Precipitate

It's amazing how marginalised clouds are. Grey clouds are a bad signal, a metaphor for grim times. When all's nice and sunny, that one cloud is cursed for being a blot on the otherwise flawless countenance of the sky. So much for a silver lining. A clouded vision is dangerous, clouds socialising by gathering is a bad omen and them getting charged, through no fault of their own, thanks to Coulomb's and Faraday's laws, and giving rise to lightning makes them big-time thugs. And don't even get started on rain- clouds bear the brunt of the criticism when the air around them doesn't want to cooperate and precipitate. If they had thoughts, the first thing they'd think about is disappearing altogether. Not that it's in their hands. To use a terrible pun, they can't even pee by themselves. All the Captain Planet elements- Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, Heart (you can continue reading once you've put your fist up in the air and said "Go Planet!"; or, finished the theme song and smiled to yourself)- hate them. For sanity's sake, I repeat- all the Captain Planet elements hate clouds.

Yet, the gods choose them as their abode. Gods are nice guys.

P.S.- I looked up "precipitate" in the dictionary for secondary meanings. Oxford's primary meaning for the verb form- cause (something bad) to happen suddenly or too soon.

Blistering Bus Blues!

The dithery Whiteline slows to a trot a few metres short of the majestic Lal Quila as indigenous salesmen raid the bus, selling everything under the moonlit sky from two-week-old coconut slices, eerily crunchy papads and family-shaped toothbrushes to paradoxically marketed “Sacche Dilli-waalon ke liye sacchi Dilli ki guidebooks” and stainless gold chains and rings for ten rupees. The three-strangely-dressed-man-strong cabin crew pulls in anyone within their hands’ reach through the non-existent doors, sometimes calling for worried wives’ angry wails, which barely matched the cacophony of the same crew’s shouts of “Naveda, Naveda, Naveda! Kale Khan, Nizamuddin, Naveda!” . The even more strangely dressed conductor begins his swagger-filled strut through the crowded corridor of uncertainty, throwing bloodshot bullets from his eyes whenever asked for the price of the ticket, when not shooting sugary greetings at his beloved(s) on the phone. All those manners are forgotten in a moment (déjà vu) when the driver slams the brakes, prompting a barrage of expletives from both men- one at the other, while the other at a poor brother who forgot to see the red light earlier. The golden-nosed Himesh croons carelessly from helicopters, auto-rickshaws and what-not as these scenes play on, supplying an apt background music as the three capped fellows in front of me whisper on each of their phones “All day, all night- mujhe yaad sataye teri”. I switch on my phone’s radio to escape the nasal onslaught, only to run into Kylie Minogue expressing her desire to chiggy-wiggy with Akshay Khiladi Kumar. As I desperately try to make head and tail of that song, the rest of the channels disappoint, too, when not screaming into my ears- “Happy Choti Diwali!”. Sector-37 couldn’t come any sooner, and I got down, thanking the invisible stars for ensuring I got there without further mental/musical damage. Lady Writer, fast becoming my circumstantial favourite song, kept me busy before Ma, Big B and I got to our new home, somewhere in the almost-deserted urban jungle that is Greater Noida. I direly regretted not recharging my phone, but vowed to get in touch with everyone I always call each year on Diwali as soon as I got back to R. Meanwhile, as I get down to writing this post, Pa cheerily informs me that I’ll be travelling to Delhi from Noida by bus on my way back. The song automatically playing in my head treacherously switches to Mann ka radio tu sunle, mann ka radio...

(Originally published on October 18^th 2009, at 0202 hours)

The Mistress of Spices

Over the past week or so, I’ve inadvertently taken a trip through the dark side, or at least quite a bit of it. I’ve bitched about people, been rude and ruthless, displayed inappropriate anger, lied, tried forced insomnia and have, in general, been a person worth hating and not not liking. This trip has taught me many lessons, the most pertinent obviously being that it’s never worth it. Another significant learning has been the fact that most of these tools in my hands could prove to be very profitable on my end- and dangerous for others.

But throughout all this, has been an undercurrent of melancholy, which has somehow characterised this semester so far. Unlike ever before, I wrote six separate drafts- all jottings from the holidays gone by- and trashed them all. Okay- another lie. I’d written one, and imagined another, at most, but that isn’t the point. Somehow, now every post I make has to make the cut. The cut earlier was probably a stamp of approval from people I look up to. Now, it’s a concoction of emotions from inside, and an extrapolation of some outside. And in all this lies an undertone of discontent, disillusionment, detachment and, most of all, disappointment- words I wouldn’t have in my vocabulary a year or two ago. But, that’s the kind of times these few months have been. Yet, the darkest of clouds has to have a silver lining. In the midst of hastily deteriorating relationships, I’m beginning to form a bond with my branch-mates, finally, and they’ve been nice enough to accept the late bloomer, too. Status messages have changed from esoteric referencing and dereferencing to corny songs on (un)popular professors. I’m beginning to get the feeling I’ll really miss this motley crew when they’re gone, and that’s a strangely nice feeling to have. A sense of underachievement still overrides these smiles, but anything’s better than the almost omnipotent feeling of indolence. That reminds me- I have to take off my shoes. And stop listening to The Beatles, for now.

True Lies

Lying is an art man has been trying to perfect for ages. If Paris were good at it, Troy wouldn’t have been part of history the way it is. It’s another one of those dark arts that can make man all very powerful. Imagine Dharmaraja accepting it, and the Mahabharata would probably never have been the epic it is. But a vice it remains- albeit a very potent one. Even a decent level of mastery over it and snap: you’re in the seat of power. Of course, social science in its own innocent journey towards uncovering every little aspect of human nature, has left no stone unturned in trying to figure out the intricacies of this dark power, and has been successful to a very large extent. So much so, that some are actually in the profession of finding out when one is attempting to blind Lady Truth, much like her notorious cousin, Justice. But, as one great man implied perfectly in the work of his lifetime, man’s greatest weakness is a consequence of his strength, and vice-versa. To convince the greatest of doubters of your statement, you’d have to do just that- convince the one who can have the greatest doubt: the one who knows it isn’t the truth. Once you conjure up a lie good enough to convince yourself, in a way that you yourself believe the truth to be just a figment of your imagination, the deed is done.

In a way, lying is telling the truth.