The Man Who Came From The Cold

I am back! Like the proverbial Peter Proud, I have walked into a place where I belonged once. The reincarnation is complete. I will start writing regularly once again.
I am at Gurgaon right now, working with the same advertising agency. All this while, I didnt have time to breathe. Now that I have moved to Planning function, and have a laptop and a full-blooded internet connection, I have some ( if not all) the time in the world to do my own thing, more importantly reflect.

Musings on slowing down

Too quick to imagine! Too slow to blog!! Well, borrowing a line from Neil Young is not going to help me defend my actions. No excuses for keeping silent for long this time around.Got too involved with office work- actually, inter-office politics. Perhaps, ensnared is the right word.Saved myself by the skin of my teeth.For the moment, though.Not to forget the grace of God. Gawd....the offline world is dirty with internicine minefields masquerading as skinny alleys and swarming with a gargantuan population of back-stabbers. The world is full of *@##$#$ and other real slimy-shady characters. I am sure Eminem will concur.
Are these the opening bars of : "It was a dark and stormy night" ?
Not really. Two bright spots in a man's morning : Got my Saturday Club corporate membership after months of intense lobbying, and rightfully reclaimed my sparkling new Wagon R ( actually fresh from the oven, as they say)from the garage a week after it was unceremoniously banged and damaged by a mentally-unstable psychopath of a driver. The marwari Jack D Tripper was dripping with alcohol and reeking of pan masala.Took him by his collar and extracted 2000 bucks from his purse, besides forcing him to write a confession, and lodged a formal complaint against him with the local police station. In India, the Police happens to be the most organised mafia syndicate and it was only after raising my voice several notches higher to break the sound- pollution barrier was I able to convince those "uniformed gentlemen" to accept a "General Diary" from me.
On the Republic Day, travelled to Madras ( self-funded) to participate in the Odyssey Trivial Pursuit slugfest.Got KO-ed in the prelims by just a point. Therefore have to wait till next year to prove a point. Couldn't win against any of the usual fiends but influenced some friends who agreed to team up with me next time around. Most importantly, got a handle on the Do's and Dont's. A puerile act ? Well, the child in me propels me to act unabashed at times and take outrageous risks. Why did I end up spending an everest of currency notes from my pocket for participanting in an event which attracted 850 3-member teams ? Because it was there.
Last Saturday was at the Calcutta Club's International Night.Mixed business with pleasure. After dishing out plastic smiles to the clients, tried out some exotic dishes from Morocco, Iran and Qatar. The worst act of the day : Trying out the Turkish Melon flavour from Bacardi. But where were those Pretty Young Turkish Delights gone ? All I could survey was a galaxy of "Thirty Plus" over-the-hill crowd around. I watched a random set of last-chance-trendys flirting with desperate abundance while Indian Ocean played on with their usual nonchalence.
A sleepy Sunday categorised the day as an authentic lost weekend.

Gazing at remains of the day. 

Not about just putting a lipstick on a gorilla

“The intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex” quipped Edgar Wallace in early 1930s. Indeed the “thinking man’s crime writer” found his own immortality within his creation : King Kong. Many lightyears later came Peter Jackson who firmly established the fact that Kong is King. Yes, I just saw “King Kong” this Sunday morning ( Jan 1, 2006) at Inox with the entire family and I am still reeling under the sledgehammer performance put up by “the 8th wonder of the world”. In his inimitable style, Peter Jackson de-positions Steven Spielberg as a jurassic inhabitant of the Special Effects park. Yet the director doesn’t treat computer-graphics wizardry as billions of blue blistering barnacles littering the silver screen. I can visualise the “wide-eyed school kid” alter-ego of the director looming large in all the frames. I take a trip down the memory lane and I vividly remember the dazed state of my mind after watching the 1933 version in a B&W TV set at my mamato dadu’s place at Lake Market. I was a school-kid that time. The gullible soul that I was, I used to believe in a lot of myths and mysteries in those days. Almost of all them got shattered in zillions of pieces over and over again by the time I grew up. Thank you Peter Jackson. For re-assembling some of those broken pieces and giving me back a part of my childhood memories. For transporting me to the “Island of the Day Before” aka Skull Island where characters from Borges’ “The Book of Imaginary beings” tumble out into the open. For making me reinterpret the inner meaning of the line : “It’s the beauty which killed the beast” at this age and time.

Followed the movie with a family dinner at the Calcutta Club. Superb food from Ambar. This time the service was much better. Maybe because there were less of lazy bearers.

Spent a quiet 31st Dec night with my wife watching Ray’s “Days and Nights in the Forest”.

2nd Jan : Took a day off from work. Went to Belur Math to watch the evening aarti. Had a soothing effect on my frayed nerves.Met my dida at her spartan Galiff Street flat. She is a retired college prof but a very interesting person to talk to. Her advancing years ( she is eighty plus now) and her deformed legs notwithstanding, her mind is razor-sharp. In lot many ways, she reminds me of my deceased grand mother which whom I was attached for long. I clicked a picture of her with me. Perhaps a child’s way of snatching a candy made up of memories and tucking it away in some corner.

In da club

Got to get into the groove of writing a blog. Sure, work expands to fill the time available. But what the heck! My resolution: Keep writing for atleast ten minutes every time I find time oozing out of my watch. A Dalinian vision of molten watches. Well, all of us do hallucinate at work at some point of time. Blogging is nothing but persistence of memory.

Yesterday’s plan of meeting up with RH and RT ( college friends, both of them) at Some Place Else got cancelled and we eventually settled for the Calcutta Club. A full bottle of Kingfisher beer and a plate of golden fried prawn flew off the table in no time. The service stank. The bearers were missing in action, ignoring our frantic gestures to the point of utter disdain.
RT is a high-flying yuppie consultant. He “flies”( sic). RT regaled us with his stories about trans-atlantic flights-which has now become his fortnightly chore and how he hates it all. Also his story about how he recently went to Chicago on a project, met a Korean co-worker, and was offered a new job by him to head a different company’s soon-to-be-started Indian operations. “But you have changed your last job just about four months back”, I asked him. “I know, and they will kill me if they find out about my plans”, he laughed. “But why”? I probed. “ I can set up my office anywhere in India, and I am seriously thinking about shifting to Calcutta”, he said. “The only catch is, my wife doesn’t want to shift out of Delhi”. The conversation soon veered down to the recently acquired status of Calcutta as a “happening city”. RH, who was keeping quiet all this while, also jumped into the fray. Somewhere an emotional chord was struck. Decibel levels were raised. Thursday evening suddenly came alive for few minutes. Perhaps the only topic (besides The Forgotten Hero and The Forgotten Indian cricket captain) which unites and animates all Bongs- sad, old or otherwise. After many a raving and discourse later, we decided to call it a day. It was a long and lonely drive back home.

Why do I write “Calcutta” and not “Kolkata”. A hangover from the Raj days. I don’t want to consume a tablet of Party Smart to get over it. Call it a reverse sub-altern viewpoint.

Have a diner invitation at an office colleague’s place tomorrow night.

In pursuit of WOW!

Yesterday evening I was at my in-law’s place for dinner, followed by a DVD screening at my home of Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”(WOW). I have read the Bengali translation of this HG Wells classic many moons ago, which was, believe it or not, published in a C-grade paperback format, and I remember picking up the same from one of those quintessential A H Wheeler outlets. This is an example of what happens when Spielberg tries his hand at B-movie-making. What I admire is the scale and extent of destruction which was portrayed…straight out of a gothic manga – thanks to the talented folks at ILM. I am not surprised at the lukewarm reviews this film received. Perhaps its not virulently jingoistic or a visual spectacle like say, Independence Day. Not due to the fact that the film is “cold”. I can vouch that a lot of Kubrick’s work is colder!! Spielberg has faulted only on one count : He has been not able to establish the fact that “the germ is the idea”! Blame it squarely on his scriptwriters who have not been able to develop on the "germ of an idea" inspite of all of HG Wells' genius. Hope they learn the cinematic technique after revisiting Ang Lee’s “The Hulk”. And moreover I could spot the clever ploy adopted by Spielberg of always focusing on the trials of a hapless girl and thereby hijacking the sensibilities from the sense of the viewers. Imitating oneself can sometimes become a self-depricating act of mimicry no matter howsoever one strives to make it out as the sincerest form of flattery. Some sequences in the film are carbon copies of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. Like, for instance, the sequence in where the aliens are searching for their prey inside the basement. Cut and paste with the digitally-created raptors, and voila! you jump cut into a ditto sequence from Jurassic Park. The pursuit of WOW has been abandoned. Game over!!

Some serious meetings are happening at office on year-end targets. Only to be interrupted by stupid phone calls from clients. It’s a different war out here with estimate amounts and deadline pressures. A wretch of a life!
Planning to go to Some Place Else today evening to meet up with old college pals. Got to down a few pegs with them.

And God created.....

28th December 2005. Its 4.45 pm on my watch. I type in the first few words. Makes me feel elated...its a different state of mind.