Story Of A Weird (Weed) Night

(All characters in this story are purely fictitious and bear no resemblance to anyone. The story is purely imaginative and not meant to allude to any particular incident.)

Those days I was in Navi Mumbai. A few months earlier I had joined a very reputed pharmaceutical company in the city. Along with me sixty other young people had joined as part of an on the job professional training program.

I stayed with four of my colleagues. We had rented a small two bed room duplex house. I, Joy, Raj, Sanju were the first people to move in. Balu joined us a month later. His sister and her family were staying nearby, and he had put up at their place for the first few days. Balu moved into our house with an old bamboo cane sofa set, which was lying unused at his sister’s.

Our house had a hall, a kitchen and a big bath room on the ground floor. A flight of stairs on the inner wall led to the first floor where there were two bedrooms and a small bath room. There was a big veranda attached to the bigger bedroom. It was my favorite place to relax.

Joy was a stout and chubby guy. He was fun loving; bong by origin, but hailing from Gujarat. He loved food and would go to any extent to have good food. Every Sunday he would leave early in the morning, and roam around malls and shopping centers in various parts of Mumbai. Then he would find out a hotel that hosted a buffet, have his fill and come back. In the evening he would come back with stories of extraordinarily cooked tandoori, or a perfect glass of mocktail. He was a gadget lover too and preferred to be on the right side of the current trend.

Raj, the guy from Dehradoon, was a quite fellow, with dreamy eyes. You wouldn’t even realize his presence if his phone was kept in the silent mode. He had two mobile phones, one to receive missed calls from his girl friend and the other from which he made the calls. One or the other would always engage one charging point in the house. Nevertheless he would join in for any adventure or fun, and I liked him for that.

Sanju was a funny guy. He was an amiable fellow, a good singer, a simple guy who spoke fast and in a rather excited voice. He would sometimes hang his mobile phone from a band around his neck, and push it inside his inner wear to prevent its theft. He had an infectious laugh. I, Sanju and Raj, shared the same taste in cigarettes, Gold Flake.

Balu was a tall lanky fellow, with a baritone voice of extraordinary quality. I always felt he could have made his name in the theatre. But instead he chose to sit in our hall, and discuss worldly affairs, the effect of which would be greatly irritating, especially if it was late in the night. But it was good to have his sofa in our living room. We would use it for our telephonic conversations late into the night. I had also made some improvisations to use it as a bench for my weight training.

Joy had a number of relatives in Mumbai. He would visit them and tell us about the fabulous food he had, refrigerators full of chocolates in their house and such other things. Once he told us about his rich uncle who had a son, his cousin. This cousin was older than Joy and was a rock star in the making. Joy told us he would always be high on weed and sit in his room playing or listening to rock music.

We challenged Joy that he was telling lies. He had no such drug addict cousin and that he was making up stories. We dared him to bring us some of the stuff if at all what he said was true. All said and done, we had forgotten this entire episode, until one Saturday evening when Joy came up to us and showed us a packet. It was a small zip lock bag containing a single pellet of a grayish stuff. He said it was high quality ganja; he had borrowed from his cousin.

Ganja, cannabis, hashish, weed are the various names by which this narcotic goes.I had tried this stuff once or twice, during my hostel life, but had never really got any kick out of it. Even Raj said he had had a similar experience. I believed that either the guy who sold us the stuff, had sold us poor quality stuff, or it does not have any effect on me.

“Just this one pellet?” we exclaimed.

We hurled expletives at our chubby roommate for having brought such a stingy amount.

“This is useless, it will have no effect at all”, Sanju declared.

“You stupid fellows, you have this first, then I will see where all your bravery goes. But I am warning you before hand, don’t ask me for help when all of you are screwed up”, so saying, Joy handed us the packet and went upstairs.

The three of us got down to business immediately. Balu didn’t smoke. He sat on the sofa, with an elderly air and looked curiously at what we three were up to.

“This is too less for rolling up even a single joint”, Sanju said.

Raj said,” Let’s do one thing. Let’s not use up the entire stuff in a single joint. We will keep half for the night. Let’s mix the remaining with the filling of a cigarette and make the joint.”

So, I emptied a Gold Flake with care so as not to puncture the paper body at any place. I took the tobacco filling on a paper, mixed half of Joy’s stuff into it, by pressing it gently between my fingers. Then using a small paper spatula and a toothpick, I packed this spiked filling back into the paper casing of the cigarette. Our joint was ready. The three of us quivered with anticipatory excitement. Let’s see what trip this joint takes us to, we thought.

The cigarette was lit, and passed around after each puff. The packing of the cigarette matters a lot for it to taste good. I for instance have always found broken or folded cigarettes very bad tasting. Air pockets inside a cigarette make it very bitter and I hated the loathsome taste. The packing of this joint too had not been very good, but still, considering the adventure potential of the stuff inside it, we finished it off, taking slow but deep puffs and holding the smoke inside for some time.

Nothing happened. Damp squib again, I thought.

We went upstairs. Joy was sitting with his laptop, chatting with someone and smiling to his own self. We kicked him on his wide back side and hurled the choicest expletives for making fools of us.

Joy asked,” Did you have it?”

We nodded in the affirmative.

He just smiled and said, “Do you want some music?”

We sat down on his bed. This was the smaller of the two bed rooms. Joy and Sanju shared this room. They had their beds made out on the floor. Joy connected his MP3 player and put on some music. It was rock, metal he explained. I did not like this type of music, so when my phone rang out, I went downstairs to converse with the friend who had called.

How long I had been on the phone, I don’t remember. I remember the continuous cacophony of the unearthly noise from Joy’s MP3 player, mixed with Sanju’s laughing, and Balu’s deep baritone in the background as I spoke into the phone.

After sometime Joy started calling out my name, “Hey Abhi come and see what’s happening.”

I ignored, thinking he might just want to show me some funny You-tube video. I was in no mood to fool around. So I didn’t go upstairs and kept lying on the sofa. But he kept on calling me. Finally giving in to his replentless yelling I went upstairs. The music was still blaring; Joy was sitting with a disturbed look on his face. Balu and Sanju were sitting on the bed and smiling. Sanju looked at me and winked. Raj was sitting in one corner of the room and was head banging in rock star fashion. He was smiling.

I understood that these guys were playing a prank on Joy, so I left and again went downstairs. Within five minutes, Joy started shouting in his shrill voice. This time Sanju too was calling out to me. I went upstairs again. Raj was standing on the bed and head banging with full vigor. Something was not right, I felt. It didn’t look normal. He still wore that stupid smile on his face.

“Raj, it’s enough, stop it”, I said.

No reaction.

“Switch off that god-forsaken noise”, I told Joy. 

The music was switched off. But this had no impact on Raj; he continued what he was doing, only faster. I slapped him on his face- no reaction at all. He was still smiling stupidly and jerking his head. It looked as if he was in a trance, possessed by a spirit. The way he was jerking his head, I was afraid it might come off his torso. We forced him to sit on the bed and tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail. He was on a completely different plane; our words did not reach him. Now I was getting worried. I looked at the watch, it was ten thirty already.

“We have to call in a physician, guys”, I announced.

“No way. We can’t call anyone. If any one comes to know of this, we will get into trouble”, said Balu.

What he said was correct, our neighbors would not find it very funny, if they came to know we were experimenting with hash.

“Shit! it’s already ten thirty, or I would have gone to my sister’s house. You guys could have done whatever you wanted”, Balu spoke again. He was getting on to my nerves.

I was totally clueless what to do. I had no prior experience with this kind of situation. And if we did not do something quickly, Raj might definitely fall ill. At that moment I remembered that one of my friends was well known for being a very ‘adventurous’ sort of person. Why not ask him, I thought, he might suggest what’s best. So I called up Rakesh and told him about our predicament. He laughed out loud and said, 

“It is normal dude, just take off his clothes, and put him in the shower. Try to make him to lie down after that. Don’t let him get out of the house under any circumstance. That can be dangerous.”

We struggled to make Raj to stand. He was still smiling stupidly and moving his head. While the other three held him tightly so that he can’t move his head, I undressed him to his birthday suit and then took him to the bathroom. We held him under the cold shower. As the cold water hit his face, he resented it. He tried to force his way out of the shower but we managed to hold him. Finally he stopped resisting, and after a full five minutes of drenching, he said in a weak voice,

“Okay guys that’s enough, I am fine.”

We let out sighs of relief. Finally we were able to restore him to normalcy. I thanked God that he spoke. I had already started cursing myself for entering into what was rapidly turning into a misadventure.

Raj seemed very weak. The vigorous activity of the last hour had sapped him of all energy it seemed. We dried him with a towel. I dressed him up in his pajamas and T-shirt. We wrapped him up in a blanket and made him lie down. I rubbed his palms and the soles of his feet with my hands to generate some warmth. Raj went to sleep.

I had just started feeling relieved, when I observed that I had a strange sensation in my chest. I felt as if something was sitting tight on my chest constricting my chest cavity. I was taking shorter breaths, my chest felt heavy and my head felt lighter. I could see Joy talking excitedly, but his voice seemed to come from a distance. My conscious mind told me something was terribly wrong. I looked at Sanju. He was sitting at the edge of the bed, with a worried expression on his face. I gestured questioningly at him. He pointed at himself and then drew a line in the air across his own neck. I understood, he too was losing it. There was not much time to lose.

“We must immediately go to bed”, I said out aloud.

I went down and put the main door under lock and key. Then I locked the door leading out to the veranda. Joy asked me why I was doing all this. Sanju answered,

“Do as he is telling. I think we are also losing our sense. If we both lose it, it will be difficult for you to control us.”

“Whatever we do, just don’t let us out of the house”, I told Joy. “And today we will all sleep together in this bedroom. No one leaves this room”, I added.

Balu was not happy at all. But the prospect of having to control me (a ninety kilogram guy) gone berserk, later in the night, made him stow away his doubts. He complied without any argument.

Without losing any more time, the four of us lay down beside Raj. I checked out his condition before sleeping. Yes he had regained warmth and was sleeping peacefully. Thus assured I lay down with the others.

I still had that feeling in my chest, and it seemed more pronounced. In order to divert my mind, I started conversation with Joy.

I asked him, “What happened to Raj?”

“He was listening to the psychedelic rock music and started head banging with its beats. He just continued doing it. After smoking weed, you tend to keep on repeating what you are doing. You lose control of yourself, it’s like entering a trance”, Joy said.

“Actually he was trying to scare Joy at first. But even I failed to understand when his fake trance transformed into real drug induced trance”, said Sanju.

At last everything was under control I thought. I was feeling happy. My head was light and there was a sense of light heartedness inside me. I started whistling a tune. Sanju caught the tune and started singing. I added my voice to his. Our voices reverberated in the still atmosphere of our bedroom. I liked the sensation.

Joy whispered to Balu,” Forget about sleep now. These two have lost it. They will not stay quiet now.”

I heard what he said and smiled. I did not care anymore, neither did Sanju. We sang one song after another, I don’t remember for how long. 

In the morning I woke up the earliest. My throat was parched. I took a long drag of water out of the bottle kept beside the bed. I remembered what had happened last night. I thanked the heavens for taking us safely through the night. I checked Raj, he was fine. Sanju was sleeping like a baby. Balu and Joy too were asleep. I pulled the sheet over my head and flopped down to sleep again.

The Kingdom Where I Belong

“The journey is coming to a close, the adventure is about to end, and in three days’ time, we will be going back to our respective houses, where we will embrace our families, see our children, read through the correspondence that has accumulated in our absence, show off the hundreds of photos we’ve taken, tell our stories about the train, the cities we passed through and the people we met along the way.

And all to convince ourselves that the journey really did happen. In another three days’ time, once we’re back in our daily routine, it will feel as if we had never left and never made that long journey. We have the photos, the tickets, the souvenirs, but time – the only, absolute eternal master of our lives – will be telling us: you never left this house, this room, this computer.”

I read these lines out of Paulo Coelho’s Aleph. The words were really meaningful to me at that moment, considering I had just arrived at Hyderabad after a tiring but pensive journey of over thirteen hours. I had gone home to attend the last rites of my deceased grandmother. Returning from home is always a very emotional affair, it always has been, since the last fourteen years. Since after finishing school, I have always stayed away from home. It is people like me who can really appreciate how good it feels to be ‘home’ and also how sad and strange it feels to be a ‘guest’ in your own home.

Having stayed away from home the last fourteen years, I have come to think of myself as a ‘Lone Wolf’. By virtue of having stayed with my family in Bhutan half my life (during school days), and the other half away from my family; I never got more than a couple of weeks or at the most a month to spend with my close relatives, every year. Yet, there have been lean years like the time when I was doing my masters; I came home after an year and eight months. My family and relatives have always wondered with awe (and also some sympathy), how I stay away, all by my own, far away from my own home and my own city. I have always secretly prided myself for being on my own, taking my own decisions and making my own mistakes. But of late I am suddenly finding all of it meaningless.

The fact which I find most funny about my condition, that I also joke about with my friends is that where I stay, I do not belong; where I belong, I do not stay; where I officially belong, I actually do not belong; yet, where I actually belong, documentarily I do not belong there. Is it very complex? No wonder I too find it mind scrambling sometimes. Actually I always feel like a foreigner, wherever I go. When I stayed in Bhutan, I did not belong there; when I came back to India, people thought (and I too thought) practically I belonged to Bhutan, that is I did not belong here. Since then I have stayed in three different states in India, all places where I really do not belong, yet when I go home to my ‘own’ place; other than my family and outside my house, I know no one, no one knows me, in short I do not belong there too.

Yes, I know, it is indeed very confusing.  

I have never really spent much time thinking about my relatives ever, my maternal uncles, my father’s sisters and their families. Not that I am averse to them or something like that; it’s just that it never occurred to me. After my marriage it surprised me no end to see my wife’s numerous relatives strewn across the city of Jaipur, not only her own uncles and aunts, but her parents’ uncles, their kids, the kids’ in laws and such other far off and complicated relations. All these people were there to attend our marriage reception. In the beginning it was really baffling for me, how can people maintain such distant relationships, it is something I never could comprehend at that time. I myself cannot think further than my own maternal and paternal uncles and aunts, forget their families and their further branches. Even among these few people, other than my uncle Boro Kaku, I have never really interacted with the others on a regular basis, since the last ten to twelve years.

My last trip home brought an altogether different realization with it. As I mentioned earlier, I had gone home to attend the final rites of my deceased grandmother. She had passed away last month peacefully, at the age of eighty four. Since she was staying with my parents at that time, all the rituals were carried out at our home. All our relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins, their families came to attend the last rites. It was the first assembly of its kind in our home. Having stayed away from home most of the time, I my sister and our parents have always ‘attended’ such congregations, this was the first time we were hosting one.

The house was teeming with people, relatives of all sizes and names. There was so much activity; rituals going on one side, food being prepared on the other; oldies were catching up with one another, bursting out in laughter once in a while at old anecdotes. The younger ones, my brothers and cousins had their own secret agenda, slinking in and out of the house silently in a group now and then as if plotting some secret mission. In short the house was buzzing with activity. I always shun such large gatherings, unless it is imperative. But seeing my wife enjoying this big gathering, easily mingling with all these people and being happy, I too thought of giving it a try.

Withdrawing my ‘self’ out of all this commotion, I tried to view all that was going on with a purely objective view. I tried to notice each interaction between these 30 odd people, as they were; without any bias in my mind. The kids were having a whale of a time. Seeing them I remembered my own childhood visits to Boro Kaku’s house. I and my cousin Saurabh played cricket in the veranda all day long. Sometimes he would cheat and we would get into arguments leading to stoppage of play. We wouldn't even speak to each other for a couple of hours thence. Sometimes our noise would disturb Boro Kaku’s siesta; he would wake up and give both of us a sound spanking each and send us off to sleep. I remembered the impish face of little Saurabh and could not restrain a smile.

My wife was moving in an out seamlessly from one interaction to another. No one could say that she comes from an entirely different culture with an entirely different mother tongue.  She has already managed to endear herself to all the elders in the family. I could not but wonder how she managed to do so much, in so less time. My aunts, older cousins, all were full of praise for my wife. They patted her on the head, blessed her with all their heart. This interaction, as insignificant as it maybe, brought smiles and a feeling of happiness to all their faces. I understood that this is also something that I have missed most of my life and have been keeping away from, the rest of it.

In the evenings after the day’s work, everybody assembled in the bedroom. There, amidst laughter aplenty, caused by Boro Kaku’s antics and hilarious jokes, we had our evening tea. Twenty odd people sat huddled against one another under a large blanket, having tea and sharing old stories, told and heard hundreds of times. Stories of my uncle’s college life, my father’s bachelor life, or my aunt’s school life. I have heard these stories many times before, yet this particular instant it seemed very special. I suddenly realized, this is where people belong. Not in the city or village, or the work place, people belong in the memories, in the stories that are shared over and over again. I understood I have found the answer to one question, “Where I really belong?”

By the time I realized as much, it was already time to bid adieu. The ceremonies were over; it was time everybody returned to their respective houses, families and work places. The heaviness in my heart due to the realization of what I had neglected all these years, made me very sad. This parting seemed more painful than the numerous such others before. My wife’s parting tears shed in my aunt’s embrace did not help either. So with a heavy heart, we left, for our routine lives. Seven days of pure unadulterated happiness just came to an end.

I felt as if my late grandmother had blessed me with this new realization from the heavens. It is a parting gift she left me, to make me a better person, understand myself better.

I felt very sad for the first two days after returning to Hyderabad. But just as Paulo says, in three days time life has again come back to normal, as if nothing happened, I never left this place, I didn’t go home at all. It is as if there is no change at all. The only change being the realization of the importance of family and relations and where I actually belong. In Paulo Coelho’s words,

“Two weeks? What’s that in a whole lifetime? Nothing has changed in the street, the neighbours are still gossiping about the same old things,………., the latest celebrity scandal, the constant complaints about the things the government promised to do, but hasn’t.

No nothing has changed. But we – who went off in search of our kingdom and discovered lands we had never seen before – we know we are different.”

The Next Compartment

Paulo Coelho writes in Aleph,

“We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us, they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms. For example, I can’t see who is in the next carriage, but it contains people travelling in the same time as me, as you, as everyone. The fact that we can’t speak to them or know what’s going on in that other carriage is completely irrelevant. They are there. So what we call “life” is a train with many carriages. Sometimes we are in one, sometimes we are in another, and sometimes we cross between them, when we dream or allow ourselves to be swept away by the extraordinary.”

Yesterday morning, I was travelling to office when my mom called me and told me about Dida’s (grandmother) disorientation of late. My mom had very solemnly informed me that since the last couple of days, Dida had not been her usual, that she was sleeping long hours. Her speech had also been slurring so that, most of what she tried to communicate was not understandable. It was as if slowly she was drifting away. I was told all these to be mentally prepared for any eventuality.

Even as I disconnected the call and put away my cell phone, I remembered my last visit home in July ‘12. Dida had been slightly troubled at that time. She had told me that she could not remember her gurumantra (she had a bound photograph of her guru on the tea table by the side of her bed). She was very troubled being unable to remember her initiation chants and was worried that God would not accept her (post mortem). I was at a loss of words, not knowing how to console my grandmother. She held my hand with a plaintive look in her eyes. I had taken her palms in mine, folded her fingers into the gyan mudra and asked her to chant after me,

‘Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare;

Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare’

She had said, “But this is not my gurumantra, this will not work.”

I had looked into her helpless eyes and had asserted that this is the most powerful mantra, stronger than any guru mantra, and this alone would suffice. After holding her hand in mine and chanting Hare Krishna for some time, I had helped her lie down and asked her to keep on chanting aloud. She kept chanting the mantra, till she drifted away to sleep.

Two drops of tear that had been growing all this while at the corners of my eyes threatened to well over. From what my mother said I could make out that my Dida was biding the last few days before embarking on a new journey. I remembered Paulo Coelho’s allegory of Life being a train. I wished that I could hold my Dida’s hands in mine while she left for this new journey. I wished I could see her safely through the vestibule into the next compartment. I wished she was not alone when the great moment came and she had to cross over.

The same after noon when my father called me up, I understood that the moment of truth had come. I heard my father saying in a very normal tone,

“Babu, there’s sad news, Dida left.”

Although I was fully prepared to hear this, yet the immensity of the realization that Dida is no more, took some time to sink in.

I asked, “When?”

“Just about half an hour back,” he answered.

Dida had been sleeping for a long time after lunch. My parents had woken her up to feed her some milk. She had taken a couple of mouthfuls but the third had just spilt out of her mouth. There was a drop of tear in her eyes. Thinking that she had again fallen asleep, my father wiped the tear off her eye and made her to lie down.  But later as my parents realized, that was the moment she had taken the leap. Now it feels good to realize that she was not alone when she had to cross the vestibule. She was safe in the arms of her son and daughter-in-law as she had gone across.

The Brahman pundit who was overseeing the last rites had said that since it was a poornima (full moon), the journey was on a very auspicious day and that indications were very good. Apart from this, it took us some time to realize that five years earlier my grandfather too had passed away on the same date. My mom said that just as in life they had been so inseparable; it was my Dadu only who had come and taken Dida away to be with him. It gave me much relief to believe that not only was my grandmother not alone while crossing the vestibule, but also her best friend in this life was ready on the other side to welcome her and take her away safely into the next compartment.

I dint think I would post again this year, but the latest turn of events had given rise to some very conflicting emotions and I felt it could be best resolved when laid down on paper. Now that it is laid down as intended, I feel happy again.

In continuation to the discussion described in the beginning, Paulo Coelho also says,

“Love always triumphs over what we call death. That’s why there’s no need to grieve for our loved ones, because they continue to be loved and remain by our side. It’s hard for us to accept that. If you don’t believe it, then there’s no point my trying to explain.”

I thank you Dida for showering so much love on all of us. I shall always remember you in the many ways that you have touched my life. Today I feel very happy for you. I wish that your new journey be full of thrill and plenty of happiness and you make lots and lots of new friends on the way. Farewell.

The age of story telling

Some of the most cherished memories of my childhood are those of listening to stories from my elders. My grandfather and my maternal grandmother were excellent story tellers. Since most of my life I stayed away from my relatives owing to my father’s transferable job, the short breaks that I spent with them would be highly cherished.

My mama-bari (Bengali for maternal uncle’s house) trips would be real fun. I have 9 cousins on my maternal side, out of which 5 of them are either about my age or older than me. It was with these 5 cousins, I used to sit in the evenings with my grandmother on her big cot and pester her for stories. Our grandmother would only be happy to comply. While she would continue stitching together rugs with small pieces cut out form old clothes (and by god, she used to stitch the most wonderful rugs for us); she would tell us stories, which we kids would listen to, wide eyed, with our imagination running wild. Once in a while, one of us would ask a question or a doubt, which she would very patiently and lovingly answer. One of the elder sisters (she was in high school by then), would sometimes be skeptical about a story and start an argument. At such moments I would use my clout of superiority being the guest in the house, to beat her up and show her the door (Oh I was such a bully). I did not like interruptions in the midst of my grand ma’s stories.

Sitting around her, we used to hear with eyes filled with wonder, stories of Chand Saudagar, of Behula and Lakkhinder, of the Barobhuiyyan of Bangladesh and their heroics against foreigners and many more. I don’t have a count of how many times we made her repeat these stories but she used to tell us these stories with the same zest each time. I have never been to Bangladesh, but in her stories my mind would fly away to her village in Dacca. Her narration would invoke the imagery of the ponds, the tamarind trees, the house, the courtyard, her father who was a zamindar and her step mom who was kind to her. I never understood earlier how somebody could be as patient as to tell these stories over and over again to a bunch of toddlers who may not even understand everything said. My grandmother never really liked having to leave her own home in Bangladesh and come over to India during the Bangladesh war. From being the daughter of a wealthy landlord, to having to start afresh as a refugee was not the easiest truth of life to accept. Now I understand that every time she repeated these stories she actually re-lived those days whose memories she always held so close to her heart.

After so many years, having grown up and living far apart, each busy in his/her own life, I still feel these stories and the time thus spent bind us together at a certain level. It is something that is still common among us cousins. It is these small things in life that I feel keep each one of us rooted. How so ever our life changes, these moments will always remain there, fixed like the pole star.

My grandfather was a different type of story teller. In the day time he would sit on an easy chair on the veranda and would tell stories of olden days when with a char anna (25 paisa) coin he would buy a rickshaw full of vegetables for the entire joint family. He told us about his journey to Kolkata for his studies. He told us about the house where he used to stay and how he used to cook for himself. And then there were the funny ones too. Our favorite among the funny stories was the one in which a shepherd boy, one day meets a tiger and the tiger says, “I want to eat you.” The shepherd takes off his clothes smears oil all over his body and enters into the gaping mouth of the tiger. Thereafter he slides through its stomach and intestines, comes out of its back side and escapes, thus fooling the tiger.  I and my cousin would roll over and laugh our hearts out at the funny way our granddad would narrate the story with his exaggerated expressions. Our granddad, on winter evenings would wrap his favorite shawl all round himself and sit cozy and chat with everyone. But in a short while he had the tendency to doze off. I and my cousin, being the naughty imps that we were, would shake him out of his snooze and ask him to tell the story of the tiger and the shepherd. Then we would laugh ourselves to splits as he would doze off in the middle of the story and we would wake him up again.

My father and uncle are also great story tellers. They tell us stories of their childhood in Bangladesh of their joint family, of the cousins and of all the mischief they committed together and got punished for. They still tell these stories with so much enthusiasm, that I can feel how much they miss those days. I have heard that my grandfather had parted ways with his brothers over property and since then my father and uncles and aunts had had to shun contact with their cousins. Now with the life of the older generation mostly accounted for, my father and uncle are trying to reestablish contact with their long separated cousins.

Recently, I read an article on Paulo Coelho’s blog. It is attributed to a certain Loren Eisley. I found this very meaningful and so I have copied the contents as it is from: 

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/11/29/in-the-plane-between-melbourne-and-los-angeles/

There is also a movie named Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton. It is a wonderful movie telling about the relationship between a son and a father who is a great story teller. It ends with the story teller dying happily and all the characters of all the stories he had ever told his son come alive and come to happily celebrate his passing. The movie ends on the note that,

“A man tells his stories so many times, that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.”

This oral tradition is as old as the Vedas themselves. There have been story tellers in the past, there are now, and there will be in the future. But how long can we keep this tradition alive in our own families. Does our next generation, born and brought up into nuclear families, big cities and more conversant in computers, video games and PSPs have time for these stories? Or for that matter our generation, living our life in such mechanical, competitive and materialistic pursuits; do we have the time in our stressful lives to tell stories to our successors. Well I don’t really know; it is just a doubt that came to my mind. But if the answer is yes to any of these questions, then I guess we need not worry for one more generation.

Wishing everyone a very happy new year 2013…..

Adios

The Road to Lekeythang

I count myself among an elite group of fortunate people who have been specially blessed by God, for really less known and not so well understood reasons. I was born and brought up at a place that could only be the outskirts of what they call paradise, only more beautiful. Today as I was watching some photographs of Punakha, I remembered the happy school life I spent there. Of all the places in this quaint little town, there were a few that were my favorites. One of those favorites was the road which I walked every day to go to school. Today I suddenly missed that road very much. It was a road from which I have viewed some of the most beautiful things in my life. I was just sitting and trying to recollect my experiences on this road.

My school was at a place called Lekeythang. Punakha High School was exactly a kilometer from home. It used to take about eight to nine minutes to reach school, walking at a very brisk pace. My school was by the side of the road connecting Punakha to Thimphu the national capital. This stretch of road with its surroundings was a beauty in itself. It was cut out of the side of a mountain with a sheer but vegetated drop on one side, into the blue-green waters of the Mo Chhu (Chhu = river in dzongkha) River. On the opposite side, the slope of the mountain bore lush greenery, with some flowering shrubs, on which sweet smelling flowers bloomed in the evening.

This road would be an interesting sight from the distance twice a day; when school going kids in their smart little grey ghos (traditional Bhutanese dress for boys) and blue and grey kiras (traditional Bhutanese dress for ladies) with red collar would troop to school in the morning and back in the afternoon.

It would be a sight to behold when the soft morning sunlight would shine on the beautiful green water and the silvery silt on its far side, giving both an amazing sparkle. By mid morning, the sun would be vertical enough for its rays to penetrate the clear green waters to expose the bed with its well rounded pebbles and boulders, and also the school of trout that would now and then be visible in the clear waters. This is also the ideal time to observe the kingfishers that would perch on overhead branches and swoop down with lightning speed to make their catch. Sometimes on a sunny winter morning, if one is lucky enough, one can even see a family of otters swimming or basking in the sun on the far bank of the river.

On reaching the Black rock (that was the limit till which students were allowed to loiter during breaks on school days), near our school, the swirling waters of another river, the Pho Chhu, would be seen joining the relatively calmer waters of the Mo Chhu. The minty blue turbulence of the Pho Chhu and the green waters of the Mo Chhu would come together at the confluence and give birth to the Puna Tsang Chhu. And just like in any marriage, for the initial hundred to hundred fifty meters, the Puna Tsang Chhu bore evidence of the initial conflict of Mo Chhu’s green and Pho Chhu’s blue, in the form of a different color in each of its halves, before settling down for a uniform greenish color. There was a small chhorten painted in traditional red and white, at the confluence of the two rivers. The word of mouth was that, some ancient lama had prophesied that the day the water level goes above the chhorten; the town would be in danger of submergence.

During the monsoons the picture would change all together. Heavy rain would cause soil to be eroded off the face of the mountains and both the rivers would turn rusty red and then brown. I still remember, during the monsoons when both the rivers would swell up to double their normal volume, I would look fearfully everyday towards the chhorten, to see if it was still there. Seeing it intact, and the prayer flags fluttering, would give me assurance that every thing’s fine. Other than that I would always avoid looking towards the roaring mass of brown and grey water in the monsoons. I have always been afraid of water bodies.

On a moonlit night, the view of this road with the mountain wall on one side and the river, and in fact the entire valley on the other side, poses an ethereal view. It would look as if it has just jumped out of a Byron poem.

She walks in beauty, like the night 

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright 

Meets in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

 Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

It would seem to me that this is the picture Lord Byron had in mind when he penned these lines. The atmosphere would be so surreal and heavenly, that time would come to a standstill. The only signs of any movement in the entire universe would be the constant gushing sound of the Mo Chhu flowing, the chirping of the crickets and the pleasant smell of some wild blossom wafting with the night breeze. It would be like living many lives in just that single moment. Now that I think of it, I realize I am blessed for being a part of numerous such moments; in any other way, my life would have been incomplete.

I have also been on this road on a new moon night during the rainy season. The road, owing to absence of street lights would be pitch dark. Those days one had to have a light to walk comfortably. With the roaring sound of the swollen Mo Chhu on one side and the fear of poisonous snakes on the other, I would always try to walk on the middle of the road to feel safe. Occasionally (the occasions being very rare at such late hours) a vehicle would come with its blazing headlights and I would run, to make the most of the god sent illumination. On such nights the pitch dark water of the river with its angry roaring reminded me of the chasm Coleridge mentions in Kubla Khan. 

“And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing…”

Now that I think of my past life, I feel so grateful to God that I got a life, an opportunity to see this creation of his, its different facets and in multiple forms. This is but just a miniscule part of the beauty of the place I have come to love so much. If I were to extol its beauty in its fullness, I guess one life time of writing would not be enough.

An unfinished story

Those days I was working in Pune and was travelling at weekends to Mumbai, to be with my wife. The three hour bus journey on the Mumbai Pune Expressway was always a very exciting one for me. I liked it especially during the monsoons, when the entire Western Ghats springs up to glory in all its entirety. The vibrancy of fresh vegetation masks the dull grey crudeness of the rocky outcrops. I always cherished these three hours of ‘Me-only’ time. Not that, I was plagued by need for space amidst the crowd of Homo sapiens; in fact I stayed in a PG room all by myself.  But just like the kite that cannot fly inside a room, my mind too would find it easier to break away from its reins; with the cool air rushing in through the window of the bus; and fly away, far, far away. I would sit by the window and look out while my mind would be flying outside, like Harry Potter riding his witch’s broom… Wooooohoooooooooo….

On such trips, which were plenty considering I travelled almost every week , I would either read a book, listen to music, observe people, or simply look out of the window and let my mind fly. I was never really a great ‘fellow traveler’, so I would never strike up conversation with any of the other passengers.

On one such occasion, I was reading a new novel by a young author (If it’s not for ever… It’s not Love, by Durjoy Datta). I started reading it without much expectation (It came in free with a couple of other novels at a Landmark sale), but as I went from page to page, I liked the story better and better. It was about the protagonist who survives a bomb blast. Incidentally, he finds a half-charred diary at the blast site, belonging to an unknown young man (presumed to have died on that fateful day). The contents of the diary form the backbone of the plot. Numbed by his own near death experience, after reading the contents of the diary, the protagonist is agonized at the thought of having to pass away without a good bye, dying without having said the right words, dying with unsaid words buried within the heart. After going through 50-60 odd pages of the novel, all of a sudden I realized that I was shedding tears. I looked around; it was my good fortune that all the seats behind and beside me were empty; luckily no one bore testimony of this weak moment of mine.  I went back to reading as the protagonist with the love of his life, set out in search of the people mentioned in the diary, with the hope of conveying the untold words and unprofessed love of the dead young man. I could simply not stop the tears that rolled down my cheeks as I read through the lines, and I couldn’t stop reading either.

The narrative had invoked a powerful surge and opened the flood gates to numerous memories. Memories long repressed, those that have become a part of existence, a dull pain that I have gotten used to, a dampened throbbing that never really ceases.

I realized then that Life is just like a ball of yarn. It is made up of numerous relationships. They come in various forms, duration and stature; small, big, close, distant, long, short and many more; each bearing a different name. These relationships are crisscrossed, rolled over and across, round and round, to make the ball of yarn that is life.

I have seen kittens playing with a ball of yarn. When we are young, we are immature, restless and impulsive. Just like a young kitten, we paw the ball of yarn, play with it, now kick it, again bite it, then scratch it. Within a short time the ball becomes a loose mass of yarn, with torn threads hanging out all around. By the time we learn to take notice of this and try to set everything right again, it becomes too late. The erstwhile ball of yarn becomes a soft floppy mass of torn and entangled yarn, the torn ends hanging loosely. These torn ends are the numerous people, the relations that lost their way in the maze of our busy lives. These are the relations that unceremoniously petered out, without conclusion, without even a ‘Bye’. By the time we realize the importance of these interactions or rather lack of them, it is too late in the day. There is no alternative to bearing the weight of all these unfinished, unconcluded relationships in ones heart forever. I felt as I read this book, the importance of a last word; every relation, every interaction deserves a conclusion, a decent good bye. Sigh!

As I resumed reading the book, after a long break, poignant with heavy thoughts and sweet and sour memories, the protagonist and his lady love had already started meeting people mentioned in the diary. By the time the bus crossed Khalapur Toll Naka, I was already at Page 108. But then something very frustrating happened. I flipped the page to reach directly to Page 129. Twenty pages were missing from the book. I wax vexed at my bad luck. I tried to continue reading, but then I felt that it won’t be fair to read such a good story in an improper manner, I dint want to continue without reading those 20 lost pages. I will have it exchanged I thought, I still had the bill.

After reaching Mumbai, I went to the Landmark outlet where I had bought the book and asked for an exchange. But the book was not available in the store. Then a thought occurred to me. Why not wait for the book to come to me. Maybe someday, I will get a copy of the book, without my trying for it, and then I can finish reading it. At least as long as I have not read the end, it can be anything. There’s still hope for an ending that according to me would be the most fitting. Thus, I have been waiting for the book to fall in my hands so I can finish reading the story.

The Tao of 'Self' Study - My first attempt.

I grew up hearing and believing that Learning is a means to an end. Life has been as kind to me as to kick my backside every time and finally making me accept and admit that Learning is an end in itself. Paradoxically enough, Learning has no End. I heard that the best place to start with, is one's own self. So I started studying myself.

When I embarked on this mission of self- study, I realized that what I had presumed to be a cup of tea is actually an ocean of brine in itself. My heart sank at the prospect of never being able to complete.  But then wise people say that we have come into the world bare and alone and will return to the elements in the same way. Nothing is for the ‘taking’ or ‘keeping’. So I convinced myself that whatever I manage to achieve will only give me joy, and no one’s going to judge me for what level I achieve or fail to achieve. These are paths not frequented by many. There aren't many hares to taunt this tortoise.

I was at the CCSHAU (University, where I was doing my Masters studies) shopping center when such noble thoughts were seeding in my head. Not a person to procrastinate in such innovative and capital investment free ventures, I resolved to start immediately. At that funny moment in my life I was taking puffs of happiness out of a Gold Flake cigarette. Yes, that’s the brand I vouched loyalty to, all my smoking days. Thus I undertook my first ‘study of myself’- How many puffs are required at my usual pace to suck up the cigarette, till the embers reached the logo at the bottom, a couple of millimeters above the filter (The portion that dedicated smokers of my acquaintance called the Golden kiss; but I always maintained unequivocal hatred for that revolting and distasteful last puff).

Having thus made an outline of the study to be conducted and of the inventory requirements, I returned to my room in Ajanta Hostel (163, or 165?). I had all that was required to carry out the study; one and a half pack of cigarettes and a match box. I intended to put myself through a set schedule of smoking a cigarette every waking hour and take down the number of puffs. This was to account for any variations due to vagaries in my mood over the period of the day. Well okay, that needs some explanation.

Those were very troubled times for me (or so I perceived). At one end, I was only physically present in Haryana, my mind was really somewhere else (that’s a different story all together). At the other end my Masters guide was not making things any easier for me. Now that I think back, the main problem was that I had gone to Haryana with the sole academic objective of completing my masters and returning in two years. It never occurred to me that I would be spending a couple of years of my academic life in CCSHAU, why not enjoy it and make the most of it. On top of that, having a circle of Bengali seniors and batch mates didn't really help. Other than the occasional (although the occasions were not scarce) get together to drink and make merry and share general contempt for the ‘pig-headed’, drunk ,brawling and whoring  ‘local’ hostelers  nothing substantial was achieved in these communions. Well that’s beside the point. On the whole, I was not at peace with myself and would be in different states of mood depending on the plane on which my mind was dwelling.

So the next day, I executed the study as planned and at the end of it (at about four o clock, the following morning), I came to results that were quite amazing. Barring the cigarette that I had smoked during the game of cricket on the field, in all the other 12 instances, I had finished the cigarette in 13 puffs. The outlier result on the field was 17 puffs, attributable to heightened physical activity and shorter drags to accommodate a parched throat. From this raw data, I concluded that whatever my emotional state over the study period, the 5-6 minutes spent on smoking always brought it to a different plane that is away from the current state. The results indicated (at least to my ‘scientific’ mind, or whatever you may take the liberty of calling it), smoking distracts our mind from whatever it is dwelling on. In other words it provides the mind an escape, a wormhole to a completely different world.

When one is stressed, a short period of escape from the problem at hand seems reasonable enough. The problem is that, once one gets acquainted with this escape plan, he starts using it for every single reason. It may become an indispensable companion, whether one is burning the midnight lamp, playing chess, having a ‘man-to-man’ talk, watching an India- Pakistan cricket match, or simply waiting for his girlfriend. So the situation becomes completely reversed. When one begins, he has genuine stress and is looking for a stress-buster; later on he looks out for ‘stress’-full situations, excuses, to use his ‘stress-buster’. Well whatever it is, I was very satisfied that my study was completed successfully and unhindered, and more importantly, with solid results.

Thus, began my journey of studying ‘myself’, stupid as it may seem now, I know how important it had been to me in those days. The subject (smoking) was pathetic to begin so grand a venture. But then, it is just like the outskirts of a big forest. Dense, thorny bushes block one’s entry. Its only when one manages to get through this initial obstacle, the jungle floor reveals clearer passages. And just like that over the years, I have observed and realised many things, but those are all stories for another time.