Nandu

hi. my name is raju. and i am fife years old. and nandu is also fife years old. nandu's papa and nandu's mamma call her nandu when they are loving her and nandita when they are not loving her. i call her nandu always-when i am loving her and when....no, no i am always loving her very much. we go to school in same bus and sit on same bench and go to same toilet together. english mam says we must go to separate toilets but i do not want to go away from her.and we together eat both tiffin-boxes, one by one. sunrise in the east to sunset in the west we are together. at evening she goes to her home and i come to my home (my home is very very big, and red in colour).we play with two dolls. one is male doll and one is female doll. male doll's name is raju and female doll's name is nandu. and i love nandudoll more and nandu loves rajudoll more.yesterday, we were on the beach. and i was riding my tricycle (my granpaa had gifted me tricycle on my birthday) and nandu was trying to make home for nandudoll-and-rajudoll with sand. and suddenly my tricycle went over a little snail, and he died.seeing him, i became very afraid and sad and came running to nandu. "nandu, nandu" i was shouting when i went to her. "nandu, nandu.. i will tell you somthing if you dont tell it to my mummy.. i..i..", and nandu was making the home. "nandu, nandu... listen listen.." and nandu was very happy looking at the home. beside the home were rajudoll and nandudoll. i picked up nandudoll and started going back to my tricycle (and the dead snail). on the way.i told nandudoll everything.i told him that it was not my mistake..it happened by mistake only.....

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Hey Hi thr! I am Raj. Seein you all after 17 years, I am now doin my MBA. Infact, done my MBA. Final results today and I jus cant wait! All this hardwork and all these sacrifices of last 2 years….They better materialize into fantastic results or I am gonna get screwed bigtime. If I top, I mite jus get thru my dream job or else guess deep shit waits fer me.

Holy Shit!!! I forgot. How cud I!!! Fukk Fukk… I can be such a dumb ass sometimes…How cud I 4get 2 call her up? She is my life and I am hers, and this said suffices…

“Raj, dude you rock!!! You do!! You topped the whole frigging insti!!”

Wot??? Wot??? I cant believe my ears!!Gosh, y r these 2 years going past my eyes in a flash? I m in a trance. Nandu nandu u r d 1^st person who deserves 2 know dis.

--“Hey Hiiiiiii Nandu Darling….Sweetheart!! Happy Birthday… Many, Many Happy returns of the day…”

--“Thanx Love. I love you. I was afraid u 4got!”

--“Ohh how cud I? Know wot? Results declared today and…”

--“Know wot Honey! My friends have come up and they are such a bunch of sweethearts.already flooded me wid gifts. So wot r u getting along for me? I m sure its sumthn unbelievabl. You ll reach here by the evening rite..?? I ll c u then… Muaaahhhhhh…..Bye!!!”

--“Bye love Bye.”

She hangs up; and I continue “ Nandu, I topped. Can you believe it?? All those missed dates n parties n discs!!. I succeeded Nandu………………..”

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Hi dear friends. I am Mr. Rajan Khanna, the CEO of Lucent Technologies. In life as soon as you think, all that was to be achieved has been, and you just need to hold on, exactly then life veers into uncharted territories and unmapped terrains without giving you the faintest of inklings. Suddenly and swiftly, you are thrown overboard into a surging ocean, surrounding you like eternity, with the orders to swim to life or sink to death. It has been a day when fate has played its deadliest move and I happen to find myself not in the same team as fate. The management has given me transfer orders, as the CEO of Vincent Inc. a very young subsidiary of Lucent, with the ultimatum of either boosting its sagging fortunes or relieving the company of the burden of the fortunes I was being paid as remuneration. I still haven’t told this to Nandu, my wife of 26 years. I find it preferable baring the ugly facets of life face-to-face rather than on the phone, so I can comfort her if it gets a little too much for her gentle disposition.

I am home Nandu. The loser, the defeated is home.

Ding-Dong

--“Good Evening love. So why are you so decked-up? Some outing??”

--“Oh yes love, a ladies' evening together at Mrs Kapoor’s. I am in a hurry. But, why on earth do you look so helpless and depressed?? “

--“Coz I am darling! They transferred me…”

--“And didn,t give you a salary hike, right?? Doesn’t matter love. I still love you lots. Come hop in, dinner is in the fridge. Microwave it before you have it, okay??

Silence.

--“Okay??”

--“Yeah, okay darling Okay!”

--“Bye then. I might be late. Don’t wait for me.”

--“Bye, and have a great time!”

My drawing room has beige walls and beige sofa. People say I have a commanding voice suited to CEOs! I never knew this voice is so full of life as to make audience out of the beige and rather lifeless walls separating me and the surging ocean outside. I spoke and I had audience too.

Such is Life

Cycling swiftly down under the canopy of Gulmohars on sweaty March afternoons, stopping by at the roadside vendors to gulp glasses-after-glasses of iced Badam-Milk so ostentatiously laced with exactly 3 or 4 strands of keshar, ogling at and fervently commenting about the girls walking the roads, cracking jokes mostly upheld as immoral and improper by the parents and sometimes, very sometimes marveling at the very intriguing football-like structure of Buckminster Fullerenes interspersed with imitations of the very funny and equally grotesque stammer of our Organic Chemistry Ma'm (who allegedly used to dye her hair black every morning before coming to school).

These are the memories that still persist and indefatigably refuse to stop knocking my door, apart from of course her memories.

 

She, whose name was Rimi Khanna; she, who was more than a classmate; she, whose stunning long and dark tresses and pristine fair complexion garnered her attention from one and all; she, who I loved; she, who assured me of her love; and she, who I had seen holding hands with a friend of mine, and thus cruelly murder all my love for her.

 

The urge to run away from the girl who I had so madly loved, far off and for ever, had been so compelling I agreed to leave the country for higher education. The degrees, the hard-earned scrolls-of-honor helped me turn my back on the country where I will never cease to belong, where I will never be not-waited-for, and.... where I will never return nonetheless, I vowed.

 

Today I am grey and almost what people would mockingly call past-his-prime..... My wife Prerna died 11 years back while delivering to this world our only child, my sweet daughter Nisha. People urged me to remarry but I was left too broken and shattered to even consider the rather-offensive suggestion. Also, the rather fast clip at which this whirlwind called life engulfed me left me with no time but lots of time to work and slog, rise higher and higher every waking moment, so high that I ceased to be a man and gradually metamorphosed into a zombie, no feelings, no emotions, no heart and no needs. Nisha is in a residential set-up in Kentucky. She gets to meet me once every month, when I make it a point to flood her with gifts, hoping to redeem myself, relieve myself of the guilt of being such a failure as a father.

 

 

 

 

 

My uncle is on his death-bed, thus at least lending me an irrefutable beckoning from the homeland. My country still looks the same, feels the same and smells the same. The unbeatable invite of the nativeland, ohhhh, I feel so at-home.

 

It almost looks like the unparalleled and unexpected happiness of seeing his nephew with him has brought my uncle back from the jaws of death. He is convalescing against all odds, and into the green of health yet again. What wonders human presence can create. What tragedies human absence can!

My schoolmate, long-lost friend Shirish who chose to stay back in this country, like so many others, took me to the inauguration of a book the last day. The plot, he tells me, deals with a childhood pair in love, but who have to stay away from each other the rest of their lives due to a rather trivial misunderstanding. I enquired the name of the author. He calmly replies "Miss Rimi Khanna."

 

Such is life.

  

The Dynamics of a Dynamic Relationship

For just a moment, just one fleeting second, let me imagine myself as one of those God-forsaken incapacitateds who are inflicted by this very fatal and unrelenting disease, rather a mental disorder to be more precise, called as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) by the wise and as love by the otherwise. While I consider who among the wise and the otherwise are wise and who otherwise I realize that I have in fact managed to put on the garb of OCD, oops, love. Before this "˜prized feeling" chooses to forsake me let me get on with this write-up. If it doesn't, God help me and for the better Samaritans among you, you will find the Hospitals-and-Nursing Homes-Directory in the second-from-bottom drawer of my old, dilapidated, broken study table. ( Feel free to use-and-help.)

 

 

Now, since I am in love and I am straight as well (Thank You all Ye Americans who gape and marvel at the simultaneous occurrence of these two conditions. It does happen in India. And will continue this way for some more time to come for sure. Thank You.) , I have this arm candy on, oops, with, me all waking hours (don't worry about the sleeping hours. That's a tad bit too personal to be discussed here, especially for free. ), she who chooses to accompany me to all accompany-iable places like restaurants and well....... some more restaurants. There are other places as well she wants to accompany me to, I will be fair to her, but those are places where "Darling! It won't look prim if I would be with you here. You surely don't mind being away from me for sometime Honey, do you?" Looks like a question. And is so. Rider: It's rhetoric. Tch tch tch.........

 

Lest you fall into the unbelievably misleading, unfair-on-her, misconceived, and deceptive belief that there are no places (other than restaurants) that she accompanies me to, I will clarify that You, Young gentleman, are already as mistaken as you ever can hope to be wittingly or unwittingly in the course of this infinitely ignorant lifetime of yours. There are other places too you can see her with me. Discotheques. Period.

 

 

Fast-Forward: By The number of Years you have harboured and cherished the grievously inane aspiration of falling.........and what makes it more ignominious still, in Love!!

 

 

Bob Dylan crooned "Times-They are a-changin". The pertinence and relevance of it to current-day scenario is intelligibly demonstrated and lucidly exhibited by the perfectly-executed-yet-serendipitous accident that We (Yeah, you are woefully right. I am still suffering from OCD!) are into live-in. For the more spiritually inclined among you, it directly means that we live together and indirectly means that we share the same apartment from the 4^th of a month to the 2^nd of the next. 3^rd is the day when the landlord knocks. That one day I own the apartment exclusively. Cough-Cough!! Excuse me please.

 

My arm-candy, by now, my ominously-prospective-spouse, often quotes her distant maternal aunt's divorced husband's daughter-in-law's favorite one-liner "Share a life, Share a wallet." Since we plan to live ONE life, we should share ONE wallet. And, the one that belongs to me. (She is not stone-hearted enough to say this though. After all, she loves me.)

 

Very often, I go to pick her up from her office in the evening, unfailingly fortified with a fresh red artificially-scented and spray-watered rose with a long green stalk (Stop it you curious cat. Can we discuss the price later?). Almost as unfailingly she expresses her immeasurable gaiety by hugging me tight-enough-to-induce innumerable creases on the anti-wrinkle shirt of mine that I had planned to deo my way to office tomorrow as well. Poor thing. But she is happy. And so am I ( Was it Shiv Khera or Kahil Gibran or none of the two who warranted "Be Happy when She is"? Smart observation, I must say. But for this rule the gentleman would hardly be happy ever! ) On our way home, she sometimes falls for that Louis-Vuitton handbag or that Calvin Klein 3.4 oz Eau de Perfume for Women. Also, sometimes she forgets her plastic money in her office-locker. Sometimes, the previous two '˜sometimes's coincide. Rest is history.... Whats worse... They were right, History in fact repeats itself.

 

She sounds very convincing when she says she loves me. I am marrying her this summer. You are invited to the wedding. We don't expect gifts but don't want to risk losing the so-thoughtfully thought-of physical manifestations of your best wishes either. So.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She

I know her since my childhood. We played together. We literally lived together, loved together. She had been my truest confidante, somebody who knew me inside out. Somebody the warmth and comfort of whose touch had never failed to ensconce in me the faith that I am much needed, and that I matter, and that I mean the world to somebody. A precious feeling. As much a responsibility. A prized one. A cherished one.

 

Life moves on and waits for none as if she needs nobody. Perhaps she doesn't. But she herself is needed for by one and all. She knows it. And basks in the glory......... As I grew up from adolescence into manhood, our bonds strengthened. The lady in her had emerged more conspicuously and she needed my shoulders more than ever. Rather the man in me was perhaps thinking so and rejoicing in new-found glory. Nonetheless, she loved me and I loved her, and that was all that mattered to me. And to her.

 

She is sick. Very sick. I am professional. Very professional. She needs me these days, again more than ever. I have come to know this pretty girl, Tina, in my office. Guess Tina likes me. Tina is an 'interesting' date. Rather, 'intriguing' might just be closer.

 

Meanwhile, she is sicker. Also suspectful of Tina. Something's cooking between Tina and me, she thinks. And she is not completely wrong. Yesternight Tina was looking ravishing and after dinner I decided to stay over at Tina's place. When I returned in the morning She was not in her bedroom. Hospitalised.

 

I rush to the hospital only to see Her more scuppered by the infirmity of Hers. She refuses to forgive me for my laxity and frivolousness. Neither do I deserve to be forgiven. I am a wretched fool. Selfish. A selfish lecher that's it.

 

I cry. And She can see the crystalline tears roll down my cheeks. As I turn my face back in shame and attaint, She calls out my name. I turn again, this time round, only to see Her arms wide open, to fall and lose myself in that eternal embrace of Hers. The same warmth. The same comfort.The same precious feeling. As much a responsibility. A prized one. A cherished one.

 

She has forgiven me. Thank You Maa.

 

I love you Maa. Get well soon. I am there by your side. Always. All ways.

 

 

 

 

Secrets to Happiness

 

Out of the innumerable ways to keep yourself happy and happening, jocund and jocular, merry and mirthful, I have tried to explore a few and enlist a few more! Not to hurt the reader's self-respect and pride, I promise that even the most discerning of you would smoothly fail to locate and/or dislocate which of the enlisted ones are the unexplored ones. Here follows the succinct compendium:

• Stay away! Keep off from all articles/books beginning with a "Secrets to.."for the simple reason (you will almost feel like a fool after reading this but I assure you very dignifiedly this was not the attempted end!) that secrets being secrets are afterall what their name suggests: secrets. Thay hence cannot be unraveled and dictated simultaneously keeping them secrets. Food for thought, huh?
• This is for all those people who have been foolhardy (that is a word that has been invented with the SOLE purpose of letting fools feel less miserable of themselves by calling them Foolhardy and not just what they are: fools) enough to still continue into the article despite the warning above. You are not foolhardy, you are a fool: complete and pure, unadulterated and unexpurgated, unabridged and uncut. Thank You.
• If you are not getting the clue already, here it is plain and terse, crisp and in-your-face. I am not a man who keeps his promises too often. You atleast know from the way this is turning out to be succinct? Don't you? And if you don't, you are hereby banished to the above bullet for all times to come. That suits you better.
• Merriam-Webster risks sounding un-enough and takes a shot at defining happiness:obsolete:good fortune:prosperity (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/happiness).I really am not sure whats it about the " obsolete " stuff, but, hey, is happiness obsolete already? That's a rather disarming idea, wee bit uncomfortable too!
• Since we have already successfully demonstrated that happiness is obsolete, we hereby solemnly declare ourselves smart enough not to dissipate our precious time, energy and resources in its pursuit. Make way Will Smith, you are obsolete too!
• You are smart enough to notice that this is the last bullet and smart enough as well to notice that I have not introduced you to even one secret to happiness, right? (You are surprising yourself by being so smart, right again?)Take heart in the fact (apropos. First bullet) that I have atleast not cheated you the other way, by revealing secrets and not letting them be!

Ruminations on the eve of an ordinary day

Don't know why the little urchin at the crossing smiles,
while I look for reasons galore........ and find none

Why silence is the only words i possess
Why muffled are my cries?

Why stillness is my only momentum,
Why handicapped all my motions?

Why mornings appear so dark,
Why night befriends?

Why all this heat doesn't thaw,
Why I turn and freeze?

Why footpath dwellers elicit no sympathy,
Why I smirk at friend's gaiety?

Why imprints of pain are but indelible,
Why joy refuses to leave a mark?

Why I love resentment so,
Why love resents me?

Why beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,
Why everything is so ugly?

Why vitriol tastes so sweet,
Why honey is cloying?

Why questions will go unanswered,
Why curt replies abound?

Why life breathed its last,
Why death refuses to die?

Words beckon....

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable ones, and then starting on the first one. Well said, Mark Twain!!

And thus I hereby alight from the train of procrastination and board that of "do-it-now". And thus I hereby transfer my blog from my thoughts to http://www.blogger.com . I still am not sure about the terms and conditions to which I just agreed while signing-up; its nonetheless a sincere hope of a puerile blogger that they do provide me with AT LEAST as much of space as my thoughts do! A wee bit more would surely won't hurt and neither go unacknowledged!

All these years I have laboured under the torturous realisation of not having documented and thereby stored whatever gibberish I am capable of being the progenitor to. Also add the guilt of not publicising my precious thoughts and views on subjects well enough thus letting the lesser mortals toil and moil under the overburdening and all-encompassing dark of ignorance!!! They made for flagitious feelings as nonpareil in its origin as asinine in its content. Now, this one is a doughty resolve to exculpate myself of all such remorse and guilt. I hope to succeed.


A lot of thoughts remain unworded, a lot of seeds ungerminated, and a lot of bubbles unseen to the surface..............