here nor there

‘You… you’re just like your father!’

The smokes have caused a raging fever, or at the least a marked rise in body temperature, but I still look up, my head still cloudy.

‘Huuhh?’

That’s all I could manage before my attention diverted back to mentally picking out stray strands from my shoelaces.

But she started speaking again, her tone an aggressive plead for attention. My head raises itself ever so slightly, but thinks it not quite worth the effort to look at her face, positioning my eyes to hover around her neck and collarbone.

She says something about my father being quite the randy chap too. Too? It must be a dig at me; probably thinks I’m staring at her chest. Perfectly reasonable, I’d say. The men in my family aren’t renowned for their sensitivity.

I’d like to tell her that it’s a consequence of having sat in front of the screen too long, watching one foreign language film after the other. It’s inured my eyes to look below the lips and watch for subtitles.

But by now the tension in my neck has given way and my head is lolling about on its side, almost resting on my shoulder. Involuntarily, though not undesirably, one hand goes up in apology (second and fifth fingers twitching with expressiveness) while the other lunges for an adjacent chair, looking for a hold, even as I slowly come to realize that I need to take action if I’m not to fall off the chair and unto the grass.

Seeing that I had now attained a tolerable state of awareness, she repeated what she’d said earlier.

Only then did two things strike me. The first was that if she’d known my father when he was alive, she must be really old. Alongside that it dawned that I still hadn’t seen her face, and the state of nattiness of her sweater (quite chic, I’ll concede) was not indicative of her age. She’s probably new age; my head still refuse to look up, gazing at her closed shoes and drops of dew on it.

The second was just how reflexively repulsive it was to hear that I’m like him. I don’t have issues, please don’t be mistaken, but I don’t want to be him either. I can’t help looking like him, but I certainly will not act like him. But then she probably meant the former.

I grin and nod in response, but I think it came off as a grimace and casual sway of my upper half. Conversation I’m not interested in while in this state, but maybe she knew someone I knew. Why else would she come up to me?

‘Don’t be such a boor. I have no idea who your dad is, but it makes for a conversation starter if true, and an argument if not. And don’t let me down my backup line…’

I look up. She’s youngish, and clearly in a more placid state of inebriation. A flash of Anouk Aimee shudders through me. I start to form a sentence, and in anticipation of its delivery, I point with vague purpose. But then, the words dripped away, and suddenly all I could focus on was this errant finger that was pointing at her. It quickly curled back into itself.

‘What were you going to say, right that second?’

This sort of thing happens only to film directors in Fellini films, I thought. I was already drifting away, into the clouds.

inside i'm growling

The Opeth show in Chennai. The Opeth show in India. A word to IIT-M – their organisation was terrible. A lot of people missed at least one of the opening bands while waiting to be frisked and let in. They really should have started letting people in earlier.

Waiting in line to be let in, I missed the entire Demonic Resurrection set, and I think I’m a happier person for it. The defining feature of the performance seemed to be a lot of pounding on the bass drum – which when you take into consideration that their ringleader is also the drummer (if I’m not mistaken), is not all that surprising. Sure, he’s supposedly a nice guy and all, but their music, I’ll return to sender.

And we’re in finally, just after Motherjane has taken the stage, looking from afar like they’ve all decided to pay tribute to the Joker/Heath Ledger. Only getting closer does it become clear that they’ve gone for half-faced Kathakali makeup, which possibly gave them the aura of looking less-mallu, while emphasising their mallu roots. Goody for them; I’ve never been too much of a fan.

They start strongly with songs like Mindstreet, and the crowd appears to be on their side, but ultimately, I think the audience had only a certain amount of tolerance for them, and after showing some semblance of respect for 3/4ths of the show, starting chanting ‘Opeth, Opeth..’ and in general were trying to wish them off the stage and summon their Gods (read: Opeth). While I felt bad for the band, it’s not like I didn’t want them to go – they got a little too boring after a point.

Motherjane leave the stage; the tension is palpable. When will they show? Breaking with the mood of the show entirely, a couple of gaudy Nokia commercials air with the most un-metal music that could be conjured – PCD (that’s Pussycat Dolls for the uninitiated) and Vanilla Ice are the two I remember. The techs go about their business of checking the guitars/microphones etc. for a good half hour, all while this chap behind me keeps yelling ‘Miiiiiichael!’ (his heart beats for Mikael Akerfeldt).

A clearly harassed gent from IIT comes on stage, pleading (and I do mean Pleading) with the crowd to move back from the barrier and stop pushing. They, understandably, being dunderheaded metal-types, tell him to go fuck himself. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. Later on, when Akerfeldt asked them to do the same, they dutifully complied with only a little good-natured protest. He was a lot less frazzled when saying it and more flip when asking them to buzz off, yes, but that’s also R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Can’t buy that.

So, the crowd waits, and then finally, Popol Vuh starts playing, and anyone who’s heard The Roundhouse Tapes knew that this was the point that the band were going to make their entrance. A thought did strike me, especially when Akerfeldt played pretty much the exact riff to check his guitar – whether they were just going to lip-synch to that live album. That however, was dispelled when they didn’t break into ‘When’.

The show… um, rocked. Akerfeldt is a lovely boy who didn’t disappoint me with his stage banter that was funny, and completely calm, and the band were (as expected) really tight. But to be completely honest, they didn’t blow me away. I thought that, at least from where I was standing (next to one of the speaker towers), the vocals and bass were too low in the P.A. mix (or conversely, the drums too high). I also zoned out a bit in the middle, when the songs seemed to be melting into each other, and the deafening cheers of the people around made me feel light-headed. But they came back strongly towards the end, turning the corner with ‘Bleak’.

I think I was a bit jealous of the Black Tee Masses (BTM) though. To completely lose oneself in the knowledge of who is playing and the music itself, some swaying, a lot of sweaty head-banging and rousing cheers and profanity and Satanical pledges and pissing contents to see who’s more hardcore and ‘metuhl’ (and the admittedly deserved abuse showered on Nokia’s crass commercialism*). It’s all a little repulsive, but perhaps only because I’m not a part of it. And the women. Oh so many attractive women, but all in the form of an intimidating goth-metal-emo amalgam, and with hulking boyfriend in tow. Such a pity.

The band played a really good set on the whole though, and the crowd lapped it up. To be fair, all Opeth had to do was show up, and the BTM were in immediate salivating, prostrating adoration mode. Not that I blame them, but being a casual fan of the band, I spent more time looking at the BTM’s antics than the band.

Before this show started, I’d bumped into someone I knew who was telling me of the Black Lips show a couple of days earlier, and the general insanity that was in the air. Well, he wasn’t appreciative of it, dismissing it with a pejorative ‘dude, that band is so GAY’. But that’s exactly what I want to see – lunacy in a show; people taking their clothes off, destruction, the band making out with each other, and above all – the scandal in the eyes of the BTM (who would’ve waded through hours and hours of shady metal, given this was at Campus Rock Idols).

Now that is a show.

* In lieu of an encore, Melvin (or something) from Nokia steps out, promising to bring back Opeth if the crowd supports Nokia. And then a little ceremony to launch a new phone happens, regional manager of Nokia in tow – presenting it to Akerfeldt. He seemed a little nonplussed by the entire thing, but took it on the chin, also slyly insulting them before starting the 2 song encore.

Couple of notes:

> Akerfeldt was wearing a Clutch tee-shirt. That got me excited. When I'd zoned out, I was also playing their Blast Tyrant inside my head.

> One of the songs played while waiting for Opeth to take the stage was Elbow's Fallen Angel - a song capable of moving me to tears (when in the mood). It's truly beautiful, and I hadn't heard it in years. A filip to dig it out.

orphans

‘I hadn’t spoken to my parents in a while, but the last time I called them was in slightly embarrassing circumstances.

‘For whatever reason, the Company had pencilled in an adventure team-building exercise for us cubicle rats, and figured that our sedentary lifestyle could be sufficiently shaken by the trip. I daresay their motive was to push us into the wild so we’d feel thankful for whatever minimal manufactured lifestyle we were provided. Verily, they were keenly aware that the best weapon to use to shoot down any rebellious tendencies towards our work environment was to threaten us with the real world.

‘So anyway, this trip has been called, and the entire floor is going about it in the only way it knew how – draw up a list of things and go shopping, rather than working out or something that would ensure some level of fitness out in the open. But, well.. meh.

‘I knew it’d be a waste of space to buy the yuppie adventure-pack of tent, boots, solar water evaporator and that. I mean, all said, how wild are the white collared going to be? All I wanted was a good pair of cross trainers. And I owned a nice pair. Only, I couldn’t find them.

‘So, I called them… because the last time I could remember being active was when I’d passed through Delhi, heading towards the mountains. Which was way back when. And they remembered.

‘I call and casually chatter for a couple, making excuses about work being busy and being tired and sneezing all the time, to which my mother insisted that I do breathing exercises, and then nonchalantly asked whether my shoes were at their place.

‘She wasn’t buying it – she deplored me for ten minutes about my laziness and lifestyle and inactivity and that sort of thing. When I got a word in, I tried to do damage control by saying that I had a pair here, but only wondered if it was there. To which she yelled about being a spendthrift and that sort of thing.

‘Damned either way. And the stupid thing is, I really don’t know why I called them. What would I have done if the shoes had been there? We’re in different cities… ask them to mail it to me? Sheesh.’

‘Funny you say that. I hadn’t seen my parents for ages, but I took my mother to the book fair. Which was a scene in itself – she was imploring to the people at a stand hawking books by Jiddu Krishnamurti that she was extremely familiar with the concepts and often visited the Theosophical Society. Went over for dinner as well, and spent the night at their house too, where I’d grown up.

‘I’d like to think that I’m where I want to be in life at this age, but that’s bull. I’m not. Maybe I had a shot at getting it, maybe I never did. But that’s all past now. But I knew that I’d been in a rut for some time, spinning my wheels, going nowhere… that sort of thing.

‘This listlessness was my life in general, is my life in general, only that I’m there… and I’m having a bath at their place, and looking through the stuff on the counter, find this bottle of shampoo. This is a bottle that I’d bought probably ten years ago, just out of school or a little later, and used most of it. They still hadn’t thrown it away.

‘I think a lot about being desolate and all that in the present, and the past for that matter, but… I don’t know. Seeing the bottle gave me some impetus or something. It was like shaking a book and finding things stuck between it that you hadn’t noticed before fall from between the pages. It made me think of what I was then, what I wanted to be and what I was looking forward to.

‘And… I’m just standing there, under the shower, looking at this dusty bottle with a bit of goo at the bottom, and I really don’t know why it had to act as a catalyst or whatever for this train of thought. But it made me want to… be… something different from what I am now. What the bottle and the boy who bought it back then wanted.

‘I mean, look at it…’

(rummages through bag)

‘Geez, you’re carrying it around with you?’

‘Yeah yeah, I couldn’t leave it there. It doesn’t leak…’

‘I hope you aren’t planning to use ten-year old shampoo… I don’t think that bit at the bottom even has what it takes to get to the neck.’

‘No. No. Well. No. Yeah… no. Purely motivational, carrying it around.

‘It’s… can you hold onto it and show it to me once in awhile?’

warren beatty was supposed to be in on it too

My parents have lived in their house for more than fifty years, the walls fortified by sand, mortar and emotion. I hardly ever visit them, outgrowing them along with my need for their internet connection. Three generations lived there once upon, and I think they outgrew each other too, retreating into themselves in the face of their impotency to break away or get along with each other.

But then, a few days ago, I stayed for dinner and spent the night – the first since I’d moved out of the region. The time and distance may have made me forgetful about mornings there; or just plain complacent about my own level of painless tolerance.

As I walked into the bathroom in the morning though, I’d started slipping back into the old routine, and remembered breakfast. Decades could pass (but they haven’t), and I’ll still be haunted by the breakfast table, the daily gathering of three generations and two branches of the family, a family web-spun parlour, whose sole purpose seemed to be to lay to waste hopes, aspirations and dreams. Or, Hopes, Aspirations and Dreams; they’d make you forever regret that you’d ever deigned to have had HAD. And never let you enjoy the meal.

Under the shower, I needed to keep reminding myself that they were all dead. Even those who seemed immortal in their mean-spiritedness, who made me feel guilty inside for wishing their deaths. Who made me wonder if they’d been feeding off my hate, sustaining their undoubtedly malevolent spirits. Who’d have made me poison them if they’d lived even a little bit longer. Who I’m glad were cremated, else I’d be scouting my shadows for them. Those who haunt the dust. Yes, I had issues with all of them.

I like to think that they’d have forced my hand, that I’d have emerged from my cocoon and killed them all. Every last one of them. Well, there were only five, but I could’ve thrown in a couple more once I got into the groove. It’s like flying, I think. I’m afraid to take the first flight (crash, death and all that), but each connecting flight becomes easier until the point that I stop consciously thinking about it.

Their eventual deaths were shocking though. The first to go was the oldest. But no, it was a surprise, because she was the biggest curmudgeon of the lot, and seemed destined to live forever, Tithonus-like, wasting away yet never dying. She was something of a cicada in life itself, it must be said. She was snuffed by a nurse’s pillow – it was either her or her, she must have thought. There were a lot of people who thought the same thing. Maybe they drew straws.

She was the widow. The other two went together, bickering to the very end. She’d studied no longer than class 7 (and never let her B.A. educated handmaidens forget it), while he’d nabbed her when she was sixteen, the two entwined for the next sixty odd years, completely incompatible. I used to think of a body rejected an unsuitable organ when I saw them together, only rather than accepting failure, they seemed to morph into something else altogether, bound by distrustful squabbling. By all accounts they never touched each other outside of conception (and waited long before conceding defeat), something that suited both of them.

So it was a shock when they died in a road accident, mowed down by drag-racing rickshaws with inebriated drivers. I think they conked them over the head for good measure post-mow. It’s shocking because the last thing either of them would have wanted was to have died in each other’s arms, reflexively clutching at the closest non-conking individual. My mirth at funerals has always been interpreted as an outlet for grief. Hah.

And now, ‘home’ again, I could do the same to two octogenarians – who’s going to doubt them ‘passing away’ in their sleep? Who’d even worry, weep or wonder? The next of kin? Um. No. Nobody cares, and a fair number would clap silently.

This is the vintage stock that flows through me. I’m going to linger in the shower a little longer.

bad word coffee

I woke up.

More accurately, I was woken up – the entire diner conspiring against me, clunking a glass down on the soft wood, peeved that anyone could find peace in the dim buzz of a Sunday morning’s cacophony.

It’s not that I wanted to, but minute upon minute of watching nothing through a door frame is better (or worse?) than counting sheep for me. The sleep units dropped on the nape of my neck, block upon block, driving my head lower till I passed out on the damp surface.

The diner is never busy enough, and that’s the only reason I hadn’t been kicked out yet. Not that they didn’t want to free up a table – the owner kept giving me the stink-eye from his colonised corner while looking distastefully at the lemon juice that sweated drops onto the newspaper that doubled up as a feeble coaster.

Real people drink coffee in the morning, he probably thinks to himself, oblivious of my gambit. My coffee would go cold, giving him a reason to come over and offer a replacement (charged, of course). What does juice do? It’s safe, short of him whisking it away and popping it in the microwave for a bit while I was asleep.

In fact, he’d probably do it if I asked him to. It’s a hole of a place – scuffed furniture that may give way at any moment, ambiguous tiling that gives way at any movement, a purely ornamental table fan and walls that’d probably last seen fresh paint around the time of Partition. But, it owned a microwave that was the cynosure of its own eyes, and was possibly wont to microwave everything that passed through its kitchen (people included), given half a chance.

While you wouldn’t guess from the lemon juice – which I suspect is constituted of two parts water and one part detergent – the food was reasonably chewable and priced proportionate to its edibility. Being a three minute walk from home, I’d grown quite fond of it. I daresay they’re fond of me too, but I’m not going to test that theory any time soon. Still, I’m tolerated, somnolence and all, in spite of never having spent more than three rupees per hour on average in the odd year that I’ve been frequenting this establishment.

I think it works out well for him though – he uses me as bait to lure other customers in, as my territorial markings lend the place an air of occupation, and nobody ever likes sitting, or even entering, an empty diner. And I get to spend my Sunday mornings somewhere. It works out well for the both of us even.

In walked the first catch of the morning.

Bring us each a plate of idlis with the motherfuckers drowning in sambhar, the ringleader bellowed as they settled down at a table. He sounded like the indolent land mafia-finger shattering type, and looked it – goldfingered and a pair of acolytes nipping at his heels, obedient and whipped. Clearly, every time he heard his own voice, their dicks moved. Perhaps his too.

My translation is a little faulty actually – A plate of idlis drowning in so much sambhar that it’s flowing out of their cunts would be more accurate. Tamil is a wonderful language.

Cunt idlis on the menu might be a winner too.