I am still wandering...

Why can’t beautiful women behave nicely to their carnal and visual opposites- murmured Vyas as he de-boarded the bus, the old bus with an older conductor whose hands always smelled of rusted, peopled iron। Vyas never gave him more than the ticket amount as he always avoided the rusty-ironed-hand’s change.

So Vyas, the eclipsed sun of our story and son of a late Army official and a typically illiterate sweaterknitting, two-saree-owner mother works at a bank to only earn his bread as there’s hardly anything left for butter.

A 5’7” shabby 26 year old boy or man, he knows best, Vyas is elbow-complexioned with red lips and facial skin like a tanned buffalo’s! His hair puff was the only visible feature of his façade that whispered of his youth. His textured hair kept him seeing a mirror each morning, being shamelessly oblivious to his premature ageing!

All these miraculous features with a life of struggles at pinnacles and the not-to-miss banker’s job barred his masculinity to mid-bathing masturbation sessions and occasional cleavage peeps in the bus.

Today was supposed to be like any other sans-energy, sans-smile day when for the first half he opens his mouth for customering and Gold-flaking and second half for customering, Gold-flaking and burping, adding foul-odour yawns in the siesta hours.

But the evening had unexpected waiting for Vyas. Enough to kill the yawning and stir him!

Vyas while dealing with the customers usually kept his head low for two reasons. 1) He doesn’t want futile socialization as he calls it atrophy and 2) he doesn’t want people to see his face and make unwanted gestures with their.

But today there was a head lifting voice after the lunch that made him alter the angle of his neck. This was Vyas’ friend- a college pal- Surojit. His sight made Vyas’ lips flicker in a welcoming gesture for it was after 6 years of college that he saw a known face. After opening his new account, vyas opened the conversation as he replaced a hesitant colleague at his desk.

The conversation, ought to be loud and hearty was low and short. Both talked of college, life after college and job. On Vyas’ question about livelihood, Surojit’s answer was-“I am still wandering”. Vyas, not to embarrass him, carpeted the topic. After some Gold-flaking, both bid farewell to each other with the promise to meet monthly in the bank.

With this promise they parted and Vyas replaced the replacement. As Vyas enveloped himself in monotonous, single-syllable routine, he was still brooding college times which used to be umpteen times better (he even used to be fairer than this in the college). He started smoking on 3rd day of college. He loved Bindra, who loved Krishnan, who loved Padmaja and Padmaja ran with her domestic help Mutur, a bihari. Bindra consoled Krishnan and today they are happily married with two kids, darker than their parents, perhaps a shade darker than Vyas even. Had Padmaja not ran with her domestic help, Vyas would have a Social and biological outlets to enjoy. But college was not that bad after all. He watched his first porn film in college, a Srilankan porn movie with 1 hour of foreplay and 10 minutes of action.

Vyas attributes his virginity to such a gory exposure first then to his social circle and finally to his facade. The only women he knows other than his mother is Mrs Lakshmi a co-worker. Vyas thinks Mrs Lakhsmi met her menopause at least a decade ago and her husband could gather the courage to fornicate with her only twice, for they have two children.

His Virginity was a celibacy which always left Vyas in the purgatory of pride and prejudice.

All these and more thoughts, as fast they travel, steered him to Surojit, for this flashback was an upshot of his arrival. Surojit never attended mathematics class, the professor was his father. His Bengali sister was far better than any other girl in the college. He and Vyas became friends at the end of first year. Vyas took his Bajaj Vespa when he went to Bindra’s house (in his best shirt-RED) to say her happy birthday.

And suddenly, Vyas froze in his chair. The floor slipped from under. With wide eyes and sweat drops forming on his forehead Vyas recalled a haunting memory… Surojit died in the final year of college. It was an accident. A bus ran over him while he was driving his Vespa.

Thick sputum formed in his throat. And like the sputum, Vyas could not digest he met with a dead person or-what froze his spine-a ghost.

It took him three minutes and a customer’s meddling to regain mundane consciousness. As he finished the work till evening, he decided to check his records for he address Surojit gave him. It seemed that the spree of surprises was not over.

The form bore the address of their college.

Vyas held his scalp into hands to grab all that happened to him. Did that mean Surojit was still living in college? Is surojit, the now metaphysical, still attached to college memoirs? How long will he be like this? Will he come again? Then Surojit’s righteous words echoed deafeningly in his head

“I am still wandering”

His spirit was wandering in the college compound and it came to see an old friend six years after they parted.

It was always late

Each morning, 30 minutes after leaving the bed, I am usually found in one of those DMRC beasts either fantasizing a seat, a women, sulking with an IPod plugged in to my ears or most commonly... reading. Finally out of existent stock and wary of going somewhere to purchase newer books, I finally picked up a Novel called "Zero Percentile" and started reading it today. This novel, written by a quassi-chetan bhagat author in a sami-chetan bhagat style with a fully chetan bhagat marketing plan was nowhere comparable to (at least) best selling Bhagat. The narrative was unorganised, unplanned, unedited and unthoughtful. It was like a news article done by the cameraperson because the journalist was on leave. However, the 40 pages of this novel resurrected in me something that even Ayn Rand, Lawrence and Rushdie failed to... my own dream of writing a Novel.
I kept 'Zero Percentile' down after reading 40 pages to enjoy the trance and nostalgia that it gave me, trance of my own first novel. Starting 3 years ago on this unplanned voyage of writing a novel, I (immature and unexposed) played safe and romantic by picking up a Delhi based love story as my plot. With my limited knowledge of vocabulary, art of expression and usage of words to their true potential, I wrote about 150 pages in MS Word(I still remember that old Sahara laptop). Those standards of yesteryear are but a source of mockery now. Those plane expressions, underutilized idioms, pointless sarcasms, careless satires, disparaging euphemisms and short vocabulary were anything but tamed and timid. But today, when I have made a career out of writing and I'm by my standards a decently read man with viable knowledge of language and its usage as a tool... today, when my pen is, if not sword, at least a sickle of verbiage, I am too messed up in my grooming to pen out my aspirations. The madness has died and the magic could never grow. All dreams of boundless creativity are broken each morning by the alarm clock. The trance of imagination is broken by the assaults of deadlines. The ship has met it's fate even before its first journey. It will soon be sunk in the white-collar-whirlwind. The death has already happened in me much longer, but I realized it today after reading another budding author, who at least wrote. Zero Percentile will continue to be my most-haunting and disparaging novel for long. But I never-the-less-never-the-more need to start from page 41 tomorrow...

Training for taming

Post placement-the wetting dream of all management students-life has been spiralling, twisting and intimidating. The society and civility are no more like before. The blood-brotherhood promises are growing stale. The commitments to oneself, the oath of disciplines, the fantasies of luxury and the utopian perfection have ceased even before their creation. Let alone eclectic growth, some of us are probably diminishing from inside.

How so ever occupied I be or pretend to be, some fragments of past do visit me each day. Remembering my first year in that obscenely built lavish triangular dwelling, I recall the emotional voyage of absurdity, aloofness, confusion, numbness, friendship, politics, bacchanalianism, mockery, bigotry, accidents, nudity, extremity, incapability and atrophy. While yet, another side of me contemporarily recalls freshness, rejuvenation, attachment, charm, belongingness and insecurity. Till the speciality of pursuing higher education became a necessity: a socio-emotional dose, we were through with the confused half of our MBA.

Following the 3 month break in our redeeming Sabbath I, with some chosen and imposed friends moved to another accommodation. Now this one reminds me of laughter, potpourri, happy high, sad high, only high, high-high, neighbour nagging, pre dawn whacking, perverseness, madness, fear, frolic, frenzy, fame, sense, logic, untangling and relief. Correspondingly, the not so egoist alter ego remembers mirth, bliss, strife, derelicts, homecoming, extrapolation, vision, pacification, belief, humour, commitment and oneness.

Having said all this, I must mention that it is not merely the spasms of nostalgia or fits of chagrin that haunt us, it is the crowded and rowdy outside world that upsets us by not being as we shaped it inside. You might not like to pardon my frankness, but the vainness of MBA is more intense than its best reminiscence. Even if you see that the road to future is bright and sunny, prepare for a rain or sunburn, and for some of us, even for an eclipse.

Atlas Shrugging...

What do you want to be? What do you want to see? How do you want to be heard? A confusing mix of prejudice, olfactory, aural and visual parodies and social kinaesthetic are the (seemingly) end products of our sensory and social protocols. The masses- despised and prioritised alike in the books of history- always lost their voice for the wake of a revolution. The elite- feigning and heathened by the masses got their larynx and word heard across ages, catalysing revolutions and catastrophes equally. Then there is a third voice, unheard and unseen, the voice of ventriloquists. In the want of maintaining the fulcrum of real balance, these voices left unnamed, mute. Paradoxically, it is these aural altars of sacrifices, commitments that deserve –from neo-natal to posthumous-ovations of human and inhuman. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for us, they could never get their undemanded, unasked and unexpected share of tribute. It is these voices that I vow and bow to. It is these voices that I want to get noticed. The silence that you live in, is the most intense and deafening enlightenment, in chasing which, you make most of the most atrophic resonances from your vocal chords. For the uncomprehending nobodies, it is the silence of an umbilical cord that balances the fulcrum of most divine creation. It is the serene silence of night, that holds the fulcrum between nocturnal sagas and sunlight humdrums. It is the silence of God, that balances the fulcrum of religion and survival. The silence of creation, used as ventriloquist’s tool, balances the quintessential apparatus till destruction.

What began with big bang, came to us with a protozoon and is taking us to apocalypse is but a mere puppetry of ventriloquists, sound and un-succumbing to their share-takers. The point at the core-heating and waiting to unleash- is the irony of these voices. Playing the roles that nobody told them to play, these voices have been pried upon since they began to speak. But as the world is approaching its cataclysm, its intelligence is burgeoning and its emotiveness is ballparking. So while we await our individual, societal, civilisation and conscientious end, it will be conducive to identify what kept us going so far: the ventriloquists. Heeding us, feeding us, nurturing us, creating us and destroying us; these voices have become strained. Therefore the usual silence they created with their sounds is getting eerier. Balancing the fulcrum, their throats- the working mnemonics for origin of universe, mankind, society, communication and culture- are getting drenched and parched. They are getting HOLLOWER. But poor forms of life that we are, instead of feeding and heeding them, we stuffed them with our inefficacies and lethargy. Instead of the healers that they wanted us to be, we became their fatal taxidermists. But as these throats are getting more and more stuffing, the silent eloquent balance they maintained is fading. The fulcrum is penchanting towards destruction: from morals to man to masses to mankind. While nothing can be done, (or worst: undone) it is agreeable to rationally and shamefully acknowledge the deceptive imagery-cum-motion-picture ... the ‘Maaya and Mithya’ that we created to masquerade us to doom. Let us analyse our individual apparatus and the balances and accept the brutal assaults that we made to sodomise the ventriloquist throats. Let us- till we are pulled from predicament of penultimate to the wholesomeness of the ultimate- be thankful, obliged and equally remorseful to the balancing chords of unspoken throats. Let us be remembered –with our genocides and thoughtlessness- for our boldness and confessions.

I ask again: What do you want to be? What do you want to see? How do you want to be heard?

Love: One wonderful feeling, emotions and money minting!!

Love is not a degree of coincidence or an art of perfection. Love is an accidental arrangement, carnal or platonic, with bare minimum requirements defying age, gender, appearance and even tangibility of existence (like falling in love with God). Love is as worldly as celestial it is. It is not difficult or important to be in love. The vitality lies in building stability, longevity and essentialism as the unshakeable pillars of this feeling. Once again, love is not merely or necessarily a feeling. It can also be an abstract though running so vehemently in mental dimensions that it appears actualising concurrently in the real world. Love is not always refreshing or a positive addiction .Like a rejuvenating love, a thwarted love can become a habit or even a forced compulsion, a desperation to seek belongingness in a wasted acquiescence that otherwise is a source of disgust and dismal.

While very few rising in love, ‘falling’ in love has rightly been phrased by either a visionary or a victim. What however is more depressing is the inability or blindness of those falling into a deep trough of emotional engagement that they start believing the opposite. It’s like running a pillar to post marathon with the belief of reaching the other side of the earth. Many forms of today’s love are harsh incompatibilities masqueraded by a vast cocoon of ignorance, embroidered with brittle threading of happiness, hope and optimism to hide the reality. But when the reality outgrows this cocoon, everything -brittle or vast- breaks into pieces which hurt.

These are the pieces of solitude, of desperation, of contempt, of memoirs, of aimlessness, of hatred and many other confused multifaceted emotional outbursts that have been best captured by poets and psychologists alike.

But there are some positivisms also included in the packaging of love. While some are directly beneficial to concerned parties, others bring benefits to the external world. Love means business to so many professions and services. Flowers, gifts, cards, travel and tourism, internet, telephony, telegrams and telegraphs, cameras, apparels, accessories, entertainment industry, food industry, ‘pharmaceuticals’ and much more. Even in its dismal state of being, love is a source of business to trades of counselling, psychometrics, medicos, druggists, Telephony, chocolates, electricity, television, breweries, spirits, tobacco and drugs.

So…. love is a necessary evil with huge demand in markets.

Non-periodically yours!
AbhishekM

Internship at Hindu Ltd.

Once upon an unrecorded time in another dimension across the wormhole, there was this guy Arelius, who was doing his MBA in Shangri-la Institute of Management in Celestial town. During the time of internship, Arelius was placed under Hindu Ltd, the company run by Hindu Deities at top and middle management and jointly owned by Hindu Gods as Board of Members. Hindu Ltd was the biggest of all the recruiters at Shangrila institute of Management. Their operations were across the world with their headquarters on the border of India and Nepal. 

Arelius, who was in marketing and promotion department, was assigned a project to survey the existing customers of Hindu Ltd. His project included determining the consumer satisfaction level, consumer behaviour at Point of Purchase (Multiple unorganised Outlets with the generic name ‘Temple’), product line and consumer benefits like festivals, celebrities, fasts, rituals and holidays. Arelius decided to start his project by visiting contact points where the footfall was in millions during selected time periods. The company called these points as ‘holy places’. His first such visit was at Maha Kumbh Mela, somewhere near the Headquarters of Hindu Ltd. The activity was organised once in 12 years jointly by field representatives called pundits or pujaaris with assistance from Nature department. Arelius, unknown to the trends and buying behaviour, though went there to record the consumer behaviour and satisfaction level, but was awestruck by the organisation and event management skills of the company. The quality control was in a dismal state with no support from the Nature department. The Operations were haphazard and the crowd flow also required major channelisation. Unable to ignore these observations, Arelius noted them and proceeded to consumers for their feedback. A bigger level of dismay struck him after his first feedback. The respondent, a 55 year old woman from middle income group was very satisfied with the services. All her responses were positive feedbacks without any complaints or suggestions. On finishing the survey at that site, Arelius realised that customers were not just satisfied but delighted. 

Arelius later went to another contact point named ‘Balaji’. The services offered here chiefly included shelf displays of statues of one of the board member of Hindu Ltd, called as ‘Idols’ and a live band which played music religious genre. He observed a very particular tendency among the consumers of Hindu Ltd. at this area. Though most of the visitors appeared to be sane and composed, but during a strange promotional activity called ‘aarti’ (when the live band performed at its best), the consumers displayed weird responses. Starting from tossing their head in all directions, they went as far as injuring themselves by either rolling down a staircase or pulling off their hair from their scalp. Unable to hold his curiosity, Arelius met one of the field representatives after the promotional activity to understand the rationale behind this consumer behaviour. He learned that among other activities, this contact point also offered free ghostbuster services to its consumers. They were able to capture their target audience, a quasi-niche segment, solely by the means of grapevine and brand loyalty. Noting his observations, he left the place. 

Arelius visited many more locations and outlets of Hindu Ltd. during his tenure as a trainee. Some were Amarnath, Kailash Parvat, Haridwar, Vaishno Devi and Chaar Dhaam. He found the common sentiment of consumer delight at all the location irrespective of the poor quality of services and operations. He also realised that the company should never opt for demographic segmentation as its consumers were spread across all regions across the world and so did its outlets. He observed that brand loyalty was the biggest USP for Hindu Ltd. as the consumers rarely looked for competitors’ services, irrespective of their attempts. He also examined that though the quality of service was inferior, the incentives and up-selling added to customer delight. It was usually in form of edible merchandise like Prasad and ‘charnamrit’. Moreover, small statues of board of members, that were nothing short of souvenirs counted for revenue generation. Another benefit to the company’s advantage was that investors were always ready to provide funds for overhauling of existing outlets and expansion plans as well. Subsequently, the company was cash rich. While Hindu Ltd was not the market leader but it enjoyed monopoly in certain regions. Arelius recommended that the company, apart from expanding its operations, must also try to attract more consumers to increase its profitability and Return on Investment. Though there were numerous small attempts to seek new clients by the field representatives, but they were often small scale and unorganised. The competitors were however coming up with continuous innovation for the same. 

Then, courtesy his mentors and seniors, Arilius was able to finish his project before time. Impressed with his performance and swiftness, his department decided to give him another project during his tenure with Hindu Ltd. We shall soon get to know what it was and how it changed his life….

Speculatively yours

AbhishekM

Are you in pain? haahhh

Aahhhhhhhhh...
No its not pleasure I am moaning with, its pain. The humdrum obligations that led me to this temporary yet drenching catastrophe are not as important as the connotation attached to the word and concept that this word, pain, endures us. "A strongly unpleasant bodily sensation such as caused by illness of injury" is what Oxford describes pain as, but I am afraid to say these literary scholars probably missed the subtle nuance and chronicled only the nuisance of pain.

Pain is not just a carnal unpleasantness. It can not be always depicted or conveyed with flesh, blood, cries, agonies, tears, or death. There is more to pain than a body can endure; the mental pain. Than explaining the mental pain, I would exemplify it. It is when you can see someone crying with hunger or despair thousands of miles away but you know you can not do much to his comfort. It is when few mavericks carry out a spree of destruction and jeopardy to innocent and naïve people. It is when you see that rulers of a civilisation are too overwhelmed with avarice and selfishness to help those, who made them what they are, from suffering. The biggest pain however comes when you realise that the unaffected world is too selfish or occupied to see the pain of the affected half, when all persuasions to philanthropy succumb to the hardened hearts. When the biggest pain of unknown is inexistent while the slightest trouble to the beloveds can agitate what even revolutions failed to.

Ask yourself, are you able to see, let alone inflict this pain? Do such ophthalmic sights and cacophonic sounds nerve you? Do those umpteen epitaphs the citizens of this world face each day serve as a reminder to you? Or for you citizens only belong to countries, regions or worse, religions? The purpose of my words is not to stir you to action, as even epics can not dragoon you that far, but it is to stir your conscience and let you witness the pain and atrocities at a global plethora and realise how infinitesimally miniscule and inconsequential are those fears and pains that we bear. So next time you bruise your knee or strain your wrist, or are down with fever or loose a friend, or even love of your life… remember there are far bigger unheard stories that speak of elegies of pain a human mind can seldom imagine and a human body can never endure. That’s why my pain, courtesy an accident on a road connecting Delhi with Maharashtra, is so inconsequential that I mentioned it in the beginning, so that I can disparage it till the end…

Cynically yours

AbhishekM