Blues is a Woman

Music, my love I miss you. For me there is no feeling greater than making music. Nothing gives me more adrenalin rush than playing on stage. The music pulsating through your nerves, your blood through your band's collective body. You play. You listen. You learn to feel musical signals. You learn to be spontaneous. To give in. Today, in this land so far away from my music, and people I made music with, it is easy to forget those moments of ecstasy. But it comes back to you at times. And it overwhelms you to tears.

I miss my piano. I hallucinate about playing it in the middle of a boring session. Or at night when I'm half asleep. I miss Subhayu, Soumyadeep da, Andy da, Shreya di, and Shinjan da. I miss you Nevermind. I miss the Blues.

Random Acts of Madness

What would happen if I had not bunked a Mechanical Workshop class one afternoon on a whim and gone on a limb to a desolate mall along the bypass with a guy I had just got to know? Cool chap. Crazy about music. I was terribly depressed about something I cannot recall clearly. He was heartbroken about something else. Bothered by what seemed to be grave matters at that time we set out aimlessly. 

A pointless impulsive act of randomness changes your life more than the the really important stuff. Most of the things that really makes me who I am today are not things I planned or decided to do. Strangely what matters in the end are things I never really actively decided. Many of the plans I had about life did work out. But I cannot think of one decision that involved a lot of thought and planning that brought half the memories as the impulsive ones did. None of the things in life that I would guard with my life are things I thought would be of any consequence when I came across them first. Because I was busy looking at things that matter. I was worried about my own designs on life.

I might be worried about a lot of things right now but I know that none of the things I am worried about will actually cause me trouble. May be there will be no trouble at all. Even if there is any, they will be because of things I have not taken into account. I love the way life works. I totally do.

Madness matters. More than method, in fact.

[To the techies, do let me know what you feel about the cardinality of the class relationship?]

I see You, You see me: The Magic Numbers

I have made my peace with this place. It is fine. I have met some people who are nice. I have my group. I won't think about you. You who can crawl to Chayer Dokan after a day at work. You. And You. I love the food here. I love how there are no mosquitoes here. How I have wide footpaths. Pruned shrubs all along the way and archways of more pruned shrubs to change lanes while walking. I love the Tangri Kebab at Punjab King. It is a two minute walk away from the ATM which is a two minutes walk from my room. Asma I don't think of you any more. I don't think of you Spider Man, you who are dusty from hanging on to a pole in front of a dying New Empire and a flourishing KFC. I only read the Calcutta pages on The Telegraph and TOI everyday. I know you are alright. With every passing day I hear rumours that grow dense with despair. It becomes increasingly clear that I won't be returning soon. Anyway. Not that it matters. Not that I would let it.

At night I close my eyes and I am walking on Park Street. How are you?

Reporting from Ahmedabad Part-1

You take a flight to a manicured infocity and start liking the comforts of clean air, plenty of greenery, embarrassingly wide footpath- not a hawker to block your way, or make you offers of questionable thingummies. Your office is a leisurely three minutes' walk away. You can stay in your room and watch a Bergman or listen to music or read on Reader and there's no mother to keep bugging you to go to sleep in time.

But there are little things that suddenly catch you unawares. An otherwise boring HR video that has a shot of the Governor House or the Victoria Memorial chokes you in the middle of a session. The city sounds when someone from the city calls you make you loath the soothing calm of a planned town. Sometimes when the poo will walk down from Chandni towards Park Circus along the main road while talking to me on the phone I can tell how far she's reached from the sounds on the road. 

'Don't cross the road now. Please wait for your turn. Abhi rasta paar na karein kripya pratiksha karein....'

And I know she is at the Park Street crossing. You know what that feels like, don't you?

I am not saying I don't like this place. The people are blunt and it's impossible to have conversations with them. Everyday when I come back home from office I feel a strange emptiness inside me. I think of how hard I have been trying to talk to people. I genuinely try to like them. But I cannot. They have not heard of The Beatles and they don't know who Norah Jones is. They listen to 'soft romantic numbers' and their past time is 'watching or playing cricket and watching tv and orkuting'. They think Indian Classical is boring. The other day someone walked into my room while I was watching Summer With Monika. He stared at the screen for sometime and said don't you have some better movies? Non black and white? What do I say? I paused the movie and made polite conversations with him, apologizing for my clearly inadequate collection of movies.

All the people here are tech-retards. They know less about the internet or technology than any humanities people I know. They do not know what a browser is (well, many of them) or what a URL is for that matter. They can't differentiate between the internet and an intranet and have never heard about phishing or keyloggers. 

They are shocked to see that I know how to differentiate a single-breasted suit from a double breasted or that I use keyboard shortcuts for most things. I regularly hear taunts about how I must have prepared for almost every subject being taught here ahead and how lame that is. I smile awkwardly, not knowing how to react. I guess there are better engineers than these. It's just that I am stuck for two months with the lamest of the bunch. I know things will be somewhat different once I am out of the ILP. At least I won't have to stay with them 24x7.

And that will be the end of my rant for now.

Farewell Post

There are too many people I wanted to meet before I leave. Too many things I wanted to say. But with the maddening running around I had to do to get the documents and provisions together (to be packed in a bag) I had very little time to. Then I thought I would write a mail each to people who matter, and there are quite a few, to tell them that they will be missed when I am gone. But I run out of words. I woke up unusually early today. About 6.30 in the morning. Could not sleep longer. I sat down at the piano. And I found what I was looking for - Robi Thakur. While I was playing I remembered this one poem:

"Jaha kichhu boli aaji shob britha hoi
Mon bole matha nari- e noi e noi  :)
Je kothaye hridoy amar poripurnotomo
She kotha phote na keno e binaye momo
She shudhu bhoriya uthi osrur abege
Hridoy akash ghire ghono ghor meghe"

I realised there's one song that's been sung so long and so much that would say all that there is to say. And here it is.



PS: I am leaving tomorrow, Saturday morning. Will reach Ahmedabad in roughly two and a half hours.