Travails unlimited

Maudlin melodies on the net, thanks to Internet Radio, and a lovely sunny,wind-blown day,,,an impending nighter after two days of well-earned rest,,life is good. Add to it the fact that I was out on my favourite activity yesterday,,shopping. So what if it was for mundane and utterly prosaic stuff (read Undies, bed-linen, flip-flops, a wallet,,), retail therapy works, every time!

On my way back I discovered the joys of weightlessness, once again,,,as one of my ex-friends (notice the sudden icy chill?) used to say, being a "feather-weight" has its own advantages, your self esteem is much better than when you were a hippo in man-skin, plus it makes you ready for any upcoming NASA auditions for their future space programs,,they do need fussy, cleanliness freaks out there, trust me! Back to the auditions,,, every time I am out, availing of the public transportation, be it bus, cab or the three wheeled demon-vehicle called an (?) Auto I am at the mercy of the laws of physics, the wind condition of the day and all other elements that are in my immediate vicinity. I happened to be in an (shudder!!) Auto, while returning from my little trip yesterday,,and I found myself tossed around in its confines, thanks to the drivers love of cross-country rallies, I pretty soon was sitting on an unknown lap,( the sheer embarrassment of it),,snug as a bug in a rug on a rainy night, after one slightly more violent undulation of the vehicle,,.gives you a pretty good idea of what floating in space must entail,, after that I more or less hung on with all I had, read teeth, claws, legs,,,,till my destination was reached. Needing something strong to steady my jangling nerves, I headed for the small tea place near my hostel,,,,Yes! Tea! What do you take me for? It was just 5.30 in the evening?

Finally! I was in the safety of my room, I proceeded to put on a movie,,Eragon it was,, and relaxed.

PS.The Nano is out, right? Maybe,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Friggin' trying times

I saw my face in the mirror, just now,in passing, mind you (lest you credit me with some Narcissistic tendencies), and I could swear my face looked like Meena,,,,,,, the Kumari, I mean, and I surely do not have any leanings towards cross-dressing . My life is such a melodramatic, sad, tragic, sob-story right now, even Shakespeare would be proud of it,,let me enumerate how,,,I am on alternate nights, because of some impending International audit, that is the official version at least, my version of things are, I believe, more accurate, they just do not want my face hanging around to sour the milk, so to say, when the Phoren gents and Laydies come a-calling, anyways,, so I am on these nightmarish alternate nighters, hardly able to tell one day from the next, what with spending all my time, curled-up in bed, asleep, or guzzling coffee, by the gallon, trying to keep my peepers seperated while at work. To top it, and this really hurts, the Humongantic water-filter-cum-chiller-cum-dispenser in my hostel has picked the perfect time to call for an early, albeit well-deserved retirement. I am parched during all my waking hours, and am reduced to lugging huge bottles of chilled water from the Hospital at all odd hours. Maybe I just have not been noticing, but my hostel seems to be inhabited mostly by camels, I am the only guy seriously pissed enough to be on the phone, a dozen times a day, trying to get the blessed thing resurrected,, but with all the,"Daagtarr, ho jayega Daaagtaaar-ing", I have had it upto HERE with it all. The sweet Amma who was cleaning lady-cum-breakfast-fetcher,for the entire hostel, had a nasty fall a couple of days back, and is laid up in bed, with half-a-dozen stitches on her fore-head, (God bless her),thus,,,the Hostel is literally swathed in dog-poo, all the boarders have rave parties all night, food is literally flung around, and all the dogs in the Tri-state area seem to congregate here at night, gate crashing, and all this junk-food is sure upsetting quite a few canine tummies,,,,my OCD is in its death-throes. it has been six days of living in a smelly hell, oh, I am cleaning my room all right, rest assured on that particular count, but I have to crawl through two friggin' floors of stench, and coated, smeared floors, every time I go out of or come back to my room.

If you read an Obituary bemoaning yours' truly, in the next few days, please do remember that I was made a martyr to filth and tap water.

It is time to go back for some water, let me go put on my Scuba gear, bye folks,,wish me luck, or simply a speedy end.

PS, Forgive the typos, am too upset!!

COLOURS

Holi came and went, leaving me with its colours,
Blood and gore, the irremovable stains of parents' tears, the black stain of drunken driving, the unwashable hues of peoples' misery, left all alone to suffer.
The stain of sweat on my brow and the imprint of guilt on my soul, as I spent an entire night, filled with futile attempts to stop 2 lives from slipping away, these were the colours of Holi for me. How do you tell the 70 year old parents of a student, when they call you, long-distance, that their son is hanging-on, by his teeth,?
The colours were so different, I was so different, the stained faces and hands meant happier things once, I long for 'that-boy' to come back into my life.
It is a 24 hour joy-ride for me, guess I better go back in, the families need 'counselling' and 'consoling', and I need my high.

To a boy I once knew.

There once was a small boy, the only child of his parents, fat and ugly, his head immersed in a book at most times, he was seldom seen without one, books and scraps of paper, with words on them accompanied him everywhere he went, saw each morsel of food enter his mouth and possibly the culmination of that particular process the next morning. School ended never too soon for him, the window seat in the small library of his tiny hill-town beckoned, where he would be found, curtains drawn around him, engrossed in the adventures of the people from the pages of the book he was reading at the moment, their lives were so much more interesting than his own. The characters he loved were endless, each dear to him, be it the lying Pinocchio, the sisters Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth, Black-beauty, Lorna Doone, Huck-Finn and his friends or Oliver terrorised by Fagin. He followed the Famous five on all their adventures, pointed out clues to the Hardy brothers, all the while wishing that they would join forces with Nancy and her pals.

The lone book shop in his town was another haunt, the comic book heroes as much a part of his life as real-life people. Tintin and Snowy made him long for a dog of his own. Birthdays came and went, bringing more books with them, he still had the copy of 'What Katy did' that his father gave him on one such Birthday. He went on to Pygmalion and heavier tomes, the hunger driving him to learn Bengali, so that he could be a part of the world his mum spoke of, she too read, period.

His best memories were of those early childhood days, curled up in the Library window, he spent whole evenings there, reading until darkness made the words on the page blur or until his mum came looking for him, light in hand. Study hours were quickly dealt with, the unfinished stories beckoned. Happiness was always just the turn of a page away, demands were few and desires were limited to the contents of a 'to read' list.

I search for the boy still, at times, and wish he was here. I wish he was still here.

Sanctuary

There is this particular tree (no I am not going fashionably green), the lush, laden boughs of which shelter my peaches and cream skin from the ever envious sun. I am accustomed to standing beneath it several times each day, enjoying my only vice,,,Tea!! This place is a vantage point (saw the movie?), it gives me a view of my work-place and its approach. Every time I stand there, sipping my brew, reiterating my Assamese-ness (?), I stare at the stream of swanky rides that pull up into the drive. Mercs, Beemers, Jags, Audis, Volvos, Hondas,,,,the list is never ending, much like the money these guys seem to have,,Sigh!!!!

Standing here I can also bitch to myself, to my hearts content, how people can so blatantly disregard other peoples health and manage to blow noxious cigarette smoke into my nose and mouth,,,,,,

Standing here, I invariably get the chance to honour my commitment to SLM, I did promise never to let any child begging on the streets return empty handed, and I religiously see that I keep that deal.

This is one of the only parts of the day, I am with things I love, my cup of Tea, the way the tree sheds its tiny leaves, sometimes into my cuppa, this 'Gulmohur' taking me back to my College and its red and yellow-strewn lawns and roads, rain-soaked, verdant, vibrant ,,,it takes me even further back into the recesses of my memories, to long walks back from school, along roads, carpeted with fallen blossoms, sharing laughter and yarns with friends most of whom are lost, no-longer in touch.

This is a time I keep for myself, when I shrug off a bad night, brace myself for a gruelling day, always knowing that I can return to this spot for a touch of reassurance, for a whiff of familiarity, of Home.

Of dreams and Nightmares

Most of the my days recently, have had a strange dream-like quality to them, and I say dream-like because I have aways felt that the border between a dream and a night-mare is an often blurry, thin line, hard to make out at the best of times, much like sanity and insanity.
Dream like,,,,I never seem to be in control of what is going on around me, what is so new in that piece of news, you might ask, nothing,,,except for the fact that now a days, I seem to be more lost than I usually am, and that is quite an achievement I can tell you. When ever I manage to get some time off from my work (?), and pause to draw breath, I feel myself slip into a sepia-tinted dream, where the same evil, uncontrollable things keep happening, again and again. I am like a mute spectator, hands tied behind my back, for good measure, and I cannot intervene, cannot do anything to repair the rents that start appearing.
All the events that have transpired in the past few months of my glorious life, come back to haunt me, every vivid, stark detail,,,,, the pleasant times too, but with evil twists in the end, of the kind that J A would be proud of.
No, I have not taken up smoking pot, with the salary I draw (hint, hint!!), I am lucky if I can smoke left-over stumps and the fag-end of fags, not the human variety.
Now, I have gone and said something politically incorrect. Shit!
Back to dreaming for me.