The Angry Young Man

In the modern history of the Indian daydreamer's psyche, there was a time when blatant heroism buttressed by uncontrolled wrath toward injustice was considered a worthy quality in a protagonist. The hero of that era was often from a middle-class or poor financial background without much hope of making it big because of what was considered an epidemic of corruption. Perhaps the anger in the hero was, if not in greater measure, a part of the common man's irrefutable reality. Many, many movies made during that time reflect this theme in various settings. I know of one such person, who was a hero to me when I was but a little kid of 10.

It was just after the summer of 1989. The entire city of Hyderabad was still swaying to the tunes of Mani Ratnam/Ilaiyaraja's melodious Geetanjali. My elder cousin sisters were still in awe of Aamani paadave and Om namaha. Heck, even we learnt Jagada Jagada and Nandikonda so completely that our parents wished we were as precocious in our school lessons (incidentally, nandikonda song displays sheer genius in nonsensical lyric writing set to brilliant score - show me one song of this genre of recent times that can compare!). Nagarjuna, who was a sad chocolate boy or at best a hebetudinous vestige of his father's acting legacy till then had just started making his niche in movies with Geetanjali. If Geetanjali took Nag to his first massive success, Shiva simply catapulted him into the Stars. It was this movie that made knuckle dusters and cycle chains so popular in fight scenes and pop culture that every kid of age knew how to use their plastic counterparts for destructive purposes. It was around this time, the hero of this post, my eldest cousin MD was of an age when a boy metamorphoses into an angry young man and a champion in the eyes of kids and peers.

MD was a tall, lanky guy with a great warmth in his smile. He was unpredictable, as in one day he went to the local barber to shave his head completely to the utter dismay of our family's rather wide gamut of conservative attitudes, and at the same time, super knowledgeable in matters that amused us no end, as in where to buy those orange leather trousers like Chiranjeevi wore in that movie. He could sport an electric blue or a Rorschach blot shirt and still carry it off with elan. To us, he was what Winnie Cooper's brother Brian was to Kevin Arnold from Wonder Years - cool. Now, while MD never knew this, we kids knew that he was at least interested in Ms. V from the ground floor of their apartment complex (if memory serves right). We used to wonder when we would be of an age to have a girl friend and shave our head not in Tirupathi, where our parents would force it on us, but through our own volition in the sanctum sanctorum of the style of the youth, the barbershop.

Now, every hero must have his villain. I have no memory of the poor guy's name, but let's call him Govindrao. Govindrao was a small, compactly built man with languid features. Govindrao was so bald that it was joked about that his wife did her make up using the reflected light from his shiny round pate. What Govindrao lacked in features he certainly made up for it in character. He may not have been a real villain, but to us kids he was no less. He was the arch nemesis for an evening cricket game or the morning water fetching operation (this was the time when everybody had to get up early in the morning to fetch water from the municipal tap downstairs). It was also rumored among us kids that he wasn't very popular among the grown ups either.

This place where my cousins lived was called IB towers, I pretty much spent my entire free time there, where the ground floor overlooked a huge mud courtyard leading up to a concrete alley running to the main road. The municipal water sump was just around the place where the mud courtyard met the concrete alley way. We kids used to play in the long and numerous corridors of the different floors of the apartment complex or in the mud courtyard/concrete alleyway.

It was a late summer morning, one of those days when we had no school to worry about. We kids were running about and playing in the first floor corridor with plastic clubs and Rambow (a fantastic amalgamation of Stallone's signature machismo bow with the ultra-traditional weapon of Lord Ram). We did not know how it all started, but the kids who were closer said that they heard of some argument between Govindrao and one of our aunts who was trying to get some water. All we youngsters knew was that Govindrao said something bad to her and she couldn't control her tears and she left the place.

As if what was about to happen was portended by the weather, there was a dust storm brewing up swirling sand from the courtyard. MD must have come down so quickly none of us saw him coming. From here on what happened can only be expressed as a montage of snapshots. Govindrao in his brown shirt and checked lungi trying to face MD who stood a good foot and a half above his bald pate. MD chasing Govindrao through the dusty alleyway and back into the courtyard. Govindrao tripping and falling and trying desperately to run but forgetting how to regain balance like a little kid. Govindrao squirming to let go off MD's vice like grip on his collar. And, a blur of action without any suggestive background music, except for the silence fused into the air along with by our bated breath. The end result: Govindrao with a cut on his lip groveling in the mud courtyard and MD with a wrath so great, we were both completely mesmerized and utterly scared. With that one glorious act, MD established himself as one not to be messed with. One who would not condone anyone who mongered ill will or heaped unjustified slander. He was the quintessential angry young man, the last of the kind we would ever know in real life.

It is true that MD calmed down so much in later years that it was unbelievable he was the same guy who whacked sense into Govindrao. MD has since married Ms. V and they have a beautiful daughter. He has taken an extraordinary interest in spirituality and is by all means a very knowledgeable person who understands the value of tradition. They live in New Jersey devoted to a life of peace and happiness.

P-P-P

I don't even have to say it. Of course, this will be an inconsequential fart of a post in a galaxy of blogger supernovae which changes the gas concentration of the universe at the 10^38th place after the decimal. I would not even talk about such things normally. But, that is exactly why I can write about it. Had it been more "important", I wouldn't have taken the time to sit at night to punch these keys! Who in their right mind would do that after an entire day's (I mean lifetimes') work of a few zillion mouse clicks and key strokes punctuated by curses hurled at Microsoft Word for just reasons or otherwise? All those key strokes have to matter. They are supposed to provide intelligent insights. Too much pressure to matter and be something. Damn.

Let's gossip! My Bengali friends call this P-P-P: Para ninda, Para charcha, Para stree (I hope I got the last one right!). In other words, gossip of the lowest kind which is highly entertaining to us humans.

Para-stree:

My boss, let's call her UGH, is an overweight, overworked, under-social creature suffering from carpal-tunnel syndrome who works till 5:30 pm on a day she is supposed to have taken an off on. The rest of the days she is there before I get in and she is there after I get out. She is there. UGH has several issues: early in the morning, during the one-on-one meeting detailing the day's work, she would suddenly be at a loss for words, not because of my "sterling" work, but because the poor thing cannot breathe. She suffers, struggles, pants, gasps, and swims over the edge of her desk as I look on helplessly. She reaches for her asthma inhaler in a bag the size that can hold a small bulldog and shoots twice while her iced-coke from Wendy's looks coldly upon us from the table. I sit rooted to the spot lest I should be flattened in the confusion.

Sometimes, she has a brace on her left hand that puts Terminator's to shame for its technological modernity, and she cannot use her thumb to do anything evolution allows humans to do; for example, exactly what I use to twiddle because I cannot understand much of what's going on. To her, I must look like a Neanderthal who's just figured that thumbs (and brains) are actually functioning parts of the body. She has a controlled impatience with programmers and newbies which, coming from her corporeally enormous frame, looks like a ruddy, rumbling volcano which decides every time that it is not time to explode... yet. I do feel sorry for her sometimes when she is desperately gasping for breath during an asthma attack but will not get out of the office to get fresh air (although I wonder if that does her any good during an asthma attack) or when she has a brace on her hand and she is punching those keys with extra vengeance on a holiday.

Para-charcha:

My roommate, let's call him OW, is a balding, young American guy with a goatee that he trims in the kitchen, and a rather large frame that he carries around in a tomboyishly-feminine way. I cannot determine exactly what is effeminate about him, but masculinity certainly comes out the wrong way for this gentle giant. He is studying to be an audio engineer and keeps out of the way most of the times. Of the few occasions when I can sense his presence in my waking hours, it is his dramatic and unsettling entry into the house characterized by a high-pitched yelp which he thinks is a song of some kind, that certainly deserves first mention in a series of idiosyncratic oddities. He is also some sort of a budding musician who is "trying", which role he assumes exactly after a half past one at night. I wake up from some pleasant dream, where I am romantically involved with my sweet yet geographically distant wife, to twangs and pangs of pain of an electric guitar that he is transmogrifying into an acoustic guitar. Being in a semi-stupor and a semi-shock of being rudely awakened, I can neither move nor cry for help. I swallow the courage to act and give away to yet another beautiful, hypersomniac rendezvous. In the morning, I find the remains of a disembodied guitar spreadeagled on the couch with a broken neck and spewing veins (I'm not kidding, the strings sprout from it from all sides).

Sometimes, if I am at home during the day time, I hear what can only be described as a continuous wail of a cat with its tail stuck in a low-current power outlet. Upon inquiry I gather that he was praying. It is also interesting to note that he immediately follows this cacophonous act of worship with some serious online video gaming. For some weird reason, he would then want me to disconnect and reconnect the modem every few minutes. This particular ritual of killing the modem can drive a man crazy since there is no problem with accessing the internet. And, he can keep at this video game for particularly long hours, the kind of determination I wish I had to finish that damn thesis. I would have gladly given him the modem to keep in his room, if there was a cable outlet to connect from there. Alas, there is none.

Between yelps, wails, and strumming, he sometimes finds time to cook Indian food which he loves. The result of that cooking spree can only be described as a series of cruel and torturous murders of meats and vegetables sometimes cooked for over 3 to 4 hours! The evidence is overwhelming to ignore. The kitchen becomes a live experimental station to genetically alter not only the contents of the feast but the dormant insects in unfathomed crevices of the house which run for dear life while considering if the Earth's atmosphere has finally given up buffering human blunders.

Para-ninda:

This category, I am not a big fan of. But it will surely come into play when the people concerned with this post will vilify and maliciously heap slander upon my good name. From their point of view, it will then be para-ninda. Also, it is frickin' 2 o clock at night/in the morning! Time to say bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Resistance is futile: the Borg song

Peel the layers and look within

don't you see your inner machine?

Give in willingly, and we'll be gentle

'cuz you ought to know, resistance is futile.

All for one and one for none,

we face no fear under the gun;

we look down upon the loaded barrel

'cuz we certainly know, resistance is futile

They say "you've bottled emotions",

and have other odd notions;

we make'em wince for their taunts puerile

'cuz they better know by now, resistance is futile.

Self and Me

There is happiness

in a space called me,

how spacious am I?

There is sorrow

in an emptiness called me,

how empty am I?

There is space and

emptiness, happiness and sorrow

in a space I call myself

and an emptiness

I call Me.

Personal geology

In the end, I am a rock 

that knows how to breathe,

with the core of a volcano 

of emotions, and a crust skin deep.

My face is wrinkled or young;

impressions left by a world

all governed by tectonics

of internal pyschology.

I'm an engine for building

mountains of hope that crumble

under the weight of time, the folds

and faults are left for all to see.

I hold oceans of tears under

a frosting cold exterior;

my summers are just blinks,

my winters last the Pleistocene. 

My character is sculpted 

by tides of time chipping and

dusting out the glaring  outcrops,

balancing inherent energy.

I gaze at each moment 

as if it were eternity,

it gazes back at me as if

I were a moment in its story.

In the end, I'm a rock 

that knows how to breathe,

I'm a piece of the earth 

and the earth a piece of me.

Unbelonging

not a whim of yours

not a mould of clay

not your wishes poured into a body

not your thoughts filled in a mind

not your soul to claim ownership

not your pet spirit chained

I am ... not yours today...

Blue asylum

Now there, don't eclipse my vision

don't walk in to the picture

don't silhouette my world

with this light I don't want to see.

I hung the planets just so, the stars look just fine,

scratched the night's dark canvas with my thumbnail

and carved the crescent moon just so. 

Now don't tell me my painting's tilted. 

Don't say there is happiness around the corner, 

beyond this well-lit road of contentment, I'll only walk

till the corner, only to return to my dark house.

Now don't tell me to light my house with hope.  

Don't silhouette my world,

with this light I don't want to see.