Sweet Dreams

I fell into a dreamless sleep
while dreaming afore,
and then i dreamt no more.

The Chemical Lab

I saw
the chemist
through the window
of the chemical lab

bent intently
mixing concoctions
in vials

he leaned  back a moment later
and sucked in Chemical X
letting it mix
with chemical Y
which he had procured during lunch
an hour ago

some catalysts
were subsequently added
not too much
not too little
in just the perfect proportion
so that the reaction
could go
to completion

the byproducts
were carried away
by a river of liquid
it would be filtered, to the last molecule
further downstream
in chemical filters

the heat produced
warmed his body -
he drew another breath
and life went on

I looked again
and I saw
a chemical lab
through the window
of the chemical lab

Messenger

The pen
scribbles across
an empty page

like a messenger
carrying a love letter
from one lonely edge
to the other

The Eiffel Tower

Had the eiffel tower come to life
one morning
it would have seen tiny humans,
toiling under the midday sun
like ants in a  colony
organised to the last detail

Walking in lines, on the footpaths
or driving in cars along the roads
true to their roles - workers , soldiers
laboring for the queen
slogging for the colony

they would all look the same
from high above
round heads on broad shoulders
with legs jutting out  in quick succession
like the gears
of a well oiled machine

the stream of humanity
would of course,
be perturbed by the tower
look up , point,
the tower would get a glimpse of their faces
and look at  them flee, with mild amusement
and note that they were indeed human

the tower would then enter the river
and see the colorful fish
swimming in schools
along the current
with their flippers flapping
in quick succession
like the gears
of a well oiled machine

the fish too would scatter,
but without looking up

and then the tower would wonder,
about existence,
was it the humans who built it?
or was it the fish?

as the sun would set
the tower would head back
to paris
its metal pillars clanging on the paved road

if on its way
it accidentally stepped on a human
it would wonder
whether the human would be grateful
for being freed.

Of Lost Spectacles

Its annoying when i lose my spectacles. I exit the shower with a spring in my step- one of those long showers where you get lost in a protracted fancy, imagining yourself under a waterfall or swimming in a river, or prancing around with a swedish supermodel in the rain- exuberant at how light i feel in my new found aura of filthlessness. But my optimism is premature. Once i reach my room, i realize that everything is an incoherent blur; much like when one wakes up in the middle of the night with crap in one's eyes, and stumbles listlessly towards the very distant dorm toilet. Turns out that myopia stops being funny after a while, especially in moments like these. And the cold breeze taunting my soggy self doesn't help my sense of humor.

All proceedings are stalled until my specs i find. There's a very subtle irony in this situation, as if god were bored and in the mood for a practical joke or two. What i'm looking for is what i need to look for what i'm looking for. I can barely tell my thumb from my dong (i know what you're thinking, but i have a large thumb) -to be asked to find my ultra invisible pair of  spectacles is this state is almost a mockery of whatever sight i have left. Its like asking a one legged man to run a marathon.  And  invisible they are indeed, thanks to my insistence on buying  a pair which , i paraphrase- "don't stand out too much". I should have listened to mom. She likes me with the thick frames. Another pang shoots through me, the familiar pain that you feel when you realize that you should have listened to mom. Some common references- "Oh shit, the doctor says its lung cancer", or " This hangover is the worst hangover in the history of hangovers!" or even " Is it just me, or is this bungee chord too long? "- you get the idea.

The irony is not lost on me, its very much like cutting diamond, where the cleaver has a diamond tip. And you need a cleaver to make the cleaver with the diamond tip. I wonder how they made the first cleaver. Maybe some lucky caveman found a sharp piece of diamond to begin with, and set the chain in motion. Too bad he didn't patent it, he wouldn't have to live in a cave otherwise. Nevertheless, realizing my current predicament to be no ordinary one, i set about wistfully trying to recover the lost relic, groping around familiar spots where i usually set my specs down. I grab many an unexpected object during my thorough search of the room- a decadent  chocolate bar behind the suitcase under the bed (that explains the smell); the calculator that i'd lost an year ago, turns out it was under the book rack ; the skeleton of an abandoned lizard tail , which i don't chuck away in disgust, but feel the small bone joints of the structure  with my finger tips before carefully storing it away in my desk drawer. I realize how  creepy that sounds now that i'm writing it down, but it seemed perfectly normal at the time, trust me.

But fate is in a particularly cruel mood today, and I find quite a few long forgotten treasures, but nothing that could help me see . I begin to realize how wonderful an invention the specs are, restoring your vision as soon as you put them on , and they don't even need batteries to work . There's only the slight drawback - they can get lost. Its as if they sprouted legs and walked away. I've never lost something as dismally as I seem to have lost my specs. If there were a  category in the oscars for the "Most hopelessly lost thing", i think my glasses would definitely make the cut. Even if they don't win, they'll  definitely give stiff competition to  " Lindsay Lohan's virginity" and  " Taxpayers money in the commonwealth games" . And one could expect the speech to probably go as "I wouldn't have been able to do this without my wearer, who threw himself off the balcony the day i got lost. This (raising the golden statue above his head)  is for his sacrifice. Amen". I'll be the Heath Ledger to my spectacles Oscar . How sad is that?

I've missed my morning class already, and I don't think i'll ever find my glasses. The sun will cool to a white dwarf before I set my eyes on those wretched backstabbing life destroyers , fucking spectacles. Fuck them. I do not need a crutch of silicon dioxide to get on with my life. Myopic as an old horse that i might be, I still have my near vision intact. I pick up the newspaper, settle my wet ass down on the chair, and navigate to a random page. There's a report which claims that many of the books restricted by  copyright till now, are being made available to the blind in  braille, free of charge. It makes me feel better. In your face, spectacles.

"100% Scholarship"

"100% scholarship"
proclaims the billboard
protruding upward from behind the bush,
on a busy intersection.

It stands on rickety legs,
like those of a starved child,
and yet has the body of an obese man,
with sharp edges where the shoulders should have been,
without the head.

It is draped in paper and polythene,
it can barely breathe
but then the fumes of the rush hour traffic
aren't fresh air exactly.

Stunted in appearance,
spat on, scribbled on,
paid scant attention to,
a weirdo by all means.

All alone in the crowd,
and yet,
season after season, year after year,
in rain and in shine,
it stands there,
proudly proclaiming,
in big loud words --
"100% Scholarship"

Train Station

They hustle, they bustle,
a gushing torrent of muddy water,
not a uniform muddy, like the Ganges
but muddy like chocolate chip milk cookies,
a confluence of shades of brown,
testimony to the hours spent, laboring under the tropical sun,
Like the glittering bands of red and orange and green,
on a war veteran's verdant uniform
they wear their color on their cheeks,
each a symbol of hardship, of strife
but while one glitters in all its glory,
the other is forgotten,
in the torrent of muddy water

Trains pull in hooting like a farting bull,
and smelling like one , too,
they empty many gallons of humanity,
on the grey simmering tarmac,
its high tide at noon on weekdays,
low tide at night, on weekends,
but no matter how torrid the weather,
the river never runs dry,
for there is forever the old man,
with his tattered old bag,
who lies by the east bound track
like the last drop of water,
in an empty sea.

Man's Best Friend

It looks at you,
imploring eager eyes
tail wagging and tongue sagging,
groveling in the mud, muzzling your toes,
so unabashedly vulnerable and yet with such careless abandon,
as if a friendly pat, a few gently mumbled nothings,
would fulfil its existence

Meanwhile bombs drop and havoc prevails
blood pours into the sea
like a crimson glacier at the peak of summer
markets plummet, economies crash,
meteors brush past and stars collide
storms rip through, ecosystems subside,
nations and masses collectively fret
solutions seem impossible to beget

And you look back at the joyous ball of fur cuddling at your feet,
gaze into the depths of those benevolent beads for eyes
and for that brief moment
all problems seem solved

Hitchhikers Guide to Orissa

I scribbled fervently as I finished the last question on the paper. Phew! A quick  glance at my wrist watch - 20 minutes to go yet. To hell with it. I stretched, took a look around, then wrapped up the assortment of various stationary scattered on and around my desk. I deposited my answer script on the relevant stack , and scampered out into the corridor. RIP mid semester exams.

Three days of open time, and that nagging urge to get out,  to spread my wings. My backpack had been sitting in   a quiet corner all week, silent and conscious of my situation , all the while staring at the uneventful wall behind it. I could almost hear it beg to be used. To be stuffed, hoisted, lugged through sand, swamps dust and jungles. Some offers are too good to refuse, and this was one of those. I sometimes wonder whether its my backpack which gave me my traveling bug ... it has been around before it reached me, and the travelling bug is said to be contagious.

So the plan was set, and a few more lunatics with backpacks joined the gang. Seven of us on the roadtrip, but there still was a major problem yet to be resolved - where do we head out to? Despite protests from some of the more lazy people, the compass was set south, and we decided to head out to Orissa. Chilka lake to be more precise, and its vast unexplored bird and animal life;  its sprawling scenic backwaters, and waterfalls in near vicinity. More about the waterfalls later.

So here's the gang - there's me , mod , the resident you-know-what hole. There's Ankit "bada sutta" Verma, calm, quiet, and with a notorious air - straight out of a mafia film,  just that he's indian. Then there's Sanket "Gultra" Deshmukh, dazed, angry, amused and  hysterical in equal measure, alternating between the states and random. There's Vivek "Diablo" Sharma next - he's the exact opposite of gultra behaviorally and bs (bada sutta) physically. There's Nitish "Rathi" Rathi , typical haryanvi baniya with constantly thinning hair, and dripping with thick sarcasm. Sirish "Shishu" Subramaniam, the management guru who manages to find humor in the most unexpected of places, and has a gait like that of a emperor penguin.And last but not the least,  Amardeep "Amar" Gupta, with long feminine hair, and a body to match.

So we set off to Balguan, which lies on a tangent to Chilka lake. The train journey was what you can expect it to be if you travel unreserved. Three of us slipped  into the sleeper coach,  haggled with the TTE, and finally procured 3 berths. But wait - did i mention that there were seven of us ? The next six hours were spent constantly shifting positions, finding vacant voids for our stray limbs amongst the mess of mangled bodies, and accommodating even more illegal travelers on the floor and and in every nook and cranny large enough for a human body to fit in. The TTE made a second round later, demanding even more cash. We ran the typical drill of broke students with exams  (in Balugaon !??), and managed to show him a few empty wallets before he let us off the hook. I've never met an honest TTE in my life ; it's almost as if they have an procedure that filters out only the most morally flexible for the job.

Balugaon was a small and  forgotten station. Rathi, in quite typical fashion, was desperate to relieve his bowels, and after many failed attempts to locate a toilet in the immediate vicinty, took the chai-waalas sage advice and defecated on the tracks. "New experience" in his words. The seven of us stuffed into an autorickshaw meant for 5, and reached the edge of chilka just in time to catch my most gorgeous sunrise in recent memory. The sun rose gloriously from a sea of orange and pink, which gradually changed to purple and magenta, all the while flaunting its depth of shade in the rippling water originating from under fishing boats.

   

                                                      

A boat trip from Balugaon to Satpada promised us a view of the endangered Irawady dolphins - Chilka being one of the only two saltwater lagoons in the world where the dolphins reside. What we were not informed however, was that the boatride was going to 3 hrs long , in the mid day heat. The view was spectacular to start with, and the calm vistas of the gentle water seemed to seamlessly merge with the horizon in a distance. It was supremely peaceful - until the sun came into its element. All of us tanned by a couple of shades on that single boat ride, with gultra getting a headache and losing half of his sanity at the same time. Sishu lost the other half. We saw a few dolphins on the way - spectacular and elegant creatures, non chalantly leaping out of the water a few feet from the boat, whistling and gurgling in harmony. They had a skin of the color of the muddy brackish water, and had benevolent eyes a shade darker. I had a joyous fit the instance that i saw them, which soon settled down to a calm appreciation of my first dolphin sighting.

Satpada was another little town, centred mainly about dolphin tourism, with little shops running along the road as we headed in. Our plan was to travel to the Nirmalajhar "waterfall" a few kilometers from here, as confidently indicated on the wiki page. The OTDC rest house was our respite from the road, giving me the option of testing out the local crab for lunch, which turned out the be utterly horrible. The crab shell declared war against the soft tissue in my mouth, and while everybody had a full stomach afterwards, I was left with a bloody mouth and a stomach ache.

An overenthusiastic boatsman took charge of us there after, randomly getting hold of us in the street. The poor guy looked through the group of foreign tourists right behind us, bee-lining towards our confused group. I still cannot fathom what could have prompted his indiscretion, considering that we had empty wallets and were headstrong bargainers, not to mention the presence of  a baniya in our group. We were not complaining though - the guy had a boat, with a roof on it this time , and the boat was all our for the journey from Balugaon to Johnny Kuda (strange name, i know!) .




An incredible boat journey, dozing under the summer sun  while the warm surf washed against our boat, while gultra clicked away (himself) with a camera in hand on one end of the boat. Narcissism was defined after gultra was born, and his smiling skull in half of the pictures explains why.

                         

                

Another hard bargain from Johnny Kuda brought us to junction (what junction? the name slips my mind), which was some highway basically. We walked up to the driver, who was chatting away as if he didn't have a bus full of irate commuters waiting for the bus to start. We looked at the driver- and then we looked at the bus. It was so thoroughly packed that people were oozing out of the bars in the windows.  And then lightning flash - amar suggested that we could ride on the roof. The driver was hesitant at first - "dada, police pakdega highway par" --  one look at the bus - and all he could do was shrug his shoulders.

And then, we took off.

Gush after gush of cool wind hit us square in the torso, as the bus caught speed on the highway. The bus lethargically wound up the gentle slopes of the eastern ghats, as the temperatures noticeably dropped with the height. Off came the shirts and out came the mikes, as all of us showed off our mediocre vocals, shouting at the top of our lungs to overpower the whoosh of the wind. The people on the road below were quite bewildered , having seen such theatrics only from cattle and little children. The little children joined in the waving and singing, and before long we were at nirmalajhar. 

Now this is the Nirmalajhar that I had imagined it to be - a 50 feet waterfall with cool freshwater, falling into a   and pond followed by a  trinkling stream with leaping salmon , surrounded by green grasslands and burstling wildlife. The driver however stopped the bus in front of a dilapidated old hindu mandir , and announced - "aa gaya". We looked at each other for a second.  "Yahan se raasta kya hai ? " , enquired Verma innocently, expecting the reclusive waterfall to be buried in some deep alcove away from civilization. "Yahi hai dada", replied the driver, refusing to budge from his previously asserted predicament. We could see a square bathing pool inside the temple, but surely that couldn't be the famous waterfall. Verma, still desperately hopeful, prodded on - "Andar jaa kar hai kya kahin ? ". The driver, exasperated by the bunch of baby faced hopefuls asking dumb questions, reiterated for one final time - "YAHI HAI!!". And then he sped off.

Nirmalajhar wasn't too bad though, we had a blast bathing in the moss filled water. The little 10 feet by 10 feet pool was supposed to have an inexhaustible supply of holy water. Gultra enthused by the holy spirit, had a sudden urge to jump into the water, and everyone else followed. Holy or not, the water was soothingly cool, and a diving competition (in which i lost to rathi 9.5 to 9) capped the visit. Another trolley ride took us to the nearest railway station, where the station master told us to wait for a few hours before we could get a train to Puri. A few hours? You've got to be kidding me.

And hence the plan was made that we'd hitchhike to Kurdhan Road, and get a train from there to Puri. After a few reluctant drivers, one finally stopped to drop somebody off. Everybody had temporary amnesia, and forgetting their worn out states rushed to the truck. The truck driver, intimidated to see seven sleep deprived and drawling guys ganging up on him late at night , refused straight. However being a student in IIT prepares you to make the most absurd excuses to fit your cause (and explain your absence from class) - and suddenly one of us chimed in - "Dada, behen ki shaadi hai, baraat chhoot jayegi, please adjust!". The driver, quite possibly having attended quite a few emotional "behen ki shaadis" in his own family, melted like swiss chocolate, and let us on. 

2 hours in the open roofed lorry - with nothing but the steel floor underneath, and the open sky above. Shishu, being a eerily efficient opportunistic sleeper, dozed off immediately while the rest of us were battling with textured steel penetrating our rear sides. Diablo still had his ray bans on in the pitch dark, I wonder how much of the stars he saw. Before long we were at Khurdan Road, and on a late night train to Puri. 

Monday morning happened on the train. And with 12 am came holi. Now shishu, gult, diablo and me were asleep when the holy hour crept one. Verma, Amar and Rathi were not. They had been waiting.

Sirish was the first one to wake up fifteen minutes later. And then gultra, followed by Diablo. And they woke up with close up (the red and sticky kind) all over their faces. Sishu wiped his face off like he does every morning - before realising that he had heavy make up on -  and then looked at his sleeve. And then he looked at the faces around him ready to erupt with laughter. And then he understood.

Diablo woke up, felt his face, got angry, and went back to sleep. ("Bahut neend aa rahi thhi yaar"). Gultra woke up , disoriented for the first few minutes. And then he wiped his forehead... just to grab a fistful of closeup. In one of his crazy fits, he walked up menacingly to where verma , amar and rathi were standing, their smiles slowly devolving to terrified frowns. And then came the dialogue of the close-up kand -- " (pointing at Verma and then the left door)Mein tujhe is darwaaze se phekunga,  (pointing at amar and then the right door) tujhe uss darwaze se phekunga, (making cirlces in the air while pointing at rathi) aur tu, tu to gayab hi ho jayega ! " . And puri was here before we knew it. 

I still don't know why they didn't smear my face, verma told me later that they thought i had woken up. 

We reached Puri at 1 in the morning. We bifurcated into two parties - one headed directly to the beach, while sishu, diablo and I headed for  the Jagannath temple. We were almost attacked by bulls, dogs and monkeys on our way through the deserted roads. Despite being holi(y) day, the temple was deserted , with all the devotees in deep slumber outside the temple. We asked where we could get some prasadam, and we were pointed to a cave like room - which turned out to be a bat cave. So cool. Now tell me where I can eat. 

We had some great south indian prasadam, and assuming that it was for free, thanked the pundit and prepared to leave. He looked up at us - "120 rupees", he said, poker faced. We looked at each other, and sishu mouthed "lol". Well, at least we have full stomachs. And we saw the bats.

The beach was incredible, running along the knee deep surf in the moon lit night, when nobody is around, is incredible fun. We fooled around in the sand and surf  till sunrise. While i got high on the view, the hypnotic drone of the waves as they lashed the shore, and the golden sand sparkling under the silver moon,   Rathi, Verma and Amar stuck to the conventional methods of doing so. Morning came, and another spectacular sunrise.

We headed off to Konark after that. I don't recall what happened on the way, but Rathi does.

                                             

We had a lavish breakfast at the OTDC retreat, and rented a toilet. Gultra at this point was as alert as corpse on drugs, and fell face flat into his breakfast multiple times. I had some trouble with the toilet, which i assumed to be western, and it turned out to be and indian style elevated by a couple of feet. No worries though, I figured it out before it was too late.

The sun temple was  exquisite. The sandstone sculptures were masterful. And the themes were well ... different. Unabashed and elegant displays of raw human passion, bodies intertwined in hungry longing, as souls united to become one - it was almost lyrical. Gultra became obsessed with a particularly unfeasible position, which i'm sure he'll try out with his next female partner, if he can manage to find a gymnast girlfriend.

Back to Puri after barging our way through many road blocks ("Bura mat maano, holi hai!!!"), we took a train back to Kgp. Got proper sleeper tickets this time. We had some female company from Bhubaneshwar in our compartment, but we discovered that the instinct to sleep is far more overbearing than that for the propagation of the race, and hence the next five hours saw us collectively lowering the centre of mass of the coach - fast asleep. 

And then Kharagpur arrived. Back to the real world. My backpack is at peace now. But not for long. It never is.