I'm in love with the eye.
cogitated thoughts
I'm in love with the eye.
Yes, you ARE right. We all know that we've seen those two faces someplace else. O where art thou Douglas Adams?
It must be the glossy tinge of light that all magazines have, I would have never thought that a bell could look that classy.
motley, motley, MOTLEY!
exclusively beatlemaniacal.
There wasn't really any space left to write out band names...
I have been thinking about redoing my room for a while now. In my opinion, familiarity doesn’t exactly breed contempt but it does possess this knack of making you want to be dynamic. The feeling, like so many other feelings, sets in a little later than it should. In my case, it has set in at a time when the chances of my going to a hostel are fairly moderate if not prodigiously high. The kind of chances, you will agree, which narrow down my need for reinvention.
My room, in over-used words is a ghost from the past. One of it’s walls even has a Guns n’ (‘n’ ’ smirk) Roses poster on it. So I suppose you can imagine how far it goes back.
I would have been unaware of the walls or the atmosphere in my room, if it weren’t for a certain video I happen to have had the privilege of watching a couple of days back. The video, you see, was of a room. Queen’s English knocks on my head with her fist and asks me to be more precise. The video, you see, was of one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen.
Most of the people on my very eminent friends list feel that rooms are no big deal. They do exist after all for the sole purpose of giving you the chance to make them unclean. But as most of them belong to one-of-those institutions, which support the word ‘unclean’ with banners, hands up signs and trumpets, their opinion doesn’t really amount to much.
Even the thought of bare walls makes me feel like I’ve had my first viewing of the Ring.
So yes, bottom line: a room is where your heart is.
Along with the just-turned-teenager-I-want-to-be-cool attribute that is splashed across all over my room, there are a number of memories attached to it.
It was in this room that I celebrated my Tenth std results and it is in this room that I have now moped over my Twelfth std ones. Everyone tells me that it isn’t that big a deal, which in a matter of speaking is well and good. But it’s the first time that I’ve managed to miss a hundred marks in a goddamn exam and that is of course not a very pleasant feeling. In the short span of 48 hours, jaws have dropped, eyes have been strained, indignation masks have been put on faces, silences have been spoken into telephones and wild queries of true identities have been made. ‘‘Was it really YOUR roll number that you typed in?’’ And to all this I would like to say, ‘‘DUH! Shit happens’’.
I sincerely wish that it didn’t happen to me but it sincerely chooses to wish other wise.
I’ve been trained not to brush things under the carpet because of which, it wasn’t that hard to let the 80% slap me on my face, shake me up for a while and make me break down for a little bit. So, I patted everyone’s head and told them it was all right, made others pat mine and tell me the same.
There was nothing else to do but to call up the cousin-with-most-guest-appearances on this blog and ask her to please bunk college so that she could come to my rescue like one of those United States Marines Bertie Wooster keeps talking about. The place you are in, moulds your conversation to quite an extent and this was justified in ‘Rice Bowl’ where both of us treated ourselves to some nice Chinese food. The place as such is a cosy, quiet restaurant…the A.C, cushioned chairs and of course the food manage to give the dim lit place a certain feel, which makes you feel warm, laid back and that sort of thing. But I think they have an exceptionally bad DJ or whoever- picks- their- playlist because they had this crazy CD/cassette on which seemed to be a mixture of the most horrifying music that anyone can possibly be subjected to. Imagine Britney Spears, Christina Augielera, dik chik remixes and a not-so-good-percentage stuffed into one paper bag, then burst right in front of your face and you WILL genuinely feel as if ‘‘ AUGH! I’ve been shot.’’
Oh well, I’m afraid I’ve been digressing for a while now. Do accept my apologies and allow me to welcome you back to whatever it was that I was saying. (Scrolls up…Ah...oh…uh huh... yes) So, all that manages to mould conversation, making it the inane, rugged thing that technically isn’t supposed to happen between two people between whom silences never get uncomfortable…especially when there are things to be said and intensities to be evoked. The REAL thing is thus, built up, allowed to gain more energy and has a strong, structured foundation. If it’s done the right way…it can EVEN have a PLOT.
So, when we had finished lunch, made a customary visit to Blossoms (That was after Shalu promised me that she WILL NOT allow me to buy any thing as she likes my house and probably didn’t want my parents to disown me on accounts of prospective bankruptcies…she obviously ended up buying two books for herself.) and aimlessly walked the streets of Brigade Road, we found ourselves drifting towards the Barista on St Mark’s Road. By the time we’d ordered our coffees and laughed at the morons who actually managed to screw up a 5 lettered, easily spelt, clearly pronounced name by calling me ‘Snaiae’ or something of that sort, the REAL thing had grown and developed a voice of it’s own. If I’m not mistaken, it was at around this moment that time came to a dignified, silent, unseen stop. The words were heart felt, the emotions were genuine, the silences were comfortable and the frantic phone calls from both our mothers, asking us to get ourselves to home this instant because it was thunder storm-y and terribly cloudy were unheeded. Someone must have finally come and pressed the pause button because time had decided that it had had enough of inertia, making us realize in a simple, yet not abrupt way that the intensity had been sucked out, transported some place else and goodbyes were due.
There was something about the wind outside that didn’t quite feel right. It was too strong, powerful…a tad too icy cold. The world outside the stone walled, subtle Barista seemed to be in a chaotic mode. There was a lot of noise, too many traffic jams and a lot of people hurrying up. I realized then that this wasn’t going to be Rain Supreme. It was going to be something else. It was going to be Tempest-esque...
It doesn’t help in such situations, if your direction sense is close to zilch and your knowledge of bus routes is worse. These factors basically mean, auto zindabad and auto zindabad means raised eyebrows when you tell the driver ‘Old Madras Road’ and in a somewhat unhearable mumble, ‘Beninganahalli’. I finally did manage to find an auto and bid a goodbye to my cousin who suffers from no such ailments and got on a bus, reaching home about one and a half hour later than I did (Ha! :-P )
The auto had moved just a couple of meters when it started raining. Raining is actually understating it and doing it a whole lot of injustice. It wasn’t the sort of rain, which starts slowly, gradually turning into cats, dogs and all that. It was the kind, which thought that Darwin was basically a jobless man with a mid-life crisis and wanted to rebel with theories of evolution…making you wonder ‘what the (what’s that four letter word that begins with the same letter as fancy does…well…ahem, can’t remember) thundering typhoons?’ The auto driver immediately decided that the rain was MY fault. I immediately decided that I was going to go home broke...penniless…pleading ‘no, NO…not mea culpa’.
This time, my good friend, ‘time’ decided to slow down. It wanted me to contemplate, mix and match occurrences, question myself, question the heavens…. it wanted me to THINK. And for the next hour, that is exactly what I did. It was crazily cold and there was a constant spray of water hitting me. There was so much electricity in the air that I actually started feeling that things were following a synchronous pattern. Every time my thread of thought changed, something around me would change. Oh fine! little voice inside head, you been reading the Alchemist or something? But, I swear…the moment I decided that I HAD to do something about the walls of my room, they started a hail storm….
I needed yesterday. I needed the terribly sweet coffee. I needed the REAL thing. And I needed the wash. The rain that wasn’t a tempest anymore but more like a prequel of Noah sitting back with all his animals on a sunny island. There are no defined answers yet. But, there were at least questions. ‘Quo Vadis?’ you will say. And I will tell you to open your eyes and watch it rain...while I wait silently…wait for the mists to clear.
My room, in over-used words is a ghost from the past. One of it’s walls even has a Guns n’ (‘n’ ’ smirk) Roses poster on it. So I suppose you can imagine how far it goes back.
I would have been unaware of the walls or the atmosphere in my room, if it weren’t for a certain video I happen to have had the privilege of watching a couple of days back. The video, you see, was of a room. Queen’s English knocks on my head with her fist and asks me to be more precise. The video, you see, was of one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen.
Most of the people on my very eminent friends list feel that rooms are no big deal. They do exist after all for the sole purpose of giving you the chance to make them unclean. But as most of them belong to one-of-those institutions, which support the word ‘unclean’ with banners, hands up signs and trumpets, their opinion doesn’t really amount to much.
Even the thought of bare walls makes me feel like I’ve had my first viewing of the Ring.
So yes, bottom line: a room is where your heart is.
Along with the just-turned-teenager-I-want-to-be-cool attribute that is splashed across all over my room, there are a number of memories attached to it.
It was in this room that I celebrated my Tenth std results and it is in this room that I have now moped over my Twelfth std ones. Everyone tells me that it isn’t that big a deal, which in a matter of speaking is well and good. But it’s the first time that I’ve managed to miss a hundred marks in a goddamn exam and that is of course not a very pleasant feeling. In the short span of 48 hours, jaws have dropped, eyes have been strained, indignation masks have been put on faces, silences have been spoken into telephones and wild queries of true identities have been made. ‘‘Was it really YOUR roll number that you typed in?’’ And to all this I would like to say, ‘‘DUH! Shit happens’’.
I sincerely wish that it didn’t happen to me but it sincerely chooses to wish other wise.
I’ve been trained not to brush things under the carpet because of which, it wasn’t that hard to let the 80% slap me on my face, shake me up for a while and make me break down for a little bit. So, I patted everyone’s head and told them it was all right, made others pat mine and tell me the same.
There was nothing else to do but to call up the cousin-with-most-guest-appearances on this blog and ask her to please bunk college so that she could come to my rescue like one of those United States Marines Bertie Wooster keeps talking about. The place you are in, moulds your conversation to quite an extent and this was justified in ‘Rice Bowl’ where both of us treated ourselves to some nice Chinese food. The place as such is a cosy, quiet restaurant…the A.C, cushioned chairs and of course the food manage to give the dim lit place a certain feel, which makes you feel warm, laid back and that sort of thing. But I think they have an exceptionally bad DJ or whoever- picks- their- playlist because they had this crazy CD/cassette on which seemed to be a mixture of the most horrifying music that anyone can possibly be subjected to. Imagine Britney Spears, Christina Augielera, dik chik remixes and a not-so-good-percentage stuffed into one paper bag, then burst right in front of your face and you WILL genuinely feel as if ‘‘ AUGH! I’ve been shot.’’
Oh well, I’m afraid I’ve been digressing for a while now. Do accept my apologies and allow me to welcome you back to whatever it was that I was saying. (Scrolls up…Ah...oh…uh huh... yes) So, all that manages to mould conversation, making it the inane, rugged thing that technically isn’t supposed to happen between two people between whom silences never get uncomfortable…especially when there are things to be said and intensities to be evoked. The REAL thing is thus, built up, allowed to gain more energy and has a strong, structured foundation. If it’s done the right way…it can EVEN have a PLOT.
So, when we had finished lunch, made a customary visit to Blossoms (That was after Shalu promised me that she WILL NOT allow me to buy any thing as she likes my house and probably didn’t want my parents to disown me on accounts of prospective bankruptcies…she obviously ended up buying two books for herself.) and aimlessly walked the streets of Brigade Road, we found ourselves drifting towards the Barista on St Mark’s Road. By the time we’d ordered our coffees and laughed at the morons who actually managed to screw up a 5 lettered, easily spelt, clearly pronounced name by calling me ‘Snaiae’ or something of that sort, the REAL thing had grown and developed a voice of it’s own. If I’m not mistaken, it was at around this moment that time came to a dignified, silent, unseen stop. The words were heart felt, the emotions were genuine, the silences were comfortable and the frantic phone calls from both our mothers, asking us to get ourselves to home this instant because it was thunder storm-y and terribly cloudy were unheeded. Someone must have finally come and pressed the pause button because time had decided that it had had enough of inertia, making us realize in a simple, yet not abrupt way that the intensity had been sucked out, transported some place else and goodbyes were due.
There was something about the wind outside that didn’t quite feel right. It was too strong, powerful…a tad too icy cold. The world outside the stone walled, subtle Barista seemed to be in a chaotic mode. There was a lot of noise, too many traffic jams and a lot of people hurrying up. I realized then that this wasn’t going to be Rain Supreme. It was going to be something else. It was going to be Tempest-esque...
It doesn’t help in such situations, if your direction sense is close to zilch and your knowledge of bus routes is worse. These factors basically mean, auto zindabad and auto zindabad means raised eyebrows when you tell the driver ‘Old Madras Road’ and in a somewhat unhearable mumble, ‘Beninganahalli’. I finally did manage to find an auto and bid a goodbye to my cousin who suffers from no such ailments and got on a bus, reaching home about one and a half hour later than I did (Ha! :-P )
The auto had moved just a couple of meters when it started raining. Raining is actually understating it and doing it a whole lot of injustice. It wasn’t the sort of rain, which starts slowly, gradually turning into cats, dogs and all that. It was the kind, which thought that Darwin was basically a jobless man with a mid-life crisis and wanted to rebel with theories of evolution…making you wonder ‘what the (what’s that four letter word that begins with the same letter as fancy does…well…ahem, can’t remember) thundering typhoons?’ The auto driver immediately decided that the rain was MY fault. I immediately decided that I was going to go home broke...penniless…pleading ‘no, NO…not mea culpa’.
This time, my good friend, ‘time’ decided to slow down. It wanted me to contemplate, mix and match occurrences, question myself, question the heavens…. it wanted me to THINK. And for the next hour, that is exactly what I did. It was crazily cold and there was a constant spray of water hitting me. There was so much electricity in the air that I actually started feeling that things were following a synchronous pattern. Every time my thread of thought changed, something around me would change. Oh fine! little voice inside head, you been reading the Alchemist or something? But, I swear…the moment I decided that I HAD to do something about the walls of my room, they started a hail storm….
I needed yesterday. I needed the terribly sweet coffee. I needed the REAL thing. And I needed the wash. The rain that wasn’t a tempest anymore but more like a prequel of Noah sitting back with all his animals on a sunny island. There are no defined answers yet. But, there were at least questions. ‘Quo Vadis?’ you will say. And I will tell you to open your eyes and watch it rain...while I wait silently…wait for the mists to clear.
Alright! So, everyone knew this was coming. I’ll just hand out a couple of invitation cards, make some welcome speeches, assign you all a few mood- codes (you there, its your turn to be the clown of the day, and you, YES! you thought you could avoid my powerful gaze if you twiddled your thumbs and looked at the ceiling? You have my sympathies, but it’s your turn to be the miserable creature that sits on the last seat and looks at all the glamour around him/her, longingly…well I’m certain that you get the drift. Beg your pardon? What is it that you whisper amongst yourselves? Have I like….uh…lost it? Well, let me put it this way, everyone anyway seems to be going slightly mad…. and poor, wretched me isn’t really the trend setter here…
We are suckers for punctuality on this show, due to which you have just a little time to put some powder on that radiant face or spray some perfume on that majestic double-breasted suit.
So now that we are all ready to receive the mawkish queen of reiteration, I might as well make an appearance and deliver my piece. And since allusions aren’t really a language on their own I assure you that I’ll try to speak some English which, I suppose, would make it a tad easier for everyone including my lovely Sunday newspaper critics.
When I was a little kid, I used to have this crazy hobby of collecting stones. I used to pick up stones from all over the place (my favourite haunt was a construction site; they had the best shiny and glossy stones) and put them in these plastic bags and keep them in my cupboard. It was good fun till it started freaking my mum out…so one day, when I brought this circular, absolutely symmetric, black and glittery stone, home and told my mother with a pronounced mysterious drawl to my voice that the stone was going to bring us bad luck and destroy the world MUHUHAHAHAHA, she must have figured that this particular hobby was not doing much good to her imbecile daughter and in the matter of a few moments, the babies of my months’ efforts and devotion were thrown outside, lying like victims of the accident that was the big bad world. I was needless to say (yeah Mr oh-so-smart Alec now that I’ve admitted that there is no need to say it I AM going to go ahead and say it) devastated and bitter. But, that was still manageable…even for a 7-year-old kid. What I couldn’t manage though was the biting feeling that it had been a waste of my time and more importantly a waste of my mum’s. I could have ‘utilized’ that time to do other things with my gazillion friends… And when you are forced to concentrate on unpleasantness like that, you start blocking out the parts that really matter. The ones that were the cause of the dreamy looks of fascination in my eyes, or the ones that made me believe that any thing was after all possible… If She could encapsulate such interesting stories about an ancient age on a miniscule stone, then how much could she do with a whole world…
For a couple of days now, I’ve been waking up from dreams that consisted of people that have been or are a part of my life. But, the strange thing was that they were always set in some vague place…like old forts and riversides. It’s been pretty difficult for me to check myself. I would suddenly find myself thinking about those dreams as if they really happened and confuse it with what was happening in real life right now; because you see, the people were real…
And they’ve always been real. It’s not their existence that’s the problem…it’s mine. I wish now, that I’d realized where and when to fold the page into two. But, as is the case with most of the things that you know you are supposed to be doing but don’t do because it’s less complicated this way; I chose not to realize it. It’s not really my fault though, I’m just a juvenile idiot…I got so carried away by the pats, the smiles, the modified quotes, the rush, the file transfers…. that I didn’t bother differentiating. And when there were uncalled for goodbyes with the deer being sent on a hike, I chose not to understand it… Someoneonce told me that we were just nobodies in here…and damn me for not having listened then.
‘‘They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
And you know I see right through you
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screamin'
You're not listening anyway’’
--Acoustic#3, Goo Goo Dolls.
Well, it’s about time too. But, if I try and analyze every thing that I’ve been doing for the last four years then I would choose to regret it. I would choose to be unfair. And I don’t like doing injustice to choices. So I would rather just move on, thanks for all the bananafish. Seymour's still around to show them to me anyway.
In the words of a young man who claims that his momma told him that life is like a box of chocolates, that’s all I’ve to say about that.
I dare say that my head would have been muddled up for a long time but I thankfully experienced some thing yesterday, which saw to it that I don’t dwell upon things for more time than is actually required. It was more like a series of events actually…
I’d just finished an excruciating exam and they’d given us a break of an hour and 15 minutes before we could be belted, squished and trampled again.
My dad drove down to Cubbon Park and we were sitting in the car, eating the Tomato Rice that my mum had lovingly packed for the two of us. Dylan was asking Mr tambourine man to play a song for him. And at this exact moment, there’s no escaping what time it was; it was 12:15 P.M, I saw this family right ahead of us…there were seven people; five of them children (all of them were boys), a lady and another man which I assumed was the head of the family. The H.O.F was clicking photographs and the rest of the family was sitting on one of those benches-that-are-found-in-parks. The kids were doing crazy poses and all that. There was nothing particularly interesting about this whole thing except for a tiny, little detail, which I of course being the kind-hearted writer that I am, am going to disclose to you. All the members of the family that belonged to the sweatier, gory, darker sex, which if you recall, amounts to a total of six people, were perfectly…bald. I nudged my dad and both of us sat staring at this strange group, at the way the sunlight rebounded from their shiny heads, till we started smiling, grinning and finally ended up laughing. Not those loud laughs, or the crack-you-up till you feel like your sides- would- split laugh or even those subtle ones that are marked with politeness. It was just this really pleasant laugh that you do once in a while when you are peacefully happy about some thing. It makes its way through the clutter in your head reaching the epicenter and once it gets there, it starts generating waves in all directions so that by the time you are done laughing, your heads been sprayed with some fresh water and isn’t really that muddled up any more.
I don’t know if you’ve had the feeling of being in slow motion. Kinda like the Matrix bullets funda. It usually happens to me when I’m sitting in the car and looking outside the window. Dad will be speeding up. My mum will be chanting some shlokas under her breath, seemingly soft but loud enough for my dad to hear and figure, my brother will be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly I’ll see the world whiz past by me in slow motion. Maybe it has some thing to do with the fact that it’s night and there are neon lights all around…The world’s still moving…but it’s moving slow, it’s moving at a speed that will make me notice just about every thing…Neon lights, apparent high speeds, music, skylines, buildings, traffic signals, people…lots of people…and thoughts. Like a disembodied entity once observed, ‘Things began to come to him. Not drawn by a pull, but just passing him by almost as if suddenly they'd given him the permission to live in their world.’ It’s not a very nice thing to happen often but to happen when you are on a low, it’s just as good as it gets. Everyone deserves it once in a while, because it involves clarity. Things just have to make sense from time to time. It’s a defective need but that’s how it is.
It’s about concentrating on the tiniest piece in the frame. Looking at a worm crawl past by you, or a flower moving with the breeze, or seeing the way water flows into your open mouth from a bottle or laughing at bald people posing for photographs.
And I think that the ability to do that with any success is something that disintegrates with age. So, I like the way things are right now. I don’t mind the fact that I get to be called ‘juvenile’ by someone at least twice a day. And I’m not giving up on my teenage fantasies at least till I’m 21 if I can help it.
After periodic pleas from the, Pul(r)p(l)ish Fiction fanatic I finally got around to hearing the joke that wasn’t really funny but was told if we wanted to hear it anyway. No, of course I’m not going to tell it you here. Lets just say that it involves tomatoes...and well, ketchup.
So, basically ‘all we have to do now, is to go get that five dollar milkshake’.
‘‘So, if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, Yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there..I'll be there.’’
--Drive, Incubus.
We are suckers for punctuality on this show, due to which you have just a little time to put some powder on that radiant face or spray some perfume on that majestic double-breasted suit.
So now that we are all ready to receive the mawkish queen of reiteration, I might as well make an appearance and deliver my piece. And since allusions aren’t really a language on their own I assure you that I’ll try to speak some English which, I suppose, would make it a tad easier for everyone including my lovely Sunday newspaper critics.
When I was a little kid, I used to have this crazy hobby of collecting stones. I used to pick up stones from all over the place (my favourite haunt was a construction site; they had the best shiny and glossy stones) and put them in these plastic bags and keep them in my cupboard. It was good fun till it started freaking my mum out…so one day, when I brought this circular, absolutely symmetric, black and glittery stone, home and told my mother with a pronounced mysterious drawl to my voice that the stone was going to bring us bad luck and destroy the world MUHUHAHAHAHA, she must have figured that this particular hobby was not doing much good to her imbecile daughter and in the matter of a few moments, the babies of my months’ efforts and devotion were thrown outside, lying like victims of the accident that was the big bad world. I was needless to say (yeah Mr oh-so-smart Alec now that I’ve admitted that there is no need to say it I AM going to go ahead and say it) devastated and bitter. But, that was still manageable…even for a 7-year-old kid. What I couldn’t manage though was the biting feeling that it had been a waste of my time and more importantly a waste of my mum’s. I could have ‘utilized’ that time to do other things with my gazillion friends… And when you are forced to concentrate on unpleasantness like that, you start blocking out the parts that really matter. The ones that were the cause of the dreamy looks of fascination in my eyes, or the ones that made me believe that any thing was after all possible… If She could encapsulate such interesting stories about an ancient age on a miniscule stone, then how much could she do with a whole world…
For a couple of days now, I’ve been waking up from dreams that consisted of people that have been or are a part of my life. But, the strange thing was that they were always set in some vague place…like old forts and riversides. It’s been pretty difficult for me to check myself. I would suddenly find myself thinking about those dreams as if they really happened and confuse it with what was happening in real life right now; because you see, the people were real…
And they’ve always been real. It’s not their existence that’s the problem…it’s mine. I wish now, that I’d realized where and when to fold the page into two. But, as is the case with most of the things that you know you are supposed to be doing but don’t do because it’s less complicated this way; I chose not to realize it. It’s not really my fault though, I’m just a juvenile idiot…I got so carried away by the pats, the smiles, the modified quotes, the rush, the file transfers…. that I didn’t bother differentiating. And when there were uncalled for goodbyes with the deer being sent on a hike, I chose not to understand it… Someoneonce told me that we were just nobodies in here…and damn me for not having listened then.
‘‘They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway
And you know I see right through you
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screamin'
You're not listening anyway’’
--Acoustic#3, Goo Goo Dolls.
Well, it’s about time too. But, if I try and analyze every thing that I’ve been doing for the last four years then I would choose to regret it. I would choose to be unfair. And I don’t like doing injustice to choices. So I would rather just move on, thanks for all the bananafish. Seymour's still around to show them to me anyway.
In the words of a young man who claims that his momma told him that life is like a box of chocolates, that’s all I’ve to say about that.
I dare say that my head would have been muddled up for a long time but I thankfully experienced some thing yesterday, which saw to it that I don’t dwell upon things for more time than is actually required. It was more like a series of events actually…
I’d just finished an excruciating exam and they’d given us a break of an hour and 15 minutes before we could be belted, squished and trampled again.
My dad drove down to Cubbon Park and we were sitting in the car, eating the Tomato Rice that my mum had lovingly packed for the two of us. Dylan was asking Mr tambourine man to play a song for him. And at this exact moment, there’s no escaping what time it was; it was 12:15 P.M, I saw this family right ahead of us…there were seven people; five of them children (all of them were boys), a lady and another man which I assumed was the head of the family. The H.O.F was clicking photographs and the rest of the family was sitting on one of those benches-that-are-found-in-parks. The kids were doing crazy poses and all that. There was nothing particularly interesting about this whole thing except for a tiny, little detail, which I of course being the kind-hearted writer that I am, am going to disclose to you. All the members of the family that belonged to the sweatier, gory, darker sex, which if you recall, amounts to a total of six people, were perfectly…bald. I nudged my dad and both of us sat staring at this strange group, at the way the sunlight rebounded from their shiny heads, till we started smiling, grinning and finally ended up laughing. Not those loud laughs, or the crack-you-up till you feel like your sides- would- split laugh or even those subtle ones that are marked with politeness. It was just this really pleasant laugh that you do once in a while when you are peacefully happy about some thing. It makes its way through the clutter in your head reaching the epicenter and once it gets there, it starts generating waves in all directions so that by the time you are done laughing, your heads been sprayed with some fresh water and isn’t really that muddled up any more.
I don’t know if you’ve had the feeling of being in slow motion. Kinda like the Matrix bullets funda. It usually happens to me when I’m sitting in the car and looking outside the window. Dad will be speeding up. My mum will be chanting some shlokas under her breath, seemingly soft but loud enough for my dad to hear and figure, my brother will be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly I’ll see the world whiz past by me in slow motion. Maybe it has some thing to do with the fact that it’s night and there are neon lights all around…The world’s still moving…but it’s moving slow, it’s moving at a speed that will make me notice just about every thing…Neon lights, apparent high speeds, music, skylines, buildings, traffic signals, people…lots of people…and thoughts. Like a disembodied entity once observed, ‘Things began to come to him. Not drawn by a pull, but just passing him by almost as if suddenly they'd given him the permission to live in their world.’ It’s not a very nice thing to happen often but to happen when you are on a low, it’s just as good as it gets. Everyone deserves it once in a while, because it involves clarity. Things just have to make sense from time to time. It’s a defective need but that’s how it is.
It’s about concentrating on the tiniest piece in the frame. Looking at a worm crawl past by you, or a flower moving with the breeze, or seeing the way water flows into your open mouth from a bottle or laughing at bald people posing for photographs.
And I think that the ability to do that with any success is something that disintegrates with age. So, I like the way things are right now. I don’t mind the fact that I get to be called ‘juvenile’ by someone at least twice a day. And I’m not giving up on my teenage fantasies at least till I’m 21 if I can help it.
After periodic pleas from the, Pul(r)p(l)ish Fiction fanatic I finally got around to hearing the joke that wasn’t really funny but was told if we wanted to hear it anyway. No, of course I’m not going to tell it you here. Lets just say that it involves tomatoes...and well, ketchup.
So, basically ‘all we have to do now, is to go get that five dollar milkshake’.
‘‘So, if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?
Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, Yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there..I'll be there.’’
--Drive, Incubus.
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