Chaotic, isn’t it? Love?

So, …I went and watched the play Chaos Theory at NCPA last evening. Alone. I went and watched a play at NCPA on a balmy Sunday evening after Christmas – A L O N E!! Well it is not as bad as it sounds. It was, in a way, a result of my own design.

But then I am not going to theatre alone in future. It’s kind of depressing, you know. To be there, where everybody else is strutting around with women in different shapes, sizes, age, dresses and un-dresses (if there is a word like that for not having enough protective cover). And the types – so many of them. There were the perennial Parsee women with short cropped hair, high pitched voices and a permanent snigger with all things Indian; whose costumes I always find to be a queer and confused mix of Western and Indian. And there were the SoBo women with their Jimmy Choo shoes, Bulgari bracelets, Prada Bags and Falguni Peacok evening dress, who trophy husband in tow, continue scoring on their record book for air kissing during the dying days of the year. The middle class was also there, but why waste my time talking about them. They are boring, ain’t they, wearing boring salwar kameezes (one daring one wearing butt enhancing tight jeans with red pullover) and what not, playing second fiddle to their husbands or fiancés or boyfriends (if they are allowed to have one), looking at their faces with mixed feelings of admiration and lust. A few teeny boppers (or anorexix and desperate late twenties disgusing as teeny boppers) with very short skirts, hot pants and spaghetti straps were also their to challenge and distract my libido but I was beyond them, at least last evening; I was.

And then there were the Delhi-Kolkata intellectual types - wearing ethnic prints, oxidized silver jewellery, large bindi and dark lipsticks. Most of this variety are dusky and I have hots for these. I think these women are horny and I have this perennial fantasy of having a one night stand, nay, make that a one month steamy affair, with one of these people. For deep inside, I think I am one of them – hey, stop right there!! I don’t mean I am a woman trapped in a middle aged man’s shapely (ovoid is a shape) body. I mean everybody who knows me, knows that I am an intellectual stuck in a wrong job. Thus I have kind of a contractual lifelong option to have, sometime in my life, a relationship (short and sweet) with one of these women, where we will drink a lot of cappuccino and beer and vodka or whatever form of stimulants they may be, talk about constructing Derrida, post-colonial subaltern (if they can speak or not), documenting the reality of Agnes Varda and such stuff about which nobody has any clue of and have lots of sex in all sorts of settings, themes and positions (as long as it does not hurt my weak back, sprained ankle or the aching knee). I know my destiny is just waiting, but last evening wasn’t the time.

See, that’s what women do to me – having or not having them. I wanted to write a 3 line review of Chaos Theory and instead I have washed my own dirty linen (with ethnic prints) in public (if they chose to come here).

Anyway, I liked Chaos Theory. I mean, not in any of those ways when a movie or a book or a play becomes a great moment in one’s life. It’s not a great play. But it had its moments and merits. The theme is not new but has been around for some time. It’s When Harry met Sally without the happy ending. And without an unhappy end too – this generation has done away with being emotional and judgemental. The production was spiffy, what with a digital screen depicting the settings through Andy Warholish backdrops, and two dimly lit wardrobe corners where the protagonists were changing after each scene. The pace was as it should be in these times – brisk. The dialogues were smart, although certain tones seemed a little out of place for 60s’ St. Stephens. But it had a lot of humour of all kinds – some tacky and clichéd, some pretty original and some quite sophisticated. The references to literature were a bit tenuous at times but still well quoted at the best of the moments. The play made me laugh and made my throat choke and corner of my eyes shine at a few intense moments (this is attributed to that extra drop of estrogen that makes me like rom-coms and chick-flicks). Anahita Uberoi was excellent in bringing out the nuances of this complex relationship which ran deep under the corny banter of 3 decades – banter and games which tried to hide and run away from a love which did not find its place under the sun (I am choking again). Zafar was a little monotonous though, and I am not sure, whether it was the script and direction or his inability to understand the underlying poignancy of the theme which lay under his smart alec dialogues. However, at the end, I thought that the playright himself was suffering from the same block that the characters did in their life. Like them, Anuvab could not bring himself to tell a story of unfulfilled love, a story of circling around each other but not having the courage to embrace the love – he could not tell an intense story without making it extremely light hearted, so that the couple next to me thought it was a comedy with a few romantic moments. The playwright felt apologetic that he has to tell a story which has a theme which is not well accepted by today’s milieu – sentimentalism.

At the end, I had to look around furtively if I was the only one to have pulled out my handkerchief and was relieved to note that Anahita had, what looked like real tears, on her cheek and most people around me had a faintly sad look on their face which was smiling till minutes ago.

There is hope for love.

now, it's public!!

I have thrown this blog open. Open for everyone to read. I feel it's a brave thing to do. Because some of the older posts have names. Not only that some of them are so mundane, so boring, so very predestrian that it's a shame to read them. I will reconsider if I wish to retain them or delete. But for the time being, I am doing nothing. Anyway, not too many people will come this way. To this dingy scrapyard at the end of some fucking cul-de-sac of the virtual universe. And if they come, all the best to them.

Beware!! See what a juice diet can do to you

I am home. Home alone. During the long weekend of Christmas. It’s not all that bad as it seems. As a matter of fact I wanted it this way. I also took the Monday off to make it a 4 day long break and packed my wife and daughter off to Kolkata for a week. And I have been planning something different and intense.

I planned switching off the phone, the cable, the internet. I planned not to step out of home and meet anyone. I made a list of things I am not allowed to do. And it included reading!!! Reading, which the second most natural activity for me; after breathing. And I planned to go on a juice fasting diet.

But as Bruce Nolan said, this is how the cookie crumbles. They said one of the side effects of the juice diet is a headache. ONE OF THE SIDE EFFECTS!! Like one of the side effects of having beta-blocker is your metabolism will be a little slow, so slow that even your little left toe will not feel it or one of the side effects of sex is that you will be a little tired. But no siree!!! This is not ‘one’ of those side effects; this was THE fucking side effect. I kept expecting it through the day and there was no hint of hit. Then in the evening there was just this bit hardening at my temples, the kind you would expect when you haven’t had a single drop of caffeine in 24 hrs. Something which would go away with a little of wishing, a crocin and some food. Food? What food? I ain’t supposed to have any. Okay dokey. So we down some 3 glasses of juices for dinner – tomato-bell pepper, carrot-spinach-celery and strawberry-black grape. And we pop an aspirin and smear the forehead with Tiger Balm, switch off the light at 10 pm and pray. What comes next is a colloidal solution of sleep and headache till 4 am when sleep gave up the battle and I am a pulp with just two live points in my entire being – the nerves on my temples. I can’t have one more pain killer in an empty stomach; so I crawl to the fridge which was 10 km away and pull out a small tetrapack of unsweetened soyamilk and reach back my bed. As the cold milk starts its journey, the head started feeling better and I was like “Okay, now I have nailed it!” But that was a deceptive move by the body like Lionel Messi does it for Real Madrid. Being deprived of the all the goodies for just 24 hours, my body was wreaking revenge on me at wee hours by unleashing nausea and burning stomach next on me. So I down few gallons of Digene and try to curl in the bed desperately trying to fall asleep, like a spurned lover in denial. Finally, I gave up, went to the bathroom, drove my arm upto the elbow in my gullet and retched out the soyamlik. My finger tips felt numb and the temples were firing at full volley. But then peace accord was signed and as the sun struggled to send its first faint rays between the grey and cragged skyline I fell in an uneasy sleep. It was the bai who woke me up with her doorbell and without any embarrassment of a defeated person I told her to cook daal-chawal-sabji before putting the milk and muesli on the breakfast table.

Wish I was as unabashed about losing in love.

Now that is a different matter.

In the evening I was making a call to one of my closest friends based in US, as I was eating my daal-chawal dinner and Abdullah Ibrahim was playing some nice jazz on his piano in my living room, I realized my strange (and painful) relationship with money and women. Seen from a different perspective, I have had a decent share of it. But it’s not as simple. I wish things were so simple.

I was just watching a chick-flick or rom-com (whatever you call it) – “27 dresses”, where a plain Jane’s aggressive and not so truthful sister was robbing her heartthrob away to the pulpit. I like rom-coms; the good and the not so good ones. Firstly it’s about love, my favorite topic. Secondly they have a lot of pastel colors, which the extra drop of estrogen in my blood can discern and appreciate. And lastly, things get alright at the end of them. So it was in this movie. Things got alright at the end. Everybody was happy in a completely pastel shaded (with an overdose of yellow, nay beige) wedding on the beach.

But in life things are not so simple. So, we are talking about my strange and painful relationship with money. From a stratospheric level, or just from the 10,000 ft level, I seem to be making enough money in a country where getting a meal a day is counted as a great fortune. It is absolutely true and untrue. Had I not been in the business of money for a decade and half, and was making this kind of money, I would have been feeling like a king or may be like an MLA. But then I have seen serious money, and I have seen and known people who have made serious money, and I have met them, rubbed my shoulders, sat on the same lunch table for days, shared the same lift and the loo, stayed in the same building and felt poor. There are plenty of blokes making more money than me (like Salman Khan and Mallika Sherawat or Mukesh Ambani), but none of them are close to me. And then there are lots of people making far less than I am doing but they stay far away. I have smelt it but it has not come to me. I am not particularly kicked by money, but not having it the way everybody around me have it, pains me a lot. But I can live with that. I mean I have been living with that with just a wee bit of heart burn.

The story with women is a little bit similar but much more complicated. After coming out of an all boys boarding school, I did not turn out to be one of those shy kinds who stammer and stutter in front of women but peep lecherously from behind the doors. I was easy and outgoing. Made quick friends with women, was always empathetic to their thoughts, causes and troubles (the extra estrogen bit), treated them as equals and got to know quite a few of them. But then whenever I fell attracted to someone, it did not work out. Had I been the shy type and the not-knowing-girls type, this wouldn’t hurt so much, perhaps. But having been known as someone who had more than his fair share of women, not having a girlfriend (or an affair) was something tough to live with. My mother was the first one to be aghast some 15-20 years back when she realized that none of the girls who I talk for hours on phone, or ferry on the back of my bike or go to movies with or have chai on a rainy day under a shack, none of them have even a micro crush on me. She took matter in her hands during my absence when I was away in B-School and right one year after graduation got me married to a girl who was 7 years younger and has a golden heart. And then life was happy ever after :-)

If life was so simple I could have written everything about it. But it is not. So even if I want to, I can’t tell everything for fear of hurting myself and hurting others.

So I won’t talk about love anymore. Just that I am not nonchalant in losing in love. I have not been. I have been quite a mess.

For a moment, please

You are standing on the edge.
Limbs twitching,
Breaths short and shorter,
Eyelids blinking,

You want to jump in

In that momentary stillness

And the moment passes

The golden silence evades you

New Year by a Long Table

Round and round
The sphere goes.
We put a mark somewhere on the way
    And celebrate the passing of the old,
    heralding the new.

But we come back to the same room
Around the same table
Looking at the same faces
That hide and reveal
The same currents within.

Perhaps, the water has changed.