A Manic Monday

Why do people commit suicide?

This was the thought with which I woke up day before yesterday morning. Sternly conditioned to abstain from uttering or thinking of anything remotely macabre by generations of superstitious matrons, I found myself propped up in bed in the wee-hours of a madras Monday pondering over this with clinical interest. Why would anyone want to seek peace in an unknown realm, than find a way in the known? How would life be, if one knew what comes after death?
After-life or After-death has been the mirage over which the religions of the world have rooted their foundations. From the cyclic theory of the oriental religions and the tangential moksha, the linear ideology of the occident culminating in the pearly gates to heaven or the pit below, to the zany experiment born in the mind of Douglas Adams, this ambiguity has given rise to it all.

The circumstances that had me wondering on such lines, were quite uncanny. I was totally sleep-deprived, and had read the papers before going to sleep. Had glanced upon the crime section, which I don’t usually dwell much upon. Had a weird dream, and woke up to listen to a suicide case of a woman, and her husband’s role in it, being read out by the unemotional mechanical voice of a regional channel news reader.

I walked through the day pre-occupied, with such questions in mind, wondering for the first time without any emotion, even detachment.(And yes, detachment, too is an emotion.)

Before I went to bed that day, I had mentioned my weird morning to one new friend, that I had stumbled upon in orkut. That night I had a weirder dream. A barren village, parched mud tenements. The houses grow and multiply, but the inhabitants perish. People wonder about some curse, seeing healthy ones perish. A lone man, an outcast whose tobacco-stained teeth and cracked feet are my only impressions left of him, keeps muttering to himself. “All will be well, when the good people will come” is what he keeps repeating to himself. When the village folk finally heed to his words, and exasperatedly ask “Who will send the good peole you keep mumbling about?” “GOD”, someone yells, and it all comes reeling into wake-fulness. The clock showed 2 am. I was so sleepy, but too confused to sleep, that the room started spinning. I called out to my father, who was sleeping beside me. He just patted my head and I don’t know when I fell back to sleep.

I don’t know if it’s a premonition of sorts. My mom just says it’s the novels I read. Or perhaps the impressions I form of my observations. Or that I was merely stressed.
I don’t know what it was. But it was mighty strange.

Read some book, some time back, not able to recollect, where some character says that aliens keep tab of us by stealing our consciousness during our sleep. If it is H2G2, I shall be pretty much convinced they have done a rush job with mine yesterday night…

People 5

The Fallen Lord of the Bridge

Nightly Prowls of the straying Southwesterly winds. Showers that moisten a dry metropolis. Every street that is some street, every gully that is some gully sequestered with miniature ponds of brown, green and gray. Tyre trenches cut patterns in the soft earth. Twin puddles of emerald. Bright verdant new leaves of spring seeking kinship with the shy hidden moss. A bridge of hardened cement. Work abandoned in the rain.

A man in brown shirt and blue lungi. Sleeves rolled up. Lungi drawn in carelessly between his legs. The Lord of the bridge. A head of tousled lifeless hair, bent down. Loss and weariness screaming out his drooping shoulders.

Is he broke? What ails him? Did an elusive sweetheart shatter his heart? Has a dear one left him to face the world alone ? Did he lose a job? Was it aching bones? Was he a criminal on the run, catching his breath? Was it guilt that weighed him down? Was he shutting out hungry faces back home? Had he bowed down in resingnation to a cruel fate? Was he contemplating something deeper? Perhaps the futile search for the meaning of life?
..............Or was it hangover from the night’s toddy?

Har Har, Jujhar.

Happened to watch Headlines Today the past two days. Was forced to run away from the drawing room leaving behind a half eaten dinner* for the first time in my life.

Day 1:

The Host: Jujhar Singh

The topic of discussion: Women’s rights groups up in arms against profane ads.

The cause of Nausea:

The ‘ad-nauseum’ in question was one advertisement for Amul Macho showing a couple of ladies grow green when the village belle seemingly sees bliss in washing her man’s underwear. The arbitrator Mr. Jujhar Singh pitted Mr.R.Balakrishnan (of Cheeni Kum fame) against a women’s rights activist. I am perennially skeptical about anyone with feminist leanings, and had been reasonably impressed by Mr.Balki from the reviews of his movie, and was naturally quite interested in how the argument was going to fare.

Mr.Balki defended his fraternity with a fairly lame argument saying the ad was infact liberationist by showing a female boldly expressing her sexuality. He also did not fail to commend the “creative” juices that poured into the “masterpiece”.

There are so many brilliant ads that so many of us have grown up with, and cherish even though the products they advertised have long become obsolete, and they did not resort to such blatant profanity to be creative. But our dear Mr. Arbitrator lapped up this argument, with a fervent “Aye Aye, Sir”.

This rights activist was slightly different from her ilk, in the sense, that she didn’t raise her voice, although she didn’t really approve of her opponent’s views. She quietly discounted all the aspects, that she had initially put forth, (like women’s dignity, sensibility, blah blah, and the like) but hung on to one particular PoV, that of the aesthetics that this kind of explicit lewdness would instill in young Indians. Mr. Balki had no solid answer to this.

That’s when our heroic arbitrator jumped in and drawled with a resonant belch (that was meant to pass off as a stylish nasal accent), “But, ma’m, don’t you think we are over-reacting and stifling the creativity of our talented young ad-makers?”

Tolerance Meter hit red, and I ran out, secretly wishing I had a stronger hold on my senses.

Day 2:

The host: Jujhar Singh again.

Heated Debate on: Yuvraj vs. Yuvraj.

The cause of Vertigo, Nausea, and partial deafness:

Yuvraj Singh’s birthday bash case. Neelam Mahajan poised to create a new record in pushing the decibels, the wronged mother fuming in the studio, and Mrs.Singh, on the phone. Our dear arbitrator went tipsy with glee. For the lady beside him was set for some action.

The matter being sub-judice was of course something that HT and our dear Jujhar had so graciously chosen to overlook. Mrs.Singh not being able to hold up to Mrs.Mahajan’s well-toned vocal chords looked like a lamb ready for sacrifice.

Had it not been Jujhar and HT’s shrewd move to keep the two ladies physically separated from each other, the damage to life and property would have been immense. A heated exchange of words ensued. Some even warranting a defamatory suit, that might have had Mrs. Singh in the studio, and Mrs. Mahajan on phone, maybe, for want of a refreshing change.

Jujhar gave a toothy smile, and blurted out something inane in his guttural twang. In case, you had been counting the morsels on your plate for want of a suitable diversion, and had to lift your head fearing a crick in the neck, the progress of the fight flashed on the screen, each scandalous utterance making way to a new line of trash, uhmm… flash.

Tolerance Meter went bonkers. I stumbled out of the room, fighting for dear life and desperately clinging on to what was once my sanity.


*: Was forced to flee, as for reasons best known to him, my father insisted on keeping HT on at full volume. Jujhar kept chasing me to the remotest corner of the house, with his debonair din.