Romantic Cemetary

till death do us part

People go lengths to prove their love. Death is as far as it gets. Ask Romeo, Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Laila, Majnu (Indian Context), and many others whom history and modernity has forgotten mercilessly. But lately, with practicality creeping in, romanticism has taken the back seat. Not that I thought that death was romantic anyway.
Talking of the length lovers go to, here is one recent incident. This one is not to be remembered for the extremity of the incident, but for the tinge of humour in it, if you can find it at all.

A colleague of mine, Amit - an art director, is getting married in a month or two. His fiancée is a news reporter with one of the channels. A cute young couple – made for each other kinds. One fine evening, in the middle of the campaign he gets a call. He jumps up, rushes towards the television and switches it on. “Guys, she is anchoring an exclusive.” Okay. All eyes turned towards the television. The title appeared, “Corpse Robbers.”
What on earth? We watched it, whether we liked it or not we did. That was how much excited the guy was about it. And why shouldn’t he be? It is his girlfriend on television. Even if it wasn’t the most romantic of places you would like to see your girlfriend, a rugged graveyard of all the places, it was his fiancée.

The programme, in contrast to the name, was really interesting. It was about a bunch of thugs who made a living out of selling fresh bones dug out of the graves, to medical students. A little bit of controversy lingered. Nice feature.

After half an hour of stand still, the office came back to life.( Obviously because we were literally buried in a cemetery.) Amit’s phone rang. It was her. What would she have asked? “Darling, did you check my dress out,” “Were I any good,” or “Which one of the corpses did you like,” or “Did you see that long dirty femur? It still had rotting flesh on it.” Not one of them thought the way I thought and made fun of Amit who was busy appreciating his fiancée’s effort and bravery in the grave. I broke into a laugh while every one looked at me as if I was laughing at my grandfather’s funeral. Well, what was so funny anyway?

There are lot of ways to express one’s love. Whatever way it might be, it should never go unexpressed. If it can be expressed by commenting about a corpse, so be it.

Note: This is completely senseless. I think it is black humour or maybe it is blank humour or maybe it is just because I felt like writing on it. It is like a movie which has three scripts, each by a writer of a different genre or something like that. Who wants to know?

Democrazy!

walking the line called bias...

“And the winner is…,” screams the television anchor. Who is he trying to kid anyway? Why should he engage in all the histrionics and try and create suspense when the tale has already been told. Let me introduce you to the latest trend in the entertainment industry – Interactive Television. Game shows, music competitions, quiz shows and even beauty pageants, the audience has a say in them all. Let me not understate. The audiences give the final word.

The moment I switch on my television to watch my favourite show, a plethora of ads greet me. Vote for your best singer, the best quizzer, the most beautiful woman and so on.
Participants themselves shed out a bag of well rehearsed emotions in an attempt to reach the heart of the millions watching and en route maximise the number of votes. Tales of a lost childhood, fulfilling the wishes of one’s parents, a dream that never came true, a handicapped brother, charity funds you have never heard of(fund for homeless aliens from Glitula) and in some cases, more than a little skin show – a few of the tactics employed by the participants to grab their share of sympathy and votes. It won’t be long before a butcher who thinks that the notes in music are printed by the reserve bank of India will have the final say in deciding the best young singer of the country.

‘Sa re ga ma’ until recently staged the platform for exciting young singers to display their trade. Talented musicians rated them and eliminated the relatively lesser performers. Till the final round, everything was fine. And then there was interactive television. Presumably, a male oriented audience voted out the best of the male singers keeping the charming, voluptuous one on the stage. The butcher I mentioned earlier is quite certainly one of them. Quite sad! This is not an event to be singled out. This is just one of the instances among many.

Where are the channels headed? If the channels are planning to hike their TRP in the process, they might be very successful. But in the process they are losing the little credibility left in them. If they are doing it under the pretext of democracy, giving people the power, let them remember that power corrupts. Democracy may not be achieved, but democrazy definitely has been.

Sundance

the cabin on the hill

Let me take you out for a date with nature. Let me take you to a place where you can get away from life and still be at the heart of it. A place straight out of one of those fantasy movies. Where streaks of the sun creep in through the morning fog; where the clouds kiss the lakes; where the mountains cuddle beneath a yellow carpet of blossoms.

Let me take you to Sundance – the cabin on the hill

Getting to Sundance: All journeys to the cabin are by the Wildacres 4-wheel drive vehicles that have proved themselves in negotiating the rugged terrain for years. The trail to Sundance is not for the faint-hearted; but you will know that the risk was more than worth taking once you reach there. The alternative is to hire a Deccan chopper(for once who burn money for firewood); a helipad zone has been demarcated for this. YOur jeep won't take you to the door. It will just drop you a few metres away. Trudge through the jungle for a few yards and there you are.

Sundance - The Cabin on the hill: The experience welcomes you right from the veranda (the only place in the cabin where you will find more glass than wood). 3 steps from the ground shall take you to the cabin’s veranda, turn around and your eyes will take you for a breathtaking ride over the lakes and the hills.

You enter into a large hall to face a fireplace right in the center. The neatly furnished living room and the dining area lie on either side. If the smell of fresh wood hasn’t tickled your nostrils yet, it will now. You will walk down into the coziest bedroom, with windows just large enuff to let in the light to awaken you from the slumber. Right next to it is the kitchen. That is strictly if you think your cooking is much better than the wonderful delicacies provided by your caretaker. Let me remind you that the caretaker and his wife are rare sightings who appear only at your beckoning.

Neighborhood: The occasional conversations you strike with a fish too close to the lake shore, eavesdropping on what the wind has to say or what the birds are chirping about, or shaking hands with a Sambhar which has decided to drop is as much a neighborhood experience you will have here. If you can’t wait a minute before seeing a fellow human being, which is seldom the case as you are mesmerized by the sights, you can either summon your caretakers to visibility or go on a 30-minute drive to the Wildacre farm.

Cabin Dwelling: The blissful solitude of the cabin can be enjoyed to the fullest by a couple. But up to six is never a crowd at this delightful place. The couch and the dining area will obediently turn themselves into bedrooms.

Dos and a few Donts:

Dos: You can do almost everything you’d do in a place where there is more wilderness than anything else in company. Fishing, lazing around the woods, catching the cool breeze at the lakeside or you can just take the telescope tucked in the corner of your veranda and lose yourself into nature. You have a cabin to come back to after the journey! If you have a mate, you need no reason to come back.

The few Donts:
Don’t bring your pets. Leopards love little dogs for breakfast, lunch n dinner.
It’s a great place for children to get a complete experience of nature, although I would advise against it as well. Leopards are fond of anything little. If you know what I mean.


NOW THE FUNNY PART:

I have never been to this place. I have seen plenty of photographs and also heard a little about it from my boss.

What are you waiting for? Indulge.

Unevolve!

what the f*#k?

Unevolve

“Woof, woof! Looks like you are on the wrong side of your territory,” barks the dog. “Looks like you are on the wrong side of the evolution curve,” replies Garfield. The fat cat might have been joking, but how I would love to be on the other side, he would never know.

I was having one of these ‘rum’ sessions with Vivi. I luv these sessions because of the quality(very subjective) of the conversations we have. Before that, let me tell you about vivi. Vivi is one of my closest friends. He has been going through a rehab of sorts, had a serious drinking and drug problem. He is one troubled mind, who believes that the whole world is against him. His love for his dad lasts only as long as the bottle of booze his dad buys him on weekends. That time is halved the instance I decide to barge in on weekends. Let me get back to the session. When we have these sessions, we discuss about the weirdest things on the planet. Simple things which might have been overlooked; crazy things which humans would fear to contemplate (includes him and me) under normal sober conditions and lots more. Things that made sense to just both of us.
In the end, that is all that matters. Why should a conversation between two make sense to the world? Why the hell is the world so bothered? Why is life so complicated?

One of the things we discussed that day was about the complications in life. Why is life so complicated? Why does a newborn baby cry? Medical science claims that the moment of the first cry is the moment of life. The moment when the child takes his first breath. That is the scientific part of things. You know what I think? I think, the baby cries because it is the moment of realization. A realization that it is not safe anymore. The simple agenda in the mother’s womb is over. It is a mess out there. The baby is crying on the thought – Why isn’t the world as transparent as a mother’s womb?

Can’t we live like our forefathers…when I say forefathers, I mean, ‘the stone age men.’ The guys from over a million years ago. Forget the ‘sun worship’ part. The rest of it. No electricity bills, no career counseling, no office politics, no traffic jams, no prohibition, no rapes, no AIDS, no hassles. Hunting for food, caves for shelter and a mate for love(literally and laterally). Life was so simple. Why ain’t it anymore? Today if I have to write an ad, I have to think about the consumer psyche more than I think about my parents. What the flying fuck? Dinosaurs might have been a threat. But they don’t bully you. They don’t kill you on a monthly basis with income tax. If your fate would have it, you would have sudden death. Why aint life as straight and simple as that?

Take my case for instance. I am stranded with hardly my bread and butter. Copywriters don’t earn much. I advise all aspirants to think twice before opting for the glamorous advertising life. I survive on a ‘brunch’ all day. Landlady calls up and all efforts of charming the MILF are dissolved in a solvent of monetary demands. In the stone age, all I would have to fight for my place of residence with, would have been a pterodactyl. Why ain’t life as simple as 1 million B.C. or whereabouts.

I guess I would have proudly owned Garfield’s statement. It would have been a privilege to be on the primitive side of life. It would have been a luxury. Hunting wild boars, making cave paintings and making love to my mate and with some luck, some other desperate cavewoman. Neanderthals rule. Why ain’t I on the wrong side of the evolution curve?

School life Vs The rest, etc.

nostalgia...

Which is that period of life that you will cherish till you die? “School Life”, would be the unanimous answer. I beg to differ. Call me a black sheep in the herd, but I have plethora of things that don’t go in tandem with the rest of you. What are you going to do, outcast me?

One of the reasons why my school life falls short of the first spot in the long list of enjoyable phases in life, is because of that word which frequented the nightmares of everyone that age – ‘Home-work.’ Planning ahead to select the snack you will eat while watching a football match during a weekend is the best I can do. Scheming a modus operandi to pass the calculus exams the next day or picking the best person to copy the organic chemistry assignment from, is definitely not my cup of tea, coffee or whisky.

Getting up every morning, rushing to school after bath and breakfast(both have literally stopped appearing daily in my life), encountering the empty basketball court(which we usually use to play cricket), the empty stairway(which used to buzz with activity once upon a time), empty park(home to swing-cricket, a patented Udyogamandal school sport), and a group of uniformed girls and boys piling on a rainbow of assignments to be completed in 15 minutes is not a pleasant sight.

Many guys would consider a co-ed college with the male-female ratio as 1:3 as the closest thing to heaven. When you get suspended for admiring a girl( in the trrrrrrrrrue sense of the word), the heaven image gets tarnished in a second. It is as good as Anna Nicole Smith nude and horny in front of an impotent man. Against all odds, I had fun like never before. Lack of pretentious displays of attitude being the main cause - due to the lack of proximity of the opposite sex.

A chained dog is more dangerous than a stray one. This is applicable in humans too. The opposite poles attract, and here too they attracted with vibes and vigour. A few hearts broke at first, a lot many followed. A very few survived; but fun it was. An attendance shortage with a record breaking 23% should substantiate my claim – a renegade’s dream.

Exams came and went unnoticed, like the hero’s friend in teen movies, with a loud ‘I came, I saw and was ignored’ written all over their faces. I claimed another instance to fame with a miraculous, fastest ever exit, from the exam hall. ‘Gone in 27 seconds’, they called the phenomenon. A few of my friends consider this achievement as a direct reflection of my unscrupulous life; the paper if you remember, was ‘role of ethics in the society.’

I came across the wonders (not listed in any book of records, quite sadly, I must say) called cigarettes and liquor during my graduation years. They were branded evil(what a sinful thing to say!) during school days. This is just one of the few lies taught to us; damn the education system. How untrue our text books were, I ponder as I walk down the memory street (I am tired of using the ‘lane’) with a cigarette in my hand and a few drinks in my belly.

‘Girls are god's worst mistakes’, a popular belief until the 10th standard. The line loses all its credibility as you enter college. Moments of joy and innumerable disappointments that even Shakuntala Devi’s math genius will fail to keep numbered. In large probability, your first kiss – a smooch to be precise, is very much likely to happen (this is in a purely conservative south Indian context- for all those who chuckled and thought out loud, ‘what about the DPS mms clip?’).

Motor bikes – a faster, flashier and a noisier version of your school day mode of transport was also available. Bicycle bells cannot even scare mice away, air-horns on the other hand, can disinfect a jungle.

A great bunch of innovators for friends, ready to venture into the unknown, brings some zing in contrast to another bunch who head home at 5 in the evening to finish the math assignment. Journeys to as far as the center of the earth, or to be honest, as far as your motor bikes would take you when run on fuel that is entirely dependent on the perpetually limited capacity of your wallet, are memories that remain.School life was an unforgettable phase of life. But in the long run, like in the movie ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’, if I were to chose one to be erased from my memory, I’d erase school.

Arguments are not welcome, coz this is a blog.