Garbage

These chaps, they used to be regulars at the garbage dump near home. So much so that if they missed a day, it showed. On the garbage dump.

At first, nothing seemed abnormal to the mind. One day, perhaps when the eyes were really 'seeing', a question popped.

'What do these chaps eat in a garbage dump' ? A dump that was a collection of discards from middle class housing board colony ! Old magazines and discarded report cards. Perhaps old love letters and recent bills.

Or maybe it was the worn out dress with fresh designs, left by the milk that went sour. And such else.

And in a short while, the bigger question popped up. Since when did horses start feeding on garbage !

It took some intelligent souls to let my primitive brain know that these were not exactly 'horses' but some sort of 'crosses between horses and donkeys'.

Ok. So ?

The answer trail didnt lead anywhere. Infact the trail stopped right there. 'What' they ate, 'how' they ate and 'how come' they ate garbage, didnt occur to (m)any !

In a typical worldly way, It was satisfactory to all that lived there, that some work on the garbage happened. So, this unanswered question still stays unanswered.

And i wondered, what other beings live off garbage.

Quick realisation dawned, about that being a very tricky question. If you include metaphorical references of 'species living on garbage'...well, the entire world will have to get mentioned.

Isnt it ?

All the mega serial and news channel followers. Of all the political analysts who will comment on TV about your cat, if you call it Cabama ! Of all those that hurtle after those wierd material stuff. As wierd as as a Rs.11.00 lacs ( Approx $23,000) pen in the name of Mahatma Gandhi !

The list is endless. And ofcourse, includes the writers that dish trash, and trashers that dish out blogs.

So, leaving out such metaphorical references, what else have you seen live off garbage !?!

But then, who defines what is 'garbage' !?! For example, these half asses must think of me to be a complete ass, to label their principal source of sustenance & living, 'garbage' !

And, so must the others.

hmm.

Garbage

Collateral Damage

You have been reading the papers too. In the hurry of the morning minute. Somethings register. Many things dont. But today you are in the market. The missus has brought you here. By force. It doesnt take long for you to realise whats been lurking in the dark corridors of the mind.

That you are far removed from the reality of the real world.

You wonder if you are part of the burgeoning numbers of escapists. Not for long. For you know. Educated. Desk worker. Working out of cubicles cleaned by contracted organisations to the sound of noiseless air conditioners.

Lost in a mirage filled canopy of busy ness. In perpetual quest of aggrandisement of self-importance. All under the garb of work !! Attending meetings, making presentations, sending mail, seeking approvals and giving feedback ! ofcourse, all over many cups of tea.

Today, you hear the missus bargain with the vegetable vendor. In marathi. For obvious reasons, you feel safe in her company. You hold the bag. She bargains. Brinjal. Cauliflower. Onions. You hear the prices. And baulk.

You remember reading in the papers about inflation and such else. But arent quite prepared for this.

You remember going to the market as a young boy. Shopping for the family. At these prices, you think you could have bought out every chap out there. You are still reeling from the surprise. Of the prices.

And, you realise, what irks you more is how distant you are from the masses.You follow the missus. Shop after shop. Carrying that bag. Wondering, how people make a living at these prices.

The security gaurd who perhaps would make as much as your monthly grocery bill. The chap who cleans the car who perhaps would make half of that. The maid who mops the floor. The shop boy who fetches the product. You wonder.

The weight of the bag of vegetables isnt as heavy as the thoughts that run past you. You wince.

That night, long after your trip to the market, you are in bed. A book in hand. Reading lamp on. The book that usually sets some thoughts afire is miles away from a strand of a spark. Restless thoughts still roam the market that you went to.

You realise how fortunate and cocooned you are. You make resolutions about sharing. About awareness. About staying light. You feel better. Slightly.

The missus senses something amiss. You sense she has sensed something too. The air stays quiet. Interrupted by honks and wailing sirens faded by the distance. This city isnt called maximum city for nothing. Making a living despite all odds is what gets you by.

She clears her throat. And says, 'you know in some time we can apply for a new loan'. You sit up. Half in trepidation. For you dont know where this is headed. 'I have the collaterals ready'.

Your ears perk up. Like a deer who hears the rustle of dead leaves as the cheetah gallops towards it. "In some time the collateral will have enough value to make the bank chap sit up" .....

In the silence. You sit up. Half a tremor seeps through as you mutter 'and what is that'

'Two bags of cauliflowers. At current prices....'. Her voice trails.

You smile. Close the book. Say your prayer to the lord up there. And thank him for his large mercies.

Collateral Damage

Dear Ms.DeMonte

Dear Ms.DeMonte,

It seems you taught English in school. Its also said that you have yelled. And felled those boys and girls, sometimes with nothing else but stern looks that were as ominous as a Swine Flu warning.

Of course, at times their notebooks have been airborne in a flash, at speeds that would have delighted the Indian Air Force. Crashing into corridors and corners. Enraged. For reasons ranging from faulty punctuation to fumbling pronunciation. Incorrect past tense to imperfect future tense !

Over time your students are said to have (usually) learnt that missing an apostrophe was catastrophe ! Atleast, In your class ! Many years after they moved on into adult life, atleast in one of them, its stuck right through.

This chap that i am talking to today, has a penchant for poorly executed semantic gymnastics. And that too on, as public a forum as a blog ! "The gall". Wont you say. Like a local weight lifter trying a Olympic ballerina act ! In your name..

But there sure are things that you must be happy about. Like for instance, if you come to know that upon spotting this store

this chap thought of you.

Thinking of the lady who taught him English in class two while his missus is besides him, can well have chaps who read Freud arching their eyebrows in interest. Much like a biology student eyeing a lab specimen.

But before your anger is airborne its important to specify that the thoughts were about English language ! And so he says. Like giving 'different meanings' to this notice, just like you would do.

He gave it four. Without changing anything of what was already written there. Just adding those full-stops !

1. Mans. Gift Store Woman Welcome

2. Mans Gift. Store Woman Welcome

3. Mans Gift Store. Woman Welcome

4. Mans Gift Store Woman. Welcome

And was all excited! Like an urban two year old spotting a bullock cart. Additionally he confessed that you visited him in his dream and gave him a pat on his back.

[ Of course, much to the annoyance of his missus. Any missus would be. If the husband, wakes her up in the middle of the night and asks her if she patted his back. ( He also murmurs that 'what for' from the missus kept his restive for the rest of the night ) ]

So you see Ms.DeMonte, to say that you have been an 'influence' would be a gross understatement. Perhaps a little short of the likes of an Indian film director, ripping off a Hollywood blockbuster. Frame-by-frame. In the name of 'inspiration' !

Teachers like you are a rarity these days. Some of them don't subscribe to your line of thought. Many others don't understand it. Like that apostrophe-catastrophe bit !

Missing the apostrophe is one thing. Looking up the dictionary for 'catastrophe' is quite another. Those stern looks and airborne notebooks indeed seem to have left a lasting impression.

A sober chap talking to another who is four drinks down. About his 2nd standard teacher called Ms. DeMonte for three full hours, says a lot. Wont you think.

Your Truly,

Four drinks down. Three hours now.

PS : I have noticed, despite a general haze in the air, that the apostrophe isn't there in any of his four options. Am i to expect catastrophe?

Dear Ms.DeMonte

Tea !

Indian tea. Chai. Available at every street corner. Well before the sun shows up. To long after he has disappeared into the Arabian sea !

It doesn't take much to get this going. Tea powder. Loads of milk. Plenty of sugar. Traces of ginger. And voila, theres this 'chai' ! And as the sugar coat courses the alimentary canal, a strange energy pervades. Usually. Placebo or otherwise. That is fact.

Many have romantically described the humble tea as some kind of a 'least common denominator'.

For everybody has tea. From the stock broker who makes a million as he twiddles his thumb and the slum dweller who makes an inconsequential sum amount after heaving his whole body and lifting inconsequential construction equipment.

Everybody has tea. From the office goer to the street side hawker. The college professor to the cop. Thugs to theologists. The player to the proctor.

The tag of 'least common denominator' seems to fit in perfectly.

Of course, the tea is served in the glass tumbler ! So much part of our tea drinking routine. So much so that the flavour of the tea also seems to come from the glasses that hold the tea.

Washed many times over in a day. Refilled as many times. Perhaps more ! The tea glasses are an integral part of 'chai' ! Adding their own twang to the tea.

But imagine. Imagine you worked in an office some distance away. Or at some obscene height in a construction site with no lifts ! Ordering tea in a glass is impractical.

Worse ( & more probable) if the vendor knows your overdue amount on the credit card and is doubtful of the return of the tea glasses...

Tea comes in a polythene bag, with plastic cups. Home delivery !

The same tea. With Tea powder. Loads of milk. Traces of ginger. Sugar coated. But in a plastic frame ! It may not have the glassy feel. Its still tea. Offered with happiness.

The next time your taste buds take to the sugar and milk like a first time MP making his first swindled million, take a moment to savour it more !

Popularity and preference sure point to tea power. Tea brings alive any discussion. On any topic. Business and recession. Life and culture. Body and fitness. Anything and anything at all.

Like the other day. An insipid discussion was in progress. About the important part plastic has begun playing in our lives. Insipid. Until the time the tea arrived. Brought from the local corner tea store.

In some time, we sipped tea. Out of a plastic cup. Poured out of a polythene bag ! You bet, there was a different ring to the discussion.

The group ranted and raved about plastic.

My mind was elsewhere though. The flavour of human ingenuity underscored the flavour the tea! Or plastic for that matter.

Tea !

Oodles of doodles

The speaker moves his arms. Wavy gestures and air filled lungs pump enough volume to reach the far corners of the room. Examples are cited. The future is invoked. Questions are posed. Frameworks are discussed.

There is a training program that's on.

The participants are all there. Physically at least. Their bodies too large to disappear into thin air. They are all there. Their thoughts are a different realm though. Nobody can say for sure where thoughts are. Like a cyclone that's much hyped but didn't turn up.

Their hands are at work though. Heads almost hemmed to their notepads. Perhaps serving as the biggest of 'motivators' to the trainers and lecturers ! Construed as note taking, and such other activity of importance that adds to the self importance of the speaker.

In practice, doodles emerge.

Of cows. Huts. Planes. Ships. Faces. And the like. The cows could look like sheep whose harmone therapy went awry. And hut designs that could make a Pygmy cry. And that could be particularly ironic if the program was on something like 'Getting it Right the first time" or something to that effect !

Perhaps not as ironic as having arrows and spears doodled all over, in a workshop while the junta is talking 'Partnership' !

At other times there are lines & shadings. Precise shading of intersections and empty spaces. Preciseness to the nano millimeter. That hitherto seemed capabilities that rested with American missiles that were launched from ships, traversing two seas and many mountain ranges to hit the hidden commode of secret toilets of Osama Bin Laden and gang.

Such impeccable designs. Sketched with such intensity and effort.

Have you wondered why ? Something seems to be at work here. A natural by product of sitting in a lecture or a training program.

Perhaps its about camouflage. Of pretense. Pretending to be attending, but actually away !

But why would students & participants take all the effort to draw such impeccable cows ( with hormonal treatment going awry ) and arrows & straight lines that could be used to teach geometry to infants.

There must be some research done on this.

Perhaps its all about the mind. Perhaps it helps shade a few shapes. And shape a few shades. Or maybe its to sharpen whats faded. Or fade whats sharpened. Contrasts. Colours. And the like. .

Which perhaps is what one can get out of a training ! Whatsay ?

Doodles seem to be here to stay !

Oodles of doodles

Flab

There has been a new wind that's been blowing at home. And the wind is about losing flab. In fact, cutting flab dramatically !

Before you say, 'oh no, not again', stay with this post. The flab fighting on the body isn't headed anywhere close to a photo finish. Its a lost cause. A non-starter. Lets move on. The quicker the better.

This post is about the house. The house, you see, has accumulated flab. Over the years. Possessions galore. 'Possessions galore' can seem to be a pompous boast of a vain man.

Only here, the possessions that are being talked about are not exactly ones that a wealth manager smile. So.

What would this wealth manager say, if he was shown cupboards of books, files, magazines, folders, paper clippings. etc.

Some dating twenty years. From the days of Narasimha Rao and Ronald Reagan. Old magazines. India Today. Time Magazine. Business Today and the like.

Artifacts picked along the way. Like, the odd stationary bill from a store that's since been gulped down by a mall that intimidates by the sheer size of its parking lot !

A menu card from a fancy hotel. Flicked to rekindle in an unforeseeable future, the memories of a special evening with special people !

Overhead projector sheets from the first corporate presentation made, which seem today to be almost the time when the dinosaurs hatched their 11the egg.

Discussion notes from organisations organisations who helped pay the bills in an earlier time. Copies of mails. Approvals and such else. Heaps of study material. 'Extra reading' printouts . Notes from training programs that have long been forgotten.

Wedding invitations of friends who have now progressed to attend Parent-Teacher meetings and now organise dinners based on the tuition teacher's calendar !

Bus tickets. Train tickets back home. Travel pamphlets from Bangkok to Bombay. Shimla to Sivakasi ! And beyond !

Books & small artifacts. Some picked specifically as memorabilia. Others accumulated in intense lazy stupour. Of course, each pregnant with a story of its time and place. As the hand ran a cloth to drive the dust away, a million memories got dusted too.

Four racks in the cupboard were emptied with the ferocity of Bruce Lee felling opponents in 'Enter the Dragon' ! Strange noises et al ! The remnants of the tearing, throwing and mowing remained on the floor for sometime.

Not very later, gunny bags of the 'old newspaper' chap held them. With grimace and glee ! Twenty odd years of accumulation. Carefully clipped newspaper cuttings. Innocently flicked menu cards. Carelessly kept old bills. Study material from a different age. Reviews. Publications. Occupying four racks of the cupboard. Moving along the many houses. City to city.

All gone. It required two trips on a bicycle like this. In a four hour span. They were gone.

We live an age were Google is a verb. Space is a perpetual constraint. Dust beats the Gods in omnipresence. And of course, the daily day offers new possibilities for life and living, much unlike any time before. Perhaps, the nimble mind, without baggage will soak it all up well. So is the case with homes ! That logic beat nostalgia's seductive presence !

Net result : All gone. You would have expected the missus to have jumped with joy. Happy she was. But, she was a tad upset too.

For all of this yielded her a mega sum of Rs. 129/- ! The care with which these were preserved and the 20 year time stamp on some, seems to have had her imagining something like an inheritance from Bill Gates or someone !

'Rs.129. Huh'. Was all that was heard.

So much for flab !

Flab

Reservation

How many times has it happened with you that you get to what seems to be a 'vacant' seat, only to sight a handkerchief, or an old newspaper, or a book or some object of similar value there. Standing in for the 'owner' !

In some time the 'owner' shows up, indicating that he had 'reserved' the seat. And lays claim to the seat with such ferocity that would put the Chinese's claim of Arunachal, to pathetic shame !

I guess this is a uniquely Indian moment. I guess. I am not sure. Please correct me if i am wrong here. My guess is given shape by the fact that we have a chronicled mythological precedent. Of Lord Ram's footwear standing in for the gent when he went into the jungle! So.

So, in a busy movie hall (or wherever else, esp if there are no allotted seat numbers) you can stroll around, ogle about, wander with a pop corn or a cone of ice cream. All this while the old dirty handkerchief stands in for you !!

In smaller cities and towns, this scene is so often repeated in inter city buses. Where the clamour to get a seat is only matched by the ability to reach a handkerchief, newspaper, belt, tiffin box to 'reserve' a seat !

If a 'representative object' (dirty handkerchief, shredded newspaper or whatever) of the dude in yellow trousers got to the seat before you, well, the seat belonged to the dude in yellow trousers ! So we have seen. And heard.

It was 'refreshingly different' to see this gent, and his mode of reservation. Aboard the river cruise on Goa's Mandovi river.

He clearly had outgrown the handkerchief and belongings of low value. For friends of his, for whom he 'reserved' seats, he gave it his one whole leg and one whole hand !

And warded off every body else who came close to the seat with a dismissive disdain that perhaps would befit a Taliban war lord looking at his goats, whom he was going to have for dinner !

This is a new standard that must quickly be made known to the rest of the country. We need more people like this gent.

Wont you be happy with friends like these ? Especially considering that they would give an arm and a leg. Just to get you seated.

Reservation

Whose name is it anyway ?

Sporting a tattoo that an actor wears. Or growing a goatee like a cricketer. And setting hair like a footballer. They are all easy to do.

Of course, its going to be difficult to sculpt a body like Silvester Stallone or John Abraham. Not forgetting 'size invisible' ( or was it 'Zero' ?) like those thin lasses. Those are tough asks.

Easiest done is to imitate a 'star's outfit. Still easier is to wear a t-shirt bearing the man's name ! Walk into a store and pick up a T-shirt which says a famous mans name !

Its kind of ironic though. Pay YOUR money, which the credit card company will send to YOUR address in YOUR name. To wear ANOTHER man's name. On YOU ?!? How interesting !

Of course, this is so common ! The eye brows wont arch one bit if a man with 'Ronaldo' written on his T-Shirt is spotted hitching a ride on the streets of Daman.

Or for that matter, if 'Torres' is spotted at the Madurai railway station !

The stars themselves, are known to wear those low caps and big sun glasses to hide their identity in public. Perhaps trying hard to melt into the crowd. Becoming more common than common.

And the common man, wears the celebrity name on his sleeve. Actually on his back ! Mankind indeed finds numerous ways to stay busy. But such are the ways of the world.

The eye brows only half arch. That too, in irony. Looking at this 'Ronaldo' netting the small fish on a Goan shore !

While the stores rake in the big money, counterfeits rule the pavements. Hollering hawkers, are known to sell such counterfeits to highest bidders.

Just the shirts. With the names, of course ! The stars dont come as part of these deals.

For they have been auctioned long before. To clubs, who were highest bidders too. But that's a different story. Of a different auction !

.

Whose name is it anyway ?

The merry-go-round deal !

Children scream. Half concealing a laugh and a spirit that seems to come alive when the man with big biceps heaves all his might on to the 'merry-go-round'.

For 25 paisa, there they are, sitting on red cars. With stationary wheels that spin in air and a steering wheel that needs no steering. The man with the big biceps moves them well ! For two minutes or for such time till the man with the big biceps gets tired, the kids spin around.

In seemingly countless whorls. Seemingly in control. Giggling. Screaming. Some crying. Some closing their eyes in sheer fear and great fright. And there they go. Round. And round. And round.

When their turn is done, they alight.

Slightly heady. Perhaps longing for more. Sometimes looking at their parents for 'one more round' ! This merry-go-round is a prominent feature of local fairs and any decent gathering in the villages.

The name says it all. Merry-go-round ! Be merry while going around. Wind in the hair. Screams. Laughter. And all that. For as long as the man with the big biceps desires. Generally its equitable. Sometimes he gives some kids a few more turns. Thats part of the deal.

The merry-go-round deal. The man spins the kids around. As new kids climb on to old cars. Cars with wheels that dont run on the ground and a steering wheel that doesn't steer.

The same deal, that gives kids a heady high, to think that they steer while knowing that they dont. The same deal that the man with big biceps plays along. The 'Merry-Go-Round' deal !

Think about it. Merry-go-round. Man with big biceps. Heady high. Spin. Scream. Scare. Loss. Seeming control. Joy. And so on.

Life.

Isnt it ?

Life...seems to me, to be one big merry-go-round !

Whatsay ?

The merry-go-round deal !