It Was Actually Three Soaps in One

… and all I could do was watch in horror as they swirled down the S-bend along with the flush water.

Luckily I have enough soap stored to last me… oh, a couple of months. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, shaving foam, and All-Out, too.

Lessons of The Day

(1) Apples and bananas are fine, but mousambis are not meant to be refrigerated. Even if the fridge does look so nice filled with fruit.

(b) Ham (and chilly cheese sandwich spread) sandwiches are bloody delicious! Far more than the strawberry preserve and cheese spread ones. And the sandwich spread container claims that it has minimal saturated fats and zero trans fats. There are other disadvantages to processed foods, I know, but at least there’s that.

(3) Whether I wake up at 6:30 or 7:15, I will always rush out of the door at 8:30, hoping not to be late. (This is actually a general life lesson– no matter how early I wake, I’ll always be late leaving.) Hurrah for snooze buttons.

Pappu Pass Ho Gaya!

And so, whatever happens, ten months from now, I’m out of law fac forevah!!

I can’t think of anything to do to celebrate.

Thinkey, Thinkey

Read of the day:

It’s a nice change to have an introspective-y Sunday where I’m not thinking about how crap it is to live alone, and how boring is life– because it’s not. I have my internship to thank for that. It’s completely shit in that I spend most of my time sitting around playing games on my phone, or looking for parking outside the High and Supreme Courts; but getting up every morning and going to work has the most wondrously soothing effect on me. The days aren’t empty, and there’s no longer a question of how to kill all the spare hours– there are no spare hours anymore. I know that tomorrow I have to wake up, dress in my penguin attire, and spend the day in court– and what a brilliant feeling that is! There is purpose.

Knowing that tomorrow brings with it 2 hours of class and 2 hours of free time spent under a Nescafe umbrella, and that I’ll be home for lunch, just doesn’t cut it for me the same way. I suppose the vain way of looking at it would be to say that my course isn’t challenging enough for me, and that’s why I enjoy the brief spells of work that I do, but that line of thought brings with it uncomfortable questions as to why I haven’t (ever) made it more challenging for myself. After all, noone asks me to come home for lunch, have a siesta, watch 2 episodes of The OC, gym, and get pissed at night. I could study more, write a paper, take Hindi classes, practice my drumming… anything, really. But who’s going to make the effort?

Unbeknownst to everyone, though, I think I am making the effort. It’s being done very slowly, but Perakath is slowly going to the mountain, yes he is. The details aren’t important (to you), but I have a plan-with-timeframe in mind, and for the first time in years I have enough self-belief to think that I’ll actually carry it out.

With even these littlest of efforts that I’ve already made, the differences are palpable. Since it rained last week and I caught a chest infection, I’ve been off cigarettes almost completely, because from experience I know the infection will heal much faster if I don’t smoke. And not smoking means I don’t feel like drinking all the time. (It’s amazing how closely they’re linked in my head.) And not having the urge to drink all the time is a great feeling, because I know thereby I’m not an alcoholic.

I’m not constantly horny, because I don’t miss sex all that much. After years of waking up to regret drunken come-on text messages sent the previous night, I’ve discovered the key to controlling those urges. When you’re drunk and feeling horny, it’s not the actual act of sex you’re missing. What you’re craving is merely the final release. And, though it’s taboo to speak of it, God in her wisdom has given us other ways to get that release. Mere seconds afterwards, you realise that that’s all that you needed, not the person you thought you did. It’s not the same thing, but coupled with the knowledge that another woman will come along in due course, be it now or in a couple of years, it’s good enough to get by.

So I’ve gone from being a chain-smoking, class-bunking lewd drunkard constantly wishing he was somewhere else, to a regular angst-free chap who only worries about whether or not there’s bread to make sandwiches for the next day. I like being this guy, for now anyway. He has his issues too, of course– I met someone for a couple of drinks after work the other day and she said, “Periya, you look so…” and I prepared myself to hear ‘fat’ or ‘bald’, but she completed, “…old! Especially in your formal clothes.” Old. That’s a new one. Not entirely inaccurate either, given the huffing and puffing way yesterday’s basketball game went.

Although I suspect that whichever guy I am, I’ll never end up buying that drum kit. It’s one of those “dude if it was going to happen it’d have happened by now” things.

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got…

Bloody greedy chowkidar. I’ve always been nice to him– to all 3 neighbourhood chowkidars, in fact, although only 1 of them is mine– buying them biscuits and coke in the summer, and biscuits and milk in the winter, and buying them powwas of whiskey all year long. That’s on top of the rather significant sum I shell out every month to get the vehicles washed daily, and to “look after them.” Never mind that looking after them is his job, as one visitor pointed out in anger even as I shushed her into silence.

This month though I dared to be a little firm, and tell him no, 300 rupees a month in addition to food, drink, and booze is an unacceptable sum to pay a chowkidar. Keep in mind he gets paid by every house in the colony in addition to his (admittedly pitiable) salary.

You can’t agree to something and then make a fuss two days later. Camel in a fucking tent. This Arab isn’t going to feed and water it any more.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Hello my duckies!

Although sober, I’m in a good mood, for many reasons.

Viva La Vida, the song, was just on the radio and I quite love it. It must be fantastic in concert!

I spent six hours– SIX HOURS– cleaning my room today (this is another factor in my good mood)! Solid summer-cleaning, I did. Dusted, broomed, mopped, relined shelves with newspaper, removed cobwebs, cleaned the fan, cleaned the inside of the fridge, cleaned the bathroom, cleaned the curtain and tablecloth, cleaned the soaptray (it was clogged with dried soap)… and finally cleaned myself. Most of the cleaning was done with the fan off, to prevent dust flying, so I lost about half my body weight in sweat and ended up with a prickly-heat type rash all over my shoulders and chest from all the sweat-soaking. But the room is so clean, I look around every now and then and beam. Sometimes I feel I should hire myself out as a sort of solo Dustbuster.

After that I went to a Sardarji’s car accessories shop in Kamla Nagar that I’d reconnoitred on Friday. A new CD player and speakers was a little outside my budget, so until I got there the plan was to ask him to put in the new speakers but merely repair the existing cassette player. He’s a good salesman though, and convinced me to compromise by buying new speakers but also a second-hand CD player instead of getting the tape deck repaired. It sounds great, and didn’t break the bank either!

Whatteproductiveday. *Beams*

Oh, look what I came across– The Asterix Annotations! (Link is to Asterix In Britain, because that’s how I came across the site.) Immensely interesting reading for anyone who loves the comics. And text-heavy, graphic-unintensive. I especially like the explanations where classical art/sculpture are referenced, e.g. here, here, here, and here.

I didn’t know ‘Sol Lucet Omnibus‘ means “The sun shines for everyone.” Quite a brilliant line actually, when you think about it, non?

‘Microcephallic’ Certainly Is

Whoa, shucks, you should’ve seen the size of that flying cockroach. Monstrous it was. It’s perched on my blazer, I hope it doesn’t set up nest there.

I’m back in Delhi, sitting at my computer desk downloading an OC episode and checking all 229 new items in my Google Reader. A very stiff Romanov-Coke is by my side, and a Marlboro regular glows softly in the ashtray. Opening IE signs me in directly to Hotmail, Facebook, and Reader, and I have the use of Limewire and Last.fm again.

It’s like the last month (and the resolutions I resolved in it) never happened.

I got here two days ago and have been unbelievably busy since then. My latest internship began yesterday, and I’ve finally seen the inside of a courtroom. Many courtrooms, in fact… a couple in the Supreme Court, and half a dozen in the High Court. It’s quite illuminating, this mingling with Delhi’s legaleagles. (Arun Jaitley, in particular, seems to pop up in every courtroom I visit, the baldy.)

Before I forget, might I please inform you that not once have I heard the phrase, “Objection! my Lord” uttered, in vain or otherwise. Perhaps they say it in the trial courts (endearingly called Tis Hazari, Karkarduma, Patiala House, Rohini, and so forth), I wouldn’t know. Nor is there a court reporter who types out every word uttered in the courtroom and reads it back when so directed by the judge. Grisham, you liar, you.

The one thing that leaps out at me is the attitude everyone seems to have. All the senior lawyers seem to have, for unbeknownst reasons, very big heads. (Literally.) Macrocephallic, is that a word? And all the advocates, whether senior or otherwise, seem to have a perpetual sneer on their faces. “I Am Lawyer, I wear black-and-white and fail utterly to see the resemblance to traditional waitering livery.” The only place I’ve seen a hint of humour is in the courtroom, when the judges crack a joke and everyone guffaws like there’s no tomorrow. Even my immediate seniors, fresh members of the Bar Association, have superior smirks plastered on their unshaven mugs. Lighten up, fellows. So you’ve hung around the High Court long enough to know where things are and how things work. You talk glibly of “matters” and “hearings” and “orders” and gossip the insider gossip over lunch in the lawyers’ cafeteria. Ai ai ai. Exists there the humble lawyer? (Crowley excepted, of course, poor chap. I haven’t seen him in court yet, the hardworking dog.)

In my Bombay internship last June, I was so pleased to see this one lawyer– a girl so hot I was actually tongue-tied around her, incidentally– bring out an iPod deck after 9 pm every night and play house music in her cubicle as she worked. I of course was working the whole day with my then-new mp3 player glued to my ears, but then I wasn’t being paid. Nobody in the lawyers’ chambers seems to even own a portable music player.

Delhi is Oh! so muggy, so muggy that it reminds me of (ack!) Bombay, that worst-weathered of cities. I hate it, I hate this weather with a vengeance. Why can’t it be autumnal already? The day I got back here I went and got my car a/c fixed, so the commute to work is at least bearable… but I often wish I could just dissolve entirely into sweat and make my way to that great air-conditioned room in the sky. The blasted black blazer that drapes me three-quarters of the day doesn’t help matters, either.

We finished work two hours early today, which meant that I accidentally discovered just when it is that the ITO junction is jammed with traffic. (”So THIS is rush hour..!”) But those two extra hours were just what I needed to pay my broadband bill, retrieve my bike from the college parking lot where I’d stashed it for a month, and pay my tiffin lady. I still haven’t cleaned my room, though, which is quite out of character for me. I’m sleeping on one half of a bed whose sheets were last changed in May, and I’ll have to do so until I have two spare hours on Sunday to safai properly.

Urgh, the humidity. Excuse me while I go wash my face… again.

Death and All My Friends (or) ‘Vida La Loca’

(Written over the space of a few days, thanks to not really feeling up to a post the last week or so.) Title play.

For the last week, I haven’t brushed my teeth before sleeping at night. Nor have I cleared my bed before sleeping, or drawn back the bedspread. I just keep putting it all off, and finally I fall asleep on one half of my bed, without having changed, brushed my teeth/washed my face, or getting under the sheet. (The only thing I always do before I drift off is move my glasses to a place where I can’t roll over and flatten them. Very sensible of me.)

If I had any sense, I’d remove my lenses and bathe right now, and come back to write the rest of this. Hmm.

I’m waiting up with the vague idea of having myself a drink before bed. In times past, I would be waiting up for everyone to go to bed so that I could slip onto the balcony and have my starry smoke, but these days I’m being a good boy and not puffing. So now I’m just waiting up to drink-and-not-smoke. Mom is asleep, so I could pour it even now I suppose– birdbrain brother won’t be able to tell it’s not plain Coke even if he does come down. I’m sitting in a rocking-chair in front of the tv downstairs, watching Rafael Nadal’s horsey ass wobble slightly as it struggles somewhat to keep up with Nicolas Kiefer’s beard. Boris Becker is commentating, and the other nobody commentator can’t help but kiss his ass a little bit, poor chap. Brer is upstairs watching The Departed on the big tv in our room and text messaging his little non-girlfriend nonstop. It annoys the rest of us, his incessant texting, but I’ve been there, done that, so I’m trying not to say too much.

Anyhow I’ll keep putting off pouring the drink a little longer, and a little longer, and maybe I never will.

Sigh. At some point in the near-ish future I’ll have to take a sabbatical from the ethanol, just to see if I can live without it. As the months pass I’m finding it less and less cool that I have a couple of hollow legs. The idea came to me last week when I was taking stock of my finances for the coming school year and I realised that I simply can’t afford to keep drinking in bars any more, until I earn my own keep. Why not take a year off alcohol entirely? 12 months’ Lent of sorts. And without booze I’d have no reason to smoke either, so not only would I give my liver and lungs a rest but I’d save at least 3 grand a month. 

Ugggghhhhh. Can you imagine a year without alcohol? I can, but I can’t imagine actually living it. So sad, yes, that in my head good times are inextricably linked to intoxication? Kingfisher’s slogan seems to have hit its mark perfectly.

So the dry year isn’t happening, not right now anyway… but a dry quarter? A dry month, at least? Who knows, who knows. Que sera ho jaayega.

*** 

My grandfather passed away last week. He was a day short of his 80th birthday, and… not sick sick, let’s just say bedridden. When he moved to Vellore in 2002, just when I was finishing school, my mother didn’t really want him living with us, so he took a place on rent 5 minutes’ drive away. He was quite normal in those days, walking with his walking stick, still driving, even though he wasn’t supposed to. Poor guy. A career as an aircraft engineer gave him the love of vehicles that he passed on to my dad and myself. When finally his sons forced him to sell his last car (the driver was conning him, or something), he never really got over it. “I’m going to buy a new car so that I can drive to Bangalore when I want,” he’d confide to me. “I have to have a car.” My dad merely laughed it off, but my mother felt sorry for him. “He would have had a car all his life,” she told me. “It must be really hard for him to know that he’ll never own one again.”

His legs were what betrayed him finally, giving up the ghost a little more each year. Walking stick became one of those walking frames, became a wheelchair, became 5 minutes in a chair after his daily bath and the rest of the day in his bed. I was a good grandson, regularly went to visit him even when my dad wasn’t in town (to accompany me). Brotherkins didn’t go half as much, although to be fair it certainly helped that I could drive myself there and he still can’t.

My mother uses Appacha’s example as dire warnings of what happens to you if you smoke– he smoked two packs a day for decades, decades– fuck me, I’m not going to smoke for decades on end, heart attacks hurt, don’t you know? According to her all the smoking is what caused the arteries in his legs to constrict and rendered him immobile. I suspect there were more factors than that, but whatever.

***

Because he was so unwell, we were all expecting Appacha to die sooner rather than later. I didn’t feel particularly upset, although I did appreciate the messages of support I got from a few friends. I was slightly annoyed that my mom hadn’t told me as soon as it happened, but waited until that evening, but I understand that she was just trying to make sure I wasn’t distracted from that day’s exam.

The last funeral I went for was ten years ago, when my mother’s brother finally died after spending six months in a coma after hitting the median and falling off his scooter. He died on a Republic Day, and the first thing that came to my mind was, “Will I still be able to go to the [annual] carnival this evening?” It’s not an unknown point of view, is it– once the person’s dead they’re dead, right? Unless you’re genuinely upset, from close emotional bonds or whatever, why should you have to modify your behaviour because of an inevitable occurrence?

Because you do, I suppose. I was touched by how many relatives and relatives-in-law landed up for the funeral. He’d wanted to be cremated, but there were some issues there, so instead he was buried in the CSI cemetery, next to his wife. I was also touched by how many Vellore people came for the funeral, as well– people who couldn’t have known my grandfather very well at all, but who came to show support for my dad.

Having turned into a (rather large) crybaby thanks to repeated exposure to episodes of The OC, I’m now trying to contain the pearly drops– at least in public. I watched Prince Caspian in Bangalore last week, alone (!), and I LOVED it. I thought it communicated the essence of the book as well as any movie could have. And once or twice, especially the bit with that darling Knight of Mice, Reepicheep’s tail, I was horrified to find myself fishing in my jeans pocket for my ‘kerchief and dabbing at my eyes. Horrified because it’s all very well to let one’s eyes well up in the privacy of one’s room, but in a movie theater where noone else in the row is showing the slightest bit of emotion? Bad enough I’m a solo male movie-watcher, and then I cry during the movie too? No, no, not done.

With even my limited experience of them, I know how easy it is to sob at a funeral, what with all the gloomy atmosphere, and the memories, and the cold body lying there with its hook-nose poking above the coffin sides, and the singing of Abide With Me, which seems to be a tune custom-designed to stop up my lachrymal ducts. And I didn’t want to be seen crying at this funeral. I just didn’t.

So I made an effort to sufficiently stiffen my upper lip. And lo and behold, what was the best way to hold the tears back?

Mentally composing this blog post.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

And so, to Bangalore, where the weather is absolutely fantastic, stupendous, and magnificent all at once. Munificent, even. (It’s the middle of June, don’t they know??) The people speak a strange language that is vaguely familiar to me because I can understand Coorgi. A lot of them also speak Hindi and/or Tamil and/or English, so I’m positively spoilt for choice here every time I open my mouth. However, the natives are completely clueless as to how to decongest their roads and so moving around is a phenomenal pain– alleviated somewhat by the 23-hour English FM radio station, unique in India to the best of my knowledge.

We drove here a few days ago, the family and I. I’ve recently discovered, with the male parent temporarily around and wishing to drive ‘his’ car (hmph), that (a) it’s very boring to sit in the front passenger seat on road trips once you get used to being the usual driver, and (b) the rear seat of a Qualis is far bumpier than the front. But my brother and I swallowed our prides, sat slightly closer to each other, and watched a movie on my mom’s lovely laptop– double headphone jacks! –while Ma and Pa chewed sticks of grass and shot the wind up front. I found Superbad hilarious in moderation, but then I do go for the Ben Sandler brand of humour… you may not.

Mother and Father have built a house in north-east Bangalore, on the way to the new Bengaluru International airport. It was my mother’s dream to build her own house, and she’s done it with a modicum of style. The community is green and woody, with lots of shoots and leaves, large lawns, VERY pretty houses, and a stud farm for a neighbour. I kid you not. There live horses whose purpose in life is to– well, you know. 

I can’t see the great attraction in building a house of one’s own, myself (why not buy a readymade one, instead of going to the tailor?), but in our family if Amma wants to do something, it’ll get done sooner or later. Later, in this case. But we finally had the puja to inaugurate it, while my dad is still here! My mom consulted her brother, who consulted a Hindu calendar, and they arrived at 6 a.m. on Friday the 13th as the most auspicious time to have the ceremony. The three rational men rolled their eyes and cursed silently to themselves many times– but only in private. Our puja was short and simple: it consisted of boiling some milk until it spilled over, apparently to represent plenty. My maternal grandfather flew up from Madurai to be with us, and we asked my paternal grandfather’s brother to say a prayer. Pappan Appacha remembered “those who should have been here but are not able to”– my mom’s mom and both my dad’s parents, and the tears rolled down my dad’s face as he honked his nose in his hanky.

Custom further dictated that we spend a night in the new house, and so we had come laden with sleeping bags and blankets, although I forgot my pillow. Bugs and drainage problems: but we survived.

It’s at heart a retirement house built a couple of decades early, so the plan right now is to rent it at a price that covers the loan instalments. Standard procedure perhaps, but cunning nevertheless.

Look what I found in Bangalore though!

Isn’t she simply gorgeous? Pardon me for using the gender-specific pronoun, I usually find it pretentious, but this excepts. She’s my baby! I learnt to ride on her, 7 years ago now, and fuck, was I cool then. *grins cheekily* Mint condition, truly very well-maintained she is. Most bikes of her age and class (1974 model Jawa 250 cc, if you’re interested) have Hero Honda headlights and loads of other rubbish thrown on. Our lady has almost all her original parts: she just needs an engine rebore and some wheel alignment and she’ll be perfect. That helmet lock at the back, pointing up like a happy tail needs to go though.

We’re not going to do all that, though… she’s not really my bike, you see. She belongs to an NRI uncle, my father’s brother, and we merely looked after her for a few years (luckily for me, my high-school years) after my grandfather became too old to do it. That grandfather was an aircraft engineer with Indian Airlines, and my father and I have both inherited his love of locomotive machines. After I left for college though, my brother was still too young to ride her and with the disuse she began to rust quite quickly. A couple of years ago she was shifted to a Bangalore-based cousin for safekeeping– Bangalore is the place to be for Jawa and Yezdi bikes. My dad and I miss her though, and we always look in on her when we can.

I can’t really bring her to Delhi to live with me, although I’d certainly like to– then I could sell my rat-pat Bajaj. No fuel guage, no horn, terrible brakes, terrible lights, two-stroke engine, clouds of white exhaust– the Jawa was not designed for modern-day traffic, and I suspect she’ll never leave Bangalore again.

Actually I didn’t suspect that until I thought of it just now, but it seems crystal-clear now. *sniff*

She’s not dead yet though, and neither am I! :)

PS Yes I know, the ugly parking sticker has to go too. Meanwhile you kindly be noticing the regular door lock behind the number plate, and also my new boot cut Levi’s.

Really Now

If I don’t see fit to think of them as bitches, noone else should have the right to, even on my behalf, don’t you think?