Fueling Thoughts

I can't speak for the kids today, but   children of my generation were exposed to a myriad of stupid, inconsiderate questions. When young – who do you love more, your father or your mother – usually asked right in front of your parents. Seriously, what’s your fucking business? You do not care beyond the cheap thrill of making a child squirm. A little older, it became the self-righteous – what rank do you hold in class? “First from the last,” I often replied without blinking, my shadow giving them the middle finger. Sometimes I would ask back – with the sweetest of smiles – what rank they held in school or college. They usually changed the subject or lied. Once, I witnessed how an ageing Oriya IAS officer was competing with a fellow Oriya ex–uncle-in-law (a retiring professor) about always being the topper. When the latter said he was first in everything except handwriting and drawing, the officer solemnly declared he was always first in those subjects too… Two old coo...

T aking a sabbatical hasn’t reduced my workload in the slightest. Sure, emails now get curt one-liners or no reply at all. Most work-related calls go unanswered. Then again, calling it work was already a stretch. If earlier all the “liftoffs,” “jump starts,” went straight to my spam folder, now their calls are also being ignored. The few I do pick up, they wish I hadn’t. And as always, someone remarks, “You’re so blunt!” A few times, I asked back, “Have you ever met a polite fireman?” The question is usually asked with a wry smile and the mental image of that #metoo era cartoon – a fireman climbing through a window to save a woman in a burning house, only for her to sniff, “I don’t consent to being touched.” He shrugs and leaves her to roast. People fall silent. Most have never met a fireman – especially one at work. The truth is, firemen don’t have time for courtesy, consensus, or consent. Their work is dangerous – saving lives and property, not debating pronouns or k...

I don't know how many enjoy watching those "oddly satisfying" category of clips where people wash carpets, where a grimy brown-black rectangle reemerges into its original bright colours with floral or geometric patterns. A practical example of resurgence and rebirth, though more likely it feeds the same voyeuristic mechanism that makes people watch Dr. Pimple Popper drain pus, extract giant blackheads, marvel at giant boogers, or savour the stench of a just coughed-out tonsil stone. Let me assure you, in reality, washing carpets is oddly dissatisfying. I found that out yesterday. I hauled out a mysterious, grey-tinged, cardboard-like carpet, long folded up, with no recollection of how it ever got into the house. My mother said it was natural wool and that my father had bought it while I was still in school. It took a boutique blend of cleaners and about four hours of pressure washing to restore it to its original white and cream. My back ached for the rest of the day, an...

At an age when most rockers had burned out, OD’d, or on permanent residency in rehab, the King of Heavy Metal came in screaming his first solo mega-hit "Holy Diver," well in his mid-40s. After decades of yelling along without a clue, I finally used the internet to figure out what Ronnie James Dio was actually singing about—apparently some transdimensional batman masked messianic figure taking a dive to save an ungrateful humanity. Sounds familiar - flood relief Bamboo Boats anyone ?? On a personal level, though, Holy Diver lately started meaning something else altogether. Call her a metaphor of my Jungian Anima, the female archetype lurking in a man’s psyche, or a temptress - a Sky Dakini in the flesh, luring me to take the plunge. For the Lord knows how pathetically susceptible we men are to female cajoling—far more than to nagging. And its certainly more effective a method of allure than by ghosting, in life or in chats. Well, this Holy Diver—or should I say Sky Diver—is n...

My father had a deeply irritating habit. Any subject I picked up, he had to follow. But first, he would patronize me - Astrology, Buddhism, tantra, Jung or whatever I was reading. Suddenly my books became his, and soon he the “expert.” The only things he didn’t chase me into were Taoism, motorcycle repair, and boat building. Our approaches differed. I collected books, skimmed, dropped them when bored, filing fragments away in the chaotic, multithreaded system of a dyslexic ADD brain. He, on the other hand, would first criticize the author, then read cover to cover, make notes, study further, and inevitably write an article—say, on Tibetan Buddhism’s effect on Shankardeva’s Vaishnav tradition. We rarely agreed: his pedantic stance was dogmatic, while I followed Lao Tzu—“the further one goes, the less one knows.” Still, one explanation of his stayed with me: the difference between a Bodhisattva and an Arhat - both are realized masters in their respective Buddhist traditions. A Bodhisatt...

I’ve found myself on an unplanned sabbatical due to factors completely beyond my control. Sudden caregiving responsibilities, and the absolute apathy toward my work from all quarters in my region (international interest and multiple media coverage be damned), have forced me to step back. Not to think or replan or reevaluate, but simply to flatline the monitor. Time now drifts by in household chores, repairs, and errands. Fixing a 50-year-old bungalow, a 20-year-old car, and then there’s the “Toilet of Doom.”  I’ll come to that later. First, a revelation made by myself to myself, in a dream last night. I was seated in  a large glassed office or a conference room when a smart, pretty young lady, purportedly a CA, who asked me, “What do you think is wrong with the startup sector?” I took out my notepad and drew a cross-section of a volcano. “Everyone,” I said, “wants a startup to grow into a massive volcano, impressive and loud, great for the optics and valuation. But no one ...

  “Hello—No Problem!!” bellowed the grimy dreadlocked Sadhu Baba for the umpteenth time that evening. His fixation was Derick, an egg-headed bull of a man in his sixties from Australia, who could easily have made a film career playing a Nazi or a skinhead. He was also the owner of the worst Royal Enfield imaginable—glitter and chrome but breaking down at every corner. We were sitting across in a former parachute-turned-tent at Sarchu, shared with a few dozen others—tourists, truckers, the owner’s family, and the Baba himself. Totally sozzled after helping the truckers with their booze and then stoned from countless chillums, he would first yell “Hello,” wave at Derick, and, once he had his attention, give a thumbs-up and roar again: “No Problem!!” The “Techno Baba,” by contrast, was a self-styled sadhu—a young Bihari from Pasighat—living off an attractive but perpetually stoned Israeli blonde in an old Manali guesthouse where I stayed. With long shampooed hair, clad in a saffron...

     “Are you a devotee of Lord Krishna?” I was taken aback by the unexpected question and didn’t know how to respond immediately. I looked at the inquirer, my co-passenger in the Rajdhani coupe, and tried to assess if he was one of those self-righteous types who will extol the virtues of vegetarianism all the way to Delhi. “I asked because you are wearing a Tulsi mala,” he clarified. “Tulsi is sacred to us Vaishnavas; it is a holy plant. I also have one, but I feel shy to wear it. Do you use it for chanting?” “Well actually… I wear them for health reasons. I suffer from respiratory trouble, and someone recommended Tulsi. These beads are a gift from a friend,” I replied not untruthfully, leaving out the details about how they came from Nimtala Ghat crematorium — one of Calcutta’s more morbid corners — where we once went to smoke for Shiva, talk of life, and stare at death. Besides, which born-again hippie can be without a string of beads? We made a cont...

Deep Purple’s “When a Blind Man Cries”  is arguably one of the saddest rock ballads ever  sung. But honestly, I was never a great fan of Purple and only started paying serious attention to the song after hearing a cover version by the German never-grew-old rockers  Axel Rudi Pell.  They did justice to the song in a way Ian Gillan and the rest of Purple could never dream—  powerful, yet  plaintive  heavy metal vocals, with canyon-deep guitar riffs emerging from the core of the heart only to rip it apart, while tears stream down from empty eye sockets.  Listening to this song invariably reminds me of a college senior and good friend, “Raja,” an ethnic Nepali who lived in a small room behind a pharmacy owned by his uncle, not far from my home. Short, stocky, thuggish but effulgent, we shared a love for books and rock music—though he leaned more towards metal. I started appreciating  Iron Maiden  thanks to him, while he tripped on Floyd...

     Meat Loaf's iconic Bat Out of Hell Album cover. If I had anything to brag about in my youth, it was that I was the first guy in town to own the entire Pink Floyd collection. A remarkable achievement, considering most of their albums weren’t even released in India at the time, and my parents barely gave me any pocket money—definitely not enough to buy a cassette tape. So I call them gifts from the Gods of Psychedelic Rock. Two others in town made the same claim. One was blatantly lying—he had a few and just knew the rest of the album names. He later died of an overdose. The other copied my collection and then claimed, to all, he was the first. He became a rock band vocalist, who organized a Pink Floyd tribute concert "The Wall" in the city - pocketed all the proceeds, not paying other artists and contractors, and fled to Mumbai, where he is now some kind of music director. Anyway, I soon dropped the boast—not a single girl was impressed, and most had no clue who the...