Rhymes and reasons

One of the few things I’m grateful to technology for is that it is possible in this day and age to fly four hours and land in a city where you can sit comfortably in your T-shirt and ogle all you like at East European girls tanning in the Arabian sun, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Paradise, in fact.

The problem with paradise is that it’s temporary: You don’t belong here and the neighbours are nobody you care to know, so it’s only blissful for a week or so. You’re in a country that depends on a dozen tombs built by men of another era out of a faith that you don’t share. You look around at the highway, the temples, the mausoleums, the curvy streets of houses, your hotel, you find nothing that would look out of place in your own hometown; which is exhilarating to some people but not to you. You expect the week-long trip to turn out to be another of those ordeals that fail to capture your imagination. And yet, it does.

Mankind is at its best when engaged in the endless heroic quest for whatever — truth, love, literary excellence, supremacy in tennis, a perfect 10 — and relaxation makes them dull. It’s true. Deep down, we’re all hunters. It is the pursuit of goals that keeps us alive- an eternal hunger that feeds on itself to push us towards whatever it is that we have set out to achieve.

The fundamental religion of most of mankind is the faith that God has revealed Himself to us and not to the non-believers. Our faith is the one God chose and so if we vanquish the other tribes and rain fire and destruction on them, we’re only carrying out God’s Will.

Now, eating pickled cheese under the Saharan sun, I am sliding into hedonistic pantheism, slouching down the Nile towards Luxor, on a quest to make my parents and brother happy until the money runs out and we regain our senses and head home.

Back in R-Land, as I go about the unenviable ritual of chronologically arranging my grade sheets, I realize that it is faith, or rather the lack of one, that lies at the heart of the downward spiral I have been on. I suppose that is what growing up is all about- the gradual loss of faith, be it in a Higher Force, the system, and eventually, yourself.

The 31st of December has a delightful habit of catching me on the wrong foot. On this occasion, much to my own surprise, I find myself on the banks of the Nile, observing the remains of a long defunct civilization. In the run-up to D-day, H-hour, a fancy sound-and-lights show has been set up in Giza, in an attempt to extract a few precious pounds from an overtly-enthusiastic crowd. Five minutes pass, and the event gradually begins to arouse my interest, as it impressively takes on the arduous task of condensing Egypt's three thousand year history to a forty-five minute show.

The show makes up for what it lacks in style with substance. A spectacular flare of red and yellow goes up in the sky to depict the accession of Khafren and the dawn of the Age of Pharoahs. Shadow-figures turn up in the middle of the sky, clutching non-existent bricks in a hapless attempt to depict the construction of the Pyramids. Quite aptly, Beethoven’s String Quartet No.16 is played in the background. ‘Es muss sein’, a voice bellows, ‘ja, es muss sein.’

‘It must be. Yes, it must be.’

Getting the BALS Rolling

Anyone standing beside Delhi's renowned India Gate at dusk that evening would be forgiven for thinking that he was in a scene straight out of a Hollywood period drama- Peter Jackson's latest epic, prehaps. The weather was more forgiving than it had been all month, with temperatures hovering around the 30 degree mark. Yes, touch wood, fingers crossed and all that. Even amidst the chaos of traffic, dust and street-hawkers, the sunset was quite a spectacle. As was the case with most sunsets, I soon pictured myself walking into it with the lady of my life. On this occasion, it was Ana Ivanovic. 'God is the greatest director of them all', declared Dreamy Joe, cruelly ending my wondeful reverie, 'and the capital his maginificent canvas.' 'Nothing wrong with the sets or the director', I replied, 'but he could have done a better job picking his actors.'

I'll board the Tamilnadu Express four days from now, bringing down the curtains on a fairly eventful stint at the capital. Many of my notions about the city and its people have altered considerably, though not always for the better. For one thing, the place is hotter than I'd imagined. Nevertheless, I have spent a month amidst Delhi-ites without losing my sanity, which is a fairly pleasant surprise. One thing that i have learnt is that if you leave logic and etiquette by your bedside table, Delhi is a wonderful place to live in.

'Lodhi Road isn't actually a road,' the Boss informed me a month ago, 'it's a locality. To get there, you'll have to take a bus to Sarai Kale Khan, which isn't a Sarai, but a bus terminus', the conversation strangely reminescent of a scene from one of my favourite movies ('Tum jo ho woh tum nahi ho, tum woh ho. Woh jo hai, woh wo nahi hai, woh tum ho. Main jo hoon kya main hoon?' Does it ring a bell?)

Over the course of the past two months, many have wondered what I did at work. A couple even asked me if I took a pillow along. Flustered, I have decided to put you, dear reader, through my average working day- a day in the life of Dela, if you like.

7.15: The alarm rings. Put it on snooze and continue sleeping.

7.20: It rings again. Slam it on the table to see if that makes it stop.

8.10: Wake up.

8.50: Stand in the sun waiting for that blighted 323.

10.00: Try to come up with a credible excuse for turning up an hour late.

10.15: Realize that noone really cares.

10.30: Start Firefox and open 3 tabs- Gmail, Facebook and sciencedirect.com

10.45: Set off for a cup of coffee, hoping to run into an HR girl I'd been eyeing for a while.

10.48: Find noone there.

11.30: Boss walks in asking for a report I'd been assigned two days ago. I start talking about his tie instead, buying myself a few precious minutes.

12.15: Submit the report courtesy Messrs Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

12.30: Another round of coffee. Still no sign of the HR Girl.

2.15: Lunch time. Walk to the cafeteria with my colleagues only to find Rajma Rice and Aloo Zeera on the menu.

2.18: Pretend to receive a phone call and slip away to Eatopia.

2.23: Gorge on the best fusilli ever made by man.

3.10: The boss walks in with another assignment. Once again, the conversation turns to his ruddy tie.

4.05: To the coffee machine again. HR Girl is there this time, putting forth her two pence-worth on the Rupee-$ rate, how it had to stabilize around 47 for an optimal exchange-rate, export advantages and all that jazz. My opinion is sought. The only 47 I know is the bus that got me here from Andrews Ganj, I tell her. HR Girl leaves with a grunt. I continue to sip my cup of Georgia Gold, still wondering whether or not she got the joke.

5.15: One last cup of coffee and I'm off for the day. As they say, all in a day's work .

There and back again

The first cries of the pani puri vendors announce the break of dawn. The Arabian Sea glistens in all its glory once again. Pigeons and gulls fly over us and further inland. The sun couldn’t seem to make up its ruddy mind whether to shine in all its cynical glory or let the cool breezes endure. The distant silhouette of the Gateway of India is soon surrounded by specks of human bodies. The auto and rickshaw wallahs arrive in the hope of an early customer. The beggars pick up their rags and rehearse their heart-wrenching wails. The eunuchs are up, going around doing whatever it is that they do. Another day in the life of the world’s greatest city has just begun.

It has been quite a journey. Forty eight hours ago, I was in R-Land trying to make a dim-witted hexagenarian see reason. With us getting richer by 75k (with a fancy 4' by 2' cheque to prove it) and a mail from the Tatas heaping an undue amount of praise on us, the milk of human kindness would rise like a tide in the old man, we thought. All that remained was mere paperwork- he would sign the blighted application and be done with it, perhaps with a few words of wisdom- a ritual men his age can’t seem to do without. None of that happened, though. Except the homily with the words of wisdom, of course (“You're still young. Many big opportunities will come your way. And not all of them will clash with your examinations. Har! Har! Har!”) Far from amused, I set off anyway, deciding to do a “Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” The last word, of course, has no place in the present context.

Three uneventful rides (aboard a bus, flight and an auto-rickshaw respectively) found us at the hallowed gates of the Taj Mahal Palace. As embarrassing as it might sound, this was my first stay in a 5-star hotel. I have flown first class only once in all my life, and that was also on a ride to the Schiphol when the KLM officials were kind enough to offer me a free upgrade. A flight journey is invariably synonymous with a packed Cathay Pacific 400-seater or four hours of Omaret Yakobean aboard Air Arabia's Boeing 737s. The ordinary folks that we are, my family and I are loyal customers of the RCI Resorts and the Midway Motels of the world. An odd Sheraton stay makes my day. The last line rhymes, by the way. That I had another first-timer for company helped, of course. I still made a fool of myself, but it was reassuring to have someone by my side through all my buffoonery.

My blog turned two earlier this year- an occasion that I, in a spate of laziness, conveniently chose to ignore. The forty posts notwithstanding, my blog is far from the complete chronicles of my life in R-Land that Miss Muffet keeps referring to. Strangely enough, the most memorable events are the ones that don’t find a place on my blog. The two trips to Allahabad, the ushering in of the new year, the Dark Knight at Satyam on my birthday, the encore two days later, Nihilanth, Watch Out, the 28th of August, 2007- the high points of the last two years are all conspicuous by their absence. Some moments are too sacrosanct to write about, perhaps; some memories too special to be shared. My third trip to the financial capital in as many years is the newest addition to the aforesaid list.

The Hundred (and one) Days

It has been a while. In the truest sense, this too wouldn’t count as a post- a fact that will dawn on you by the time you’re done reading it. Yes, this is another of those SriP-esque posts on not-posting. Bon nuit.

I completed 100 days on the other side of the wall yesterday, or I thought I did, until Mom shattered my bubble and dutifully reminded me that August had 31 days, which made me 20 and a 101 days. Ah, technicalities.

A lot has happened since my last post. An eventful train ride with the Super Nerd was followed by a highly entertaining weekend at Facchaville on the pretext of recruiting minions. I watched Dark Knight for the five hundred and twenty seventh time and drew a lot of flak for my comment on Facebook that it was the greatest movie ever. The Morons set off on a historic trip to the City That Never Sleeps and spent an amazing evening at Hard Rock Café. I fell in love the very next day with a cap and splurged two hundred odd bucks at Adlabs on ‘Rock On’, the cliché-fraught band movie with a few hilariously stupid Hinglish dialogues (‘Tumour mere brain ka hissa ban chuka hai.’) providing some much-needed comic relief.

R-Land welcomed her heroes home with a TS, where the legendary Gee Kay Ess awarded yours truly a naught on twenty five. A long overdue epistle was sent home and I was declared the winner of the War of Words on popular demand ahead of His Wordiness Sheldon Cooper. Somewhere in between all that, I also managed to watch Bollywood’s magnum opus- Junoon (Hero fights with a tiger, Hero gets bitten by the tiger, Hero becomes a tiger.)

Lots of post-worthy material and yet, the only changes my blog saw in the last two months was an absurd Feed Tracker that went unnoticed by even the most faithful of my readers. (Special mention must be made of the Hirsute Hick who visits my blog ten times a day, at least when he isn’t hitchhiking across South East Asia and posing for ridiculous pics like this one and this one. )

Have I given in to the duresses of change already? Teenage Dela would have ranted on at least half a dozen of the aforementioned events. Dela the Tween, though, has all but forgotten about his blog. Maturity, I think, is the term I’m looking for. ‘Bull crap! You’re just getting lazier,’ retorts Bald Guy Junior. Another plausible explanation.

One Night In The Capital

“Desperado... Why don't you come to your senses?”, I crooned for the nth time that night, much to the chagrin of the Bulk and The Hairy Hick who were seated beside me. “I'm trying to catch some sleep here, you ass,” the Bulk cursed, and gave another of his huge, Neanderthal yawns. My habit of singing while travelling has gone down badly with quite a few people, which I must say, is not too surprising. Not that I sing badly. Out of touch, I guess, would be the right phrase. Sixteen more yawns, five 'chole'-vendors and four hours later, we found ourselves in the capital, thanks to a bumpy ride on the rickety Uttarakhand Parivaahan that we have all come to recognize. A bumpier ride on an auto-rickshaw and we finally arrived at our destination- IIT Delhi, and the occasion was their cultural fest- Rendezvous, which, for some reason, is attended (and mispronounced) by most of R-land.

Picture this- you are exercising your bowels early in the morning and halfway through, the taps run dry. Nonplussed? You wouldn't be, if you were an IITD student. Four years in a place like that, and you'll never find any situation in life complicated, thanks to their water-for-an-hour-a-day system and the weird nomenclature of their blocks (A-long, A-short, A-perpendicular, A-parallel, A-tangential, to name a few.). “It's 10, right? Hurry! 'The Best Chick in Town' must have started,” advised the annoyingly huge first-year localite whom the Hick knew beforehand owing to the fact that they were both from the same village. I say annoyingly huge because his 6 foot something height was giving me an inferiority complex. I looked like a schoolboy next to him. I look like a schoolboy next to most people, but even so, a first year?

Anyway, getting back to the point, 'The Best Chick in Town' was picked and awarded. What do you do when some of the hottest girls in the country stand right in front of you? Well, nothing at all, if you are either Dela or the Bulk. True to the spirit of LitSec, all we did was gape at each other. (Oh my God, there is something wrong with me! I must see a doc about this.) “Now what?”, we asked the first year, to which he went on to name a dozen other voyeuristic events. “Isn't there a quiz or anything of that sort?” I asked. “What sort of a geek are you?” came the reply. Proving that I wasn't a geek meant I had to endure a 4 hour long ramp show. Halfway through it, the Bulk fell asleep. “Lets get out of here,” I suggested. “No way! We have bunked classes to come here. There are events for two more days. We can't go back now!” is what I thought would be the Bulk's response. But I was wrong, though. All he said was, “Yeah, sure. Let's go.” In order to ensure that our trip to the capital wasn't entirely fruitless, we had a couple of pav bhajis and half a dozen chuskis just before we left. (And after all this, the Bulk still claims he's on a diet.) An hour later, we were in the same rickety Uttarakhand bus again.
“Desperado....”

Train Travail- The Desi Version

It’s that time of the year again. Barely a couple of months have passed since we went back to R-land from our homes, and yet, our zest to return has not decimated one bit. People start making a wild rush for their tickets to civilization, and according to some unwritten law, the ones heading home earlier attain an exalted status. Statements like, “When are you leaving? 8PM? Pah, I’m leaving at 4!” are quite common, and invariably have the listener cursing himself for not booking an earlier train. The fact that four hours is a negligible period of time in a 100-day vacation is a thought that seldom crosses our minds.

After the entire hullabaloo about tickets, packing and, lest we forget, grades, we eventually return home. We return expecting a royal welcome, complete with your favourite dish for dinner and a smile on your dad’s face that says, “You’ve done it, son!” Much to our chagrin, the reception is lukewarm, to say the least. The entire family sports an expression that says, “You again!” After the mandatory, “You’ve grown so thin! Don’t they feed you well?” you’re left to yourself, longing for the welcome that never was.

This time round, though, there was a twist in the tale. No, there was no warm welcome this time either. It’s just that, in my case, the return was overshadowed by the journey.

Though it may seem inconceivable to the guys who know me now, there were days in the not-so-long-past times when I used to read books that weren’t all from the shelf that read, 'fiction'. The epoch of the studious Abhishek started and ended in my twelfth grade, and it was on one fine day then, that I came across an interesting analogy in one of the books that I have not spared a glance since the day I set foot on R-land. The analogy went thus: Picture yourself traveling by a bus. Your destination is A, and to get there, you travel by a deluxe bus with every facility possible. However comfortable your journey is, your memories will always be of A, and the things you did there, and not of the bus journey. A, here, is analogous to the concepts of physics, while the deluxe bus corresponds to mathematics. (I know the analogy is absurd and irrelevant, but I just want to prove that, contradictory to common perception, I can act geeky too.)

The analogy set my rusting gray cells working. I could never think of a situation where the journey could eclipse the destination, until I actually experienced it. As I mentioned previously, I was heading home by the earliest possible train. The fact that I had The Incredible Bulk for company meant I was assured of entertainment, food (courtesy Indian Oil Corp.) and a ride back home from the railway station (courtesy Indian Oil Corp.).

The journey of a thousand miles began with a single step and a three hour delay. Trains do incredible things to you. For the first time in over a year, I was up by six in the morning, though I had to go back to sleep as I had forgotten to bring along my toothpaste tube and the Bulk was still fast asleep. Eventually, I managed to wake up by ten, and much to my dismay, The Bulk was still fast asleep. Frustrated, I shook him awake. He responded with, “Ass, I have an alarm” with the simultaneous thrusting forward of his phone, while his eyes still remained tightly shut. Be it Seat 11, Tamilnadu Express or S46, Rajendra Bhawan, this was one universal action- unaltered by time, weather or location.
The Bulk eventually woke up a tad past the stroke of noon, which meant I could finally relieve my mouth of the appalling stench that a dozen hours of sleep brought with them. With no sign of any interesting events or people in my compartment, I got back to reading the novel that I’d brought along. The lunch cart came, and went. So did Agra, Bhopal, Itarasi and sundry other stations I had never even heard of. The Bulk was behaving strangely, oops, that’s not something new, is it? Let’s just say, he was behaving in a strange manner that was different from the strange manner he usually behaves in. Was this the real Bulk or was it some solar-energy-dependent-alien masquerading as the Bulk? Come on, this was the Bulk. The slightest mention of anything remotely related to food should have made his digestive juices itch for action. Instead, here he was, engrossed in (of all magazines!) Lion, our institute magazine.

As we crossed the dreaded Chambal Valley, I gave up on the Bulk, and decided to work on Mission Food all by myself. India is one hungry country. Nothing turns us on as much or as well as food does. The picture of a typical Indian station is incomplete without a dozen food stalls on the platforms. Traveling by a train passing through twelve states is one hell of a gastronomic experience. Nothing unites India the way food does. Apart from trains, that is.

Nagpur brought with it shrill cries of ‘meedo-soan papdi’ and two Indian Oil employees desperately vying with each other to impress the Bulk. In their attempts to do so, they brought us some food as well. Hang on a second, did I say ‘some’ food? It was enough to feed half a compartment. Though it was delicious, we could barely finish one-fourth of it. Thankfully, India has no shortage of beggars, and on this occasion, it was an old, maimed lady who turned lucky.

Another good night’s sleep later, I woke up at 7AM sharp. There is a common belief downsouth that the first thing/person you see after waking up determines how your day will turn out to be. If it is true, I must have a hilarious time today. I woke up to the sight of the Bulk lifting up and down each of his suitcases, one after the other. “I’m practicing now, so that lifting them won’t be a problem once we reach Chennai” was his explanation. Who needs comedians when you have the Bulk? Chennai Central finally arrived and so did a Ford iKon with the Indian Oil Logo on its bumper. There are some things money can’t buy. For every thing else, there’s Indian Oil.