The Bitter Coffee

This corner side cafe occupied a special place in my life. I discovered it when I moved to the city to start my professional career. This was on the way to my workplace. One quick skip and hop to get a coffee once in a while. As time passed, this gradually developed into a routine. Somewhere over the course of the first year in this locality, I developed a personal bond with this café.

She joined my office a year after me. And as someone who was of almost same age as her but had a year or so experience in the group, I was assigned to mentor and on-board her. The frequent interactions initially were professional. And as it invariably happens in a lot of such situations, somewhere the professional barriers got breached and we encroached into each other’s personal spaces. It was during one of our initial interactions in office that I suggested to head out for a coffee at this café and she came along. Slowly, as our relationship blossomed, the café and its corner table became a very usual setting.  We shared out thoughts, aspirations and dreams over countless cups of coffee. We dreamt about a dream wedding, an unforgettable honeymoon and a happy married life sitting under the roof of this coffee shop delightfully savoring lattes and cappuccinos.

Somewhere along, the world of idealism gave way to the pragmatism of real life scenarios. There were wedges between us, the clashes became one too often. And at last, yesterday, the Sunday before Christmas, at the entrance of this very café, this very location that had become a part of us and our relationship, she said goodbye and good luck to me one final time. Around us, as the melodious Christmas carnival drumbeats echoed, she walked away from me and from us, the final time.

Yesterday is over, and I know I won’t get over it anytime soon. I came up to the cashier as usual today morning and ordered a cup, tall and black. This cuppa, this Joe in my hand, is my last from this café. The coffee today tastes particularly bitter, and the reason is not the sugar I failed to add. Too many memories clog my veins, too much nostalgia lingers enclosed within these walls. Goodbye, dear café. Maybe our paths might cross someday in future. I, for one, wouldn’t bet on it though.

Somebody

  

Yesterday it was,

that I sat by this window.

To write something special,

for that somebody who I hoped

would turn to be my somebody special.

I was stumbling,

at a loss were words.

My hands were trembling,

at a loss was a heart.

Yet for all it was

deep inside I knew

That the stumbles and trembles

were all of a bubbling heart.

Of a mind that wanted to scream

my feelings for you.

An ode,

a verse

or a chapter

I didn’t know what to write,

the word unwritten speaketh louder.

Today I find myself,

sitting by the same window sill,

the green fields that they were outside,

stands all parched.

The fury of God it seems

not just landed the curse on me.

It spread everywhere I went.

I still want to write,

though I’m still unsure what to write.

All I know

is that person

did want me no more

as her someone special.

I was stumbling,

at a loss were words.

My hands were trembling,

at a loss was a heart.

Yet for all it was

deep inside I knew

That the stumbles and trembles

were all of a broken heart.

Of a mind that wanted to scream

my hatred for you.

The feeling for you,

masqueraded  as much to the world,

as much to myself.

Not an ode,

not a verse,

nor a chapter,

all that flashed in front of me

Was one word of hate.

The one expression of hatred.

Inside I knew,

I was lying to myself.

But always was I a deceiver.

The letter lies unfinished,

Burned to a pile of ash

In my mind and soul.

Forget me, my angel

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.

George Herbert

Forget me, my angel.

Forgive me for my deeds

and forget me for my sins.

Walk the path of life,

as like tomorrow a mile

as like the next hundred years one long mile.

I won’t cross thy path,

wouldn’t dream of hindering thy growth.

Look never to your sides,

they becometh your peers.

As peers as competitors,

they are, but a threat.

Never look your sides,

never pause a moment for a fallen peer,

for, the world won’t ask if you’re late,

it’s not the latecomer who leadeth the world.

it’s not the bourgeois who leadeth the world.              

Never look over your shoulders my angel,

never a pause, never a glance.

I stand there alone,

watching you go far and high.

I stand there, a meek reminder,

of the heritage of yesterday

you so deem to shed.

History is a cunning rascal,

he followeth you who is the leader.

The heritage is past, even for history.

Traditions relented, history said to forget it.

Even he doesn’t pause to offer me a shade.

The very me who he chased,

till you, my angel,

till you who took over.

Create your destiny,

rewrite history my love.

You are the power to rewrite.

Just  don’t pause,

just don’t waver.

And remember, not to look back

Over thy shoulder.

After all, all I did was to give birth to you my angel.

Forget me, my angel.

Forgive me for my deeds

And forget me for my sins.

The Light At The End of a Tunnel

As the darkness envelops all around me,

a darkness so blinding,

I close my eyes.

A silence so loud,

I find my hands wrapped around my ears.

A pace so frightening

I shut off my senses.

And wait for a new dawn,

A fresh lease of life.

I tell myself,

this is a phase of life.

This is a phase of life,

like any other.

And this too will pass,

like any other.

For as the shamans say,

bright light cometh

at the end of any tunnel.

Slowly I free my ears

from the wrath of my hands.

I can hear chatter.

Yes, chatter it is.

I force my eyelids open,

I see rays of light in a sea of darkness.

I am not alone, in this dark dark world.

There are little kids,

the stage of life where darkness has no meaning,

where the shades of life are brighter than the brightest.

There are old men,

the stage of life where one looks back and sighs

and claims there is no more brightness in life anymore.

Where do I fall

I do not know.

Maybe, I do not wish to know.

And then, right then,

Just when my thoughts seem to convulse around me,

is when my train,

the vehicle in my sojourn,

rips across the darkness,

and emerges out the dark tunnel

into the brightness of the day.

I was right,

there was indeed,

bright light cometh the end of the tunnel.

Hey Me, Grow Up!

Life was a few orders of magnitude less carefree back in the days when your age could be counted in fingers of your hand. Though the realization dawned a lot late, I can think of no other stage in life when you have a zero responsibility policy to yourself and to everyone else around you. More often than not, you command the attention of all the grown ups around you, you have the license to be silly and cross those invisible and complex lines of civility (within some reasonable threshold, of course!), you can demand (and in many cases, get) stuff of your choice without bothering about any monetary aspects…. Aah I can’t put a full stop here. To summarize, you were a kid, no one expected you to show maturity and no one would chide you if you did not do something which was expected to be done in some particular way.

Fast forward to the me in college. A decade and a half after the period of life mentioned above. Dear God, so many responsibilities, commitments and obligations. That was the stage of life with the worst of two worlds. If you did something that fell into the societal definition of unpleasantness, everyone would crowd around you and remark that you’re grown up and it is time you got rid of “childishness”. On the other hand, if you were to heed to that opinion and do something which you consider correct all by yourself, the same set of people would wield the broom the other way. “Just because you are in college means you can now think you know everything? That you are smart and capable of doing everything yourself?” Well, wasn’t I? Didn’t you people mention just the other day about me being grown up, me needing to shoulder responsibilities and me shedding my childishness, huh?

But even in those days, there was quite a number of things that were like black box to me. The biggest example that comes to my mind is related to banking. I had absolutely no idea about any banking related service. I studied to become an engineer at an institution quite far away from home but if someone were to ask me to deposit money into an account or to get a demand draft, I would simply stare blankly. Truthfully, I did not know. Mercifully, to my credit, I did not need to know. Crediting money into a bank account was a phone call transaction, “Dad, I’m on zero balance.” And the reply would be, “Alright, I’ll put some money in over the weekend,” or something likewise.

I passed my post-graduation and found myself employed. Well, that is the motive of life, isn’t it? Study well in school, get into a good college. Then study well in college, get into a good job. Is it a government job? Aah priceless. Nothing more to attain in life. If not, well, there is no job security, so you should try to get into a sarkaari department or PSU. Phew! I found myself in a private company. So far, so good. Now, you move from the life of an all-taken-care-of-once-fee-paid hosteler in college, to someone who has to stay in a rented home or apartment at your city of work. You think that you have finally transitioned into an adult who can stand independently on his feet. You have that special glee when you receive your first paycheck. That tendency to splurge on that bike or dress or piece of jewelry you’ve always yearned to own. But alas, trouble is never far away. You are suddenly thrown into a different turmoil of sorts.

At home, everything was taken care of. You knew there was running electricity, running water, cooking. All these and much more, and you didn’t know anything one layer below. At hostel, you paid the hostel and mess fees and you didn’t care after that. Now? You have to set up the internet connection. You have to pay the electricity bill. You have to buy groceries. And no food if you don’t cook…! That’s unfair. I thought all the problems were behind me, weren’t they? Cooking is well and truly an art, and I’m nowhere proud to say that I’ll take a century or two to actually learn something about that. My mother was awesome, whenever I attempted to help her with in the kitchen, I used to make such a mess of things that she had banned me from entering the kitchen. So much for maternal love, I guess God decided it is time for a little payback! In a few years, I’ll probably be married. Not trying to sound masochist, but I am so thankful I am not a girl. I can’t imagine if I were a girl, my in-laws would be shell shocked to discover that the only thing their sweet little boy were to get from me by means of my culinary expertise would be bread-butter, oats or cornflakes. So much for gender insensitivity.

I am hardly about confident of replacing a light bulb when one blows out. I have no idea what to do when a fuse trips. Or when my bike or car doesn’t start. I might have a decent idea of the state of political affairs in the country and India Pakistan bilateral ties and sports, but ask me the price of a kilo or rice or a dozen onions, I promise I’ll give you the sweetest smile you have ever seen from a dumb face. I don’t know what detergent to use to wash what particular fabrics of clothes. When is starch used. How to sew back a button that has jumped out from my shirt. Hell, I’ll stop embarrassing myself, I’m drawing a blank.

I did my graduate studies, followed by post graduate studies. I am employed at a multinational company writing software for “millions of customers”. I just pray and hope my manager or the persons who interviewed me, do not see this part of me. Maybe, the optimist in me might find out a way to learn one or more of these things as time passes and I encounter this world with gusto every passing day from sunrise to sunset and sometimes beyond. Brace myself.

Those Wasted Moments

I still lag behind “Generation X” and its likes when it comes to something basic – accessing internet. At least once or twice a month, I make an effort to actually sit down and do something random surfing the internet. When small sceen phones, phablets and tablets have captured the imagination of the world, I still prefer my laptop to keep me company on those occasions when I deliberately choose to shut off from the mundane world and tread into a nomadic sojourn. Oh by nomadic sojourn, I do not at all mean the footsteps of those very erudite world travelers like Huan Tsang or Ibn Battuta, my sojourns are leaned back in the sofa in my living room, feet atop the coffee table (with a coffee, according to the time of the day and my gastric conditions) and staring in the laptop screen.

At a time when normally we’d talk of an increasing speed or swiftness associated with most things, it is simply one way of me pressing the pause button on myself. I have become so much of a multi-tasker – I listen to music when I work, I watch TV when I eat, I read when I walk, and so on. So much of multi-tasking around me that I often forget that I, like, everyone else, started off as learning to do one task at a time with diligence. Those days when I used to sit down with a text book and notes with pens and papers and no laptop or desktop monitor in front, those days when having dinner meant sitting around the dining table with family and talking was the only thing apart from eating, those power cuts which meant a degree of social activity in and around the neighborhood. Those days. This is what I try to simulate when I sit accompanied by my solitude, with my laptop connected to the internet.

Internet is one big web. The kind of web where you latch onto one cog, and before you know it, you are somewhere deep inside with or without realization. I end up watching some of my favorite childhood videos, songs or advertisements. Sometimes it feels like bliss to sit and simply listen to Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, that Doordarshan song does to me something still inexplicable. More than twenty years since I watched that song, after probably watching it for close to a thousand times, I can still watch it that one more time. The Doordarshan Samachar theme song, which seems to remain embedded. My parents, as was the case with my teachers at school believed watching English news at Doordarshan would help improve spoken English and as a consequence I used to watch Doordarshan news fairly regularly. The ten year old me can’t remember a lot of news items or events covered on TV in those days but I certainly remember gawking at the anchors and thinking about them as legends who could “memorize” half an hour’s worth of news and recite it flawlessly without stuttering or stammering (Oh, I came to know about the concept of teleprompters much later in life). People like Sukanya Balakrishnan, Tejeshwar Singh, Neethi Ravindran, Suneet Tandon and Rini Khanna(among the names associated with faces I distinctly recollect) were truly charmers. I don’t know the role it played in impacting my English language or vocabulary, it likely would have, but it certainly inculcate the news junkie in me. Plus, the inexplicable feeling of nostalgia on hearing the theme at the start of the news bulletin. Something which remains, and inexplicably so. The other element of my nostalgia associated with Doordarshan are the advertisements. Nirma (“Washing powder Nirma”), Nataraj Sharpener (“Khoob cheele bina thode”), Cadbury Dairy Milk (“Asli swad zindagi ka”), Titan are among some of the advertisements I watch sporting a smile on my face. I guess before sporting icons and movie stars monopolized the advertisements, these advertisements had their simple yet unique charm.

One of the things I “progressed to” with the advent of cable television at home was BBC News. I remember watching the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center during dinner time from the cozy confines of my house, not fully comprehending the impact of that day but still knowing all was not well. Probably the most distinct “visual landmark” that I keep with me of my “BBC days” would be the iconic Countdown to BBC News. Sometime in the first decade of the new century, the television scene in India exploded with an astounding speed. I was absorbed into that metamorphosis where specialized channels came up for 24 * 7 news, movies and entertainment domains, as opposed to one channel (Doordarshan) for everything. Looking back, I can parallel that happening with my transformation from childhood to adolescence, probably one reason why I rather remember so much more fondly of those days with a single channel and limited programs.

Those frozen moments in time, idling and reminiscing of the time in front of laptops watching those videos, which are starting to become few and farther between, bring out the child in me. The use of internet, I realize, might not be all as is propounded and generally agreed upon. It could as well be a priceless source of reminiscence, of nostalgia. Indirectly, of some missing cogs in what forms the me of today.

Yours Sincerely

Somewhere around high school I remember my English teacher introduced us to the “art” of letter writing. Those days - it was an academic exercise. Those different types of letters, where to write the “from” address, the “to” address, the subject line and all that. The intention was not to write a letter to a government official or to write a leave application to the school principal, the intention purely was to write an answer to the relevant question when it popped up in the English term examination. Make the English ma’am happy and your score-sheet will show up with a smiley face.

As a wide eyed kid, I still remember some of the finer nuances from those English classes. My teacher taught us to keep everything on the left margin of the letter - “from” address, “to” address, the date etc. My father used to write it the opposite way, in a lot of cases he used to put the date and place in the right side of the letter. As a twelve-year-old I have had arguments with my father trying to prove that my teacher was right and he was wrong and he should change the format he used. Aah those priceless days when the words of a teacher used to be the absolute sermon. Unquestioned and inevitably unerring! Poor my father, I’m pretty sure he would’ve smiled when I tried to “teach” him the ways of “modern letter writing”.

Oh, and the other thing, the ending of a letter. A formal letter was supposed to end with a “Yours faithfully” or “Yours sincerely”. On the other hand, an informal letter would end with “Yours truly” or “Yours lovingly”. I’m actually surprised I remember this much details about what I learnt in those English classes. I should’ve taken English literature or poetry and studied further. Instead what am I doing with life?

Little did I realize that what I learnt then would most likely end up to be proficiency in a dying form of communique. What used to be the art of letter writing, due emphasis on the word art, has now been denigrated to snail mail. Imagine that. Once the primary form of communication between son and parents, husband and wife is now collectively referred to as snail mail. The advent of electronic mail has blown to smithereens the “art” of writing a letter, it is now commonly referred as the “format” of an e-mail. I still use letters occasionally when dealing with government officials and banks in India. In fact, I cherish those times when I actually can touch pen on paper, write some lines in the prescribed format of an official letter and sign my name at the bottom, but such moments have become few and far between. I wonder in the future, some few years down the road, will I be using pen and paper at all for any practical purposes? When my kids reach high school, will they have a class covering letter writing? Let me surmise. Oh, they will most likely have a course about writing emails for formal and informal purposes. Some day he or she will probably come up to me, see me write an email and correct me, complaining that I am rudimentary in my computer skills! And my father, sitting beside me with a pen and paper in his hand, will have the smile of his life!

Logically Illogical

"Someone who thinks logically is a nice contradiction to this world". I guess not many people can comprehend the innate meaning of these lines, written behind a famous matchbox, better than me because for long, I have suffered for using my neurons more than others or than what is required. Funny laws govern this world and those who think a lot, usually succumb instead of enjoying their intellectual peculiarity.

Logic is the extent to which something can be explained or attributed a reason for its existence. Effectively what it does is it gives us a platform to handle the basic ideas and queries. Had it not been for logic, we would definitely have to think a lot more. It helps us make assumptions and also, generalize things. We crave for things to be logical and consider them ominous if they are otherwise. Logic is a cover that we place upon ourselves to protect us from our worst fears (or happiness, for that matter!!!).

But if one goes into larger dimensions, omitting minor details, one would be surprised to realize the absurdity inherent in our ambiance. Everything, without exception, is illogical. You can always find an argument that can contradict the present state of things. It’s everywhere, be it our social, personal or professional fraternity.

We talk to those whom we don't like. We get what we don't deserve (and vice versa). We are misunderstood when we have best intentions. We are chastised for what we are remotely related to or sparsely believe in. We laugh when we want to cry and hug when we want to slap. We do what we don't like and then say that we could have done better. We see a girl, fall in love and within six months, she becomes the most important person of our life. Do you think it is logical?

Logic is an arrogant subset of a very humble illogic. It, at best, is a footnote and in no case, the complete epic. Being logical is a curse, not boon. It’s like offering yourselves to be chained inside a closed room when you know that beautiful sceneries are waiting outside for your appreciation.

Logic filters thoughts, which is the greatest crime on earth. Logic is neither absolute nor is it infinite. It has limitations, ifs and buts and an impulse to control. It is not free, spontaneous or vigorous. It lacks energy and happiness. It is cold and dead.

On the other hand, illogic is everything what logic is not. It is to accept, to coexist, to love, to inspire, to depress, to react, to marry(!!), to command, to express and to think. (Let us end it here because I can still write a lot more of them)

To be successful in life, we need to be illogical. "Rules are made to be broken". Nothing logical succeeds for long (like India's foreign policy). Every now and then, we face situations when we have to choose between a logical thing and an ‘odd’ option. Though deep within, we want to take our chances and do some experimentation, we usually end up with the former.

I (you too can) have observed that if you can play with this teddy bear called 'logic', this world is just the right playhouse for you. Every successful person has made his own way in his own way and it is only his defiance to accept the 'logical' that he made it to the pinnacle where he is presently standing.

On the contrary, if we accept 'logic' among our decision variables, we would be doomed in the banality of our existence. Logic is not an identity. It’s a burden. Illogic is the mother's lap. Logic is living in Patel hostel, double seated and super deluxe!

Illogic is what, Shrimad Bhagwad Gita tries to teach us. "Karmarev adhikaraste ma falesu kadachan | ma karm phal heturbhuma te sangostvakarmari". You have only the right to action (i.e the karma). The return ('phal') is not under your control. How much logic can you find in this philosophy?

Logic is stopping us from what we are actually capable of doing. In the corporate world, so much emphasis is given on the out of box thinking. Look at Steve Jobs, Nintendo or even the open source phenomenon. Illogic is the absolute truth. It’s omnipotent and omnipresent.

Everyday we should practice to be more and more illogical in our routine life. We should laugh when not needed to and talk when we don't want to. We should behave in eccentric ways. We should do things in ways that cannot be explained. We should avoid taking logical decisions, at least for things of minor importance. We should stop searching reasons behind things and do them just because we want to!

Though I have still not practiced this 'illogic' meditation (but I will someday), I am sure, if done properly, it can help us to free ourselves from the chains of logic and we would have a more rationale attitude towards our life. I believe that once our minds transcends the limits of logic and stop questioning the 'illogical', we would be as much a God as a human can be and would achieve what we call in the Hindu culture as 'Moksha' or salvation.