The song of death

this is something i scribbled in my diary an year ago :

Every time i fall asleep
lying in my dreams deep
a tune i hear
its the lullaby of death

Ennui

sitting alone on my porch
i spend my days alone
with nobody to share my
sorrows with

lonesome,  i look at the sky
gaze at the patterns
which clouds make and fly

only companion, of my nights
is the moon
miles away,
i look at it, in retrospect
sink in abyss
to find my way

Late nights and movies

Asphyxiating smell of Cigarette smoke combined with the fragrance of incense sticks filled the fourth floor of hotel corridor. Standing shirtless in the balcony, I could see a deviant scene below. The clock had struck and it was midnight but still the street below didn’t show any sign of inactivity.

Here, it was, bursting with energy as every restaurant seemed to pack in the last moolah for the day. It was the night before comedk and the street seemed to be an influx of the cultural diversity of India.

My eyes, heavy due to the long flight and all the rice I had since morning, though intoxicated, refused to sleep though. The shadow of a big banyan trees in contrast with the yellow light of street lamp casted a silhouette on the wall, which was intimidating to say the least.

Bored of looking around I switched on the TV.

 Streaming through an ocean of kannada channels I could breathe a  short sigh of relief as I found an island in the “discovery” channel, it was later I realized it too was dubbed and being telecasted in kannada.

After a few minutes of exploration and investigation, catching hold of SET-PIX was at par with being strangled on a deserted island surrounded by sharks which be au fait with our language.

The movie being shown was ong bak 2. I was hooked as I found the steel grayish cold ambience of the movie quite enchanting. The plot wasn’t too good but I stuck on to it in dearth of nothing better to see. After wading through the movie for an hour and half, I was hardly able to comprehend anything. The movie left a meaningless void, which perhaps was the precursor to entrap the audience for ong bak 3, which I haven’t gathered the courage to watch yet.

I was reminded of the incident today, as after almost a couple of months, rocky 2 was something that I bumped into. One hand pushups were the one of the reasons I watched the movie for, an oscar winning screenplay being the other. The murmuring dialogue delivery of Mr. Stallone coupled with ‘you know’ in almost every other line was infuriating, if not frustrating. As I watched the boxing sequences where the protagonists taunt each other, I was vaguely reminded of sunny deol’s antics from apne (word check wants me to change it into acne; is it right??). The best part about the movie was the way it started

“Metro Goldwin Mayer presents”.

It’s something rarely seen in the movie these days. But who’s complaining??

p.s.; the lion of goldwin mayer had more expressions in the 15 second clip than sly stallone bestowed upon us in the 2 and a half hour of junk. Avoid if you must.

Going Nuts

Groundnuts, cashew nuts or hazel nuts- there are many. Each have their own benefits, advocated by doctors universally. But this article is neither about nuts nor about their apparent health benefits. Instead this is about the nicknames we students gave to our teachers with all due respect.

Of all funny names that come to my mind, Chinese butru tops the list. We were in class 5^th and he never taught us but some invigilator duties were sufficient to rechristen him. The reason behind this hilarious name, I am told was his short stature and mechanical approach (fake Chinese gadgets –the inspiration perhaps) to teaching. Incidentally, a friend of mine told me about this while we were playing and we both ended up in tears of laughter. Another such uproarious name that we invented almost half a decade earlier than the rajnikant starrer ‘robot’ was , yes, you guessed it right, ROBOT. His punctuated style of speaking was probably the reason he was named so. Nepali master was another such name we gave to one teacher of ours (do I see accusation of me being a racist?).

It was in class ^7th, I changed schools and was introduced to new teachers with new names. At this point of time, I felt how creativity sweeps all barriers of physicality. Even at distances as large as a few hundred miles, students name their teachers with comparable zeal.

Here, in spite of the city life, nicknames awarded to teachers were laden with ingenuity.

Sample this. A teacher called chiniyabadam was baptized so because of his customary statement:

“Nahi padhiyega, nahi likhiyega…station pe chiniyabadam bechiyega”.

But jokes apart, he was dexterous in his craft and more than that he was a good human being who rose above teacher – student relationship to help his pupils. Another was called Prem Chopra purely because of his voyeuristic poetry and striking resemblance to the said actor. Krrish and chhota chetan, despite being clichés were hit among us. The teacher who loved his students but was abhorred by one and all was called “baka”, which I guess was because of his eccentricity which everybody confused for wackiness. He was a senti-“mental” guy who got carried away with his emotions.

To forget dumdum mai and her beetle chewed face would be a mistake execrable. Another such teacher was thermos, she taught us geography and disaster management, which is a pun in itself as nobody but the first bench of the class used to listen to her. The rest were heavy eyed enough to doze off.

Pele, our math’s teacher, was funnily named thus with no such reason whatsoever. He knew his students called him with such a name and almost appeared to enjoy that.
dholu and raavan were 2 such another names, purely based on the physical appearance of the teachers, the former had a big paunch and the other one was huge in size.( no, he just had only one head )

It was again in the summer of ’09 I changed schools after graduating from high school and a new world of nicknames opened to me. This time I had the privilege or perhaps, become smart enough to moniker people around me.

“solanaceae” was the name which we used to call a teacher, simply due to his strange infatuation with the foresaid plant family.

I had my share of fun all through school life, experimenting and dubbing everyone around me. What’s your story??

p.s.: another nut was, well, a coconut. The man taught us mechanics – the physics of freely falling vaddies.

It hurts

 The poem was written on 31st mach '10:

It hurts

When you have nobody back home,

It hurts,

When people don’t trust you,

It hurts,

When belief is a word that’s strange

It hurts

It hurts,

When you realize,

The smile is fake,

It hurts,

When people sympathesize,

For god’s sake

It hurts,

When you know,

You have no shoulders to weep upon,

It hurts,

When you know,

There’s nobody u can trust upon

It hurts,

When you have to face it,

All alone in the big bag world,

It hurts…..

Never Did i say

This piece was written during the week I had to pass in isolation, and I realized that my friends were my real foes:-

Never did I say,

I want to walk with you,

All I wanted was,

You speak the truth.

Lonely days, cut off from the world,

Seem much more beautiful these days,

More, much much more,

Than your ugly false ways.

Your lies, your consolations,

Of no use,

Your evil notions.

If you’d have told me what it was

I would have never fled away,

A bit of trust, and lots of love,

I still want to come,

All the way.