Fueling Thoughts

The army officer who impressed me the most, did so by being utterly unimpressive. An ex-fighter pilot - medium in stature, speech, and demeanour, more like a middle-rung manager or a well-to-do small entrepreneur. Nothing like the arrogant fly-boy jocks you see anywhere. Despite being dyslexic and petrified of heights, I had a fetish for choppers and  nurtured a secret hope of getting a private helicopter licence. Till my age, bad eyesight, the severity of my dyslexia, and the domestic and financial imprisonment of being a caregiver and a lousy breadwinner permanently relegated it to the basket of broken dreams. This gentleman flew MiG-21s when in  the forces. So I asked him what it actually felt like - the adrenaline rush, the euphoria, the sense of freedom , or being one with the limitless sky . His reply was something I was completely unprepared for ... “ Well, y ou are strapped into a very uncomfortable seat with extremely poor frontal visibility, sitting in front of what ...

  In another universe, I wake up today in an unfamiliar room, clean, small, and absolutely devoid of character. Rush into a tiny bathroom, shower, put on a formal shirt, crumpled in the suitcase in transit. Slip into a suit, now slightly tight on the midriff, jeans, because I can’t squeeze into the matching trousers any more. Wipe the dust off the shoes with toilet paper, lest I don’t find a shoe polisher in the corridor. Walk down to the dining area for the complimentary breakfast for which I had to pay another 20 euros, smirk at the continental fare of only 5 or 6 dishes, pile myself with bland coffee and stroll out to hunt for the complimentary shuttle to the exhibition venue. And not finding it, or being told that it left, check whether Google Maps is working, and decide to walk down the 1 kilometre from the Ibis Airport to the exhibition hall. Reaching there, completing the registration, losing my way at least twice by trying to follow their layout map to find my...

  I am still torn over who is the more tragicomic figure in  BAFTA award winning documentary   Mr. Nobody vs. Putin : the protagonist Pavel, known as Pasha, or the history teacher Abdulmanov. Pasha looks like the iconic Soviet film character Shurik come to life - the endearing, hapless, sexless, nerdy, pedantic antihero of Soviet comedy. Only he is slightly more pudgy, but equally looks like someone who is not feared, followed, or taken seriously. By contrast, Abdulmanov is like Koschei Bessmertny, the immortal skeleton, the central villain of most Russian folk tales. Tall, skinny and humourless, absolutely ideologically committed to the country’s politics. He is obedient to dictates from above, reverent toward the Soviet past, and unwaveringly loyal to the present leadership and its narrative. One cannot even call him an opportunist or a sycophant in the conventional sense. Yet he was rewarded with a new flat as the best teacher. Possibly he was one,  h...

  After a little over a year, I could finally leave my hometown and board a train, perhaps after half a decade. It was the new Vande Bharat overnight service to Kolkata - Indian Railways’ latest flagship and the country’s first high-speed sleeper train. Certainly the most modern thing on rails in India, with interiors almost at par with new Chinese trains, though not quite there yet. The travellers, however, were mostly unchanged - yelling across the wagon, playing music, or watching news and clips on mobiles at full volume. If some wore headphones, it took care of the input, not their vocal cords. The train was new and clean, inside and out. The linen was fresh and crisp. It travelled quite fast for an Indian train, and almost everything worked, except the bathroom occupancy lights. They glowed green at all times, which meant anyone inside had to bear the indignity of the doorknob being repeatedly rattled by people attempting to enter, especially while they were re...

After more than a decade around boats, and for earlier  living in Goa, whose only relevance here is that it happens to have a seashore, I am routinely treated as a know-all repository for anything remotely connected to ships and vessels. Of all the questions I get, the one I detest most, and about which I know virtually nothing except having seen a few lined up for scrapping at Alang, concern cruise liners. To be fair, I did predict the commercial failure of India’s first homegrown cruise ship even before its maiden voyage. Like most of my negative prognoses, that too came true. But my dislike for cruise liners has nothing to do with ships. It has everything to do with the people asking the questions. The questions are never about ships, routes, costs or even seasickness. The most common one is - whether it is true that one can avail of intimate services on board, in massage parlours and saunas, the “happy ending” kind, while their families lounge on deck and pose for photos. Why g...

North East India has long been conflict-ridden. First came fights among tribes, then tribals versus non-tribals, then tribals and non-tribals against invaders, followed by cries for independence, protests against discrimination, and so on. It was this way before the British arrived, it remained so after they left, and it continued unchanged as part of India. The 70s and 80s saw mass  insurgency, agitations, and political unrest. And yet, if there was one man who was the undisputed and omnipresent aspirational icon across the region, it was Bruce Lee. My generation grew up under his stern, steely, daring, all-seeing eyes. He was everywhere, staring down from posters on the walls of  bedrooms, roadside eateries, garages, and barbershops. Fights in ticket queues outside theatres screening his movies put those in the films to shame. With much of the population having Mongoloid features, teenagers and young men imitated his look and strut, sporting the Lee-cut hairstyle that resemb...

 Let’s face it, people may watch a random film without relating to anyone in it, but not TV serials. Hence, the ever-suffering strong woman with a heart of gold in soaps, tailor-made for a predominantly female audience. For me, since school, it was Mr. Spock. Tall, fit, logical, cool vampire ears, a deadly shoulder grab, and zero interest in women, basically everything I wasn’t, except the last part. Most girls around me seemed to think I was just as alien anyway. With "The Next Generation", Spock became Picard, still logical, aloof, single, but more human. His interest in women? Strictly intellectual equals. My loyalty shifted accordingly. Fast-forward a decade. I was at my parents’ place when an early morning call woke me. An acquaintance, an aspiring politician from a neighbouring state, with a request. Not the kind anyone wants to hear first thing in the morning, and one most would refuse right away. By then I had already hit rock bottom in Goa, the second or third time i...

  I came across a report in a local English daily from last year stating that the riverine island of Majuli on the Brahmaputra does not have a single functioning river ambulance. One vessel is reportedly in a completely dilapidated state, while two others are considered repairable, at least for now. Around the same time, I was pitching for CSR grants to build a purpose-designed shallow-water ambulance using my bamboo composite boat-building technology, powered by a diesel-solar hybrid propulsion system. To strengthen my case, I used images from Dhubri in western Assam, where three identical fibreglass boat Ambulances fitted with large imported outboard motors were lying beached on a sandbank, slowly disintegrating. Each of these vessels had been either purchased by the government or donated by state PSUs, at a cost of at least USD 5,000 apiece. They were rarely operated due to the high running costs of their fuel-hungry petrol outboard motors, compounded by fuel pilferage by staf...