The Break and the Brake.

    Being a kid of the eighties, the boy too had had his share of being pushed and shoved into the mainstream of academia. The elders tried to convince him into believing that he was destined to be a great engineer or maths professor. His biggest mistake was defeating a drunken uncle in a game of chess when he was five. He was from a lineage that was symmetrically divided by the ‘chess leads to IIT’ and ‘you can be popular among your friends by being an expert in Robindro Shongeet’ schools of thought.  A big city away from home was the only escape. And he escaped. Although deep down inside, he hoped for greatness – so what if chess was the only indication?

    It had been almost a year now that the boy had started to think for some reason he was “creative”. Not that he had ‘created’ anything so far, but he felt it was more like something that was always at the brink, sort of like global warming (?). A lot of time in the last four years was spent in the ‘big city’ just hanging around not-so-happening places, alone, where he just stood and stared at people, cigarette shops, dogs chasing cars that were chasing women, walls with no graffiti, etc. His stares were blank – his head created stories instead of observing the actual ones unfolding right there. You can’t say he missed a lot of trains; he was just one of those who were fascinated by the station. He’d rather walk.
Having walked a lot, now he knew what he wanted in life. And at the top of that ‘want’ list, was a break from all of this. Mind you, besides getting a useless degree, he hadn’t done anything in the big city.  As I write about the boy, even I’m wondering – from what exactly does he want a break? He just wanted to go home. Just for a little while. Now that he thought he knew how to create stories from a spoon or a table fan, he tried to connect with everyone and looked for beauty in everything.  And home was beautiful, I’ll at least agree with him on that. At times I feel he was too romantic, not in a Romeo, but Jesus way. So his luggage home consisted of a guitar, a notebook and some pens.

    Home was just as he expected. The weather was good, but the city was changing. Inside his head, he felt like a homecoming king. Or like the changed and reformed cyborg in the second Terminator movie. He actually had a shrink to patient conversation with the auto-rickshaw driver on his way home. His folks had shifted to a new flat, and our boy missed his old place a lot.  So much so that during the first few days of his ‘break’, he used to take a bus to the old place and smoke a gold flake cigarette every other evening right outside his erstwhile kingdom. One such evening, after having one of the best idle conversations he had had in many months with ... someone, he decided to get a taste of his old life. He walked into Ganesh Saloon* – the place where he used to get a haircut every other month since the mid-nineties. He was high on life and decided that he needed a haircut. Go figure.

    Still maintaining his prom king like walk, he walked in and produced an extended director’s cut ivory smile to the barbers. They smiled back. This was his cue to announce to everyone in the town that he was back.
Boy – Don’t you recognize me after all these years? It must be the beard, right?
Barber  - Arrey Saahab, aap? After all these years? I’m so happy to see you. Please take a seat. Will be with you in a minute.

    Our boy smiles that whole entire minute. A mixture of pride and nostalgia mixed with a pinch of hope that the world is still a happy place. He adjusts himself on the hot seat when his turn comes and the good ‘ol barber asks him how short he wants his hair to be cut. The boy, still as romantic as that French skunk from the Bugs Bunny Show, opens up to the barber and tells him he doesn’t care how short the barber chops it, he showed up because he missed Ganesh Saloon and the people that worked here. So the trimming and the snipping commences along with our boy telling the barber stories about big city barbers and how they do not ‘connect’ with their customers, while charging them around eighty bucks for a cut that’s probably worth twenty. And other anecdotes continue, till our boy dozes off like a baby in its mother’s arms.

    Ten minutes later he wakes up to find that his month long effort of growing a pseudo-intellectual beard goes down the drain. His new style resembles some Italian magician sporting a French beard. He could have hoped to carry off the look or hide in his room for a week, but with the military length hair even that plan seemed futile. Without saying a word he gets up and places a hundred rupee note in the ever-so-smiling barber’s hand, expecting at least seventy-five back as change. The barber asks our tragic hero – “Ekdum looking like foreign, no?” and returns a twenty rupee note.

    Our boy comes home and doesn’t really know how to deal with getting ripped off and looking like a European paedophile. So he books a ticket back to the big city.


*most of the other saloons have turned into “Salons”.

On tuesday, i fell in love again.

On tuesday, i fell in love again. With my bag. It was an epiphany. I had just climbed four storeys carrying a bag full of beer, vodka and whiskey...i placed the bag gently on the floor. One of the would-be-drunk people commented something about me being too delicate with my bag, as if it were my partner. i justified my passionate desterity with a speech about the importance of booze in a loser's life and walked away. couldn't stop thinking about the comment though. I mean i did put the bag down gently, but my bigger concern for some reason was the bag getting wet in case of a boozocide, not the boozocide itself. I love these subconscious regression therapy moments. Grass had nothing to do with it. it was pure unadulterated subconscious. and it told me that i loved my bag.

Gradually i picked up the pieces of that missing puzzle. i always thought, or so i was told zillions of times by other people, that i loved myself the most. True. I am selfish. Sue me. but now it dawned, that it wasn't me, that i loved - it's my daily stuff i love. and having lived out of home for a long time now, my bag, my ever faithful black bag, is the shining star in the night sky of my life.

small incidents in the past came to my mind. everytime, i didn't finish my syllabus two hours before an exam, i packed 3-4 fat books in the bag, and surprisingly read almost each one of them in the final metro ride. Everytime i went to score grass, i stored seemingly worthless documents in my bag to back my claims of being a student researching on slums, in case i got busted. The grass itself used to travel through the nooks and corners of delhi in the secret pouch inside the bag, passing undetected through all metro stations. Sita did not have as much spare jewellery with her while getting air lifted by Ravan, as the amount of spare change i have with me at any point in time. My bag jangles with memories of useless transactions. when i collect these memories and put them on the payment counter in a KFC, i enjoy the ghastly look on the cashier's face. i enjoy it more as i say with a smile holding up my darling bag, "there's more where it came from." And i don't need to mention a black bag's importance in a kleptomaniac's life, do i? let me clarify one little thing - i did "buy" the bag though. An investment. a good one.

My bag helps me hide things which if carried in the open, would render me a "bad boy" in this oh-so-perfect-and-decent-society. i shall not go into details of those objects. people who know me, know them. I'm too drunk right now to compose a song for my beloved adidas bag. I love by bag, i love people too - but my bag loves me back.