Instant Coffee

He was, after all and instant kind of guy. Not that you would ever be tempted to hold that against him. It was always now or never, here there or everywhere. Sit him down and he’d fidget, start by wriggling a toe, the toe would then set the foot into motion, which, in turn brought the leg too life. And there he’d be, a lanky leg swinging from a lanky body. The movement would then cascade in a wave of flesh and bone through his body till he was rapidly and imperceptibly vibrating, eventually it would get too much and in one convulsive shudder, he’d explode, his body would lift two inches off the seat and he’d be on his feet. He’d leave if he could, but if required to remain in the vicinity for instance if he was in the midst of a conversation he couldn’t postpone, he’d pace violently around the room bouncing from wall to wall and occasionally off pieces of furniture.
He lived a fast paced, half-baked abbreviated life. He cooked only instant meals, drank only instant beverages and accepted only the easiest of tasks to finish. He gave up watching movies in theaters and on the telly since he couldn’t fast-forward to the credits. He gave up on relationships because after the initial high they gave him, he had to work to make them work.
He gave up sleeping because his mind never gave him the opportunity to do so any more. He’d lie in bed for a couple of hours, the lights out, holding his eyes shut, making effort to try fall asleep. It never worked and soon he’d be out of bed with a leap and light up an endless chain of cigarettes, till dawn found him pacing up and down the hall his brain working in overdrive, flitting from one line of thought to the other.
Occasionally, the urge to accomplish something long-term would over take him and he’d strap himself into a chair and list out an action plan that should have in theory got him where he needed to be. He was dedicated, for a week he’d stick religiously to his objectives and then suddenly something would happen, he’d spend a weekend drunk, shack up with a girl he’d met and suddenly another set of long-term goals seemed more attractive and he’d set off in pursuit of them and so on ad infinitum.
He’d been like that since he was ye high (palm held somewhere in the vicinity of the knee) he’d always preferred the adverts over actual programming on the telly, mainly since they got to the point faster and never left you hanging till next week. Next week? Who knows where you’re going to be by then, he needed the plot resolved in 30 seconds or less or it was a full 30 seconds wasted.
He was proud of it and inordinately so. He’d boast about it for a full five minutes till his concentration gave way and something new popped into place. He was brainy, his head buzzing with ideas, occasionally he’d swat one down and lay it bare but mosquito sized bites never make for a mouthful and that’s all there is to say about that.
He didn’t let emotion bother him, that’s not to say he never felt it, anger, love, jealousy, greed were as real to him as they are to any man, only he never felt them too long. Pangs, like hunger and a needle in the arse, short intense bursts of emotion that were quickly replaced and forgotten. They’d flow over each other in waves one often riding on the crest of another while he played in the surf.
It was all good, the world was made for him, for the likes of him, geared for people who would not and could not give a fuck. For those who would flit from one trend to another, from one orchard to another, not even bothering to pick the fruit.
It was a disease growing progressively worse as time bounded forward. His ability to do, to think and feel anything for a period of time grew shorter. To keep up, he began to think, speak and feel faster.
Now he’s alone, locked in a room, bouncing, straight jacketed. He doesn’t speak anymore. All you hear is an unintelligible monotone. He doesn’t think, his brain gave up a long time ago, all it processes now is a continuous stream of words mostly monosyllabic. He doesn’t feel, his emotions overlap and he is ecstatic, enraged, lusty and repelled all at once all the time. And that’s when he’s sedated.

Four Stages of Love, Lust, Longing and Loss

Love
“Look at me…”
“Look at me…”
“Oh fer fucks sake why won’t you look at me?”
Furious he gives her back her the white cane, turns away, just in time to miss a solitary tear run down from her eye.

Lust
Like a dog marking its territory, canines bared and an evil glint in her eye, she sinks her teeth into his shoulder, bites in deep, a spurt of blood, a warm ruby, flood in her mouth. She leans back to inspect her handiwork.
“That should keep your shirt on for at least a week”

Longing
Amy Lee makes him cry.
Tracy Chapman makes him cry.
Tarja Turunen made him cry and Annete Olzen makes him cry.
So he now listens to Angela Gossow, but she turns him on.

Loss
Ok says he, hold on for a mo’, this might get uncomfortable, but it won’t hurt much, well not immediately anyway. He reaches in, deep, fiddles around a bit and then with a twist, wrenches it out.
Arm extended, fingers dripping, he hands her, her heart.

Here’s To The Future

Chose life, chose a job, chose a career, chose a family, chose a fucking big television
Chose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers…
Chose your future, chose life,
But why would I want to do a thing like that?
I chose not to choose…
Renton- Trainspotting

It’s been a long uneventful two hour flight from Hyderabad to Delhi but all of that seems set to change, we’ve been in a holding pattern over Delhi for the last 30 minutes or so. It’s near twelve at night and as the plane banks left, turning one wing over the other at regular intervals, I see the city I love so dearly pass under me, a dark, midnight blue fabric, patched in swathes of bright, connected by tendrils of light, that snake through the black. Red and yellow lit ants mechanically navigate the map, only to be curtained suddenly as the wind sweeps upward, revealing a similarly hued sky, dotted now with stars.
It’s all going wrong I calculate in my head, horribly wrong, but I’m not perturbed, not in the least. I foresaw this. To the casual observer, I may seem silent, a barely conscious being, hulking behind thick black frames but my brains been ticking in overdrive, long before I even reached the airport, before I checked in, before the plane had landed from Chennai. Something was going wrong, something had to. I didn’t see it in the stars, nor in planetary motions, neither was it revealed to me in a dream or in the entrails of sacrificed beast. These arcane methods of fortune telling don’t work, nope, not one bit. I’m not psychic, at least I don’t like to describe my gift that way, the word psychic, carries in my mind a negative connotation. It carries with it the stench of ignorance, of fortune-tellers in tents, story-telling for their two pieces of silver. No-fucking-way, I’m not one of those, not a fucking charlatan, hiding behind a veil of mumbo-jumbo and semi-scientific sound bites. For that reason and that reason alone I’ve never revealed my gift or rather my talent to anyone. The explanation or the best one that I can think up still sounds far too far-fetched for anyone to take me seriously. Well sure there are those who have an innate instinct that attracts them to bull-shit, but they are the same ones that religiously read the astrology columns every morning, precisely the people I want to avoid.
I see the future. Well not really I don’t really see it, no actually on second thought, I do. It’s like this, take a point in time. Draw this on a sheet of paper, it’s easier that way. From this point you can draw virtually infinite lines. Assuming that point represents a situation, then each line represents a decision, we spend our lives swinging by our decisions from one point to another. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Some points on the sheet, seem to have an attraction greater than others. You could represent these on the sheet as thick black dots as opposed to the regular points which are best depicted as fine points. These big points ‘focus’ lines from the smaller points toward them till their vicinity is a thick maze of lines being drawn irresistibly into them. To allow one’s self to be drawn to any one of the surrounding situations means any decision you now make will inevitably reach a predictable conclusion.
Some of these situations you can predict, others you cannot. The decision that I made that I made that led to my descent into what I can now see as inevitable was waking up that morning. Obviously one of those decisions that you cannot but help to make and can dissect only in retrospect.
I once tried to explain this ability of mine to a friend, he was predictably excited at the start, but he sank deep into discontent as I continued. At the bit where I had just concluded explaining the bit about the ‘attractor’ points or inevitable situations, he snapped and began to pound the shit out of me in the fury and despair of life being revealed as a seemingly deterministic progression to an irreversible, unavoidable conclusion. That was a dilemma I too had wrestled with for a long time when my abilities had first revealed themselves to me. Was life a preordained, custom designed and delivered package, break open the seal and live. If so, where was the purpose, was one necessary?
I’ve never been particularly bright, so I quickly abandoned this philosophical line of thought, partly motivated by the fact that I could look ahead and see that it was leading nowhere fast, merely a long circuitous route back to situations that were easier reached without too much complicated thought.
I could have predicted his response, had I looked closely enough, there was a single line leading from the situation to one where he would react badly, well, badly for me anyway. But so caught up was I in the more probable outcomes that I lost sight of this one single outlier. The problem was that for the situation to escalate to that one outlier, depended on the choices that he made too, something I, in the excitement of sharing my secret, had forgotten to factor in.
He was partly right, it is a terribly deterministic view of life, to know that you are swinging from one point to another in a predetermined fashion, that at times your choices may make no difference in the inevitable outcome, that all the possible decisions that you make and all their possible outcomes are mapped out, a cosmic game of connect the dots.
But think about it for a minute, it isn’t all that strange, we make choices and there are consequences. While we do think of most of the consequences of our actions, some are unpredictable, these we attribute to chance. Chance is not something you can do anything about, you can prepare contingency plans, the famed plan ‘B’ often ’C’ and ‘D’ too, but chance is by definition chance. Does it really matter if it is destined if we don’t know about it?
Anyone who sits and clearly thinks about a decision will be able to predict the most probable outcomes, they can plot out the lines and situations, like an elaborate game of chess, thinking a couple of thousand moves ahead, they advance a pawn. That’s seeing the future too, except, I can see chance, I can see your opponent falling face down on the board sending kings and queens scattering amidst a shower of bishops and knights, I see the rook flying into your eye.
Today morning I awoke, scanning the probability continuum, I spotted an anomaly, an attractor point, rotating slowly, strange, never seen one like that before. I quickly scanned the horizon and all I could see were lines heading inward, in toward the point. What struck me as strange though was that the points that led outward, darted out, struggled against the gravity of the situation and unable to attain escape velocity collapsed inward, transcribing long defeated elliptical paths as they fell back. The implications of the situation horrified me, but in an instant I was normal again. The future had long lost its power to shock me, I had turned indifferent. Success and failure didn’t bother me, I accept them in my stride, easy if you can see them coming a mile off.
I went through the day mechanically, planning out my course of action, what I would do and when, not that it would make a difference, I knew what was going to happen and I was powerless to avert the inexorable conclusion.
As the plane banked again, left, ever left, now over the outskirts of the city again, I followed the lines, leading from patches of light, inward toward the city. From a distance, Delhi appeared a large blot of light against the night. Small buds of light lay on its periphery, soon to be swallowed by the amoeboid growth of the capital.
Now we straighten out. My ears hum as the plane drops, flaps extend accompanied by a crescendo of wails, mourning the future to come. I see the streets now, rushing towards the inevitable, faster, faster still. They have now resolved to parallel streams of red and yellow, rushing towards me. I close my eyes and see the lines of fate sketched on the immense plane that was once my life surging irresistibly toward the point.
I sat, relaxed, sinking into the seat for the first time on the flight, lay my head against the headrest waiting. Then I saw it. The plane that I had assumed to be flat was curving, curving away from me. I had always looked at the future in two dimensions and had always seen a flat surface, now I found to my confusion that it was anything but flat. Here, it was curving back on itself like an immense cylinder, so wrapped up in this revelation was I that I did not look at the point. When I did, I found it lying where the curve started.
A whine as the wheels lowered and a thump as they locked into place, the air rushing past now increased in violence, threatening to rip them off, then, with a loud thud and shudder we were no longer being held up by the wings, solid earth had taken over. Below me I saw the lines emerge from the point and collapse over the edge of the cylinder to other points, beyond the horizon and not as I’d thought, back in. As I travelled over the horizon, I saw emerge beneath me another universe of points and lines, situations and decisions, choices and consequences. Below me was unveiled another network of hubs and spokes and attractors and outliers.
As I disembarked, I heard an airhostess whisper to another, “what the fuck is he so happy about?”

Midnight Reveries

She walks into the room, dressed in pants and what at a glance seems to be a jacket. Both are the same colour, grey or maybe off-white, I don’t particularly remember. Both are the same colour, not as in similar, they are identical, she probably bought them as a set. I don’t remember the last time I saw someone dresses like that, oh yeah, maybe it’s a uniform or something, that would be a good excuse to dress like that. I don’t remember any more detail, after all, all I got was a glance. What held my attention though, in that glance were her shoes, black, leather, pointed, spiked short heel, so sharp they’d deflate your balls. Kinky, I love ‘em. Her hair is curly, tied severely at the back of her head, not too long, I’d guess about shoulder length, maybe a little more. She’s got thick black framed “stay the fuck out of my way” glasses on, the frames disappear as they venture behind her ears into her dense black hair.
She’s not particularly attractive but she’s got my attention all the same, only one glance though, that’s all.
I return to reading, El-Cid battling bull, an article on bullfights , written so exquisitely, that the accompanying image of El-Cid, thrusting his sword between the shoulder blades of the bull, large dark globules of blood, spurting, caught on film, seems like poetry in motion. God I wish I could write like that, it’s so fucking beautiful, I could cry.
I get up, the magazine is done, I head over to the rack and pull out another two. She’s sitting at a table now, absorbed, a pile of books at one side while she writes into a pad, occasionally looking at one lying open by her left hand, but I don’t notice any of that, I’m too busy ignoring her. I have to shift my seat, the aircon is directly above me, slow oscillating vents, blow lazy arcs of frigid air. Blowing cold my way every time El-Cid lances the bull, I surrender to a shiver.
Now I’m sitting with my back to the room, to her, focus again on my reading. I’ve been here two hours, reading for the most part, my eyes beg for mercy. I take off my glasses with a muted click on the soft plastic of the table. I close my eyes and I see her face. Not the girl in grey, but another, another I know so well. Four inches from mine I see it, look down the length of the nose into deep brown smiling eyes. Held at a hugs length, so close I can see the gentle fuzz on her upper lip. But the eyes continue smiling, taunting, daring me to make the next move, infinitely happy and content to remain four inches from my own. I remember them again as I ride, my bike leading me home, calm, even as my rear wheel slides out of control, an Audi, bearing down on my right, intent on swallowing me up. Smiling as I weave through traffic. I rise slowly out of my body, floating twenty feet above the tops of cars between which I perform an intricate dance, leaning left, leaning right, momentary flashes of red as I brake.
I’m home, fed sitting on my bike warming my bare feet on the engine of a friend, dark amber water, diluted with rum. My flat-mate is sitting with my laptop so I’m forced to kick it old school with a pad and pen. I’m focusing on my hand, the one on the right, twisted, gripping the pad while the one on the left scribbles intently. There’s a scab on the tip of the thumb from an incident with a kitchen knife, I’d pick at it, if only it didn’t bleed so much.
The last time it did was in the loo at work. I broke it open, brushing my hand against the rough nylon of my backpack. I stand, guiding the stream with my left hand, holding my fly open with two fingers of my right while my thumb drips scarlet into the urinal and dark red on the on the tiles. This is one of those automatic, self-flushing models, a contraption straight out of a Douglas Adams, a urinal that flushes when it sees fit not when required. I couldn’t be buggered, I’m in a hurry. I tuck my ID into my shirt and lean over the sink, washing my now bloody hand. Someone, concerned leans my way,
“What happened”, a cardinal sin, don’t talk in the loo.
“Umm.. nothing, an old wound opened up”
“Aah, then it didn’t happen right now in here toilet did it” Leaning back with a self satisfied smirk now that he’s established that there indeed are no thumb slicing monsters hiding in the shadows behind the urinals.
“…No”, honestly what else could I say.
I take a look at his face, It’s not one I recognize and I recognize everyone on my floor, I’m rushing out so I don’t manage to get a look at his ID for the ‘C’ for contractor. Wedging a wad of tissue between thumb and forefinger, I run down three floors to the eighth where security has a first-aid kit.
My neck hurts from leaning over to write, I put the notebook down and head in for a refill, planting my glass on the wreckage that is the kitchen counter, I measure out a drink, around me are the remnants of the macaroni and cheese that I passed off as pasta in white sauce, it doesn’t make a difference as my flat-mates haven’t heard of either and the finished product proves to be singularly unpopular. I’m left to finish off the mess, laden with cheese and tons of butter, I can feel my arteries clog, awesome, I loved it.
Writing now, all I can think of are the eyes, the black outline thick, a light brown, fading to green on the edges, I can feel them soft under my lips, firm under my tongue. I frame the face, jet black hair from the top and with my hands from underneath, between them a narrow face, retreating rapidly to a chin that ineffectually tries to hide all evidence of a dimple. I hold it four inches from my face, staring at it in cock-eyed clarity, beautiful.

Chronicles of a Monsoon BIker

WARNING: Post peppered with profanity.

Clutch, flick, release and twist, the newest dance on the block, clutch, brake, tread and release, it’s the craze baby. Faster, clutch, flick, release, twist, release and brake, can you keep up? Hold on now it gets complicated, clutch, flick, release, twist, swerve, brake, release, twist, swerve and twist some more. See now you’re getting the rhythm, now the grand finale, all together, no point losing it all now. Clutch, flick, release, twist, brake, clutch, tread, release, twist, swerve, clutch, flick, release, swerve, avoid-a-cop, twist, jump-a –light, twist, release, swerve, cut-the-bastard-off, twist and crash.

Got all of that? Now, do it all over again, you want to improvise? Sure, sure that’s where the fun’s at. Just remember the basic steps of clutch-flick-release -twist and clutch-tread-release-twist and everything else is yours to decide. Add in a swerve or too if you are feeling sprightly, brake a lot if your day’s been off or just throw in a lot of scrapes and crashes if that’s how you get your kicks. No children, nothing’s taboo, what a man (or woman) and a bike do behind closed doors is nobody’s business.

Drink and drive, smoke-up and drive, hell , shoot your damn head off with a sawn-off shotgun and drive, do whatever just don’t get in my way.

Just spent Sunday driving, clocked up close to a hundred in this choked and congested shithole, Hyderabad and boy was it fun. Came home with an aching left wrist (my clutch hand, for those not in the know), sore ankles from all the braking and gear shifting and in a foul mood.

Driving in an Indian city on our obstacle-course roads is a challenge, cos if the pot-holes don’t get you, some psychotic motorist surely will. Sure I’m a bloody loony on the road, but if you can’t beat ‘em join the motherfuckers, cut like nobody’s business, rip, swerve, pop a wheelie just for the heck of it. Like Cat Stevens now Yusuf or whatever said, baby it’s a wild world, it’s hard to get by just upon a smile. That would just be dumb, sitting at the side of the road, flashing an inane smile at the insane motorists that pass you by.

Sorry, just feeling a bit anarchistic at the moment. I am a partly responsible motorist for sure, I stop at every red light, even if I feel like a total idiot stopped in the middle of the road while people whizz by, stopped at the risk of being rear-ended by some jackass who won’t believe that someone’s actually stopped. In Pune it was easy there were a fixed set of signals that every one jumped, so you could learn pretty easily and avoid any untoward incident by doing something unheard of and actually stopping at one of them. Here in Hyderabad I’ve figured after about a month and a half of driving that they have their own rules too. There are a set of lights that people don’t stop for, just that it’s a bloody universal set and contains every bloody light in the city. Nobody stops unless there’s a frigging cop standing swinging a baton and a book of traffic tickets on a string, whistling nonchalantly to himself, not a care in the world, taunting you, tempting you, daring you to try, try jump the light .

Jim Morrison told us to roll baby roll, obviously he’d never been caught in office traffic on a post-monsoon waterlogged road on the back of a bike ankle deep in brown gook, being sprayed by every passing car like a succession of dogs marking their territory. Honestly sometimes I feel like a wholesale lamp-post and not even a bloody enchanted CS Lewis Lampost (The Magicians Nephew and the Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, if you’ve never read the books or watched the movie) just a regular, shitty, half rusted lamp-post, up to my knees in stirred shite, gnashing my teeth, growling under my breath and occasionally out loud.

Blah! There, I said it, that’s how I’m feeling. All the excitement of getting out of office, the day’s work left behind. A whole bloody evening left to look forward to, catch the elevator down, out into parking, swing a leg over my machine, thumb it to life, put it in gear and open up my throttle, only to have to slam on the brakes as I leave the gates and enter the traffic jam. The lake bordering the road out of office has flooded it’s banks from the recent rains, the construction site bordering the road has been flooded. Both are emptying water into each other and on to the road that runs in between. I roll up my pants, tread down a couple of gears and make my way warily through the water almost up to my engine. The car in front flashes his brake lights, I slow down to a dead stop, look around for a way out, none, reluctantly I put my feet down. Damn, the only thing I hate more than wet socks is wet underwear.

The moment my rear wheel emerges from the water, I throttle up, I fishtail as my soaked tyre struggles for grip on the slick silt and gravel. I’m spraying everyone, including myself, I couldn’t care less. All I want to do is get home now. The moods worsening now, out of sympathy, the clouds part slowly to reveal an impotent orange dying sun. Nothing save a drink, some Old Monk (black rum, my favourite drink after a cold beer on a hot day) maybe and some loud music can salvage my mood.

Back on the main road that runs through Madhapur, the arsehole of Hyderabad, now I’m in my own element, traffic is fast, but I’m faster. I know every pot-hole, every bump, every cop, where the bus will pull over, I know the best line through the turns, I know where the wanker with the death-wish will jump on to the road. Like a level in a video-game that I’ve played a million times, I brake, twist, clutch, release, twist, flick and tread without even thinking about it. It’s so predictable, my favourite turn, a long right, where everyone takes the inside, leaving me the outside all to myself, I know, just after the turn is where the slow moving traffic accumulates, in my lane. I flick my indicator, right, indicate with a slow flick of my hand, which could mean anything from screw you to watch out here I come, then hand back on throttle, I pull through the gap between the white sedan and the red SUV, found another gap, power up, as I chase down the next car. Out come the big guns, just like in a video game, I put away the Desert Eagle and pull out my Uzi, pepper the SUV I’m overtaking full of lead. Next the cab in front, he’s a tough bastard, all over the road. Fake to the left then hard to the right as he covers his blind spot, AK-47 in hand I scream past him, blood and guts, bing! One more kill, the points rack up, the engine quietens as the road slopes down, now I’m on a roll. They’re fleeing helter skelter, Ha! Meet your maker you sorry sons-of-bitches....aaargh I’m a god, a GOD I say, bow down before me you insignificant specks of turd, flecks of a wet fart on the sides of a toilet bowl.

On the home stretch now, smaller game, pedestrians, easy kills as I warm down, only the road is done, I’m on a stony slippery mud path now, still spraying the scenery, excavating the road as I pass. Tight turn, slip on a patch of damp, clutch, tread, tread, brake, tread, open the metal gate with my front wheel. Tread again, half a flick into neutral, engine-kill, kick out the stand, twist-key, push-in-key, twist handle to the right, twist-key, pull-key-out. I’m home. Press-release-button, tug-at-strap, pull-helmet-off. Level complete. Game over.

Not Just A Scent

The smell stays in your nostrils for days after, you think you smell it on your body, on your fingers, on your arms, on your chest and you can taste it on the back of your teeth.
It’s not just one smell, it’s a mixture of perfume, of sweat and of love. A heady mixture that has the power to carry you back in time to places you were, back to the things you said and what you did.
One whiff brings back that smile that killed you the first time it flashed your way, another brings back the heat and the proximity of the body that you held and a third, the pain of parting.
You smell it in an elevator on the way up to work, you sneak a glance but the source is nowhere to be seen, not the source that you wanted anyway.
I’ve heard that we have no memory for smell, well not one that parallels sight and sound. But somehow I do remember and like the Lady Macbeth no matter how much I try to wash it off, my fingers still smell.
It comes to me at the strangest of moments, when I take a drag, it’s not the nicotine that hits the back of my nose, but the smell. When I pull off my t-shirt, there it is again. I spray on some deo, Brut should do the trick, well it gets me through the day but back home again, it pursues me.
I remember the first time I noticed it, happier days, the wind blew it my way, a dense cloud of hormones and sunshine and monsoon all at the same time.
It’s the smell of rebellion, of freedom of the wind in your face as you drive, the weight on your shoulders and pain in your wrists and the warmth on your back. It’s the long strands of hair that whip against your face as you are caught in a crosswind, as you tread through gears and hold the bike steady as it careens to one side encouraged by an enthusiastic gust.
It’s a wave goodbye, it’s a promise whispered in your ear, it’s the unspoken promise from one pair of eyes to another. It’s the sinking feeling in your gut when you hear the words, ‘we have to talk’. It’s the expression of hopelessness mirrored on your face. It’s knowing what could be perfect is being torn from you. Knowing decisions that affect you, your life are being made and you could scream your charred lungs out and it wouldn’t make an ounce of a difference. Not to you not to who matters, it only hurts more. The smell dries out your eyes, it hollows out your laugh and draws lines across your forehead.
A mere whiff that killed you the first time it wafted your way, now drills painfully into your head, knowing that it belongs to another. Let it go you tell yourself, but there it is on your fingers, on your arms, on your chest and against the back of your teeth.

Pulling A Disappearing Act

Hello stranger, welcome to the blog, c’mon in, the waters real nice. There was a strange being that inhabited these shores once, gather round children and I’ll tell you a tale of an obsessive compulsive. Are you nice and comfy? See, I told you the waters nice, yes, that is a turd floating by, ok so I may have lied a bit.
This is not a grand reopening post, I cannot guarantee that there will be many more to come, I can’t say anything for sure at the moment even whether this particular one will make its way online. The creature that initially inhabited this shell has left and is long gone. I’m trying it out for a fit to see if it suits me.
First a shout out to all those that have left their kind condolences for Kartik’s passing; Yaseer, AHD, Confusion, and Nothingman.
The last time I took the time out to post, I was in Bangalore, yes I’d been bangalored baby, but sadly it was not to be. After nearly a year of working and drinking around the clock, I upped and was shipped off to Hyderabad, the city of Nizams and Biryani. It was the former IT hub of the country till it was bangalored. Now it’s a fucking ruin. To me it looks like Hyderabad was on its way to growing into a somewhat sophisticated city till the IT industry tempted by the cooler climes of Bangalore moved. Now this place is stuck in a fucking time warp, half way between cosmopolitan and a provincial backwater.
That of course is the irrepressible arrogance of a Delhiite. We run around the country bitching about how screwed up the rest of the country is despite the fact that we live in the biggest shithole of them all. It’s just that Delhi is like a drug, not even Mumbai with its humidity, sophistication and film industry can substitute. Only a true dilliwala loves the city for everything that everyone else thinks is insane.
I’m working now, yes a real job. The parents are ever so proud. I earn now, finally my time is worth something, yet I still find time to waste sitting around doing nothing, scratching my balls. It works out to something like a couple of bucks a scratch.
That of course in my own twisted way is the story of my life thus far, like it or lump it, your call. Now on to the real stuff, yes children it’s anecdote time, gather around at the feet of pervy Uncle Kartik, little girls stay out of the reach of his hands at all times, boys, mind your arseholes. Somebody bring the fags (cigarettes if you are American and homophobic), get a light and settle down.
Five minute break while I go out to get a smoke for myself and my hung-over roommate.
So here goes, (where to I know not myself), two friends of mine and I just moved out of the hostel we’d been living in for the past five months and into a rented apartment. It’s actually what they call here, an independent house, with two, two-bedroom units, three of us in the front and three other guys at the back (more on them later maybe). So we were properly stoked at the idea of finally getting our arses out of the hostel into a place we could call our own. Now this independent house is stuck in the corner of the ‘colony’ with no neighbors (what attracted us to it). So the other day, I get back from work, groceries in hand headbanging to Children of Bodom playing on my iPod. My only concrete plans at the moment are to rip a couple of movies a friend at work lent me. I get in the gate and see the door is locked from the inside and a light is on in one bedroom. I figure one of my roommates is home surprising since he generally comes in about after eight and it’s only seven. I pull one of the windows open and holler for him to open up. No response. The bastard’s probably got his earphones on and can’t hear me, typical. I holler again louder. Nothing. Now, I’m irritated I just want to make myself a cup of tea and settle down to watching Papillon, if it’s half as good as the book, it’ll be well worth the while. Why the fuck won’t he open the damn door. I’m pissed now, I move to the door ready to start pounding on it, that’ll wake him up.
My eyes fall on the bolt, it’s hanging loose, the sleeve’s broken and the supposedly solid bolt is bent. Fucking hell, I think. My brain is working slow, too damn slow, I confuse this new information with my previous train of thought. My brain still assumes my roommate is in the flat but now it’s thinking something terrible has happened. This happens in a fraction of a second. Now I step in. In the gloom I make out a large mass in my normally empty bedroom. Oh fuck, oh fuck. My groceries go flying , the bread and potatoes crush the tomatoes. For some reason, I pull off my I-card and fling that into the hall. Ignoring everything else, all sense of personal safety out the window, I rush into my bedroom, ‘Shot in the Dark’, Children of Bodom, cover Ozzy on my iPod.
“Out on the streets I’m stalking the night, I can hear my heavy breathing”
I fumble at the light switch.
“Prey for the kill but it doesn’t seem right something there I can’t believe in”
Light floods the room.
“Voices are calling inside of my head, I can hear them, I can hear them”
Terror.
“Vanishing memories of things that were said and they can’t try to hurt me now”
Horror, shock.
“A Shot in the Dark...”
The earphones come flying off as I tug at the wire, shove them into my pocket.
The room is full of clothes and open suitcases, a battlefield littered with corpses.
I run across it straight to one of the open shelves, to where my laptop normally lies.
Sweet relief. It’s still there.
Later, once all the drama’s over, I’ve called my roomates to survey the carnage. We've examined the damage, nothing was stolen... seriously, what a bunch of fucking amateurs.

Both the rooms were ransacked, all my beautifully ironed clothes were screwed up, one roomate was so traumatized he didn't sleep the whole night. Me after I managed to sort out my room I fall comatose exhausted from the shock, worry and work.

The next day, I have a great story to tell in office and to blog about.