Holy Diver

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 not a fantasy figure, but a person in a series of YouTube Shorts. A striking, brown-haired, but decidedly unglamorous young woman sitting on a chair, in a white top and cargos, listening to someone intently, who turns to the camera, smiles shyly, and flashes a V-sign. Next she’s in a hangar, zipping up a black-and-white skydiving suit (usually the mark of an instructor or someone advanced), offering the faintest smile before gazing into the etheric distance, tying her fiery long hair into a bun, walks towards a North Carolina–registered plane, turns her head flashing another smile, and boards. Next moment—out she goes, slicing through the air, sketching figures against the sky. And that’s where I sigh deeply…

For if her appearance and demeanour weren’t enough to have me smitten, ready to play the fool a dozen times over, she also breaks the final barrier—jumping out of a plane.
For, alas, I am petrified of heights.

Incidentally, I knew at least four women who’ve done the leap. Three went tandem, thrill-seeking, and urged me to try, assuring me they too had been afraid of heights. The fourth, an army reservist, did three jumps, admitted they were basically booted out of the plane, parachutes popping automatically with half the recruits bawling or wetting themselves until a dull thud and ache of landing brought them back to earth. Only on her third jump did she dare open her eyes midair and glimpse a surreal serenity, and felt her own insignificance against the vast earth below. But no, thank you, she won’t be doing that again.

This leaves me in a peculiar jam. With Concorde's retired, the Russians no longer hawking MiG-29 joyrides, the edge of space still locked behind billionaire gates, and aeroplane bathrooms far too cramped to join the "club," my one remaining option to experience the sky in all its glory is… to take a dive. But really?

I just pray I don't meet the brown haired “Holy Skydiver” from North Carolina—I mean not anytime soon...

The Dao Tse from Indu

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 Bodhisattva, he said, seeing goats led to slaughter, would lecture the herders on the sanctity of life, their sins, and the karma. A Theravadin Arhat, by contrast, may chat with the herders, bless them if asked, perhaps request kindness to the animals while they are alive, then move on, knowing people must eat and survive. Having somewhat known both streams from inside, I think his was the best distinction I’ve ever heard.

Of course, I had to add dryly that he forgot the Tulkus - reincarnated Lamaist Bodhisattvas who would chant, bang drums and gongs, blow a horn blessing both herders and goats, to protect them from demons and then have one for their meal. “Give me the wandering Daoist any day,” I said. He would stop by, share banter, eat what was offered, drink their booze or his own, laugh and move on, following the Dao.

“In China we call them piànzi -cheats,” said Chen, my hosting company’s liaison, when I shared my fascination with the "Dao Tses," Taoist sages. Making me realize that our people weren’t so different after all - at least in their views about travelling mendicants.

That evening, in a bar, Chen pressed me about why an Indian is interested in Daoist thought, when it's been long ignored in China except for perfunctory temple rituals. What followed was hours of my drunken stream of consciousness - Daoist parables, Iching cosmology, Chuang Tzu quotes, reflections on “the Way.” A fascinated audience gathered, some catching my English, others listening to Chen’s translations. 

In true Daoist style, the language barrier and the booze only thickened the mystic veil.
Years later, I visited the city again. Chen had left the company, and his replacement took me around. On seeing my interest in a wayside Taoist shrine, his face lit up in recognition: 

“Ooo...so you are the Dao Tse from Indu!
I heard much about you!”
As a follower of the Way, I didn’t ask what.

An Unplanned Sabbatical, a Volcano, and the Toilet of Doom

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 wants to provide the magma that turns into lava, or accept the eruptions that make it grow. So you end up digging for the magma and in no time are surrounded by hordes of volcanologists and other experts (the mentors, incubators and accelerators), all curating your growth, offering advice, or acting as touts for tourists, which is to say, the potential investors.

Founders are expected to stack stones uphill, show slides of Mt. Fuji, and promise they can do the same or better. Some even put up a fake facade with an impressive volcano image -that’s the whole ‘fake it till you make it’ mantra.

In the end, no one really cares what your volcano actually does, whether it forms islands, raises mountains, or fertilizes the land. And yes, volcanoes sometimes explode, taking everyone around them with them. Eventually they go dormant and die”

Now, about the Indian Johns - or the Toilet of Doom.

There was an old Indian-style lavatory in the house, leaking and blocked for decades, but it stayed that way because my late father insisted on using it -  his meditative power spot. I finally decided to convert it into a western WC. Got all the fittings, but plumbers either weren’t interested, disappeared after a look, or quoted enough to build a new one.

Never one to be blackmailed by the working class, my left leanings notwithstanding, I took on the project myself.

 It took two days just to get the old pan out. Turns out the contractor who built the house had cast the floor with a 4-inch concrete slab.  Subsequent plumbers poured even more concrete below, trying to fix the discharge pipe leaks.

The result, me lying on the floor for hours, head in the hole where the pan used to be, inhaling fifty years of sewage fumes, drilling out bits of concrete, and holding a digging bar while my Friday swung a giant hammer right above my head to hit it again and again.

By now, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though a little still remains.  One thing’s certain, Stephen King wouldn’t have seen any redemption in this one. 

Frankly, neither do I.

It’s definitely not something you’d put on a résumé, I may as well as write about it here. After all, it’s not about skills or tight purse strings, but attitude. Besides, dubbing it “the Toilet of Doom” not only makes my unenviable effort sound cooler, it also feels oddly appropriate.

A Tale of Three Babas

 

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“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 lungi, and utterly ego-less, he was mercilessly mocked by the hotel owner and his lone helper—a lazy Nepali addicted to chess—both unsure about their roles as master and servant. The Baba, in turn, would mutter about these fallen times when holy men were no longer respected.
Bankrolled by his girlfriend, he ran a modest trade in hash. His routine was simple: slip into the guest circle on the balcony, light up his chillum, pass it around, then announce—“Anybody want good hash? Tell me, I got good hash!”

His girlfriend I only saw in fleeting glimpses. She mostly stayed in their room, except in the mornings, when she queued for the common toilet—oversized shades on, toilet roll in hand, tugging at her pyjamas stuck in her butt crack. Sometimes in the evenings she sat on a bench on the veranda, dragging a joint or just staring into the distance next to a mini boom box. She was hooked on techno, which they blasted at full volume. The Baba would thrash his body and long hair to the beats, leaping into the air whenever a vocal hook dropped—often it was “Om Namah Shivayaaaa!!”

And then, there was the “Unexplained Baba.” I came across him while riding down a lonely stretch between Tura in the Garo Hills and Mancachar in Assam, searching for the only Buddhist stupa in Northeast India. Out of nowhere, there he was: walking nonchalantly up the road, tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, dark as the night, with floppy curls and a distinctly Australoid face. He was stark naked and seemed utterly at ease in his sky costume. I looked at him, he looked back at me—disinterested—and kept walking. I saw no reason to stop—for his autograph or for a pic.

My pillion at the time, the sister of a very loud name in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, sat in stunned silence, then finally blurted out: “What was that?” 

I could only reply: “No clue.”

Later that night, my Garo friends whispered that it was a "Mande Burung"—Meghalaya’s elusive cryptid, or perhaps a remnant of a lost Stone Age tribe, depending on whom you asked.
I would have said “Lord Bhairav on an earthly jaunt,” had there been a dog trotting along. But there wasn’t. John Keel would have been interested. But there was no UFO in the sky.

The Unexplained Baba he remains, his image still etched in my mind.
And no, I have no regrets for not stopping...

The Journey

 

  “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 contrasting pair. He was a middle-aged Bengali bureaucrat, neat and composed. Me — long hair, beard, the beads, a chakra shirt stitched out of a batik-print bedsheet, and dark glasses hiding bloodshot eyes from the previous night’s party. The ice broke when I mentioned I had lived and worked in Calcutta and spoke some Bengali. We exchanged the usual compliments about each other’s states and people before moving to personal topics. He said he was posted in Guwahati, heading to Delhi for a meeting, and would use the chance to visit his family.

When he asked my business in Delhi, I gave him no intelligible answer. Telling him I was joining a group of foreigners I’ve never met, as a voluntary bike mechanic for a six-month “All India Pilgrimage on Motorcycles” — pretentiously dubbed "Bullets for Peace" — might have sent him running out with his luggage.
We talked for an hour or two before falling silent and retreating to our berths. He climbed to his top bunk, pulled out the beads he was too shy to wear, and began chanting Hare Krishna. I opened Wilhelm Reich’s “The Function of the Orgasm”, immersing myself into the world of Orgone energy and human sexuality.

When a Blind Man Cries - An Ode to Nivedita

Deep Purple’s “When a Blind Man Cries” is arguably one of the saddest rock ballads ever penned and 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 eyes. 

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's Wish you were here, which he copied from me. When a Blind Man Cries was his favourite ballad, and he could go on and on discussing the lyrics, the sadness, the pain. Though he never acknowledged it, the song was a metaphor for his secret, one-sided tragic love for Nivedita. His classmate and someone he never gathered the courage to say “Hi",  fearing what all tough guys dread the most—rejection. 

I always saw Nivedita as demure, petite and a reserved girl. She also possessed an almost ethereal beauty and femininity—porcelain skin, natural auburn hair, with a decidedly European nose and cheekbones. But what was truly disarming about her was her utter simplicity and complete lack of airs or pretence. She came from a very middle-middle-class family, had studied in a vernacular school, and always spoke in Assamese. Her voice was normal, almost flat, without a girlish timbre or any of the exaggerated, drawn-out tones of most of the convent-educated girls—all those hiiiii, byeee, waaaow, ooauch… Interestingly, while everyone acknowledged her beauty, she was not on anyone’s radar. I never saw anyone courting her, or her out on a date. Well, except for Raja, but his inaction just made him a ghost that yearns.

And there was me — but she was considerably senior. We never interacted; there wasn't much scope for finding intellectual compatibility or common ground, and most likely there was none. So I chose to admire from a cinematic distance, watching the vision of a real-life Miranda — not one lost in the Picnic on Hanging Rock, but in the bustle of life, of the then-still-small town of Guwahati.

She was also the girl for whom I jumped out of my seat on a bus and offered it to her when I noticed her standing beside me. “Sit down, a girl like you shouldn’t stand,” I uttered with a gracious, flirty swagger that surprised even me. It also the only time I spoke to her. By then, I was used to any of my actions—no matter how kind or well-meaning—being met with a scowl from women. I was surprised when her face lit up with a smile, and she even said, “thanks.”  She kept stealing glances, bemused, realising that the college’s undisputed, Don Quixote, was both her admirer and a gentleman.  She looked happy, but honestly so was I… still am. A transient, yet lasting moment, suspended in time — with a sweetness most dates would struggle to reach, let alone match. It was also the last time I saw her—giving me one last side glance from the bus window as it sped away. 

Years later, I bumped into Raja, who had since shifted to Nepal. We shared a smoke, caught up on our lives, and discovered that both of us were still single had so far achieved absolutely nothing. At one point, I couldn’t resist asking him about her. He went silent for a moment and then said he had once seen her getting off a rickshaw, a few years after college, with two kids—one in her arms, the other in tow—clutching a very heavy vegetable bag, as she struggled on her way home. She looked haggard and tired, despite still being so young.

She was such a frail and beautiful girl,” he said, and after a pause added, “life is unfair.” I nodded in silent agreement. I knew that his own unrequited romance, was the last thing on his mind  - it was a lament for someone he adored, but never knew, yet wished the very best in life. He looked away, quickly brushing aside a tear; I pretended not to notice.

It’s not always the blind man who cries. 

I gave him a quick hug, started my trusty Marmalade and rode off.

Life is a Lemon, I want my Money Back!!

  

 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 they were, while most people invariably followed up with, “So... do you do drugs ? Smoke Pot ?” Over time, I found blindly claiming to love everything "Floydian" came off as a bit pretentious. Besides, I actually preferred listening to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.

Take the lyrics from Solar Fire, for example:

“See the morning dancer crossing the sky
Turning gold to amber, travelling by
He must know the answer, he must know why
Looking for an answer—look to the sky.”

A hypnotic psychedelic mantra, echoing a primordial prayer to the sun—questioning the ephemeral and mostly meaningless human existence. Looking for an answer—look to the sky.

Somewhat unintentionally, I even started looking like Manfred Mann: long hair, sideburns, round glasses, bell-bottoms salvaged from musty chests and suitcases of friends and relatives, worn by uncles in the ’70s. Music blared from my tiny stereo throughout my waking hours, and different songs got tagged to specific episodes, moods, and thoughts.

Late nights were spent fiddling the dial of an old Philips tube Shortwave radio under the guise of studying. A memorable catch was tuning into Radio Zimbabwe playing Manu Dibango’s Soul Makossa — maku mama-say, mama makossa...at 2 AM.

My cassette and later CD(downloaded MP3s not store bought albums) collection grew copious over time—many of them rarities. As a result, I always had a string of amateur and professional musicians making a beeline to my place, even though I never learned to bang a table in rhythm.

Then came satellite TV, beaming MTV. The neo-hippy look made a comeback, thanks to bands like R.E.M., peace symbols, flowery shirts and all, and suddenly a bunch of kids started resembling me, forcing me to start dressing “normal” again. It wasn't Almost Cut my Hair any more - I did cut my hair.

And yet, the habit of mapping life’s chapters to music stuck. Ironically, most of those songs were written or sung before I was born or while I was still in nappies. In late-80s, early-90s Assam, I was a deliberate cultural misfit—a 70s counterculture comet, lost on a jagged path, 10,000 miles off course and 20 years too late.

Love life during youth—or rather, heartbreak—was always defined by Whitesnake’s:

“Here I go again on my own
Going down the only road I’ve ever known…”

But honestly, that was for peer consumption and unjaded teenage bravado.

I spent years pining for a college classmate, imagining her to be J.J. Cale’s "Sensitive Kind". My heartstrings wailed along with Santana’s guitar, and sank into slow despair to the Rasta beat of "I Don’t Wanna Wait in Vain,"  realising that she never felt the same.

In darker moments of solitude, I wiped away silent tears listening to Joan Baez’s Ballad Book (the Child ballads), or even earlier rarities like River in the Pines or Man of Constant Sorrow  —their emotional weight rivalled only by Frank Patterson’s mournful Danny Boy or Cedric Smith’s dramatic rendition of Carrighfergus, hallowed by Loreena McKennitt’s etheric soprano in the background.

There was even a brief Chris De Burgh phase, but it ended as quickly as it started when the Lady in Black (that's what she wore on our first date), left me for a Colonel twice her age. Listening to Missing You after that felt like mockery, but it wasn't The last time I cried. 

Adult heartaches—usually involving considerably younger muses—made Patrick Kavanagh’s Raglan Road the recurring anthem of my love life. Immortalised by The Dubliners, Van Morrison, and even Mark Knopfler:

“On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue…”

Eventually, coming to the conclusion that, indeed - Love is just a four-letter word. 

Ever the political radical in thought, if not in action, I found a kindred spirit in Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms with:

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher

A journey that culminated with The Partisan—adapted from Anna Marly's legendary French anti-fascist ballad La Complainte du Partisan — on Joan Baez’s anti–Vietnam War protest album Come from the Shadows. The Leonard Cohen version could never give the same goosebumps.

Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows

Songs that ended up as part of revolutionary compilations for some friends who claimed ties to the militancy that scarred the state in the ’90s - or that's what they said.

The pacifist in me, meanwhile, clung to Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone—though I always preferred Joan Baez’s haunting German version, Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind. Given that neither of us actually knew the language (as Joan herself once admitted in a TV interview), I felt my choice was completely legit.

 However, if there’s one song that sums up my life—The Real McCoy—it’s Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back by Meat Loaf. Most of the MTV generation would know him due to the widely popular and equally meaningless 90s rock opera hit, "I will do anything for love, but I won't do that", whatever That implied. Gen Z probably discovered him only because he died a few years back.

I was already batshit crazy for his 77 debut Bat Out of Hell, complete with its insane album cover art - since school. (Yes… I have it on vinyl, too.) For a person who could never memorise a single poem, I knew the complete words of "Bat out of Hell," and the scandalous "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" - both the male and female parts. Which made my claims of being dyslexic and having ADD highly suspect, to say the least. 

Life is a Lemon was originally released as a single and later added to the more popular—but, let’s face it, significantly inferior—Bat Out of Hell II.

Why does it resonate with me? Because really, what could sum up life—or more specifically, my life—better than this:

“It's all or nothing, and nothing's all I ever get
Every time I turn it on, I burn it up and burn it out
It's always something—there's always something going wrong
That's the only guarantee, that's what this is all about
It's a never-ending attack
Everything's a lie and that's a fact
Life is a lemon
And I want my money back.”

 Parting Note: I finally made time to figure out who or what is Coldplay. Well, bollocks. Not only did I find their music insipid to the point of revulsion, but if forced to attend their concert, I’d probably end up hugging someone else’s wife too - out of sheer boredom—preferably someone younger and prettier. Give me a Fourplay concert anyday...