Taking clothes off in a stadium...

There are times, when I happen to be running late for an appointment, a meeting, a party, or even work, and I feel the craving to have one of those Back to the Future cars that could just hop in the air and go flying around wherever required!

Today was another one of those days! I had this craving from the very moment I pulled out of my street this morning. My head was pulsating with the irritating feeling that can neither be called pain nor numbness. May be it was my blocked sinus, or I possibly slept through the night with my head exposed to cold. May be I was just hungry. Hunger! This rang some bells, in my already buzzing head as well as my stomach! Now I knew!! it was that bucket full of Dunkins' cappuccino that I had had before going to bed at 2. So I started munching on pieces of the vegetable roll my mother had placed in the passenger seat as I hurriedly sat in the car.

I had yet not finished either the roll nor the silent appreciation of Mama's tasty cookery, when I drove right into a traffic jam, caused by uniformed policemen dragging the rusted and deshapped barriers in the middle of the road just before the District Courts compound! So much for my indulgence in the breakfast on the roll...

It was 8:50 am when the traffic was blocked, for an unknown reason. And it was 9:45am, when somebody from the office called me back to tell me why the routes had been blocked. The army man was taking off his uniform finally, at the Hockey Stadium on the Mall. So all the arrogant asses who had not stayed at home to watch the patriot's sacrifice on the national tv channel, were now running around in circles, trying to get to the places they would have reached hours ago, if our nation's great leader had deprived us the awareness of this event happening! It is a democracy after all! The public must know everything!

And there we were, the arrogant members of public, wasting fuel on the roads, running late for our commitments, enjoying awareness of the history being made!

It was 10:45am when the traffic finally thinned enough to allow me to shift the car in the third gear. It was a moment of relief!

But happy moments tend to be short lived! An exhausted and probably dying housefly spiralled in front of my eyes, and zoomed straight in one of my nostrils! Instinctively I shook my head as voilently as I could while keeping my hands on the steering wheel. The car swayed between the lanes, the surrounding cars honked curses at me. The housefly flew out of my nose and landed on top of the glove compartment. I pulled the car back in control, looked at the fly with my furious eyes, and slapped my left hand where it was replenishing its energies to make another flight and saw it spiral downwards, probably dead! But I was not satisfied yet. The democratic nation of my car had infuriated me!

So I looked at its filthy blood on my hand and muttered, "Maadar Ch**d..! Dalla!!! Kuttay ka bacha!"

I felt pretty relaxed when I reached the office 3 hours late than usual! My empire had been taken care of temporarily. Hopefully no more houseflies would bother me in my car...

This is how the chili crumbles...

I entered the kitchen, with an air of anticipation, to prepare the evening tea, while mama was busy with some other chores. It is pretty unusual for me to be home on a weekend around tea time. Usually I am away running some errands, or sleeping through the summer heat until the sun goes down. Quite obviously today was an exception. Not only I was at home, wide awake, but I was also going to do something for mama.

So there I was, walking past the familiar yet alienated appliances that furnish the place. The lights were off, and the only facilitator of visibility was dim, suffocated sunlight, escaping through the window, shadowed by a tree in the backyard. While walking towards the cooking range, I noticed a tray full of homegrown freshly plucked Green Chili Peppers on the shelf. I felt happy to see there was plenty of them. It had been a while we had not been able to find any from the market, with so much aroma and taste. When I stepped right past the tray towards the range, I stepped on something that cracked under my foot, with a squishy feeling under the shoe. I swore under the breath, for having stepped on one of the peppers I was just so reverently praising a moment ago.

A bigger concern was mama's anticipated reaction on the mess that was now lying on the floor. So I had to clean it up. Which meant I needed more light. I decided not to turn back, and continued walking to the cooking range. After switching on the lamp in the hood, I turned around to take a look at the damage I had caused to the poor pepper. What I saw was a little confusing... there was no pepper on the floor. I stared sheepishly on the still dimlit floor, pondering on the fact that the crack I heard was definitely not of a roach getting killed under my foot, and even if it was, it was hard to believe it could've crawled out of sight after enduring the weight of a 210 pound monster that I am.

Tea had lost the priority now, I wanted to find out what I had stepped on, and where it had gone! So I walked across the kitchen, switched on all the lamps there are in the kitchen, and started searching the floor again.

For a few seconds, I did not register anything unusual on the brown marble chips flooring. But then I saw it. The pepper was there, but it had turned a very unusual color of beige, and it had its head and tail raised in the air, eyes wide open, shining like tiny orbs of onyx, with absolute pain and shock. It turned its head clockwise, where I was standing, in a very slow motion, just like a robotic replica of a Jurrasic dinosaur would move. It probably did not like what it saw, and I guess did not want to die looking at the monster who killed it. So the head turned the other way, even slower this time, and apparently, running out of life before reaching the desired position, it collapsed half way through, and never moved again.

The beige pepper was dead, a couple of tiny red droplets shone on the floor beside its belly. I looked away, uncertain if I was sorry or actually disgusted, on the sight of a lizard I had just killed.
I never knew before today, that lizard blood was also red...

I did not have the heart neither the gut to deal with gruesome stuff, so I chose to face the music on not cleaning up the mess. Made a mental note to make sure I did not step on the corpse again, and continued with the tea. Mama told me it tasted good, before I told her about the misadventure.

For some reason, the tea did not taste as great as mama had put it... and she also told me the gardner had removed all the green chili peppers from the backyard, the season was over! He planted pink roses this time!

I am a man of knowledge...

"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I used to love Kay Dicky!
I still do actually, for having just the kind of personality one could religiously despise. I wonder if I will ever be able to come across another person like that. It is always good to be able to curse somebody with every profanity available in your vocabulary! It used to save me the trouble of having bruised knuckles, which they usually are when I punch anything in the line of sight to shed some frustration off my mind. Although he was not the one and only rival I ever had in my life. I also love that brat who stole my unique steel ruler from me when we were in the first grade, and then so blatantly accused me of trying to rob him when I tried to claim it back. Back then my teachers used to be too scary to be dealt with. So I decided to shut up and love him for the rest of my life for giving me the knack for always being worried about my stuff. And I also love Harry, the one who loved to stab me in the back every possible chance he got! Hell I think I love the whole world!

I think it is just easy to love your enemies, but it is so much harder to hate your friends. But I must prove that I am a man of knowledge. So I hereby declare that I hate my friends plenty!

I hate Butterson for his never deflecting righteousness. Especially when he preaches patience when some lame driver starts behaving like he inherited all the rights to the road from his step father! I hate Dexter for the whiner that he is. For him, everybody is a backstabber and he is the biggest victim of all the unfairness that ever occurs on this planet!

Billy is a lost case altogether! He occupies that special position in the gang, who would always have some innocent demand that would be impossible to grant. Can you imagine letting one of your best buddies go home when you are out on a fun party? Only because he is sleepy? And just imagine the boils that cook up when he has ignored me recently, left my calls unanswered and unreturned, and is now telling me that he is sorry he didn't answer the calls because he wanted to ignore me!

There is this South East Asian proverb, which if translated in English would sound something like, "Two guns cannot stay in one holster". That would be the case with Ali! It is simply not possible to avoid conflict when two men with well developed nerves for aggression hang out together! And I just hate it when I end up making a compromise to avoid that conflict! I hope he also hates me for the same reason!

Mostly, however, both of us find a common outlet. There is a great personality around us with an anatomy of a garbage bag! Everytime the gang would be having fun, James would be complaining that he needs to go for a poop! But it's not the pooping schedule only, he also carries the capability of saying the most irritating thing that can be said in a moment. And he is going to die with the trademark question, "What is convergence?".

With this comprehensive account of my love for my enemies and my hatred for my pals, I think I can positively claim that I am a man of knowledge.

But wait, I forgot to mention Feddy! Well, now that I've come to think of him, I can't seem to find a reason to hate him! Hell I think he's not even my friend at all! I think he is my enemy after all! And I love him! For the great brains that he has!

Nuff said!

The Spectator Initiative

"He wrapped himself in quotations, as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors."
- Rudyard Kipling

It is amazing how most of us live through our nameless lives, praising those who managed to nominate themselves to the chambers of greatness. Never taking even the tiniest of an instant to wonder why our paths do not or can not lead us to the same heights.

I have actually lost the sense of how long it has been, that everyday, I find three new quotations from celebrities of present and the past, read them, and write them down somewhere. Often to quote them in my correspondence with acquaintances and colleagues. I do not really know why and how I started this. What I know is that everyday, with every quotation, I hold myself accountable, for not bringing myself in the position where my words, probably not as ordinary as most of these quotations are I believe, would also be feverishly looked up by the people around the world. By those who seek inspiration, or direction, or may be simply wit!

For all that matters, it is not his words that would make one a celebrity, but his actions. Actions, that I have always wanted to take and never have. For my indolence has always controlled the best of me.

Today, I raise mutiny against this lethargy. I write this with an aspiration to break free, and tread the path that leads to a chamber of greatness. My chamber of greatness!