A walk by my side

The evening has softened with an unexpected shower and breeze. Lonely me walking through the green meadows of an unknown settlement, somewhere in central India near the Satpura forest range...far from any railway station or bus station, where you are sure that you cannot get back to city life soon.

Where you know you are not under any obligation. Where you know the addiction of checking your Facebook of Gmail account every few moments, won’t bother you.

Where you know you have no presentations to make and anticipate reactions from the superiors, clients.

Here I am with me. The old good me that doesn’t critically analyse me. The me which is happy with what he sees in the nature. No questions asked. Just walk with a bare-soul, bare feetand bare-chest.

I feel saintly....I consider myself near the moment of truth, near the atoll of serendipity, until some one rediscovers the warm blooded human in me.

A tiny yet sharp voice breaks the connection with truth, serendipity. “Kaha ja rahe ho babu,” asks an angry looking Gond kid. I said,"hello."

Dark night's conversation

Suspicion and deceit have always ruled our mind in one form or the other.

The other member in the family, the best friend, the office colleague, everyone or someone has breached our trust sometimes. We have nursed injuries. We have cried foul and thought of ourselves being at the receiving end.

Yet we have also not been worthy of others belief many a times, knowingly or unknowingly we have hurt others. It seems being human we become part of this precarious game.

Alok was in a thoughtful mood defining and redefining silently what is the essence of 'trust'.

Didi (the maid) has left since an hour after cooking a oil-less meal without chappatis (bread). It’s about eight in the evening.

The tiny Oraon tribal hamlet of 40 houses is into deep sleep, except the dim-lighted broken community toongi (club house), where half-a-dozen men were enjoying semi-distilled mahua. Alok looked at the chapatiless, boiled vegetable dinner neatly placed near his table.

It didn’t excite him, though his conscience was forcing him to have it or else it’s the waste of the pure labour of love with which Didi prepared this food.

Guilty! Yet he moved ahead, opened the thatched gate of the mud house and wandered in the clean red-earth-road of Dhan-Gaon. Still thoughtful, Alok stumbled upon a lonely Jokhi didi loitering in the dark.

“What’s the matter babu...not asleep?” “You educated young men always roam in search of what you only know.”

“See our boys are always in search handi (traditional rice beer) or mahua. Goddess bless them...”
Alok had no point to make, neither was he avoiding Jokhi. He quite liked Jokhi, who must be of the same age as Alok. In her early twenties she looked worn-out, dilapidated skeletal human body.

Her age is that of an old lady in this hamlet, where life expectancies rarely cross beyond late thirties.

Sharp and witty, Jokhi asked Alok again. “Want Khaini(chewing tobacco).” Alok said,”yes,” with thinking and realising he never had it nor did he ever intended to have it. “It doesn’t matter,” he mulled, and put some in his mouth in a manner similar to how Jokhi did.

“What’s the matter with you Jokhi didi? You are the old lady,... mother of two young men why are you roaming,” said Alok jokingly.

“I knew you will have this question. Very predictable of an educated young man,” she said and laughed hysterically, usual of her style.

Alok knew there will be no answers. This was a trust building exercise and he has not succeded building the bridge with Jokhi, or for that matter anyone else in this village to get a straight answer.
Jokhi, the smart one she was, could gauge Alok’s apprehension.

“Not in a mood to be in this village ..sometimes sit with us in the evening have some daru and see how people trust you..we are simple people you just need to be simple with us,” Jokhi said.

Jokhi’s 10-year-old daughter came running. “Mai mai (mother, mother) come fast chutki (the small one) is running high fever.”

Jokhi gave all her khaini to Alok and ran saying, “Babu this looks like bada bukhar (Malaria).”

Another day in Shobhita's life

The main character here is a woman fictitiously named as Shobhita.
I was not out of my battered soul yet, when Rukmini knocked my door. Unhappy with her new boss and workplace, which I have been hearing for the past two months, she almost banged my door till I broke my inertia and opened the door.
She had this very original worrisome facial expression on her egg-shaped beautiful face ....and as always she anticipated some genuine concern from my side. I was not too enthused at that moment entertaining her trivial woes. She demanded my attention anyways.
I had to wear a fictitious smile in an effort to soothe her imaginative worries which included how her boss may not allow her to order from Pizza Hut as the company has tied up with Dominos.
"What say...see how unlucky I am,” she said.
I had no words and conviction to cajole her and say,” this is just a phase in life you will soon get to work at a new place and order from Pizza Hut." But I did it anyway.
When you enter into this long phase of relationship where you do things out of habit rather than realising them, it gets seriously boring. But then you have never really tried to behave any other possible way and allowed this habit to grow.
"It doesn't matter," I thought. Just five months to go and I'm out of this place.
Rukmini and I have been staying in this working women's hostel since the past two years and never have there been a day she has not complained about her life.
She's perpetually happy in the morning at the breakfast table in the music room....then goes the days her depressing SMSes flood my hand-phone.
Co-workers smile suspiciously as if some romance is brewing...unfortunately it would have been some message reading, "pata hai me an aaj bahot sad hun.. know this guy with that Harvard-type degree..my new manager yaar gives me hi funda and forces me to accept that mine is a nondescript degree...I fought with him..u see my MBA degree is the best in Jabalpur your may be in the US... I'm so sad he is also very cute but that Delhi girl is getting all the bhao...my life is all sad ...mujhe call kar na."I would be preparing some presentation for our new clients in clean energy business...and will typically not respond to her.
Then a flurry of her SMSes reiterating how the damsel-in-distress is almost doomed.
When I go back home she won't be there typically i will have my session of television and non-fiction reading. When I'm just into my bed she will come running he Shobhita what the hell yaar you didn't even call me.
"Where were you ..why so late today," i will ask with little interest. You know I was sad in the day then in the evening Rohit took me to the cafe near the sea-face, I was amazed. ...but then he pissed me up he told, "I can work with you despite your poor education in Jabalpur."
I said he must be joking. She said," tu sunna ..he also said that he was joking." But I didn't believe....you know why?
"Why" I had to ask.
That Delhi hot girl was waiting for us to join at the bar in the inner city circle. He thought I won’t understand.
Then all the nonsense will continues till 1:30 and then she will say chalo mujhe sona hai or else I will have pimples.
I don't know but by this time I never felt like sleeping she i will have to wake up and read some stuff like "The world most respected companies,” The biggest financial disasters in the world history," and so on...
What a day....what a night ...what a friend I have I would think subconsciously with no hope and strong feeling of escaping it.

My date with alcohol; the highs and the not so highs

This post is a work of fiction and it has nothing to do with me. The main character here is refered to as 'me' for ease of reading. (Photo courtesy: http://lmgfieldmarketing.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/usable-all-breezers.gif)

I’m not necessarily an alcohol aficionado, but I had my share of getting drunk, high and wild too. A decade ago I hated the smell of alcohol, the dipsomaniacs and their unpleasant behavior after a spell of drinking.

I was introduced to this not-so-heavenly liquid by force during one of the ragging sessions in my early graduation days by four gentlemen in one of the British styled 100-year old hostel rooms, on the banks of wide Yamuna river in a dark winter night.

It disturbed me, I vomitted and I went back to my room praying for forgiveness to my God with the explanation that bad times made me touch something as untouchable as alcohol.

The next day I complained to the University Procter that landed the above mentioned gentlemen in a soup. They were suspended from the hostel for 2 months but that did no wonders for me.

They were back with a vengeance and with the determination of converting me into an alcoholic. And they succeeded in a way. I had to drink a glass of concentrated cheap rum, and vomit almost everyday.

They wanted me and other fresher students to join the movement 'a-glass-of-rum everyday', until one late night drinking session on a highway dhaba followed by a disastrous accident killed one of those seniors.

The surviving three left alcohol forever and preached the benefits of being non-alcoholic. That was the end of more alcohol for me in during the period of my four-year graduation.

I however learnt and loved the idle urdu gazhals in the praise of alcohol and women and regularly won prizes at inter university events.

After graduation I joined a reputed media school where liberty, intellect and alcohol enjoyed the same status. I was slightly curious! How could such decent looking intellectual types are friends with alcohol? Even the teachers would speak about it with dignity in the classroom.

This changed status of alcohol made me think about it with some respect. I did research about the colour and nature of different varieties of alcoholic drinks....this time it looked better.... didn’t smell as awful... But I continued to resist from touching it.

A year after, I landed in the city bureau of a national daily newspaper. Day one, the forty year old city editor welcomed me by taking to an event in a luxury hotel, where booze flowed free and everyone had a glass in hand.

The bureau slowly discovered about my distance from alcohol. A bureau of 12 women and 4 men, all of them except this beautiful lady from Kashmir was a drinker.

They didn’t ridicule me but rather sympathized about how I’m missing something so adorable in life.

Still unaffected.... I stayed away ... but alcohol no more looked ugly or untouchable to me. I accepted being friends with those who loved alcohol and discovered the pleasures of smoke filled cramped pubs in an otherwise spacious Delhi.

In the meantime I was losing my heart to a female reporter in a rival newspaper, thanks to the job of reporting at the not-so-cool late night page three parties.

We shared the goal of spotting celebrities, their gossips and their glamorous lives, while we had to come back to our humble lives in the by-lanes of typical south Delhi villages.

Those trips back home in some PR sponsored car on wide Delhi roads at about 2 hours past midnight that made us closer. She was a rebel child born to a strict Bengali teacher’s family almost similar to mine except for the region.

She was a year younger to me but was a step ahead at least in her experiments with alcohol.

Almost a year after we both were on a junket to a beautiful Himalayan hill station, where a large hydropower corporation arranged for a luxurious stay and trekking adventures for journalists before their entry to the primary market for raising funds.

There was no reportage to be made except the interview with the chairman, which ended on day one of the five day trip. Rest of the four days was for us to retreat.

We succumbed to the idyllic charm of the hills and absolute comforts of life for those few days. It was easy to be romantic and shed all inhibitions. And that was a good chance for alcohol to enter into my life.

She introduced me to the finer and expensive, non-smelly and no-vomit side of alcohol. I was floored. We had more Himalayan adventures and more introduction, appreciation and to some extent addiction to alcohol.

The high continued as long as we romanced. It ended in a year’s time when she chose to go for higher studies abroad, as many journalists do after their fling with journalism in junior positions. I lost my interest in alcohol again note merely because I was heart-broken or something but because I couldn't afford the finer expensive stuff she introduced me to.

This time, male friends tried to revive the trend by introducing me to the dark, cheaper alcohols of our times, thanks to the duty free thekka shops in otherwise dutyful Delhi.

And the cheaper variety of alcohol comes as a natural support to the guys nursing their broken hearts at least in India.

Ever heard that, “Rumko pio aur ghum ko bhulao.” (Drink rum and forget the sorrow)

By now I was graduated to a learned appreciator and critic of alcohol, a much needed quality in the media and party circuit in the city of the Djinns.

Then work and professional excellence took over me and I had to move to Mumbai, the maximum city, where you have to survive on the minimum. Minimum sleep, minimum romance and minimum parties, because your maximum time is taken by the suburban trains.

Here you have a outlet for journalists called the Press Club, where you network rather than the party meets of Delhi. You have to be in good shape to go back home safely in the trains.

So being a Mumbaiah in Mumbai I here, discovered an alcopop, called Breezer, smooth alcoholic yet keeps you fit for a train journey back home. I just slip into some networking group and sip a bottle of red, yellow or green coloured Bacardi Breezer much to the annoyance of the young women journalists around.

The girls must be thinking this as an intrusion of sorts. I heard a remark once, “Look that uncleanly shaven un-cool guy holding a bottle of our drink as if he will eat it like a Wada-Pao.”

So it be, but I’m a breezer man now.