Thank You

Many posts of mine in the recent past have been devoted to Chai, Chai, my debut book. So much so that I find it embarrassing to bring it up again lest it makes you yawn. But tonight I realise that during the emotional roller-coaster ride in the past few months, I had completely forgotten to say two simple words: Thank you.

A big 'Thank You' to each one who bought the book. Without your interest, it would have been impossible for Chai, Chai to go into a second reprint within five months of its publication. No, that does not make me another Chetan Bhagat, not even remotely. But the sales of my book have been steady enough to call for successive reprints and that makes me happy.

10 Smokey Thoughts

1. When you give a Rs-500 note to the shopkeeper to buy a packet of cigarette worth Rs 94 and when he returns the change to you, which includes four Rs-100 notes, you somehow feel he is giving away some of his own money to you. Just like you feel richer when see you find four Rs-100 notes in your wallet instead of just one Rs-500 note.

2. It is more pleasurable to smoke a cigarette when you walk up to the shop to buy a packet, compared to lighting one that is already in your pocket.

3. I dislike sharing my cigarette, and hate it when someone extends two parted fingers seeking a drag. Though I don't tell him or her that I dislike it, because the person is usually a friend.

4. I absolutely dislike it when men leave their saliva behind after taking a drag from your cigarette. As for women: be my guest.

4. I don't like people bumming cigarettes, though I myself bum one occasionally, very occasionally. But bumming a cigarette as well as borrowing your lighter -- unpardonable. Bumming a cigarette, borrowing your lighter and not returning the lighter -- death penalty!

5. One should let smokers be, as long as they are not blowing the smoke on your face. Or as long as they don't smoke in the same room. But don't make them look, or feel, like criminals.

6. The lungs of a man running a shop at Nandanam signal or at the Pondy Bazaar-Mount Road junction would be no better or worse than a regular smoker. He smokes non-stop even without lighting a cigarette.

7. As an adolescent, I hero-worshipped models of cigarette ads, Jackie Shroff included. Secretly fantasised about being one someday (perhaps the unrealised dream manifested itself in the profile picture of mine on this blog, self-taken about four years ago).

8. I smoked my very first cigarette at the age of 19 when my parents had gone to Delhi to collect a prize of my behalf for the cartoon I had submitted for a nationwide anti-smoking cartoon contest. I could not go to Delhi because I had exams.

9. It feels so good to light up a cigarette while having a drink. It feels even better to light up after good sex. Heaven is when two red lights glow in a dark room smelling of sweat.

10. The real test of determination is not about giving up smoking. The real test, if you are a habitual smoker, is to limit your consumption to four or five cigarettes a day. I so envy people who smoke just two cigarettes a day or just one in two days. I don't want to be a non-smoker, I want to be them.

Holiday And Home

If doing nothing also amounts to doing something, then I did a lot during the last weekend which I spent it Bangalore. Which mostly included sitting in the balcony and gazing at the horizon, at times with a glass of beer in hand and at times with whisky.

In the newly-developing areas of Bangalore, especially on the road to the new airport, there is still a lot of nothingness to gaze at. When not in the balcony, I would be either in the pool which the balcony overlooked, on lazing in bed with The City Of Falling Angels, a beautiful portrayal of behind-the-curtain Venice by journalist John Brendt, or at the dining table, eating authentic Bengali food. Doing a lot, yet doing nothing. You can afford it only when you are the guest of an indulgent host.

Finally, the Shatabdi Express had to pull up at Chennai Central this morning. I wished I had a host waiting for me, who would take charge of my life from the moment I landed at the station. But this is Chennai, my home: I am the guest, I am also the host. What happens when the guest, back from a soothing trip to Bangalore, expects to be pampered whereas the host, who is bogged down by life, is in no mood to indulge? What happens is this: under the blazing sun, you, the host, hunt for an honest autorickshaw driver to take you home, where the host waits for you with a long list of things that need to be done -- some doable and some you want to be done but which are simply not under your control.

It takes no time for reverie to turn into reality: one moment you are in the comfort of a balcony and the very next moment you are pushed up against the wall. One moment you have someone lobbing a cushion at you while you are lazing on the bed: "Here, keep this under your head or you'll sprain your neck." And the very next moment you have another someone throwing darts (or shooting arrows) at you just because you are lazing in bed: "Aren't you ashamed to be still lying there? Don't you have an action plan in life?" You are jerked out of bed. Holiday becomes home. Reverie becomes reality. Life becomes a bitch. But then, such is life.

Flight Of Love

Imagine yourself on a plane that is flying really low over a breathtaking landscape. You are in the window seat and you are awestruck. But the person on the next seat is a total stranger who is immersed in a book or a newspaper: it is so pointless and silly to tug at that person's elbow and say, "Look, look!" And since your mobile phone is switched off, it is also impossible to call up a loved one to describe what you are witnessing. Even if the various airlines allowed you to keep your phones on, what would you really describe? Whatever you describe would make no sense to a person who is geographically elsewhere, engrossed in work or some domestic chore.

So you are left with no choice but to feel the beauty of the landscape and not talk about it. Either there is no one to talk about it, or even if there is, the person would never understand the exhilaration you are going through. It's the same thing with love: you only feel it, but don't talk about it. When you are in love, it is like inhaling the beauty of a place all by yourself, but the moment you talk about it or start describing it, love becomes like a fresh loaf of bread gone hard.

Love is something which is meant to be felt and not analysed. The moment you analyse, love gets downgraded to either like or lust. If, from the flying plane, you look at the landscape below and figure out that you love the sight only because you see a river emerging between two mountains, then love becomes like. If you look below and wish you owned a piece of land by that river, love becomes lust. It is only when you fly over the landscape, breathing in every moment of its beauty without reasoning or wanting, that you know you are in love.

Love, therefore, is difficult to achieve. It is as rare as those moments when you happen to be in the window seat while the plane is flying low enough on its way to an exotic destination. Like and lust, on the other hand, are as common as a city coming into view as soon as the plane is about to land.

It's all about feeling it. Feeling each other is secondary. So why these thoughts on love? Because Valentine's Day is approaching and I thought I must do my bit. I hope to write more on the subject before February 14 comes knocking, but in the meantime please read this as well -- something I wrote four years ago.

Saju And I

This Sunday I spent the entire afternoon at Saju's place, finishing a bottle of Bacardi between the two of us before settling down, at five in the evening, for an impressive lunch cooked by his wife. I dozed off as soon as I got into the car and my wife was left to guess her way from Velachery to T. Nagar. Not that my being awake would have helped: neither do I drive nor do I know the roads of Chennai very well. Back home, I slept for a while and then woke up intending to write but after answering a few emails and messages went off to sleep again. A day wasted. But since the drinking session took place with Saju, I would call it a day well spent.

Saju and I go back a long way, right from the day I landed in Chennai precisely nine years ago. He was the only person in the office who was well-dressed: shirt smartly tucked in and wearing black leather shoes. Standing on the terrace of the old Express office, we had a small introductory chat. I was 30 then, he 28. One thing common that emerged between us was our liking for Old Monk Rum. Women were still not discussed for the next few days because an air of formality was still hanging in the pleasant January breeze that blew on the terrace. Saju would still call me Mr Ghosh.

For the first few days I had a good time. Everybody at office was keen that I settle down in Chennai first before rolling up my sleeves and getting down to work, so I took advantage of their generosity and roamed Mount Road during the daytime, spending a lot of time at Higginbothams and a bookshop called The Bookshop in Spencer Plaza. (Landmark was yet to come to Spencer Plaza, and when it did a year or so later, killed The Bookshop).

For the good time in the evenings, Saju would be my sole partner. We would go to a wine shop on Ethiraj Salai, which had a bar on the first floor. Since the wine shop was adjacent to a popular restaurant called Shamiyana, the bar too was referred to by the same name. Going to Shamiyana meant going for a drink.

In the dimly-lit, noisy bar, infested with all kinds of people, from masons to marketing executives, the journey of our friendship began. Saju and I. Our alcohol-lit eyes could not hide anything from each other: first we shared our dreams and desires, and then, as weeks passed, we began sharing our disappointments and desperation as well.

The best part about drinking with a trusted pal after a day's work is that the drinking session becomes an exercise in introspection. You are determined to make the next day even better. It is like writing a conscience-awakening diary at the end of the day. One can, of course, write a diary instead of having a drink with a friend. But I am no Gandhi. I cannot experiment with truth in a sober state because truth, in my opinion, precipitates in the mind only after you are a few drinks down. The truth that you see shining while in a sober state is only the truth that you would like to see, not the real truth.

But if you are the kind who is drinking as well as writing a diary upon getting back home, then you are writing literature. All you you need is a good editor and a publisher, if at all you are interested. Sorry for digressing. So I was saying how evenings spent at this particular bar cemented the friendship between Saju and I. After a point it did not matter where we drank, what mattered was the time spent together drinking.

When the going was good, we drank together in celebration. When life turned out to be a bitch, we drowned our sorrows in the bottle. We were happy on the whole, our dreams acting as a cushion against our disappointments and our desires taming the desperation. Saju got married in 2002, and I went for his wedding to Aluva in Kerala; while I got married in 2006, and Saju came for my wedding to Kolkata.

But some things did not change: Saju and I raiding bookshops and then having a drink together. Neither of us was rich enough to raid the bookshop every day, but we were collectively rich enough to share a half-bottle of whisky every single day. (Somewhere down the line, we had switched over from rum to whisky). Then came a time when we both had to change jobs, and we no longer saw each other everyday. From being together for nearly 10 hours every day, we began to see each other only once in five or six months. Suddenly, there was no one to share your secrets with, leave dreams and desires and despair. Telephonic conversations are so superficial: you can only ask stuff like "How are you?" and "What are you up to?", and the answers are rarely honest.

Of late, I have begun to meet Saju more often. It feels so good, but it also reminds me of the water that has flown under the bridge since those good times. My mother, till the time she died five months ago, would enquire about Saju on a regular basis. She had a soft corner for him because she knew he was her son's only good friend. She had even bought a saree from Nalli in Delhi to wear it for the launch of her son's book, but she missed the event narrowly, just by a few weeks. At times I feel like presenting God with a garland of shoes for what he has put me through. But God must have been too busy with the attention of other devotees to pay attention to my plea for keeping my mother alive till the book came out. She was not even 59 when she died.

It was only after I conveyed the news to Saju that evening that I felt relieved and prepared enough to see my mother lying on a bed of ice. The rest of the world was condoling, but Saju was the only one who would have understood. Today, after my mother's death, I see Saju more often. From meeting him once every few months, I now meet him once every few weeks. It is a happy situation, as well as tragic in many ways.

Saju and I are like bottles of wine left side by side to mature by the vineyard owner. We don't know when we are going to be taken up for consumption so that people can enjoy vintage wine, but we have seen each other mature during the past nine years. We both have sufficient grey on our heads now and some grey sprouting from our chests too. We no longer look the same as we do in the albums that contain pictures taken only the other day -- maybe a few years ago. We both have grown old, and our friendship now tastes like matured wine.

Ah, Those Awards!

My wife, during a recent trip to Kolkata, got back with a bunch of movies, which she had picked up at the recommendation of her friends there. Three days ago, we watched one of them, Antaheen, while having lunch. And yesterday, to my great astonishment, I read in the papers (I don't watch news on TV) that it had won the national award for being the best film!

There is nothing wrong with the movie as such, but I didn't find many things right either. To begin with, from the look of the screen, it felt as if you were watching a serial. The 'look' of the screen, what in cinema parlance would perhaps be called frame, matters a lot to me. It is the 'look' which tells you, the moment you glance at the screen, whether the film was made in 1978 or 2008. It is the 'look' that also tells you whether are you watching a film or a serial. Maybe the 'look' is determined by the sets, the lighting, the cinematography, the background music and so on -- a technical person should be able to explain better.

So to begin with, Antaheen looked like an extended serial. Two, the dialogues were saccharine-sweet: all the characters spoke so sweetly, in the typically Bengali way. Where was the intensity? Three -- the movie should have been titled Laptop -- all the characters were foreover sitting in front of laptops. True, the laptop, or rather the internet connection, was crucial to the story of the movie, but you can't let the laptops distract from the emotions on the faces of the characters. Boy, almost all the characters were on their laptops almost all the time, bearing artificial expressions that clearly showed they were not actually laptop-dependent in real life. Who would know that better than me? And who would know better than me the expressions and the anguish of a man who is addicted to chatting online with a woman whose mind he has seen but not the face?

Two things, however, are very powerful about the movie. One, the storyline itself, whose presentation, I think, could have risen above the saccharine-sweet dialogues and been more intense. Two, the role of Mita Vashisht. But were they sufficient to get Antaheen the national award for being the best film? A good film stays with you long after you have finished watching it, and Antaheen was certainly not one of them.

But then, this is my view. My wife doesn't agree with me at all (she has threatened to post a comment if I ever blogged about the film). It is true that while I was watching the 'laptop' film, I also had my mini-laptop resting on my stomach, but I did have my ears and eyes wide open.

A day after we watched this film, wife dragged me to the club, where they screen movies on the terrace on certain Saturdays. That Saturday they were to show London Dreams, starring Ajay Devgun and Salman Khan, which did not interest me one bit. But I reluctantly tagged along, thinking that while she watched the movie, I would sit in the adjoining open-air bar and drink. One can drink on the terrace too while watching the movie, but you can't really smoke unless you choose to be outright impolite to the fellow audience.

So I sat with wife for a while and watched the movie, waiting to get away as soon as a boring scene or a song came on. But I found it impossible to tear myself away. I had always liked Ajay Devgun. Not that I've watched too many of his films but I find him intense. Salman Khan, on the other hand, is someone I can do without. But in London Dreams, I found it impossible to keep my eyes off Salman. Two particular scenes I can never forget: one, in which he moulds the same lines into different genres of music, and two, when he proposes to Asin. What an awesome actor! -- no wonder he is still very much up there. Maybe he just needs better scripts and needs to appear more 'cerebral' at least to the media. But believe me, his performance in London Dreams was top class. Perhaps his best performance till date.

A mainstream commercial film or a commercial actor is, however, never in the contention for the national awards. I wonder why. Though under the BJP regime, Raveena Tandon did get a national award for a commercial film, but she also subsequently went on to head the Children's Films Society. Clearly, the government loved her (though I must say I liked Raveena, even though I am not a heroine person. Also in my like-list are Sonu Walia, Sangeeta Bijlani, Tabu, Konkona Sen and Sandhya Mridul. There is something different about each of these women, though only a few of them can be counted as good actors as well).

The trend set off by the BJP government seems to be still in fashion. Even though I am against the practice of the national awards going only -- and always -- to actors in serious regional films, I still find it difficult to believe that Priyanka Chopra's performance in Fashion was any better than many others that year. I still can't believe why Rani Mukherjee has not got a national award yet. Something, obviously, is wrong somewhere.

What else can you expect from the government? Today they announced the Padma awards. They gave Aamir Khan a Padma Bhushan, which is fine. They gave Saif Ali Khan a Padma Shri, which is also fine. Aamir, after all, is senior to Saif and is extremely careful and choosy about the kind of movies he does and that's what set him apart. But Rekha being chosen for a Padma Shri as well? Excuse me?

How dare the government put her on par with Saif, who is a novice compared to Rekha, and below Aamir, who was still wearing half-pants when Rekha was already an established actress? Imagine Rekha, the Rekha, getting a Padma Shri in 2010 -- an award she should have got in 1990? It's a national shame, an assault on the sense of judgment of millions of Indians.

It is hardly surprising that people have no faith in the government's acknowledgment of people's worth, because the judgment is either politically motivated, callous or driven by sheer indifference. Last year, Ameen Sayani got the Padma Shri. The man who had been the voice of India for 50 years -- a household name in the literal sense of the word -- and still being found good enough for only a Padma Shri. I am not sure if Ameen Sayani accepted the award -- too tired to Google up -- but had I been him, I would have said, "Thanks, but no thanks." That's too politely put though.

Blogged!

When you blog frequently, and if the blog is of a personal nature and not social or political commentary, then all is not well with you. Something must be needling you or worrying you, some pent-up emotion begging to be let out. So much so that you feel terribly lonely, in spite of having company, and feel like reaching out to those who read you and -- perhaps -- understand you. It is a different matter that you never really share what you are tempted to, because real stories can never be told, and end up writing about something else.

I say this from experience because during the happy and calm phases of my life, I have found myself ignoring the blog. In fact, during the happiest and the most peaceful period of my life, which was March 2006, I did not write a single post except this, which I still value as my most favourite post so far. Rishikesh had made me peaceful. I suddenly had nothing to say, nothing to share. Life was like sitting by the Ganges and watching the river glide away.

But for several months that preceded the trip to Rishikesh, I was a prolific blogger. I was single and very lonely, and I would write lengthy posts in order to reach out and, in the process, maybe connect with that elusive someone. The soulmate never came, but by then the writer in me had found his voice. Till then the voice was tentative, subconsciously looking for an idol to style itself after. But after about half a dozen posts, it had found its own style.

Today when I look back at those days, they all seem to belong to the distant past. But in reality, they are like weekdays leading up to a Saturday that is today. I started the blog in October 2005, got married in April 2006 and had a couple of meetings with the publisher that year, signed the contract for Chai, Chai in March 2007 and travelled for it rest of the year, wrote the book in 2008, got it published in 2009, expecting the second one to be out in 2010. One thing has led to another in quick succession.

I still remember the day I signed the contract for Chai, Chai. I hadn't thought of a name yet, but in the contract I was supposed to make an entry. "Write anything that comes to your mind. This is just a formality. You can change it later," the publisher told me. He is a busy man, and sitting right in front of him, I considered it inappropriate to ask for a smoke break so that I could think of a title. So I wrote out a name, just to quickly finish the ritual of signing the contract. According to the contract, the book should have been called Don't Pass Me By.

Today Chai, Chai, at least for me, is history, even though it is barely three months since it came to the bookshops. I am no longer the person who wrote it. The person who wrote it -- a carefree man who was smug about his conquests but did not know what personal loss meant -- died the day my mother died. Today I am a slave of my moods -- at times bitter, at times sage-like, but rarely happy. On top of it, many battles waiting to be fought, starting with the wrestling matches with words.

That should explain why I am so regular on my blog these days.

A Screenplay

(Strains of shehnai in the background. Ashok Kumar and his wife welcome Shammi Kapoor to their home).

Shammi Kapoor (beaming, the air of a royal): Baaraat theek aath baje pahunch jaayegi. Magar hum ek baat to kehna bhool hi gaye...

(Ashok Kumar's face falls. He looks at his wife.)

Shammi Kapoor (in an assuring tone): Nahin, nahin, ghabraiyye nahin, humen kuchh nahin chahiye. Hum sirf itna chahte hain ki baaraatiyon ka swaagat Pan Parag se kiya jaye!

Ashok Kumar (relieved as well happy that someone shared his choice of pan masala): Oh, oh, Pan Parag. Humen kya maloom ki aap bhi Pan Parag ke shaukeen hain (reaching for a tin in his kurta pocket). Yeh lijiye!

Shammi drops a spoonful of the masala into his mouth. Jingle begins: Pan Parag pan masala, Pan Parag!

Wandering, Wondering

These days I day-dream a lot. The reason is my decision, rather determination, to move out of Chennai by early next year. So at times, I imagine a 40-year-old me leisurely walking down Brigade Road in Bangalore, window-shopping and looking at pretty faces. Or idling away evenings in Kolkata's Citi Centre, admiring some of the most stunning women on this planet. Or wandering around Connaught Place in Delhi, one of my favourite pastimes that never bores me, running into the gorgeous women I once knew.

It is true that there is more to life than just women. But what is life without them? Life is not a stag party. But the bottomline is, I am currently weighing my options. There is no compelling reason to leave Chennai; in fact I am game for spending another decade here. After all, if anyone ever writes a book titled Madras Made Me, it has to be me. But 10 years, according to me, should be the cut-off point. Anything longer would make me lose the 'outsider' tag, which I so zealously guard.

A human being, on an average, lives for 70 years. The first 20 spent in the home town, and the remaining spent in five different cities, 10 years each. If you still think you have another decade to go, then settle down in one of these cities (better still, a small quiet town, like Aluva in Kerala) or your native town. That, according to me, is life fully lived. Or, as they say, a life well-lived. The air in your retirement home, no matter where you live, will be the sum total of India. India is such a diverse country that you get to see only one colour of the rainbow if you spend your lifetime in one particular city.

However, this is my personal opinion. Others need not agree. My opinion stems from the fact that I was born and raised in the Hindi heartland of Kanpur, which is a big city but where you can't spend your working years if you are into English journalism. If you want to make a career out of English journalism, you have to be in one of the metros.

But even if I was born in Delhi or Kolkata and had an ancestral home there and I took up English journalism as my career, I would have still contemplated changing cities after a while. I am a compulsive traveller: a vagabond. I will always be overpowered by the charms of cities I have not lived in. That's how I am. People look at me in different ways, and most often, they look down. And why not:

I am a Bengali, but I have never lived in Bengal. I was born in Uttar Pradesh, but still not a UP-wallah because my mother-tongue is Bangla. For a long time I worked in Delhi, which is no man's land anyway. And then I moved to Chennai. Whether the man who moved to Chennai was a Bengali or a 'north Indian', I still don't know. And now I have spent 10 years in Chennai, which means I am almost a Madrasi, but I am anything but one. From Chennai, I made countless trips to Kerala, where people very often mistook me for a fellow Malayali and upon discovering that I was not one, would ask where I came from. When I told them I was a Bengali, they gave me an invisible hug and made me feel like one of their own. But that does not make me a Malayali either, and at any rate, not the kind of Bengali that a Malayali in Kerala imagines me to be. So who am I?

Some of my good friends call me rootless. They all hail from Kerala but who live in Chennai to earn a living. They call me rootless because I don't conform to their idea of a Bengali, but that's hardly my fault. I mean, to be very honest, I have watched Pather Panchali as a kid and found it depressing. Since I don't aspire to be a filmmaker, there is no compelling reason for me to go hunting for a DVD or pretend to be ecstatic when someone finds one. I would any day settle for Amar Akbar Anthony or Hum Kisise Kam Nahin. These are movies that make me feel good.

The whole idea of watching a movie is to feel good: the good guys winning and the bad ones licking dust. Don't you find it difficult to change channels when you find the villains being beaten up? You know the end result, yet you want to be part of the process. Having said that, I am a fan of Satayajit Ray myself, but I don't have to like the Apu trilogy in order to be one. My favourites are Nayak, Aranya Din Ratri and Ghare Baire. Ghare Baire holds a special place in my heart because it also has an orchestra-less rendition by Kishore Kumar.

That, by the way, speaks volumes about Kishore's appeal because Ray could have settled for either Hemant Kumar or another 'Bengali' voice. Kishore, even though a Bengali by birth, was essentially a Hindi singer. And yet Ray used him for two landmark songs in two of his landmark movies. It is true that Kishore Kumar contributed to the making of Pather Panchali by chipping in with Rs 5,000, but I will never believe that Ray, a perfectionist to the hilt, would have got Kishore Kumar to sing his songs just to return the favour.

So back to my rootlessness. Who wants to be rooted? I am a wanderer who carries tales to tell. As of now, this wanderer is wondering where to go next. The choice is between Bangalore, Delhi or Kolkata. I need some more day-dreaming to arrive at a decision.

Like, Love And Lust

This post is inspired by the present state of mind of a friend. Once upon a time, she was in love with someone. It wasn't exactly the kind of love in which people did things together and also did things. It was the kind of love in which two people know they love each other and feel warm and secure in the presence of each other and are unable to do anything more than steal glances or exchange a shy smile.

She was in this state of love for a couple of years and then they got talking. Love began to be expressed in words. But soon after, circumstances led her to move on. The man her parents had found was likeable; also, she too had grown ever since she had first set her eyes on him. The parting of ways was amicable. For the four years she has been married now, they have been in touch. And then, the other day, he got engaged. My friend lost her sleep. "The whole idea that another woman will control his life now is killing me. I am plain jealous," she confessed.

So love, eventually, does not figure in the picture, even though it was love that it all started with. If you really love someone, you would say, "I am so glad he is moving on too. I am so happy for him." You would not ponder over your dwindling importance in someone's life and lose sleep over it.

In my opinion, there is nothing called love. There is only like and/or lust. And I think 'like' is a far more strong and honest and worthwhile emotion than 'love', a word that has become hollow and meaningless because of prolonged misuse. You are sitting in a coffee shop and there is something about the girl on the next table that you like. It could be her eyes that you like or maybe her nose or her lips. Or maybe her shapely breasts or -- when she goes out to take a call -- her shapely butt. Whatever the case, it is either 'like' or 'lust' that are at play in the coffee shop. Where on earth does 'love' come from, when you don't even know her? And yet they use expressions like 'Love at first sight'. What a fucking sham.

Even logically, you first got to like a person in order to love him or her. Or do you first fall in love -- whatever that might mean -- and then go about liking a person? To tell you the truth, I get great sadistic pleasure when I hear about love marriages breaking. Couples who wait for each other for hours on public benches or in restaurants end up waiting -- individually and alone -- in the premises of the family court. Where did all the love go? There was no love in the first place, only lust -- not just in the physical sense but even in other aspects such as money and good life. Only that you misread the lust as love, or at times deliberately mispell lust as love.

Liking is not only an honest emotion but also the solid foundation for any bond or relationship. If you don't like something, how can you love it or even lust for it? If I am not a pen person, but still claim to have "fallen in love" with a Mont Blanc foutain pen in the showroom that looks good and costs Rs 42,000, it is not love speaking but only lust. Once I acquire the pen, it would be no different for me than the ballpoint pen they give out for free in Kingfisher planes. Alternatively, I would be so conscious of the price of the pen that I would keep it locked up and never use it. But if I am someone who likes using fountain pens, then I would like to acquire that Mont Blanc someday and after acquiring it, would fall in love with it someday depending on its performance. I wouldn't fall in love with it just because it is good-looking and costs Rs 42,000. What if it doesn't write smooth enough?

That's what happens when you fall in love first even before you like something. What if the pen doesn't write smooth enough? What, then, happens to all the love -- doesn't it become meaningless? That is why couples, madly in love only till recently, head for the family court: they never get to like each other, they only masquerade their lust as love and when things don't turn out to their liking, they choose to call it quits.

Love is something that is earned or built over a substantial period of time. Wanting to bed a man or a woman is not love, but only an attempt to cleanse your Indian soul of guilt. Which is why you will find people telling each other "I love you" when the sex is good even during a one-night or one-afternoon stand. I mean, till the intercourse happens, you don't even know the other person from Adams, but the moment penetration takes place, the bedroom reverberates with orgasmic "I love you" screams. Love, my ass! Why can't one just say, "You are quite good at it. I like you. Maybe we should do it more often" instead of trying to clothe lust in the cloak of love?

If you like someone, say so. If you want to sleep with someone, say so. Why fire from behind the sandbags of 'love'? I love my wife today not because she is my wife or because that's politically the right thing to say. I married her not because I loved her, but only because I liked her. But over the last four years, after liking the various small little things about her, I have begun to love her.

But the human mind can be crazy and behave in strange ways, and that is what keeps 'love' still in circulation. I have known many fools who can kill as well as die in the name of 'love'. But such people, who I can only consider as mentally ill, are driven only by the fear of their dwindling importance in the life of their so-called lovers. They never spare a thought for the happiness of their loved ones -- which they would have had they been true lovers.

There is one particular breed of people whose psyche I fail to understand and who have corrputed the meaning of the word 'love'. These are people who, in spite of being so much in love with their respective spouses once upon a time, get swept off their feet by some damsel or dude at some point in life and dump their happy homes in order to set up new ones.

If it is a genuine case of 'liking' making amends for 'lust', it is fine. But most often, at least for men, it is lust that leads them from one partner to another. On the face of it, they might say, "My present wife understands me much better than my ex-wife." But what they actually mean is, "My new wife fucks much better than the old one." Obviously so, for the 'old wife' had had many family responsibilities to fulfil other than good sex, and it is just a matter of time before the 'new wife' too acquired her own set of family responsibilities.

It really escapes me how people can dump their wives for a girlfriend. If they can dump the wife today, they can also dump the girlfriend tomorrow. These are men who easily get swept off their feet -- men whose balls are weaker than their soles. It is one thing to like a beautiful woman, and quite another to fall in love with her just because she is beautiful. If beauty is the only parameter, then there are many women waiting down the corner with a beautiful pair of eyes or boobs. But when it is all about liking, even the smallest of bottoms becomes shapely and highly cuppable.

Success

On 6 October 2005, I bought from Landmark a book called One Man's Chorus, a collection of essays by Anthony Burgess. I know the date because the receipt got preserved in between the pages. But I do remember the circumstances under which the book was bought. I was with Express, and the good, old Express office was still on Mount Road. The annual sale was going on at Landmark, which was just across the road.

But there was a problem. The salary hadn't come yet but was most likely to be credited that evening. So armed with the accountant's assurance, Saju and I walked across the road. Books were spread out like an elaborate wedding buffet. We attacked the spread from different directions. Saju, the seeker of depth, went in search of Latin American writing. While I dug for my kind of books which, at the given moment, could have been a rare travelogue or some kind of an anthology.

I chanced upon Burgess' One Man's Chorus and grabbed it. I also picked up Kubrick, a slim biography of the filmmaker written by none other than Michael Herr. (The two books had something in common, which didn't occur to me then: Kubrick had made Burgess' A Clockwork Orange into a film). I also picked up the autobiography of David Blaine, the magician who I idolise. I felt so rich! Only that I didn't have the money. All along, I eagerly waited for a vibration in my pocket: I would be getting a text message as soon as the salary hit my account.

Till the time the text message arrived, I moved around uneasily like a man who had had three bottles of beer and was now unable to locate an urinal. Finally, relief!

"Saju, look what I got, Burgess!"

Saju was plain angry. "You better hand it over to me. Since when did you start reading Burgess?"

When he saw the cover, he was visibly relieved. He had heard the name as Borges, the father of Latin American literature, though his name is pronounced differently by serious students of literature. But then, students of literature don't necessarily have to be lovers or makers of literature.

Having bought whatever we wanted to, money no longer an impediment now, we went to the wine shop next to Melody theatre and spent the rest of the evening there. After downing about six drinks each, we descended, around midnight, on the Safari Hotel in Royapettah. There, as usual, we demolished, between us, 20 aapams and four plates of mutton korma. That was, to tell you the truth, our routine after sunset. But today, both of us felt extra good because of the purchases we had made.

That night, Saju dropped me home and went to his wife. I didn't have a wife then, neither did I have a blog (I wrote my first post exactly 11 days later). So I began reading. Burgess' style sucked my attention in like a striptease artiste, and I kept at it all night. By 5 in the morning, I had finished One Man's Chorus.

Then, as it usually happens, the book lay hidden and forgotten in one of the shelves. There were occasions when I wanted to go back to it, but who is going to look for it? It is not as if I have a huge library -- though it is not a very small one either -- but the problem with hunting for a particular book is what if you are not able to find it? You are instantly heartbroken and you spend the rest of the day asking yourself: Where could it have gone? Who could have taken it? Best not to look for it.

Fortunately, I found the book this Sunday. It had been sitting right under my nose. But then, you are always blind to things under your nose or within your reach. So I read the essays again. My own circumstances had changed drastically since I had last read them -- and now I looked at them in a new light. I had a protective mother back then, but no wife. Today I have a wife who protects me from the vicissitudes of life, but no mother. Back then, I had a column but no book. Today I have a book but no column. And many more such reversals. The only things which remain common are Saju and the salary. He is still my best friend, and I still wait for the phone to vibrate at the beginning of every month.

Anyway, the whole point of this obscenely long post is, as I said, I saw the chapters in a new light. They made so much more sense now. I guess that's true for every good book. As Naipaul once said, "Reading my books once is like taking the dog to the theatre." But there is one particular essay by Burgess that fascinated me equally then as well as now, though I didn't have a blog then to share it. So I am quoting from it now. The essay is titled 'Success':

"I regard my vocation, which I came to very late, as that of a novelist, and I have to consider now whether I have had any real success in it. The trouble with fiction is that there are two ways of looking at it: as a business and as an art. Just up the coast from me at Cannes, sitting glumly but royally on his yatch, is a man who succeeded indubitably with the novel as a business. His name is Harold Robbins. He is, however, not satisfied with having sold a great number of copies of books about sex and violence: he wants to be regarded, on the strength of his evident popularity, as the greatest writer alive. Nobody will so consider him and this makes him somewhat sour. It does, of course, sometimes happen that the most popular novelist is also the best -- Dickens, for instance; perhaps even Hemingway -- but the one doesn't follow from the other. We expect great fiction to be too subtle or complex for popular acceptance. A good writer will often worry if his work goes into too many impressions: he will feel that he has not been subtle or complex enough. He will feel that he has been inattentive to his craft and turned out something like John Braine.

From the business angle I can point, though cautiously, to some small success. In twenty-five years of professional writing I have been able to make a living. Even if this means no more than being able to afford an egg for one's breakfast twice a week it is still a matter of pride: one has called no man sir, except perhaps a New York black cab-driver, and one has been able to telephone from one's bed at eleven in the forenoon and tell someone to go to hell. This living, however, has come from steady application to the craft, a determination to write at least one thousand words a day, and not at all from the kind of reclame that greets a Catch-22 or a Princess Daisy. A lot of the money has come from journalism and from writing scripts for films that were never made. A fairly exiguous amount has come from fiction. If there is any money in the bank it is there because I have gone on bullying a fairly small public into buying a Burgess book every year. I have had, in other words, to keep at it."

Back then, I had found this passage amusing. Today I find it inspiring.

Nine Years

On this date, exactly nine years ago, I was in the train. I must be somewhere around Bhopal around this moment, having left Delhi the night before, excited about the 24-hour journey that still lay ahead of me. I was coming to south India for the first time. I was coming to Madras.

Memories of those days somehow remain frozen. Songs of Minnale were a rage. The streets were clean. The roads were still empty. Autorickshaw drivers could not dream of buying a mobile phone. The building I live in was packed with people. My neighbours ignored the number of women visitors I had; instead they chose to be impressed by the number of books on my shelves. A picture of Swami Vivekananda, sitting on the bookshelf, also helped.

Today. There is no such Tamil song which can be considered a big hit, registering even in the ears of those who don't understand the language. The streets are either dug up or littered with garbage (cleanliness is being compromised ever since Neel Metal Fanalca took over from Exnora). The less said about the roads the better. Even the maid carries a cellphone. As for my neighbours, there are not many people left. People my age or younger are all in the US, turning the building into an old-age home. People who remain have gotten used to my ways.

What I miss most is the silence of my street. I remember the days when I would run out of cigarettes and walk out of my street into the busy North Usman Road, buy cigarettes and come back and smoke one on the street standing outside my gate, listening to the birds chirp. Today, the street has become a thoroughfare because of the new flyover on North Usman Road, which begins right in front of my street. Vehicles not taking the flyover keep piling up at the mouth of the street, causing a constant jam, and all those who want to avoid it find my street to be the escape route!

Some things have not changed, though. Muni amma is still there. The day I moved into the flat nine years ago, it was Muni amma who had painstakingly cleaned it up with 'Surf water'. When I tipped her Rs 50, my neighbhour admonished me saying it was too much. Twenty-rupees would have done, she said. Muni amma subsequently became my maid, always being kind and motherly and never raising an eyebrow at my lifestyle. Once in a while, though, she would hint to me that it was time for my kalyaanam, or marriage. Today, she lives in the building, her son being the new watchman. She walks with a limp and has become too old to work as a maid. She is one person I've known the longest in Chennai, and she was one person who cried when she heard the news of my mother's death. My mother could speak Tamil and got along very well with Muni amma.

And then the fruitseller at the end of my street. For the first few years after coming to Chennai, I would buy apples from him on a regular basis. He must be 40 years old then, and he would sit there with his son, who must have been 10 or 12. Soon supermarkets sprang up in the neighbourhood and I stopped going to him. And after I got married, it was wife who was shopping for grocery anyway. The fruitseller was forgotten. Just the other day I noticed him again. He must have been there all these years and months, but I had somehow become blind to him. And now I saw him: his hair had all turned grey and he did not get up from his stool upon seeing me, like he did before. I had become a stranger for him. His son was now a man. And why not: if he was 12 then, he must be 21 now! How silly of me to have expected him to remain a small boy. That's when I realised that nine years have passed.

Did similar thoughts cross the fruitseller's mind too when he saw me the other day? If yes, what were they? Maybe I don't want to know them.

On Assignment

With the Dhananjayans, the legendary dancer-couple. January 13, 2010.

Idiots

Since I have not read Chetan Bhagat's Five Point Someone, I cannot say how much of the book is shown in Aamir Khan's 3 Idiots. I saw the film this evening and quite liked it. And since I am aware of the controversy, about Bhagat not being duly acknowledged by the filmmakers, I waited till the end when the credits started rolling in. Only towards the fag end, when half of the audience had already walked out, did one get to see the tiny words on the screen rolling down, "Based on Chetan Bhagat's novel Five Point Someone." If the movie is acknowledging that it is based on the book, shouldn't the credit come right when the movie starts? I think that is highly unfair and, to me, looks even deliberate.

If the movie has used only 10% or 15% of the book, as the filmmakers claim, then the credit line should say, "Partially based on Five Point Someone" or "Inspired by Five Point Someone." Even then, the credit should not have come at the fag end when the theatre is almost empty. I am no fan of Bhagat -- simply because I have not read any of his books except Two States, which I found hilarious in parts only because of its candid (at least from an outsider's view) portrayal of Chennai -- but I do get a feeling that his book was hijacked. Even if the idea was hijacked, that's good enough reason the author to get pissed; who cares about the screenplay or the details?

It is the idea that makes 3 Idiots click, the idea being: Do what your heart says, be what your heart wants you to be, and not what your parents or teachers want you to be. Needless to say, the film is doing so well. It is bound to strike a chord with millions who wanted to be something in life but ended up being something else, but at the moment are in the process of forcing that something on their own children.

Personally, I am familiar enough with the idea to have pursued it with a zeal 17 years ago when I became a journalist at the age of 22. But what a pity that I wasted three years before that, sitting for engineering entrances knowing fully well I was not going to get through. My fetish for stationery and the smell of fresh ink made me spend a lot of my father's hard-earned money on guide-books and correspondence courses meant to equip me for IIT-JEE. Looking back, the three years were not actually wasted: under the charade of 'preparing' for engineering entrances, I was silently equipping myself to be a journalist by reading up every single newsmagazine that was printed at the time. Sadly, many of them have closed down: Illustrated Weekly, Mirror, Probe, Onlooker.

But those were the most depressing days of my youth: almost every evening, father would come back from work to announce that the son or the daughter of a certain colleague has been selected to some engineering college or the other. A pall of gloom would instantly descend on our home. I would feel like the academic equivalent of a man suffering from erectile dysfunction. If at all there was an outing plan for the evening, that would stand cancelled -- just because someone else's child had got into an engineering college. That's the sad part: you are rarely judged by what you are, but always by what the other person is.

Only regret, today, is what if I had spent that money on literary books instead of guidebooks? Would that have made me a better writer? Perhaps. But I had no example to look up to and emulate. Everybody was busy 'preparing' for something or the other. But on the whole, no regrets at all because I got what I wanted.

When I became a journalist, the number of engineers who were joining the profession was not funny. They were doing the same thing as I was doing. If they eventually had to sub copies, what happens to the time and money they had spent on becoming an engineer? Was the race worth it?

At an age when they should be watching movies and having ice-cream with their girlfriends/boyfriends, they remain buried under books out of fear and pressure -- what if they are not able to make it? And once they are not able to make it, the inferiority complex robs them of whatever little self-confidence they are left with and inhibits them from displaying any other talent that they might have. What a tragedy. A degree might earn you a job, but it is not sufficient to get you a life.

Chetan Bhagat himself is a good example. It was writing that brought him fame and fortune. And once he realised his writing was selling, he junked his prestigious degrees. Degrees are dispensable. It's only determination that counts.

P.S. The highest point of 3 Idiots, according to me, is the performance by the boy who designs the helicopter. His role was short but packed with intensitiy.

New Brand Ambassador

(From a forwarded email)

Interview

For someone whose duties include interviewing people, be it a doctor or a bureaucrat or a writer or even a police constable, it was a welcome break and a change to sit back and give interviews -- all thanks to Chai, Chai. This is one interview I can take the liberty of reproducing here because it was not given to a newspaper or a news agency but to the in-house publication of a company. Since you might not get to read it online, I would like you to read it here:

We know that the inspiration for Chai, Chai came about when you found yourself standing on the platform at Itarsi, waiting to change trains, and you wondered what the smallsville beyond the station yard was like. How did you take it from there?

The thought that struck me at Itarsi – what all might be lying beyond the station yard – was very momentary. I forgot all about it as soon as the train moved and came back to Chennai. Those days I was writing a Sunday coumn for the New Indian Express and was also doing a lot of travel pieces. Till then the travel pieces we carried were rarely written in the first person. The column too had a large following. I got fan mails from a wide spectrum of people, from a prisoner in the Chennai jail to a sitting judge of a Kerala court! That’s when Tranquebar (there was only Westland then, Tranquebar was yet to be born) wanted me to do a travel book. They wanted something different. For many months I did not know what I should do in order to be different. Finally, on a subsequent trip to Kanpur during Diwali holidays, the Itarsi idea returned to me. I looked up the railway timetable (my father reads it as a pastime: that gives him the vicarious pleasure of travelling) and discovered from the map that that the busiest junctions in India are actually very small towns about which we know nothing. So I thought, why not go to these places. I am so glad the publishers found the idea to be different enough.

So you didn't have difficulty finding a publisher…

On the contrary. I remember the evening Saeed Mirza had come to Chennai for the launch of his book Ammi. I think this was February 2008. Tranquebar had been just launched and Mirza’s book was the first to be published under this new imprint. Gautam Padmanabhan, the CEO of Westland, introduced me to Mirza saying, “He is also going to be a Tranquebar author soon.” I felt proud as well as ashamed. Ashamed because I had not written a word yet, even though I was done with most of the travelling. Of course I paid a huge price for the procrastination because my mother, who I was so eager should see my first book, died just eight days before it came off the press. But I also believe that the words have to come to you; you can’t go to them. What people call procrastination, I would call it fermentation.

Reviews of Chai, Chai have been either laudatory or plain negative. How's that?

There are only two ‘plain negative’ reviews, that too, very strangely, from magazines belonging to the same publishing house. Fortunately, for me, such reviews are in sheer minority. Chai, Chai is a very Indian book, written by an Indian. You should have travelled by trains and spent some time in small towns in order to appreciate the book. Which is why most of the reviews are laudatory. But if you are one of those who finds ultimate romance in small-town France or Switzerland, or who totally identifies with a Western writer’s non-stop cribbing about the heat and dust and corruption in India, then Chai, Chai may not be your cup of tea. One review that was part laudatory and part negative said the book had been “dumbed down” for the Western audience! Excuse me? I live in south India, most of my readers are in south India. I can’t presume they will all understand those dialogues in Hindi, can I?

Were you surprised when your book went into repritns so soon after publication?

Yes and no. Yes, because writing a book, just like making a movie, is a gamble. You never know what is going to work and what is not. Your sole companion is your conviction. You can only hope for the best. But in the end, only 265 people might actually end up buying your book. That fear is always there. But given the subject, a part of me was also confident. Chai, Chai is a book in which everyone gets to see a bit of himself or herself in it. As I said, it is a very Indian book: there is no scope for either borrowing the lines or the setting from the Western books you admire. It talks about the real India, live and kicking and, at times, not-so-kicking.

Is there going to be another book?

Many more. Immediately next in line is a portait of Chennai, the city where I have been living for nine years now.

What will it treat with? Travel again?

You can call it travel if you want to. In order to write about a place, you need to retain the traveller’s eye even if you are a resident. Nine years is a long time to understand a place well, and short enough not to become blind to it. All I can say is it will be a first-of-its-kind book about Chennai, about which people up north know so little, except that it is inhabited by Madrasis who eat only idli and dosa and who are conservative and God-fearing. How many know that Chennai is India’s first modern city? While the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal were still under construction, the British were already building Fort St. George in Madras. Calcutta and Bombay weren’t even born then while Delhi was still very much the Mughal capital. The book will pull the curtain of notions from over the face of Chennai.

India File

The book is so small I wonder how it survived the shifting of homes and cities. Small because the font is smaller than the usual and the lines are not double-spaced. Clearly, the Indian publisher had tried to save on money. I had bought the book more than 10 years ago from a shop on Janpath in Delhi. The inscription is intact: '"BG, 5 Feb 1999." The price printed on the back cover is Rs 80.

Rs 80, even in 1999, was peanuts. My monthly salary at the time, if my memory serves right, was around Rs 18,000. Those were the days when I spent a substantial amount of my salary on books that cost Rs 300-400 each. Today I am pretty careless about my collection but back then, I would spend almost every Sunday dusting those books and arranging them in a certain order on my modest cane bookshelf. Many of the books I never got around to reading, but I preserved them like embryos just because I had spent a fortune on them. Therefore, it was a big surprise that this book, which cost only Rs 80, should have survived when I shed excess baggage each time before shifting homes and cities. I mean, I could have easily -- and smugly -- given it away to somebody: "Here, take it. It's a good book. Remember me when you read this."

I am so glad I didn't. The book in question in India File by Trevor Fishlock, once upon a time a foreign correspondent stationed in New Delhi. It was published in January 1983, when I was 12 years old. He subsequently wrote another book based on his experiences as the India correspondent, On The Cobra Road, which I bought a few years ago in Chennai and read and reread it only because I spent Rs 400 on it. But India File sat untouched on my shelves for more than a decade. Maybe the small font had put me off. But this evening, I do not know why, I pulled it out and flipped through its yellowed pages. And then I started reading it from the beginning. I had no idea -- what a fucking fool I was to have judged a book by the font size of its text -- that I actually had a gem sitting ignored on my shelves for more than a decade.

If you want to know about India, even if you are an Indian, please read India File. But I think the book is out of print: can you imagine how lucky I am! Let me reproduce the very first paragraph:

"At last the gasping newcomer floats free to take up his inheritance of India. If it is a son there are murmurs and grins of pleasure. A conch may blare and the midwife's fingers close over a large reward. If it is a daughter there is neither tip nor fanfare. Birth is the beginning of what Hindus believe is the soul's adventure on earth and one of the tutting women around the nativity notes the time of day, for the family starmonger will want to know what planetary and stellar forces were tugging when the cord was severed. This sage will consult his charts and draw up a horoscopic identity card which will have to be produced by its owner at life's checkpoints: before his ritual toddler's tonsure, before marriage, examinations, journeys, a new job, elections, war, ceremonies, crop sowing, business transactions and other gambles. Indians embrace the universe and their fated imperishable souls move to its mysterious awesome rhythms, out of one life and into the next, sins and atonements inked in heavenly ledgers."

Mr Fishlock, are you there? Please remove your shoes and socks. This Indian wants to touch your feet.

2010

New year, new book. Pencils have been sharpened. Ink filled in my various fountain pens. Two new notebooks sitting on my desk, waiting to be filled with thoughts and quotes and info. Reference books at hand. People and places waiting to be visited. And the brand new mini laptop, which I fell in love with at first sight and treated myself to as a new year gift -- my thought processor and my new second wife. I begin tonight.

I wish I could survey 2010 like a road spread out in front of me. But all I can see is a fog of mystery. It is the mystery that makes you want to live, live on. Yet, personally, I can look forward to 2010 with optimism. Of course, it will have its share of downs and many hypochondria-triggered trips to the doctor. But on the whole, it promises to be a busy and a pleasant year.

Also, 2010 will be my last year in Chennai. Unless, of course, dentiny intervenes. I am determined to move on, for, by the same time next year, I would have spent 10 years in Chennai. Yes, 10 years -- a decade! Too long for a vagabond like me.

When I left Delhi in January 2001, I was pretty sure that I would be back in a year or two. I had things to go back to. I had no idea that I would fit into Chennai so well that I would end up spending a decade here. I am so glad that when I finally leave Chennai, I will have a befitting parting gift for it.

Happy New Year!

Of Old Age, Sex And Politics

Narayan Dutt Tiwari is one of the landmarks of my childhood, in the sense that hardly a day would pass without seeing his name or picture in the newspapers. He was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh on and off, depending on how pleased the Congress high command in Delhi was with him. By the time I grew up and became a journalist, the BJP and the casteist parties of Mulayam Singh and Mayawati had already dislodged the Congress from power in the state and Tiwari, respected but irrelevant in Lucknow, had shifted base to Delhi.

In Delhi, Tiwari made news when he, along with Arjun Singh, broke away from Narasimha Rao's Congress in 1996 and formed Congress (T). During the general elections that year, the party fielded cricketer Manoj Prabhakar from South Delhi but he lost to BJP's Sushma Swaraj. After Rao's exit, Tiwari's party, like all splinter groups of the Congress, rejoined the parent party. Last heard of, he was the chief minister of Uttaranchal. And just when you began to wonder if he was still alive, just like you wonder about many Congress leaders who were already quite old when you were still a child, his name erupts in a sex scandal!

Since I do not watch TV, I missed out on the coverage. But I did get to see some of the scandalous stills on You Tube. The 86-year-old Tiwari is shown lying on bed, his hands resting on his chest. It could have been the image of his body lying in state -- so serene and still he looks. The only hint of life is the very faint smile on his lips. When surrounded by three naked women, even a dead man is likely to break into a smug smile. Fortunately, Tiwari had remembered to remove his trademark Gandhi cap before getting into the act.

The Tiwari scandal proves three things (they have been proven before, though):

1. Power is the ultimate elixir of life. A lesser mortal, at 86, would have been confined to bed, shrivelled and shrunk, waiting either for death or the attention of a family member. But when you are in power, there is no dearth of attention and death is always far away. Take the case of Narasimha Rao: he was so ill that he did not even stand for elections in 1991. But Rajiv Gandhi's assassination gave Rao a second lease of life. Look at Atal Behari Vajpayee: the moment he went out of power, the various ailments got the better of him.

2. The sexual desires of a man don't die with age. At 86, he may not be capable of providing pleasure (in any case, Indian men, no matter how old, usually have a poor track record in this department), but he is certainly capable of receiving pleasure. In other words, the senses are pretty much alive. So take heart, guys.

3. The rotten political system in our country. Licence for mining in return for sexual favours? Politicians have all the money in the world to buy sex, but still they like to use official power to get sex for free. How corrupt! And what is a 86-year-old man doing as a governor? Age irrelevant if you are the chief minister or prime minister, as long as you are popular with the people and go through the grind of election campaign. But why should Raj Bhavans serve as old-age homes? Tiwari, who already has one foot in the grave, went a step ahead and turned it into a brothel. What a shame.

The Best Birthday Gift

Birthday Views And Reviews

So the shirt didn't come this year. Every year, for the past 10 years, my mother has been couriering me an expensive shirt on the eve of my birthday. I say expensive because what she'd shell out would usually be way beyond her means. Only a mother would do that.

The shirt would usually reach me the day before Christmas, and then the instruction would come on phone, "Make sure you wear it on your birthday. Even if for a short while." This year, I have no choice but to dig out one of the shirts she had sent me and wear it tomorrow -- even if for a short while.

Tomorrow, dear friends, I turn 39. My last birthday when the first digit of my age will still be '3'. The beginning of the last 365 days of my thirties. The countdown to turning 40. Middle-age, here I come! So my birthday and my New Year resolution: to make the most of these 365 days. If I make the most of these 365 days, my next 10 years should be taken care of and I shall be able to enter middle-age with grace and with a youthful stride.

But for that I need to be strong. The past four months, as most of you know, have been an emotional roller-coaster for me. Every day I have been drinking a cocktail whose ingredients are pain, joy, regret, excitement, anxiety, exultation, bitterness, jubilation and anger. Every few hours one emotion takes over from the other and my mood changes.

Yoga can be my only saviour now, as it has been in the past. Nothing beats a 90-minute session, starting with the sun salutations and ending with the headstand. It prepares you to take it easy, or take on the world, if required. So once am done with this post, I am going to wash my yoga mat and hang it in the balcony to dry. But there is something that I need to get out of my system before starting the detox process. It has been stuck in my throat like a fishbone and I shall now cough and spit it out.

India has two respectable newsmagazines, India Today and Outlook. Each of these magazines come out with monthly travel magazines, India Today Travel Plus and Outlook Traveller. Both these magazines have reviewed my book Chai, Chai. Both the reviewers happen to be women -- women I do not know. I am surprised that the judgments of two reviewers about a first-time writer's travel book should be poles apart.

Excerpts from the Outlook Traveller review:
It's hard to tell a good story even when you are writing about wildly interesting people and places. But it takes a very good, maybe a great writer, to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary. Small town India is very definitely ordinary; but while journalist Bishwanath Ghosh is many things — including wry, nosey, dogged and conscientious — a very good writer he is not.

In Chai, chai he sets out to discover the towns that lie just outside major railway junctions, the nationally known place-names that nobody ever actually visits. Instead of merely changing trains at Itarsi or Jhansi or Guntakal, he asks, what if you were to get off and treat the town as its own destination?

It's an innovative, interesting question, fuelled by the urge to know what people's lives are like in tiny towns; towns that lie on the fringes of the traveller's consciousness, usually cloaked in a mist of homogenous anonymity. Sadly, Ghosh does not seem to like the towns much, which is fair enough, but he does not even dislike them interestingly. Knotted up in descriptions of goat-infested lanes and oily hotel sheets, lurching from bar to bar or drinking in his hotel room, he just seems lost. In attempting profundity, he achieves only the purely banal. Here, he is on Manju, a housewife-turned-prostitute in Itarsi: "This was a strange encounter: people usually spend an hour with a human being who had [sic] turned into a prostitute, but I had just spent an hour with a prostitute who was also a human being."

The bottom line is that in Ghosh's hands, a promising project fills with lead and sinks straight to the bottom.

Now, read what India Today Travel Plus has to say:
Chai, chai... The unmistakably nasal, shrill call of chai vendors at railway stations is something that I have always remembered. No wake-up call is more effective than this; no other tea more soul-stirring and energising. The picture is the same no matter which station you are at. Equally piercing and commanding is the whistle of the train, which urges you to file into the carriages and move on.

It is at this very moment -- when you are caught between a cup of steaming chai on the platform and the urgent hooting -- that the story of Chai, Chai begins. Picking seven railway junctions where trains stop, but people never seem to alight, Bishwanath Ghosh sets out to explore towns that have never been credited with more than being just railway junctions.

The result is as refreshing as the idea, just like the perky tea I can never do without on train journeys. The narrative begins with Mughal Sarai and takes you through Jhansi, Itarsi, Guntakal, Arakkonam, Jolarpettai and Shoranur. As he travels down south, right from the heartland of north India, Ghosh takes you along in the most casual yet engaging manner possible. He records every detail with honesty. That includes the smell of a rickety staircase in a decrepit hotel in Mughal Sarai, steel tumblers used for drinking whisky at a family dhaba in Jhansi and also the aroma of early-morning fresh idlis invading the compartment of a train to Guntakal. Just five pages down, and you begin to see that the story of Chai, Chai is in the details that the writer has registered and presented in simple, lucid prose. And it is this attention to detail that keeps you glued to the pages even when the pace slackens and all that Ghosh seems to be doing is walking down from one chowk the next chauraha.

The other thing I like about the book is the fact there are no surprises. Ghosh infuses colour and flavour in everyday life, describing seemingly mundane chores and happenings with a sincerity that gently persuades you into revisiting certain sections of the book. One such episode, in my opinion, is Ghosh's visit to a Mughal Sarai bar. Here, he strikes up many an alcohol-induced friendship, which promptly leads to invitations to be a family's guest and also imaginary trips being planned to Pondicherry and Bangalore... The following day, when his attempts at establishing contact with a 'coaching' teacher he met at the bar fail, Ghosh observes that 'promises made at a bar table, no matter how genuine while being made, are not to be taken seriously'. No rocket science, this; just another realisation that all of us have lived with. Yet, put in the context of Ghosh's narrative, it feels comforting to re-run such axioms in your mind.

Fortunately, neither of these reviews are going to decide the fate of Chai, Chai, which has silently launched itself into the orbit. The book is going for a second reprint next month and Landmark, the bookshop in Chennai I frequently visit, has put copies on the bestseller shelf. I shall, however, consider myself a bestselling author only when -- and if at all -- Chai, Chai sells close to 10,000 copies. I do not know if this will ever happen, but I am -- by and large --happy with the way things have turned out so far. Moreover, Chai, Chai is not my last book: two more are bound to see the light of the day by the end of next year. But since Chai, Chai is my first, I shall always be possessive and protective (though not irrationally) about it. And therefore, this question, dear reader:

If you happen to be someone who has never heard of me and has not read Chai, Chai either, which of the above-cited reviews would you go by? The one in Outlook Traveller or the one in India Today Travel Plus? I want an answer, please. I can hear my well-meaning friends berating me, "Don't worry about the reviews. Ignore them. Your job is to write, so just write." Which is all very fine. I could have ignored the Outlook Traveller review and even spat on it, but what do I do about Google search?

Every time I run a search for my book, which I am required to every once in a while, the offensive review shows up on the very first page. And of late, during the past two days, the link to this highly malicious review is being thrown up as the very first result during a search run for Chai, Chai. It is all very sinister. There seems to be someone mischievous out there who wants anyone curious about Chai, Chai to first read Mitali Saran's take on the book before proceeding to other reviews and views.

Mitali Saran is the woman who reviewed Chai, Chai for Outlook Traveller. I am really surprised that she should waste her precious time and the magazine's precious space in reviewing a book she thought was utter crap. I have no problem with criticism, which is more than welcome, but it is so easy to detect the malice in her review, as if she has a score to settle with either the writer or the publisher. Fortunately, other reviewers do not share Ms Saran's views about Chai, Chai. But how the fuck do I get this malicious review off Google search? Will my techie friends please help?

Bombay

It's midnight. Ten minutes minus or plus. We, a group of about a dozen people, have just finished dinner at a rather cosy joint on Carter Road called Out Of The Blues and are waiting for our respective cars. Last-minute small talk and the last cigarettes before getting into cars with rolled-up windows.

Suddenly, she too emerged from the restaurant -- the slender beauty in the shortest of dresses -- to wait for her car. So short was her dress that even a feeble gust of wind would have answered the prayers of at least half-a-dozen pairs of eyes. But right now the night was still and warm. So warm that this pot-bellied man came out of the adjoining street clad in only a lungi and a soiled vest. He stood there, picking his teeth with a matchstick. He was barely two feet away from Ms High Hemline, totally oblivious of her presence. He must be living in a nearby shanty and must have come out for a post-dinner stroll. His eyes must have grown immune to short skirts by now.

Then it struck me. A woman whose bottom half is almost naked. A man whose top half is almost naked. One pretty, another ugly. One rich, another poor. And yet they shared the same soil standing just two feet apart, unmindful and at the same time accepting of each other. This can happen only in Bombay. This mutual acceptance is what defines Bombay and sets it apart from other big cities where the poor would not be seen within 1 km radius of an upmarket restaurant unless they were beggars. It is because of this mutual acceptance that dreams often come true in Bombay.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed my four days in Bombay. Lunch at Leopold Cafe. Long walk on Marine Drive, watching the silhouettes of lovebirds facing the setting sun. Stroll on the cobbled streets of Bandra. Sunday afternoon stroll from Flora Fountain to Colaba Causeway -- oh, the handsome, historical buildings! Pausing every now and then to stare at those buildings like an awestruck villager, much to the irritation of the wife who, unlike me, knows the city well enough, I could only see the ghosts of stiff upper-lipped Englishmen and sophisticated Parsis behind their thick, brown walls. In the silence of Sunday, it was impossible to imagine these monuments belonging to the great Indian workforce. Maybe these buildings are still intact because this is Bombay.

But it is easier to love Bombay if you don't live there. I was only a smug visitor who had the luxury of putting up in Colaba, the best part of Bombay. The Bombay that I had heard about or seen in the Hindi films was all within a radius of 4-5 km. What a pleasure it was to flag down a taxi and get into it without haggling with the driver. Sitting on the rear seat of the battered Fiat, I would light up a cigarette and feel like Dinesh Thakur of Rajnigandha, with the song Kai baar yun hi dekha hai playing in the background. And in the end, when you got down and asked the driver, "Kitna hua?", he would look at the meter and give you a ridiculously low figure, such as Rs 22 or Rs 34. In Chennai, you pay double the amount for half that distance -- that too for an autorickshaw ride!

And one evening, while visiting a friend who is a Naval officer, I even heard Asha Bhosle perform live in the Navy stadium. The friend had assumed that it would be more appropriate on his part to invite me for a drink to the club than take me to a crowded concert, so he had not bothered to pick up the passes. But I did make him stop the car and roll down the windows in order to listen to the opening song of the evening -- albeit from a distance. It was the famous Jaan-e-jaan dhoondta phir raha from Jawaani Diwani. While Sudesh Bhosle was able to mimic the energy of Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle -- well, I felt very sad listening to her. She could barely do justice to the song which only she could have sung. But then, she is over seventy now. I was suddenly glad that my friend had not picked up the passes.

Shakti Kapoor

In Bombay, where I reach on Wednesday morning on my first proper visit to the city, I would have liked to look up one person: Shakti Kapoor. I simply love the man, don't ask me why. But it is highly unlikely he would be there.

This morning, my father broke a piece of news to me. He was going through the Bengali paper he subsribes to back home in Kanpur, and his eyes fell on a small black-and-white advertisement for a jatra show. Jatra, the way I can explain it, is the folk theatre of Bengal. The stage usually stands like an island amid the audience, with only one side cordoned off to provide for a crude green room for the artistes. In no other form of theatre, as far as I know, does the audience get to have such a close look at the artistes and their performance. The advertisement for that particular jatra show, which caught my father's attention, boasted of Shakti Kapoor as the lead performer. It even carried a black-and-white picture of a haggard-looking (my father's words) Shakti Kapoor.

So when this Bengali lands in Bombay, Shakti Kapoor would be somewhere in Bengal, possibly in a town like Midnapore, practising his Bengali in order to live up to the expectations of the audience. The lay Bengali, no matter where in Bengal he lives and what he does for a living, is a perfectionist, provided he himself is not expected to be one. So I can only imagine Shakti's ordeal. But I am sure jatra pays him well enough. And am sure he is liking the fact that the Bengali audience, whose benchmark is none other than Satyajit Ray, is accepting him. Otherwise, makers of D-grade films in Bombay are always on the lookout for a 'big name' who can play the pimp or the conman or the comedian.

But Shakti Kapoor speaking Bengali? That too in a jatra where he has to go live in front of a Bengali audience that surrounds him from all three sides? Well, that's almost like spotting prime minister Manmohan Singh in an upscale Delhi pub or catching US president Obama light up a cigarette during a press conference. Too good to miss! Trust me, when I go to Calcutta in the first week of January for a reading of Chai, Chai, I shall track down Shakti Kapoor and watch him perform.

How I love the man! I love his accent, to begin with. I also love the lecherous look on his face, which is always more comic than villainy. But what I like the most about him is the way he gets startled. Did you ever notice that? His eyes suddenly pop out and his mouth falls open every time the hero turns the tables against him. Oh, how I love that look!

Shakti Kapoor, in most of his movies, has either been a cruel villain or a comedian villain, but the thing is, you enjoy even his cruelty because it is all so laughable. I have lost count of the number of times I must have watched Baap Numberi, Beta Dus Numberi. Trust me, the pair of Kadar Khan and Shakti Kapoor have made innumerable unwatchable movies watchable, no matter how great the star cast. They are truly great actors, or so I think.

Did I hear you saying, "Aaaooo!"? If you don't know where "Aaaooo" comes from, you clearly don't know Shakti Kapoor well enough.

I Have A Dream

Shops are already putting up Christmas trees and playing the carols. Which means another year has gone past. How do I look back at 2009? So far, it has been the worst year of my life and also the best. Strange, isn't it: the best year also happens to be the worst!

Mathematically, a plus and a minus should cancel each other out so that you are left with a zero -- a clean slate. But life is not mathematics but chemistry, where a electron meets a proton to form a new, stable compound. I shall be stepping into 2010 as a new, stable compound. In any case, the years ending with an even digit have always been nice to me. I was born in 1970, got the appointment letter for my first job in 1992, moved to Delhi in 1994, got the appointment letter for a job in Chennai (which changed the course of my life) in 2000, got married in 2006 and so on. It was an aberration that my first book should have come out in 2009: maybe the best of it will happen in 2010.

Also in December 2010, I shall turn 40. Half of my life would be over, and yet my biggest dream remains unfulfilled. It shall remain unfulfilled unless I work towards it, and it is about time that I did. It is a simple dream on the face of it, but not simple at all when the dreamer happens to be me -- someone who is used to living paycheck to paycheck. But I am determined to make it come true. Here is the dream:

Owning a house by the sea or in the lap of a mountain. At daybreak, I would greet the sun with at least 12 rounds of sun salutations followed by a sequence of yogic postures that would include five minutes of shoulderstand and three minutes of headstand. After that, a breakfast of bread and eggs and juice in the lawn, if there is one. After breakfast I would proceed to my study to write. The study would have a large desk in the middle of the room. Three walls would be lined with books, while the fourth would be adorned with Bose speakers as well as various framed pictures of R.D. Burman and Kishore Kumar that I would have stolen from the internet and developed into prints. That would be the music corner.

I would write non-stop till noon and then pour some beer for myself and go over whatever I've written since morning. Most of the time, I would be happy with my work and proceed for lunch. A simple lunch, nothing fancy. Post-lunch, I would sit in the balcony and light a cigarette and catch up with the gossip over phone and also look at various contracts and cheques sent by the publisher. A short nap and then I would be writing again. In between, I would get a text message from the bank: Rs 4.5 lakh have just been credited into my account.

Just before sunset, I would go for a long, brisk walk. Another text message from the bank: Rs 80,000 credited into your account. Oh, the advance for the new book. I would return invigorated and go for a shower and come out to find 'literary' and other friends waiting. I would go behind the bar counter and declare the evening open. The bar would be well-stocked with duty-free alcohol, but friends would not be discouraged from bringing their own booze. After two drinks each, we would move to the music corner -- with drinks in hand, of course -- and worship Kishore Kumar and R.D. Burman for a couple of hours. From a bartender I would transform into a DJ.

Sharp at 11 I would declare the bar closed and say goodbye to all of them. Of course we would all have had dinner by then -- simple food cooked by a certain Ram Singh or a Ramu Kaka or a Ganga Ram. Once they leave, I would pull out a book from the shelves and put myself to sleep reading it. So dear friends, that's my simple dream. Please pray that it comes true by at least 2012 -- a year that ends with an even number.

Wait a minute, I forgot something. I left out my wife from my dream day in my dream house. Let me come back to you with a rewritten dream, lest I am left out of her life.

Departure And Arrival

Yesterday, December 4, was my parents' wedding anniversary. Fortieth anniversary. Had destiny been not cruel, I would have squeezed Kanpur into my travel itinerary because they were planning a small party. They were inspired by a similar party thrown by one of our neighbours to celebrate their 30 years of marriage. In fact, when I last spoke to them over phone while they were in Kanpur, they were deciding on the menu.

A couple of days later, they embarked on the fateful trip to Banaras. The idea was to pay a visit to my brother who lived in Banaras. Who knew that that was to be my mother's last train journey, and that soon she would be setting out on her final journey, being carried on the strong shoulders of her two sons all the way to Manikarnika Ghat where devout Hindus dream of landing up as dead bodies.

While carrying her body through the extremely narrow streets of Banaras, which was a challenge by itself, I stepped on a spot on the cobbled street where the brick was missing and in the process sprained by foot. I instinctively cried out in pain. The only person in this world who would have let out a scream seeing me in pain was now on my shoulder, lifeless. I quickly gathered my senses and moved on. But the foot hurt like hell.

I can go on and on about the cremation story. It is an interesting story, especially because it is set in Banaras, where hundreds of people actually come to live during the final stages of there life. Only a fortunate few die there though: most aged people, tired of the interminable wait for death, return home for a brief vacation or a family function and end up dying there. But I am saving everything for a book, because it will easily take a few thousand words to describe the scene at Manikarnika Ghat alone, where I spent four hours in the company of the living and the dead. The living also included cows and goats and dogs. The dogs were drawn by the smell of burning flesh, whereas the cows and the goats came to chew on the flowers that bedecked the biers. It was surprising to see how the goats there are resistant to the furnace-like heat generated by the pyres.

The moment we brought mother's body to the banks of the Ganga, it began to drizzle. And everybody who had been a part of the funeral procession ran for cover. Only my father, my brother and I stood in the rain, wondering how to protect mother from getting drenched: she was lifeless no doubt, but she deserved dignity even in death. Fortunately, the drizzle died down before it could do any damange. In fact, mother looked fresh after the brief shower. These were her last moments in the human form. She seemed to be smiling. The date was August 29 -- just two days before her birthday. She would have turned 59. On the evening of September 29, Chai, Chai reached the bookshops.

A small confession. There is a Balaji temple, the replica of the one in Tirupati, on Venkatanarayana Road in Chennai which I pass everyday on my way to work. Long before my mother died, long before Chai, Chai hit the stands, I made a silent plea to Balaji: "If the book sells 10,000 copies, I will come to Tirupati and get my head shaved." My logic was this: the book selling so many copies is a remote possibility, rather an impossiblity, so there is no question of me parting with my hair. But in case God listens to my prayer and makes the book sell 10,000 copies, going bald is a very, very small price to pay.

Destiny intervened, and I had to shave my head even before the book reached the shops. My faith in God was shaken. For the last two years, I had only one prayer, a desperate one, that my mother should live to see the book. Her heart was packing up, and I knew she would be gone anyday. But why did she have to go precisely eight days before the book came out of the press? Had she lived for two more months, she would have not only seen the book but also attended the various launch functions. She would have died a happy woman. The regret has become a gaping hole in my heart which shall never heal.

As I sat on the banks of the Ganga in Kanpur on a pleasant September morning, with a barber running his razor on my scalp, I told God: "Look, you are making me shave my head even before the book is out in the shops. Now it is your responsibility to sell 10,000 copies."

So far, God has been a good marketing executive.