White Hot

The sea was as calm as ever. More importantly, she was calm - it always had that effect on her.

Such an endless expanse of blue-green, a little scary at times. But she had grown up with it, seen it turn within a span of 10 years into less of the blue-green and more of the black-brown that this city is so famous for.

Why only this city, why blame only this city. Isnt that the way of life? A baby - pure as untainted snow, a water-cress lily. The entire transformative journey into adulthood and beyond is paved by dark encounters with this degenerate world. Any aberation is just that - an aberation.

She wondered - was life meant to be this difficult? Is that what the challenge of it was? Would we be just cardboard cut-outs of the Brady family if things were any different? Would she mind?

The waves made these swooshing noises. And some spraying noises. She could feel the salt on her face. It stung. Especially at the places where her wounds were still healing.

But the scars inside ran far deeper and were dangerous, as dangerous as righteousness. Righteousness gives us a special kind of anger, that seethes and seethes, sending out little sparks before engulfing all that comes in its way.

The scenes kept coming back to her. The smell of charred human flesh filled her dreams. Her anger was white-hot.

Where is my funny bone

I think I am getting unfunnier by the day.
I write funny no longer. I read funny no longer. No wait, make that - I read no longer.
I dream about work. Everyday. Every-single-fucking day.

Maybe I should turn up in office one day wearing just a jute bag, go slap a few people around me and then take a dive off the emergency exit.
Nobody will take me seriously after that. Ever.
Problem solved.

ASM-ing in the hinterland

Sunday night. Back from another one of those weekends.

Life has been so hectic in the past couple of months. All the new people and places. The responsibility. What gets me is that if I screw up, twenty other people get screwed too. I am not sure I am ready for that. It is a heady feeling, people saying 'Yes Boss' to you all the time. The first time I was called Boss, I didnt realize it was me being addressed. The flip-side to being this boss person are many, though. Like I said, I can't switch off. Then, I can't just do my own bit and mush-off. I need to remember who did what, bring it up in the right forum, ensure they get suitably appreciated/rewarded/promoted/reprimanded/punished for it.

Am I having fun? Most times, yes. Sometimes though, I wish I could just quit and run away from it all. Those times being Tuesday mornings, in particular, when I have to get up at the crack of dawn and head out of Mumbai.

Maharashtra rural. My playground, my workplace, my mecca. People - not from HUL, I tell this to, visibly wince. But I know that at this point of time in my life, nothing else would have been good enough.

Schizophrenia

The wheel turns full circle
Ordainment happens
Honeymoon finally over

December Day turns into week and weeks
From a hazy shade of hesitant winter to full-bodied spring
Good times only rolling stronger

Long rides through the dusty
And simmering roads
Seat belt firmly around the neck

The longest ride in a long time
The most fun too
Learning to let go of the safety clasp

Poha for breakfast
Errant marathas for lunch
She-boss

Morning chai
Lunch by the Viao
Girl and friend

Deep thought and the answer is not 42

Lately I have been thinking about creativity. It seems to me, that the more creative a person is, the more self-loving they tend to be.

While it is possible to be self-loving or narcissistic without being creative, the other way round - is that possible?

Imagine a painter. What great emphasis must he be putting on his vision of the world, that he decides to express it.

Creative people are consumed by their own thoughts and interpretations and want to put them out there, somewhere, for the world to see and enjoy, sometime - if not today.

(A person could argue that some people create for the sake of creation and not for other people to enjoy. By world, I don’t necessarily mean people though. Anything, plants, rocks, rivers. And the fact that they think what they can create is worth creating, means they must have a sense of self-importance. Does it not?)

A writer must be deeply aware of self. He cannot just be narrating incidents. He puts a bit of himself in everything he writes. People reading him relate that bit to random bits in their own self.

Being self-aware is not the same as being narcissistic though. The line may appear blurred, but people who are self-aware are also aware of their fallacies. Well aware.

Are writers simply self-aware? Or also self-loving?

The other side to this coin is that most writers, especially writers of fiction are excellent observers of people, scenery, human nature.

“Her body-language was fatigued. Hunched back. Sagging shoulders. Un-flexed arms. Sitting across from me, she was reading The Financial Times. While chewing gum - slowly, lazily. The impression was entirely of someone who was supremely disinterested in life.”

I can imagine a writer, Rushdie, Lahiri etc, traveling the world, doing research - meeting people, observing them, taking notes, taking in.

One can’t both be an excellent observer of other people and deeply narcissistic? It’s a paradox. Narcissus had no place in his life for observing other people.

Maybe it’s a professional requirement. Or maybe writers aren’t really all that creative - just talented at observing and then expressing.

Or maybe, my hypothesis that all creative people have a bit of Narcissus in them, is flawed to begin with. Perhaps they are only deeply respectful of their self, their ego.

Spike me!

I still get nightmares from the time that the ‘resume mentor’ would inspect records of my flimsy achievements with steely-eyed determination, just like a Chinese woman inspecting her face for clogged pores. And then sport a look of resigned frustration, just like the afore-mentioned woman’s husband footing the bill for pore-opening creams, lotions, essences, masks and serums. A pore, after all, has to breathe.

But I digress.

The point is, I finally have my ‘spike’.

I have climbed The Great Wall twice.

Beat that - any of you 9+ pointers, who win Olympiads or design regression models for fun. And maybe play a little tabla on the side. At concerts.

The child inside of us

Why do we like children?

I like kids because they are cute. First of all. But the larger reason is that they are so upfront about most things. Comfortable with their vices.

Scenario I - Two kids playing with a ball. They will fight for it with all their heart. One will sit on the other till he/she relinquishes the object of objection. Scenario II - You playing with a kid. Making funny faces, trying to make it laugh. The kid does not think it funny. Will make no pretense. Will raise hell and high water if you don’t let it go when it wants to.

Children are endearingly selfish. They know what they want, are not afraid of taking action on it, no matter how silly the desire may be - candy floss or your attention. They are huge attention-seekers too.

They are miniature us with no-holds-barred. We love to see them go at each other with such unbridled enthusiasm. We figure let them have fun while they still can. But somewhere, children are endearing to us because we live our vicarious desires, especially the baser ones, through them.

On the other hand, some of the most annoying grown-ups I have met are the ones who have not outlived the child inside them. The ones who still think that their wishes should be uppermost on the minds of all around. The ones who will ruthlessly engineer events around them to get what they want because they actually believe they deserve it.

A child is all that we love with gusto. A ‘childish’ man we abhor.

Selling my soul, while helping you find soul-mate

I hope you guys are noticing some of the advertisements that Google has been throwing off-late at my blog.

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How promising. And what a brilliant piece of advertising. Beautifully laddered.

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How cool is that.

The bigger question to ask here is why these ads are finding their way to my blog. An even bigger point of curiosity for me is, why aren’t any of you people clicking? I don’t see any hefty google pay-cheques in the mail.

Have we become so jaded as a society that even promises of meeting beautiful women, making an endless amount of money and finding the soul-mate, fail to excite?

What do we really want?

I, for one, want some dollars, courtesy Google. Please do click.

Peace-time love

They were in love

Oh, it was anguish

It was candlelight

It was music and heady perfume

And traveling for two hours just to spend one together

It was long phone calls

And silly fights

Beautiful words and stolen kisses.

And then came the day

When he didn’t feel the need to bathe

And she didn’t feel the need to wax

They love each other more deeply now

Anguish firmly replaced by

Formless pajamas and a five-day old stubble

Sun, Shanghai and S

I am glad I got the chance to work with a woman. There is this notion one has about women bosses. They tend to go overboard in their zeal to appear efficient, no-nonsense. This one has the perfect balance. Yin and Yang. She is the most soft-spoken person I remember meeting in a long time, and she cuts to the chase too. Cultural barriers are inside people’s heads. This lady cottons on to my thoughts, before I utter them.

So, a lot of really great things happened yesterday.

Sun happened. Spring came to Shanghai and my happy feet contracted the delicious disease. I tapped my way to office. To the beats of everything from Atif to ABBA, Shanu to Simon. With jacket carelessly flung over arm.

Random people smiled at me. On the subway, in the supermarket. Here’s the thing about the Chinese, they don’t smile at you of their own accord. They maintain distance, protocol. The Great Wall of China. Although people here are always staring at me. As a Brazilian colleague, recently drawled - Yeaaah man, they are always staring at you, and they want to touch you and they want to take pictures with you and...it’s crazy.

My sympathies to him. I may not be quite the tourist attraction that he claims to be, but people definitely do stare. Only non-chink for miles, in the Yellow Sea. Imagine being Paris Hilton at a Nobel laureates' convention. Or Albert Einstein at a rave party. Well, on second thoughts, he would have been quite in the Einsteinium there. The point is, I look like a freak. And that these descendants of Confucius smiled at me, without provocation. It was like the aura of happiness surrounding me penetrated their reserve.

I succeeded in my mission of befriending a Chinese woman. I drafted a plan of action, did some ‘target-setting’, practiced a few ‘opening lines’. They worked. I am trying to seduce her into showing me places around during the weekend. Don’t judge me, it’s mainly for the conversation.

Past deeds bore fruit. I met an Indian in office, a senior guy. First of all, we spoke in Hindi. Bliss. Secondly, while talking I happened to mention that I was working in the Andheri office for some months last year, sitting in the adjacent cubicle to this person, who happens to be his boss. A look of awakening dawned on his face and he immediately started rummaging through his cell-phone. And came up with a picture he had taken of a ‘quote’. Written by blue felt pen on a bit of chart paper in terrible handwriting. You guessed it and if you didn’t, go do some syllogisms. That quote was one of the many I had put up in my cubicle; he, on one of his visits, thinking it was interesting, had taken a picture of it. Okay, okay, not quite the Slumdog saga, but it felt good. To see one of your whims having made this journey across the continent. With me in tag.

Sex and the city. While sex in this city is more or less off-the-charts, I did manage to find a DVD set of the series, seasons 1 to 7, for 20 Yuan. Quick calculation. INR 140. F*** me.

Too much stimuli is there. Coming soon is an account of the Chinese woman’s obsession with her skin, me being all too painfully aware of it since the unit I work for is called - Beauty Care. Along with some tid-bits regarding the way the Chinese government manages PR through its newspapers, and how, if things were left to it, the much touted India-China story would have the ‘India’ part determinedly scratched off.

Scent of a city

Shanghai. It looked just like Gurgaon at first glance. The ride from the airport to downtown was marked by a feeling of deep satisfaction as all things fell into place.

It’s still early days. Been raining off-late. Cold winds. The works.

But I like it. The city is convenient. It didn’t take me any time to adjust to its beat. The beat itself is not distinctive. Shanghai is like one of those world-cities. Center of finance and business and what not. Or maybe I haven’t discovered the finer notes yet.

The Chinese are inscrutable. They look unapproachable. Serious people going about their business. Like they have the weight of the entire world’s manufacturing on their petite shoulders or something.

Ouch.

So anyway, although they look like Sir-when-I-ope-my-lips-let-no-dog-bark-Oracle, they actually are the sweetest people on earth. If you ever are in trouble and there’s a Chinese near, have no fear. Talk about the ‘State’ being different as different can be from the people it governs.

About those errant notes, by the way. I tried to discover them. I undertook a 2 hour walk, one way, to The Bund. Beautiful. In a surgical sort of way.

While I like the comforts of Shanghai, nay, I adore the comforts of Shanghai - where the streets have signs and no one knows my name, I do have a few questions. I wonder what brought those disfigured beggars at the Bund Tourist Canal to Shanghai? Was it the dream of a better life? Or are they native Shanghai-nese and have nowhere to go? How did they get disfigured? Is it similar to the racket that runs in Mumbai? How do the guys incessantly peddling their wares to exotic looking foreigners - from fake watches to portraits - make ends meet? Are they making enough money from all the people they dupe, o-so-sweetly? Which are the areas of Shanghai where the not so white-collar live? Have they lost their jobs yet? What do they have to say about China’s recent declaration on a news channel - China refuses to acknowledge the recession?

I want to see the underbelly of the city, any city. I don’t just want to go to the Bund, marvel at the array of retina-blinding-white-neon-golden-lit-branded-displays at People’s Square, restrict myself to traversing the criss-cross of super-super highways and architectural marvel that is Shanghai. I want to get into the brain, the heart, the soul of a city. Walk across its dirty gullies, be privy to the shameful secrets that it tries to hide so religiously.

Say my name, Shinlee Xihou

They can't pronounce my name here.

That pleases me. Makes me feel exotic.

On another note, need to get better shoes.

Mirror mirror on the wall..

Met an old friend today. It’s that time of the year when west-gone birds come home to roost - for a bit, what with Christmas vacations and all. Old friends have a way of bringing you face to face with a self that you barely recognize now. They remember things you used to say and do, things which you yourself have forgotten. They surprise you at times with their acute observations, their little windows into your soul.

Most of all what surprises you is how you used to be. Am I the same, slightly ditzy, seemingly carefree thing now that I was then? Life was that simple? Or is just the rose-tint of nostalgia that makes it seem so…so endearing?

So we got discussing about this and that. A girl we both know, me - on the fringes, as one of the most staid and conservative people ever, is getting married. She met the guy on a flight. She is a Southie - steeped-in-the-wool, he a Catholic. People never cease to amaze. Another woman, who met her now-husband through Orkut came up. She met him via a common birthday community.

Almost makes me feel conventional. One may question the almost bit. Engineer-IT-MBA. What’s not conventional? On the other hand, have come to believe that convention really does not exist. It is just a façade. Everybody has a funny, irregular, mould-breaking story to their lives, which is at most times hidden from public view. But yes, the eccentricities-oddities, well-hidden though they might be, definitely do exist. Perhaps just a scratch of a nail below the thin ice.

One thing has definitely changed about me. I used to revel in my oddness. I used to like being ditzy, irregular, forgetful, crazy, irrational at times, impulsive. Unapologetic. No longer. I have spent the last year ironing all of them out. Trying to get discipline and sense in. Caution. Responsibility. Look-before-you-leap kinda thing. It’s there in my writing even. The style, the content. Suddenly it’s a different set of attributes that seem desirable.

The face I saw in the mirror today, when I met him and the day I met those two, was somebody else’s. What is it? Growing-up? B-school? Life?

Use Detergent/Wear Sunscreen

I met a woman the other day. And asked her about her favorite ads on television as a way to get some more ‘insight’ into what she was all about. Rather what her ‘attitude towards shopping’ was all about. Yes, that is of paramount importance to me nowadays.

She thought for some time, while I waited with a cultivated look of pleasant encouragement on my face. After some time, she said she liked the Pepsi ad featuring Mahendra Singh Dhoni best.

I laddered.

She described the ad. Minister ka beta. Line mein ghus jata hai. Dhoni kehta hai. Pyaas honi chahiye.

Why does she like the ad. What does it mean.

I laddered some more.

She said. Zindagi mein aage badhna ke liye pyaas honi chahiye. Yeh baat humko achhi lagi is ad mein.

This amazingly complex country.

In a village called Etaunja in Uttar Pradesh

Lives a woman, like every other woman

She goes out in ghoonghat

And runs the home with a measure tape

But she watches and she dreams

Thirsty dreams of unfettered flight

Aspiring India of the glorious ambitions

Your children go to school in collars of impeccable white.

The double O

First Love -

Is something else

A shrine to an innocent self

First Love -

Which when comes your way again

You brace to get overwhelmed - again

First Love -

Her walking into the room

After all these years, and it’s like the Mona Lisa

Overhyped. Overrated.

Yes, Emotional Atyachar

Dev D is the perfect movie. A coming together of people bursting with the juice.

The music oozes passion. Not only does it not stick-out like a sore thumb, it gives the movie direction. And Emotional Atyachar is well - the new anthem. The movie itself is brilliantly put together with pace changes and contextual lighting. Minimal dialogues. Raw.

Mahie Gill exudes sex appeal and energy. Kalki Koechlin is like a cat. Graceful and mysterious. And Abhay Deol. What can one say. Tortured. Absolutely.

The actors fit into their roles like cork in a champagne bottle. They are brilliant actors, no doubt. It’s mostly clever casting though.

Dev epitomizes obsession. Paro passion. And Chanda survival-instinct.

I am as taken by the characters as by the people who made them. So Anurag Kashyap encouraged Abhay Deol to drink while filming. And to land up on sets right out of bed. Hung-over. Mahie Gill broke a few doors, the hand-pump, somebody else’s hand and sprained her own ankle during the course of the movie. Chanda’s character was auditioned extensively, actors were give the orgasm part to read out. Kalki K didn’t know Hindi very well. But she spoke French and Tamil fluently and hence the final scene turning out the way it did.

There are movies and then there are movies. This one was a pleasant surprise. Watching it makes one wonder how it would be - to create your labor of love, to see it taking shape in front of you. To hit upon inspiration, to get others impassioned about your vision. To see yourself vindicated as the curtain falls. To lose yourself in front of the camera. To overcome the fears - of ridicule, failure and commoditization.

One of SRK's many quotable quotes - I leave behind a little bit of myself in each of my movies, and I fear that one day I will have nothing left.

Technicolor Dreamcoat

It struck me today that I am a boss-person. I get inspired by people around, maybe more than the work.

My room is a mess. There are things lying around. The bed is never made. Newspaper strewed. It still looks pretty damn neat. It is Wadala Sheraton, all said and done. How bad can it look. Like Aishwarya Rai having a bad hair day.

I don’t like the Sheraton though. It’s amazing how people have raved about it so much. I don’t want to live in a sone ka pinjra.

So trip to China happening sometime next month. Will like that. They have gorgeous hair. Should find out what the secret is. Can’t be good genes. Cant only be good genes.

The Chinese are secretive people. Inscrutable is the word. Plus they have the Mandarin. Must be a very narrow group of non-Chinese who can tell the Lee from the Loo.

I see people all around me trying to maintain the work-life balance. In fact, I am one of the last few to join the bandwagon. This says something about young people fresh-into-their-careers nowadays, does it not? And all of these people are ambitious, make no mistake. Coming of age, methinks. Of sensibilities.

'Sensibilities' seems to be my most oft-repeated word off-late.

The gist

It stares me in the eye
Like a sarkari office peon certain of my imbecility
I turn away
Chewing on my lower-lip in concentration

This question that comes up at times
The answer that I struggle with most times
Give me this day my daily bread
Also tell me how I should be

Should I stash my woes behind the daily dose (of laughter)
Or treat this life as pursuit for nirvana
Check for expiry dates and tell-tale signs on birthday gifts
Or maybe believe. Just believe

A goal. A goal. Should I set one
Or just drift along till I see someplace to anchor
Believe all men are born equal
But then why do so few rule and many others - just root

There is no - to be or not to be
Am and want to be
But what, and why, and how
That is mainly the question.

God in Gucci

I have discovered that when you boycott something, or proclaim disdain for it publicly, it is actually because you like it more than you care to admit, to the world, and sometimes, to yourself.

Like perfume. I never buy and rarely wear perfume. The only perfumes I own have been given to me by friends. Why? Because I don’t care to smell good? Wrong. Because smell to me is the most inebriating of senses, the most powerful, the most heavenly.

Smell is an obsession. I associate everything with smell. A sliver of a long-forgotten smell is like the key that opens long-locked doors inside my mind, the lubrication that gets those rusty hinges to swing.

The smell of my sister’s baby skin in the days when she would still let me hug her, the stench of Salt Lake City when I was a hot-headed-wear-heart-on-sleeve kinda punk kid, the cold remembrance of the air conditioning at Sinhal classes where I was easily the most painfully-shy, short-skirted, fifteen-year-old in her own ditsy Neverland, the perfumed nail-polish and the musty odor of second-hand Sweet Valley Highs from then, when I was quite the bimbo, the skin cream we all love to hate on my lips for the first time - the feeling’s gone, but the smell remains, the ghastly gobhi-aaloo when I would wake up feeling homeless and lost - remembering the smell of my mother’s love, the Vodka in plastic cups - brilliant hazy nights and freshly-laundered rosy mornings. And lately, the roses that smell of Hugo Boss.

The list is endless.

I love smell so much that I don’t think there is any smell in the world good enough for me. And so, I never wear perfume.

The same goes for love. People who say they don’t believe in love, in fact, believe in it so much that anything less than the over-powering, all-consuming, absolutely-exhilarating emotion is not acceptable - is not love.

The Energy Crisis

A friend recently, while narrating his trysts with the good ol’ arranged-marriage-beast, ended with - I like a little bit of passion, energy. It’s not that I want her to agree with me all the time or say only nice things. In fact, even when she says - You are an asshole, it should compel me to think - Am I really?