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Cytoplasm

It is not often I sit down to write – to write something substantial. Neither do I sit down to write something substantial all the time. However, there are things that every person cannot help. It might be active or passive reaction but the constant factor here is that reaction, which for me is writing.
When I first noticed the man on the footbridge, in close proximity to my place, he hardly occurred to me. Then I saw him again and never turned back – I was on my way to my workplace in the morning. The third time is the day I sit down to write this.
The usual after-dinner walk was a wholesome affair for me for all the wrong reasons and a perceived healthy routine. I never realized till now that it was a purposive attempt to see the unimaginable or rather the unavoidable aspects that creep through the shadows and stand out starkly under the dim neon haze.
He could be a man just like you and me. He could be a father, a husband, a grandfather or even a ‘nobody’. He could be a deranged, a homeless, a loner or an egoist. Yet, to me he looked a sixty something aged person with silver hair and unkempt beard. Disheveled full-sleeve brown shirt and a soiled crème pant over brown socks and brown leather, affordable quality shoe unworn under his dangling feet, he sat there on the damp staircase after a well showered evening in Kolkata.
There was nothing unusual about him as compared to millions of homeless in this city. Yet, there was a certain control about his stature as he sat on the sideway. That is when a bystander’s presence strikes a passerby’s imagination. It is more so, if the passerby is a voracious reader, affirmer and applier of deductive reasoning as proposed by Arthur Conan Doyle, through his gigantic literary character.
He could be a man kicked out of his home by his children or grandchildren for all the several causes that may be easily construed. He might be a madman whom his family members got tired dealing with. He might be an egoist who just could not take any form of mediocrity by his own standards from the people with whom he dwelled. However, definitely, with mosquito netting, shawl and a well-covered pillow you cannot be just another loner or just another vagabond. You have to be put in that position to be there.
An abject violence of humane society norms it was found revolting to the psyche of a social individual as me.

*****

Amazing

This is to keep a tab on what happened today post quarter to one a.m.

After a nightlong party at 'Not just Jazz by the bay' three of us end up at Bade Miyan for food. I go to the the nearby HDFC ATM for money for that's where my salary A/C is. I find a card of 'Sukena S_ne Chant' Card No. 4386 2425 0150 0080. I ask my friends to come over to the ATM as witness. They come. I ask ATM guard for Customer Care No. and he gives me 2856 1818 which is useless. I call up 100 and nobody answers.
I go to the the nearest police officer near Taj Mr. Saukener (Mob. No. +919773094304) and deposit the ATM Card. My friends leave for home before me. I go to Churchgate station and take a taxi for home but think of taking the card no. and name of the person.
I go back to Taj. Contact Mr. Saukener and wait to get the no. Get the details and call back to confirm that I will be available for any help.
This is to let know whosoever it may concern that I did what I thought was right and will be available for any assistance.

Salaam Bombay

Salaam Bombay

I try so much to think of loving you,

And I fail miserably –

Like the lone child on the street side.

For I cannot see through

Descending acrid smoke of burning flesh

I can’t turn my eyes away from the child –

Its flesh ripped and shred of impact

As he sits there, over the charred remains

Of its inconsequential social connect.

I cannot see how we all are not thus orphaned,

For where I stand – what I see

Everybody has been stripped bare –

Down to the inherited, bestial flesh and blood

I try hard to look through the chaos

Of uncertain lives fleeing in anticipation

I try hard to recollect our dreams, in my mind.

But the smoke stings, it pains so bad – so deep.

This earth, a sky seems unimaginably shattered

And through all this – my dear

I silently cry out loud to you

I kneel before you my beloved.

I pray to you – pull back the reins of time

And put me two moments before

The unforgiven, unwilling child of human wrath burst.

For a moment I will see the child lisp in its mother’s lap.

For a moment I will look up and bid goodbye to you.

Come to me now – my beloved,

For I try so hard to think of loving you.

________________________________

Under the Shadow of Terror

Noise Unlimited

Whatever now remains is like Noise - in its true definition. There are two sides to it.

1. People responsible for their carelessness and unprepared ness - they are generating the noise while curbing the real 'voice' viz. the dictate from the Govt. that media should no more broadcast videos of the attack - is that to keep people from disturbing images or do they know it too well that Indian mind is like black board - a stroke of duster and the chalk of calamity wiped off? Are the resignations, comments, opinions, vague statements sounding like boardroom 'global gyan' ('We will not tolerate terrorist tactics...' and like) worth the hoopla surrounding them? Really, have there been any actionable reactions? Something like, 'we have appointed XYZ to set up a committee which will plan and blue-print for a Federal Intelligence Agency of India', would have meant at least something. I fail to understand how feminine FMCGs could become talk of the hour - lord save the sanctity and sanity of our Media houses. Did they really find, even the person who indulged in such pithy remarks, worthy enough to be splashed over prime time news?

2. People who are subject to these propagandas - they end up taking sides. What have they got anyway? They only have choices and nothing like the best candidate or the rightful leader. They just choose the next best thing and end up where they were by the end of another 5 years. Just like stray dogs - they stray, they are shown the biscuit, they go to the vote machine wagging their tails, they sit waiting like a loyal dog, no matter they get kicked all along, then the 'eater' finishes off and the dog begins to look for another 'eater'. At times they will be stupid enough to follow that same 'eater' around.

The first kind confuses and the latter one is politically, socially and emotionally illiterate enough to be easily confused. In the end we have exactly what my title states and reflect the present state of affairs - Noise Unlimited...

Leopold Back-calculation

Nothing has changed much. People just want to get high before they are on a higher plane. They fail to flatter themselves. It is not that easy. The terror is unimaginable.

I look at these people congregated or rather accumulated at Leopold tonight, and I am unexcited. It is only natural to be egoistic. It is only natural to be nationalistic. But what really matters is – what do you really believe in.

I did my inquisition. The inherent fear of life sustenance is unquestionable (I just hate that I cannot write this in layman’s terms; I wish somebody did). Everybody hid in fear when the firecrackers became gun-shots in reality. I doubt if anyone else would have done otherwise – even with a bullet-proof armor on them.

I wonder what might have happened that day. I can but only wonder. But still, if I have that, I’ll stay with it because that is the only thing I have got to justify myself – about the way I feel. And that is just the way everybody of you reading this feels. So, stop lying to yourself!

Mumbai Burns

I am not Marathi, I am not Mumbaiyya. I am a simple citizen, another unknown Indian, who just happens to be professionally based out of Mumbai. And I feel violated.

I feel I have got everything to do with this calculated inhumanity on display for the last 60+ hours. I have never faced this upfront but now I do and I am going to do something about it. I have to speak out. I am not of that mettle to keep myself closed in the boundaries of a job, a family, few friends and four walls which keep changing.

There a few things that I hate but I hate them unfailingly and it seems it is not going to change for quite sometime now.

I do not accept to live under the shadow of the gun.

I do not want those people walking on this earth who have murder on their minds.

I do not want my near and dear ones to be terrorized.

I do not accept that a country like ours do not have an intelligence net.

But most of all – I hate the lousiness of some people who say, ‘What can I do?’

Money, stature, family commitments, professional pressure, relationships they don’t matter. In fact, when these very things are under fire – I do not believe we have got any justification of sitting back, thanking fate for saving us and waiting for the carnage to get over so that we can get back to work next morning like worms crawling across the dingiest filth on the face of this earth.

I defy those who call this ‘the undying Mumbai spirit’. I call this apathy, indifference and overall irresponsibility as an Indian and as a human being.

More than 190 people dead – that too only officially, three times that injured and an overall atmosphere of unwelcome fear looming ominously over Mumbai. We cannot keep saying that ‘Mumbai has won’; because it hasn’t. The terrorists have won – not once but again and again, and it is about time we put an end to our little day-night therapy sessions over the idiot-box with some politicians and diplomats who have been as irresponsible as us. It is about time we vent our retribution on these maggots.

Terrorists are not cowards. Cowards are only human. Terrorists, however, are inhuman to say the least. They are agents of the virus called terror. Love just won't do.

This is the time when we think, talk and act vitriolic. This is when our attitude should ooze acid against those buggers. I cannot imagine that I have to share the same air with these proponents of the unjust death.

We pride ourselves in unity. I disagree vehemently. We just fake ‘unity in diversity’. There is no such thing, unless we acknowledge ourselves as common human beings, each one of whom has got right to live. And those who don’t have no right to live!

I want to live without oppression – be it terror or in any other form.

I want to live without fear – be it the bullet or the ballot.

I want to live without bias – be it religious or socio-economic.

I want to live free – and my head held high because I know I have done something.

Candyman Dreams

Candyman Dreams

It is a straight stretch of glazed, ivory black granite brick road. Tram tracks have sank deep into it over the years of intense pressure. Millions of wheels roll bumping on the cracks across the graveled stretch. This is not a story of the street. Yet, streets have stories to tell.
Streets are brilliant storytellers. They never tire of telling them. More often than not they live up to their reputation. Streets have so many stories to tell. Some are hazardous and a rollercoaster ride with the shocked riders clenching their teeth under a deepening comic grimace – destinations are always far away. Some are murderous in the darkest hour where only few scurrying footsteps can be heard under the shady lampposts gleaming drearily in the creepy drizzle drenched city – a moment of silence, a muffled groan and silence reigns again. Some are deceptively fast paced and bouncy for the sentry religiously defending his castle from the onslaught of cannon balls, hurdled across with more aggression than conviction or accuracy – expectedly on a day when a strike or boycott, of any nature, has been declared. Some are monotonous like the everyday traffic snarls extending all along its stretch. Yet, it makes up for all that when the story is interspersed in between by the chapter where an unintentional blink made two pairs of eyes meet for the first time in their life and become unforgettable to each other. Such are the, occasional but obviously the brilliant sparks of a genius.
Some stories are mishaps. Precisely, an unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate. Yet, it must be a decisive outcome with no choices to the end. Why? I mean we all got choices for a solution to the situation but only decisive ends to them, which is in fact the most important time to make a choice. Well, but stories are just that – stories, and this story is just such a story.
The street was swarming with mid-day traffic. The pressure was far less compared to the morning office hours. Yet, dust, burnt petrol fumes, charred rubber on hot asphalt and bare, glazed granite bricks were aplenty to make it feel alive. For the street, however, it was getting a wee monotonous. All of these it beheld, day in and day out. Maybe, the street brooded under its skin; it was loosing its human touch.
They say thought is the fastest thing known. They even say there is something called telepathy. Then the plastic pack full of green, yellow and orange candies should have known the street well enough. For the response was just that – a mishap.

If you go up to him any day you will find two deep set blazing eyeballs peering out at your approach. The square lower jaw seems to hang down in most disagreeable fashion under the lax muscles and wrinkled skin over his cheeks. The nose sticks out like a wasted chewing gum stuck up and left in a thin stretch, poking at everything that beheld it. The lines on the forehead were deep enough to be portrayed in black, four of them uniformly spread across the ample width of the forehead. The hairline was a premature disaster, of black and white, cumulatively gray.
He was not the funny man. He was the candyman. Looks are deceptive and even more in black and white, on paper. One look at his face could tell the everyday story of a wife selling vegetables, two children well malnourished who helped their mother beg when times were worse and a life torn apart in pride and disability. Some are born free, some are born cursed.

Now let The Street tell its story...

He ran across the dangerously busy crossing. The only thing in his eyes was the bus on the other side of the road. The bus had stopped at the signal...

...Bus of route number 215A...bus full of passengers...passengers packed inside the bus, sweating...children nagging on mother’s lap...people bored of the wait...
...Green, yellow and orange candies...mango, pineapple and orange...quenches thirst...time pass...50 paisa apiece, two for a rupee...profit of 10 paisa on a candy...10 sold; a rupee rich...run, run, run...

Meanwhile, the plastic pack of candies was concentrating on the street’s thoughts.
The stopped traffic was let off. Like a simultaneous reaction to the revving up of the first gears of the waiting vehicles, candies, like marbles, rent through the bag and sprinkled all over the street crossing like colored, shimmering pearls of many little, precious dreams. They fell out off his arms like a brook of jewels, a brook of shiny little dreams.
But he was still running. He was thinking. He was not ‘thinking’...

...Many passengers...good omen for the day...a day of good income...will save five rupees for the children...Durga Puja is also round the corner...maybe fish curry tomorrow...

Somebody shouted out at the falling candies. He slowed, turned and looked down towards the near empty plastic bag on his relieved left arm, even as the bus of route number 215A ceremoniously picked up speed and roared past. His jaws hung low. The right arm, he had had raised to stop the bus, slowly crept down and fell limp by the other side. His eyes were slowly opening, dilated –

That was the very last picture of the candyman seen by the person, sitting in an auto-rickshaw, which the street beheld. But the street is not telling their story today.
It is a very happy day for the street. The street had so many colored marbles all for itself. It has got marbles to play with, today...

________________

Flubber, The Absent Minded Professor & Mayurkanthi Jelly

Flubber, The Absent Minded Professor & Mayurkanthi Jelly

This is very interesting.

Well, subtly so, because I am still searching for the right answers over the ‘net’. This occurred to me while reading ‘Mayurkanthi Jelly’ (Peacock-neck Blue Colored Jelly), 1965, written by Satyajit Ray. Mark the year here.

Spielberg has been credited with ‘E.T’ (1997) when the storyline and idea was already there in Ray’s ‘Bankubabur Bandhu’ (1962) whose script was titled ‘The Alien’.

Here comes the catch! Spielberg’s ‘Flubber’ was inspired by the movie ‘The Absent Minded Professor’ by Samuel W. Taylor, which was made into a movie in 1961! However, the wonder does not stop here. It seems one of Ray’s short stories for children titled ‘Mayurkanthi Jelly’ (Peacock-neck Blue Colored Jelly) was released in 1965 and bears striking resemblances to both the stories!

There you go!

Emancipation

Emancipation

Something happened today. Today? Rather, yesterday late morning – just like anything else that might happen and as memorable as none other. I don't know why but my experiences has never left me blankly staring into a de ja vue alley. Never. And so, I happily write on.

A cat littered in the kitchen - in the cozy damp corner just below the kitchen sink of our rented apartment, I guess on the night before yesterday. It was more of a shock than find. Pangs of hunger had at last broken my vow of laziness at noon. Food had just been delivered at my doorstep and it needed only one plate and one spoon to be served – rice, pulses and potatoes – simple and sumptuous. But not a single plate or spoon had been left clean, heaped in the sink for over two days I guess. Abhorrence of the stench or arrogance of being - both combined, had connived and so I proceeded to the sink.

Suddenly, a brush of fur – alive! The cat stealthily brushed past me and dived over the window still. Almost instinctively, the first thing I did was to stoop to check beneath the sink and straighten my back with a snigger of disgust crossing my face. Three – one spotted gray and two black bundles of sparse fur and throbbing, rolling over each other, kittens. Instinct again produced the 'F' word – deeply, smoothly through my clamped lips.

For a few moments, I was somewhere there, between the zone of ignorance and annoyance. Great! So much, for lunch! I looked outside the window and as expected 'momma' cat was right there, beneath the window still, looking up straight into my eyes, as perplexed and upset as I was. I hope I got her right. I looked left, I looked right and I located a small cardboard box and proceeded to do the most obvious thing - take that 'bloody' litter off my block, no place for aliens here.

I extended my right hand and touched the first throbbing, ugly fur ball - at first gently and then efficiently, to quickly transfer it into the box. In ten seconds flat the three were in the box and I lifted it over the window still. 'Momma' was still there. Now that I am saying this I might as well admit - it was pretty stupid of me to think 'momma' cat would understand. I just picked one up and showed it to her. I had thought she would understand that I wanted her to know I was beholding her creations and wanted to get rid of them urgently, as the responsibilities were absolutely out of question for me to handle. Stupid me. The snarl that emanated from her snapping jaws, with razor sharp, inch long canines on two sides showing, startled me. It looked vicious and so it felt.

There was no other way out. I locked the backdoor to the kitchen, the only way into my living room and proceeded, with the box, to the door. I latched it and went down stairs, stooping out of the quite low lying hallway and emerging just underneath the window still where scary 'momma' was perched, still looking up through my kitchen window, waiting for this to end as much as I did.

I whistled and there was an immediate turn of the feline form. First, it looked into my face. I didn't utter a sound and yet instinctively 'momma' looked into the box below her. I slowly walked up to the nearest garbage bin - a few steps away, and laid down the box and she followed each and every movement of mine - unpredictable and anxious movements, eyes transfixed on the box.

But as soon as I stepped away after laying them down and waiting at a distance to let her take her bundle of joy away, in a totally unexpected show of indifference, she turned on her back, tail slowly undulating and walked away in the opposite direction. That was the second and the last time the 'F' word hissed through my pursed lips.

I quickly picked up the box and proceeded to follow to 'momma' who was now perfectly sitting under the shade of a parked motorbike. At first it glanced away indifferently, but I was desperate to get rid of the three lives in my box. I gently upturned the box right in front of her and the litter rolled down on the ground, right in front of her alarmed and again transfixed eyes. stood aside.

I think gray is a good color - compared to black around. Otherwise why would she grab her 'gray' kitten over the other two and proceed to find a more private place, now that the old one stood busted by its original, yet, presently totally flummoxed tenant? I stood there waiting for it to come back for the other two. It was a long wait.

Some inquisitive kids from the block had gathered around. They had questions and an unwilling, famished me was the only one there. Perhaps it was horribly stupid of me but then I was not exactly thinking of my state. This is very typical of an empty stomach when the 'Gabrielisque' spirit takes over. Mind you, I was completely starved by then. I guess all of this lead to that point of great impatience when it just boiled over and the milk was spilt...

It was somewhere between all these kids and two litters that I forgot recollection of my position. Of the numerous cats in our block there was this certain black furred cat. It had been quite intriguing to me before and now it was approaching the very place we were standing over the two squeaking, blinking kittens. I recollected my general knowledge. They say these feline animals cannot bear the sight of offspring of others – not even one amongst its own species. I stared at the approaching, un-suspecting ‘stranger’.

It got the vibes – little, nearly inaudible squeaks of its own nature. It turned and headed straight for the kittens. I stood there transfixed. Whether it was my inquisitiveness or whether it was my foolhardiness, I don’t know, but I allowed it happen. I allowed the ‘stranger’ to approach the two defenseless cubs. Perhaps it was plain enchantment of witnessing a killing – the full rawness of nature that prompted to freeze my body as I concentrated on each and every excited quiver on the fur of the black furred cat.

It licked only once and in a flash it had got one of the litters by its neck. The kids took a step back and yet stared in amazement like me. They felt so weak like me – unable to comprehend and hence totally unresponsive to this display of violence. The jaws sank deeper into the neck and for sure now, I knew, this was getting murderously devious of me. At that very split second it happened.

Greed got the ‘stranger’ to drop the first and dash for the second and simultaneously, I don’t know what possessed me, I picked up the box that had been lying aside for sometime now and confronted the murderous ‘intruder’. Maybe it is the fear of regret. Maybe it was the sense of penance. I never knew then. I know not now either. I threw the damned box on the gaining black furred cat and it let go of the last living litter and bounced away.

I picked up the harrowed body of the visibly shaking figure of the fur ball and brought it over to the original place, place where its mother had left it to come back. I somehow believed it would come back and it did. I don’t know why, but like a man possessed I stood guard over the last live one that lay beside the badly mauled body of its sibling. The last few moments were the same for the broken neck. Quivering of body, stretching legs, jaws hanging and tongue lolling out with clenched phalanges and choking breadth squeezing shut the eyes such that it might pound the socket inside. For a moment the eyelids relaxed. Then there was peace.

I stood there waiting. After about twenty minutes, between which all these had happened, I saw the ‘momma’ approaching the place where she had left her possessions. This time she looked up to me with a look I have still not been able to decipher. A look quite similar to the first time my ex-beloved asked for a particular soft-toy for her and still inexplicable.

I pushed the live one in her sight. She grabbed it softly by its neck and with the gentle little body mass safely hanging between the protective jaws of ‘momma’ cat I snapped. With a last passing, inaudible sigh I strained my neck over my shoulders to catch a glimpse of the lifeless little body. Turning around I walked upstairs, back into the cool comforting confines of my apartment. Content, exhausted – blank. I kept the box aside and readied myself for my late lunch.
_ _ _ _ _