Saturday, December 25, 2010

Jerry Almighty

Jerry my sis’s 10 month old cute cocker spaniel is home these days along with Danny, my sis and their five year old kid, my niece Sarah. He has big hazel eyes, a rotund head and innumerable soft curls on his long ears. Maybe being brought up in an open area in the suburbs of Dehradun has made Jerry hyperactive, maybe it is a “pup thing” but he goes berserk at times running around the whole house skidding and slipping and nipping at things and sprinting anywhere, even into dead ends, at full speed.

The one thing that comes to my mind when I see this old pup is “passion”. He seems to be passionate about everything that he wants to do; at times these are not necessarily things that would earn him the title of a good dog. They wanted a dog as a snake alarm system for Sarah since she plays in the open in a place that is abound with snakes. As luck would have it, Jerry seems to be missing the exact quality that would enable him to do this. The word “caution” does not seem to exist in Jerry’s dictionary. Jerry loves and loves to be loved the family can’t help but give in to his charms, and many a time, his helplessness.

Quite frankly, Jerry would fare better as a mongoose for I know he will behave like one the moment he sees a snake; I pray that snakes keep away from both Jerry and Sarah. I am also quite thankful that Jerry managed not to find the leopard that was on the prowl in the area where my sister lives. In other circumstances he would to invite the pardus to play with him and that would have conferred everlasting peace on the twitchy, restless Jerry. That would have been one messy Tom and Jerry show.

I think Jerry’s claustrophobic in our city because we always leash him before he leaves home and our home is smaller than my sis’s. Walking Jerry is quite an experience. Jerry loves being outside and the moment he is, he transcends into a world of his own. He hardly ever looks up, his nose is constantly on the ground and he follows it like a dust particle in Brownian motion. He yanks and pulls the chain in every direction that his nose forced him to follow. I am surprised at the force with which he pulls me along. He’s a small dog to be generating that intensity of force, like I said, he oozes passion and he follows his nose with the same and when he encounters me trying to stop him, he pulls with every ounce of energy in every muscle of his body. In the beginning I almost fell from the hard yank but slowly understood that this dog doesn’t pull as light as he weighs. He never looks at me, never implores the way he does when he wants to eat, he just pulls as hard as he can, I see he legs neck and back in action trying to break free from the invisible me.

Jerry neither learnt to fear or scare anything. I have heard stories of him scaring big dogs. Witnesses say that the victims are more taken by surprise at Jerry’s haphazard motion than anything else. He seems like some small object that is moving haphazardly and too fast to be clearly visible that they get spooked. Anyway the little zealot’s inquisitiveness once landed his buttocks in the jaws of a bad tempered dog who didn’t give two hoots about the randomness in the universe. My sister turned to be more dangerous of the competition and rescued a confused Jerry from the grip of what would have been a couple of stitches and shots of antibiotics.
Of course Jerry forgets and therefore forgives and I still have to take off with him at the first sight of the ferocious stray dogs in the area before they see Jerry or vice versa. In the former case I doubt I’d be able to outrun the danger and in the latter, the would-be victim is sure to pull me towards the danger in a fury of excitement and inquisitiveness, I therefore am as alert as a dog while walking little Jerry while he’s lost in a wonderland of scents and odours. But I hats off to his ears (or whatever sense) for tonight I saw a dog sprinting towards us from a distance and I am sure Jerry saw nothing with his nose buried in a pile of leaves while I goaded him to run along with me and climb the flight of stairs to my home but no sooner had the mutt crossed under, Jerry sensed the presence of his contemporary and started to whine and pull madly at the chain. He gets too excited on seeing other dogs. Last night I told him to shut up when I got hyper on seeing a big German Shepard cross us and started to pull crazily at the chain to go closer to it. The big dog crossed nonchalantly but then looked at me with a puzzled expression as if trying to say “is this pup for real?”

I see Jerry all excited about life and all inquisitive and eager to explore even while I restrain him with a leash for I know there are places I do not allow him to go for the sake of his safety, I tug at his leash seek cover for him every time I sense danger. All the while Jerry never looks at me! He’s busy doing his thing and I’m non-existent for him. I wonder if I treat god the same way. If one exists that is. Just a silly passing thought on the eve of Christmas. Merry Christmas 2010 every one.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

I remembered you till the time I didn't remember to call. -JSS

Monday, December 20, 2010

Proponents

T’was Sanjit’s B’day and I managed to not call him somehow; I suffer acute and fulminant procrastinitis.

Hashmat came over and we left for CCD-35 to meet Ashish and the others of whom we did not know. I went in the car after my bike refused to start which I later found out was because of the weak battery. At CCD, the others were Puja, Ashish’s son (who still doesn’t have a name), Mayuri and Jason.

After a few wise cracks we got to describing how the year had been for each one of us. My words were egotistical, centered on me, myself and I, how I’d hit rock bottom but risen like the Phoenix etc etc. Hashmat’s were poetic and talked about how he didn’t care much about the days gone by and the one to come but about the present moment; he even laced it with Urdu verses and it sounded nice. Puja’s was about becoming a mother and staying awake and how life-changing the whole experience was. Ashish’s was the same (of course not mother but a father) and also about how he switched his job to work for a not-well-known company (Yikes! I was about to use the word “infamous” incorrectly here), Mayuri’s was also about being phoenix but unlike me, she credited it to the power of God and I don’t remember what Jason said. Alexanderson didn’t say much but was busy absorbing the sights and the sounds around him after he woke up.

Another interesting topic that was talked about was how Facebook usage has been followed by a concomitant decrease in blogging activity and I corroborated this by my firsthand experience. This is one of the reasons that I am writing this post, for I do not feel like writing about this or any other experience anymore and it has mostly to do with my using Facebook. I believe that to want to write about something, something should stand out from the norm like a beacon staring at you in the face. That potential energy gets sapped away in trifling short messages to friends and never builds up enough once you feel that you’ve already talked about it. This post, no matter how insignificant or boring, is an attempt to break that habit of not writing. So although I do not really feel like writing right now, I am.

Ashish also informed us about an essay competition, the prize of which is an all-expense-paid literary tour of England. The details are given on the website www.revelationmovement.com. I am excited about it, not that I think that I have a chance but thinking that it would probably help me read a book or two, since I cannot get myself to read any.

An interesting discussion on God ensued and turned intense and though I remember it being great, I don’t remember the details anymore. Probably because it is 1:30am and I am sleepy but I am glad that I wrote.

Friday, December 17, 2010

When something needs to be done about a lot of things then you really should stop procrastinating. - Jesse S.Samuel

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Rid(d)er

Afternoon: I fixed my bike
Evening: I thought I’d fixed my bike
Late evening: I’m in a fix here

I dunno what to make of this; was it divine intervention to make me go back to cycling, was it a wakeup call to stop procrastinating for good, did it serve to humble my loud-mouth, was it something to help me slow down and look at my life for once or was just a great script for comedy. I’d like to believe it was combination of all.

Last evening after almost losing my leg to kick starting a bullet in vain, I took a lift half way to my place and then boarded a rickshaw. Things so happened that I couldn’t manage more than 4 hours of sleep in the night. Today morning I boarded a bus to my workplace carrying my helmet. I had to walk some distance from the stop, accompanied by two people from my institute, one of which unwittingly said some nasty things about someone I care for, of course totally oblivious to the latter till I bombarded him with interrogation regarding the legitimacy of his blab. I manage to embarrass him but not without upsetting myself as well.

In the afternoon, I went to check if my bike would start. With a warm battery in the afternoon sun, it took a few kicks to revive the beast from coma. I heard the dug-dug long enough to smile and forget the morning’s incidence. In the evening, I returned to my dug-dugi and kicked again. Something about the way she wheezes that tells me if she’s gonna start in a while or just slip into coma again. She sure slipped back into coma but not without sending my leg into one as well. I decided I’d drag the fat-ass to the mechanic and did so. I reached there only to find the workshop locked and caught up a few breaths to drag it back to the institute. I realized my mistake, I’d ignored the battery water level way too long and in the cold evening, it couldn't even cough a spark into the spark-plug. I asked one of the guards at the institute for water and he offered warm water in an aluminum kettle. As I poured the life giving water into the battery, the PAPARAZZI arrived. My batchmates,seeing my pour warm water into my bike stopped and cracked wise jokes on me

“OMG! If you’d give such love to a woman, she’d keep you happier than your bike”,

“Wow! This thing runs on water? Warm water?”,

“Click his picture! We gotta upload this on facebook!”

“Evening out with your girlfriend eh!, why don’t you both go to a restaurant…err! Petrol pump!”

Sure they clicked my pictures as if they’d seen Paris Hilton’s underwear…or Paris Hilton without one…and then they disappeared without offering any help.

Outside, seeing my ordeal, the rickshaw walas, warming their hands around a bon-fire, were staring at me like hyena’s eye a dying prey. I walked up to them and asked how much they’d charge to take me to my place and I was quoted a price of 100 bucks (I mean come on, it's not like they had to carry the bike as well, it was just me). I walked back showing them my middle finger but they smiled. Maybe they thought it was some kind of thumbs-up.

I walked up to the hostel to the paparazzi hideout and told them to give me one of their bicycles (yeah I didn’t ask, I told them), they offered one provided I get my pic clicked on the bicycle wearing all my leather biking gear. I obliged and dutifully showed them the middle finger and they smiled too. No sooner had a cycled a few yards, I realized that the cycle was too small for me and its seat was made of some material that can be aptly called softwood.

My knees were just an inch odd away from the handlebar at their closest point and my weight was too much for the tyre pressure. I love cycling on my bicycle but this one was total pain and the cycle rode really heavy. As I made my way through IMTECH, whoever recognized me had a good laugh seeing me perched atop a relatively small bicycle and going zigzag trying to avoid the handle hitting my knees.

I heave-hoed my way through the less crowded roads in the beginning but as I hit the traffic I realized that the threat of being mowed down was very real; most motorists were on cell phone and/or overspeeding and caring two hoots about other “lesser” people. On every bend and corner I pedaled on like a freaked out snail watching cars and truck closing in, trying to wiggle out as fast as I could. I missed my Bullet and then later I started to miss my own bicycle which is a decently nimble machine. I watched Bullets going dug-dug past me and I sighed. I then realized that I was way too slow even for other cyclists but then was reminded of the adage “beggars can’t be choosers”. So I was beggars wasn’t I, I’d almost bully-beg-borrowed this tin-can I was riding.

Then something upset me: smoke, beedi smoke on my face, yuck! As if the vehicular exhaust wasn’t enough to pollute my lungs which were working overtime anyway, I had someone shoving tobacco smoke down my windpipe. I instantly looked at the source. It was rickshaw-wala in front of me and there we both were right under the bright streetlights. As more smoke rose and came to me, I looked at his ruffled white hair from behind; the white smoke and the white hair looked queer enough for me to forget about the filth of it for a while. As I strenuously wiggled to overtake him, I started getting a cleared picture of his face. First the ears, then the profile as I looked at the gaunt, heavily-wrinkled, weatherbeaten face of the old man I was mesmerized the thought of somebody painting a face like that or somebody capturing a picture like the one I was getting to see. As he puffed on his beedi in a style that looked so original it could be used as a video-lesson for actors, it seemed like he didn’t need to look up to the traffic to know where it was coming from or where it was going but he kept going without committing a hair of a mistake. His legs and one hand were on autopilot and his face and other arm were lost in the ecstasy of the beedi smoke. It seemed like to him there was nothing to the world cept his beedi; a strangely awesome sight. Then I thought I’d have missed it completely had I been on my bike.

As I crossed pretty women on the road, I, now perched atop a funny looking “nothing”, realized how impossible it was to get them to catch even glimpse of me; a shiny bike does shimmer me into moments of fleeting attention doesn’t it. And after a few such incidences, I realized how inconsequential that need for attention is.

This could’ve happened only on this bicycle for when I’m on my own, I’m concentrating more on racing with the motorized traffic and winning for a while; I realized that even that was a silly thing to do. I realized that all baabu-cycles riders were old men.

Then I found myself on the road right across my alma-mater. I realized that I crossed it every day but never looked at it. This time I was slow enough to spot my last classroom in the dark, I stared at it for a while and then instantly shifted my sight across to the other side to the two palm trees I loved looking at during a boring class and was overjoyed to spot them as well and in fact they did seem a little bigger than my recollection of them; 14 years is a long time.

By now I had gained some speed and was happily swaying left and right as I pedaled down home. It had been quite a while, or had it? I checked the time, it had been 25 minutes since I left and home was probably another 10 odd minutes away at that speed. Just then something bit me on my knee. Some godforsaken insect had probably made its way up there…Yeeooww! That hurt. I squished whatever it as was from outside between the fold of my jeans.

When home was in sight my cell phone began to vibrate, I took the call, it was from Arijit

“so how does it feel like to cycle up to home?” he barely managing to control his laughter. Apparently some nit-wit had updated Facebook about my condition even before I reached home.

“Awesome” I replied. I really enjoyed the ride.