Night Whispers

This is one of the stories that I'd written for RBC's Writing in Practice course last semester.Its a dialogue really.I thought I'd put it up.

-Is that you, Maya?
-Hello sweetheart.
-You don’t sound like yourself.
-That’s because I fell asleep waiting for you. What time is it?
-Just past twelve. I won’t disturb you in that case. Go back to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.
-No no. It’s perfectly alright. I’m awake now anyway. But I was pretty tired before. Considering all the late nights we’ve been having…
-Okay. Then let me hang up now so you can go to sleep.
-No. I’d much rather talk to you than sleep.
-Aww baby. You’re too sweet.
-Thank you [She giggles]. So are you. You’re really sweet. And cute. And handsome.
-Ahem. [An embarrassed clearing of the throat on the other side]
-No I am serious. I find you extremely attractive!
-Okay. Stop now. I’m already flying high.
[She laughs]-The party last night was fun though.
-Yes. It was amazing.
-And my friends have been teasing me endlessly since yesterday.
-Really? But what do they know? Did they see us err…you know…
-Yes! And they asked me about it. I denied it, but what’s the use?
-Oh my God! This is so embarrassing. How will I show them my face now?
-Just the way you showed them your face after I told them about our kinky phone conversation!
-Yes. That was really mean of you.
-But they are my closest friends. And it’s not like we were doing it- just talking about it. We just got a bit…carried away…that’s all.
-Hey, do you want to sleep with me?
-What!! We-e-e-ll…do you?
- Yes. I want to. But you know we can’t.
-I know honey. But I’m flattered that you would want to.
[A pause. She continues.]
-We got carried away yesterday. It wasn’t right. But the fact is, it was also amazing.
-I know. I…I wish we could do it again. It’s so tempting.
-So do I. It was such a beautiful kiss. It was like the whole world was going round us in a circle, and we were still. I wish the others hadn’t seen us though. Now we’ll never hear the end of it.
-Look, as long as our intentions are clear, and we are honest with each other, I think we are fine. As long as it isn’t harmful.
-So, darling, you mean to tell me that all this is harmless?
-Yeah sure.
[They both laugh. She continues.]
-Oh dear. This is such a crazy situation isn’t it?
-Yes it is. But I’m so glad I met you and found such a good friend in you.
-We’ll always be friends won’t we? I won’t ever let you leave me.
-I never imagined you and I could have something going. I’ve never done this sort of thing with anyone before.
-You think I have? I never imagined I could be the other woman in someone’s life. That is morally so wrong to me. But I can’t help it. I just let myself get carried away. Do you think that makes me a bad person?
- Of course not. You are a wonderful person. And we are just close friends
-Close friends who are attracted to each other and kiss as a result?
- But we both know what we are doing, right, so it will be fine. Relax.
-Its just that this is the first time in my life that I’m genuinely following my heart and not my mind. I’m being impractical by doing something morally incorrect, letting myself get carried away- and not doing a thing about it.
-You’ll be alright sweetheart. I won’t let you get hurt.
-Hmm. That’s what he used to say as well. That’s what they all say. I’m never going to have a serious relationship with anyone. I think the short flings are much more exciting.
-Like ours.
-It always comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?
-Yes it does.
-I wonder why.
-Don’t. You had better go to sleep now, my dear.
-Yes. I supposed I should. Call me tomorrow, won’t you?
-Don’t I always, sweetheart?
-Yes you do. Goodnight.
-Sweet dreams.
The phones clicked, the bedside lamps were switched off, and a girl slept alone, dreaming of a man who slept in another woman’s arms.

And now for something completely different!

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Ami likhi ni

There's a very tenuous link between insanity and sanity . My boro pishi Beli was very beautiful and given to the luxuries of life like fine sarees ( I have a few) and velvet mules and imported perfumes and cosmetics ( snow powder ?). Now Beli had been married at 12 and was a widow by 14 because her crook of a father in law had not told my grandfather that his son was on his last legs - with what I never could fathom out , despite my wicked ferreting ways as a child , and those who could tell me are all dead and gone , except Mili who's in her second childhod and far far away , both geographically and in her mind ...but I did glean this , she married a second time , this time , a widower with 2 daughters , he was a zamindar 's son with their ancestral house at Jongsherpur (??) and his mother would not allow her to have a child - since she was a widow and therefore maybe not a virgin (this was in the early 40s maybe) . So evertime Beli was pregnant her mother in law drugged her and got the dai to abort the foetus . She did this thrice before Mili got wise to what was going on and raised Cain . But by then the psyche , a little brittle perhaps had started to crumble ...she died mad in Lumbini Park many years later ... because her husband was dead and she was psychotic and it was not safe to keep her in a house which had kids ...
Shefali was scatty and glamorous and beautiful and hopelessly in love with one of the Panth boys who was a pilot ( he was another mad bugger, but thats another story ) - he used to fly his VTs over her house and drop flowers and scatty Shefali who never poured herself a glass of water so long she was in Dada's house had to sit with a ghunghat up to her belly button, rolling endless chapatis in Hari's mother's house - that was till Mili went, saw her and raised Cain (of course Mili raised Cain in her Mom in law's house, too). From rolling out of shape chapatis to giving birth to Khuku/Niru and then upping and dying suddenly, leaving a host of beautiful memories behind like heaps of rose petals ... that was Shefali. Indelible marker memories in her brothers' sisters' and mother's minds who filled my childhood with talk about Shefali, so that when I used to pore over her mother's Joy-scented photographs (yes Moni ma used to keep an open bottle of Joy in her trunk in one corner, I swear that trunk still smells of Joy after all these years) and open her copy of some poetry book,( forget the name, but it had a blue leather cover and was a longman's edition, pristine without ever a pencil scratch (which means she only mooned about Hari all the time)) I used to imagine I knew her.
My second pishi Mili was like Jo of Little Women. She looked after the house, and her assorted brothers, one younger sister and the older one, Beli. She married Pishamoshai who was the best Pisha anyone could ever have - I adored him, my husband adored him, and my girls loved him.
All of them were a bit wonky, that's what AG says - but they were terrific, brave people - all the men handsome and charming, all the women ,beautiful, - all with a tenuous hold on reality - one died young, one died in Lumbini Park, hopelessly insane and the other is old and frail, far far away, still guarding whatever memories she has and living in them far away from reality ... because that is all she has now that everyone is dead. Wherever you all are and that includes you, Ma, I'm raising a toast ... Prosit!

Bhwot In JUDE

The Charge of the Heavy Brigand:
An excerpt from my latesht blog post.... read all about it...
............"Then the Don entered the room. Everyone was silent, watching the fearful symmetry of the pointy beard.

Don: Shoi korle?? (Did you sign?)

Panu: ah.. yessir!!

Don: Sabai? (All?)

Panu: yessir!!

Don: Kata Jaal korle?? (How many did you copy??)

Panu: I-Uhhhhh…."

And other BHWOTing experiences as well ... Features rigging, pulling, singing, et al.

Anybody?

What say we get a yearbook? I'm willing to work...anybody interested?
And lets get some new t-shirts shall we?

The Sickened Coming

Turning and turning the webspaceless gyre,

The Blabberbots cannot hear the Editors...

Blogs fall apart, Mere Templates cannot hold...

Abhijit Gupta is loosed upon this world.

Inspired by the Post made by our dear teacher.
We all love you Sir, really!! Welcome to our humble blog...

I think the idea of the Literature and Censorship blog is so cool...we should have things like that for our other courses as well!

All mimsey were the borogoves

All please observe a minute's silence in memory of the passing of Jabberwocky Redivivus, the second avatar of the departmental magazine. 'Twas in the year 1989 that the then editor, in order to express solidarily with Salman Rushdie (who had been fatwa'd on Valentine Day 1989) also decided to close down his magazine and retire to an undisclosed place, with armed guards. There has since been no Jabberwocky...

train catching

few things to do when you miss your train:

never thought you'd need this huh? well you never know which bond flick script you might be writing next, so go on, take a look.

1. look for a auto driver who does NOT have a f****** cellphone. and even if he does have one, pray to god he does not use it when your rushing to catch the bloody train. ps: why does every soul down south have a frigging phone on them?!!!! were'nt we supposed to be a 3rd world country or something like that? news-flash: it's a totally different world that the south indian (read: bangalorean) auto drivers live in.

2. when you near the station and see a train at the platform from the auto, do not shout (with any form of conviction) "that's a local train". reasons? a) local trains don't have ac sleeper class coaches. b) they don't leave at the exact moment when your train is supposed to leave.

3. if you have any friends already on the train, they must NOT pull the chain. yes i know it looks tempting, but the 1000 rs. fine, especially when you're returning from a financially taxing trip, along with a month's imprisonment is not the ideal solution. go ahead and scream at them, but that red chain is a massive "no no".

4. oh by the way, if you're talking to those very friends on your phone dont ever say "no no, oh shit no!". the line might just get cut and even though you dont want the chain pulled, this could lead to a lot of very heated souls. a better choice? "pull, pull, yes, yes!" (and no, im not running a porno blog.)

5. this one's a beauty. look around for some nutcase who tells you "you're too early for tomorrow's train". boy, all that temper really gets the adrenalin rushing, and trust me, you need that for the rest of the pre-train journey.

6. suddenly see an apparition of a cabbie who's willing to drive you to the next junction for 600 bucks. (you cant be too sure if it's the same bugger who made that guiness record-winning joke). make a dash for it. dump you luggage and yourselves into some squishy omni and pray very hard. your back, butt, knees and leg might ache away to glory. but on the bright side, you won't realize that your whole body is aching. i dunno, but it's one of those crazy tricks tough situations pull on you.

7. looking for a variation? here's one. have one friend call his/her parents 5 mins before train's supposed to leave and say they've not reached station yet, and then have the line cut abruptly. then mistake their no. for your own parent's and actually take that damn call. after that i leave it to your imagination. i'd ideally tell them that we're safely on the train and then hope to high heavens they dont really figure out that no self respecting train ever has a blaring car horn.

8. now comes the interesting bit. look out for all the red lights. sigh. get furious, coz nothing's below 72 secs. then voila! you're past it! zooming ahead of those dumbjock drivers. try counting the number of lights you jump. but take my advice, dont try it. it's way more fun just looking outside open mouthed and thinking "boy, bond must've had one heck of a time!" but this one's seriously not for the faint-hearted. count on having lost at least a few years of your life on that ride. oh and, i know you'll not have the time, try and get the cabbie's address, just in case you want to post him a x-mas card. it's worth it. or better still, keep in touch coz you never know when you'll be late again.

9. once at the other station, run like crazy, bag and all. now you'll know why everyone tells you tyo travel light. but never mind, too late for regrets, just run. ok, when you're throwing your bag on to the tracks to run across the blessed train, never jump before bag. those things are bizarrely designed. even the devil could'nt pull them off the platform without yanking off his arms.

10. anyways, now next to the train. safe, right? wrong. indian railways is one of those things which just might not want your happiness, let alone have you go back home in one piece. they have these dastardly things called general sections. (once described very aptly as "general sex" compartments where the only criteria is that you have to keep up with the sex. think there are no takers for this theory? try contacting JU 3rd year english and ask for chicko.) so you haul yourself and your blessed bags onto this crazy contraption and look around. lo behold! there arent any passages between coaches! why? coz these damn things are'nt connected at all! so off you go again, this time looking for a familiar looking coach. by the time you locate one and are up, bags and all, the trains off again, chugging like a little ol' lady. but thankfully this time you're on it.

11. the last part's easy. just lug everything behind you and go on a cross-train sprint, looking for your compartment. now you know what the members of the fellowship felt like. you also know that once on the train there's no need to run any more, but somehow your body doesn't seem to respond to that logic. and that running with luggage between people who, lets' just say, love their inertia of rest, is a task that would challenge even hercules.

so now that you know what to do, try it sometimes. you could always reach on time, but hey this one's fun too. almost like a movie. especially so when im not in it.

ps: variation: after all this you're still adventurous? go into the next coach for a smoke late at night. finish, come out, and what do you see? you just saw a passage, now you don't. why? coz some jackass just wanted to shut the bloody connecting door. now, dont panic. if you're lucky, the train will have stopped at a station, you'll find some one willing to open the train door for you. a short jump, a quick jog, another jump up and you're home safe! see, it was'nt so difficult now, was it? now if you go into all the possibilities...the train not stopping at a station till say the wee hours of the morning...spending a night with perfect strangers...the train leaving without you on it...again...ah well life's a miracle, aint it!

Going South?

Wait, no. We went south. As far as supposedly cool Bangalore only to find it quite warm. It's a loooong train journey. You may want to amuse yourself with mp3 enabled mobile phones, handycams, handycam enabled phones, jokes, bad jokes, worse jokes and stuff that's still worse- but it's a long ride.Remember that. Always.
But then you get to Bangalore and things aren't that bad. You watch Jethro Tull, live in concert from behind the stage. I mean, everyone does watch it from in front so why would you do that?
Then you realise Ian Anderson's staying on the same floor (2 doors away from your's in fact.) So you generally listen to him practice in his room, chat with him, take snaps, get autographs and grin and sing praises...
One could also go to a Bryan Adams concert there. It's a lot of fun and well worth the money...
Oh, and watch out for the forthcoming documentary that may or may not be called 'Bangtrip.'No? How about 'Bangotrip' or 'Bangatrip?'And we wish we had read those very helpful hints on train catching posted on
http://thatsbecauseofthefanandeverything.blogspot.com/ . We might have been a little more relaxed.

Going South?

scandal in the dept

"i need two boys tonight...ah...don't u worry"
--------MM( to poor abhinandan and samby)