Love in Damascus

As I look outside my window and see aeroplanes sparkling by at this hour( its a beautiful sight believe me, all those distant airliners from faraway lands setting foot in my city cruising past my window), I feel a bit terrible about falling asleep. Its late and I know that, I could just stay awake for a while like old times and count all those planes- reading in between, but I am sleepy and tomorrow is a working day. I feel terrible that something beautiful always has to end, like me lying in my bed and watching these aeroplanes after an industrious day. I see flames racing towards me , somebody dropped a bomb somewhere and I will die soon, me and my entire family and everyone I ever knew, we are all gonna die, but the nuclear flames disappear and then the whole earth shakes , I see the buildings go one by one and then there's me and even that stops, there are no planes in this sky, no dreams, no voices, only the cries and shrieks of terror followed by a silence that sounds like death. I want to fall asleep now and I want to wake up tomorrow, I want to wake up tomorrow hoping I will be alive, and someone else will die somewhere in another place, another country because that's how the world works- some live on, some die. One moment you are here and then you are gone, dead and cold, your death not your own making but someone else's and your dreams they die with you too, but what if I could change the world?
What if I could teach people not to hate, to endure, to suffer, to fight back with words and reason... what if...

"How many deaths will it take to
know that too many people
have died?"

There are no aeroplanes in the sky tonight, perhaps they forgot all about my window, perhaps i am asleep just like everyone else, perhaps they are all dead in Syria- a pretty girl whom I will never know, a best friend with whom I never shared a smoke.

Numb your senses

There's violence in dark
There's violence in the light
There's violence in sound
There's violence in sight.

Numb your senses,
Nimrod.

Intolerance, India.

Religion itself is an outdated concept that needs to be abolished if we are to progress. I know I am intolerant when it comes to that, but who cares what i think. It certainly isn't tolerant when all Research Institutes where progress ,free thought and innovation come from gets fund cuts of the order of 70%.

Most patriotic Indians (mired in mediocrity) whose general aim is to better than their neighbors are happy being better than a Saudi Arabia or a Pakistan, and god, if it exists, help them.

You know what happens with less education?
A brain that follows orders, ask less questions, accepts wrongdoings, hates other pretty easily. Half-education is worse.

( If you think your leaders want anything other than that, then god help you, too. Because one day you may die like a dog in the street, unjust, unkind and it will not be because of your wrongdoing, because someone's brain followed orders without thinking. Your multiplexes and iPhone won't save you. Your swachh country won't save you.)

Your apathy creates terrorists, your subtle antipathy endorses it. And that is intolerance, but I am pretty sure you won't get me. If you do, teach that child, teach him to love despite the wrongdoings that have been meted out to you, despite your suffering and countless deaths of your loved ones at the hands of wrongdoers. Teach the children , be a good example, that's when they go wrong, when they are young.

Accept that intolerance is there, but don't be a hypocrite, don't run away, and its not worth being better than a Saudi Arabia, its worth being better than a Finland or an Iceland. 

Thank you.

Little Prince

On tranquil mornings like this when I lie on my bed and recover from the vivid shock of a nightmare, I hear my dog's bark and its mollifying. Although it reminds me of all the beautiful things that have gone by, and all the loss that I am about to endure; but familiarity begets hope and I am not afraid to love; as the author says- "Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence."

Good Morning.

From one Child to another

1.

When I was very young, I
was sent away to a school
near the hills - Welham School,
Dehra Dun. A very good school, said Ma.
I did not understand why my mother or my father
would send me away- I was a kind boy,
but then what do children know about
what adults think?

Do you know what adults
think?

I cried a lot that day, when daddy left me there,
it was long ago, a summer’s day-
and I cried and cried and only cried, and whoosh
 I fell asleep. I don’t remember dreaming that
night; you forget your childhood dreams
when you are old. There were others, you know,
who would cry for months through the night-
we boys would first ask them to shut up and it
won’t work so we would make fun of them, each
one of them, of their tears and of their parents.
We would tell jokes and make merry, and we will
always stick by- us together, us against the world.
All those years- between geometry and grammar, between
stories from the Bible and false prayers we
learned to smile, we learned to smile and to
make fun.

And with each passing day we healed-
and healed. Home is everywhere. Home is
in this valley.

2.
I am an adult now, and sometimes when
I visit Dehra I always pass by my old
school whose vistas haven’t changed
much. In the silent valley it stays hidden
safe from the touch of time, safe with
memories and dreams of a thousand children-
safe and merry, merry and safe. Do the
children still wet their beds?

Do they often
cry?

I am an adult now and I do not know
what adults think, but when the day
breaks and I am back in the big city;
in the big city where my child sleeps
in his little home safe from tears,

I always make merry and I always
make fun.

FRIEND

It was 2007, in the first year of my college, I met him. He was a year senior, and was always in the midst of things (mainly football) - the one you could call the popular kind, but I remember him watching me on that day, the very first day as if he was waiting for me.

My first year, when I arrived in the city, I was a bit lost- I was told by everyone back in my little country home- not to trust anyone in the city, especially the ones who spoke good English. So I was rather a reticent kid of eighteen who didn’t speak much and only observed- ‘I had that innocent look’ as one girlfriend once pointed out. I don’t know what it was but after a month or so when I used to sit in the portico with my classmates, he once came over and started talking with me- I kept in mind what my folks back home said- ‘no politics’ because that's what seniors did and so I was a bit disappointed when he started asking me- if I was into any sports. Soon he introduced me to his bunch of footballer friends and I really started enjoying my college life. He always maintained a certain distance with people, even with his footballer buddies and that was really evident. It was through him that I met a lot of girls too and being confused initially - I was sure that he wasn’t sleeping with anybody- he was distant and never cared and the girls liked that, well most of them- the mysterious guy and all that shit. Naturally they confided in me and I was falling in and out of love every other day- but I was still shy to make any move on anyone. Among them I really liked one of the girls, who would later become someone else's girlfriend but that's another story.

He introduced me to Jack Kerouac, Bengali folklore, the untold history of Mughals and what not, and he would sometimes stay back at my PG and we would listen to The Doors and everything would be fine. I remember how great a footballer he was and through all my time I had seen him play, he was never tackled by any of the opponents- he was that good, and I also felt that he underplayed himself- as if he knew how good he was so he didn’t want to ruin the competition, he didn't want the others resign to their fate.

He continued his post-graduation and while doing that I invited him over to my country home up in the North of Bengal- Silmora. He had never invited me to his place in all those years of living in the city and I always figured it had something to do with domestic strife at his place, but then he never talked much about himself and I really didn’t know who he had at his home. He always had something interesting to say without backing it up with evidence or narrating the source- and that's what I think was the most peculiar of his characters and the most unnerving one, it got me worked up. I will get there. You will see what I mean.

My college time girlfriend had a problem with him- she once accused me of having sexual relations with him- all in good humor.

When I invited him over to North Bengal, he gave me a look that was mixed both in emotions and a sort of existential nothingness- somewhere in between- which bothered me a lot, I don't know why, like he was hoping this day would come. To be honest in college I was the only person he spent time with, he would tell me all these strange stories about old Bengal and it’s dacoits and the murders of family members because of greed- he seemed to know so much. He told me a lot about Silmora- where I came from (because obviously I had told him everything about me) and I asked him where he had read all of that and he named some obscure Bengali book that I could never find.

I don't remember much from his visit though, because nothing happened, he became much more withdrawn, he would wake up early in the morning and disappear in the village and you could find him with a book on the other side of the jheel that was by our house. My parents liked him because of his habit of waking up early in the morning and he was much more verbose than usual with them, as if he hypnotized them in liking him. 

It was one of these days while returning to our home, I looked at the house from the other side of the jheel, it was almost sundown and Silmora is the most beautiful at sundown when the silhouettes are long. He suddenly looked at me and told me that- 'There's a man trapped under your house, he needs to be free.' I didn't say anything because it was pointless and I would only be answered back with silence. I wondered if he had read it in some book- or if he was imagining up a story. Or may be both.   

After I left college I lost in touch with him, and I heard he dropped out and disappeared somewhere. I haven't thought about him much since then and it was a bit of a shock for me because he never left any trace- to be honest he was the one who ditched me, and I was always egoistic enough not to ask around about him- if I didn’t knew, nobody knew, not even the fucking authorities. So many years in the city and I didn’t even know where he lived. It’s funny how much a man could not tell you if he doesn’t want to tell you.

Five years have gone by since then and my parents have shifted to the city, our old country home remains locked in a mist of weed and country snakes, and a few days ago I visited it to just to do the yearly maintenance and cleaning. It was then, I don't know why I suddenly remembered what he had said to me years ago, about a man buried beneath our house. In that empty house it was an eerie thought. I couldn't sleep that night and I had a "le cauchemar" which is a classy nightmare and so I woke up all alone in the night  and thought about him and our time in college. I felt the dark moonllit plains of Silmora folding up on me and it was then I realized how I had actually once wanted to touch him but couldn't.

It was long ago and we were in my PG and he had probably read me out a Walt Whitman poem and I just wanted to touch his hand when he looked away, but I had only felt air - cold air.       

Hum Apke Hain Kaun?

The brouhaha surrounding Bajrangi Bhaijaan made me watch snippets from an old classic (probably the first Salman Khan movie I watched and that too in a theater) - Hum Aapke Hain Kaun.
I remember watching it in a hall called 'Mitra'- I guess with my entire family and being amused by the flashy lights that jarred my little eyes every time a song sequence happened.
I will always remember the lines 'Didi Tera Devar Diwana' without understanding what it means as of now. Madhuri Dixit who sat on a Billiards Table romancing Salman Khan (Bhaijaan) in one song sequence hardly impressed me back then- it was 20 years ago and I was too bloody young to understand why MF Hussain would make her his muse. Although, no offence to artist Bhaijaan I fondly remember the fluffy white thing that danced with Madhuri and umpired in a cricket match, yes a little white spitz, just like our very own kuttush.
And in a split moment of curiosity I did a Google search, 'what happened to the dog in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun'? And really you must love the internet.

.....
In Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), the role of "Tuffy" was played by Redo, a 6-year-old Indian Spitz belonging to the Assistant Director Madhukar Sawle. The Spitz had a vital role in the movie. Actress Madhuri Dixit later adopted the dog, which died in 2000 at age twelve....

Now that I am all grown up, I do love Madhuri Dixit. I kinda have this thing for women who love dogs.