the irony called "fuck"

A girl came over to him and said “Can I have a cup of coffee with you”?

He looked at her askance and gave a positive nod. They went to a nearby coffee shop, Café Coffee Day, and the girl led him to a corner which overlooked the sea and was in a kind of elusiveness from the rest of the café. He kept staring at her as she looked out the window; a sense of calm over her face mystified him as he tried to gulp the whole episode down in one shot. But it kept producing a lump in his throat, which either the girl guessed or he suspected that she guessed.

“What does the sea looks like to you”, she asked.

He says “it looks just like my own self in the mirror, tossing up and down at a frantic pace without any knowledge of its existence or its course of motion in the next second. And in spite of all this uneasiness around it a strange sense of happiness prevails in its disco-dance”

“Are you a writer or something”, she said skeptically.

“I’m a whore of the most third rate sort” and said it with such an assured voice that he himself believed it for a very long duration.

“We are all whores in one way or the other. It’s just the kind of fucks and its frequencies which distinguishes one from the other or how much pride one takes in being one”, was her reply with the usual serenity with which she has been watching the sea.

“Kind of fucks!! Gives me the idea that you have been a regular at destiny’s bed”.

“At one point of time I almost thought as if I was its certified mistress” with a sort of élan that he almost felt weak in his knees.

“So how does one rate as the best and one as the worst”.

“Aah!! The evading question, you are a motherfucking writer, aren’t you”, she says with her most intimidating face.

“My question still stands”.

“Your question made me realize the irony in the usage of the word, fuck. When life fucks you, you say that it has been harsh and you have been bulldozed by its never ending cock, penetrating you with all its vigor, long after even when you have dazed off into a hallucinating world where you cannot imagine any traces of life except a sense of longing for it.”

“But the only thing you desire while on bed with a person is exactly that kind of fuck”, he completed her sentence as if reading her mind under spell.
“So how would you answer it”, she asks as if his would be Americas answer to Sputnik.

“It depends on how you view a fuck!! As a dogmatic activity proposed by many clerics, a routine activity which you have to perform in order to keep a marriage working, something you crave for day and night, or a subject blown out of proportion.
In the first case your usage of the term in the negative sense is justified, in the second case it just makes the cut because life is itself engulfed in an oceanic routine, if you crave for something by the night so much and the same word embodies all the illhappenings of life for you during the day time is nonsensical, and in the last case it doesn’t matter where or how you use any term because you don’t probably care as to what stands you keep in your life”, slightly twitching in his chair more worried whether she would buy what he said rather than his usual insecurity towards making sense.

“Suppose you are standing on one of those rocks out there and a wave splashes all over you soaking you from tip to toe, would you say that you have been fucked because you felt elated by the water’s intimacy or you would say you have been fucked since now you have drenched clothes and all and need to change”, she goes the extra mile.

“So you want to stand on the frontiers of something with such a natural force and command it at your disposal”.

“You just quoted my ambition in life with the simplest phrase”, she says without the slightest bit of vulnerability.

“One shouldn’t spill out her secrets just because someone struck the right note out of the blue”.

“Well you deserved to know that one and I couldn’t think of an answer to fake your revelation”.

For the first time he was able to find her attractive with a strange sense of belonging. Her eyes were filed with sense and she was trying to look through her head. Her hair betrayed her because it was not as straight as her look and not as twisted as her thoughts.

“Checking me out! Wondering how would I be in bed!”

“Oh you are well out of taste for my bed but the blues of your eyes match the ones of my sheets”.

“So your bed is this giant ocean where you need to be a swimmer of the extraordinary sort”.

“No it’s the sky which you can see while standing on this earth but need a rocket to discover”, he says in an amusing tone.

“And what is your place like?”

“The Milky Way!”

“Is it really that good or you are saying so to make me see it?”

“Who said the Milky Way was good?”

“Well it certainly is a heroic example to give”, she says with a pinch of excitement.

“Wanna see it”?

“I thought you would never ask, since I don’t have a rocket”.

“Well you don’t need a rocket to see my place, that’s just for the bed”.

As she walked into his apartment with careful steps so that she doesn’t steps on the papers lying carelessly on the floor, she could see the Milky Way as it was in fact cloudy which can be seen on the wall to the right which was filled with questions without any question marks and all colors possible, mostly with the black pencil. Two racks carved out of wood brimming with books lying against the wall in front with a couch in between and a table in front with an ashtray crisscrossed with pencil sitting on top of a few newspapers. A couch was lying adjacent to it and it was evident from its neatness that it was more recent than the used one. A gadda was lying in front of the hand printed wall with the blue bed sheet he talked about. To her right were two doors leading to the same balcony and a television set hanging in between the doors right in front of the bed with a movie player lying below it.

She went to the bathroom opened the tap over the tub took off her sleepers and lay fully clothed.
“Do you have a good story that can turn me on? I haven’t been turned on in ages”, she was lying in the tub with her face protruding just from the surface and her ears were inside, eyes closed.

He was sitting right next to the tub with a cigarette in his hand and reading from his diary, a narration about a similar incident that took place in his world.
“….At one point of time I wished that her lips could stay with me. They were quite unlike anything I had seen before. Emoting desire and manufacturing desire, in me. I felt like playing with them, with fingers, toes, toys. I wondered if I could see mine touching hers. I wanted to see how they react when I touch them. I wanted to see the teamplay of as an egoistic species as that.”

She takes her face out and without opening her eyes asks “So were they all you think they were”.

“I was so in love with them that I decided never to find out”.

“A love scene without kissing!”

“Yeah I tried everything in the book to make her remain connected without the kiss, but she didn’t like it. It was the hardest punch a girl ever gave me but what else can you expect after three failed attempts from her side”.

“You are a selfish bastard, continue”, looking in a way that made the comment her most believable one all night.

A Whirling Dance of Nostalgia

It was way back in 2003 and I was going to watch India’s first sci-fi movie-Koi Mil Gaya
with my non-cinematic best friend, F. Both of us reached the cinema hall quite late and the balcony was booked. I guess it was the first and the last time in Allahabad for me when the balcony was booked for a 9-12 show. So we bought the stall tickets and amidst extreme temperatures took our seats with drunkards, rickshaw pullers, goons and other not so friendly cinema lovers. Later in the movie when Hrithik gets all fixed up by the alien, the man sitting next to me got up and started speaking to the screen-“ab aawaa, toka bataii, ab aawaa”…he was talking to the villains and tempting them to come and risk their lives with Hrithik now. His seizures grew more intense with every testosterone-raging action sequence as we concentrated sans any shirts (we had taken them off a long time back.i was wearing a vest and F was bare chest) more on him rather than the movie.
This is how I’ve seen films. Even the slightest mention of the non-acceptable social terms receive loud applauds and whistles. I remember paying Rs 80 for a Rs38 ticket for Lagaan and many others (once I’m at the theatre no price is big enough to scare me).
I had come out of cinema halls with people going nuts about a movie like Yaadein.
I’ve danced with people and shilpa shetty for “dilwalon ke dil ka qaraar lootne”.
A movie released meant I’m going to see it. Even the ones like Mast, Main Prem Ki Deewani Hun, etc etc. Every time a romantic scene appeared on screen I felt like watching it with my first girl friend because that is how I know romance.(ishq mein jalte hue saans tezaabi lage,raaz khulta hi nahin koi to chaabhi lage)
But over the past few years I sensed an alienation of my movie-going crowd from films. I thought it was due to the bad condition of cinema halls and the crowd became more and more temperate with every passing day. Few whistles, fewer shouts and a dented chaos. And that drew me away from cinema halls, actually more than the fall in the standard of films being made (meri aarzoo kamini,mere khwaab bhi kaminey)
Yesterday at the screening of Kaminey, it all came back. The same sense of acute helplessness on knowing that it’s houseful, return to the same ticket blacker who has sold me umpteen tickets, debate with friends that a Rs 40 ticket for Rs 80 is a fair deal, going into his small hut to get the tickets in order to dodge the policeman who is standing on the road and finally telling my friends euphorically that I got them. I always get them-vanity.
The movie rolled on and the shouts kept going louder and I joined them. Whistles for the kiss between Shahid and Priyanka, a loud shout at Priyanka’s mention of rape.
It also saw the return of that odd neighbor who sits next to me and it appears that he’s watching a film for the first time-giggling every time Shahid pronounced pha ko pha…
And she also knocked at the door of my memory when Shahid and Priyanka were arms interlocked, sight trapped (aji pehli baar mohobbat kit hi ahaan, aakhri baar mohobbat kit hi ahaan)
And the movie is just awefome!!
Vishal has blended all that I used to watch earlier and most of what I watch now with his own inimitable style. He entered the locked room of archetypical Indian cinema and stirred the motionless time inside it with his genius.
Every cliché of our cinema was given new wings and it all flew above my head while all his puppets were controlled with new threads (chikne chikne lach-che hain reshmi se phande hain)…
Shahid playing both roles to perfection as if played by different people, Priyanka’s totally in sync with her Marathi portrayal and every other character is a new face.
Mikhail is the new psyched chota-gangster; Bhope is your old local con cum politician blended with the new political upheaval in Maharashtra, Tashi is the latest drug lord signifying the drug mafia in Goa and all of them have their own identity, all are unique. You can write an entire 2 hour movie on any one of them individually and yet they all have been used like the finest ingredients are put in the exact amount to make the best Kadhai Chicken cooked by mom.
The best songs of the movie haven’t been used in the film because they’ll dent the pace, the look is as grim as can be because the title of the movie is Kaminey, and the camera is very close to the subjects because it’ll heighten the frenzy and the pace.
I would love to know the budget of the film because the shooting takes place either on the roads of Bombay or a few dilapidated rooms and the costumes appears to belong to the actors. Not a single thing is superfluous and it’s so rich without any gloss.

Thank you Vishal Bhardwaj for sending me back in time and for being able to say that I’m an Indian audience and we kick some serious ass with our cinema.
The best Independence Day gift ever.

recent ramblings

While I try to visualize Kundera’s Prague and his pain, through the corner of my huge balcony gazing into an arrow of streetlights, which is inflicted on every page of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I am able to explain the ineffable-what pisses me off the most right now?

I am an evolving audience of both my beloved art forms-cinema and literature.
As a reader I started from Sidney Sheldon and then moved to likes of Kundera, Marquez, Rushdie, Kafka (not as much to be proud of), Ghosh. What made me change my writers?
Its part me and part the authors. I was able to relate to their works, see a tiny Raza or a Zain on some page or the other and a wide array of societies-Prague, Latin America, Calcutta and their idiosyncrasies along with the protagonist which is part me and part someone else. So I’m all of them and they are all me set against that picturesque landscape of fleeting transcendence. Also a completely different idea helps me understand a dime here and there about myself. Now that self-realization is not essential for some, but I believe the best way to understand the motor of the world is by understanding oneself. I think both of us are created from the same matter and along similar principles. The divine intervention, of course. And I also feel that this world is exactly as to what it appears to me. But how does this world appears to me? There is no concrete answer to that question except that you search for all those tiny Raza’s and Zain’s and extract them from various pages and lines and assemble them to get the whole picture.

Same goes with cinema. Earlier it was strictly Indian cinema, popular Hindi films to be precise, seen because time is there to be passed and some activity has to be performed in order to claim that one has passed his time doing something selective.
The change happened due to the repetition of plots and their impact on me which dimmed with every passing movie. So I ventured outside my fixed realm making it a point to learn a thing or two about what I’ve seen through newspapers and other articles. I always try to attain a different height of emotions, which is because when you are at a height the desire to go further up never ceases. Especially with emotions. So here I am continually evolving or contracting, who knows, but there is a prominent change.
But things around me-people, society, parents, relatives, situations, response to situations, even friends, their nuances or wit, similar dialogues, similar expressions, even their stories more or less the same.

If I am going through so many amounts of curves and heights and sometimes absurdly bizarre thoughts in a matter of just few minutes, why aren’t things or stuff around me changing at that similar or even at some pace?

Come on, think just a bit differently, try to see death as something that’s coming towards you rather than you going towards it, search for the meanings to your replies as to what’s the logic behind the explanation you have been giving for the past one hour, look back not just to extract a good story but to extract yourself as to how you were-your stories should be more about you rather than some other loser, you as the loser is much more interesting than a stranger as a hero.

Like Kundera said-when someone says that Children! You are the future. It does not imply that children will one day be adults and so they are the future, but that the society is becoming more and more like a child.

an ode to jim morrison

Some say he was a poet
Some say he was a ghost
Sashayed on parapets
Of roofs and lives alike

Punctured with images
From an otherwise plain childhood
They pinched him every now and then

He dabbled with pain
Death was his high
Words were his flight
The snake was his respite

He traveled all alone
Whether they were his barred caves
With Indians and lions

He talked only to himself
And listened only to himself
Writing fresh chapters
Experiencing gravity-less highs

Words cascaded from his mouth
In the voice of gods
He listened to his voice when it came out
And heard gods speak through him

He saw life standing from a bridge
Which parted the known from unknown!
And felt torn apart in both directions
Like he felt torn between Pam and the rest

He reached every unknown destination
Riding the alcoholic ocean
He saw ever light
Through the marijuana rings

He rejected all the circles
Of reason and boundaries
And only saw circles
That connected him to it all

He freed himself from the locks
Of the cages that we aren’t born with
He chose the wilderness of pain


originally published for passionforcinema at http://passionforcinema.com/an-ode-to-jim-morrison/

holy smoke

Breezy as life seems all my senses are upped by a couple of notches. Oranges taste sourer than usual, cigarettes tastes just a wee bit harder; the sun appears harsher as if the rays will enter me any minute. As if life has become these small packets within the same time frame. While one packet is moving faster than usual the other one is just a tad slow. The thoughts are jumping from one packet to another at the speed of light and a sense of déjà vu prevails. As if I’ve been here in this moment before and everything seems repetitive. In one moment I’m like an alien to this world while in the other everything seems mine.
And just when the alienation seems absolute those around beckon me to come back.

In those fleeting moments you get the feeling that somehow you are unwanted and those around you realizing that you’ve guessed that try everything within their domain to make you feel otherwise. And you enjoy that party crashing unwanted feeling as if defiant to a certain force that’s trying to detach you from everything. Every act seems to be taking a longer time than usual-the opening of a lock or switching on a light, even opening the WordPad is like a jihad. While riding you feel you are going at 150 instead of 50. There is this numb feeling and everything seems so calm as if the noises are coming from somewhere far and you are far from the noises as if your insides are flying around you while your body is sitting with them.
You want to correct everything about your life with a tick mark. As if this is it, the greatest escape but you don’t want to go you want to remain here as if there is some unfinished business. The resolve for life grows stronger.

Thoughts bombarding me like shells from a machine gun and I want to remember all of them so that I can pen them down. Allexcellent. The frequency is unbound. And as a new one enters the older one leaves even as harder as I try not to part.

And in those fleeting moments you promise that you won’t take it again as if you are bribing God to let you remain in this world for a longer duration. At some stage the soul snatching becomes absolutely unbearable and you want to undo the past 2-3 hours of your life. Sitting in front of the shithole which resembles your life and you are the sum totals of all the impurity flowing in it. The guilt of all that you think is wrong and are not sure about is coming out of you with every blow. And in those fleeting moments you don’t want to remember anyone as they are some part of your guilt and all your energy is focused on survival. If you survive this you will survive all.
As if you life means something to you and you want to fight for it till you last breath.
You see people and you want to understand them just by the look of their eyes. You feel they are looking at you with a sense of belonging. All the answers seem too perfect and everything makes sense. Every song seems pure and singing along with it will somehow impure it. And it takes more than a couple of attempts to voice along with it. All your mistakes seem larger than you ever felt them to be. You want to be left alone. It’s as if you have arrived at the solution where you can leave to some far off place without even moving from your chair. And those sitting in front of you are trying everything to help you reach that unknown destination. Your mind tries to move in some other direction and your heart somewhere else. The mind shows you the guilt, the heart wants you to forget it and enjoy the flight. The heart is kind and helps the lightness to beat the heaviness which is powered by the brain. You want to tear your brain out and almost do it but it’s your organ and due to that yourorganloving feeling you plead with your heart to make peace with its neighbor.

You loose track of time yet again and feel as if a century has passed since you had been sitting here and you won’t be able to get up again. As if with another drag your chance of reclaiming your stance dims. After enough bullshitting you take another drag and then another and another and then ask your head to screw himself as if you are too sure that “I will be able to stand again”. After this entire tussle you realize that it hasn’t been such a long time after all and the mind is not all that bad. But then you do try to get up as if to prove someone wrong or reassure yourself about your power to stand. And you are able to do it with some effort and then the next step is to walk as if you are trying to learn to walk once again and this time if you fall they won’t pick you up because it’s not your first time. You are able to make the steps and rejoice once again but however hard you try you are unable to put that foot where you want to put it and since you are too high to curse yourself the vanity makes you enjoy that.

Tu to jaane na maine ki teri bandage tu sanam hai tu khuda hai mahiya.
I call her in these fleeting moments to hold me like one of her props. Play with me like she plays with her hair. Rub me on her body like she rubs soap.
I want to see all that is hidden inside her behind those clothes she wears. The moment I take a dive through her eyes inside her she moves them away and I start drowning inside her. Call me an insane paranoid or whatever you want but I want to shake her with a look. I want her to make me feel like her prized possession. Something she doesn’t wants to part with. And I won’t touch her until then. Until I am absolutely sure that it’s me she wants and I am not just some stoppage or switchover through which she wants to board another train which will take her to a happier place. I am ready to take her to that place but want to be sure she won’t leave me the moment she reaches there. Stranded inside her without her and without anything to hide myself is my greatest fear. I want to see her at particular times which are hard to describe. Is there any time when I don’t want to see her? Yeah, only when I am with her. I don’t know how but she seems more captivating in my thoughts. Her charm reduces that moment she confronts me. Maybe because I am able to be myself with she in my thoughts or maybe she is able to be her only then.

Dekh kar tumko tamanna jil jaati hai har ek fariyaad dil se nikal jaati hai.
I look through a window and see you opening the gates and running straight towards me with the look as if you haven’t seen me in years and I celebrate that victory as if your homecoming is some sort of a game that I was playing with myself. And every time I promise that I won’t celebrate this hard and every time I rejoice harder.
I am on the verge where there are no more emotions left for me to feel while I’m with you in my imagination and no more words left to record those feelings. It’s a dead end. As if there is this great wall at the end separating reality from imagination and it is only after breaking that wall and touching you in real will I am able to write about my feelings for you or have any new feelings.