Ah, The Joys Of Living In Chennai

Celebrating A City That Embraces One And All — Never Mind The Autorickshaw Drivers And The Mess During The Monsoon

Bishwanath Ghosh | TNN

The Rough Guide, the equally authoritative cousin of The Lonely Planet, doesn’t mince words while introducing its readers to Chennai: "Hot, congested and noisy, it is the major transportation hub of the South, but most travellers stay just long enough to book a ticket for somewhere else." While these observations can hardly be disputed by anyone who ventures out on Chennai’s roads on a daily basis, they are also flawed.

Chennai might be hot, but the heat is not murderous as it can be in north India during the summer months. And what about the period between November and March? The fact that you wake up sniffling every morning during these months shows Chennai can be cold too. As for the congestion and the noise, well, this particular edition of Rough Guide was printed in 1999, when Chennai was actually a paradise compared to Mumbai or Delhi. The IT boom was just about beginning, and not many people owned cars, so congestion was out of the question. And as for travellers staying here just long enough to book a ticket to somewhere else, isn’t that only natural? When you are a traveller who is on a whirlwind tour of South India, you stay in Chennai for, at the most, two days before proceeding to Pondicherry or Bangalore or Kerala. You don’t expect them to make Chennai their second home, do you?

It is highly unlikely that such observations would offend Chennai, which has always been a prisoner of perceptions anyway. If it is Chennai, it only has to be about idli and dosa, Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan, and Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music. Any deviation becomes news. In Delhi or Kolkata, the opening of a new pub or a mall is likely to pass off as a routine event, but in Chennai, at least till five years ago, such events were seen as harbingers of change. Chennai is changing, they screamed, every time a new pub opened. Chennai is changing, they screamed, every time a mall opened. Chennai is changing, they screamed, every time a continental restaurant opened. These days, they all say, “Wow, Chennai has changed.” And you thought only the other metros were entitled to ‘change’?

Yet, Chennai hasn’t changed a bit: the Margazhi festival is still held every December, actors still influence politics, and people still drink filter coffee the first thing in the morning. In other words, this is the only city in the country where you can witness, first hand, tradition as well as transformation. In a place like Delhi, you’ll have to hunt for tradition. In Kolkata, you’ll itch for transformation — though things are a lot better there now. It’s only Chennai that brings you the best of both. And most often, it is technology that binds the two Ts. For example, at the Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore, Indian Bank recently set up a vending machine which exchanges currency notes for coins. The idea is that if you have a ten-rupee note in your pocket and you can't afford to spare the entire amount, you can always get loose change to make a token offering. What better example of tradition and transformation doing a jig under the strobe light of technology?

This is one facet of Chennai you can’t help admiring, doesn’t matter if you like the city or dislike it otherwise. And it’s the mix of tradition and transformation that has made it into a city where cosmopolitanism and culture co-exist in harmony. There is something for everyone — you could be a retired civil servant or a bright engineer, religious or rationalist, a Venezuelan or a Bengali. You’ll be given enough time and space to do your own thing.

"People here are more civilised. They let you be," says Pooja Dey, a 27-year-old homemaker who moved from Kolkata to Chennai ten months ago. "In Kolkata, they are overfriendly and that can get onto your nerves. Besides, I find this place much more developed and a lot cleaner." Pooja's husband Sushanto, 30, whose family runs the SreeLeathers chain of stores that sell leather goods and who is now set to open its outlet in Chennai, nods in agreement. "Recently, some parties called for a bandh in Chennai (the Feb 4 bandh in support of Sri Lankan Tamils), but life was normal on the bandh day. In Kolkata, a bandh literally means a bandh. Everything comes to a standstill. That way, law and order in this city is good.” Sushanto goes a step further to praise Chennai's roads and traffic, even though many hardcore Chennaiites would be hesitant in sharing his enthusiasm. “It is still a pleasure to drive in Chennai, at least when compared to driving in Kolkata, where the rickety Ambassadors really test your patience," he says.

Pooja and Sushanto must listen to what a Tamilian — who was born in Chennai but grew up in Kolkata and then returned to Chennai to study and went to Mumbai to pursue an impressive career and who has now returned to Chennai to spend his post-retirement years — has to say. “I still feel Kolkata is the best place to live among all the metros. People are very social, the cost of living is low. That will be my first choice," says G Ananthanarayan, who retired a few years ago as a vice-president of Larsen and Toubro (L&T) and now lives in Ashok Nagar.

Ananthanarayan’s love for Kolkata, in all probability, stems from the fact that he spent his growing-up years there. Things you grow up with — be it a city or a certain kind of music — always hold an appeal for you. As he himself says, "You look for different things in different stages of life. If you are looking for a career, then Mumbai is the place to be in. But in the latter part of life, when you are no longer worried about your career, Chennai is a better place to settle down."

Why Chennai? “Because I happen to be a Tamilian,” he laughs. But apart from that? "Well, Chennai is still green, while Mumbai has become a concrete jungle. And today, Mumbai is as hot as Chennai. And Chennai, like Kolkata, has culture. There is music here, Carnatic music. Also, the beaches are clean, far cleaner than the Juhu beach. I like Marina and Elliot’s Beach," says Ananthanarayan.

Says Hema Nair, 30, a passionate human rights activist who is more attached to causes than places, "I like change, so I won't mind staying in other cities but Chennai is where I would like to 'settle down', if ever I do that." Why? "Because this place lets me be,” says Hema, a native of Alappuzha in Kerala who was born in Kolkata and grew up in Chennai, where she co-founded the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care, and who has lived in places as diverse as a town called Mito in Japan and New York. "Chennaiites are tolerant, hard working, sincere and happy people. Everyone is welcome here as long as they don't disrespect or demean this city or its people. I hate the politics here, but then I hate the way it is almost everywhere else."

One can make a mathematical deduction now. People who've lived in Chennai at some point or the other — no matter if they had also lived in more happening cities and had the choice of making them their home — are always glad to embrace the warmth of Chennai when it comes to settling down. Clearly, there is a lazy, seductive charm about the city we call home.

From the first anniversary issue of The Times Of India, Chennai. April 14, 2009

My Grandfather Died Yesterday. He Had Sold Me The Queen Of My Dreams

When you create a body of work that goes on to eclipse your personality, and then you age and are pushed into complete oblivion, there comes one occasion when you, as a person, are celebrated again. All this while, your works were being celebrated, but no one remembered you. But on this occasion, you are, once again, formally acknowledged as the creator of your work and given a standing ovation. But you miss that ovation because the occasion happens to be death.

My grandfather has missed that ovation too. He died yesterday, in Mumbai, aged 83. I grew up in the cosy comfort of his study that was lined, instead of books, with scripts and prints of films and LP records. I grew up reading those scripts, watching those films and listening to the records -- they played a significant role in shaping my thought process and made by life meaningful.

Wait a minute, he was not just my grandfather. He was your grandfather too -- the grandfather of several million Indians who were born in the 1970s and the early 1980s. His name: Shakti Samanta. I know of people -- many many people, in fact -- who haven't heard of Shakti Samanta, but they have heard of Aradhana, Amar Prem and Kati Patang. They've even seen the movies and liked them and liked their songs. But they haven't heard of Shakti Samanta.

That substantiates the point I was making: when you create a body of work whose quantity matches its quality, the creator himself becomes irrelevant after a point. When you have an ice-cream, for example, do you ever wonder about the inventor of the ice-cream? There has to be someone who must've made the very first ice-cream in the world, but his identity is completely irrelevant because the ice-cream is so common that it seems to one of nature's creations, just like the water we drink and the air we breathe. How on earth it matters who created the ice-cream as long as you enjoy it, be it in the form of casatta or a choco bar or vanilla?

Whether Aradhana was casatta, Amar Prem the choco bar and Kati Patang the vanilla -- it is for you to decide which one was which. But these are varieties of ice-creams that our generation will always relish, no matter how old we get. And if the movies are too much of an emotional burden to watch, there are always the songs to enjoy.

In that sense, Shakti Samanta is far more important than a grandfather: he is as integral to my life as Thomas Alva Edison is. What would be my life without the songs of Aradhana, Kati Patang and Amar Prem? I don't listen to them every day, I don't listen to them for months, but I know that they are there -- a home in the native village I can go back to whenever I want to. Without these songs, I have no identity.

Songs like Mere sapnon ki rani kab aayegi tu, or Yeh shaam mastaani cut geographical boundaries. Mere sapnon ki rani, correct me if I am wrong, was, at one point, perhaps the most popular piece of music after the National Anthemn. And yesterday, the man who picturised the song, Shakti Samanta, died. Please shed tears for him.

It is difficult to say whether the Rajesh Khanna-Kishore Kumar-R.D. Burman combo made Samanta's movies popular or whether it was Samanta who was wise enough to bring the trio together and prove that it can be a deadly combo. Whatever it maybe, the fact is that the careers of R.D. Burman and Kishore Kumar would have taken a different path had it not been for Samanta's films. In Aradhana, R.D. Burman, for the first time, was credited as the 'Assistant Music Director', the music director being his father, S.D. Burman. As for Kishore Kumar, everybody knows that Aradhana was his launch pad to stardom as a singer.

Though Mehmood, the versatile actor, wouldn't have agreed. Mehmood is no more, but his views are well-known. According to him, it was he who made R.D. walk out of his father's shadow and turn into an independent composer in Chhote Nawaab, and that Kishore's vehicle to his success as a singer was not Aradhana but Padosan. According to Mehmood, it was Mere saamnewaali khidki and not Mere sapnon ki rani that made Kishore a runaway hit.

All said and done, Aradhana turned a new leaf. For the audience, as well as for many pillars in Bollywood. Till Aradhana, Samanta had chosen to use, to great success, the staple, time-tested combo of Shankar-Jaikishan-Mohammed Rafi. Kashmir Ki Kali and An Evening In Paris are living examples.

Aradhana turned the equations upside down and overnight, Kishore Kumar became the hottest singer and R.D. Burman the most hummable composer. All this, because of one man who you didn't even know how he looked like.

I first saw Samanta when I was nine or ten years old, on Doordarshan. They were interviewing him on the location while he was shooting for a movie called Khwaab with Mithun Chakraborty. It was a song sequence they were shooting, with Mithun Chakraborty sprinting to a peppy song by Yesudas, Banjara main nahin magar...

Shakti Samanta was dressed in a white shirt and white trousers and a white cap, and he was giving a soundbite of which I have no memory whatsoever. Obviously not. I was so young then. After that I never saw him, but only his movies. Amar Prem and Kati Patang I saw on TV, but Aradhana on the big screen -- in 1986!

My parents say Aradhana was the first movie I ever saw. They say they had taken me along, when I was barely a year old, to watch the movie in the theatre. Understandably, I had to watch Aradhana again, in the same theatre, 15 years later, soon after my Class 10 board exams. Those days, if Doordarshan was not showing a film, there was no way you could watch it at your will unless the neighbourhood theatre chose to screen it.

But there was one Shakti Samanta movie I watched in the theatre long before Aradhana, and which made me cry. That was Anand Ashram. A particular scene that brings together a son who had chosen to go his own way and a rich arrogant father, played by Uttam Kumar and Ashok Kumar respectively, was too much to bear. I was crying. I also watched Amanush in the theatre, and all along, I wanted to kill Utpal Dutt, the villain, with my bare hands. But then, shortly after, Gol Maal happened. I no longer wanted to kill Utpal Dutt. I wanted him to live forever. Forever!

But then, dear reader, nothing is forever. We all have to die someday -- sooner or later. Kishore Kumar was the first to go, at the age of 58, in 1987. R.D. Burman died next, in 1994. He was just 54. And Shakti Samanta died yesterday, at 83. But the songs the three of them created shall remains ageless. You can hum them at any point of time: today, tomorrow and even the day after tomorrow. Now that they are all in heaven, am sure they would be making great music up there.

As far as Bollywwod is concerned, two people should be mourning Samanta's death more than anyone else: Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan. For them, as for Kishore Kumar and R.D. Burman, who are no more, the movies and songs they made with Shakti Samanta are as important a milestone as, say, their graduation day in college.

In case you still can't figure who Shakti Samanta is, or was, let me list ten popular songs from the films he directed so that you realise what a great man we lost last evening:

1. Yeh chaand sa roshan chehra: Kashmir Ki Kali

2. An evening in Paris: An Evening In Paris

3. Mere sapnon ki rani: Aradhana

4. Ek ajnabee haseena se: Ajnabee

5. Yeh kya hua, kaise hua: Amar Prem

6. Yeh shaam mastaani: Kati Patang

7. Mere naina saawan bhadon: Mehbooba

8. Saara pyaar tumhara: Anand Ashram

9. Aapke anurodh par: Anurodh

10. Do lafzon ki hai: The Great Gambler.

Need I say more? One only has to listen.

Looks -- The Way I Look At It

There is one thing that experience has taught me, a realisation that has crystallised in my mind only recently.

That, a really sexy woman always thinks she is average-looking. And that the really sexy women on this earth always hide -- at times deliberately -- behind the veil of simplicity.

The veil, rather the objects of simplicity, could be a pair of specs, plain-looking clothes, unwaxed arms, floaters instead of smart sandals, and so on. They wear this veil, either because they are innocent and don't realise that they are actually masking a potentially jaw-dropping persona; or because they don't care what the world thinks of them; or because they purposely want to stay away from the glare: they want to be judged by what they are and not by how they look.

In the first case, it is the innocence that enhances the sex appeal manifold, while in the latter two cases, it is the I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude that makes them even more irresistible.

Procession Of Memories

Dear S,

I am writing to you not because you happen to be a friend or because your name starts with an 'S' (women who have mattered to me always have names -- I don't know why -- that start with an 'S'). I am not writing to you because you happen to good-looking, who stands out in a crowd, nor because you have a brilliant mind. Maybe I am writing to you because of all these too, who knows.

But why I am writing to you at this hour, it is half-past midnight, is because I want to share something. Something which only you will understand because you belong to my generation. You belong to the generation of Sholay. You belong to the generation of Julie. You belong to the generation when romance was walking in the rain on the streets of Bombay and singing, Rimjhim Gire Saawan...

Such a clean song, Rimjhim Gire Saawan. Unfortunately, or rather very fortunately, there cannot be another rain song like that. A middle-class man and an upper-middle-class but traditional woman, hopping over puddles and escaping the drizzle -- the landmarks of Bombay flashing past as this song -- a gem from R.D. Burman, sung by Lata -- plays in the background. You know, I prefer this version over the one sung by Kishore; even though Kishore, to me, is God.

You know S, expressing my thoughts in words is not only my bread and butter, but also something that I should keep practising, considering that it is the sole tool that can make my dreams come true. Yet, there are times like these when words fail me, when I have so much to share that I don't know where to begin, what to write. Because these are things to be felt.

Words fail me when I watch My heart is beating on You Tube. All I can do is copy the URL and send it to people who are online and who might understand. There is nothing I can say. What can I say about Om Prakash? All I can wonder is why do people like Om Prakash have to leave this world? Seen him in Chupke Chupke? He is the real force behind the movie. It's a movie that you might have watched 24 times, and yet when you watch it the 25th time, you still wonder what's going to happen next.

Do watch My heart is beating... What a song, what an accurate portrayal of an Anglo-Indian family. Watch Om Prakash, the alcohol-loving engine-driver who was also a doting father. When I first saw Julie, I cried when Om Prakash died. But when Om Prakash really died a few years ago, I did not cry. You don't cry when a Om Prakash or a Ashok Kumar dies. You refuse to acknowledge they are no more. You have the luxury of that denial because they've left a body of work you can always return too.

Kishore Kumar, my favourite singer, is dead. R.D. Burman, my favourite composer, is dead. Sahir Ludhianvi, my favourite lyricist, is dead. But what an immortal song they've left behind! -- Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi, yunhee nahin dil lubhata koi, jaane tu ya janena (tranlastion: Whether you know it or not, we do have a connection from the past, or else why should I like you?) The song is from Aa Gale Lag Jaa, and is sung in three different situations. I like all three versions, but the one I like best is the shortest one, that comes in the end, literally, because as soon as it ends, 'The End' comes on the screen. And in this version, it is not Shashi Kapoor, the hero, who sings it but Shatrughan Sinha, who plays a small role. Listen to Kishore's voice, and you will fall in love with him, S.

But who am I to tell you about Kishore's voice? Have you not heard Aanewala Pal from Gol Maal? And have you ever wondered, why we never tire of Gol Maal? I think the directors of those days were more sensitive. And they were dedicated. Moreover, they did not work at the point of this dangerous weapon called hype. Hype fucks up everything, I tell you. Hype can draw 20,000 people to the theatres on day one, but can it make a movie last 20 years? Hype kills the craft. It is like going to bed with a woman who has very high expecations from you. No matter how much skilled a lover you are, you always wilt under expectations. Doctors call it performance anxiety. Whereas, when you go to bed with a woman who has never had sex or has not had sex in a long, long time, she is happy with whatever you give her and you find your flag suddenly flying high. The idea is to give the people what they want, and not to rouse their expectations through hype and then falling flat. Do you get what I mean, S? Am sure you do, that is why I am writing to you.

You know, I liked Rang De Basanti. I watched the movie in a theatre in Trivandrum, on the opening day. The movie haunted me for days: it stayed with me. But it is not the kind of movie I would like to watch again and again. But Gol Maal I would. Amar Akbar Anthony I would. Similarly, I like the songs from Life in a Metro or Honeymoon Travels. They are nice songs. So good. But if I was exiled to an island, and was given the choice of taking only one music CD with me, I would take the combo of Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin/Yaadon Ki Baaraat.

Have you ever wondered why their songs are still so fresh? So sparkling fresh? They were made more than thirty years ago, when you and I were possibly roaming around naked in the house, unaware of the social requirement that genitals are meant to be hidden. Today, you will find picturisation of these songs inane when you watch Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin. But the songs themselves? Chand mera dil, chandni ho tum, chand se hai door, chandni kahaan... At school, when I was in class three or four, we had a teacher, Mrs Nath, who sang this song beautifully during one of the free periods. Mrs Nath, at the time, must have been nearly forty-five. Ideally, she should have sung something from the Rafi-Shankar-Jaikishan era. But she chose this song. It was the magic of R.D., darling. It was the magic of R.D.

It was also R.D. who made the song you were mentioning the other day, Ghum hai kisi ke pyaar mein... Wow, what a song that is. I've seen that song a countless times on Chitrahaar, but I never thought of its as 'wow' till you reminded me of it the other day. Fuck, I had forgotten about it! You know, that song is from Rampur Ka Laxman, and picturised on Randhir Kapoor and Rekha. Now that's one thing about Randhir Kapoor. People may debate about his acting skills, though in my opinion he wasn't such a bad actor. He was good, actually, if not brilliant. Oh what the hell, he was actually brilliant, considering that he did not have the looks or the voice or the style that an actor was supposed to have at the time, and yet he pulled off some great movies. But why I consider him lucky is that he got some of the best songs R.D. Burman and Kishore Kumar made together. Really, the best songs. Be they the songs of Jawaani Diwani or Biwi O Biwi. S, I beg you to listen to the songs of Biwi O Biwi, especially Waqt se pehle and Meri bulbul.

When the Express office shifted from Mount Road to Ambattur, these two songs set my mood for the long journey from T. Nagar. I listened to them on my earphones, because my driver, Suresh, would play Tamil songs on the car stereo. There were days when he played Hindi songs too because he liked certain Hindi songs. He was, for example, a great fan on the song, Kitne bhi tu karle sitam... from Sanam Teri Kasam. He once asked me, while the song was playing, "Sir, nalla voice. Who is the singer?" Asha Bhosle, I told him. He liked another song, "Humen aur jeene ki chaahat na hoti..." from Agar Tum Na Hote, a song that got Kishore Kumar a Filmfare award. Sadly, he never asked me who the singer or the composer was.

The fact that Suresh, a lower middle-class Tamil boy barely twenty-three years old, liked these songs: that speaks volumes about the music created by R.D. And mind you, he didn't play these songs to please me. Whenever he had to please me, he would play two Tamil songs which he knew I liked: Raja Raja Cholanna and Guruvayurappa, both Illayaraja's compositions and both equally mind-blowing. He, himself, was crazy about Kitne bhi tu karle sitam... Ah, the magic of R.D.

Every child grows up with lullabies and songs, but there comes a time when he or she actually registers the tune of a song and then goes on to remember it for the rest of his or her life. That becomes the 'first song' of your life. Going by what my parents say, my 'first song' was Kanchi re kanchi re from Hare Rama Hare Krishna. According to them, that's the first song I danced to as an infant. But I think my 'first song' was the title song of Yaadon Ki Baraat. I was barely four years old then, and we had gone to some town near Calcutta to attend the wedding of a colleague of my father. My father himself was twenty-nine or thirty then.

I hardly have any memories of that trip to Calcutta, but I remember that particular night somewhat vividly: a lot of men, including my father, stood by the roadside, perhaps taking a smoke break while the wedding was being conducted in one of the homes. My father doesn't smoke or drink (shame, his son is now exactly the opposite), but he stood there on the pavement along with the other men and me. One man, wearing a white kurta and pyjama, sat on the pavement like they sit by the beach when they are defecating. He was smoking a cigarette and singing, "Yaadon ki baaraat nikli hai aaj dilke dwaare..." -- The procession of memories is flowing out of the heart. The song stuck. That was the beginning of my musical journey, S. Come home someday, and you will see what a dictator I am when it comes to being a DJ. I wouldn't bother whether you've eaten or not, but I will make sure you've listened to all the songs I want you to listen.

That's one thing I noticed about myself, S. People, when they get drunk in the company of a woman, usually paw or prey. I only plead. Plead them to listen to the procession of my memories -- my yaadon ki baaraat.

So come home someday. But wait a minute, won't you like to take a look at the picture below? I stole it from the internet. It is worth watching. It belongs to the era when singers and musicians were not jealous of each other. I think it belongs to the late 1940s or, at the most, early 1950s. The camaraderie lasted well into the 1970s, which was our decade, and therefore the magic. By the 1990s, it had become a dog-eat-dog world, S. That's how it is even today. Now look carefully at the picture. It is a rare one. I can spot at least four great singers: there is Rafi right in the middle and right above his right shoulder is Talat Mehmood. The man on extreme right is Mukesh, and right above Mukesh is Kishore Kumar. S, do you see even a hint of arrogance in any of their faces? They all look dashing, but arrogant? I suspect there are many more well-known names in this group picture, but I am afraid I can't recognise them. Though I suspect that the man standing, second from left, is C Ramachandra. Look at it carefully, S. You won't see such pictures often.

Raja

Barely two kilometres from our house in Kanpur was a mill called the J.K. Rayon. The tall chimneys of the mill, the sound of the hooter at the beginning and end of every shift, workers trooping across the playground in front of our house in groups while on their way to the mill or way home – these are landmarks of my childhood.

In that playground we played cricket during winter afternoons – the neighbourhood boys, irrespective of which school they went to. Someone would own the bat, someone would contribute the ball, and someone else would bring the stumps. Pads and gloves were a luxury and largely unnecessary. The umpiring would be done someone who had done with batting for the day, even though his decisions would often be overruled by the ‘third umpire’ – one of the neighbourhood uncles closely following the game standing at the gate of his house.

It was at this playground that I first met Raja. He was about my age, which was around twelve at that time, and he studied in a Hindi-medium school, which wasn’t – and still isn’t – a matter of great pride. His father worked in J.K. Rayon, most likely as a lower-rung employee, considering that Raja wore the same shirt for weeks, maybe months. We never got around to becoming friends, but there were times when we would chat after the sun had set. Deep in my heart, I envied him, and maybe even hated him, for being a good bowler. Then one day, J.K. Rayon closed down. I was fourteen then, studying in class nine. The closure was sudden, because only a year before, when we were in class eight, we – as students – were taken on a guided tour of J.K Rayon so that we got an idea how a mill functions. Suddenly, the hooters stopped calling. Workers no longer trooped across the playground. There was total silence. It was like being in a theatre without the front-benchers.

I was myself at a crucial stage of my life then: board exams were barely a year away, and I had started taking tuitions to strengthen my grip on mathematics and physics. Every morning I would wake up at five and walk to the tuition master’s home, which was not very far. But on winter mornings, under the blanket of darkness and dense fog, it was a challenge to navigate even half a kilometre of familiar territory. Worse, there were street dogs to contend with. On the way back, however, there would be daylight and the fog would have cleared a little.

It was on one of these mornings that I noticed, on the same playground, a familiar figure emerging out of the fog on a bicycle. He was calling out, in a lyrical manner, “Andey! Double roti!” Andey means eggs, while ‘double roti’, in Hindi, means bread. To protect himself against the biting cold, he was wearing a muffler and a pair of woollen gloves, and his bicycle had a large tin box saddled to it. “Andey! Double roti!” he called again. It was Raja. Our eyes met, but he promptly looked away, as if he did not know me. Subsequently, I tried not crossing his path while on my way back from the tuition classes, but he was always there, desperately trying to sell bread and eggs to families that were just waking up on a chilly morning to wonder what’s for breakfast. After a point, he did not matter to me, and neither did I to him. He had become a seasoned hawker. He was no longer the bowler I envied. All this, because the mill his father worked in had closed down. Since he was the most able-bodied in the family, it fell upon him to sell bread in order to earn the daily bread.

I have always wondered if there would have been trade unions or calls for strikes had this been a woman’s and not a man’s world. Had managements and trade unions been headed by women, I am sure they would have arrived at a mutual compromise during standoffs to ensure that the kitchen fires kept burning. Women rarely talk big or raise slogans: they are always in touch with what you call the ground reality.

Success

I got married in Calcutta in April 2006. Within two months, I went back on a short visit, during which I spent a few hours at Belur Math, the home of Swami Vivekananda. I distinctly remember being overcome by a sense of calm as I stood there, watching the Ganga flow with dignified silence. And then it all came back to me, like a flashback.

It was in the summer of 2004 that I began my journey into self-discovery in the real sense, on the banks of the Ganga. The route was sex. I was in Uttar Pradesh at the time, covering elections, and in the process spending two long, lonely and sexless months roaming its dusty towns. There was a brief respite from the loneliness when I caught up with my friend Sanjay at Ayodhya. There, one morning, after attending L.K. Advani's press conference, the two of us went to the makeshift Ram temple that sits on the rubble of Babri masjid, and then to the banks of the Sarayu river.

Legend has it that Lord Rama drowned himself in this river. Sanjay and I stood there in silence for a while, and that's when I noticed her. She was good-looking, and must not have been more than thirty years old. Accompanied by another woman, perhaps a relative, she emerged out of the river. They walked into a thatched shed, which seemed to be a changing area. There, this woman first got rid of her wet blouse, and then took her sweet time changing. All along, her wet breasts hung loose, glistening under the morning sun. The other woman, the relative, looked at her in shock. But she simply didn't acknowledge that look of shock and went about the elaborate process of changing while being topless. Little did she know -- or maybe she did -- that a tornado was building up inside me.

Advani's rath proceeded to Bihar, Sanjay returned to Delhi. I came back to Kanpur. I was alone again. Alone and tormented. I decided: I'd done enough of election reporting, and that I must now take a short break, maybe in Haridwar. Why Haridwar? Because it was cooler, it was in the lap of Himalayas, and it had a river where people bathed.

So one April morning, I arrived in Haridwar, a cool breeze brushing past my cheeks as I took a cycle-rickshaw from the station in search of a hotel. It seemed the Gods had decided to favour me: that day happened to be the day of ardh kumbh, of half kumbh, an extremely auspicious day to take a dip in the Ganga. That afternoon, sitting on the steps of Har-Ki-Pauri, the ghat, I had my fill of breasts. Breasts that were big and small, young and old, rich and poor, sophisticated and rustic, urban and rural. The tornado had subsided. But another storm began to build up. It led me further up the Ganga.

I don't quite remember when that storm subsided, but it left me with a blog, On The Ganga Mail, a title that was inspired by this article I wrote for my paper. And thus began the journey of a man in search of himself who, night after night, would labour and transform his joys and agonies into words and sentences. And then, one day, the man got married and was suddenly at peace -- peace induced by the fact that he no longer returned to an empty home and therefore had no time to agonise over trivial things.

It was this peace that I experienced as I stood at Belur Math that morning, three years ago. I thought: my journey is the same as that of Ganga. It began with turbulence, in the Himalayas, and now it ends in such a serene manner in the plains of Bengal. Why can't Ganga Mail, the blog, be turned into a book so that this journey gets recorded for posterity?

I wrote to two publishers. One of them outrightly said, "We are not interested in publishing blogs. Please get back to us if you have a novel." Another hemmed and hawed, basically asking me to fuck off but not in so many words. I then showed my blog to the editor of a publishing house that brought out only academic books. The idea was to get an opinion. The editor, a young but highly talented man, wrote to me saying that while he liked what I wrote, it was highly unlikely that any publisher would ever touch it. Reason? I was not a big name and, therefore, nobody would be interested in the personal crap that I wrote. He was only speaking the truth, and I admired him for that.

Today, as a blogger, I am like an aspiring actor who hasn't gone beyond performing for himself in front on the bathroom mirror. I might be a great actor, but no director is going to come to my bathroom to see how well I act. I shall remain anonymous and die anonymous. But if I were to become a successful actor, then there would be people waiting outside my bathroom to record my performance in front of the mirror so that they could make documentaries or at least put the clips on Youtube. And mind you, the actor in me hasn't changed one bit: I am the same actor who once performed in front of the mirror and who is now delivering hits. It is success that makes people change the way they look at you. Which is fine. But the sad part is, while merit leads to success, success never looks at merit. It only look at names and faces that are already associated with success.

In 2006, London's Sunday Times sent out the opening chapter of V.S. Naipaul's 1971 Booker-winning In A Free State to 20 agents and publishers. Only the name of the author and the names of the principle characters were changed in the 'manuscript'. To the newspaper's great surprise, the 'manuscript' only got rejection slips! Not a single publisher touched it. Conversely, if the paper had sent out pages from the diary of a London teenager, passing it off as a journal that Naipaul had kept during his younger days, there would have been a minor riot among the same set of agents and publishers.

A friend of mine, who spent a few years in New York before returning to Chennai, was telling me a story the other day. In New York, as also in other Western cities, you find musicians (in India you'd equate them with beggars) who play in subways and pavements. People who have a few minutes to spare gather around these subway musicians for a while and then move on. If they feel generous, they drop a few coins into the open guitar or violin case. One day, a well-known musician decide to play in one of the subways. He played for a couple of hours but no one recognised him or bothered to stop. He was the same musician people would have paid hundreds of dollars to watch him perform, but he was right here, performing for free, in a subway but no one bothered to stop and listen. The logic is simple: if a musician is performing in a subway, he can't be great. Or, if a musician is great, he can't be performing in a subway. Conversely, get an Olympic wrestler and dress him up in a jacket and a bow tie and hand him a violin and ask him to wrestle with the instrument in an opera theatre, he'll most certainly be welcomed as the messiah of 'New Music.'

Success depends a lot on your coordinates. How to get to those coordinates -- that's the real success story. Everything falls into place after that.

Books, etc.

God bless this website, www.pustak.co.in. I discovered it four days ago and since then have already ordered four books:

1. Henry Miller on Writing
2. A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953
3. Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker, by Lillian Ross
4. Portrait of Hemingway, by Lillian Ross

Fortunately or unfortunately, ordering books on this site is so easy that I will now have to keep my credit card out of sight. What's more, the books are priced for the Indian pocket, which means it is as good as picking them up at Landmark, and yet you get books that are never likely to adorn the racks of an Indian bookshop. For books that should not have cost me Rs 600-700 at the local bookshop, I've paid up to Rs 1500-2000 while ordering them from Amazon. That's because Amazon charges you the original price printed on the back cover which is actually meant for the Western market (we Indians pay the price painted on the small sticker pasted by the local distributor), and also a hefty shipping fee.

Anyway, I'll now have to wait and see how soon the books arrive. It's been ages that I read a book cover to cover, and I can't wait to lay my hands on these. These are so my kind of books. Barring book no. 1, which was an impulsive purchase and which I suspect would be a compilation of Henry Miller's views on writing that are sprinkled across his books (all of which I have), I am really looking forward to the remaining three. God, please make time fly faster.

Ok, now coming to the point. A few years ago, I ordered a book from Amazon, Mr Shawn's New Yorker -- The Invisible Art of Editing, by Ved Mehta. It cost me a fortune, but who cares -- Ved Mehta is a writer I would like to imitate, and what better book than the one that describes his long innings at New Yorker, that too under the wings of Mr William Shawn. For the uninitiated, New Yorker is a magazine that every wordsmith should read, or at least be seen reading, at least the online edition. Now that sounds cheeky. Ok, let me put it this way: if you are a writer and if New Yorker chooses to publish your piece, you've earned the ticket to nirvana.

Mr Shawn was at the helm of same New Yorker for decades and, in the process, also the mentor of my favourite writer, Ved Mehta. I finished the rather voluminous book in a matter of days -- three days maybe. If you go by Mehta's book, Mr Shawn shines through as the perfect man there can ever be -- perfect editor, perfect husband, perfect father, perfect mentor and so on. There is so much perfection in the book that you begin to wonder: is Mr Shawn a man or an angel?

Somehow, I found it very difficult to swallow Mr Shawn's image in the book as Mr Perfect. A perfect man, in my eyes, is fictitious: his real place is in heaven, not on this earth. It's the imperfections that actually make a man and his existence worthwhile on this planet. And I kept wondering: how can Mr Shawn, the legendary editor of a magazine like New Yorker, be such a perfect human being?

The truth came tumbling out today, much to my gratification, as I placed the order for Lillian Ross' books. Ross is synonymous with New Yorker because of the pieces she has written for the magazine over the decades, and in the book In Here But Not Here, she tells the story of the life she shared for forty years with William Shawn, the legendary editor of the New Yorker.

Excerpts from the blurb that made me order the book:

"An enduring love between two people, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it," Ross says, "so I would have to say that I had an intrinsically normal life for over four decades with William Shawn. I have a lasting sense of the normalcy of it all. It was a normalcy that Bill Shawn was able to create for himself and for me against all normal odds."

William Shawn was married, yet he and Ross created a home together a dozen blocks south of the Shawns' apartment, raised a child, and lived discreetly. Their lives intertwined from the 1950's until Shawn's death, in 1992. Ross describes how they met and the intense connection between them; how Shawn worked with the best writers of the period; how, to escape their developing liaison, Ross moved to Hollywood-only to return to New York and their relationship. The book is a gem, an exquisitely told real-life story more potent than fiction.

I am now waiting for the book to read the juicy details. But my views stand vindicated: no man, or woman, can ever be perfect. In order to create, you need to be imperfect; if you are perfect, you are merely following the rules that have already been set and therefore impotent. After reading Mehta's account of Mr Shawn's life, I had begun to worship the legendary editor as well as feel sorry for him. But after reading the blurb of Ross' book on the website, I can now see myself putting my arm around Mr Shawn's ghost and telling him, "Mate, we are on the same boat. But mind teaching me some editing?"

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye

Something I first read way back in 1992. A poem by Leonard Cohen. Chanced upon it again, after almost 17 years. Looks like it's a season of departures and reunions:

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

-- Leonard Cohen

Life

Holding hands,
we walked into the arrival hall
smiling faces, welcome hugs
You'll like this place, you'd whisphered.

Now I look carefully:
tearful faces, farewell hugs
and you said I'll like this place?

You cheated me, my dear
When you held my hand, I thought
we were stepping into the arrival hall
But this is the departure lounge.

Rewriting

In 2001, immediately after I moved to Chennai, my daily evening routine would be like this: I would get out of office at around nine in the evening, buy a quarter bottle of rum on the way back, come home and make some rice and daal in the rice-cooker which my parents bought me, and then sit down with the rum to work on my 'novel'. It was a plot I had been nursing for a few years -- and which I still do -- and every evening, I would write a fresh opening. I was so obsessed with the opening paragraphs that I never got around to digging into the plot which, till date, remains a virgin.

After the night's writing, I would eat the rice and daal, still steaming hot, and read Somerset Maugham. There were nights when I would be so drunk that I would indulge in this quirk: I would look at the back cover and keep gazing at Maugham's hypnotic eyes, hoping they would come alive and give me some insight into the art of writing. So desperate I was, to be able to write well. The effort didn't pay off.

In October 2001, on the eve of Ayudha Pooja day, I sent my first three chapters along with a synopsis to a publisher, by courier and all, and a few weeks later, got an email saying they were pretty much packed for the season and would not be able to entertain my manuscript.

Now, as they, say, whatever happens, happens for the good. The other day, I found a copy of what I had sent to the publisher -- yellowing A4 prints, tucked away in a clipboard. I knew they must be around somewhere, but had never bothered to look. Then, the other day, looking for some old issues of GQ magazine, I found them. Reading what I had written almost eight years ago, I realised why it was rejected -- simple because it was written eight years ago. Even if the publishers, in a rare moment of gullibility, had decided to publish it then, I would have disowned the book today. So bad it was -- the art of telling a story in those three chapters. But at the time, I had thought of myself as a junior Maugham, who couldn't have been wrong. I had cursed the publishers when I got the rejection email.

This evening, I went through the yellowing printouts once again and decided to start the story afresh. I can do it now. There is a world of difference between the me of then and the me of now. Back then, I drank rum. Today, I drink whisky. Back then, I was a reporter. Today, I can tell stories. Back then, it was my burning ambition to be a published writer. Today, I have a book scheduled for publication.

Yet, there is something in that old manuscript which I will like to retain or which I will have to retain, for the simple reason that I cannot better it. It is those opening paragraphs. Which I wrote and rewrote week after week, drinking the rum and waiting for the rice and daal to be cooked. I am not saying it is a flawless piece of writing per se, but it is a flawless beginning as far as my 'novel' is concerned.

How come the opening became flawless when I found the rest of what I had written as crap? The answer is in rewriting. Rewriting is a ego-puncturing exercise, an exercise in self-education: each night, it tells you what a fool you've been the night before and that you can do better. Maybe, Somerset Maugham's gaze helped, after all.

Friendship

Now this is true friendship. Not that I didn't know. Three days before I wrote about my friend Sanjay, he had already written a poem to mark our reunion. And I didn't even know he had written it till last evening. Here goes:

Bondhu bollo, amar aathtirish (38), tor aathchollish (48)...
hotath pechhon phire dekhi, shey ekhono aathash (28)...
aachhe ekhno shei bhalobasha,
premer shei unmadona,
dekhi, ekhono du chokher kone chholchhol korche, duto chhotto chokher jol...
"Akhono tumi ki colourful ?" jigesh kore bondhur bou,
"Na, akhon aami black and white" -- kanchapaka chule aar gopey haath ghuriye bollam...
shotti, bocchor gulo kokhon jano beriye galo,
chuler rong bodle galo,
chosmataro power berechhey,
kintu, shey to bodlalona,
ekhono rod jola dupure
she roilo hoye aamar jiobner Ruby Ray...
monta akhono chhute beray shei maya mriger pechhone,
Hemantor gaan..."mon haralo, haralo mon haralo", ekhnono monta gun gun kore gaye...

A translation :

That day , my friend said, I am now 38, you are now 48...
Suddenly I looked back, he was still 28...
the love still lingered,
flames of friendship, still burning,
I could see, two little drops of tears, in corner of his eyes,
"Are you still colourful," asked my friend's wife
"No, now I am black and white," I pointed to my greying hair and moustache.
The years just passed by even before I could realise,
colour of my hair changed,
power of my spectacles went up...
But he never changed
Even today in this midday of my life
we remember Ruby Ray,
and our hearts still chase the illusionary deer
That Hemanta Kumar's song, "I lost my heart somewhere," the hearts still sing.

N.B. Ruby Ray is the muse in a famous Bengali song, Mone pore Ruby Ray, sung by R.D. Burman. The tune was also used by him for Meri bheegi bheegi si in Anamika.

My Friend Sanjay

Part of my youth made its journey in an aging Fiat, whose number plate began with the letters 'DIB'. The car belonged to Sanjay Basak. When I first met him, I was 27, he was 37. The place was Delhi. The year 1997.

I remember the first time I noticed him. I was standing with a bunch of fellow reporters at the Parliament House annexe. Some meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party was on. I saw a boyish-looking man, rather dashing, walk past along with a woman journalist. He ignored our group.

"Isn't that Sanjay?" asked one of the reporters in the group.
"Yes, who else?" said another.
"Then why did he ignore us?"
"Don't you see he has a woman for company? If he had stopped to say hello to us, he would have had to introduce her to all of us." Everybody laughed.

A few days later we were formally introduced. We must have met at the BJP headquarters, immediately after the 3 o' clock press briefing when reporters interact with each other socially over tea and snacks. That very moment, somehow, I knew we were going to be friends: I saw a bit of me in him, and a bit of him in me.

That was the time when the BJP was at the doorstep of power, and L.K. Advani had just embarked on his biggest rath yatra ever, and he was to tour the entire country on his motorised rath in a span of two months. The BJP had opened its purse strings, and journalists wanting to cover Advani's trip were being flown to whichever town or city they chose to report the rath yatra from.

If I had an editor who was kind, I could have easily travelled the length and breadth of the country at BJP's expense, that too by air, and that too when apex fares were unheard of. But my editor was anti-BJP then (only to do a U-turn a few years later) and, moreover, a hard taskmaster, who would rather see me generate special stories from Delhi than faxing a rehash of Advani's statements.

But I found myself on the plane to Calcutta once Advani began his tour of Marxist Bengal. It was unprecedented -- the leader of the saffron party taking his rath right into the red country -- and my boss relented. On the Indian Airlines flight to Calcutta, I had another reporter as co-passenger. That was Sanjay.

I distinctly remember being struck by the humidity of Calcutta the moment we stepped out of the airport. That was my first visit to Calcutta in 10 years. The last I had been there was in 1987, as a 17-year-old who was neither a boy nor a man. I also did not know then that nine years hence, Calcutta would be my hometown-in-law and that the same Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport would be almost my second home in that hometown-in-law.

My only hope in Calcutta back then was Sanjay, who knew the city like the back of his hand. But that sultry night, we tamely followed the local BJP workers to a hotel in College Street where we were to be put up. The room was air-conditioned, thank God. So lit up our cigarettes and opened our drinks and went to switch on the AC. That's when we found out that what seemed to be the AC was only the facade of an AC -- merely a showpiece to give an AC-look to the room. Fortunately, we also found out that quite a few reporter-friends from Delhi had also arrived in Calcutta and were staying in adjacent rooms. We called them over and had a party of sorts.

The next morning we drove down to the city of Burdwan (or Bardhaman), where Advani was supposed to arrive after touring Orissa and other parts of Bengal. Instead of waiting for him to reach Calcutta and make a speech, we wanted to catch him in action. We drove all day, first to Burdwan and then beyond: the idea was to run into his motorcade and then follow it back into Burdwan. It was a cloudy day and I remember stopping to buy a few bottles of beer and stopping again at a roadside dhaba which, obviously, served hot rice instead of hot rotis.

It had begun to drizzle by the time we left Burdwan behind and went ahead in search of Advani's oncoming rath. It was still raining and we were on a highway in the middle of lush green fields when we came face to face with the motorcade. It was Advani's secretary who was at the deck of the rath at the time. The moment the last of the cars had passed, we U-turned ours and followed the rath yatris right up to the PWD rest house where they were making a brief halt.

At the rest house, Sanjay and I caught up with the BJP guys from Delhi whom we knew. They were so gratified to see us (and also by the public response they got in Bengal) that they decided to let us stand behind Advani as he made his grand entry into the city of Burdwan on his rath. Trust me, that was the most adrenalin-pumping moment of my life. It is one thing to be a superstar and be mobbed by fans, but this was a different ballgame. Imagine people lining on the road for hours in the drizzle just to get a glimpse of you, and once you show up, they behave as if they've seen God. They cheer, they cry out, they throw gifts at you. Since we stood behind Advani, we were also part-recipients of the adulation, albeit by default.

When you are an actor, people know that you can at the most entertain them. But when you are a popular politician, as Advani was at least at the time, they believe you have the power to rewrite their destinies. They can do anything for you.

Anyway, the BJP did not last long in power. But my friendship with Sanjay did. It almost did not, actually. Months after I moved to Chennai in 2001, I got an e-mail from a common friend Palash, who said, "Sanjay has blood cancer." I was shattered. I did not have the courage to call Sanjay. I chose to drink myself silly for two nights. What would I tell him if I called him, "So buddy, you are leaving?"

Fortunately, it wasn't blood cancer. Sanjay recovered. I met him during my subsequent trips to Delhi, and privately, we would go down memory lane: the kind of stuff we did together when I was in Delhi too, the car with the number plate "DIB" being the vehicle to pleasure-hunting. The pleasure-hunting was not always pleasurable: one night the car repeatedly broke down while we were on our way to a date of sorts. Two new-found women friends, supposedly respectable but -- till then -- unknown to us, were waiting for us at their home. No mobile phones back then, and the car kept breaking down and I had to push it each time it stopped. Fortunately, the car gave no trouble starting when we eventually escaped from those women, upon discovering that they were not so respectable after all, and found a sizeable crowd from the neighbourhood waiting to confront us at the parking lot.

While our individual adventures were runaway successes -- his more incredible and durable than mine -- our joint adventures always ended as comic failures. The last time I met Sanjay was on the eve of 2004 elections, when we took the train from Delhi to Kanpur and then took a car to follow Advani's rath all the way to Ayodhya (yes, Advani again!). At the hotel in Ayodhya, we invited a French journalist to our room for a drink: she had been accompanying us all the way from Delhi, and one could see she badly needed a drink. Just when she had put her feet on the bed and was beginning to savour her drink, others started trooping in. What was supposed to a be a quiet evening ended as a party of sorts.

So that was the last time I met Sanjay, exactly five years ago. And now, on my recent trip to Delhi, I met him again. But not before I almost lost him once again. Exactly a year ago, while I was in Jolarpet in connection with my book, I got a call from a friend that Sanjay was in a critical state. He had, apparently, contracted a strange kind of malaria during his stay with naxalites in Chhattisgarh and doctors in Delhi had given him only 48 hours to live. I instantly called up Palash, the common friend who had told me about the blood cancer episode years ago, and asked him to find out more and keep me posted. I was certain that I wouldn't see Sanjay again.

Life is strange. Sanjay lived. Palash died -- in an accident -- just a few months after. And it was Sanjay's turn to give me an account of Palash's funeral.

When I met Sanjay two weeks ago, I felt as if I had never left Delhi. Only that the bag of his anecdotes/escapades was now so full that it was on the verge of bursting. He is 48, after all. But am sure Sanjay's bag is made of stretchable fabric -- he can easily squeeze in two dozen more personal anecdotes that are bound to accumulate in the next ten years. And maybe then he will retire?

But it's not just my admiration for his ability to charm woman easily that sustains our friendship. There is a lot more, which can be seen if only one scratches the surface. So here is your chance to scratch the surface. You will not only understand my friend Sanjay better but also me and my love for him. Meanwhile, here's the two of us, in a picture taken on March 14:

Sandhya

You must meet my friend Sandhya, the karmic bum.

Playboy, Anyone?

Someone just left this message on my Orkut scrapbook:

kriya:
Require young playboys.interested age between 20-30 and height above 5'5" can mail their details with their contact number to kriyakapoorrr@gmail.com.will revert back.
Experience atleast once.
Earning 25000 per day.

Kriya, I regret to inform you that I've long crossed the age limit.

Those Days

Wrote this three years ago. Don't know what made me go back to it today.

Wife And I

Very often, and especially of late, I find one particular question thrown at me. The people who throw the question are mostly friends, well-meaning ones at that. And the question is: "Does your wife read your blog?"

The answer is yes.

By the time I finish writing a post, it is usually three or four in the morning, and when I wake up, wife would be already at work. I call her up the first thing and even before she can make the routine queries ("Did you have the tea?" or "Did the maids show up?"), I beg her to read the post I'd written the night before and give me feedback. Really, when it comes to family and friends, you have to beg to be read. As the day progresses, my wife finds time to read my posts, and the verdict, invariably, is: "Bhaloi hoyechhe, bor (It reads well, dear husband)."

When I tell those well-meaning friends that my wife does read my blog, their next question is, "And she does not say anything?" Perhaps they expect that each time I write a post, I am actually tied to the bed post the morning after and spanked brutally.

Quite a few of them admire me for showing the courage to write what I write. Once, in the presence of my wife, a fellow blogger-cum-friend commented: "I must say that you are really courageous." To which my wife said, "It has nothing to do with his courage, it's just that I am cool." Touch wood. I know women who -- had they been my wife -- would have smashed the laptop and the modem so that I could never blog again.

But my wife, instead of being an impediment to my blogging, discovered the power of blogging herself. Today, she has a pretty impressive blog and a dedicated fan-following. Our styles might not match, but we both work hard when it comes to writing a post. The only difference is that while she writes during the day, I write only at nights. And while she tells stories, I sell thoughts. To each his own.

In any case, I am what I am. The train called Ganga Mail began its journey long before I got married, and there is no reason why the train (of thoughts) should change its course just because I am married now. Beliefs are beliefs: you stand by them, irrespective of your location or gender or marital status.

But at the same time, just because you believe in something does not mean you are obliged to follow it in real life. For example, I believe smoking is bad for health, yet in real life, I end up smoking two dozen cigarettes a day. So there doesn't have to be a connection between me, the blogger, and me, the person. As a blogger, I am like the neighbourhood chaatwallah, who sells paani puris to spice up other people's evenings but is himself never seen partaking of any of his own paani puris. But does that mean a chaatwallah never craves to have paani-puri at all? And if yes, what does he do? Does he eat his own stuff on the sly, or does he walk over to a fellow chaatwallah to satiate himself?

No easy answers to that. But then, whoever said finding answers is easy? This blog has been searching for them for long, but in vain. In a world full of hypocrites, answers are bound to be elusive; and as long as they are elusive, this blog is going to thrive.

Song Of Silence

Smoke wafting up from my fingers
Scotch waiting at the elbow
We sat in the gentle glow
feasting on silence

She bared her soul
I bared mine
And yet
we had not spoken a word

We held hands, hugged tight
kissed passionately
And yet
we had not touched each other

Desires burned
fulfillment glowed
as we sat listening
to the song of silence.

Blogging And Dreaming

...So that night when it suddenly began to rain soon after they had ended up doing what they shouldn't have, considering that she was another man's wife, he was surprised as well as relieved. Do you hear that? It's raining," he whispered to her. She didn't respond. She lay clinging to him, absent-mindedly drawing invisible geometrical figures on his bare chest. "Do you hear that? It's raining," he said again. This time she looked up at him shyly, her face glowing in the darkened room. She smiled at him and nodded. They locked their lips and bodies once again and rolled over, trampling upon the guilt-bug that was lurking on the bed.

The Guilt Bug is the first short story I've ever attempted. If at all it can be called a short story, that is. It's barely 1,500 words long, and ends rather abruptly. But am glad that I wrote it because now I know I can do it, having made several false starts -- in the last 10 years -- for novels that have remained in my head.

The first few paragraphs of Guilt Bug were also meant to be the opening of a novel I've had in my head for a long, long time now. They were written exactly five years ago, in a hotel in the small but charming town of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. I was on a two-month assignment to cover the 2004 Lok Sabha elections in the state, and Rampur was the last town on my itinerary.

The hotel, if my memory serves right, was called Delite. One cloudy afternoon, after roaming the town on a cycle rickshaw and getting people's views on the contest between two women, actress Jaya Prada and the widow of the former nawab of Rampur, I retired to the hotel and sent the boy to get a quarter bottle of whisky. After pouring myself a drink, I switched on the TV and began watching the news. The breaking news of the day was the mad scramble among sadhus to take a dip in the Ganga. It was an auspicious day, I gathered from the news, and hence the scramble.

Suddenly it struck me: "It's an auspicious day. Why don't you begin your book today?" So I switched off the TV and reached for my notebook and wrote these lines. Somehow, I couldn't proceed beyond the point when the two characters make love and crush the guilt-bug lurking on the bed. I had the basic story in my head, but I found myself impotent when it came to fleshing out the skeleton. So I left it at that and returned to the election campaign.

Then one day, just the other day, I came across those handwritten lines -- a piece of paper neatly folded and forgotten inside a notebook. Life was pumped into the flattened, bloodless bug and the remaining story was written in about two hours. I had intended to make the story longer, but that night I was running short on patience and alcohol. So I decided to wind it up as quickly as possible, and therefore, the abrupt ending. I was more eager to see if I could actually write a story -- from the start to finish. And I was glad that I could finish it -- so glad that I actually sent the story to New Yorker magazine. In my mildly drunken state, I believed I had written a gem of a story. Thankfully, the sun always rises sooner than later to sober you down. So the story got published instantly the morning after, without any evaluation, in my home publication called The Ganga Mail.

But come to think of it, it isn't a bad story that I've written. Really. When I read it a couple of times after writing it, I could actually visualise the couple in the bedroom -- the unsaid words creating the atmosphere more than those said. It's actually a minor achievement for someone who, till five years ago, didn't know how to proceed from point A to point B in a story without losing his own interest or making his reader lose interest. But then, five years ago, I did not blog. Blogging helps. Imagine a bunch of kids tugging at the trouser of an old man, "Grandpa, grandpa, please tell us a story." The old man pauses and clears his throat and begins, "Ok, once upon a time, there was a king..." And the kids sit in rapt attention. Blogging is a similar throat-clearing exercise. It teaches you to synthesise your innermost thoughts and translate them into words and tell a story that people will listen to.

Someday -- hopefully someday soon -- Guilt Bug would be a full-length novel. Since the story breeds on human unhappiness, it shouldn't be difficult to expand its length. Unhappiness is something that is not difficult to find at all: it is as common as the air we breathe. If anything, it is happiness that is elusive: you only find it in communist countries like North Korea or Cuba, where you are told, "Better be happy or else..." Come to think of it, most of us live in imaginary dictator-ruled communist countries, where you have to appear to be happy all the time, where even raising an eyebrow can be considered an act of defiance and attract censure. But raising an eyebrow is also the first step towards freedom, and I hope my novel raises a million eyebrows. As of now, though, the novel is only a dream -- only that the dream, this time, is not beyond touching distance.

Drinking In Delhi

Location: Roshanara Club, North Delhi.
Occasion: Twenty20 match between Roshanara Club and Teachers, the whisky brand.
Result: Since Teachers was a participant as well as one of the sponsors, whisky flowed like water that evening.

The Guilt Bug

"You know something," she said, "whenever it rains all of a sudden, something good happens to me."

"Really?"

"When the postman came with the appointment letter for this job, it had just rained that afternoon."

"And you started believing in it?"

"No, wait. Not just that. Many years ago, dad was in hospital. He had a heart attack. We were in Chhattisgarh then. There was only one small hospital there, a government hospital. Doctors said the only way to save him was to fly him to Delhi. How we managed to get into the plane is another long story, but the moment we landed in Delhi, it began to rain. And doctors in Delhi refused to believe that he had had a heart attack. He was perfectly fine."

"And you started believing in it?"

"Don't make fun of it," she playfully punched his arm.


So that night when it suddenly began to rain soon after they had ended up doing what they shouldn't have, considering that she was another man's wife, he was surprised as well as relieved.

Do you hear that? It's raining," he whispered to her. She didn't respond. She lay clinging to him, absent-mindedly drawing invisible geometrical figures on his bare chest.

"Do you hear that? It's raining," he said again. This time she looked up at him shyly, her face glowing in the darkened room. She smiled at him and nodded. They locked their lips and bodies once again and rolled over, trampling upon the guilt-bug that was lurking on the bed.

When he woke up, he found her arm around him. She was wide awake. Their cheeks were touching and her big, beautiful eyes were fixed at him. The gaze, at any other time of the day, would have made him feel smug. But right now it unnerved him.

"You are up already?" he asked.

"I didn't sleep at all."

"Why?"

"Because I was busy looking at you."

"Come on," he blushed. "What's the time now?"

"Wait," she said and reached for her mobile phone that was lying behind her. In the process, she let him have a good look at her breasts, something that she had refused outright the night before. She had made it clear that she would remove her clothes only if the lights were off, or else he could forget about the whole thing. So they had spent the entire evening in near darkness, guided by the dim light emanating from the next room. But now, bare under the streaming sunlight, she made no attempt to cover herself.

"Seven-twenty," she said. As she checked the time, he couldn't help notice that the phone showed fourteen missed calls. She pressed the key to find out who all might have called her, and they all turned to be from one number, identified as 'Hubby.' From the corner of her eye she noticed he was watching, and she quickly pressed the 'exit' button and flung the phone away.

"Why didn't you answer his calls?" he asked.

"Because I didn't want to. That's why I kept the phone on silent mode."

"But won't he be worried? You've been missing for the night."

"I want him to worry. I have lost count of the nights I worried about him."

"So you want to get even with him."

"Yes, can't I?"

"Using me as the tool?"

"Shut up, I love you. If I had to sleep with someone just to get even, I would've done that long ago. Do you think there is any dearth of men?"

"I didn't mean that way."

She now pulled up a sheet and covered herself. He got up and walked, naked, to the door to collect the morning's newspapers. The only other flat on that floor was mostly locked, so there was no problem opening the door a little while naked and stretching the hand out to pull in the small bundle of newspapers. He got seven newspapers, one of them being the newspaper he worked for. A part of his job was to read through the other six papers the first thing in the morning and find out if his paper had missed any news and then scan his own paper to look for errors.

He slapped the bundle next to her. She lay there motionless, her gaze fixed at the ceiling. He didn't feel like indulging her. He put on his clothes and went to the kitchen to make tea. In the fridge, he found three eggs. So while the water boiled, he chopped an onion and two green chillies and made an omelette. And while the tea leaves infused, he toasted four pieces of bread. He carried the breakfast tray and placed it on top of the pile of newspapers. She was still looking at the ceiling.

"Look," he said, "I have never done this even for my wife. Do you mind getting up and having this?"

"Why, do you think you are doing me a big favour?"

"Not a favour. I am just being nice. Now please get up."

She sat up, holding the sheet tightly around her throat so that it didn't come off.
"What's this fuss about? I have seen you naked. Now what's the big deal?"

"Oh, shut up! You haven't see me naked."

"I have."

"No, you haven't."

"But I have."

"Ok, whatever. Where's the ketchup?"

When he got back from the kitchen, she was not there on the bed. He heard water running in the bathroom. He lit a cigarette and drank his tea. But hers was getting cold, and that was now irritating him. He rarely made tea, not even for himself, and now that he had presented an entire breakfast on the tray, she chose to go to the bathroom. Couldn't she have gone to the bathroom before, or a little later? When the bathroom door opened, she emerged fully clad, just like she was the evening before, and sat in a corner of the bed in a dignified manner.

"Could you pass me my plate, please?" she said. She smelt of his soap.

"But the tea has gone cold."

"Oh is it? Don't bother, I can't drink it hot anyway."

"Are you sure?"

"I told you, don't bother."

"Are you pissed off about something?"

"Pissed off? Whatever for? All men are the same."

"All men? But what did I do?"

"You did nothing. When did I ever say you did anything?"

"But you sound angry."

"Not at all," she said, as she took a bite of the bread and omelette. "Why should I
be angry? You men are the same."

Since she was fully clothed now, he suddenly felt like disrobing her and making love to her once again. But he didn't have the courage. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, in a ladylike fashion, eating her breakfast. He tried arousing her by placing his foot on her right shoulder and ticking her ear with his toes.

"Hello! What do you think you are doing?" she snapped at him, shaking his leg off. "Can't you see I'm eating?"

He felt a bit embarrassed and withdrew his leg. "I am sorry. Just that I was overcome by affection."

"Affection, my foot! All you men want is sex."

"Why do you keep saying 'You men'? I don't know about the other men in your life, but I certainly was not keen on the sex part."

"Oh yeah? And you want me to believe that?"

"I swear on God."

"You don't have to say anything. I know what you mean. I know you men."

"You are getting me wrong," he said.

"I'm getting you right."

"But what did I do? Did I do or say something to piss you off?"

"Nothing. It's just that I love my husband."

"Then why didn't you take his calls? He kept calling the whole night"

"That's a personal matter."

He saw her off at the elevator and said, "Bye, Meenakshi." Only last evening, she had told him, "Get used to calling me Meenu."

Problems

We lie almost every day. You, me, all of us, even those who claim that they never lie at all. If you are wondering how, then this is how it is:

"Hi, how are you?"
"I'm fine."

Only after answering the question do you realise that you have just lied. You are not actually fine. You had a fight with your spouse. Your child is unwell. Your job is on the line. You are worried about money -- where is the next instalment going to come from? You are unable to find a match for your daughter.

In short, there is something that makes you feel miserable sometime or the other. And yet to smile and say, "I'm fine." What a lie. When I have this how-are-you question thrown at me every morning and evening, especially after I sign on to g-talk, I wonder if I should unburden my mind share the trouble that's weighing me down. Then I realise, what's the point? The other person will just be nice and patient with me and make sympathetic noises, and that does not really solve my problem. So I end up saying, "I'm fine, what about you?"

We are all people with problems. That's one thread that binds humanity -- problems. It's not surprising, therefore, that Paris Review, which has published some of the best anthologies in the world, also came up with an anthology titled, People With Problems.

What sets apart one human from the other is how they deal with their problems. Someone's child dies and he becomes a mental wreck or turns to god; while another recognises that death is inevitable and till such time it comes to claim you, life has to go on. The latter, in my eyes, is a true yogi, because he recognises facts and does not take refuge in false faith.

Kabir Bedi is one man I admire. I have never written about him in my posts, but if there is a man I would like to be, that is Kabir Bedi. There are many men who are tall and handsome and well-sculpted, but this man is also erudite, charming, suave and has a philosophical air about him. Shobha De, in her autobiography, made fun of this philosophical side, which she believed was assumed. But I, as a lay viewer/watcher, believe that this is the side of Kabir Bedi that illuminates his persona and makes him so irresistible.

Anyway, coming to the point. The other night I was watching clips of Riz Khan's interview with Kabir for Al Jazeera channel on Youtube. One must watch the grace with which he answers the question about how he dealt with his wife's and son's death, one shortly after the other. Without losing any of his charm in front of the camera, even though one could see his eyes quickly travelling back in time, he effectively drives home the point that one has no choice but to accept the fact that life goes on.

I think the thought of mortality is the biggest source of unhappiness. And when I say mortality, I don't our own mortality, but that of our near and dear ones. That's something that keeps us on our toes throughout the lifetime, even though we know we can do zilch about it. The thought of poverty is the second-biggest source of unhappiness: what if I am left with no money tomorrow? What will I eat?

And when the combined fear of mortality and poverty grips you, then you are as good as dead, unless, of course, you understand that life must go on and you must make the most of it as long as you are breathing. Most of us do that, actually, but only instinctively and not with a sense of awareness. But then, if you start doing things with awareness and not instinctively, then you become a yogi and are no longer a mere mortal.

Come to think of it, it is the acknowledgment of the simplest things in life that distinguishes a yogi from a mere mortal. The yogi knows that nothing is permanent -- not life, not money, not relationships. He knows that everyone has to die one day, including the near and dear ones. So why get worked up if they are dying? It's like the last day at college: people have to part ways, because you can't stay in college all the time. If anything is permanent, that's you, your own self. And if you keep digging into it, you will find God. And once you find God, does anything else matter? Suddenly you find yourself on an elevated seat from where you watch the world like a theatre. At times you are so moved by the plight of an actor that you come to his rescue and perform a miracle. That's a yogi.

The mere mortal, as in the bhogi, knows these things too. But he, like an ostrich, refuses to acknowledge them. He somehow believes that he is entitled to be insulated from the vicissitudes of life, so he runs from temple to temple, asking for infinite money, infinite fame, and infinite addition to the lifespan of people dear to him. And when he realises that nothing is infinite, he is heartbroken and crushed. He becomes a person who has a problem. Like you and me.

The answer to all our problems is simple: break free of all attachments. According to me, happiest is the man who has no family or friends or relatives, and who lives on the pavement and fills his stomach with the bread thrown at him by a passerby. He is a man without worries: he has no bills to pay, he has no family to feed, he has no one to shed a tear for and, above all, he has no fear for death.

Most of us fear death not because we are scared of dying (because most often, death doesn't give us a chance to think), but because we wonder how our near and dear ones would react if we were to die. We worry about how they are going to cope with it, and therefore we are scared of dying.

Ah, why such morbid thoughts. Let's talk about the state of elevation and happiness. And some of these could be achieved if you read Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India. In the book, written in the early 20th century, Brunton narrates his encounters with many Indian saints, including Ramana Maharishi. And almost all of them told him the basic thing: "Before you seek answers to other questions, first look into yourself and find out who you are."

Now that makes life so easy. Who are we? If you think hard, the first answer that comes to your mind is that we are mere toys at the hands of a bigger, unseen force. And that unseen force has the power to fuck up our lives at any point of time. But till such time the unseen force decides to do that, why not live life to the fullest -- that's the only thing in our power. And once we exert that power, we just might bring the unseen power to its knees. In that sense, it is not really a lie to say, "I'm fine."

Delhi

"Naukri ke interview ke liye aaye ho (have you come for a job interview)?" asked the Jat autorickshaw driver, as he dropped me in front of PTI Building on Parliament Street in Delhi. I nodded: I had cleared the written test, and was now going to appear for the interview that would decide my future. If selected, I would be joining Press Trust Of India, the country's top news agency. More importantly, I would be living in Delhi, the so-called Mecca of journalism. "Koi nahin, ho jayega tumhara (don't worry, you will get through)," the driver said rather seriously, as if he was friends with the board members.

The interview got over. I had no clue whether I was in or rejected. I came out and bought a cigarette lighter from a hawker who had spread out his wares next to the building. Before lighting the cigarette, I looked at the lighter suspiciously, wondering whether it would last more than a couple of days. The hawker read my mind. "Not to worry," he said, "if you have a problem, bring it when you come here next time." Next time? I did not tell him that there might not be a next time.

But I was back in Delhi within weeks, this time for good. And that morning, when I had a quick smoke before I reported for work at PTI, the blue cigarette-lighter was still working. It is amazing that I should still remember the colour, even though that's the most irrelevant feature of a five-rupee lighter.

Thus began the journey of a 23-year-old man from Kanpur, in a city which belonged to no one in particular, but the high and the mighty belonged to it. Till then, Khushwant Singh was my god. I had read a bit of Shobha De: or did I read about her? I had a copy of Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, but never got down to reading it. Till then, I had not had a woman boss, and dreaded the thought of having one: blame it on small-town mentality. I had never seen a woman smoke or wearing short skirts, except in the movies. I had never seen men and women -- rather boys and girls -- putting their hands around each other and walking on the streets. I smoked less than 10 cigarettes a day, and drank once in a blue moon (each time, I only threw up). I did not suffer from hypochondria. My parents were young then: father was 50, and mother 42. The year was 1994. I landed in Delhi with a blue VIP suitcase, packed with a dozen shirts and half a dozen trousers -- all stitched by the neighbourhood tailor.

My maternal grandparents lived in Delhi, so place was not a problem. And my grandfather was a cool person in many ways: he dug out one of his old ashtrays and gave it to me. Twenty-three years before that, he had given me my name. Then my grandmother: she would stay up all night till I got back home so that she could re-heat the food. But their affection was smothering me. After playing the son for 23 years, I did not wish to spend my days in Delhi playing the grandson. I wanted to be free. Fortunately, I knew someone in Delhi. She was my age, and her kindness matched her beauty. In hindsight, I think we were in love with each other, but at the time, she was being just a friend, rather a mother. Holding on to her fingers, I explored my Delhi. There was not much time left: she was to leave in a few weeks.

One Sunday afternoon, we went to Priya cinema in Vasant Vihar. I think we went there to watch Lion King: remember Elton John's Circle Of Life? That's one song that still makes me cry. Anyway, it was that afternoon I got the first -- and the last -- culture shock of my life. I saw girls and boys loitering about hand-in-hand, and I also saw the girls smoking. Even traditional-looking salwar-kameez-clad girls were puffing away, as if it was the most natural thing to do. What turned me on was the assertion of freedom -- "If the boys can smoke, why can't we?"

Suddenly I wanted to be a part of that taboo-less, liberated world, where the women wore the I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude on their bindis. But I was a newcomer to the city, that too from a conservative town like Kanpur, so how do I get such women to people my small world? I took the easiest way out.

There is a Shiva temple in Connaught Place, on Kharak Singh Marg. One afternoon, after my shift in PTI got over, I went to the temple and prayed: "God, get me some of those women -- the kind I saw at the cinema hall the other day. Do you think it is fair that I should always be stuck with girls who only have marriage on their minds?" It was the most casual prayer I've ever made to Shiva, trust me. I really didn't mean it. It was a prayer made due to a momentary loneliness, more for the fun of it because you know gods are not going to take it seriously.

But Shiva, being the large-hearted god that he is, decided to shower me with extraordinary kindness. Suffice to say that life was never the same again. But what surprised me was the swiftness of my transformation: one Sunday I was at the cinema hall with a sense of longing, and two Sundays later I was there again, with a sense of belonging, holding the hand of a young woman and watching Keanu Reeve's Speed.

That was also the starting point of other transformations. Egos crumbled, attitudes changed, education began. Today, as a man of 38, I feel like telling that 23-year-old man from a small town, "Serves you right!" Because at the time he dreaded the idea of taking orders from a woman, but eventually ended up spending 10 out of the 16 years of his professional life so far reporting to a female boss. Today he hates it that he does not have a female boss -- just look at the transformation!

Today, at 38, sitting in the laidback and yet far more agreeable city of Chennai for the past eight years, I can see many more transformations. New egos have taken over, and new attitudes formed. But it was in Delhi that this boy became a man. This Saturday, I am returning to Delhi on one of my twice-a-year visits. But this time, for the first time, I am going there solely to meet the boy whose face I still see in the mirror every morning. I also know where to find him: he would be loitering around in the inner circle of Connaught Place, window-shopping with a woman. If he is not to be seen, he must be hiding in a bookshop called The Bookshop. Many of the books I own today were bought by him from that shop.

Women!

A friend/colleague of mine, Janani, has these things to wonder about women. Yes, one woman wondering about other women:

1. Why do they keep saying cho chweet, cho cute?

2. Why are they so finicky about not repeating their clothes often?

3. Why are they such nags?

4. Why are they so inquisitive?

5. Why do they have a huge lexic budget?

6. Why do they pretend that they don't want to talk about sex?

Answers please.

Men

I have a friend, Priyadarshini, who wants to share five thoughts about men:

1. Why do they keep their wallets in their arse pocket?

2. Why do they shun responsibility/commitment?

3. Why do they only speak the truth when they are drunk?

4. On the road, why do they drive faster when a woman overtakes them?

5. Why are they obsessed with breasts?

Any answers?

Adultery

The title of this post: now that's one subject that fascinates me a lot. I am sure it fascinates a lot of other people as much as it puts off many others. But what is interesting is that you never know who is fascinated by the thought of adultery and who is not. Most often, those who publicly treat the word 'adultery' like a contagious disease are the ones who take sips from the sinful potion on the sly. While those who keep plotting or dreaming of illicit sex, actually never gather the courage to indulge in it. And it is so much fun when you read their expressions: their eyebrows say something and their eyes something else.

Now, why am I writing about this subject tonight, even though I am too drowsy to even keep my eyes open, thanks to the two injections I received on my butt a few hours ago for a throat infection? That's because I want to take some load off my chest so that I can sleep in peace. Thoughts about adultery -- as a subject, I mean -- have been fermenting in my head during the last few days after conversations I had about it with a couple of friends -- both happen to be women. The conversations, in both cases, began with my posts on Shivani and then one thing led to another and in the end, I found a hand-grenade lobbed at me in the form of a set of questions: "How can one think of another man or woman while being committed? Doesn't commitment mean anything? And if you have to think of other men and women, why get committed in the first place?"

The answer, my friends, is simple. It is only after you get committed that the thought of other men or women crosses your mind. When you are single and footloose, the word 'other' is redundant and meaningless: all you are looking for is someone who could suit you the best in the given circumstances. Only after you make the commitment that this demon (maybe angel, in some cases) called adultery pops its head into your cosy tent.

So the argument -- that if you can't keep a commitment, then don't commit at all -- holds no water. Because when you make a commitment, you do so with the best of intentions: you have no clue at the time that, five years from now, you might be cursing yourself for having made that commitment in the first place. At that time, commitment must have felt like a secure palace, with the passage of time, it just might become a prison. You suddenly envy the people roaming freely outside.

What do you do then? Walk out of the prison? Many people strongly believe that if you can't keep a commitment, be honest about it and walk out, but don't cheat. If only it was that easy. If there is a small hole on your wall, you don't desert the house and build a new house, do you? You merely get a mason to plug the hole. And then, you go on to live happily ever after.

Adultery, according to me, does not have to be always about getting physical and making things messy. It can be about fixing that little emotional hole in your life. And masons are never hard to find.