Impossible is nothing

Somebody asked me recently what’s the toughest thing to do. I said discipline can be tough at times. I based that reply on my personal experiences of late. For instance, i bought a new pair (of course, they’ll be new; why would anyone buy second-hand (wait, second-foot?) shoes unless they are Nike sneakers) of running shoes two weeks ago. I’m yet to run though. They lie under my table, gathering dust and wondering when the fuck am i going to take them for a run. So much so they might be silently begging me to at least take them for a walk. Well, look at me. I consue a lot of information throughout the day in the form of words, long articles none of my friends bother to read, book, movies/tv shows/documentaries. It’s exhausting—mentally. I sleep by 11 and wake up by 7 but i don’t have the discipline to implement the most basic of exercises to ensure i don’t suffer from the health issues i’m suffering at the age of 30. Backache. Neck sprain. Acidity. Fatigue. Migraine. Younameitandiwillnodmyheadalong. From being one of the most agile persons around, i’ve cocooned myself as someone who thinks a lot but does very little physically. Small wonder somebody called me chubby recently for the first time in my life. So, yes, to me, the toughest thing to do is instill discipline by carrying out a U-turn on daily sedentary regime.

However, the toughest thing to do is and shall always be nothing.

Upward spiral

Jack Daniel's completed 150 years of existence and for the first time ever, they admitted that the original recipe of their whiskey came from a slave that Mr. Daniel owned. This revelation is just another thread one can hold on to for showing how dominant racism was once upon a time. It’s unimaginable to see a white person sharing a platform with a non-white. Remember, it’s always Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay—not the other way round. But i’ve got a bigger grudge to grind here. I think the world, be it any given era, relied on the lower section of the society for the cool stuff without giving the due credit. The finest form of music came from the poor and so did the language and art. The only difference being the rich and the privileged lot somehow hold the trump to declare what is cool and what ain’t. This has been going on for ages. The so-called upper caste, be it in Europe or Asia, did two things: accepted whatever they liked and owned whatever they could make of it. The flow has been upward for the most part. Which might explain why two decades ago, the Hindi gaalis were hush-hush but today, punctuating sentences with MC and BC is a unit of cool quotient. 

A grip on useless laws

Where is a thirsty person supposed to go when the laws of the land don't hold water? That's the question worth sleeping with in times like these. For a change, i'm referring to the USA instead of India here. This is not to forget what a mess of a nation we've built for ourselves but two events from Amreeka compel you to think through the surface. Americans takes pride in being a functional democracy with utmost regards for laws. But if a rapist gets preferential treatment for being an ex-Stanford and a psychopath can get easy access to weapons, something is rotten. Brock Turner of Stanford received six months (he'll be out within three) of imprisonment in a county jail (not even a federal prison) for committing unmentionable acts to a sloshed woman. Omar Mateen killed 50 and injured 50+ in Orlando (wonder how he managed to pull off this action single-handedly but then, he pales in comparison to Anders Brevik who killed 77 and injured 300+ in 2011) merely because he couldn't stand gay men. Whatever their backdrop, these two ungentlemen proved how ineffectual human laws could be. Neither of them had a Wikipedia page three weeks ago but now they do. They are a part of our daily conversations. A part of our reality we can't escape. 

Amma is typing...

My brother and i got amma on WhatsApp. We thought since i don't stay with them anymore, it'd be nicer to have a group of our own where we can message each other and share pictures from our daily lives. For some reasons, she didn't pick up how to upload a picture although she's fluent in emojis now. It's cute to see her use that emoticon where one eye is closed and another too big with tongue out. Turns out she uses them because she is quite slow with QWERTY. The time she takes to reply sometimes is longer than the essay that she could have written offline. But here's the catch: she was recently invited to another group where relatives (mostly women) are very active. They converse in Tulu which has made my ma type faster and stay more entertained. :(  

Much against yourself

One of the most grueling onscreen interviews has to be from The Departed (2006). It's set in FBI's office where Leonardo DiCaprio's character can't wait to shed his family's ill reputation by becoming a cop. The proverbial good guys. But it can't possibly be THAT easy for him so, the interviewer is tough on him. Tough is actually an understatement. Mark Wahlberg was brutal. At the end of the interview, it becomes obvious why what just happened happened. Leo's integrity wasn't under the scanner. It was his perception about himself and where he comes from. He wasn't supposed to be deluded. You see, it's easy to let go off one's family roots but once you do that, you are on your own. That interview was an assertion of this ground reality.  

Not today

Someday, i'm going to let myself free, consume alcohol, light up a cigarette, get into a fight, break bones (both mine and others'), try LSD, get wasted, spend an entire day planting saplings, run a marathon, cook for my family, walk naked on a beach, hug a dolphin/penguin/lion/tiger/whoeverisavailable, save a life, stop a street fight, lecture college students, click selfies inside a coffin, write a poem on my penis, give into temptation, smoke up a joint, swim in the ocean, go on a Himalayan trek, get over my bad health... and much more! Someday.

App kahaan ho?

With every passing decade, we are witnessing the change in fads and trends. Some things are going up while others are scaling down. Apps are going up while CDs/DVDs are scaling down. So much so that we might be needing an app just to help us find the app that we were looking for. No, no, App Store is useless in this particular regard. In the world of apps, there is always space for one more good one. So, here's my idea for an app: 

Since we spend a significant amount of our time online, we often end up promising people (friends?) that we'll visit them if we are in proximity. Whether these promises are made with honest intentions of meeting that person or not is secondary. The primary concern is we may not remember these promises made in the first place. So, an app that would remind you of those you are supposed to meet will come in handy. It'd be very simple. All a user has to do is enter the person's name and location. The app will coordinate with GPS and whenever you are traveling nearby the person you've bookmarked to meet, it will give out a notification with the exact distance you are at from that friend (people?). Of course, it won't force you to meet anyone no matter how close you are!

The lost moomentum

For a nation that takes immense pride in cattle-worship, shouldn't we be worried more about what's happening with the ones that are alive than about the ones that are already dead? Shouldn't we prioritize the way these four-legged patient creatures should be treated? I clicked the above picture in Gurgaon early morning before she could complete her breakfast. In a rural setup, she wouldn't have to dwell on garbage to fill her stomach but in a city, it's no surprise that she'd consume plastic (of all things) to fill her gastronomical chambers. If you are from north, you must be aware of the manner these beings halt our traffic by standing in the middle of the road for no reason. My best guess is they do that to get some answers to the questions posed at the very start of this piece. 

Third world problems

• Indian Premier League
• net neutrality 
• reckless politicians
• inspirational quotes
• Indian football team
• Pakistan cricket team 
• Harbour Line
• Fights in local trains over dhakka
• Really high expectations from others
• One-sided love stories
• Unrequited lust
• Sweating like a pig
• Desi parents 
• Videshi visa
• Jokes
• Tweeps with anonymous DPs mocking others' appearance
• Melting family pack ice-cream in the freezer
• Lethal typos 
• LOL and disorder
• Journalism 
• Bhartiya sanskriti 
• Robert Vadra 
• Fast life but slow Internet
• Epic movies that are found only on torrents 
• Megablock on Sundays 
• The superiority complex in one's ability to speak English
• Football commentary in Hindi
• Ashley Madison and Tinder
• bad breath 
• "THIS CONTENT IS NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR COUNTRY."
• 69 
• First world aspirations

Yes, talking to me

"I gotta get in shape now. Too much sittin' is ruinin' my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on, it will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There'll be no more pills, there'll be no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on, it will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight." - Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976) 

Not a day goes i don't think of this particular quote. Or Robert De Niro for that matter in that epic role. If only i had it in me to absorb the invaluable lesson that aforementioned monologue contains!

Hide and seek

Raids on illegal hawkers and vendors by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is nothing new. Every time it happens, there’s an expected amount of chaos. The idea is to stop the roadside ‘perpetrators’ from operating unlawfully. What is interesting is the persistence on both ends. The vendors will not give up as they continue to go back to the streets to sell their commodities while the civic authority will keep surprising them every now and then. Something amusing took place over the weekend at Colaba. BMC officials got a complaint that some vendors were storing their goods on top of a roadside tree at night. Despite warnings that the practice could cause an accident, injuring pedestrians walking underneath the tree, the concerned vendors did not pay heed. As a consequence, the feared van parked itself on the street and the elevated gunny bags were lowered—with much protests from their owners—so as to be confiscated. Despite the shouting by the women and resistance by men, it was just another day in the city. The odds move in a mysterious way in Mumbai.

Hum paanch

So far, i've created only one WhatsApp group and i'm glad being that admin who doesn't converse much with his chosen' members. We share lame Internet pictures, lamer Internet videos and lamest Internet jokes. But we seem so happy about the whole affair that it doesn't really strike us that we are basically wasting each others' time. I believe that's the closest any of us would ever get to divinity. No wonder why WhatsApp groups are fun un-lame-ted! Last weekend, i was part of an event that led to the creation of another such group and i must admit i'm very happy to be a member. Everybody else in it except me belongs to engineering background. They are the highly motivated types who work hard during weekdays and are climbing up the ladder gracefully. And during weekends, they live it up without losing control; something i enormously admire. So, the past Saturday, we gathered for breakfast followed by lunch involving fish. The guy on the extreme left helped with the buying part while that pretty girl next to him helmed the cooking bit—OK, cooking byte—while i observed from a safe distance. The two on the right maintained the safest distance until the food was served. It was home. I think we are always seeking home. There's no one definite place to go or be. We find it wherever we feel like seeking. Friends you're very comfortable with create that spot for you. Once they do that, they make sure you have a day well spent. Offline.

Excuses and explanations

Na, he wasn’t hitting on you. He was merely talking. He might have found you pretty but he had no intention of taking it any farther than admiration. On the other hand, you—blessed with a hi-tech mind—deciphered signals which weren’t even transmitted in the first place. You turned into an expert on anthropology to come up with corollaries of your own. Guess what? There were no pickup lines at play. No attempt to charm you. He knows himself way too closely to push himself into an intimate spot like that. His inadequacies won't let him anyway. He was just being his usual self spouting mere jokes whose sole intention were to create an atmosphere of laughter. You know, people chuckle out loud and for those few fleeting moments, forget their shortcomings? Exactly. He doesn’t need booze to do so. He’s like this almost all the time. Yes, he may have liked your company so he might have wanted to stay by longer. He’s a lonely creature at times, blabbering away to glory. But he doesn't desire anything in return for his verbal investment. What if he wasn’t seeking a date or a night with you? Think about it. What if he believes in the present more than the past or the future? Furthermore, there were no set patterns in his approach or behaviour, were there? He wasn’t flirting with you, sweetheart. There's no explanation. Just the way he is and the way things are. He talks with others—irrespective of their gender or age—in the very manner he spoke to you. It’s either this or there’s no conversation whatsoever. You should catch him on his dull days. He quite literally disappears into his chair. He might have touched your arm while tilting his head back to laugh at his poor jokes. Believe me, he does that with much older men in his office with whom he’s never going to sleep. Just like he won’t with you. He doesn’t understand the world or the generation that he’s supposed to belong to although he pretends to. He finds it excruciatingly fake at times. The blind adoption of Western (read: American) civilization and the constant conflict with its Indian counterpart is too stark for him to ignore. And these are the signals that bother him deeply, not yours.

Blast from the past

It’s been 30 years since Bhopal gas tragedy. And if there is one lesson that we can draw from what happened then—followed by the long ongoing struggle for justice by the unsuspecting victims—then it has to be caution. After all, it’s only after a disaster takes place that we realise the extent of damage. Industrialisation undoubtedly might have increased the pace of life but it has its share of horrible sides that we are exposed to almost on a daily basis.

 Going back to what happened three decades ago, there is indeed little room for respite. Till date, the number of people who died due to the gas leak varies depending on whom we’re referring to. The confusion grows when the number of those who suffered directly or indirectly is taken into account. Against such a sorry scenario, it’s interesting to highlight that the incident took place in a state capital city, not in a fringe locale.

Which brings us back to our city.

It goes without saying that Mumbai is crammed like never before. It’s nothing less than a miracle that despite the population explosion and the ensuing lack of space, we still manage to behave like a metropolitan. In light of the aforementioned tragedy, we wonder whether our city is capable of coping with something similar in case it happens. Although the recent past suggests that Mumbai’s idea of an industrial disaster is restricted to fire outburst but that might not be true across the spectrum. There’s no denial that the air we breathe within the perimeters of this city is substantially polluted. Since agriculture is at its minimum here, we don’t—unfortunately enough—bother about soil pollution either. That leaves us water to worry about. During the monsoon, the rising gutter levels give us an idea about the kind of preparation the civic authorities haven’t done.

 Taking all the unwelcoming factors mentioned above, it's worth wondering whether our dear city would be able to cope with an industrial disaster if and when it happens. Remember how Fukushima thought it was prepared for natural series of events when it clearly wasn’t?

Signs of ageing

During the rush hours, whichever local train halting at whichever platform on Dadar station brings with it the disembarkation of a sea of humanity—to put it very mildly. A majority of this crowd make way towards the overheard bridge so as to either get out of the station or to move to another platform to catch the connecting train. We overlook the ones crossing the tracks because they don't consider their lives worthy enough. Coming back to the ascending crowd on the FOB stairs, there's hardly enough space so shrinking one's contour while moving up is a standard practice. During the ascent where we resemble penguins, accidentally hitting the heel of the person in front of you or getting hit by the one behind you is a standard practice too. What isn't is an old man with a heavy box on his head climbing the stairs while you're walking up slowly ahead of him. He'll go mad at you by mumbling, "Buddhe maafik chalta hai." The irony being lost only on time and nothing else.

Undone endlessly

Does it bother you that glass is made up of sand and we are made up of stars? Our bones, nails, hair, teeth, nose bridge, earlobes...beg us the question: aren't we marvelous? Won't the universe be taking delight in who we are? We are certainly not the most superior beings to have left behind a footprint but we are fascinating. For good or for bad, we're growing at an astonishing rate too. We can feel others' pain. Each one of us is splendour personified. Able or crippled, visionary or blind, black or brown, arrogant or humble...contribute to God's social experiment on a daily basis. Dawn can't escape night. Raindrops won't evaporate before hitting the ground. Koalas shall remain cute. Humans? We're going to be unpredictable. A script? Thanks, no thanks. We might not be colourful. Darn, we can't even sing like a nightingale! But we create music out of wood and wind. That must count. We've got our abysmal weaknesses to deal with too. We somehow survive. We get by. However, the harshest of sun or the coldest of breeze seldom come in the way of our aspirations. Building happens to us as naturally to us as destroying. Conserving is as habitual as poaching. Whales can't stop us from carrying goods in the deepest of oceans while spiders scare the shit out of us. We barely think of donating blood to a needy whereas mosquitoes have their fill at night. We are fascinating indeed. No other creature comes close. No, not even dolphins. We may not understand cosmos but the cosmos must know by now what's going on. Perhaps we are waiting for the end because there is no end to us. We haven't been around a quarter of the time dinosaurs enjoyed. The planet isn't done—yet—with us. All the prognosticators can take a break. We aren't going anywhere. Everywhere we are. All of the time and all of the space is crowded by us and our thoughts. Does it bother you as to why we are so weird but still transparent?

Love her? Let her be

It's not that love has to be unconditional but then, what's the point of having conditional love? Does the moon share its beauty only with the select few? Or does the sun shine bright on the chosen ones? What about rain? Does it not fall down indiscriminately? Have you seen the wind change it course? Love, if you ask me—which you won't—is either there or not. There's no set formula to gain it although there are million techniques to lose it. Love flows like a river, not knowing that its water is going to turn salty in the end. Pure and selfless; perhaps like a mother's care. But can we emulate that as non-maternal individuals? Can we love a person without expecting anything in return? Are human hearts designed that way? Or is it a folly to believe what that the likes of Rumi said? I surmise love is permanent as long as one's mind ain't corrupted by expectations. Once you begin to expect, insecurity seeps in. And once that happens, you want to modulate the other person's personality. You wish her face looked this way or that. You're not really happy with her haircut. You want her to sleep early just because you do. You assume she can be great at something which she isn't even interested in. You coax her to walk in the park only for an epiphany you once had while doing the same. Gradually, you become annoying because your head is already annoyed with the standards it has set for itself and for your partner. You forget who you are or what you are, let alone how you are. The other person becomes a trophy to exhibit. And your so-called love has turned into societal etiquette. Do you really want to be that person? Before you notice, you've become a four-walled fascist. You yourself aren't happy and you don't really understand why you're sad with the person you loved the most not very long ago. Here's what i'd do if i were that person: i'll bring down the curtain of conditions and let the sunlight fall on us—indiscriminately, as expected. And then i'll let her be the way she wants to be. Because it's not about me, her or us. It's about the promise you make to yourself when you're about to fall asleep. That you'll wake up...from your ignorance.