Of Home and Coffee Houses

Sitting in the musty, confined interiors of the Indian Coffee House in Thrissur’s main round, right next to the famous old Jos theatre, I wondered what kept bringing me back to the joint. I know the Indian Coffee House is an establishment all over India, but I’m pretty sure the menu is not the same everywhere. The ones in Kerala have a delicious assortment of Mallu non veg cuisine including various preparations of beef which I doubt would be found anywhere else. But their food, while simple and inexpensive, is delicious to the taste buds. Starting from the regular favorite anywhere in Kerala, the porotta and beef roast. This is something I have to have whenever I’m in that city I call home. The biriyani’s are also great. This time around I tried out something I had never had before, called a Beef Omelet. As can be ascertained from the name, it is an omelet with beef inside it. Sumptuous.

The place is always crowded with the common junta of Thrissur and efficient in their service. There is something so typically Mallu and comforting about the place which is reflected in the town as a whole. The Thrissur Round, which is the main center of the city, is unique in its layout. The traffic bustles around the circumference of this round, while in the middle there is the famous Vaddakumnathan temple (where every year the famous Thrissur pooram takes place). This middle area has large courtyards and green lined avenues where one can take a stroll without ever realizing that it is bang in the middle of the heart of the city.

So what keeps bringing me back? Is it the familiarity of home? The realization that the place has a soul and the desire to soak in that soul once in a while? The beauty that my eyes are assured of reliving every time I take a trip, via Kunnamkulam, to my ancestral villages? Or the great food? Maybe it’s all of these. All I know is, when I think home, it is the place which first comes to mind.

Terror in Pune

Life has suddenly become scary. Or scarier. The threat of terror is always there at the back of your mind, especially being in India. But until it stares you in the face, you never realize how easily… how fuckin easily it could have been you. And how easy it is for people to treat it as just another event, unless they actually confront it. I was at the site a few minutes after the blast. And I dont think I can forget. Ever.

The German Bakery was one of my favorite joints in Pune. As it was for many others. The atmosphere and the relaxed ease with which people from different parts of the world milled around at virtually the heart of the city, made it a pretty popular spot. On Saturday, the day before Valentines, that all changed. I was in Koregaon Park that day, less than a Kilometer away from the place when we heard the blast, and the building shook. Me and my cousin looked outside and saw the smoke billowing up into the evening sky, but we couldn’t ascertain the cause. My cousin’s hubby and I went to the place, wondering what happened. When we reached there, barely 15 minutes after the blast, the site was chilling. The German bakery was totaled. Burnt and dead bodies were lying around and people were rushing around trying to get the injured to ambulances which had just started arriving. I was almost paralyzed at that point. It is one thing to see these images on television and another to actually see it up front. My cousin’s hubby tried to help lifting some of the injured onto stretchers, and his hand at the end of the ordeal was covered in blood and specks of flesh from the injured. I realized why it was so scary. The thought that it could so easily have been you. How many weekend evenings had I sat there, enjoying the mashed potatoes or the scrambled eggs with the pot of Earl Grey tea. I couldn’t help thinking… these people were also sitting there like that without a care in the world, when suddenly… I had passed by the place less than half an hour before it happened.

What is probably more disturbing is the fact that people have almost become apathetic towards these incidents unless it actually affects them. A nice story to talk about, muse about for a while and leave it at that. The few friends who actually thought about it enough called up or asked me if things were fine in Pune. Somehow the thought that I could have been in there did not seem to register in their minds. It almost seemed an event had happened in my city and they were enquiring after it. And I do wonder about the news channels which started reporting it as a cylinder blast, when even the cops and people at the site did not know what had happened. How did these guys ascertain so fast that it was a cylinder blast? Anybody who heard it could not believe that. Of course, later on, they revised their stories and it came to light that, like Leopolds in Colaba, the German bakery was another symbol for the haters to vent on.

Somehow it felt funny when people started wishing me on Valentine’s Day the day after. Yea, there seems to be a lot of love around.

A tribute to MJ

So the King is dead. Long live the king.
I am, of course, referring to the untimely demise of the King of Pop, MJ. Though i hadn't been listening to his songs for a long time now, other than the occasional song ("Stranger in Moscow" is one of those few which i found evergreen with me), after i heard of this, i uploaded arond 50 of his classics into my mp3 player and vowed to listen to only him for the next week atleast.
As the beats came back, so did the memories. Billie Jean, Beat It, Dangerous, Liberian Girl, Give into Me, Man in the Mirror, and a lot of others. MJ was not just any musician. He was the kind of musician who came along once in two generations. His music and videos probably revolutionalised the whole MTV music video culture. I still remember how terrified i got as a kid when i saw and heard 'Thriller' for the first time. I remembered those days in Saudi Arabia, all those years ago, when i used to listen to his tapes over and over again, on the old tape recorder we had at the time. MJ and Bryan Adams were probably my introduction to the wonderful world of music.
Of course, in recent times, he was becoming too weird for anyone. There were always those allegations of child molestation, as well as rumours of his bankruptcy. Not to forget his deteriorating skin condition.
I dont know enough to comment on these, so I'm not going to. But, all i do know, is that his music will live on. And deservedly so. Here's to you, MJ. From a kid who grew up with you a big part of his life.

To be a fan...

These days, with the second season of the IPL in full flow, I was thinking back to the days when, for the first time, i truly felt what it was like to be a fan. A fan of a team of individuals you may not have any connect with, yet you egg on like they were somehow related to your life.
The first major sporting event i really followed was the 1996 Cricket World Cup, but, though i felt pretty bad when India went out to Sri Lanka in that eventful semi final, the actual passion of following a team came during the 1998 Football World Cup, France '98.
The Dutch football team is one I've always had a strange connect with. Maybe I was initially drawn to them because of the silky skills of the mercurial Dennis Bergkamp, the non flying Dutchman (he was well known for his fear of planes, and never really travelled by them.). Maybe it was the Orange. I dunno. But, as France '98 started picking up steam, with the pre quarters, i started paying more attention to the others. The speedy and inventive midfielders like Overmars, Seedorf and Edgar Davids (who, for me, was the midfielder of the tournament). The wonderfully talented De Boer twins, Frank and Ronald, and the others.. Kluivert, Zenden, Jonk... all backed up by that excellent keeper, Van Der Saar.
It started of with that pre quarterfinal against the Yugoslavs... They admittedly did have some good fortune, with that accomplished striker, Predrag Mijatovic, missing a penalty for the Yugoslavs. Then, in the 92nd minute, with everyone looking towards penalties, Davids unleashes a shot from the edge of the box... speculative... but it went in and Holland were through to the quarters, where they would face a fancied Argentine side, who themselves had come through a harrowing match against the English on penalties.
This one was set up beautifully towards the end for a photo finish. With the scores level on 1-1, in the 89th minute, a long ball was hopefully presented in the Argentine half... and who would be there to receive it, but... Dennis Bergkamp. This was his moment. You could see it coming. With all the finesse and precision that has marked some of his best goals, he unleashed what was probably the goal of the tournament, into the roof of the Argentine net. The Dutch were through. Bergkamp had lived up to his billing. By now my excitement had reached fever pitch.
The Dutch were to face the mighty Brazilians in the semi final. Though i had an inkling that the Dutch had their best moment in the tournament already, i was still hopeful. That they would make their ancestors of Total Football, who had failed to win football's top honour, proud.
The match started of innocuously. The first half went scoreless. Then, in the early minutes of the second half, Ronaldo gets in. 1-0 to Brazil. Holland kept pushing. In the 87th minute, a cross comes in from the right, and Kluivert, rises above the Brazilian defense to powerfully head in the equaliser. The Dutch had scored at the death again. In the ensuing extra time, both teams came close to breaking the deadlock, but it finally had to be penalties.
Cocu missed and Ronald De Boer missed, and the Oranje dream was over. Brazil was through to the final. After that, i really didn't care about the 3rd place match with Croatia. Though Zenden provided another glimpse of why the Dutch brand of football is so beloved, with a beautifully taken goal. Croatia ended up winning that 3rd place. But as far as i was concerned, my beloved Oranje had lost earlier.
I went out to my balcony, and raised my fist to the humid middle eastern air. AAgh.... So this was how it felt like to be a fan.

A Day in Baroda

Me 'n SiK finally made it for Ta's marriage. A trip which had started off as a plan for 4 days, including sight seeing around Gujarat, finally whittled down to a single day's rush to catch the marriage and reception and rush back to attend work on Monday. A slew of factors, including my ten day break and SiK's engagement contributed to us only being able to spend a day for this. But we had promised to ourselves we would attend her marriage whatever happens, and we did, finally.
I have to say... Despite my reservations about Modi's Gujarat, i was impressed with what i saw. Baroda (or Vadodara) was a clean, developed and quite modern city. I wish more Indian cities took off after the model i saw there. Each part of the city seemed to have been carefully planned and laid out and the buildings were all neat and modern. Me 'n SiK definitely wished we could have had a couple of days more there.
As for the bride herself, Ta was probably the most excited and bubbly bride i have seen till now. She had an easy vibrancy and positivity which rubbed off on us pretty easily. It has only been a few months since we came in touch with her, but it already seems like we've known her for long. The days in Infy came back to me when we three did a lot of things together. My favourite of the lot: When we formed the team of three for the PE Sports Day Table Tennis Tournament. Despite the fact that all three of us hadn't played in quite a long while, we reached the second round in all sections (the double, and the singles for each of us).
SiK is also getting hitched by the end of the year. Here's to the good memories. And to the everlasting buddies, without whom life would have been such a drag.

The years lost...

Why is it that when i think of my childhood these days i get a feeling of poignant sadness? A feeling of a wonderful time lost with the weathers of growing up? Yea, i know everybody is supposed to feel that way about their childhood.. the yearning to go back in time and experience the pure innocence which only a child can feel.

I came across a facebook community recently, which was devoted to the city of Jubail, Saudi Arabia. This was where i spent a good part of my formative years, between 1986 and 1994. The pictures touched a chord within me that has left a deep imprint. I remembered everything suddenly... Fanateer area, the Farm 2 shopping center, the Commissary, the beaches, our wonderful house, and best of all, my old school.. the Jubail British Academy. The school which i still consider the best of my life... where i made some of the best friends of my life (although as it always happens with the friends u have when you're 10 years old, you lose touch with most of them). We were Indians. We were also Pakistanis, British, Canadians.. it never seemed to matter. I remember i especially had quite a few Pakistani friends there. I remember Adnan, Najeeb, and others. Sadly, I have no idea whatever happened to them after that, though that hasn't stopped me from thinking.

The city itself was a quiet, peaceful and clean industrial city. Not exactly what we would have called 'happening', but one of those places which you know you will just miss and long for when you're gone. As with most middle eastern cities, it was developed, orderly and comfortable. I remember the nice parks, the beautifully laid out roads with date palms lining the sides... which made them perfect to take a bicycle ride with friends or to go for a walk with your parents. Maybe i feel this way because its where i was a child. Where i was in the most innocent part of my life. The time when friendships and relations were untainted by feelings of disappointments, petty jealousy and sexual attraction to the opposite sex. When liking a girl and approaching her meant asking her to be your partner in the art class and nothing more. I remember her... the German beauty who i liked in class 2 and asked to work with me in art class. I remember her Golden hair and wide eyes. And i remember the pure simple joy i felt when the next time she asked me to be her partner. Wonder whatever happened to her.

Growing up is inevitable. And the slow loss of innocence is also inevitable. Which is probably why the best years of your life may seem bittersweet when looking back. Because it has been tainted since then by all the memories of things which came after. The disappointments, the heartbreaks, the self realizations. I dont know if i ever will go back to Jubail and Fanateer... and I'm not sure when i do, if i will feel the way i used to about the place.

The Inheritance of a New Beginning

Sometimes u just gotta let GO....
There are people in your life who you just feel they have to be there. Throughout. As a presence through all ur high and low points. Or you feel more like, they will be there. They become a part of you as urself, that it becomes very natural.

Until one day it comes crashing down. You realise that it may just have been an illusion. A trick of the mind to anchor your faith onto something or someone. (I guess for an agnostic like myself, it is not such a tough thing to happen). Then comes the tough part.

How do you reconcile yourself to the fact that the anchor you thought will always be there, may just not be what you thought. That fairytales may just not happen. That you may have been fooling yourself into believing this illusion.

Two things can happen. You can allow the claws of jealousy and hatred and anger wrap themselves around you and sulk. Or you can get on with it. Accept that you have also made mistakes in life and move on, remembering the good moments and that nobody or nothing is perfect.

I guess i have in the past allowed too much of the former to get the better of me. Not this time. This time, I'll actually try to be the dude. ;-)

And... as the bard says... therein lies a long story.

Me and Myself

There comes times in life when you introspect and retrospect. Or maybe a lot of times. You look at yourself in a mirror of your mind with the eyes of your childhood and you sometimes see a total stranger staring back at you. And you wonder, is that really me? You realise you have gone far from the person you once were or who you once wanted to be and there may not be any looking back.

Well i guess i'm just trying to say that this is pretty much what i have felt on occasions. Or on a lot of occasions. Have i gone too far away from the person i once was or i once wanted to be? I sometimes imagine myself as a kid looking through the looking glass at the older version of me, and i feel i probably wouldnt have recognised myself.

The other day, an old buddy of mine, from my days in DPS, Kuwait, called me up. After all the usual banter and nostalgic returns to school days, he told me, u know, i'm pretty disappointed in you. I was like, why? Well, i always thought you had more in you. You could have been somewhere man. Well, i thought i'm not exactly doing too bad right now, but i got the drift. I remembered a biology teacher i used to have during my school days. She used to think( for some reason) that i could DO something, but that i was an enigma. I remember her shouting at my parents everytime there was a parents teacher meeting, whenever she felt i was not at par.

Well, i wish i could tell her now... Sometimes, i'm an enigma to myself. But then again, what do people mean when they say they have expectations of someone? Expectations that someone will be a good person? Well, i would like to think that i'm not exactly a monster. Or is it expectations as in the yardstick of achievements that the world measures you by? Well, maybe i have disappointed myself and quite a few well wishers there. But then again, do i really want to
join that rat race?

What i would consider an achievement is satisfying your own self. Knowing truthfully within, that this is what you wanted from yourself, and that you're getting there.

Not that i think i'm there yet. Actually... there's still a long way to go.

Voices Within...

I seem to have a major problem here. My mind is endlessly at war. With my mind. I just can't seem to shut out the voices in my head which keep talkin among themselves every frickin time. I mean, hey, gimme a break! Im tryin to lead a normal happy go frickin lucky life here. But no.. I have to be reminded of my past failures, disappointments, heartbreaks, doubts, fears of whats to come, indecision... And it just does not stop.

So, is it normal? I dunno, but it sure doesnt seem so. And in these times of doubts and wavering goals, it seems to have reached a crescendo.

I gotta get a shrink....

Hate.Anger

Hate.Anger.Depression. Can there be any worse a confluence of emotions than these three?But that is what is raging within my insides and my mind now. It makes me numb at times. My mind becomes frozen with hate. I know. It may be unreasonable and downright stupid. But why do i have a feeling that i have a right to it? That somewhere along the line, i was played with? Yesterday, in the pure torture for 2 and a frickin half hours of the so called mock CAT, as i was sitting there with nothing to do, my mind was suddenly overflowing with the confluence of these three emotions.. Rage overpowered me fo rsome time. But, like everything else in life, this too shall pass. Or i hope it will. Everybody has a reason for their actions. I hope i will understand them at a later phase of my life. Because, at the end of the day, i want to forgive and forget. Or maybe, be forgiven. I dont know. Maybe i was also wrong. I probably was, actually. Still...

A phrase given at the beginning of that classic saga, 'The Thorn Birds', comes to mind. Although i do not remember enough toreproduce it verbatim here, it talks of a bird, which from the moment it is born, keeps flyimg till it finds the perfect thorn on which it will impale itself. Once it does, it gives out its wail of agony, which is supposed to be the most beautiful sound heard across the land. We are like that at times. We know beforehand that doing something may crush us. But we still do it. And we still live on...

Anger

Anger...Its a very unhealthy emotion. So they say.. But is it? Right now, i am filled with so much of it that i dont know wher the line that divides love and hate blurs. Both are very strong emotions. Sometimes i feel they can even overlap...sounds dumb? I dont think so. Because, i can feel it.
Coming back to anger... I am supposed to hav a lot of work right now, but this emotion is clutching at my insides...and spreading...and you know what. I dont actually mind it so much. Almost as if it is willing me to press forward. Oh, if you are wondering who or wat i am angry at....keep wondering!! ;-)

But, believe me...it aint such a bad thing...at times...

Pain is a very strong emotion.. It keeps clawing at your insides until you feel like your falling into an abyssfrom which you cannot get out of..Much the same way as jealousy..another emotion, i feel, which clings to your insides and spreads itself out, till you just cant think straight and all rationality takes a beating.
As for pain, when it is coupled with desire so strong for something you want but, for reasons you just cannot explain, you can never get. The emptiness which fills you is so strong that nothing else just seems to matter. It becomes hard to really smile for anything andeach morning you wake up to, a feeling of butterflies strangely fills the pit of your stomach.It is something which i have faced before. But these days, the nights have become breeding grounds for weird dreams, with all sorts of characters flitting in and out, and i wake up to a feeling of impending doom. Desperately trying to get away from the root cause of my predicament, there are times when i think i am succeeding, only to realise im back to square one. In the end, i guess the reason for this is because of the fact that im probably running away from it. Running away never really works. Unless you can get to a state of complete peace of mind, salvation is far off...

Happiness!!!!

'Happiness is an Unproductive Imagination'...

This has been a quote which has fascinated me for a long time. Ever since i saw it during those good ol' schooldays (funny how everyone seems to think they'r so 'good ol'' once u move on, though they may actually hav never been so 'good ol'' in reality!).. The Chicane video..with Bryan Adams gruff vocals..'Dont give up'.. (A pretty good track,btw)...

Something worth pondering over, i felt...i have repeated it a number of times to various pals, old and new, however, in never more than a light hearted vein..

Happiness, to me, has always seemed the state that everyone searches for, from time immemorial.. Like thy say in that dream of a book, 'Shantaram', 'the search for a truth greater than our own'..(although i gez he was actually talking bout love there).. but then again, arent love and happiness interdependant? Love does that to you. It can build up your emotions to a crescendo...then bring you crashin down all over again. Which is the main reason i try to figure it ut...is Happiness an Unproductive imagination???' After all, its just a state of mind, which is as transient as the next..

Talkin bout love, a statement my best buddy once made about it comes to mind..'Love is like Dope..It gives you a high, but then you get addicted to it'... dunno if it was original, or if he got it from somewhere..but boy, what a way to put things in perspective...(Yep, u got it rite...we both were comin out of a bad experience with members of the opposite sex at the time...a wonder how ppl can become great poets and philosophers wen they'v just been failed by love!!)

Seems that happiness can be different for different people...like they say, 'one mans floor is another mans ceiling',..but then, it basically comes down to the same thing...its just a state of mind which can vanish in an instant...although we can always keep tryin to convince ourselves that we are actually happy...

Or maybe, im just basically a sad guy..Dunno...but ive had enuff of happy talk for a day...signin off...