I suck at chess. And as fate would have it, I happen to routinely run into and befriend too many people who don't. My brother gleefully checkmated me for a good ten years before I made it to college, where Pandu continued to do the honours, if only on his computer and not with one of those magnetic chess pieces. Further west from R, my dorm currently houses a guy who holds an ELO rating almost good enough to complete one of the requirements for an IM norm. I've been wise enough not to chalenge the last of those buggers, but while frequent encounters with my brother and Pandu left me baffled, obviously, I didn't fail to stump my opponents, too. For someone they didn't mind considering fairly bright and one who could get the game, my performances were quite surprising. I'd often challenge them, in response, to a rapid game, with less than 30 seconds fr each move. My win-loss record registered at least some non-zero entries in the first column, and it wouldn't be too hard for me to connect the dots.
I loved playing chess - making moves and waiting for their results was the fun part - not evaluating one of the myriad possibilities for the fourth move after the current one! This spur-of-the-moment, zero-response-time, all-action approach won few games, but was fun while it lasted. The only learning I thus got was from moves or patterns seen in past games, which rarely mattered when I played moves that were never to be repeated impulsively again!
I remembered this aberration in thought games when I wrote the very first words of this little piece. I had no plan for where it was supposed to go. While I knew the result would be something like this, the path was uncharted.
Hell, come to think of it - I think it was this very approach that's brought me to the two colleges I've been to. I'm really hoping that I'm not castling blithely while life watches on with a knowing shrug.
Literature, cinema, art, music and all such forms of
entertainment have one thing in common – they’ve created abstract concepts out
of ostensibly simple-sounding words like love,
friendship, hatred and many others, that’re now seemingly impossible to
achieve in a normally-led life. They’ve introduced similes and metaphors that
shape an average Aditya’s existence, shadowing his own individuality, moulding
his experiences into a cast that is chiselled invariably by what he and his
surroundings read, watch or listen to.
Take, for example, the case of an arbitrary lady, say, Lata. Lata’s in her final year of
college, and on a fine Saturday morning she can’t see for herself in an
air-conditioned interview room, she’s being offered her first permanent job.
Lata’s going to be earning money soon
enough, to be financially independent, to buy her parents a lovely anniversary
gift, to occasionally splurge on a fancy three-course meal – and all that comes
with an overriding sense of achievement she’s been continually stimulated to
feel. She updates her Facebook status triumphantly – “XYZ and Co., it is!”,
with a cheeky “feeling accomplished” emoticon added alongside for good measure.
But is that long sigh she let out when exiting that room not her true feeling? Is that long-delayed,
well-earned nap not what she’s most looking forward to? Pardon me for putting
it mathematically, but isn’t the value of Lata’s relief much greater than the net present value of her sense of
future accomplishment?
Perhaps I’ve taken young Lata’s case a little too seriously.
But, for a long time, this question remained unanswered to me – when we claim
to have fallen in “love”, experience a true bond of friendship or lay other
claims of having realised these abstractions, were we subconsciously just
achieving imitations of the same abstractions as they were in pop culture? When
Lata felt accomplished, was she just
trying to put herself in Aamir Khan’s place in “Papa Kehte Hain”? When the
average Aditya falls in ishq-waala love,
is he acting out a cinema-induced fantasy?
Ever since I'd read enough books, saw enough movies and heard
enough music to realise I might’ve been guilty myself of not really expressing
my own unique emotions in this manner, my consciousness of this apparent
reality troubled me. Thankfully, over the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky
enough to have had experiences that have let me realise the true existence of
these abstractions. For years, I could never muster a camera-worthy smile. But, after a torrid last few months in
Roorkee, as I returned home to a welcoming brother and relieved parents, I
smiled the widest of smiles as the full force of happiness stretched my lips and pulled my cheeks up to the eyes!
After a day of classes that had me gaping at how much there is to know, and a moonlight night walking the plaza
we lovingly call LKP, I was truly amazed. A few months later, back on thelawns of that other great institution, with friends who’d managed to grad me
through the aforementioned torrid final year in R – let’s just put it simply – I was happy. Hatred? I’d rather not have
that force blinding me. And on a night that saw a phone call which could’ve
gone on forever, there was love.
Friendship, you ask? Just three guys and a lady, minus the
one charmer who’d stayed back home, making some boiled beans in a dirty Paris
apartment, lying down to have it with some bread and the music of the masters.
It often really is as simple as that.
The raw strength of these abstract concepts lies not in their glorified abstraction, but in their ability to manifest themselves uniquely in each and every one of us. After all, it's for a good reason that one famous document used the words life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the same phrase.
There are some things in a seven-year-old life which you know as facts but have absolutely no idea what the source of that ubiquitous truth is. For example, it is known to every benevolent soul who’s worn a ridiculously decorated conical hat that it’s Lord Ganesha who holds the world record for most puris eaten at a birthday party. Or that The Undertaker has more than one life.
One similarly gathered titbit that garnished a most filling childhood was that Toblerone was the best chocolate in the world. Many a Punjabi kid with relatives in the States would brag about how his cousins would brag about its all-conquering flavours. Taste buds located at least an hour’s drive from the nearest Nirula’s Nutty Buddy would long for a mere taste of those Swiss peaks. Even renditions of Kajol prancing about drunk beyond her wits on the highways of Zurich would only entice mouths hungry for that elusive ultimate cocoa delight.
A close-to-normal life - collecting Tazos, singing this song as the first one as soon as someone finished saying Bolo Ram Ram Ram on the bus back from school, and discussing the day’s Power Zone cartoons while playing cricket in the evening – was never to be the same once it acquired this one direction and purpose: to experience the taste of Toblerone.
It’s a great travesty to romantic justice that I don’t remember how that first pack of Swiss-made treats ended up in our corner of the fridge. But I don’t.And it did. We took almost a week to even touch it, scouring the calendars for an auspicious day to first lay our hands on the end-product of a long, arduous pilgrimage. Then we did, asking Ma to gently open the packaging- its golden foil and triangular top would make a perfect addition to my budding chocolate wrapper and foil collection, I thought. And after a gleaming glance into each other’s joyous eyes, my elder brother and I let one bejewelled piece into each of our gaping mouths. And we closed our eyes for a good few seconds...
Obtaining Toblerone isn’t much of a big deal today, with every other neighbourhood store selling its overpriced versions. Yet, as Pa gently opened another box brought with much excitement from Mumbai airport’s duty-free shops, I felt the same old rush. Perhaps it’s the part of me that refuses to accept growing up that makes eating that chocolate seem like a pilgrimage. Or maybe Toblerone is the best chocolate in the world.
The incoherence of the early-morning toothbrush conversation never manages to mask the potency of the words it carries. So as a mumble through Pepsodent’s light pink replies to my Colgate Total’s utterances, I’m resigned to another Monday morning beginning with chana-halwa. Almost four years of the same may have dampened my resolve to disregard its presence on the weekly menu, but haven’t broken into my stubborn dislike for black grams and the accompanying oily mud patch. As (to Ma’s utter surprise) I finish the daily ablutions and proceed to pray to the many Gods adorning my dusty shelves (which almost made her faint), I sincerely hope that there is some semblance of taste in the breakfast that follows. Back home, there’d be Ugadi Pacchadi, a dish with six different tastes symbolising the different emotions we’d experience through the coming new year. The mess keeps to its word and emotions in being as stoic as inhumanly possible, and off I am for the last set of mid-term examinations I expect to take.
The euphoria from the World Cup win was, quite obviously, yet to die down, despite the looming spectre of IPL 4. Facebook display pictures still hadn’t lost their “Bleed Blue” badges, which disgustingly kept reminding one of sanitary napkin advertisements. Nor had the Computer Centre forgotten our raucous celebrations after the win, with the huddled chairs in front of the biggest computer screen we had still in their respective places, including those two traitorous ones who were watching United’s miraculous comeback at West Ham on another live stream.
The month-long gap between those final mid-sems, and the ultimate end-semester exams would see a whole bunch of farewells, valedictory functions, photo-ops and other general sentiaap. I couldn’t help but wear my favourite emoticon through it all. :-/ Jynja says that emoticon sometimes looks like someone brushing his teeth. I love this guy.
It’s a recorded message in Telugu that breaks my nonchalant routine. It’s something the (wildly obvious) Punjabi aunty beside me barely registers, as does her bespectacled son, who’s still ravenously running through his KFC munch-box. The rest of the process, though, from the now almost always messed up safety instructions, to the pilot’s oft-practised “We’re fourth on the departure list and should be off the runway in ten minutes”, is in order and I put my newspaper down, put my head back and ready for another take-off, homeward bound.
The coffee on the plane isn’t as bad as the last time I decided to shell out twenty rupees for that favourite beverage being served like it is in those American movies by skirted waitresses. Most importantly, it keeps me up for that depressing fictionalised account of a family going through the ’71 Bangladesh war that was a gift from the British Library, Chandigarh, part of the eye-opening trip to the green-and-gold fields of Punjab that Mal and His Majesty had taken me to. Soon after the landing at Hyderabad, the pilot’s throaty rasp was upon us again, informing us that the remnants of the winter up north were inexistent back home- the mere mention of 36 degrees had my hands sweating their veins out. The landing at (an incredibly further Anglicised) Vizag was rougher, the temperature six degrees lesser but I swear I might have passed out on the walk from the plane to the arrivals terminal because of the humidity. Ah, that’s the city I know as home, alright. The car’s angel lights and air-conditioning were veritably heavenly, as were Ma’s healing hand and Big B’s choice of boom-blasting music.
All along though, I kept wondering: where the bloody hell do pilots get their ruddy accents from?
***
Sometime last year, my brother tried to teach me how to drive a car. My incompetence beat my impatience in an uneven encounter: he gave up in two days. With my father expressing his surprise that with a little over a year for college to end and me being impotent with anything that’s motorised and has gears (yes, I added gears for that very reason, dear nefarious imbeciles), Big B brought himself to teach me to get two wheels moving, instead. But, as he remarked himself, I must be the first person ever to be learning how to ride a bike when the cat to be belled has a 220cc engine.
For those who haven’t learnt riding a motorcycle yet, here’s a heads-up: it’s quite an emasculating experience. Particularly ironic for a vehicle that prides itself on being definitely male. Every single time I screw up the “press clutch – don’t accelerate – now shift up a gear” routine, the malevolent male bike gives its master’s male parts a proper crushing. Even Big B runs out of sarcasm when I manage to continuously achieve the holy grail of the neutral gear when trying to shift from the second to third. Yep - neutral gear at 30kmph, the fastest I got today.
As I deliver my well-rehearsed “belief in the public transport system” bullshit, even my most optimistic believer avers “You’re so never having a girlfriend. And your wife will hate you.”
I gobble another oatmeal cookie and snuggle in Ma’s arms watching F.I.R. on SAB TV. And stuff.
It’s almost creepy how your mother can decipher the mood behind every “Hello” on the phone, even spotting the fake cheery ones. The last few replies have been exasperated pleas for better sleeping habits, if not “What’s wrong?”. That first utterance always sets up the tone for the rest of the conversation, with Ma using those Mommy superpowers to figure out the ethereal emotion around every breath and highlighting her inexhaustible will to make something of her lazy bum of a younger son. Such amazing abilities aren’t just limited to maters though- the elder siblings are similarly blessed, getting the drift behind a redundant emoticon or a mere drop of a shoulder. Big Brother, indeed.
These intangibles are pretty much the best excuse I give to my professor for taking no interest in artificial intelligence. Those networks and algorithms can learn all they want, but they’ll lack, to use an almost out-of-context phrase, a basic instinct. I just know that sentence is grammatically correct- spell check or no spell check. And though that picture is for all and sundry to see, you just know that that smile is for just the one lucky bastard.
Easily the best part of my ninety-minute bus commute to work is the stretch between the Sector-8 and Sector-11 bus stops. As the conductor announces the arrival at either, I’ve put Kane and Abel, Six Suspects and Two States down over the past week, for those precious few seconds I get to look at my school. One such early morning, I was mildly surprised to see no barrage of cycles in the stand. Between the (now) four buses, below the arch bearing the school’s name, the principal’s almost-ubiquitous car was also missing. I took a look at my watch, which showed the time to be quarter to eight. I wondered why the school would be so desolate so close to the opening time when the bus radio announced how the overnight rains had given Vizag a most pleasant Saturday morning. I recalled one-upping every kid in the township from any other school as ours had a five-day week, and felt sad I’d forgotten that very fact.
Even though it was always Sunday’s less-celebrated cousin for us school-goers, Saturday was most welcome as it heralded the dawn of the weekend: no getting up at seven, no sprints to avoid missing the bus, and best of all, (early in the new millennium) Premier League games. The absence of Power Zone on Cartoon Network and the ESPN School Quiz would dull the afternoon; nonetheless, not looking forward to the stern class-teacher’s rebukes early next morning made holy Sabbath a winner in its own category. Since Sunday would be an off-day for the parents (and would have Bournvita Quiz Contest in the morning, some new movie in the afternoon and a trip to Delhi, more often than not, in the evening), Saturday nights brought no fever, as the spectre of Monday Tests loomed ahead. All the same, the NTPC Club, as I hope the Scuttling Shuttler would corroborate, screened new movies in the auditorium on Saturday evenings.
Even the weekend harbinger changed quickly as school gave way to coaching after Class Ten. The unforgiving six-day week meant Sunday’s little brother was in no way different from the other five. Those same kids we’d been troubling with cries of “Saturday bhi school ja rahe ho?” for ten short years, were now slyly-grinning classmates. The worst part? The weekly tests from school which for so long had nurtured Monday morning blues (and for brief periods, Fridays and Tuesdays, too) had now decided to take over on Sunday, not only ruining the best day of the week, but killing Saturday evenings, too. Truly Black Sabbath.
The return of the two-day weekend in college couldn’t have been more welcome. I could once again pick on some poor ex-classmate who’d graduate on six-day weeks, and sleep in peace on Friday night (or in most cases, early Saturday morning) with no lectures or weekly tests to look forward to. The college weekend is a great leveller, as Sundays now can’t claim any bragging rights and too many times, I forget the distinction between the two days of the weekend.
Back home, in the summer holidays, I can’t distinguish between any days of the week, as I’m down sleeping or up eating no matter what Shani, Mangal or Shukra have in mind. This summer with the internship, whenever I do take the 400N that takes me past my alma mater, I realise why they love to say “Thank God, it’s Friday!”. I realise, I miss the good old Saturday.
It’s weird how life can send two conflicting messages with the same courier. As I remove my scratching fingers to reveal the results of a weak insect’s poison, I am lost in thought. There are times when if one would run out of ink, even blood would bobble in effortlessly to keep the penning going. At others, it’s a feeble sputter, stutter and stop: shut shop. After feverishly dusting any remaining ants off them, I wear that salmon kurta and green shorts from last year’s Holi again, wondering where my pen is headed.
Only a couple of days ago, my two masters shrugged off Morpheus’ advances to be in probably their last moments as students of R in G-104. While the DerangedDelanged One and I kept the ever-aimless chatter going as I was packing, the Lead (Air) Guitarist couldn’t start, never mind continue, any conversation all the way till the Jan Shatabdi’s engine signalled our parting. Probably it was because he hadn’t slept for three days, and was in spirits way too high (not the metaphorical ones) to know it. The tickle was excruciating; the sting bovine.
And before it could all hit me, PV’s calm voice died down and I fell asleep, to wake up with ants on the right side of my chest.
The first reorganisation or reformation of states in India to have taken place since the economic revival of the early 1990s was the formation of the three states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal. Years of underdevelopment and want for separation on the basis of tribes and castes saw the formation of the trio at the dawn of the new millennium. Also, the administrative difficulties involved in managing states the size of the BIMARU quartet deemed it almost compulsory. In a hastily-done reorganisation, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were almost robbed in clear daylight, with almost no care taken in properly dividing the various natural resources of the regions. Even a ten-year-old like me could point out the glaring errors. Only one of the five power plants that Madhya Pradesh had remained in its divided territory, and mind you, even after the bifurcation, it remained one of the biggest states by area. The forests, coal, limestone, bauxite and other natural reserves, arable land and water resources were also shabbily divided leaving MP high and dry- quite literally. Yet, the scourge of the naxalites and Chambal valley’s notorious dacoits went into the newly-formed smaller Chattisgarh’s hands, whose accordingly-sized police force was obviously outnumbered and outgunned by the seasoned insurgents. Result? MP didn’t do too much good to its “BIMARU” reputation, while Chattisgarh is now officially the state worst affected by insurgency. Bihar’s split saw similar mistakes, with the already notorious state’s few resources, too, unequally handed, with the ample coal reserves and the prestigious industrial city of Jamshedpur going Jharkhand’s way. The little forest cover that it had, too, went the other way, and all Bihar was left with was Patliputra and the Kosi. Bad fortune played its part in flooding the river, and Jharkhand has its own issues with the naxalites and Maoists. Another division decision not going too well. Uttaranchal, now Uttarakhand (they took over a month to finalise Uttaranchal in the first place!), hasn’t met the fate of its other birth brothers, but having lived most of the past three years in the state, I learn that most of the Pahadis, for whom the state was purportedly divided, are still left in the lurch over the advantages of the development projects, the most well-documented being the displaced in the many hydro-power projects that have been commissioned in the state. Yet, maybe because of the able early leadership of the seasoned campaigner B.C. Khanduri, and many other factors, this state has prospered to quite an extent. I won’t call it an honourable exception, yet. Most of the developmental projects in the state are yet to bear fruit, mind you.
I’d always disliked more states being formed. As an enthusiastic quizzer, the idea of remembering one more state, capital and Chief Minister sounded bad. As I’ve grown up to understand the nitty-gritties of how the largest democracy in the world works, it’s only been sadder. Each year, as the Budget is announced, every other state is up in arms about the allocation of vital Central funds to it. The same goes on at the state level, too. But, given the legislative structure of the country, it is the responsibility of the people’s representatives- the Members of Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies, at the two respective levels- to address the concerns of their state/region. After god-only-knows how many years have we had an almost unanimous decision at the Centre. The Congress Party won by an overwhelming majority in the General Elections this year, requiring only minor support from allies. Despite lingering doubts over corruption, it was generally hailed as a new era with a stable government at the helm. That’d streamline the funds allocation, one would tend to believe, as more information was assimilated from the previous years’ mistakes and with stable representatives, the demands would be heard properly. Yet, the demand for statehood for certain regions, citing long years of neglect, remained.
Even back home in Mana Andhra (Our Andhra), the YSR Reddy-led government won the Assembly elections, even if by a narrow margin, indicating another stable government. The Telangana movement, though, picked up steam after the sudden unfortunate demise of the Chief Minister, and went beyond the control of the interim supremo, K. Rosiah. The reason remained the same, though- crores of funds earned by the region from the Centre were diverted to development projects in other regions, and the people of the state continued to suffer from long-standing problems like draught and poverty. Let’s come to facts- almost all ten districts of the region have seen numerous changes of political dominance over the past decade and a half. The TDP and Congress have always ping-ponged in the number of MLAs and MPs from the region, and if the required funds, aids and projects aren’t coming in for the region, isn’t it a failure of these region’s representatives, I beg to ask? Isn’t it a failure of these men and women fighting for seats of power and responsibility to deliver on the promises they’d made over all these years?
Somehow, it isn’t that easy to try and stick to what one says during election campaigns and serve people of the regions they represent in the Assembly and Parliament, but easier to campaign for a separate state, where more of the same may occur, as the real root of the problem hasn’t been removed. Now they’re going to fight it out over the next few weeks and months over the city of Hyderabad, where the price of the real estate is probably going to tilt the deal.
Amidst all this, I’ll probably have to make more space in my cramped memory for another capital city and Chief Minister, and maybe pay more to travel to my mother’s hometown, where my maternal cousins stay, as it’ll be across state lines. That farmer somewhere in a parched hut in Mahbubnagar district will still have to shiver through the night and wonder if it’ll rain well enough next year.
Maa telugu talli ki malle puvvu-danda!
(A jasmine garland for our Telugu motherland)
P.S.- No offence intended towards any particular party/region/race/caste/religion/people. This was just a rant coming late in the night.
2019 update for peeps unearthing old posts: A lot of the views here are products of their time, and of my still-being-shaped worldview. A lot of it, thus, will not be woke, awake or in any acceptable state of grogginess. People grow with time, and I really hope I have, too.
If I were to list a few things that will most definitely have not changed:
- I'm still romantic about the past, and it might still be the Alisha Chinai and Sukhbir-fuelled late 90s/early noughties that'll get most love.
- I'm still a United fan, and still hopelessly believe.
- I still love quizzing, despite the big bad world of open quizzing in meccas like Bangalore testing (and simultaneously reinforcing) that love every other weekend.
To the 2007-14 me: You were an ill-informed, stubborn and insufferable idiot. But you got to the point of recognising that by yourself, so you did something right.
Apart from being excessively talkative, boundlessly loquacious and immeasurably garrulous, I also just about happen to be a regular guy who brushes twice a day and loves coffee and good music.
