And It Makes Me Wonder...

... if Layne Staley was still breathing, if someone had just stopped John Bonham that day from going overboard with alcohol, if Roger Waters and David Gilmore had never parted ways, if Cliff Burton had survived the tragedy, if someone had saved Dimebag Darrell from the gunshot, if Lynyrd Skynyrd had survived the plane crash, what a different world it would've been today.

Alright, the most important question now, did you or did you not empty my bottle of vodka?

Gel Is Hell

(This short story got published in the HAIR magazine & it's a work of fiction. Any attempts to kick my divine ass on basis of this story shall be dealt with seriously.)

I understand the importance of advertisements, but it would be of a great help if they also gave a list of instructions advising the audience on what one must NOT do with their products!

I got a chance to go on a date after some six long months of a dull and virtually dead social life. Relief, excitement, anxiety – all ended up making me nervous and overtly conscious. When all of these emotions come to haunt you together, everything that the mirror reflects seems like a mess-up! Almost nothing seemed in its place. With no help round the corner, you are left with little choice but to just resign to your fate and offer a quick prayer to Him, so things would work out fine.

I had an anxious hour to kill before I started for the big date. To release my tension, I switched on the TV. An endorsement of some new hair gel by a celebrated cricketer was being aired. Cricket and hair gel don’t really match, but when you are listless and confused, every advice thrown at you tends to become your ultimate decision, and here the ad seemed to shout out to me – “I can help you with your hair at least”. Next thing I know, I was at a shop, buying the hair gel. I sped home and without caring to read the instructions, I slathered it on in dollops. Nervousness does that to you – either you act brave or the bravado is a mere act of stupidity, which you realize only after it’s too late. So only after I had applied the gel and tried to use my comb, did I realize that the comb wouldn’t move an inch. On checking my watch, I realized that I had to leave for my date right away! Too late to correct the wrong now; I quickly grabbed my cap and rushed to meet my girl.

I knew, as long as the cap was on, my mess was “covered”. But a cap doesn’t stay on forever, not on a date. You never realize when the cap is off, and when her hands get in your hair, and when a disgusted “ewww” fills your ears and the room, and when the girl rushes to the washroom and when the date ends in a disaster!

There is a reason I shaved my head and swore to never watch commercials ever again!

Mysore Tales - I

Pink Floyd, Vodka and now, Chuck Palahniuk.

We all are addicts and we keep looking for potential in other people. We want them to be worse than us or at least as drowned as us, in our similar addictions. If not, we spread the same.

Virus© and I are victims to the same dope – music, vodka, misery and Chuck Palahniuk.

******

Mysore was on my mind for quite sometime now. Jodhpur and Rourkela had given me a brief notion on the northern and north-eastern life of India respectively, and though, the beautiful Shillong and Leh Ladakh are still to be explored, the empty pockets and lack of a proper plan had made me look towards the South. Mysore easily seemed the best bet; with an online friend inviting time and again for a nice session of vodka and Floyd, I just packed my bags and left for the promised temptations.

The train journey to Bangalore was quite uneventful this time. Shantaram and camera remained my best company. Sajid, a good friend of Sundar, happily picked me up from the station. A good shower, excellent food and cheap milkshakes later, I left for Mysore. I was told the road trip will be really beautiful and the amazing snaps do prove the tale.

Getting down at Mysore, I made my never-met-never-seen-friend, Virus, come to pick me up at the bus station. The tired, exhausted and Infy-cted person gathered all his strength and happily traveled a good 20 odd kilometers to collect me. The welcome began with an exchange of the friendliest and the most romantic words – “Aa gayaa chutiye!” The adventure began.

Knowing Virus© :

You curse Mysore, Virus likes you. You curse Infy, Virus loves you. We see Dil Chahta Hai posters on some walls and I say that your Mysore just released a decade old movie and he says, “That’s the fucked up city of Mysore for you”. Then we pass Purple Haze, “We get wasted here” he says and why not your house I ask. “We continue there” satisfies me as an answer.

Virus© and the ATMs:

Our first stop before the “big night out” was at an ATM. The ATMs at Mysore do not function for Virus. “Infy manages these ATMs”, Virus feeds me. No wonder they suck, I say. You curse Mysore, Virus likes you. You curse Infy, Virus loves you. In all those 3 days, whenever Virus stood before an “Infy-managed” ATM, it never worked.

Meet the people:

Chaitanya and Virus have been buddies since their school days. Back then they cursed their schools, now they curse Infy. Time moves on, people change, things to curse change, but the curses remain the same. When I entered their abode, there was no electricity. Chaitanya and me exchanged “hello” throwing torch-lights at each other. Then there was another roommate – Surendra aka Surya, another old friend of Virus. I do not know their subject of curses before, it is Infy now, is all I know.

But it was a while before he entered the scene. Till then, time was spent cursing him. An hour later, Surya came with money and some bad news – “Even they are coming”. Hurl of abuses and near death violence later, we locked the doors, got on the bikes and headed for the pub. On our way Virus came up with “Let’s get some stuff for us when we get home”, and I said oh yeah! Old Monk and some cola were the only available options. So Virus and I went back to the room but since the other two had carried the keys to the room, we were forced to keep the bottles outside. Hiding the booze behind the garbage bin was Virus’ brilliant idea.

The binge:

Purple Haze had stopped serving drinks by the time we reached there. Mysore closes by 11 pm but after lot of persuasion, we were given our respective pints. Mysore sucks. You curse Mysore, Virus likes you. But we had entertainment at the pub in the form of partly-stoned and badly drunk English – who turned out to be an employee of Infy. He was rated as an embarrassment to the British community. And Infy places such guys, I ask. You curse Infy, Virus loves you.

An attempt at getting physical with one of the females at our table, a big smacking kiss to his roommate, an attempt to play with the wrong “instruments” in public were reasons strong enough for the management to show him out of the pub and slap him some fine.

A decent dinner later, we headed for home. I introduced Virus to Blackfield and we opened Old Monk. Weirdly, no one was in much of a mood to go crazy. So the rum lay aside while we discussed music. Then Floyd started playing and I suggested we raise a toast to them. We filled half our glasses and cheered for bottoms-up. I said let’s do this one more time. It went on for three more times till our noses and throat hurt. It didn’t take time; ten minutes later, the world became a blur and there remained no sense in the talk that followed. The proceedings of the night cannot be further disclosed due to one main reason – we do not remember what happened. I do remember talking to some random friend of Virus at 3 am, then calling Red at 3.15 am. The last memories of the night to me are of someone heading for the sink and myself, crashing onto the bed. Day one ended as planned!

The mornings after are never sweet. The numb day that followed shall be continued in the next part. Stay tuned.

"Stone"d

You wake up to a mild irritation in your stomach and think it'll pass by in no time. You head to the loo and next thing you know, you can barely stand. One scream follows another and you crash out of there and head straight for the bed. All you can do is scream helplessly! You try to reach for the telephone in the other room but it's quite pointless as you just can't move. You wait for help to arrive. A scared grand-mom sees you in that state and dials home. Ten minutes, while you are waiting for your folks to arrive with a doctor, you spend time scaring your grandma worse with your record breaking, agonizing shreiks , your "oh fuck"s and "oh shit"s, your beating of the wall, the bed, the ground, the tearing up of a pillow and destroying virtually everything that you can grab hold of and suddenly you realize that your granny could get a blind hit from you and you push her away and make her go to the other room. Parents arrive with no doctor(s) and the curses are rising with every second. You look somewhere away and somehow that face appears and you reach out to her but she just stands there and smiles away. You break into a crazy laughter and "that's the best I can do to stop from crying" is what you tell the horrified audience. A third call to the doc later, he arrives in his pajamas and tells you it's a kidney stone. He makes the injection and tells you, it'll hurt a bit so you need to bear it. You let the needle prick you almost artistically, and in no time one pain replaces the other - now you are screaming for the leg. "Yes it will hurt a bit, I told you", says the doc. "If you want, I can put you to sleep", he says and you shout pronto. New needle, new liquid, other half of the butt - everything's new now, everything is something else, everything is going to be new - even the pain - but he doesn't tell you that. You just roll over on the other side and the needle does it's job. "Even this will hurt a bit", he says after he disposes off the injection. New scream for the new pain for the new leg! Everything's new, everything is different, but everything is added to the original. Slowly the world starts becoming a blur, the words stop making sense, a worried brother enters the room, questions like, "How are you feeling now and how is everything with you" are asked to the wrong person; then while you are talking, you abruptly start humming Blackfield and just like that, doze off to sleep. Two hours later, the pain has subsided and you see different set of people around you - everything is new, everyone is different, every situation is different, everything changes. Pain is gone, the medicines have killed the insomnia; tea, eggs, potatoes, beef, cakes, spinach are banned for months; beer is still not a legal drink at your place, so you're forced to gulp down barley water (beer is made from barley doesn't allow it's entry in your home), the 8 pills, 3 times a day make you pee every 15 minutes and perenially put you to sleep; but try forcing a "sleep-hater" to sleep for more than 20 hrs! All in all, calmer days, full of much needed rest! All projects on the hold, hope the clients stay patient; if not, you curse them with kidney stone for life! Go help yourself!

Let The World Be...

World peace is our most destructive dream. It's the chase of this foolish dream that's creating all this restlessness, confusion and chaos. It's a dream that man should stop promoting or selling. The sooner, the better for mankind. Peace!