Digging for Meaning

:) :-| Binary living of the good professionals Advertisements, movies, friends, strangers - all want you to be happy. you show a sign of emotion that is not happiness or nonchalance, and people wonder what is wrong with you. Its a weird binary world we live in these days. For the most part, it is now normal not to 'feel' anything at all - people walk around with straight faces betraying little of their inner turmoil, wonder, confusion, rage... You spend all your time in office. and in that time, you hardly see people betraying any emotion to any meaningful depth. Everything is so light, so latte! this state of being perpetually emotionless is called being professional. Does it any good for the profession? I doubt. But should the 'good for the profession' come in the way of your humanity? The only other emotion allowed is the beatific 'happiness'. Well, life has never been this easy for humans and its good to enjoy it's riches while it lasts. That expl...

Men in air-conditioned glass boxes often feel the need to powerpoint. This might be because what they want to say (or what their counterparts want to hear) is not well formed enough. And saying it simply will unravel the artifice. Powerpoint in that sense is a tool that holds together the artifice. The red ribbon on top of a decorated gift package which possibly holds junk inside. Or the shiny credit rating that hides the shitty credit quality of CDOs.  You might now say that - "No no, it is only a tool. It depends on who uses it for what purpose." Wrong. The medium is the message. And the message is 'suspension of disbelief'. Here the medium necessitates one speaker who often is standing to deliver the message and as such gets into an authoritative position and the listeners have to hold their horses and give their attention to the presenter for a period of time. It gives enough space and time for the con to take effect. The medium of powerpoint intrinsical...

When man colonises Mars in movies, he/she/it wears those bulky astronaut suits and smothers our ears with the sound of it breathing. It steps heavily into vacuum sealed building. The doors shut tight behind it, a tad bit menacingly. There is a finality to that sound of door shutting. No going out any time soon now. And when it opens the helmet, a sweaty head emerges, happy with its contact to  air-conditioned air. Back in the living again. There is death outside - One breath of outside air or exposure to harsh sun and its your end. No wonder, the astronauts spend almost all of their time inside man made buildings. They aren't out 'enjoying the nature' or exploring new things always. They are instead preserving themselves everyday. Just like us Delhites (or broadly speaking NCRites). It is the first year in my life that I have an AC in my house. And every time I rush into the bedroom from the kitchen, I feel like I am Matthew McConaughey from Interstellar. The killer h...

The heat has been oppressive. Four month long, uninterrupted oven of a city. Well, a sauna actually. a sauna that uses hot sand and car fumes instead of steam. Gurgaon is a fucking pollution-powered sauna in the summer. We are sure to face water shortage this year. Inflation is going to skin our appetites. and then the most amazing thing happened today morning. Grey clouds appeared. After weeks of evading rains, Gurgaon is finally hosting the gray clouds, albeit reluctantly. Its been quite a few hours since their arrival and yet, no rain is forthcoming. (excuse the sad excuse for a sprinkle a little while ago.) I imagine people and animals would spontaneously erupt in joyous break dance when the rain come to stay. McDonald's and KFC will serve only pakoras and chai. I imagine the collective gazes of a million expectant eyes on the clouds would punch little holes in the clouds through which water will pour out. and then I overheard a girl complaining about the impending rai...

Scene 1. At the grocery store. The cashier is finalizing my purchase. busy tallying my bill. A woman enters, puts a bunch of bananas on the scale and orders to give some 'sooji'. Insistently. The cashier is an experienced guy. curt. efficient. grey hair. he ignores her. another woman enters and questions 'dalchini hai kya?'. in another 3 seconds, 'jaldi batao dalchini hai kya?' Cashier asks her to wait. he gets flustered and pauses before resuming to tally my purchases. The second woman impatiently starts looking here and there, murmuring something. leaves. The first woman can see that after my bill is made, it will be her turn very soon. But it seems that she is incapable of waiting. she pushes ahead and again says 'woh sooji bhi dena'. Its amazing how she tries to reframe the reality with she being at the center . she is assuming that its her purchase that is being entertained. Scene 2. Traffic light. (any NCR traffic light.) Red light. Cars s...

I wish for Gurgaon to take bath regularly. It rained today. And all of a sudden I can see the green of the leaves, the glaze of the skyscrapers and distant buildings unveiled from dirty haze. All of a sudden, the city is vitally alive. Did you even know of that building beyond that other building?  Or the fact that sun sets not where it used to set three months ago? It bloody moves sideways with the seasons.  Or the fact that the sky is blue. sometimes. The god should keep a keen eye on this errant lazy town of his. It needs its baths every once in a while. 

Recently I saw a documentary called ' Superheroes '. Its about a bunch of people who wear costumes and patrol their city streets to fight crime. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about watching it; I felt that it would make me cringe. (I cringe seeing people being made fun of. Can't help it. I hate it when people do that to others. I cannot see those TV shows where we are supposed to laugh at someone else's misery/ embarrassment. I hate it when TV shows trivialize real feeling of people or glorify the emotions to turn it into a farce. Just can't stand it.) But it turned out to be a very human story of genuine people who are fed up with the apathy of people around them. Often they were victims first and vigilante as a result of it. It was an act in empathy and escape combined that propelled them to wear mask and attempt at creating a change for the better. It was inspiring to me. Not for the caped crusading (well, not going to happen), but for the beautiful...

"Look at that. A girl smoking! A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." After watching a play at the Kamani Auditorium in Delhi, I was leaving on an auto rickshaw towards CP. It is the heart of the capital region - fashion, cultural, business & political nerve center. And the navigators of this nerve center - the auto wallahs, the cabbies - are largely migrants, who bring with them the medieval India's twisted ideas of morality. Its amazing how far apart the worlds of the navigator and his customers are.  (though not necessarily from different moral molds.) On the way to CP, we crossed a couple of college students and among them was a girl who was smoking a cigarette. Upon seeing her, a spontaneous statement came out loudly from my auto driver's mouth. The first statement uttered in the journey so far. He sees a girl smoking and out pops a strong moral statement that he felt strongly about. "A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." I asked him i...

A week ago I met these folks on the streets of Delhi, near Saket. 2 men, 2 women and a child. They were wearing clean clothes and they walked upright. They were trying to talk to people passing by but were quite meek so didn't always succeed. When I passed by, one of them asked if I understood Marathi. I said I did. It was quite dark, late in night & I felt that it might be one of those begging groups so I was cautiously moving ahead anyways. But their meekness, their clean clothes & them being Marathi made me pause and listen. I don't recall their names now. But I noted down one name that I think is relevant here - the name of the person who put them in a desperate situation - Rajiv Karade. According to the guy in white shirt, Rajiv is a labour contractor who brought them from a village in Maharashtra. They specialise in the work of digging earth for laying of telecom cables. The men & women had worked with the contractor earlier near Mumbai too. Aft...

when the lights go out and the city's TVs and chat windows are left lifeless the lonely legs bring the living souls to the windows and balconies of the lonely city. and in that honest dark time, the city sighs. empty heavy gazes converge in the heat of the city. hearts on window sill breath for life in the hot mist.

Ah. I so wish to walk the midnight streets of Paris. Woody Allen keeps on making these lovely films filled with so much 'romance' of life, and no matter what you do, you can't escape. you will fall shamelessly in love with his movies. I just saw his 'Midnight in Paris' and feel like booking a ticket to Paris and walk those streets. Well, it happened to me earlier with 'Before Sunrise' as well. anyways. If I were in Nasik or even Mumbai, I would have stepped out and went for a walk now. its 11 pm now. it won't have been a big deal. But unfortunately I am in Gurgaon now. and its foolish to be not inside home/ car  at this hour in the national capital region.Anyways.. (ya, its annoying i can imagine to keep on reading 'anyways' again and again, but ... anyways) ___ 'Dali!' , 'Bunuel.'. Ah, how i would love to meet them. and Gil does. lucky bugger. :P ___ and hands of men so easily rest on women's back, it was magical. :) _...

Tonight while walking on the street out of my place for dinner, I saw a guy at a distance standing in the middle of the road. He seemed weird, standing like there, staring at some place. Nodding head at times. Walking and stopping. Looking back. Staring again. Hesitation personified. Gathering faith in his fists. My brain is like an ajax-less 1990's browser. I have to refresh my conscience to join the dots.I was left confused by his behavior. I tried to ignore it and went ahead and put my earphones on to 'the dangling conversations'. A little ahead, while crossing him I saw him a little more clearly. Apprehension was written all over him. His eyes were wide open; mouth half open, as if he wanted to say things but words were not yet ready to come out. I followed his gaze to find they were squarely trained on a window in an apartment nearby. The window framed a silhouette of a girl. she was holding the bars on the window, quite dramatic really. A silent persuasi...

I saw two Mumbais this weekend.One through the movie- ' Dhobi Ghaat ' and another through ' City of gold' ; two completely different mumbais but all the same. Completely different narratives, but still gave the same stale smell of mumbai's stifling sea of humanity. While one movie had its politic about mumbai, the other was completely personal and intimate. Both talked about classes, but while one made me glad that I am from the privileged class the other once again filled me with nostalgia. I found 'City of Gold' to be very dark and over powering. I couldn't help but identify with the narrator's constant disgust, this sense of suffocation throughout the film. Even the scenes of happiness were quickly curtailed with the knife of cynicism laced violence. The movie laid out its politics, its helplessness, its accusations bare. The rich mill owner's disgust of the workers ("Bhikari" he keeps on barking, even before his imminent death) a...

Free time is like a crack in the door of life. With the walls of education and qualifications, we build a career-led life and push out emotion-led life. We fill the life at hand with busyness. you see, busyness adds that gilt to the walls that shine off the fluorescent light onto yourself and you feel that much happier for the moment. The sun wastes away outside, and you crank up that AC and sit inside under the flickering flouroscent magnificence. But sometimes Time plays games with you. it doesn't supply that busy dead buzz. It just hangs there steadfast and resolute. It wants some undevided attention perhaps. Busyness is the opium of the cubicle-dwellers. Can't let go of it. try to live without your cell phone for a few days. What you gonna do, when time stays and stares at you? Through that crack, melancholy starts sipping in. The magnificence, you realise has an un-agreeable stench of loneliness to it. To sit in that gilded chair of importance of some abstraction, you ...

just saw this talk on TED. Its the usual evangelical white man's talk to other white men about the need for understanding a people as a people rather than a 'problem' or a 'situation'. its about the 'shadow city' as he calls the slums in developing world. its an interesting talk and an earnest attempt in the right direction. However, in their politics to humanize, they tend to absolve the other forces at work. earlier in his talk, he talks how these shadow cities are expanding and more and more people are trooping in, without questioning why is that the case. he talks of how the shadow cities lack basic amenities of life but all these cities are built on hope and freedom. true, but what is making the people uproot themselves culturally, socially, materially and move to inhuman filth-holes in hope of what? while everyone should be able to enjoy his rights, at the same time he need not be elsewhere, far from his home to enjoy those rights and freedom. compou...

Mumbai. city of dreams. city of refugees. the camp city of private soldiers, who paste dreams made by private soldiers who came before them on their foreheads, and forge ahead. they maime, rape, throw at the city, extract returns in hope of enriching their real home; never knowing that mumbai won't let you leave you this soon having used her. they had removed their humanity like old clothes on the border of the city. they enter naked into the jungle. grimy serpents run on her back incessantly. little pesky soldiers pull up their sleeves, ball up the fists and fight to get inside the serpent. the door, that is always open seems like evanescent port to untold riches, to them. the ever open door, indeed is a port. a port through which the human transforms into a wild hog who just got untethered. once inside, they again transform into guilt ridden, gaze avoiding crabs. walking sideways. its only after getting out of the serpents, do they inhale some air, not fresh, but air nevertheless...

india is a free country. we are free to conform. 1. Khar Road Railway station - 10-15 women are squatting on the platform. curiously all are carrying exactly similar bags. grey squarish bags with black straps. quite fashionable actually in that abstract expensive way. i thought bulk deals only happened in MICA. 2. Santacruz Railway Station - strangely many men are wearing the dirty bronze colored full sleeves shirt. the shirt uniformly not tucked in. the cuffs linked. Surreal. 3. popeye - i don't get this at all... all of a sudden the market is flooded with shirts with popeye pictures.. t-shirts, collared shirts.. they are un-escapable. go to colaba's narrow galli fashion streets, all stalls will have a popeye T. which company is dumping all these popeyes on mumbai's youth? why popeye? 4. grown men in half pajamas and full sleeved untucked plain shirts. so many people adhering to this code. the color of shirt is usually light.. cream or version thereabout. these are mostl...