A: “3 stages of marriage 1.) Mad for each other 2.)Made for each other 3.)Mad because of each other”

A:”Good relations never ask for explanation, because there is silent understanding and deep faith about their unconditional presence in each other’s lives”

A:”Life is best for those who are enjoying it, difficult for those who analyse it and worse for those who criticize it”

A:” No matter how good your intentions are , the world judges you by your presentations.  And no matter how good your presentations are, God judges you by your intentions”

A:”Two Bulls are always fighting in a person’s mind…Good & Bad! Do you know which one will win? The one you feed the most”

Can you see the progression? I am starting to hum Comfortably Numb!!

Cafetaria at 8:30 am. They have just started serving breakfast. And the “Cheap Bastards” have already been conferred their honorary name,yet again, by RNK. M & RNK are trying to enjoy a cup of tea over chit-chat, while DT walks upto the table with a steaming Rava Dosa.
DT:”I know you are almost finishing, so you can leave, I won’t waste your time.”

RNK:”We do not have time itself Ma’m, so how could we waste it”. Chuckling as he blurts it out.

DT’s mobile vibrates on the table. Peeking over at her mobile she says,”Unh, someone is not coming to work today!”

DT:”Hmm…hmm…hmm…Okay”. Shrugs and takes a deep breath.

DT:”I hate it when I get these calls in the morning over breakfast. Now my dosa’s gone cold.”

M trying to contain his laughter having taken a huge gulp of cold tea, trying not to spray his table mates with it.

RNK:”My guys are more sophisricated, I just get one-liner I-am-not-coming-to-work emails” Just laughing out loud, shamelessly.

It usually subsides in a couple of hours, but can last for upto 6 – 8 hours or even longer, depending upon the level and duration of arousal. The best way of relieving the pain is to masturbate. Another suggested way is to try to lift something heavy. Just about anyway you can think of relieving the build up.

“You know you can try doing the…the… manual thing.”

It sucks!!

S:”Yeah, you have a problem?”

M:”Not really, but I am not a big fan. And incidentally, looking at Pooh makes me think of that Teddy bear on Snuggles TV ad.Have you ever looked at that bastard’s eyes?  There is something really sinister and devilish about them. It looks like that he is saying to the lady in the ad, ”Mmmmm, delicious!.”

S just shaking her head in disbelief.

M:” You don’t think so? ”

Few weeks later…

S:”I was 100% right. No,wait!. I was 200% right. You did exactly the same things I thought you would. You silly…silly…POOH BEAR!!”

Pooh Bear?!…Accepted without argument!!….Former ‘Biased Against’  tag overwritten with  ’Terms of Endearment’…Associate Sunshine.

T and S’s Bucket List

In no particular order.

•  Run a Marathon / Triathlon.
•  Have an enviable book collection.
•  Go Parasailing  and Skyjumpiing.
•  Do Phd at IIT Delhi or DCE , by any f’ing means possible except cheating.
•  Travel Europe for atleast a month.
•  Build a house on a hilltop by ourselves.
•  Do our own farming and eat our own produce for a month. 
•  Go to Valley of Flowers 
•  Go to Sesa Orchid Sanctuary.
•  Go to Mansarovar.
•  Go to Abbottabad, Pakistan
•  Open a lounge bar / takhatwala dhaba named ‘Takhat’.

This might be just a list to you , but to us, its as legally binding an agreement as a drunkard could draft under the influence of 15 year old Scotch. Further, this agreement has been made enforceable by a left hand shake and is subject to amendments as mutually agreeable to both of us.

T & S

We have enormous amounts of legal infrastructure, money, time and personal interest invested in legal separations and division of physical property, to the extent that we are even trying to measure up a pet’s affection to determine custody. But, what about the relationships that have not taken a legal form yet? Friendships, real ones and the ‘we-are-only-really-good-friends’ ones, the bonds you form with ‘special’ people , you know the unsaid, the undefined ones.Who takes stock when these break and usually pretty hard at that?

Who owns that stuffed red panda? That huge greeting card which is painfully folded to fit and stash away in the designated (“You know what this is, don’t touch it, but don’t you throw it away either. You might need it on some rotten night to cry yourself to sleep.”), and definitely smaller envelop? Your name written on a stone tablet in hieroglyphics!! ? The framed glorification of your worthless life when your birth-date is compared to that of those few who have mattered in this world? That t-shirt that you could never get your fat-ass to fit in , but which will now splendidly go with your new jeans? Weird stone contortion thingy, that you will keep turning in 3D for the rest of your life to find out, how does this thing say, I have loved you always, love you now and will love you forever.

Digitization of emotions has only increased the probability of things like these, these artifacts of association turned markers of dissociation , jumping up on you when you least expect them to, leaving you red faced at the most inopportune moments. The couple of GBs of photos and videos, which occupy precious space on your multiple backup hard-drives, lest a catastrophe destroy them!!(“The hard-drive Gods will take what they want.”) Bloody emotional fools!! Letters you can burn, but what about million copies of emails and chat transcripts from every imaginable evolutionary piece of chat software ever created, stamped with weird anagrams of your and their chat-handles, even encrypted with ALT code (Alt + 0-255 , old DOS way of not letting people open your folders by naming them with special characters.) Did I hear someone say “Attrib!”? But , I digress.

And one of the worsts, JOINT BLOG POSTS? Who the fuck ever thought of that ? Who owns the copyright to them? Lawyers, here you go, here is another vertical for you. Sorry, cant get the IT speak out of my head, its my vernacular now. Would you prefer if I called it Line of Business. I guess, bankers would kill me for unravelling the anagaram , it should only be refered to as LOB . Call it whatever suits your wood paneled offices , but you could actually file a case of copyright infringement for an ex using a joint post , even if it was just for sentimental reasons. Why communicate your hate through your blog ? Stake your claim to your sole legal right to something that was once revered and jointly owned by throwing them in legal and financial mess. Intellectual property rights along with revenge , served chilled with a shot of blood.

What is remarkable is that we don’t let the all this (I want to call it garbage , but its just not politically correct, when you are busy collecting more of the same shit!!) weigh us down.Just keep collecting as much as we can before the winter hits and we have to retreat into an emotional hibernation.But I digress , yet again.What can I say ADD is as communicable as H1N1!!

Here it is, something that has meant a lot. Something that I took off my blog, on objections by a certain someone. But, I don’t do this to express hatred or disgust, or stake any claims. I just want to share it (without translation , of course).

सरगोशी
उसने मेरे सीने पर सर रख कर पूछा,
जानम अपने जीवन का वह लम्हा तो बतलाओ,
जिसके बदले में मिल सकते हैं सभी सितारे,
दरियाओं के सारे मोती,
सावन की पहली बारिश के सारे कतरे,
उजले चाँद की सारी किरणें,
धरती के सीने से लिपटे सभी ख़जाने,
फूलों की रंगीन क़बाऐं,
सारे मौसम सभी दुआऍ,
पत्ती पत्ती पड़ने वाली भीगी शबनम़,
इस़्म-ए-आज़म,
उसने मेरे सीने पर सर रख कर पूछा,
जानम अपने जीवन का वह लम्हा तो बतलाओ मुझको,
जिसके बदले सब कुछ अपना,सब कुछ,सब कुछ,
अपना सब कुछ दे सकते हो,
मैनें उसका माथा चूमा और बोला चुप!
पहली बार मेरे सीने पर तुमने अपना सर रखा है।

Sue me!!

VLS: “Yeah, as a matter of fact I was listening to them yesterday, but today I was listening to Sarod played by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons , that you put on my Ipod”

S: “Saaz was a good collection. But, what I really want you to listen to is Raag Sorath on the Baiju Banwara CD I sent you. Its just divine”

VLS: “I am glad that you have come to appreciate Indian classical music”

S: “You underestimate my tastes and interests, but I have got them from you both”

VLS: “At one point, you and your cousin made fun of me when I was listening to classical music. And so much so that I was distressed. I actually felt bad and concerned for you that you will never learn to appreciate such soul-stirring music.That and other such finer things in life.”

S: “Did I do something like that?”

Mother, the mere fact that you  remembered , tells me how much it hurt. And then my mind wanders back to the times you refer to. A lot more comes to mind, mostly regrettable. But, then only if I could just put things into place by simply regretting. I know I can’t repair the damage, but I am trying to make up for it.

For whatever it is worth,  sorry Ma.

SD:”How come you always get into these couple type situations?”

I smell that chocolate cake that was baked almost impulsively and eaten with a big dollop of vanilla ice cream, with me perched on the blue recliner, my abode for three months after I broke my ankle on Christmas eve. One of the best summers of my life was spent in this place , grilling sausages and marinated chicken , drinking and pouring enormous amounts of beer in the marinate. Perfect use of beer distribution company’s policy of only selling wholesale packs, which incidentally was only a block away from us.

Watching the cop with his speed gun, sit between two houses , right across from our backyard, targeting clueless and often confused drivers, who had just crossed a bad stretch of one way traffic and almost found a new lease of life in the new traffic pattern. Wasn’t always there an evil smile on the cop’s face? Of course, bets were made about which car would get pulled over. General agreement , that sports car with its rear spoiler, loud exhaust and even louder speakers , should not have been tagged , instead it should have been the old couple in Buick doing 20 on 35.

First experience working from home. Thinking isn’t this how all my working life would be? I am happy that it wasn’t so. Irony, it seems has caught up with me , I am desperate nowto work from home while spending time with mother.

Some heated arguments come to mind, which I want to dismiss. But, isn’t that what was the most bothering part about the whole thing? Its you against them , one person against two, two counterpoints for each you make. Even if they do not make two separate points, it feels like so because they are two and you are alone. Why do couples get so smug? Have they achieved everything, just by being together? Where has one’s individuality gone? Is that what is supposed to happen? You surrender yourself in return for a joint personality , where you might not even have an equal representation in what is projected out to others.

Maybe all this that I am thinking will not even matter in next couple of hours when I finally move into the new place. Maybe it will. Lets just hope it doesn’t.

1166 here I come.

My fellow scotch lover  takes a sip in agreement.

T:”Well, do you realize that we might have been in the city at the same times during our lives”
S:”I used to live behind 2nd stop during summers”
T:”I used to live in sector 1 with my grandfather”
T:”Used to go to Bitten market and to New Market for top ‘n town  ice-cream with my uncle and aunt”
S:”And Brijwasi right across for lassi and chole tikki”

Damn.

S:”I went to Badrinath and Kedarnath sometime around ’90.”
T:”So did I, exactly that same year”

S:”That was the most amazing trip ever, my botanist mother used to point all sorts of plants to me throughout the trip”
T:”Damn man , my grandfather was a professor of Botany in Bhopal”
S:”My mother would have definitely known him, she was working at Holkar in Indore at the time”

Whoa , thats too much of a coincidence.

Amazing how small the world is , this is someone that I met for the first time in US. And he lived a couple of blocks from me all those summers.

And where did the conversation start

S:”I can so vivdly remember the couple of times I was beaten up in the manner of somebody-gotta-get-hurt-real-bad by my parents”
T:”So can I”