murighonto

Originally published on www.metal-hq.com on 6 December, 2010. Republished.

Originally posted on www.metal-hq.com on Sep 13, 2010. Republished.


He walks with his camera. Plodding the negro streets from dusk till dawn. Waiting for a smell. A mere whiff. Of black and white. He walks for an answer. Or perhaps a question. The last piece. His hands are unsteady from the cigarettes. His feet torn by science. But a heart lifted by every new sight and sound that periodically and infrequently assaults him from every corner.

And in the morning all is forgiven. The monsters that danced around your sleepless bed at night have retreated to the dark and dank corners. Lest a stray beam from the sun reflects upon an invisible shiny surface and destroys them. And they wait. Their hideous formless bodies breathing in and out the noxious gases they inhale to stay rotten. For you, the unconsoled to return. They wait. Just so the vicious assault of insomnia and sweaty sheets may continue. Night after night. They wait.

In the solitude of darkness.

The promises to self have been broken. The self-afflicted wounds have turned to scabs. The saturation is at it's velvety wettest. The days pass by swift and uneasy with every move of the celestial cog. The restless mind still seek the comforts of a past routine. Lungs collapse and then rise again in habituated boredom. The heart pumps relentless.

The machine has been turned on for thirty years. And it continues to grind through space and time. Producing nothing but a continuous deep and mournful grating sound.

No, it was of no use - I had not changed, and never would.
There was a soft spot in my nature, a strain of weakness, a
sensitivity that would never harden. All that I longed, and
had striven, to be - cool and stoical, detached and aloof, a
true Spartan - was beyond me. Marked ineradicably by my
singular childhood, by an upbringing in which too many women
had participated, I was, and always would be, the victim of
every sentient mood, the unwilling slave of my own emotions.

The last few lines of A Song of Sixpence by AJ Cronin, my most favourite writer in the whole world. Possibly because of these lines itself. It rains today. And I sit here trying very hard to shrug it all off and slowly, calmly collect the scattered pieces.

Monday mornings can be made fresh and crisp with notes from long-lost friends, a dead cellular phone, a cup of freshly brewed Darjeeling and the brittle remnants of a dream at dawn. The mind suddenly lifts above the obvious, the smoke and the haze of a big city and finds itself transported to a winter morning, ten years ago. Wrapped in the comforting smell of a woolen pullover and freshly washed hair.

Just because I have been away from this place doesn't mean I haven't been doing. I have. Terribly big things. Part of the evolution process. And I am only getting better. Sharper. Smoother. Shinier. Longer lasting. With extra additives for more power. Home delivered occasionally (on request). With great discounts for early birds.

Now there are a few things that I have been ignoring as well. Littler things. Invisible to the naked eye. Things that require complicated math. And round-shouldered, bald-headed, musty accountants to reprimand you mildly on occasion.

It's the last thing I need to do before I can label myself 'new and improved'. For your collective benefit. And perhaps even, mine.

And these are the last lines I will write for her.

One morning as you wake up you suddenly realise that the best parts about your life exist only in your head. As little videos running at varying frame rates. Yellowing memories with smiling faces of people who are not part of your world anymore.

This is a time when all are hopeful. When everyone is obsessed with shedding the old and looking forward to newer things. To stronger relationships. To better investments. To tastier diet plans. To faster, more fulfilling gratifications. To functional governments. To hair-fall products that actually work. To new-fangled substitutes for loneliness. Towards betterment. And in my quest for a future, enhanced me, I too will be abandoning a lot of my possessions. My intangible accumulations of more than two decades that I will give up, perhaps forever. An eclectic mix of habits, traits, mannerisms, fears and anxieties collected from a variety of sources. Gun-toting heroes of Spaghetti Westerns, hand-me downs from not-so perfect gene pools and dated, fictional idols from books.

And as I carefully pull each one out from deep within me, I remember a former self from a few years back. Comfortable, irreplaceable and invincible. And if only I could get back, to have a little chat with myself and exhibit the most pathetic specimen of my casual recklessness. Also known as, Me.

Above: Calvin and Hobbes travel time in a cardboard box. I think Bill Watterson could see the future.

Like every other new year, this too slipped in. Cunningly amidst much fanfare and drunken revelry so that no one would be alert enough to notice the large, rather inconspicuous bag of red days. Days that will start like any other. Days with leaky faucets and elevators that refuse to budge. Days with irate phone calls and the apparent stench of defeat. Days that will suddenly change gears mid-way and present you with the opportunity to change your life forever.

If only you notice.

Trust Mark Stivers to come up with this. Through this New Year I am determined to change a lot of things. A part of my evolution towards Phish 2.0. As a small step, I started with the template of my blog, an experiment that has been received well. The next step is towards being a better listener. Hopefully and completely. Happy New Year. May you find love.

Image courtesy Mark Stivers. He is a very funny cartoonist and a piano tuner from Sacramento, CA. I am a huge fan.

Approximately 2000 kms away from the shiny, happy people of Bombay I have a little vault. In which rests the collected paraphernalia of a now hazy life. The vault lies patiently in wait. For me to come by occasionally and turn the contents over, slowly and meticulously. Like a collector of fine china, taking in each piece to quietly marvel at it and yet be terribly careful not to chip it. It is where I stumble upon faded smiles, doodled notepads, dog-eared comic books and smudged photographs of happy dogs, all of who are probably in heaven now.

Even before I landed here, I had decided to walk the city. To plod heavy on the grey pavements that have nourished thousands of the starving souls that needless youth over the world seem to acquire at some point before adulthood. To give in to the unique sights and smells of every serpentine lane that vein across the grimy, sweat-stained heart of the metropolis. Hence, armed with a heavy sense of motivation (and brand new saintly-white Adidas shoes) I started walking. And with each dusty step, I found a little note. Left behind by a younger, former me.

I found the little cafe that we could never walk into fearing it to be expensive. The shuffling old ushers, bent with consumption, at the local cinema, now as derelict and run-down as its light bearers. Our bumpy (and very dangerous) pitch at the cricket field which the kids from the other neighbourhood never dared to step on. The corner newsstand where we flipped through trembling girlie magazines. The dusky, winter evenings spent on park benches huddling and coughing as we struggled with perfecting smoke rings. The window that became the cynosure of our lives because of the unseen, pretty girl who lived behind it.

In varying degrees of intensity they came back. The bits and pieces. Broken and in parts. Shrapnels of memory that are impossible to remove surgically. Lodged deep inside, destined to cause pain for as long as I live.

30 days of leave lie in front of me. 30 (apparently, very expensive) days that the company that I work for granted me. 30 terribly short days that I have to get maximum purchase out of. 30 days of potentially life-altering circs. 30 days of uppishness. 30 days of colour. 30 days of blank pages.

And I just wasted the last 45 minutes to find an appropriate cartoon.

I don't know who drew the cartoon. But I think I understand what he's trying to say.

You can always tell a rich girl by the way she does her hair.

Someone once told me that man, intrinsically, does not change. The very core of us remains the same. Irrespective of time, environment and experience. So if you were a procrastinating, lazy, run-of-the-mill, average, vanilla advertising writer with no remarkable skill sets, chances are you still are. And will forever remain to be. People don't change that fast.

But the efforts are exemplary. To learn more. To know more. To grow exponentially and without limit. Academically, financially, socially. To seek out and grip that invisible rung that's keeping us from reaching the top and the world beyond it. Every few seconds the auto mechanism kicks in. Tweaking itself a little to adjust, recoil and take yet another frog leap into space. Recording the data of every unsuccessful attempt with absolute precision. Only to repeat them. Over and over again.

Which is why the decision to upgrade myself is not so bad. To quit is harder than I thought. To change altogether, excruciating.

But evolution is a good idea. That's what they all say, anyway.

When in doubt, get Gary Larson. And sure enough. The image is copyrighted. I used it because I am a fan. Not a pirate. Or a scumbag. Though, sometimes I can be both. With utmost efficiency.

Been close to two months ago that I visited this place. Armed with a middling philosophical treatise about loneliness and an abstract justification of an addiction. Fifty soot-slimed, grueling and acidic days of work later, I am here again. With an entirely different self and purpose. And a little surprise (worth one cm displacement of either eyebrow, either way) of a announcement.

I quit smoking.

It's not a resolution. I am not in love with a non-smoker. And I am not playing out a silly macho bet with anyone. I just quit. One sultry evening inside a taxicab I decided to just give up. I have been smoking for 14 years. It has been a good, loyal friend holding me up in the empty hours between good and bad times. Providing me with a warm, crackling glow and a temporary haze. Just when I needed it.

Been ten days now and I am still surviving. The first three days were horrible though. I don't really know what or how long the detox process is. But I am willing to go through with it. After a long time I am doing something for myself. And it feels good.

Really.

That's from Gaping Void. With just the kind of words that were forming in my head. Forty seconds ago.

All I really need now is a lazy cigarette. To create a cloud bank of suspended blue smoke coils over my head. Much like a speech blurb in a comic book that the artist forgot to letter in. Condemning the character to eternal silence. And you never know if his facial expression is contorted in laughter or in pain.

There are days that last a thousand hours. And all you need is a warm, safe smell to crawl into at the end of them


Life in Hell is a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening. The strip features anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers called Akbar and Jeff. Groening uses these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death. His drawings are full of expressions of angst, alienation, self-loathing, and fear of inevitable doom. And I can see why some of you are smiling.

2.30 in the morning is a fine time to reassess your life. The fading sounds of sleepy vehicles, the rhythmic pattern of rain, the silent hum of the air conditioner and the distorted, moving light patterns on the ceiling create the perfect setting. To the cranking of rusty machines in your head, as you twist the handles of memory, wincing with each painful print it pushes out in exhaustion.

So I decide to write. I need to put an end to this break. Time and I have severe compatibility issues. Actually, like most things in my life, I have never given it the importance it deserves.

I went to watch a film yesterday. After 16 months of finding excuses, yesterday I finally ran out. The film was good enough. I quite enjoyed it. Drank two-thirds diluted coke. Used the men's washroom twice. Choked on a popcorn kernel. Smoked the exact length of a cigarette with three seconds to spare. I also managed to fall in love with the actress (I still am, I think).

In the last few days my social self was at its best. I was invited to a friend's house for dinner. A college re-union of sorts. Most of these people are now married. I sat there slowly getting drunk as the women fluttered their wings around me cooing infrequently that I should be next in line. Their husbands just looked at me glassy-eyed like cattle after yet another exciting afternoon of chewing cud.

I also met up with Gaurav (read: the life of others). I was one of the chosen few he decided to give away his stuff to. We got talking (got dangerously drunk on some extremely potent martinis actually) I never really wanted any of his stuff. And I told him so (though he is giving away a selection of his precious books to me). I really wanted to meet him and figure out a few things. About him. And maybe, in the process, a little about me as well.

That's also because I am a little confused today. Setting up the apartment has taken up most of my productive hours in the last few weeks. I have spent a lot of time thinking of ways to ensure it is liveable. And likeable. To get the futon at the exact angle that faciliates the flow of positive energy and yet make the living room look bigger. To carefully select and arrange my assortment of framed pop art posters. To get lamps that best reflect my delicate disposition. To ease out the slightest oohs and aahs out of the people I allow inside. Which in turn helps me to mould their view of me just as I want. Without seemingly trying too hard.

And I wanted to meet someone who was really shedding all of that. I was interested to know if that means we are really changing our intrinsic selves. Our core. That what makes us, us. I wanted to understand if we are really giving away mere objects or are we really shedding ourselves of all the little layers that we have accumulated since birth. There is no real answer. Gaurav's situation allows him to experiment with the concept. Something that gives him more elbow room. And I wish him luck in his endeavours.

I, on the other hand, find myself in a cupboard. Stifled and yet comfortable. But I don't chide myself. There's still a lot to do. A lot to find out in my cultivated and nurtured darkness. And only once I know what exactly I am hiding from can I face it completely. The inertia, the sleeplessness, the longing, the battery of self-abuse can only stop then.

The mission statement has been written. I need to manage my information systems and processors more efficiently. To better understand my motivators. To strive to meet the exacting standards of self can only be possible once we have the necessary qualifiers. One that enables me to stay on the road. And not meander away into the fields to have chats with smiling scarecrows.

Or develop a sudden, intense schoolboy crush on an actress.

Theology was never my favourite. But Peanuts is different. No?