Ant R

the demise of the funny bone

2012-11-07T10:32:32Z

The manhunt is coming to an end. ‘For some time to come’ as some pessimists would like to put it. As far as I am concerned though, this better be my full and final settlement with this aspect of life. When, after incessant nagging from my folks, I announced I want to tie the noose..err..knot, what I was mostly looking forward to was a respite from those rants. Did they end? Yeah, for the time being. As my friends warn me, this is just the beginning of many more rants to germinate. Apparently incidents like this give people a chance to rant to you on issues such as unwanted guests, non-likeable relatives, and planning a family (which ironically means exactly the opposite of ‘family planning’). My weekends will no longer be mine alone, watching a movie uninterrupted or quietly reading a book or lazing around would soon become prized dreams. I’m guessing all this implies there would be more mouths to rant, including mine. In a nutshell, I was happy for about a week after the announcement until friends around me pointed out that it is not going to be hunky dory afterall so maybe I should pipe down a bit. Not that I was over the top with glee but now even the faint smile has faded into a concerned frown.

The ‘guy’ apparently had been reading this blog for a while and he recently asked me why I don’t write here anymore. I told him I have nothing to write about. He replied ‘why? you used to write all that funny stuff, whatever happened to that?’ I said ‘My life is not funny anymore. The manhunt has ended.’

Commuting

2012-06-18T11:03:33Z

Long time back I had written a
post on my life on wings - those were the glorious old days when commuting
mostly meant flying from one city to another. It has been a year since I have
moved to a job that has left me stranded in the same bloody city, often gasping
for breath. Of course, I have been coming up for some air from time to time,
making personal trips whenever possible. But by and large, commuting for me now
means taking the ric and the red bus to my office.

Ok by ric I mean the lower
version of ric. A cycle rickshaw. There is an even lowly version of it by the
way. It’s called the man-pulled rickshaw, they have those in my home city
Kolkata, and they are doing really bad business these days because people don’t
feel it humane to make a man pull their weight. I would probably have taken
them for letting them stay in business, if only I weren’t so scared of being
accidentally dropped off - head first.

The cycle rickshaw in Delhi is
not so scary. Except that sometimes they have slippery sloping seats, or
dislodged ones, or better still, both at once. Yes that’s a bit scary, you’re
not sure what to hold on to. Especially when they are speeding down a slope,
you don’t know what would fall off first, you, your bag, your shoes or the
rickshaw puller.

Having said that, I have a
designated rickshaw who arrives at my doorstep at a fixed time every morning,
or whenever I need to go somewhere and call him (on his cellphone). My visitors
are often amused at the number of auto and cab drivers and rickshaw walas and
carpenters and plumbers and electricians are listed on my phonebook. But then
if a few extra bucks could save me the trouble of walking all the way outside
the colony gate, then why not. I mean, I know that having a tiger balm as my
constant no-fail travel companion says a lot about my fitness quotient but
that’s not the point really.

So this rickshaw drops me off at
the bus stop where I wait excitedly for my red bus. For the uninitiated, a red
bus is an airconditioned city bus - my preferred ride to my office. I could
always take an auto rickshaw (advanced version) but a) it is not airconditioned
and b) it reaches me too early. I mean, only today I took one on my way to work
since I was running late, and my colleague on the next table looks at my hair
and asks me ‘Auto liya?’ And this is why I hate hurried mornings.

I really savour the 15 mins of
busride to work, ears plugged to music, book in hand, looking up from time to
time to watch bizarre copassengers. I like it quiet in the mornings. But sadly
most Delhiites fail to see my point. In every bus or every train or metro
compartment, there is a man waiting to entertain you with his choicest remixed
sleaze songs, especially in the mornings. He is someone who has secretly
switched on his phone speakers, clearly proud of his taste in music, beaming at
everyone, trying to read their faces for appreciation, completely oblivious to
your surging sentiments at that very moment. Very calmly, however, I wish I
could politely get up from my seat, walk up to them and strangulate these
jokers. But what do I do? I count ten breaths and plug in my earplugs to tune
in to a channel which is not playing jingles. I mean I love radio but I hate
jingles! And trust me sometimes its a tough choice between the jingle and the
sleaze remix.

But life goes on. A lot of people
ask me why I don’t buy a car here. Can’t afford is what I tell some. To the
rest I say it is not worth maintaining one for a single person. High carbon
footprint. Fuel prices. Whataver occurs at that moment. But the reality is
driving for me is a mental challenge. My adventures on Kolkata roads with my
sodabottle-glassed driver who could not see the road to save his life. ‘Just a
little nightblind’ he had told me, but major understatement if you ask me. My
ECG reports would have told a better story.

Anyhow, those nightmares are best
avoided and hence the bus. Banal as it may sound, compared to all other modes of
city transport for me, the bus rocks. It is cheap, it is big, is looked upon
with fear and respect on the road, it is too slow to run someone over, it has a
handful of reserved seats for the fairer sex which is such a boon after work
(saves the haggling with men for a square foot of ass-space). I do not have to
pay for maintenance charges, if it breaks down, I merely hop off and hop on to
another bus - in short a totally giving,
inexpensive, guilt-free, no commitment affair this one!

..tbc

Meetings

2012-04-23T12:17:55Z

A couple of days back, I was caught in a meeting where people were revewing a project. It was a client review, wherein there were people from the client side (mainly government), an international donor that’s funding the project and the project proponent, a private entity. I was part of none of them actually, but I represented the client side since I am a consultant to them through another private entity. Confusing, I know. Anyhow, usually I duck out of such meetings and send my colleagues some of whom gladly lap up the opportunity of exposure to prospective future employers. This is one time I could not manage to sneak out of it. And so, like a diligent professional, I carried my scribbling pad. My firm provides us rather huge A4 size writing pads which I find difficult to doodle on because they do not fold properly, and also because it is difficult to hide from the person sitting next to me. And I seriously intend to complain to the branding team that designs merchandise about this. I do not want to risk my reputation by not appearing busy as the rest of them on the table for a mere design fault of a notepad.

Moving on, the meeting started with boring proportions of cliches from all sides, with the client muttering some non-descript statements, clearly clueless about any sound evaluation parameters to review them on. The project proponent had gathered their entire entourage for this meeting, and the team leader, who hardly ever visits office, gave out some mighty jargons on things that they can take on. Two of his senior team members, who also visit the office with a similar frequency as him, supported his lofty suggestions.

Nobody from their middle management and incidentally, the team that actually executes the work at ground level, spoke a word. The donor representatives who were visiting from another country, listened to all the discussion that was going on with great enthusiasm and tried to put in their two cents. While one of them explained with great gusto how an ideal system could be chalked out with reference to another country, I doodled on with full concentration, pretending to appear attentive. As I looked up from my notepad, one of the executing team members seated opposite to me shot me a wink and a smirk. I knew most of their team, and I acknowledged his wink with a faux yawn. And then the senior bureaucrat at the client side started asking people individually if they had any feedback. The rule here is, unless you are individually asked, you never speak. You sit and pretend to be dumb and ignorant, but when and only when your name is called out shall thou speaketh. And whence thou speaketh, thou shall do so such that there be no tomorrow. In short, you blabber everything you ever knew, this is your chance to impress the room full of people. My colleague’s name was called out and she pounced on this opportunity and made her ceremonial speech - I had heard her make this verbatim in 20 previous meetings, with more than 50% of common audience. “Blah blah…capacity building….blah…poverty expert…administrative reforms….citizen’s charter…blah blah”. This is how I usually hear most of these proceedings. A mundane series of repetitive words, heavy in their content, but negligible in intent.

I desperately prayed for the meeting to get over. It is not that I did not have an opinion. While these people spoke theories, I had a fundamental and pertinent question on the applicability of these theories. But I chose to text my concerns to the director at the client side whom I work with. She shot a glance at me, smiled and rolled her eyes, while the senior bureaucrat spoke on and on. The guy handling the laptop suddenly appeared to understand what was going on and vigorously nodded his head at whatever she said. The project team leader (again, who hardly attends office) shamelessly beamed at the customary praises from the client before the meeting was adjourned.

Summer Homecoming

2012-04-03T04:36:49Z

I went home last week. But that’s not news. What’s news is that I took the train. Voluntarily. Was tired of being called ‘princess’, ‘diva’ etc by the travel gang so took it up like a challenge. But not before I realised it was a silly thing to do. Trains are not built for unsocials like me who climb atop a berth in the hope that no one would talk to them. And as Mr. Murphey would have it, the more you try to escape, the more it finds its way to you. My co-passengers were carrying a kid that shrieked non-stop, when she didn’t scream, she cried. On the rare occasions when she was quiet, her folks panicked that she had pooped her pants. Sometime half way down the journey, I called a friend to wish her on her birthday (courtesy phone reminder), she heard the chaos behind me and asked me where the hell was I calling from.

When I told her am on a train, she was both aghast and amused (knowing my train frights) and had a hearty laugh at my expense. Drearily I hung up to find my phone battery was dying out. The plug point was right next to my berth, but there was a long queue of gadgets people thought they direly needed to charge. 4 cell phones, 3 laptops and 1 kindle wrapped in plastic cover that an elderly lady was reading through. There is this thing I find among people of keeping things of daily use all covered up in plastic presuming they would always be good as new. My dad did that with one of our cars, the covers never came off for the first 6 months of purchase; and then the car met with an accident. Traumatic as the accident was, at least the covers came off. Anyhow, coming back to the point, I pretty much resolved to not take another train journey, especially when I am travelling alone.

My trip home was hectic and tiring but beautiful nevertheless. A week is too short if you’re going home on vacation. I had carried my camera with much gusto but when I look at it now, I only see food pics. Which probably means that’s most of what I did out there. I checked out the Chinese breakfast at Tiretty Bazar; waking up friends at 6 am in the morning only for a hog-affair didn’t seem cruel at all. Visited a couple of other favorite joints for old time’s sake (pretending to myself am visiting the city after a decade). And of course there was poor mom who waited to catch a glimpse of me at dinner table so that she could cook and feed me my favorites. It seemed like everyone was pretty sure why I was home in the first place!

I did watch some movies in theatres, something I hadn’t done in a long time. However I was used to last minute movie booking and was taken in for a rude shock when we failed to get morning show tickets even on a Monday. Frustrated I asked ‘Who are these people who are queuing up for a movie on a Monday morning? Isn’t this office time?’ Took a while to dawn on me - college bunkers and jobless lovers. The realisation of the implications of this realisation was more frustrating than the realisation that we are not getting the tickets that day for the third time in a row. Eventually we did manage to watch the movie. The movie was pretty entertaining, however, since it was set in Kolkata, I was regretting not watching it in Delhi for then I would have loved it even more for nostalgia sake. Sitting in Cal, watching a movie shot in Cal, I somehow missed missing Cal a bit. There were some other movies that I watched, and then some more that I bagged from friends (God bless them, for am such a piggy-backer when it comes to downloading movies). In fact I also bought a couple of DVDs of acclaimed Bengali movies that my folks suggested I should watch. Only I have to now buy a DVD player and yes, a shelf to place it on. Not ‘cart-before-horse’ at all.

My week long vacation came to an end quicker than I had expected it to end from my previous experiences of home vacations. That is perhaps this time there was no nagging. To mark a perfect end to it, I took my usual flight back home. Monday morning, straight to hell..

Unshow yourself

2012-03-12T19:19:02Z

Unshow yourself

Even if I tell you otherwise

I maybe naive

Something I did not do

gives me the right to be

I may be weak

because I always was

I am not the one to change my constitution

or Colors

But YOU have no room for leeway

You have had your way

All this while

Till this day

Try not to trace it back

Cause when you left

I had systematically destroyed

All roads that led to me

Especially the one you walked

So unshow yourself

Do not try to dig deep

The patched path is illusionary

Would lead you nowhere

Just be known

It is over, forever

If only

2012-01-24T16:45:10Z

There is nothing more in here

Whatever was, is either frozen

decayed, destroyed or dead

There must have been something,

that has, over time

sucked it all out

leaving behind this hollow carcass

soulless but not lifeless

Should have been a painful state to be in

If only I felt a thing

But alas, that’s what the pain is all about

Remainder

2011-12-11T11:19:05Z

Leftovers from the previous night

And the million nights before

Of gruesome introspection

Amidst the jarring clang of contradictions

bleakest of conclusions

inflicting agonistic decisions

Immersing in their aftermath

gives far from content

just sheer torment

Molestation of the mind

Collective, repetitive

As the winding hands

play silent witness

to this test of endurance

perhaps laying a bet

on an immolation or vain

And of those million nights

I am all that remains

Anti-social?

2011-11-06T17:50:14Z

So, Dussehra over, Diwali is over, and all I have written is some harakiri inducing poetry that doesn’t rhyme in a single place. God knows what I was upto. I don’t keep track of stuff I do, I hope he does, he would need it someday for the ‘evaluation’. Anyhow, barring a few mortal occasions, life’s not been too bad. My house can now be called a home, one would like to live here now. It has also been having visitors. My brother dropped in, friends have been dropping in, parents dropped in. This sudden advent of visitors has somehow been too much of confusing information to handle for my maid who was used to seeing the solitary me in this house for so many months. Which is perhaps why, when my mom told her about my brother, my maid provided her six different versions of visitors who she thought was my brother. My mom was confused and aghast because, yeah, you know how moms are.

Mom’s penchant for chatting up people and socialising has always worried me. On Diwali eve, while we were sitting on the lit up terrace, she enthusiastically suggested we go and socialise with the neighbours - a proposal I rejected outrightly. Later that week I heard dad had gone and ’socialised’ with my most non-cooperative ground floor neighbour, who he thought was a nice poor man who nobody in the building likes, hence he feels I should go and coffee with them. I informed that indeed, I am included in that list of nobodies because he is a jerk. Dad apparently also had a chat with the broker, plumber, carpenter, electrician and the owner of the colony cab rental agency whom he has asked to ensure ‘my safety since I stay alone’. Brilliant, so now the entire colony knows there is a single woman living here, including prospective thieves.

They are somehow unable to understand that being neighbours doesn’t automatically qualify people to be included in my active social circle (which, I admit, is more electronic since the people I can relate to are far and few, literally). Besides, if I do have free time outside of work, I’d rather spend it with interesting people like myself. Alright, that was narcissistic.

Talking of which, I have a feeling that some people at work feel I have an attitude. But to my own surprise, I realised that it is an accusation I am not to keen on denying. I may have sub-consciously adopted it for two primary reasons: a) the ability to deliver hence accept only quality work and b) the unwillingness to be used overtime by those who don’t. Thanks to the ‘attitude’ I no longer have to write all the speeches. Having worked with some of the best minds in the industry earlier on in my career, it now amazes me to see the sharp decline in quality and attitude among ‘professionals’. I watch in amazement as a fair majority of people spend most of their time looking for ways to piggy back on a bunch of hardworking people. Also, I seriously want to know how many calories does the human mind take to ‘think’, given the rare commodity it has become these days. Anyhow, more on than later because this post ends here (because I want it to).

…

2011-10-13T12:03:43Z

Heart cooks up tales

of hope and light -

Culinary brilliance

out of absolute nothingness

Mind feeds on,

misled, unmindful

content,

slips into blissful slumber

While heart is at work

‘Feels good’ for a living

tempted smiles

induced glee

festival of dreams

Mind stirs up,

tormented by cackles

of happy reverie

rubbing eyes in disbelief

aghast at the mess…

Heart’s now a slave

to the seasoned mind

The pain shared by both

Mind has a heart of its own

Only soul is left to wander alone

aimless, baffled, numbed

The only hope

2011-08-29T07:30:09Z

Someday

I shall be free from

all annoyable things

surrounding me

and features

The face and this nose

and the colour of my skin

and those calves

misplaced bulges

And people around

their voices

deafening noises

all around and within

and this mind

that thinks too many thoughts

and the heart that hurts

and strays

the eyes that tire

of seeing too much

This life that hums

an endless monotone

its only variations

being off key, way out of tune

If only we knew at birth

what we are signing up for.

Hope still lingers though

For I know,

Someday I shall be free

from everything that irks me