Narcopolis...

If the book is to be defined in one word, then I would prefer to call it surreal. It is the safest blanket word for anything weird and dream like smitten with unexpected elements of surprise that, however, in the context of the novel do not hold absolutely true. Jeet Thayil appears, in a subtle way, inspired by Salman Rushdie; the way he sets in motion the story in retrospect as a dramatic monologue into each of our ears individually, one by one and we begin to get high on those heavy pot smoked-stoned words. The first few pages are a deliberate attempt on the technique of stream of consciousness. The words that the narrator blurts out as though said in a state of trance are thoroughly premeditated and unfortunately are not in line with the rest of the narration when we meet again Dom Ullis in the last page. Nonetheless Thayil deserves respect for he is not just a writer of these events but an active member in the story if not carved out as himself, but following his journey with drugs a bit of him may be observed in every character.

Reading this book is like going to a movie and coming out of the theatre without a major change in your expressions, you only grow a tad grim but would not like to discuss it with anyone. Words flow effortlessly like poetry and excellent imagery and dream like sequences of classic trance are witnessed. For me here lies the victory of the book; dreams are brutal, hallucinations are ruthless and sobriety is only paid occasional visits like one of the brothels in the book. In a way Narcopolis is a scary story, for the author never once smiles throughout the narration, even when he does it is only at the misery of the characters or rather his own self. It is a sadistic take on reality where characters are too real to forget smiling but in the midst of way too real situations to introduce any mirth.

One thought sprouts another under the influence of opium and dope and chemical and heroine and an entire array of narcotics. Gradually the narration moves ahead independently and acquires a less familiar shape and indulges in a strange kaleidoscopic pattern. The unfolding takes us from Shuklaji Street to China several decades ago and takes us forward to communal tensions in the 90s. Thayil often yields to egoistical tantrums that writers sometimes throw, through over involvement in the story that a storyteller must not be a victim of, sometimes even boasting the fact off that he knows more than the readers do.

So far, I have not said a word about the story of the book because a story has only been woven in order to highlight the dark crevices and webby niches of the glamorous Bombay. It does not sound like Bombay at all but at the same time there is no surprise. The dark demons of the night live in the wombs of gutters and alleys with illegitimate signboards, and every big city blows a sooty trumpet of such a corner. There are eunuchs and there is trade of the flesh and there are drags from chillums and imported China pipes yet there is heart and there are hopeless longings and there are sighs, but there are also castrations and pain and madness and shame. It is a filthy book but not without a fair amount of very natural emotions.

All in all, the book is a gripping one. I am not a good judge of a book but this one deserves to be read if not win a Booker Prize. Read it for the taste of that transcendental addiction to poetry that Thayil germinates within us.

The dream...

There was an amorphous quiet in the woods. Only crickets rubbed their feet together in serene patterns sometimes. If there were birds and wolves and monkeys in the jungle, they were all hushed and showed no signs of existence. Under the creepers growing on low monsoon trees overgrown with green, velvety moss and beautiful deadly mushrooms was a bend in the river. The water flew so gently that it gave an impression of a composed lake. It was an occasional glitter in this water, through the leafy mesh, that presented an evidence of daylight over the closed forest. Nature stood in its most intimate bearing, relaxed on the face of earth, shyly against the water, in a state of utter ecstasy where words lose their meanings and sounds appear a hindrance.

I must have spent a tenth of a second in this tranquil surrounding when the intrusion set in. A wild man with long knotted hair and as long a beard that looked like a lion’s mane came in. I cannot now recall where he stood; on the mossy ground or water. He looked everywhere like an animal, out of place; up in the roofed sky, into the crevices of trees, at the dressed branches, everywhere. Then he started looking at his arms and legs, and the black robe in tatters that came to his thighs, and the rope that was around his waist. He went from one object to another with his eyes with such slow movements that it all began to blend in the calm environment. Suddenly, with a sharp turn of his head he looked at me, pierced his razor eyes into mine and began to laugh, a mirthless, soundless snigger.

I often wake up when I thus meet myself in a dream--- too surreal to be ignored or forgotten in the dull routine that follows--- drenched in sweat, my veins beating loudly against my wrists. 

Diary of a dead man...

The evening is raw. There are birds of prey all around in the sky flying low in concentric circles, unnerved by a human presence below. They screech their high pitched songs into the moist air, which cut into my bones and send shivers down my spine. Appearing like mere silhouettes of their majestic tribe, they beckon the dusk and with each circumambulation it seems to reach closer and closer. The sky starts to close on me and soon I am surrounded by fluttering falcons, one of which tears a ligament right out of my shoulder.

How I loved to watch the sun go down and bathe in the warmth of its aftermath. Streaks of clouds changing shapes in the golden gloss, inches above the horizon hooked me tight until they turned grey and smudgy and I knew it was time to go back home, to the warmth of the hearth. I loved to walk on my feet and push the earth down with every step. I was in full control of things in and about my life. Sometimes I walked out of cafes with my arm around her and she loved to be held so. It was all at this hour, and it was all mine. Today I lay here still, arms and legs in full directional projection. They tear deeper into my arm.

When I was young I loved to jump into things and make mistakes only to hurt myself in the end. What lovely pain! There were fights and climbing and falls and recoveries from overtly confounded head rushes. There were people and stories and histories and lonely spells. There were no things I ever had regrets for, but only that they lasted for a very short time. Then there was growing up and the process of maturing that gave me opportunities for new mistakes and fights and falls and love and pain. There were moments when I was and some when I really was not proud of myself, but no regrets at living as I did. But was that a short life! One of them tethers its talons into my bare chest. Rest follow.

There were a thousand dreams and I lived them all one by one, but with each one a thousand more sprang like hydra and ran all around like little bunnies. I chased after them each day, caging them and caressing them, as I ran into her one of those evenings. She looked deeply into my eyes as I was busy digging up a hole, making some music of own. She snatched the shovel out of my hand and I knew my soul had met her twin. There were heartaches and rains and long strains of drizzling love. But all that ended all too soon.

And I am here now beneath four pairs of razor sharp beaks and talons. They rip out my heart and it hurts, even though it doesn’t. I must go far away now, even though I mustn’t. It all has to end up like this, but the journey was worth all its very while. Soon they will gouge out my eyes and I will be one with the earth, exposed to further deconstruction. My memories will however remain in the air, in every heart.

Random thoughts on a rainy afternoon

Imagine the magnanimity of the cosmic existence. Let’s face it, it’s a vague proposition. The human mind in its glorious limitations is unqualified to prepare an estimate of a borderless perimeter. If it has no foundation to build a hypothesis on, it struggles in the void like a ray of light: quite there yet touching nothing to show its presence, and totally unaware about it itself. Pure sciences are at an infantile stage of excavating the reality, and spiritual enthusiasts are looked down upon by astro-physicists and such other children of technology. The need for validation often spoils the splendour of a beautiful concept. I believe in what I believe.

Listen closely when the sky rumbles and pours gallons of water on the tin shed outside. Pluto need not be a part of the solar system to assure you an understanding of the universe. Vibrations that the flashes and claps of a thunder produce carve vivid scenes of the cosmic hall, echoing the stroke of an invisible stone on an ancient sheet of invisible leather, sending waves of fatal resonance down on us, tingling the mystic chords inside and subjecting us to an infinitesimal glimpse of the destruction coiled around creation. 

Sunday and Sitcoms

A Sunday during vacations can be tricky. On an ordinary week of an ordinary month it is a fresh recess from the commonly referred to, extremely subjective, often empirically stumbled upon drudgery of work. Not only does it provide the much needed break from monotony, it also relocates our belief in the theistic conception of a God, who according to Christianity needed this break on the seventh day of the week. Now, if God needed to take a day off, we mortals act only natural in following His league. This brings us much closer to Godhead and as a child of modern political India evokes in me an apparently innate and ‘ambedkarly’ rightful demand of reserving mortal privileges of a second holiday in the week to construct an opaque distinctive boundary line between Man and God. But we have digressed hugely from our original point. Let us get back to Sundays.

Ah Sunday, our saviour, the one we cherish for its enzymatic attribute of coaxing one into switching off the alarm on its eve and missing the rise of its pagan celestial namesake. Now, imagine a medicine as authoritatively potent as a Sunday being ripped off of its powers and thrown in together with hundreds of other capsules of multi-vitamins, reducing it into just another pill that will only be flushed out of the bowels the next morning with only a 50% chance of being absorbed by your body. From rags to riches, from a prince to a frog, from Manmohan Singh the FM to Manmohan Singh the PM, that’s the magnitude of the fall when a regular Sunday metamorphoses into a Sunday during vacations. It loses its edge and turns into a round ball of faded wool that even cats play with only when bored.

It is on such an impotent, incapable, just another day that happens to be a Sunday that I am writing today’s blog. As my Saturday was no different from my Sunday in any significant sense I woke up super late on both these days without an altered bubble of caustic composition popping in my gut. And here I am still awake at an hour that humanity has taken turns to call as ghastly, ghoulish, insanely late, nocturnal, or what people in the west call it much to us Indians’ amazement-- morning.

I was planning on deleting some stuff from my laptop and I bumped into three extremely popular sitcoms FRIENDS, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. I know this must be the side effect of the radiation from this once active now dormant conundrum of a lethargic Sunday that I got into thinking about them. I found that even though I watch each new episode of a new sitcom with an open mind without any prejudices, I still like FRIENDS the best followed by HIMYM and BBT the least even though it’s funny in a sadly smart way. My dizzying analysis shows that probably FRIENDS always tops the list because it touches a psychological chord of nostalgia, having stayed by my side through school and college and now in the professional sphere. But analytics dare this simple explanation.

An emotionless postmodernist analysis deconstructs the situation into yet simpler terms of what manages to seep into the subconscious state of my mind. It is beyond the people who play the roles or what the storyline is. It is the basic things like what sets are used and how is the lighting managed. We consciously hardly ever take notice of things like sets while watching something that’s more appealing owing to its actors or the plot or the script. But that is not true also with our unconscious self furthermore observing and storing each and everything we come across ever more piercingly than our eyes.

In FRIENDS more public places like the coffee house are used as settings where most of the action takes place, where many unrelated people come and go and add to the dynamics of the scene. When showing the indoors the walls are painted in more vibrant and lively colours, hosting cheerful posters and paintings. Monica’s flat in particular has windows and even a balcony making it much more appealing than Joeye’s flat across the hall that has hardly ever been shown with a window; very claustrophobic, something that my subconscious would never allow. But most of the action takes place elsewhere or there is a healthy (call it remedial) movement between Joeye’s apartment and the rest of the places.

Taking FRIENDS as an accepted standard setting margin, the rest of the two sitcoms appear smaller. HIMYM has most of the action taking place indoors, most of the time at night. Now let’s not go back and rewind on our basics why the sun often symbolizes happiness and cloudy or darkness is for sadness and depression. This plays heavily on my psychology and I always miss an opportunity to build a rapport with the sitcom, but right then the costumes come to rescue. With Marshall as the only exception, to which however he occasionally creates a counter exception thus becoming in line with the trend with no exceptions at all, all characters wear bright and happy colours, creating a vibrant atmosphere not with the painted walls but with the painted costumes. Barney’s character too leaves a positive impression in the mind for obvious reasons.

This brings us to the BBT. Like Barney, Sheldon is a talker who loves himself and likes to believe that he is always correct. Now, many people find him the best character in the sitcom, the sole reason why they watch the programme. This is indeed true. He is so irritating and we (read I) find him so annoying yet we want to see him and wait for his next move however irritating it be. Once again I am digressing from the main point. BBT offers a strict indoors setting in a house full of nerds proposing very little fun. There is hardly ever a glimpse of the outside world. This could have been happening well in an alien soil and so it loses the terrestrial touch, bringing it at the bottom of my preference among these three options.

Suddenly everything looks quite meaningless. This could mean only one thing, I am sleepy. I may do extreme things like write a blog like this which is nothing but a blot to my otherwise decent blog page, and even post it, but I can never compromise with sweet sleep, which on a worthless, futile Sunday is anyway hard to come. Goodnight.

Implications of a dark evening

            Strange things happen after dark. I had heard this being said a thousand times before, and had probably even experienced it on my own in a mild form, so far. But the dark evening of the 29th of January, 2012 brought me to the realm of the experienced ones, those who have legitimate and rightful reasons to preach this wisdom. Now that I have raised the bar of expectations high and exposed my story to the poor light of a possibly low climactic judgement, let me narrate it out loud to provoke some disappointment and lead the way to the lighter observations that came to me like the great flash of enlightenment, documenting which, by the way, was the main purpose of this blog tonight.



           While coming back from a friend’s house in Haldwani at the after dark phase of this Sunday evening, I could not find a rickshaw. Having waited for a few minutes I decided to walk my way to Kaladhungi Chauraha, a place where I could easily find a rickshaw back home. Soon enough I got bored of walking alone in the bustle of the crowded city and decided to talk to mother back in Almora. I dialled her number and started talking to her. She told me about this and that and so did I. Then I came to the topic which brings us quite close to the climax of this story. Before the climax a little background is of immediate requirement. I had got a phone last year from Surat and I had being meaning to buy myself a memory card ever since. Now that I had misplaced my iPod I decided to finally bring this plan to action and actually buy one. So I told Ma to send my phone earphones to me in Haldwani. She asked me where I had kept them. As I was about to tell her that they were in the front pocket of my small sports bag that contained my old history notes, I felt a cursory but firm slap on my hand that was at my right ear holding the phone. For a minute I was excited to think that some old friend was probably in town and wanted to surprise me like this. But I was also afraid that my phone might have fallen on the ground and had possibly broken as I could no longer feel it at my hand. But there was no sound of plastic meeting concrete.


            This, now, is the climax of the story; the main part. As I was looking at my left side for my phone I heard the familiar sound of an engine of Yamaha RX100 at my right, shifting forward with great speed. Busy as I was in the thoughts of my earphones and searching for the exact words to say to Ma in order to help her locate them, it took me a few seconds to realize that I had just been robbed. The biker had snatched my phone with an impressive dexterity and was now holding it between his teeth as he continued to increase the speed. For a second he turned his head back to check whether I was following, and I am sure I saw him smile with my phone in his mouth compelling him to turn that theft into a pleasant grinning experience, of course exclusively for him. I was too dumbstruck to run after him and in a second or two he had already disappeared. My immediate reaction is going to be considered a fake affectation for the sake of gaining some respect after thus losing my mobile, but I swear on all my lost contacts that it is true. I thought I had to buy a new one anyway. Even the vibrator in this one was not working properly. What followed was some formality in the police station et al, and is drag and boring, and moreover only a stupid ending to an exciting incident, so I am not writing about it.


            Later in the evening after dinner as I was watching some TV with Kucki da a funny thought came to me. How many adapters like mine are left all alone in the world without their respective mobile phones to attach themselves to? They might feel somewhat like the war-widows who were courageous enough to send their men to the war front with high hopes, but unfortunate to receive the news of them having being captured by the enemy with no hope of return. They, then, spend their lives always dangling from the switchboard, like split ended hair strands, waiting to be detached from the head one fine day. I felt pleasure at this sadistic comparison.


            They don’t end here, my observations. I missed a lump in the front pocket of my jeans that I continued to check after intervals, and every time I found it not there I got worried for a second and then relieved that it was actually stolen and that I hadn’t forgotten it anywhere. Few labels have been attached to me for some time now and only partly for the right reason; one, that I am always on phone and the other that I am very careless. I am on phone, but not always and who isn’t careless sometimes! Just that I am caught at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Anyway, today my phone took away both these customary accusations with it, though only for the time being. But I do have a reason to rejoice. No distractions and a temporary holiday from the albatross round my neck. I could concentrate more on the TV and once back in my room I could read some Turkish poetry in translation, something that had lately found it difficult for itself to squeeze some time out, because of a stupid but addictive game in the phone.


Thank you thief, however may you rot in hell!

What's going on!!!

Today, like many other days at home in the hills I woke up in the designed, fraudulent, deceitful morning of early January. There was no sun in the vicinity, despite it being a Sunday and the sky was covered in a sludge of dark clouds, so dark that the only light from the window in my room gave me an impression that there’d been a snowfall early in the morning. It was quiet; not even the birds chirped that chirped always, the stillness that only followed a snowfall. I threw my fur filled quilt at one side of my bed and jumped at the window, hoping to see the landscape outside covered in white moss: trees, mountains, flower pots, the old wooden bench, everything covered in pure pashmina. But as I ogled at it from the wiry mesh of my window I saw the old adulterated version of this fairy tale--- hills without snow!


So much frustration over a trifle, you must think, but my occasioning pain only doubles as I break to you that the undeserving, unchosen land of abject aesthetics, writhing under its confused etymology, Pathankot, has witnessed a snowfall last night. What is going on?!?