ruined us.

I don’t really mean that. I would not like being vella. I like to work, to apply myself with a ferocity that scares even me at times. It’s just that - there are moments when I realize the viciousness of the cycle that I have got myself into. The pressure is intense, the will to excel is too; but the bar keeps getting raised. I know I will never ever fall short, but what happens to those dreams of long vacations, movie-marathons, quality family-time, gymming and dance classes, adda-ing with friends - lost&found&past&present, book-clubs and copious reading, love?


It is a tight-rope walk alright. Somedays I find it exhilarating - actually most days I do. You have to stay-put, up there in the air; neeche gehri khaai hai - bottomless chasm of never-ending responsibilities, assignments and promotions no doubt - but leaving you with slight opportunity to enjoy the fruits of labor.

And I am talking on behalf of most of the well-educated, talented people nowadays who get into crème-de-la-crème jobs early-on in life and then get creamed.

Chuck. On a lighter note, I recently visited the markets with a salesman who happens to be an artiste - the acting-bug has him in its girraft - and he boasts of a repertoire comprising some 200-odd shayaris. He started belting them out on the ride back. Now, I remember Banjo talking about a similar experience on his travels. But I am one-up on him. Peruse this -

Dibbi pe dibbi, dibbe mein choona
Dibbi pe dibbi, dibbe mein choona
Jab Shreya madam jaaegi Puna
Prime Distributors ho jaaega soona!

Heh. The perks of this job are many. Some are obvious and some - a little unconventional. These latter ones do ‘perk-you-up’, nonetheless.

Amdavad!

Long-time-no-see daahlings. I am in Amdavad. Have been since the past one week. Has it only been a week since I landed straight from Baroda at the distributor’s avec almost all my worldly possessions – ready to take charge?

Truly speaking, it has been the best week at work so far. Life does the hula-hoops around targets, invoices, inventory, margins and discounts. There are market visits – irate shopkeepers who lay bare all the torturous practices (real or imaginary) that Levers has subjected them to, or extremely ingratiated ones who want to transfuse your blood with Wagh Bakri. I fire-fight, and when actions fail, words soothe. Saving the best for the last, the crowning glory of this week has been - being in a position where I am to lead seven grown men – all graduates and experienced at their work – the Salesmen. People, whom I am supposed to motivate, monitor, remonstrate quite frequently and nurture. I try.

The other stud in the stable is the distributor - one of those picture-perfect seths – cash-cribbing, daughter-doting, wily-little-magnate, who probably learnt aatte-daal kaa bhaav before the alphabet.

Sales is something else. It’s dog-eat-dog and dynamic – extremely affected by externalities – be those in the form of a dip in the share market or the new school year. To explain – both of the above result in ‘market mein mandi’ since trade does not have the purchasing power. Then there is the fact that all the stakeholders are constantly trying to take you for a ride. I sleep like a dog – an eye and a ear open, on constant alert.

A shopkeeper recently kept asking me – Madam, kya aap practical ho? I finally asked him to explain to me the meaning of the word and as it turns out, he was worried that being a girl, I wouldn’t be able to get my work done, if need be, through underhanded means – tedhi oongli kaa istamaal. I wonder. Although it has nothing to do with being a girl. That if anything, is an advantage.

You may ponder if you have the time and patience that this that I am describing does not sound all that different from what I was doing in the first two weeks. Let me explain. Then I was a hanger-on, an observer, a side-kick at best. Now I am the one whose head will roll. A couple of cool crores hold me to ransom.

As of now, I am celebrating, one of the many targets has been met and I am taking my boys out to dinner. They worked hard towards it – madam se party jo leni thi. Smart boys – street-wise since they spend so much time on it, making ample use of psychology and subliminal coercion to meet their ends. I like them, but my mind at times screams in militaristic fashion – saavdhaan!

Watte industry. I am sorry to see little red riding hood, or whatever of her was left, take flight. On the other hand, someone had once said, which went on to make television history – Welcome to the real world; it sucks; but you will love it.

Brest - Part Deux

I had warned my reluctant readers that Exchange Escapades would be back. So let me detach myself from the bizarre baroda-ings of present and teleport to half a year back.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Brest, but it’s incredible how much there is to talk about.

Our Institute – ESC Bretagne Brest. It was total paisa-wasool. Firstly, it was wi-fi. And then, we met some interesting people there. All our courses were in English and our classmates were exchange students from other countries as well as locals who wanted to try their tongues at the language. The professors were mostly visiting faculty from another school or industry experts. And they were all top-notch. Well, almost all. They were knowledgeable and well-versed in the art of teaching – taking time, and giving many practical examples to drive a point home.

We were the kings though – we would come back from trips, complete projects overnight and make jaws drop by what everyone thought was exhaustive research and diligent hard-work. And the jaws would remain dropped when we revealed that a mere night-out had resulted in those histrionics. It’s not like the French are dumb. But we Indians have been through a very rigorous system, right from our child-hoods. We definitely have higher standards of output and much more practice at delivering them.

That said, I like the pedagogy there. Relaxed and non-competitive to a large degree. The class strength is small and there is something to be said for that. Individual attention is possible and is conducive to exploration and learning. Professors take much more effort to explain concepts, using visual and literary aids to ratify and emphasize. Sure, the education system we have here makes us hard-working and ambitious, competitive to a fault. But it doesn’t make us curious enough.

Our classmates were from all over. A trio from Slovakia – blonde and statuesque. The guy among them was extremely sharp - as quick as silver. A pair from China – they were strange. Disparate in age and life-styles, one was the perfect Yin to the other’s Yang. The guys in my gang came to know a couple of local fellows from the school Rugby team which even led to one unforgettable rugby-playing-session for them. There were some others we would talk now and then to, but maximum air-time has to be given to the Ruchis. Ruchi Jain and Ruchi Aggarwal - both management students there. We made friends with them early-on, and hung-out often. I even had a couple of girls’-nights-out with them. Wild times, will elaborate a little later. The thing to be noted here is that even for the short duration of three months - we could not keep controversy at bay and were soon privy to the tangled equations between these two girls. My take-away from it all - it’s tough, living in a foreign country, especially when you’ve never been away from home before. It’s like a crash-course on life. Ruchi Jain would know.

Memories are like the streets in Venice – crissing and crossing unexpectedly, way leading to way. Back to the present for now- it’s 1 o’ clock on a Sunday and I need to get going. I will try the whole sitting-alone-in-coffee-shop-with-book thing today. Can’t get over the romance of it.

Work-Life balance

I came to know today that when IT officials serve commissions to aapno distributors, they are ready to get bought-off in FMCG currency, at least in part. Dove, Ponds and Lakme - the missus beams as well, and after some regular usage, hopefully glows too.

Talking of distributors, the face of retail in India is going to be immensely different in a few years. While I may have read this before, I have come abreast of live examples only recently. Imagine a Metro Cash n Carry – the wholesaler takes home 15-16 percent margins. He is happy but somewhere the local distributor is tossing and turning in his bed. The same phenomenon – deep pockets, corporate-backing and economies of scale which translates into might, is threatening the kiranas and family grocers - in the guise of Modern Trade. They are concerned. They are caught in the maelstrom of change.

Going by some of my latest posts, one may get the impression that I think of nothing but work. True to a large extent, but not entirely. Sometime back I read that Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ is slated to win the ‘Best of the Booker’ award. I love the book and worship his writing. Am reading ‘Shalimar the Clown’ right now and it is rich. More than the content, I like the literary devices he makes use of. I remember being blown away by MC. Indian Mujahideen or whosoever you are – rot in hell.

As an aside – a thought, albeit borrowed - An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. Nice. Although, intellectuals may not really be the full-house they are trumped-up to be. Ask the self-taught ‘software-engineer’ who wrote the ERP being used by stockists all over Gujarat; you won’t catch him mouthing N=1 and R=G, but his nose for dhanda can tame the highest-flying Pinocchio.

Hoodibaba

All those who eagerly await my ‘Exchange Escapades’ better know that the series shall resume and soon. All those who are wondering whether there are any such eager-beavers in existence better go boil their collective heads.

Meherbaan Kadardaan - come to Baroda. Come one, come all. At any given point of time, especially when the sun is beating you into pulp, you may encounter a two-wheeler with a helmeted-n-mustachioed Maratha riding proud and a funny little thing sitting pillion.

Now listen close – all ye apples of mine eyes and I shall let you in on a secret – if that funny little thing sitting pillion is not me then there are no rings around Saturn and the Indian Film Industry is chock-full of innocent young girls who go home to their mammas at night. SSSso, me it is, albeit, with a unique contraption on my head which I shall christen as the half-helmet i.e. a helmet without a bottom - one that can easily sit on your head like a cap. Easier than two-minute noodles.

Thou shalt wear a cage around your head - so said the son of God or was it a Safety Officer at HUL? In either case, I agree. So if you come to Baroda tomorrow, you may enjoy the privilege of feasting your eyes upon aforementioned Maratha plus little thing with a full-grown-helmet on. The moral of this story being - do come to Baroda. We will party – there’s enough chhaas around for everyone.

P.S – The helmet is not dangerous in any manner. It does have a strap that I can buckle around my chin, ensuring protection from man and motor. A cute little thing - made to size. That is not to say that I don’t have the intellectual prowess of King-Kong. Or Stuart-Little.

With love from Baroda

It’s been some time. I am, as of this moment, in a three-star hotel room, in Baroda. The television is on and some prannoy-roy-sound-alike is belting out pop-news. Yes, my dears, I am on my sales stint and my area of rampage is Gujarat. Dry-days are ahead, in more ways than one.

The above was jotted down by me four days ago and today is the second time in five days when I have the time and inclination to write some more. I am still in my hotel room. But the television is off. Have watched more of it in these five days than the whole of last month combined. It’s that and the mobile phone that keep me company when I get back from the grind. Long live technology.

Baroda is a nice city. Spacious and broad, the rickshaw guys here are a gentle breed. They are chivalrous and not as abrasive as their counter-parts in other cities. Have realized how much that contributes to the feeling of well-being one gets. It is a small place and I dare say, you can traverse the length of it (not that I have, yet) in less than Rs 60. Sayaji Gaekwad is to Baroda what Shivaji is to Mumbai. Omnipresent.

My work - is all that I had expected from it and more. Most of my day is spent at the distributor-point. The salesmen come and go. I, sometimes, hang around in the godowns, familiarizing myself with the mind-boggling array of goods that adds so much complexity to the range; but is taken in such a non-chalant manner by the layman - for whom it’s as simple as asking for the ‘naano Lux International’ instead of the ‘moto Lux pink’. Naano – small, moto – big. Dear readers, I have added another language to my less-than-impressive kitty-bag of spoken-tongues. Or, at least, am in the process of doing so. So, work is exhilarating, although a steep-uphill-climb at times. But I don’t believe in easy. Easy is like junk-food.

I went for a market visit yesterday. And saw what good salesmanship is all about. Customer-focus is, in fact, all that it is vaunted to be. The guy in-charge of half of Baroda worth a monthly turn-over of two crores – the man who is currently training me, is also a salesman par excellence. He is quite a colorful character. Jitendra Patil aka Jitu Patil is a proud Maratha, based out of Baroda. Cracking at numbers, smart with people, his post is one that I shall be joining as boss of, once I am done with my training. I have yet to discover why I am better than him. I guess it has more to do with the opportunities I got, and the training which enabled, encouraged and equipped me to look at the larger picture. Sounds like quintessential-mba-jargon. But nothing in mba is jargon when coupled with strong execution.

Enough banter. Today is a Sunday and the malls in the city shall be seeing some of me. Wheel and Knorr are all okay, but the system requires some pampering.

Brest-Part Uno

Let me talk a little bit about our life in Brest. Having completed our first trip with flying colors, we returned to Brest, but not to rest. Some heavy-duty accommodation-search was in the offing.

It’s like this – we spent the first week in firangland at Hotel Balladins, as I have mentioned before. After that, we had booked ourselves into an establishment called Apartcity - a hybrid between a guesthouse and a hotel. A woman who called herself Sabine presided over its affairs and ruled with an iron-fist, some would say. We had this roof over our collective heads for a month and after that, were relying rather heavily on serendipity to lead us to our next abode. Apartcity was a great place, having more than all the conveniences of modern living, but we were having to pay a tidy sum for it. It had to go - as the Red Queen would say, although not in so many words.

Elucidating a bit on life at Apartcity – it was an era. One of the boys in my troupe, Rahul Pal turned out to be a master-chef, also possessing the willingness to provide the rest of us with gastronomic delicacies. We would sit down to a hearty meal of chicken and chawal almost every night – much missed. The rest of us did play our bit-parts too. Som would help with the cooking at times. Chandan was the self-appointed chawal-champ, and to watch Bobby cut onions was like being mute witness to a symphony being played. Okay, I exaggerate, but he is a pretty-darn-quick cutter of onions, among other things. Yours truly, would try her best to be useful, taking charge of the ‘Ready-to-eats’; the culinary-challenged would know that this is not a particularly demanding undertaking and the alert reader would be abreast with the fact that these space-age and time-bending eatables were by no means central to our diet and well-being.

So anyway, we had to look for another place inspite of all the rollicking fun we were having there. Various agencies were hounded; numerous apartments were visited as a result. But to no avail. We did not have too much time, since another trip - this one to the rest-of-Germany and Netherlands was looming on the horizon. More on that later.

To sum - Brest was the good life. We went house-hunting; did the whole setting-up-of-household thingie upon finding it; lived a bountiful existence in that home of ours with plenty of food, booze and discussions; and also partied like bohemians. We made some friends too, interesting ones at that – some firangis and some desi-atarangis.

A few posts it shall take to talk about all of the above in the detail that they deserve. And if Ruchi Jain is reading this – stay tuned, you will figure.

The sun

Setting out
In search of the sun
The journey is new
With many a twist and many a turn

Looking back
It all seems hazy
There is a pattern
Even though it’s mostly crazy

But the person who stares back
Was somebody else
He was wearing more clothes
And some shiny stuff and bells

The sun is a glorious thing
Life, also fire
Hope wings aren’t made of wax
And hope arms don’t tire.

Epigone

D was an ambitious twenty-year-old. His mornings were spent at Prakash General Stores – the three longest hours of his day, where he played delivery boy, salesman and shop-owner’s personal punching bag. Mr P, though not an evil man, was a bit of a misanthrope. Like the eye of Sauron, his presence was piercing and pugnacious.

As soon as the clock struck noon, D would rush over to his other job as a part-time hair-stylist’s assistant, at Gazelle Beauty Parlor – an up-market establishment that offered to bring out the inner woman in you, or so it said. It is widely rumored that all women secretly believe that they can look like Angelina Jolie, given half the chance. And they chase after this mirage with unrelenting determination. For a whole battery of professionals, technicians, researchers, retailers and surgeons, this notion proves to be the butter on their baguette.

D’s profile was to cut and trim. But he ached to also crimp, color, perm, straighten and curl – his hands would itch whenever a woman having a bad hair-day walked through the door. His ambition didn’t end there. He envisaged himself as a hair-consultant. Lift a strand here, feel a lock there – and know exactly whether it should be sent for scalp-cleansing or follicle-strengthening. The hair industry beckoned him – it was his calling. But the climb was uphill.

Thus spluttered the lorry of D’s life – a vector without much speed. And then - he saw her. V turned up in his life like a jack-in-the-box and hit him squarely on the jaw. She came into the shop and asked for a note-book. Violins played, bells jangled. D never recovered from the assault.

The days after that passed-by in a blur. He followed her home. He peeked in through her window. He even threw a stone and bolted. His nights were feverish and days pregnant - with wait. He discovered he knew a friend of hers and plotted to somehow get himself introduced. After that, D was sure his natural magnetism, years of observation and careful planning would win home the bacon. He knew to the punctuation how he would persuade her to go out with him. He would take her to one of those Salman flicks at Galaxy, on his neighbor’s rickety Honda; he would buy the popcorn during the interval and regale her with funny stories. To clinch the deal, he would take her to Rajesh Khanna Park where they would stroll around talking, and upon getting tired, would park their asses on a bench. And then he would open his heart out to her.

That little imp that we call - luck - was probably looking the other way. And so, his plans fell into place.

Location – Rajesh Khanna Park. Ambience – Fresh breeze and verdant greenery. Him – Clean-shaven, spanking new and moony-eyed. Her – Fragrant, tinkely-voiced and coy as a beetroot. They sit there looking at each other, hope in their eyes and moths in their stomachs. V seems as afflicted as D. Her hands are fidgeting with her handkerchief. He is wondering whether to take the next step. He steels himself, clears his throat and is about to spew forth, when he notices a strand of hair – blowing across her face. His right hand shoots forth to put that errant strand back in its place. He notices that it, the hand, is trembling. Her mouth is slightly open – the moment is magical. His hand makes contact with her hair and runs the length of it lightly; he finds himself saying – You have split-ends, you need a hair-cut.

City-speak

I was reading something yesterday and it was about different cities having distinct characteristics – like people. That set me thinking, how I would describe all the cities that I have lived in -

Kolkata – My first love

Warm, blustering, forgetful, intellectual. The Argumentative Indian. Would prefer brainstorming about life, the arts, death, the universe and taxes; over struggling towards making just that much more money. With the times - albeit with a lag; he is an enthusiastic, bespectacled, avuncular old man, having seen it all – Michael Jackson to Mango Soufflé; but whose senses still remain infused with the incense of the Durga Puja pandals and the quintessential Mishti Doi.

Mumbai – The Enchantress

She knows what she wants and is willing to pay her pound of flesh. Ambitious, independent and upwardly mobile, she flirts, pouts, and even blows you kisses. But don’t be mistaken, my friend – she could crush you under her stilettos in a minute.
A bank clerk supporting a family of five, a tycoon’s wife marrying business and page three in an evening’s entertainment, a housewife saving for that pagdi on the ridiculously expensive accommodation or a struggling starlet planning her rise to superstardom over the wreckage of countless failures - she has determination in her soul and dark circles under her eyes – coz Mumbai never sleeps.

Pune – For keeps

She is the girl next door. Pretty, sensible and sweet. Always a breath of fresh air; she can make the effort and play the sultry seductress too - just for a lark. Before you know it, you want to marry her.

Bangalore – The Chameleon

Difficult to say. Many things to many people. My own experiences have been diverse. Hard taskmaster when I just started to work – a veritable Aunt Agatha. An upbeat, pleasant, affectionate character when I was studying there – a modern-day Aunt Dahlia? Have heard from people about her innocence in the days before she met her danna – Mr Murthy. The grand moll of geekland in her hey-days, was she used and abused? Some say she still holds that power; all said and done, she is the mother of the new India – the provenance.

Disclaimer – For the people who disagree with any of the above - kindly pardon the innocent meanderings of an over-active imagination. I simply have nothing to do.

The Brucke over the Inn

Our next stop was Innsbruck in Austria. Ski-slopes and the Swarovski theme park (Kristallwelten), plus a couple of Winter Olympics – a must-not-miss destination for every Eurotripper worth his Eurorail pass.

The one thing for which I shall forever be thankful to Innsbruck - my first experience of snow. We took a cable car to the top of the Hafelekar (2,334 m) mountain range and the view during the climb and while on top, of the Innsbruck valley and town is etched in my memory. It was only October and hence the mountains had very little of snow, that too residual. That didn’t stop us making the most of it though. I was a snow-virgin no more.

The town was as pretty as any other European town. The city-center chock-full of tourists. Picture this – quaint cobblestone pavements, populated with artists drawing, sketching and painting everything in sight for a few euros; pedestrian roads full of people milling around – some who are trying to absorb all the history around them, with buildings to look at and guides in their sonorous tones to listen to; and some who have zipped up their digicams for the moment and picked up spoons instead – contributing to the top-lines of those many road-side cafes.

We contributed our bit and then bumped into one of the four boys I had originally come to France with (he was not with us on this particular trip, having had some other plans). It may seem like a coincidence conspired by the Gods to some, but it is not really so. Out of the 200-odd IIM-freaks crawling across the European subcontinent, most would have decided to head to Austria after doing the rounds of the Oktoberfest.

After the trip to the mountain and back, we decided to take it easy and spent the evening in a pub. It had a hot-hot-hot bartender, who was also extremely charmant. I feel it necessary to mention these lustful cravings, because they were rare. Another little factoid - at the beginning of the trip, Chandan and I had decided to flick a coaster from each of the pubs we went to, just to have a souvenir – unique and free-of-cost. Due to constraints like - not all pubs having coasters, and us not always being in a condition sober enough to flick one from the ones that did - this plan did not fulfill its true potential. Nevertheless, I do have some coasters lying around.

So that was Innsbruck – the bridge (brucke) over the Inn. I later came to know that the seed for A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had been sown inside Douglas Adams’ psyche while he had been lying in one of the fields in Innsbruck, staring up at the stars. Had I know it then, I would have been tempted to try it too. When was the last time a multi-million-dollar-best-selling-award-winning idea struck me?

All that rhymes..

I am not good at writing poetry. Have always thought so. And at different points of time, have come up with different reasons as to why it is so. Let me figure this out once and for all. So, let us have a look at the poetry that has had some impact on me over the years.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost – an all-time favorite because I have, in some way, internalized the last few lines. I used to have them on a poster in my room and am pretty sure all my future rooms will have them too.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I also like the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru had these lines inscribed on his desk, and they were discovered after he died. I don’t particularly like the man, but I like the fact. These lines have history, they have character.

The Road not Taken – Robert Frost - for the sheer emotion behind it. I read somewhere that it is the story of his life. He chose the road less traveled. Have a look at these lines -
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
The irony and beauty of life – condensed in rhyme.

Mending Wall – Robert Frost - for the message. And because it’s funny, in a dark sort of way. The last line of the poem –
.. He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Platitudes, adherence to meaningless tradition, resistance to change – mainstays of our black-box-white-noise lives.

La Belle Dame sans Merci – John Keats – The woman without any mercy. A story of intense pain, heart-wrenching agony, and all that; but also the story of supposedly-competent men losing their rocker on beholding a beautiful woman. To be fair, most men would look askance at such a woman (with her wild wild eyes and faery’s song), but some never outgrow their adolescence. And serves them right that she ain’t got no mercy!

The Walrus and the Carpenter – Lewis Carroll – Delightful! From one of my favorite books – Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Finds There. Dear readers, go read this poem, if you haven’t already. It will tickle you to the bone.

A Visit to the Dentist – Ogden Nash (could not find it online) – As I recollect,
Some pains are physical and some pains are mental
A pain that is both – is definitely the one that is dental..
Wit at its best. And I like people whose names start with an ‘O’. Just.

O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman – I like this poem because it taught me the meaning of the word – Allegory. The poem is actually about Abe Lincoln and the fact that he was assassinated before he could savor the peace that prevailed in his country after the Civil war and other elements. I have always liked Abe Lincoln. There are enough inspirational stories about him and as a young impressionable girl – I would get goosebumps at the mention of them.

Mind without Fear – Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high – into that heaven of Freedom, let me always reside.

So what is the common factor in all this poetry? What is good poetry? Depth? Emotion? Brevity? Thought-provocative nature?

All of these perhaps. Good poetry rhymes, great poetry resonates.

Inane

Who is to say, what’s right
What’s not
For a body-builder
Carbohydrates are rot

For a commercial sex worker
Legality rocks
For a saint or a priest (barring the ones who are pedophiles)
It just plain old shocks

For the doc - euthanasia’s right
To end a coma too long
For the patient’s wife
It’s a life taken wrong

For a business man
IPL is huge money & fame
For a true cricket fan
It’s the end of the game

For lovers intense and young
The world will not matter
But when there’s no bread in the bin
Will not love - shatter?

The believer has his faith
Faith is a strong teacher
For the science man, the atheist
Reason’s above any fictional preacher

And for a king in days of yore
Twas duty to plunder & maraud
So, my friends, who is to really say
What is even, and what is odd?

Eis

From Vienna, we moved onto Austrian cities renowned for their scenic beauty – Salzburg and Innsbruck.

Salzburg – the city of Mozart, where cigarette-lighter to chocolate-box – every bit of merchandize has him staring at you, in his white-powdered-wig; Salzburg – the city of the Von Trapp family with Sound of Music tours galore; its claim to fame are many.

The one thing I remember vividly and that deserves mention here is the expedition to the ‘Ice Caves’. These caves are sub-zero voids inside the Tennengebirge Mountains, at a height of around 1600 meters and have ice formations in various interesting shapes – all natural. We took a train ride to this place called Werfen and set-out in search of the bus – the first leg of the journey to the caves. Werfen was one of the prettiest places I saw in Europe. Austrian Alps in all their magnificent glory, the brightly shining sun illuminating the vast expanse of mountain, valley and brook.

After the bus deposited us, we bravely decided to foot the next five-hundred-meters-almost-vertical climb (in lieu of the cable car, may I add).

That climb made me realize how unfit I really was. The air around was pure mountain – the freshest possible; it got rarer as we climbed and my panting got more pronounced in direct proportion. But I am glad to put on record that I was not the laggard in my group – Rajgaria trailed behind me, putting blame to a fear of heights. On the other hand, Somdev was like a mountain goat, he climbed, jumped, and twisted his way around bramble and fern with the nimble-footedness of one. Bobby and Chandan, in that order, occupied the ranks between us.

I went along doggedly, not-all-that-slowly but very surely. After that excruciating climb got done with, we came to a sort of rest area populated with a restaurant and a souvenir shop. Not hanging around, we went ahead to avail of the next mode of transport – the cable car to take us over the unclimbable portion (although I later heard that some of the monkeys in our B-stable did attempt that climb too). Even after that cable car regurgitated us, we had some significant meters of vertical ascension remaining, to be done on foot. By this time, I was fed-up of the whole thing and rueing my decision to come at all. Somehow I made it to the entrance of the caves and we all sat there, gasping, a couple of hours after we had started – enjoying the rest.

But, not for long.

A 75-minute-tour inside the caves was next on the agenda. While we were waiting for it to start, a party of school children, no doubt on one of their field-trips came sauntering by. And I mean that. Around 7 to 8 winters old, it seemed as if no exertion was too much for them. Born in the mountains, with fresh air, wholesome food and hardy exercise, they would have made Sir Edmund proud. Be that as it may, the jaw actually dropped when post-fifty oldies started dotting the landscape! And they did not seem to be having half the trouble I was. Kudos. Going by this, I shudder to think of what I will be at 60. Probably on the catheter.

The tour started and I couldn’t wait for it to get over. It involved moving around in sub-zero temperatures and zero luminosity with only a few lanterns for ocular assistance, on wooden boards, through serpentine passageways, with railings on either side to prevent falling on the slippery ice. The going was slow, as one had to be careful, with so many people, especially kids ahead and behind of you. The domino-effect seemed probable. At one point, the whole file of us climbed a set of stairs that was at an angle of 45 degrees to horizontal propriety, as was informed to us by the guide.

This guide character was one helluva marvelous thing. Skating along on the ice, he was another authentic made-in-Austria product.

So anyway, that disaster of a tour finally came to an end. We felt liberated. The remaining of Salzburg was also quite interesting. We met avid travelers from the other IIMs and I explored the enchanting city of Salzburg on my own as the lazy-bums – R, S, B and C got late – they were probably doing their faces and tying each other’s corsets up. Bah!

It was a good time of the year. Mid October – the air was chilly, but the sun was out in full force. If you ask me, the Alps probably never looked better.

Jetsam and Flotsam

I have recently been reading a compilation of short stories by O’ Henry. O’ Henry was an American author, real name being William Sydney Porter. He specialized in twist-endings. I am sure, all of us, at some point or the other, have heard that one where the woman sells her crowning glory - her hair and buys a chain for the man’s prized watch with the money, while the man sells that same coveted watch to get a set of combs for her, or similar versions of it. This can be attributed to none other than big O. So anyway, I came across a delightful little thing from his stable the other day. The name of the story is – While the Auto Waits.

Here is a link – enjoy - http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/238/.

On a very different and hugely disturbing note - I stumbled across something yesterday that made me let out a silent scream. It seems that kids in Australia, the UK and other places (thankfully not India yet - atleast the article didn’t say so) are trying out this game – the choking game – where they enjoy the kind of high they get out of semi-asphyxia (or partial suffocation and semi-unconsciousness due to lack of oxygen to the brain) and hence indulge in choking each other or one-self, albeit stopping half-way of murder or suicide. I cannot imagine anything worse.

It is so difficult to bring up kids in the times that we live. I kind of understand why parents so joyfully celebrate birthdays – they are just so relieved that the kid has managed to survive one full year more, given the kind of dangers that lurk – not only in places far away and outside their areas of direct supervision, but perhaps just around the friendly neighborhood shop, or worse - even in their own bedrooms, on the computer screens. It is a failure of our society, of the lifestyles that we live and of the values that we ourselves have, or those that we fail to instill into our children.

At times like these when I am forced to ponder over such heinous trends, I catch myself thinking – all I want for my children is that they grow up into persons who are reasonable in their thinking and capable of discerning right from wrong. And the onus lies on me, as a parent, to ensure that happens.

Speaking of children, and again on a complete antithesis of a note - I saw a delightful movie yesterday – Life is beautiful. Life was, indeed, beautiful in that movie. So charming was the protagonist – Guido (Roberto Beningni) as the father stretching his fertile imagination to the utmost to ensure that his child is spared the mental trauma where he has to deal with things no human being should have to; racial discrimination, torture, separation from loved ones and death - that it made my day. Also, having watched – The Pianist, the day before, the way in which both these movies tackle similar situations – of survival in those infamous concentration camps and ghettos, is vastly different. The Pianist is hard-hitting, based on a true story, whereas LIB is more of a fairy-tale as is so rightly mentioned at the beginning of the movie.

So, with movies, books, stimulating conversations with all – ranging from my mother to old and new friends, and physical exercise – I fill my days. Like I was telling somebody a few days back – I am trying to expand my intellectual horizons and contract my physical ones (LOL). All these activities lead to an avalanche of thoughts, some of which I plug back into those afore-mentioned activities. The spillage, however, I mop up by presenting them in the form of blog entries - for public consumption.

Cutting Chai

From Munich, we moved onto Austria. Vienna was our first stop. We reached there at 6 in the morning and were soon out on the streets, walking towards the City Center as usual.

The streets were so pretty. Early morning, no crowds, beautifully arranged shop windows and yellow-flower-strewn roads. Perfection. We ambled along, breathing in the fragrance, breathing deeply and stopping every few minutes to peer into a particularly eye-catching display.

I would like to say at this juncture that my long-standing disdain for Aishwarya Rai thawed a bit. I have always maintained that she gets more than is her due - as an actress, because she is ethereally beautiful. Well, all over Europe, she ended up being the only Indian actor/celebrity who had her mug on hoardings and advertisements, that being rare too, but nevertheless, there. I concede that yes, she does command a certain respect in the International arena and inspite of my aversion to that feeling of collective patriotism and pride that all us Indians have the copyright to, it felt nice to see her.

So anyway, it was a fruitful morning; we crammed in a few palaces and gardens, encountered a bus-load of tourists from Italy and took several ‘aesthetic’ photographs (courtesy Rajgaria and Bobby J). Around noon it struck us that Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia, was just a half hour away from Vienna.

Now, every Eurotripper worth his backpack has seen the movie – The Eurotrip – where a bunch of kids from the States go to Europe and fall into all sorts of interesting situations. A part of the movie depicts them stumble into Bratislava, where they realize that the streets may be dirty, but there is no limit to what a dollar can buy.

We people decided to follow in their footsteps. Off we went to Bratislava. It was interesting - the currency was much more peaceful than the Euro and the city was decrepit. A mere half hour from Vienna in all its classic European glory; Bratislava had the quintessential Eastern European look – beggars, filth, cabs-drivers out to take you for a ride. We got into a bus, went to the city center and decided to spend our few hours at one of these swanky new malls. We walked around, downed a few drinks and also shopped at the supermarket – we stocked up on stuff we figured we would need – chocolates, water but mostly booze.

Many days later, while having a conversation with a Slovak exchange student from our class and from reading a bit, I gathered that Slovakia, and perhaps, the entire of Eastern Europe is kinda like a hot-bed for development and new business; hence it displays the kind of diversity that we find here in India too – a creak-a-minute public transport system alongside super-fast highways leading you to the Meccas of capitalism – the malls. The country’s political ideology is changing and it is in a state of constant flux.

So, here’s wishing all the emerging economies of the world - all the labor, enterprise and capital that they can dole up – May every Bhelpuri wala in Bambai dream of double-storied plush interiors, head-waiters and Crores that are crisper than cutting-chai.

Life's like this

I am currently taking a break from all the travel related talk. Current events dictate that I spend some time mulling over them. Well, the cloud may be cumulonimbus, but the lining is a big fat chunk of authentic silver!

Jug Suraiya says that all of our food grain problems will be solved if the politicos could turn our national inclination towards fasting into an obsession. I have spoken before about the way we Indians fast, and his article hit home. We fast for any and every reason – religious, political, personal, et al. Hunger strikes have been popular since the time of Mr Gandhi and fasting is often the most favored instrument of bribery as far as all things divine go. On a slightly more serious note, I agree with him that various factions – the RBI, the government etc are trying to curb inflation by flattening demand. What about increasing supply?

I chuckled a bit at the latest Absolut Vodka advertisement and the ruckus it has created in the US of A. Apparently, in an ‘Absolut’ world, half of the southern states of America would fall on the other side of the Mexican border, as was the case in the 1800s. This has not gone down well with the Yankees; most of them do not know that such a time ever existed when the map of the USA looked a little different from what it does now. ‘Absolut’ly American.

Dear readers, let me disgust you a little. Apparently, the most expensive coffee in the world is one that is an amalgamation of two kinds of beans – the premium Jamaican Blue Mountain (JBM) and another exotic-sounding one (have forgotten the name). So what, you say. All clear - so far. Well, as Barney-wait for it-Stintson would say, the second bean is not just added to the first, oh no Sir – we may be strange, but mundane we are not! It is, in fact, fed to certain even more exotic-sounding cats (yes, cats), then picked from their excreta, added to the JBM and lo and behold! The most expensive and mouth-watering coffee blend in the world. Say cheers.

We Asians like to differentiate. Whether is it cheap Chinese furniture - delivered to your door-step, or Tourist-guides outside the Taj Mahal with their Toothy smiles, we like to go the extra mile. Like this South Korean astronaut – Ki, who will not only celebrate South Korea’s first mission to space by breaking into a song when that final frontier is crossed, but will also spice it up a couple of notches by taking authentic Korean fare (customized for space travel, of course) along with her. Both these are first-time initiatives; and I will say again – joie - my friends, is the essence of life.

To end this series of the insane and the absurd – here’s the cream that gave the cat a cholesterol problem. A photographer (whose name I forget) specializes in clicking naked people and he wants to shoot 2008 (yes, that’s two thousand and eight) naked people in a stadium in Vienna, as a promotion for Euro 2008! He has made an announcement which says that 2008 naked men and women, strictly on a first-come-first-serve basis, will be given the chance to get their posteriors recorded for posterity. Isn’t that fant-ASS-tic?

Wolf

Many thoughts jostle for mindspace – the situation is worse than the 9 am Churchgate local.

My father says – the biggest failure, in today’s time and age, is when two people can’t find a way to understand each other and co-exist peacefully. We are debating whether a certain divorce should happen in the realms of the extended kith and kin. Well, it’s not always that simple. Sometimes, circs are beyond control and then, say I, why should one make this gargantuan effort to compromise? Doesn’t one deserve the kind of happiness which comes out of resonant co-existence? Pat comes the thought – When we take a concept like divorce as a lil more than the last armageddonish resort, the process - wherein we are trying to understand the other person - becomes half-hearted.

Perhaps, it is so. Perhaps, we squeal ‘Wolf’ too easily.

Today I realized that one has to work at everything. Attitude is not something you are born with, it is a matter of choice.

You can chose to be positive, or let yourself go to pieces. It is hard work, you know - trying to achieve that degree of optimism that makes you notice all the good things that are there around you. Because they are there - just a question of coming out of this self-induced state of self-pity and glancing around.

Today, I chose to glance around and was surprised.

Oktoberfest - in India?

Our next trip was to Munchen – Munich, for the Oktoberfest, and then onto Austria. This trip was one that took huge amounts of planning since we were trying to coordinate with a friend from Germany as well.

Oktoberfest was great – people really get into the mood for it there. And the gear as well. Bavarian men and women dotted the landscape, whichever direction you looked in. As usual, the women had unleashed all creativity on their outfits and there were Bavarian tops with leather pants, denim miniskirts, knee high boots, et al. The fair itself was like one of our ‘Appu ghars’, nothing more, nothing less. As usual, it was the exuberance of the people which made it different. Masses of junta from all over the world, the tents were overflowing, as were the beer mugs. Revelers dancing and swaying to music – mostly German songs, played live by groups of musicians. Different breweries had their own tents and each one had a different atmosphere. We went through all of them (were there six in all?) and chose on one that looked most fun. We managed to get a table for half an hour (strictly) and ordered beer. The beer tasted just as bad, but the excitement was infectious, and even though we didn’t know the songs, or understand the words, we got onto our benches and jigged a little.

Afterwards, we walked a bit through Munich. The best thing about these European cities is that they are all pretty and small. They have picturesque ‘city-centers’ and a whole bunch of people legging it. Quite touristy and easy on the pockets too. We went to Karl Platz , Mariann Platz, Eglise Garden and also managed to hop into a lounge bar and have a few drinks. This was the first of our many, many bar, pub and discotheque sagas. We people liked our spirits high.

For the night, we had booked ourselves at a hostel in Regensberg – an outskirt. It took us a couple of hours to get there – and I also recall there being a train strike in Munich that day! We reached somewhere near midnight, tired and ready to hit the sack – when the true import of backpacking smote us between the eyes. The owner of the hostel didn’t open the door, I suppose there was a deadline to the place that we had overshot, and we were left stranded into the cold chilly night.

That night was easily one of the more painful ones in Europe. We were cold and sleepy; and although there were a couple of over-priced hotels around, like true shoe-stringers, we decided to rough it. The upholsteries of Mac D’s, a local doner shop and Burger King were the beds beneath our butts that night.

See, things are much better organized in Europe. While, a fair of the magnitude of the Oktoberfest is planned to the tee and executed almost without hitches, where the motto is to leave no stone unturned to make it a memorable and ‘come-back-for’ experience and beer maidens are hired by the thousands; it also so happens that five tired travelers don’t get entry into a private hostel, the owner living just around, since they missed the deadline. Well, I think that one is not possible without the other.

While our India is represented by the ‘chaotic, everything goes, any and every mistake is pardoned if you have - enough money/are from the same state/are a girl/are apologetic enough’ kinda ethos, firangland begs to differ. For one – atithi is clearly not the apple of everyone’s eye and although I had to suffer for it – I would rather learn from my mistakes and toe the line than live in an India where an Oktoberfest in its full glory, is not possible.