4

As usual I was visiting every random shop in that area. This super market didn’t seem any different. The salesman was in a hurry to take order and leave the store and the owner desperate to strike a conversation.
Please give only minimum quantities; there is no space for the existing stock. And moreover these people keep stealing stuff from the super market. You watch one shelf and stuff disappears from the other shelf. These women, they take the tubes and leave these outer boxes.
I’m not from the city Sir, I’m not able to adjust here. It has been about a year but still I’m not able to adjust. It was not like this in my village, I used to eat thrice a day and still be fit. Here I can’t digest if I eat once, people in villages work a lot and eat a lot. You city people don’t work and so you can’t digest. The food is also not nutritive. Back in our village, whenever I wanted to drink coconut water, I used to climb up the tree and drink it fresh from the tree, throughout the year.
And women, they don’t roam around like this. They hardly get to go out twice a year to buy some clothes, the rest of the year they have to keep themselves occupied with the TV. But here these girls come with their boyfriends and the boy would be looking at something and within that time, the girl would eat up Rs.100/- chocolate. My heart cries out in anguish to see such waste of money. And they buy thousands of worth cosmetics, one cream for hand, one for leg, they even have brushes to wash their legs. There in the village girls are always protected and here once the girl comes out of the house and ties that scarf not even her mother can recognize her.
In this city, the kids also have hundreds of rupees of pocket money and buy all kinds of useless chocolates, if I’m at the counter I never sell chocolates to kids, it’s such a waste of money. These parents have one or two kids and so they go “my son/ my daughter asked it…I will buy” and waste money. Back in the village we never bought anything almost everything grew in our back yard.
I’m not able to adjust here Sir. In our village only the baniyas did business, whenever I go back home people in the village laugh at me for starting a business.
After this long monologue we said we were getting late and sneaked out.
It is difficult for this super market to sustain, said the salesman.

3

It was one of those I don’t want to do this crap job day and to add to it, the sun was burning. The one thing I learnt from the sales stint is to wrap up my entire face with clothes leaving just the eyes. No it didn’t help me with the sun rash but had its own side effects.
Madam, are you fasting, the sales guy asked
Never having considered fasting as an option in life, I was totally taken aback by this question.
Aah! What, why would I fast?
Madam, it is ramzaan month na.
I was still in the how can anyone ask me if I’m fasting fit and said, so what
Oh are you not a muslim, then …. You don’t wear a bindi, and your name also sounds…..
I don’t know.
Madam, are you from Mumbai
All I could get from his question was his idea that this one who doesn’t wear a bindi, doesn’t follow our “culture” will surely not be a local, she must be one of those Mumbai types

2

I was out introducing another I will make you the fairest cream. Yapping about the greatness of the cream. I followed the same routine in all the shops until this one shop where the owner took the cream into his hands and started explaining to the salesman in the shop
Ye dekho maine is haath pe cream lagaya hai aur dusre haath pe nahi lagaya
Dekho ye wala haath jyada gora hai na
Then he turned to me and said, marketing matlab is tarah chutiya banana hi hai na

1

Adil was sitting at the distributors place engrossed in his book. He was on market visit to this remote place in Karnataka. It was a part of his job, but he was least interested in talking to them. The faster I get done with these formalities; the better, is what he thought

The distributor and his friend were discussing the news.

Supposedly crackers should be stopped by 10 pm, said the man

Yeah yeah, I saw that. It is the problem with this police in charge Khan, obviously he is a Muslim how does it matter to him. He has never done anything in favor of Hindus, commented the distributor

Adil lifted his head from the book, stared into blankness for a moment, and went back to his book.

This too shall pass

After getting a postgraduate degree, the happiness was pretty short lived, precisely for a period of 30 days. And then started work. One week into work I was already bored and surprisingly the world seemed to resonate my feelings. I logon to facebook and find all my friends talking about going back to college, at first I thought it was the initial period of change which we were finding difficult to cope with. Second week at work I began wondering how my parents had a career spanning 35 yrs, there were no AC offices, no business class flights but they still seemed to be happy with what they were doing. Like people say, probably it’s the problem with our generation.
Still going strong on the idea that it’s the initial phase of change I thought I should get a perspective from the people who are 2-3yrs into work life and called up a few friends who started working right after graduation. All the people who I’ve spoken to fell into three categories- those who hated their jobs and were contemplating to leave them but couldn’t do so as they didn’t know what to do after that, those who had given up on life and said this is how it is going to be so adjust with it and a few others shuttling between one job this month and another next.
All of them seemed to want a change but what change none knew. Like one of them put it “I feel purposeless doing what I’m doing but at the same time don’t know what else to do and cannot leave my job because how much ever I hate it, it gives me the salary at the end of the month”. Listening to this comforted me as I knew there were people more confused than I was.
Third week into work, a status on facebook said “Can I retire now” and there were about fifty people agreeing with the statement. Strangely those who had work complained of over working and those who didn’t, complained of wasting their time. We all seem to find comfort that none of us are happy and were competing for attention on who is more frustrated. In such mood songs like “give me some sunshine….I wanna grow up once again”, do rounds on social media. They make past look perfect, however unglamorous the reality might have been.
Next in line came the gym, guitar classes etc , somehow these seem to feature on everybody’s childhood dream category and thus the easiest way to make oneself feel good about the state one is in. This too didn’t last long, giving another reason to blame the “work pressure”
“Oh! All this is quarter life crisis.” said a know it all and went on to add “but it is true that we all lack direction”. Yeah, quarter life crisis but somehow the whole world seems to suffer from it. One thing seems to take us through the quarter, half or whatever life crisis it is, the hope that “this too shall pass”

Free…. is it ?

Aditya was relaxing under the tree after his interview. He was going over the questions asked in the interview in his mind. He wondered how clichéd the questions were and how unimaginative his answers were. But question which was the favourite of all the interviewers made him reflect. Not that this was the first time he was asked this question or that he was taken aback by the question but probably it was just his reflective mood that took him back in time…
“What are the three things that you believe in?”
Aditya didn’t even have to think twice, hadn’t he rehearsed this one several hundred times. “Honesty, integrity and hard work”, he answered.
Given the shade of the tree, the fact that he had nothing to do, he began to wonder if anyone else in the world gave a different answer to that question and smiled to himself.
Three year old Aditya spent all his time with his grandmother, given that both his parents were working and they lived in apartments and didn’t even know who lived next door, his grandmother was his only friend. She told him stories of Ramayana, Mahabharata and probably all Hindu scriptures. With such an environment it was not of any surprise that Aditya corrected the priest in the temple, when he sang one of the slokas wrong. Not that the meaning mattered to him, but they were like his lullabies and he knew them by heart.
It was when Aditya was 12 yrs, after the class on Isa Masih from Hindi text book, he began to wonder, not that he hadn’t known about Christ or any other religion but just that it was that day he started thinking. He went back home and asked his grand mom “If god exists then shouldn’t he be the same for everyone, why is it different?” oh! what classic Hindi filmi question it was, he wondered now.
She had given him another classic answer “All religions preach the same- wellbeing of all creatures, God is one but just the forms are different”. But this chapter didn’t end here, it had only begun. The answer was too simple for Aditya to leave it there.
Aditya hardly remembered anytime when his parents didn’t fight. He couldn’t help but wonder why they fought so much, when they both earned enough didn’t interfere with each other. As he grew older he turned a deaf ear to all these problems.
On the day of Kali Puja, he read in the news paper about the animal sacrifice which happened throughout the country, then came the Bakrid and several other festivals. It was getting a little too much for him to digest. He went back to his grand mom “If it is good that all religions preach then why this killing”. “All these are rituals through which people try to connect to god and we being brahmins do not do all this, it’s the other castes that do these kind of rituals”. This was the first time when Aditya registered something called caste.
Animal lover that Aditya was he wondered how savage god must be if he demands so much blood. A little research on different religions made him think Buddhism was the best religion, because it promotes peace and probably didn’t have any castes, this notion stayed on for a while. And he essentially stopped thinking about all religions.
Kitttu’s affair with books continued and he read random books picked up from library. The more he read the more his aversion towards religion grew. The breaking point came when he heard his father talk over the phone “ How can Archana marry a low caste Christian, If I she would have been my daughter I would have killed her” , Archana was Aditya’s neighbor who had married against the wish of her family. This was the time when the two entities called Religion and Family started to mean nothing to him. Aditya gave up the two anchors which were attached to him till now.
A 14 yr old Aditya was reading loads of books, he read autobiographies of some great people, he read some famous novels. This was also the time when he read My experiments with truth, being the idealist he was Aditya tried to implement all that he read. It didn’t take too much time for him to realize life is not as idealist as books are and truth is good in small selective dosages, it is neither appreciated nor acknowledged in excess quantities. He left the third anchor called principles. He was left with one belief that all principles are subjective.
Aditya was in his engineering and he went to an international film festival which was happening for the first time in his city. Aditya saw a foreign film and the director spoke about the film and critiquing the idea of a nation. This seemed a completely different point of view to Aditya, who belonged to a generation where hating Pakistan, contributing a 100 bucks to Kargil victims and celebrating Independence day with Ma tujhe salaam was the essence of patriotism. Aditya again did what he was accustomed to do; he read the book written by the director and many more. It was time to leave another reference point for Aditya, he couldn’t live with the idea of a nation anymore.
Like all guys of his age did, Aditya turned to friends. It was the time, when he began thinking being with friends was probably the best way to spend time. But like everything else in his life, this too didn’t last for long…. All it took was to question the ideas of the group/herd and in no time he was out… Thus broke another string that was holding him.
If I have negated everything, what is that one thing that matters to me, probably nothing, probably I’m aimless or probably free….
Aditya………… Aditya……………. Someone called ……
Probably he heard, probably he didn’t, he just got up and walked………

Testimonial to a friend

I have written testimonials for people who mattered little and even people who didn’t matter at all… but someone who has been a companion throughout stands unsung…

Dear Friend,

It’s been around 2 yrs since I first met you. I don’t exactly remember the date on which I met you but it doesn’t really matter. I was among the herd which used to flock you, but also the only one who didn’t stop coming to you till today. How could I, you have never ceased to amuse me. I have a special liking for things that don’t change, what will be “you” if one changes with every situation and you fit this perfectly.

People called me rigid, unsophisticated, archaic and several other things. But you never bothered about my faults. Never asked me to change, never tried to compare, never complained but just let me be. The mornings I spent with you are the most cherished memories from this place.  Each day I would wait to steal time from the mundane activities to just sit next to you. Those wonderful conversations where you patiently listened to my insignificant problems, my foolish ideas and told me stories from a different time.  The conversations right from Mohsin Hamid to Satyajit Ray, from the question of categorizing people to acting on ones wishes…. Oh! How much we talked…

Our relationship had its highs and lows too. There was winter when I couldn’t come to you because of the biting cold, only I knew how hollow my days felt. There was a time when several new faces flocked you again, let me confess I was jealous to see you with someone else but obviously the affair didn’t last long, no one else loved you as much as I did. There was also a time when I chose other mortals over you, but each time one part of me always longed for you. And how could I forget how you threw things at me and enjoyed watching me get startled.

People said I was a bored soul, I would be enlightened with you, initially they thought I was crazy, little did they know how interesting you made my colorless life.  You have been the one thing which I wanted to experience all through my life, I was lucky I found you at the right time, after 20 yrs, in a place where I thought I was an outcaste. If not for you probably I would have still felt the same after 2 yrs. Like people talk about alienation and restlessness, the only place I didn’t get restless was with you.

It is very easy to say I will miss you, life will not be the same and hundreds of people are saying this right now. But deep down everyone knows people are replaceable, there were friends in school, in college at home but we moved on haven’t we, then it gets reduced to an occasional phone call but I’m sure I will never get back the magic you created. I will still keep my search on for someone to replace you.

I hear some people say I will never come back, and some say I will definitely come…..wondering what I would do… but if I ever decide to come back, you would definitely be one of the most important reasons.

Hope you will also miss me as much I will…

Thank you, my dearest tree next to the library.

Aisich comics-1

Top ways waste your life at Mumbai

Go to office, yes! Nothing can ever beat this. You can waste days and months on gtalk, facebook and millions of blogs and e books. What else are the offices for?
Sleep. There are people who have consummated this art through constant practice. Sleep for 22 hrs. The rest 2 hrs should be assigned for eating.
Watch all crappy movies, Language barriers don’t count, box office reviews don’t count. Just think that you are researching on different kind of movies and your aim in life is to become an authority over movies and go on a movie watching spree.
Take a bus from Colaba to Borivalli. This way you can probably spend days together stuck in the traffic. Start on a Monday and aim to reach Borivalli by Saturday.
Sit in the beach. Play with stray dogs. This is possible in the evenings. The plan has to be changed a little for the morning, sit under the trees in the beach. There will be certain curious onlookers and stalkers. Running away from them also forms an important part of passing time
Go on a walk on the marine drive. Keep walking till your feet say no more. Walk till gate way of India, have a mango juice and take a taxi back to your place because if you walk more, you will drop down somewhere.
Check Burp.com and go to all the places which remotely contain anything edible and eat all the crap. Then if you have an upset stomach, it will help you waste some more of your life.
Fight with all the friends around, for different reasons and then make up with them. You can fight over some book, over getting late and it can also go up to fight over food. You will not even realise how your life gets wasted in thinking of what topic to fight, how to fight, when to fight, where to fight and then sit and think of how much more you could have blasted him/ her. After this process you can follow a similar process to make up with them.
Call your long lost friends and crib about everything in the world from your existence to their existence, this way you can spread your frustration and feel happy that you are not the only frustrated person on the earth.
Write a blog giving people random gyaan and philosophy. Now post the blog on different social networking sites as an update. Personally send a link to all your friends who also want to waste their lives and force them to read it. This way your blog can support the first way to waste the life.

Sheep in the city part 2

Another Monday morning and Cris goes to work.
The same place, same “work” i.e., sitting idle. Again Cris was pretending to be busy. It is an important part of the work culture of grazing corporation; one can’t just not look busy. There are so many things to keep you busy, chat with people, write stories etc.
Wake up early in the morning come to the office, sit, go for lunch, sit again and then go back in the evening. Sometimes do some work at the rate 1-2 busy hours/ per month. Is this life, is it all? Can’t it be any different? Today I’ll make it a little different, thought Cris.
He walked up directly to the HR and asked
Have you ever visited a psychiatrist?
Why?
No, was just wondering. Why you keep picking up wrong lot to do wrong jobs?
You choose the tigers to guard the sheep and sheep to keep a watch on the grass and not graze. You have so many buffaloes in your company, who pass off as sheep. Oh Yeah! They must have been sheep when they came and must have turned into buffaloes now…. yeah! I understand “the work” “the stress”
Then Cris walked to the team lead and started to speak
Sir, what did you study?
Why?
No because you behave as if you have done PhD in grazing, guarding, cutting, designing, managing and everything else in the world. I sometimes wonder if god has been reborn in your form.
Did anyone call you Jesus, Allah or Ram when you were a kid?
And Sir I have another doubt. Did you have a troubled childhood?
No…Of course not, he mumbled.
Then why do behave like a sadist, any problem???
I think you and the HR should visit this psychiatrist (giving a visiting card). And please do not consult the Company’s doctor. It doesn’t seem to be working…
Cris wasn’t satisfied yet.
He went out to the centre of the office and shouted “you are idiots!!!”
No one seemed to notice….
He went back to his laptop and pinged people on Gtalk “ YOU ARE DUMB IDIOTS….”
Every one turned towards Cris and stared at him….
Here you go……..
Cris Cris, what are you thinking…….
He felt someone jolting him.
Oh !!! Nooooooooo……..only a day dream!!!!