Nothing Crushes Us.

Dear Leslie,

It's spring again and more beautiful than ever. More beautiful than it had ever been in twenty years. More beautiful than anyplace I've seen in twenty years. Last night I saw the moon fairy again. She shone down our tree-top home, a moon-beam double bright. And I longed to speak to the squirrels again, but it was night and they were asleep. In the quiet I heard the stream gurgling, over the stones and festered lilies.

I've been love-sick and torn. My wounds unfaded, fresh and raw. Early morning today I saw again.You in your corduroys and converses, refusing to grow up and telling me stories. Of kingdoms whose kings were cowards.And new lands discovered. Monsters fought and defeated.Gentle giants won with love. I felt again. Your warm breath as you outran me to our lair.

Today afternoon, years later, I played again. Hide and seek with the brambles.And the bluebirds that return only after winter fades. It was the same bluebird, I think.

Its strange that Today, when I ran back twenty years, I felt only the fluttering in my heart as I looked, once more, at a Queen's land.  I would never exchange that brief summer in an enchanted land for all the sparkling diamonds in the world. I wouldn't trade for all the magic in the world.

But I wouldn't trade the pain too. The pain and the senselessness.

This Twilight, as I sat nested beneath our tree and you beside me, I saw you speaking to the golden squirrel.

You smiled.

You hadn't ever left him.

And then, as the purple faded from the sky, I fashioned myself a crown again. A few wings. Light enough to fly me to another universe.

The king will return from exile.

Ready his palace.

Love,
Jesse.

A Calcutta Bus.

I'm in love with Calcutta Buses.

"That's smart" my alter-ego argues.
"Smart?"
"Yeh. Smart to like something that in any case you are condemned to. Like the subjects you research on.""Or a hurricane-destroyed home."
"Whatever."

So there's this thing about buses, you get a lot of insight into people. Mostly it centers around how principled some are of not patronising deodorants.Though sometimes you might also get a glimpse of an intense belief that Dada is just about to return to cricket. But even beyond that, if you care to look hard enough, travelling in buses is also about sensing just that faint betrayal of wanting more. More than having to travel miles and miles in crowds with place barely enough to stand.

Today, returning home late from Salt Lake, I was stuck in jam at the Bypass.Usual journeys from Salt Lake smooth enough. But then, this was an unusual one. So, stuck beside the Hyatt Regency,I chanced to look up from my cell. There was a dinner in full swing at its lawns. And staring at the splendour, an entire bus of people.

Sometimes, just very, very rarely, Dreams find a way out of hearts and into the chilly air.

This was written yesterday, 11:45pm and left unpublished because blogger decided to play truant.

"What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief."

No more be done:

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing a requiem, arid such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls.

Lay her i' th' earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,

A minist'ring angel shall my sister be

When, thou liest howling.

Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Realisations.

I wish I could call my blog a Happy blog too, but it isn't and if I tried to make it so, I would be being a hypocrite.

All the last two months I was literally leading a 7 am to 12 midnight existence, I finally realised why I write what I write. I love writing. It's as simple as that. And strange too, coming from the only writer in an entire family of Doctors. I'm a kind of a black sheep in that sense, but that's totally by the point.

I write out of compulsion. What I write maybe senseless unorganised crap, but writing it shall be. And besides, very sadly enough, there's little, too little scope for me to indulge in all the things that I think are wonderful. Painting, photography.

And there was also another realization. If you deliberately concentrate on the better parts of your dreary life ( yes, they will be there no matter how dead you are), If you consciously make an effort not to let your lows spill into places you keep returning to every few nights and is invariably the last thing you see before you hit the bed, then you still have hope.

My posts had taken on a monotonous shade of grey, and I don't think I like that anymore.

Because, if there's something you love, its always worth the effort to make it happy, isn't it?

The Beaten Road.

Let's just say I'd lost my way. And life can lead you to strange paths. The roads I traversed are not worth documenting but I just felt like announcing, "I'm Home".

A crashed hard drive and lack of time and energy made me almost forget the look of my blog, but the writing couldn't be forgotten and though most of my scribblings would seem sadly out of context, I might publish some of them.

To newer ways.
Cheers mate.

The Great Bollywood Trick.

I don't understand what this 'Kaminey' versus 'Dil Bole Hadippa' debate is all about. What I don't understand even more is why should there be the same intellectualist noise every time Yash Raj comes to the theater. Its been nearly a quarter of a century guys. Now Grow Up.

If you paid money for Dil Bole Hadippa people, you paid not to see Godfather re-invented. You paid knowing full well what was to come. No scams being run here. And I am bored. Of reviews from Hollywood- struck wannabe reviewers. Hell, I don't even know which newspaper is paid how much for each.

This will sound familiar, but yes, we have fantastic cinema. Not international cinema, not worldwide cinema, but absolutely fantastic cinema.

And if exotic India sells, Why not sell it? We need money.[ Let me see you debate me on this ;) ]
Sell exotic India. Sell sarson ke khet. It'll fetch you crores by the acre. Though apparently, in recent times, Shit-covered-India sells even more.

Years ago, Yash Raj brought along DDLJ, the NRI audience was discovered and Bollywood could never remain the same. It now had to cater to the Indians there instead of only Indians here, though of course it wasn't as if Indians there had confetti for brain. But the brains would have known that there were better movies to be watched with the same money. So the maestro tugged at the heart and Lo! Behold! The Great Bollywood Trick was born.

The Great Bollywood Trick culminates with Dil Bole Hadippa. And so does the trademark method of bringing back something from the gone romances. So we have to have Raj with his mandolin, the Veer- Zaara touch with Veer and 'Jhaapiyon sa desh hai mera.'

Just for the record, Kaminey just stopped short of just having been a really good movie. Just. The cinematography was bad. The realism is understandable, but it was wanting. And oh, it could have done without the blinkers-strapped Shahid. I mean that part was way out of the way, if you get what I mean.

I don't have any issues with my country basically consisting of people who like mush with an overdose of song and dance(preferably Bhangra). I like it too. Just as I like deep, issue based movies of foreign origin. Though if issues are what interests you, look deeper. DBH has them too. Light-hearted, breezy, but there.

Aaj discowale khisko, bhai desi beat bajaani.

When Illness is a Mercy.

There comes a time in the lives of all mediocre people when they are dragged down into their own abysses for no reason in particular. Daily, everyday chores weigh heavy. Tiresome, cumbersome jobs needed to be dispensed with replace what is usually a joy.

In straighter words, you are stuck in a rut.

What do you do to pull yourself out of it?

You find yourself an inspiration. Even if you are talking about dreary, dead places and desert sands of dead habit. Remember. In another time you would not have believed that this was impossible. You would have laughed at the unwillingness of another to make an effort to pull himself out of habit. It wasn't an effort for you. Your spirit jumped into a new adventure everyday. How fast we scorn. You should have measured the amplitude of courage required.

You brush the dust off from old dreams. You convince yourself that they still remain and are not something that was foolishly wanted.

But most importantly, you tell yourself to wipe out that cynical smile that is playing on your lips as you type. Even forcefully if you must. You also remind yourself to stifle the half of your mind from whence originates all cynicism. That is the half on whose sword lingers blood of a mangled quarter of the other half, and Massada should not fall this time.

An illness, a body racked with aches and a fever has a strange way of recalling old determination.