A few days ago, the gang and I attended Sonu Nigam’s live performance at the Kala Ghoda art festival. Unfortunately one of us was MIA (Missing In Action!!). It was a mixed bag of an evening. Things began well enough with us meeting up at the venue. My mom and her friend were with me. Thankfully I was able to let go of them soon!! An hour or so of aimlessly wandering about the art installations and the various booths yielded nothing but overpriced ‘arty’ stuff none of us were interested in buying. The concert was scheduled to begin at 7.30 and we reached the site a bit before 7. Big Mistake. We should have made it to the concert site as soon as we reached there. The Asiatic Library steps were already full and the crowd spilled over on to the road. It was like a live many-headed monster moving in all possible directions. At 7 the opening act fired up and miss ‘Gunjan’ waltzed onto the stage. We couldn’t actually see the stage but the audio worked well enough to inflict one of the worst renditions of ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ on the hapless listeners! All three of us were animatedly discussing where Sonu Nigam would be right now – “oh he must have just left his place / must be stuck in traffic / must be in his vanity van”. Several theories later, the screeching was over and the main act started.
There was a lot of pushing, we were jostled around madly several times and had to retreat to a much safer place at the back of the crowd, unsavoury characters were present in abundance, but all of it faded into insignificance once Sonu Nigam’s dulcet tones flooded the arena. He is genuinely one of the few singers who are REALLY good live. So many ‘studio singers’ are terrible live, and it was heaven to hear his velvety voice wash over you. There was some really sad mimicry in the middle, but we got over it soon. Goodness knows why he chose a made-up song which went “Aloo-Kanda-Bhindi-Mutter Paneer”. For me, the best song was from the newer Bhagat Singh movie – ‘Mera Rang de Basanti Chola’. It is a beautiful song that brings out the best in his voice, and the patriotism in the song really makes me sentimental. All of us were singing along to almost each and every song.
Of course, the best situations and the best movies often have an intriguing subplot and ours was no different. Intrigue spilled over when two teenage girls started arguing right next to us. It turned out that one of them had lost her cell phone. Someone in the crowd had found it, answered when the girl called and was now subjecting her to trashy talk like “I’ll give you your phone if you give me a kiss”. It was so irritating. And of course, the spineless jerk spoke like that only to that girl and hung up when our guy blasted him out. There is no dearth of jerks in the world I guess. All this drama notwithstanding, we all enjoyed the performance, the girls too. Listening to live music is truly one of the best experiences!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Rose
A new short story by yours truly....:)
Anish Desai stood at the gate of the family bungalow, one hand poised above the gate latch. There it was, his home, the family home aptly called Aaple Ghar. Just standing there looking at the familiar compound brought back a flood of memories. The sunlit summer mornings spent playing with Gaurav, his twin, while Mom looked on indulgently. Mom’s piping hot pohe and chaha, never failing to brighten up even the dullest afternoon. Dad coming home in the evenings, always ready with something special for his twin wonders. He and Gaurav squabbling over everything, yet always sharing things. They were never able to stay away from each other for long. And yet…
He had been away long enough. His family needed him, and more importantly, he needed them. He would never leave them again. A single tear tracked its way down his face and he hastily wiped it away, half smiling. They’d call him a girl! His face darkened with the memory of a long gone evening, but the frown on his face was gone before even he could register it. The past doesn’t matter anymore, he thought, I just have to focus on building a future.
He opened the gate and stepped in. almost immediately he noticed mom’s favourite corner of the garden – the one with the rose bushes. He frowned – the plants had wilted almost completely. One half-opened rose sat in lone splendour atop an almost dried up bush. It wasn’t like mom to neglect the roses. She had always taken such good care of them. She had always taken such good care of everyone.
The leaves crunched under his feet as he walked down the narrow winding path and rang the large antique doorbell. A sombre gong sounded through the house. The sound both surprised Anish and scared him a little. Shivering slightly, he waited for the door to open. It didn’t. He decided to walk around the house and see what was happening. At the back, he saw a window open and climbed in, landing in the guest room. The room was completely bare, the doors closed.
The unnatural silence in the house was beginning to disturb him. Anish tried to push the door open. Thankfully, it opened. He ran out into the living room and breathed a sigh of relief. Gaurav was sitting on the sofa, his back to Anish, flicking through TV channels at his usual breakneck speed.
“Gaurav! Thank God! What happened? Why isn’t anyone answering the door? Where did all the furniture in the guest room go? Where did mom disa…….” Anish’s questions trailed off into a horrified silence as Gaurav turned to look at him with hatred and loathing burning in his eyes. Anish’s hands started trembling as his mirror image got up of the sofa and walked towards him, that look of pure hatred still evident on his face. Gaurav was thinner than he remembered, his clothes hanging off his now skinny frame. His grey eyes, exactly like Anish’s, seemed to almost pop out of his face on looking at his twin. He strode towards Anish till they were face to face. The comforting familiarity that usually accompanied looking at Gaurav’s face was nowhere within Anish’s reach as he trembled where he stood.
“You ba*****!!” Gaurav hissed “You have the guts to come back after what you did?” “Gaurav, you have to hear me out, it wasn’t my fault….” “IT WAS YOUR FAULT!!!” Gaurav screamed at the top of his voice. It was a horrifying sound that made Anish close his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Gaurav pulled his hands off and rasped “open your eyes!! Look around! If it hadn’t been for you, our family would have still been together! You destroyed our family! You’re responsible for the state of this house today! You’re responsible for mom having to go through all that…..”
The mention of his mother seemed to galvanize Anish into finally reacting. His head snapped up, eyes wide open and overflowing with tears. “NO!! I did NOT make mom go through all that!! Where is she? I want to see her, I want to talk to her, explain to her what happened, explain to YOU what happened….
“You want to see her? Talk to her?” Sneering cruelly, Gaurav dragged Anish towards their parents’ bedroom. A horrible moaning sound issued from behind the closed door. Anish wanted to know what it was and dreaded it at the same time. Maintaining his vice-like grip on Anish’s wrist with one hand, Gaurav violently shoved open the bedroom door with the other hand. The door flew open and hit the wall. Anish stood there, horrified to the very depths of his soul.
His mother, his beautiful, amazing, loving mother lay there on the bed, her clothes bloodstained, her hair wildly dishevelled, her limbs thrashing against the mattress. She looked at Anish with unseeing, wild eyes and screamed like a wounded animal. Anish screamed and moved toward her without thinking when Gaurav blocked his way and tried to push him away. They struggled for a few seconds but Anish stopped trying to get past Gaurav and ran out instead. He could feel Gaurav’s heavy footsteps pursuing him, but he continued running. He ran out into the garden, towards his mother’s favourite rose bush. He lunged towards the solitary blood-red rose on top of the nearly dried-up bush. The sharp thorns pricked his fingers and drew blood. He didn’t care. He just somehow knew that if he got the rose to his mother, she would know who he was and this nightmare would end. Things would just go back to the way they were. The jagged pieces of his life would somehow glue themselves back together and his family would be whole again.
He turned towards the house, gripping the rose tightly in his hands. Gaurav was standing in his way, looking almost demented in his hatred. Anish somehow managed to evade him till they both reached the door, where Gaurav caught him. They struggled with each other in a chokehold, their strengths almost too evenly matched. Finally Anish managed to steer both of them towards his parents’ room. His mother’s screams were still ringing through the house. Anish and Gaurav crashed into the room, falling down in a heap on the floor. Gaurav was not giving up so easily. He pushed Anish towards the cupboard. Anish banged heavily into the cupboard, shattering the huge mirror on the door.
Gaurav stared at the huge, jagged shards of glass lying on the floor. Suddenly a look of pure evil twisted his features. He grabbed a huge glass piece and ran towards Anish, shouting “I’m going to kill you for what you did to us!” Anish evaded the first strike, stumbling to the left and letting Gaurav fall to the right. The rose! He had to get the rose to mom. He tried to get up, but felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down, and saw that a rose petal had stuck to his t-shirt, and its stain was slowly spreading over the thin grey cotton. But wait…..Gaurav had been wearing a grey t-shirt, not him. He had been wearing his old favourite blue shirt, the one that mom had gifted to him on his birthday. He looked up and saw that Gaurav had his shirt on. The shard of glass that had been in Gaurav’s hand was sticking out of his chest now. Wait….. If the glass piece was in Gaurav’s chest, then why was he, Anish, feeling such pain? The only thing sticking to his chest was mom’s rose petal. Anish collapsed on the floor, the pain reaching unbearable levels now. With one last effort, he pulled himself up and dragged himself towards mom’s bed. Her wild screams were now mixed with Gaurav’s harsh cries and abuses. The whole room seemed to be littered with a mixture of shattered glass and rose petals, the crimson of the petals slowly seeping into the shimmering white of the glass. He somehow managed to get to the bed. He took one last look at his mother, still screaming and staring with sightless eyes. His head drooped to his chest, the strength ebbing out of him. He glimpsed a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye and knew that Gaurav was bearing down on him, his entire being filled with rage. Then suddenly all the pain was gone. The only sensation he remembered, as darkness took over, was the velvety feel of the rose petals in his hands……….
Two days later…
Several groups of policemen stood in and around a deserted bungalow, Aaple Ghar, on the outskirts of Pune, surveying a scene of utter devastation. Broken glass mixed with blood lay around the hall and the master bedroom on the ground floor. Several of the window panes were broken and a bloodstained blue shirt lay on the floor near a single body covered with a white sheet. A tall, middle-aged man sat on the sofa in the hall, his head cradled in his hands. The seniormost policeman in the group walked up to him. “Mr Desai?” he softly called. The man sitting on the sofa looked up, his eyes full of tears. “I’m sorry, but we need to record your statement as to how all this happened”. The man straightened up, and started talking in a voice weighed down with grief.
“My name is Prabhakar Desai. I used to live in this bungalow with my wife Sumati and my twin sons Anish and Gaurav. We were a small, but very happy family. My business was flourishing and my sons were growing up, ready to take on their responsibilities once their education was done. The tragedy struck on Anish and Gaurav’s eighteenth birthday. I bought them a brand new car so that they could go to college together. The boys had just learnt driving and they coaxed Sumati into going for a drive with them. They had reached the highway when the car’s brakes failed, it went into a skid and crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Anish was at the wheel and he survived, but he watched Gaurav and Sumati die in front of him, unable to help them because he was trapped himself. For so many days when he was in the hospital, I despaired of his recovery. I was so happy when his body slowly healed and recovered. Little did I know that his mind would never recover from this horrible event. He started seeing flashes of the accident all the time, he would get scared and shout and scream. Initially I thought he would get over it, but it got worse. He would curse himself and say that he murdered his mother and brother. I had to take him to a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and given medicines, but nothing helped. His condition worsened to the point that I had to get him admitted into a hospital. Three days ago, the hospital called me and told me that he had managed to escape. He had no money, no food and no transport. How he managed to get here, and what he must have gone through, God only knows….” His shoulders shook as he wept openly. “Everything precious to me is gone now….” He stood up and walked to the window. The dried up lawn and neglected plants blew forlornly in the wind. The only thing that looked alive was the blood-red rose that still swayed atop the half-dried rose bush….
Anish Desai stood at the gate of the family bungalow, one hand poised above the gate latch. There it was, his home, the family home aptly called Aaple Ghar. Just standing there looking at the familiar compound brought back a flood of memories. The sunlit summer mornings spent playing with Gaurav, his twin, while Mom looked on indulgently. Mom’s piping hot pohe and chaha, never failing to brighten up even the dullest afternoon. Dad coming home in the evenings, always ready with something special for his twin wonders. He and Gaurav squabbling over everything, yet always sharing things. They were never able to stay away from each other for long. And yet…
He had been away long enough. His family needed him, and more importantly, he needed them. He would never leave them again. A single tear tracked its way down his face and he hastily wiped it away, half smiling. They’d call him a girl! His face darkened with the memory of a long gone evening, but the frown on his face was gone before even he could register it. The past doesn’t matter anymore, he thought, I just have to focus on building a future.
He opened the gate and stepped in. almost immediately he noticed mom’s favourite corner of the garden – the one with the rose bushes. He frowned – the plants had wilted almost completely. One half-opened rose sat in lone splendour atop an almost dried up bush. It wasn’t like mom to neglect the roses. She had always taken such good care of them. She had always taken such good care of everyone.
The leaves crunched under his feet as he walked down the narrow winding path and rang the large antique doorbell. A sombre gong sounded through the house. The sound both surprised Anish and scared him a little. Shivering slightly, he waited for the door to open. It didn’t. He decided to walk around the house and see what was happening. At the back, he saw a window open and climbed in, landing in the guest room. The room was completely bare, the doors closed.
The unnatural silence in the house was beginning to disturb him. Anish tried to push the door open. Thankfully, it opened. He ran out into the living room and breathed a sigh of relief. Gaurav was sitting on the sofa, his back to Anish, flicking through TV channels at his usual breakneck speed.
“Gaurav! Thank God! What happened? Why isn’t anyone answering the door? Where did all the furniture in the guest room go? Where did mom disa…….” Anish’s questions trailed off into a horrified silence as Gaurav turned to look at him with hatred and loathing burning in his eyes. Anish’s hands started trembling as his mirror image got up of the sofa and walked towards him, that look of pure hatred still evident on his face. Gaurav was thinner than he remembered, his clothes hanging off his now skinny frame. His grey eyes, exactly like Anish’s, seemed to almost pop out of his face on looking at his twin. He strode towards Anish till they were face to face. The comforting familiarity that usually accompanied looking at Gaurav’s face was nowhere within Anish’s reach as he trembled where he stood.
“You ba*****!!” Gaurav hissed “You have the guts to come back after what you did?” “Gaurav, you have to hear me out, it wasn’t my fault….” “IT WAS YOUR FAULT!!!” Gaurav screamed at the top of his voice. It was a horrifying sound that made Anish close his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Gaurav pulled his hands off and rasped “open your eyes!! Look around! If it hadn’t been for you, our family would have still been together! You destroyed our family! You’re responsible for the state of this house today! You’re responsible for mom having to go through all that…..”
The mention of his mother seemed to galvanize Anish into finally reacting. His head snapped up, eyes wide open and overflowing with tears. “NO!! I did NOT make mom go through all that!! Where is she? I want to see her, I want to talk to her, explain to her what happened, explain to YOU what happened….
“You want to see her? Talk to her?” Sneering cruelly, Gaurav dragged Anish towards their parents’ bedroom. A horrible moaning sound issued from behind the closed door. Anish wanted to know what it was and dreaded it at the same time. Maintaining his vice-like grip on Anish’s wrist with one hand, Gaurav violently shoved open the bedroom door with the other hand. The door flew open and hit the wall. Anish stood there, horrified to the very depths of his soul.
His mother, his beautiful, amazing, loving mother lay there on the bed, her clothes bloodstained, her hair wildly dishevelled, her limbs thrashing against the mattress. She looked at Anish with unseeing, wild eyes and screamed like a wounded animal. Anish screamed and moved toward her without thinking when Gaurav blocked his way and tried to push him away. They struggled for a few seconds but Anish stopped trying to get past Gaurav and ran out instead. He could feel Gaurav’s heavy footsteps pursuing him, but he continued running. He ran out into the garden, towards his mother’s favourite rose bush. He lunged towards the solitary blood-red rose on top of the nearly dried-up bush. The sharp thorns pricked his fingers and drew blood. He didn’t care. He just somehow knew that if he got the rose to his mother, she would know who he was and this nightmare would end. Things would just go back to the way they were. The jagged pieces of his life would somehow glue themselves back together and his family would be whole again.
He turned towards the house, gripping the rose tightly in his hands. Gaurav was standing in his way, looking almost demented in his hatred. Anish somehow managed to evade him till they both reached the door, where Gaurav caught him. They struggled with each other in a chokehold, their strengths almost too evenly matched. Finally Anish managed to steer both of them towards his parents’ room. His mother’s screams were still ringing through the house. Anish and Gaurav crashed into the room, falling down in a heap on the floor. Gaurav was not giving up so easily. He pushed Anish towards the cupboard. Anish banged heavily into the cupboard, shattering the huge mirror on the door.
Gaurav stared at the huge, jagged shards of glass lying on the floor. Suddenly a look of pure evil twisted his features. He grabbed a huge glass piece and ran towards Anish, shouting “I’m going to kill you for what you did to us!” Anish evaded the first strike, stumbling to the left and letting Gaurav fall to the right. The rose! He had to get the rose to mom. He tried to get up, but felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down, and saw that a rose petal had stuck to his t-shirt, and its stain was slowly spreading over the thin grey cotton. But wait…..Gaurav had been wearing a grey t-shirt, not him. He had been wearing his old favourite blue shirt, the one that mom had gifted to him on his birthday. He looked up and saw that Gaurav had his shirt on. The shard of glass that had been in Gaurav’s hand was sticking out of his chest now. Wait….. If the glass piece was in Gaurav’s chest, then why was he, Anish, feeling such pain? The only thing sticking to his chest was mom’s rose petal. Anish collapsed on the floor, the pain reaching unbearable levels now. With one last effort, he pulled himself up and dragged himself towards mom’s bed. Her wild screams were now mixed with Gaurav’s harsh cries and abuses. The whole room seemed to be littered with a mixture of shattered glass and rose petals, the crimson of the petals slowly seeping into the shimmering white of the glass. He somehow managed to get to the bed. He took one last look at his mother, still screaming and staring with sightless eyes. His head drooped to his chest, the strength ebbing out of him. He glimpsed a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye and knew that Gaurav was bearing down on him, his entire being filled with rage. Then suddenly all the pain was gone. The only sensation he remembered, as darkness took over, was the velvety feel of the rose petals in his hands……….
Two days later…
Several groups of policemen stood in and around a deserted bungalow, Aaple Ghar, on the outskirts of Pune, surveying a scene of utter devastation. Broken glass mixed with blood lay around the hall and the master bedroom on the ground floor. Several of the window panes were broken and a bloodstained blue shirt lay on the floor near a single body covered with a white sheet. A tall, middle-aged man sat on the sofa in the hall, his head cradled in his hands. The seniormost policeman in the group walked up to him. “Mr Desai?” he softly called. The man sitting on the sofa looked up, his eyes full of tears. “I’m sorry, but we need to record your statement as to how all this happened”. The man straightened up, and started talking in a voice weighed down with grief.
“My name is Prabhakar Desai. I used to live in this bungalow with my wife Sumati and my twin sons Anish and Gaurav. We were a small, but very happy family. My business was flourishing and my sons were growing up, ready to take on their responsibilities once their education was done. The tragedy struck on Anish and Gaurav’s eighteenth birthday. I bought them a brand new car so that they could go to college together. The boys had just learnt driving and they coaxed Sumati into going for a drive with them. They had reached the highway when the car’s brakes failed, it went into a skid and crashed into a tree on the side of the road. Anish was at the wheel and he survived, but he watched Gaurav and Sumati die in front of him, unable to help them because he was trapped himself. For so many days when he was in the hospital, I despaired of his recovery. I was so happy when his body slowly healed and recovered. Little did I know that his mind would never recover from this horrible event. He started seeing flashes of the accident all the time, he would get scared and shout and scream. Initially I thought he would get over it, but it got worse. He would curse himself and say that he murdered his mother and brother. I had to take him to a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and given medicines, but nothing helped. His condition worsened to the point that I had to get him admitted into a hospital. Three days ago, the hospital called me and told me that he had managed to escape. He had no money, no food and no transport. How he managed to get here, and what he must have gone through, God only knows….” His shoulders shook as he wept openly. “Everything precious to me is gone now….” He stood up and walked to the window. The dried up lawn and neglected plants blew forlornly in the wind. The only thing that looked alive was the blood-red rose that still swayed atop the half-dried rose bush….
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Back to Blogging!!
Turning 30…….
So I went and watched the movie “Turning 30” the other day. I had decided to watch it the moment the trailer first came on during a show of Raajneeti way back in July. Finally a movie that appeared to show the modern urban Indian woman and issues!! Of course, it had to be watched together with my best friends. It’s a movie about a gang of girls, so it has to be watched with a gang of girls!!
The movie was altogether no great shakes. A bit silly and mostly pretentious - and it had some really bad acting by several teakwood statues. What it did manage to capture fairly well was the emotional angst of the modern 30-something urban girl. Several lines spoken by Gul Panag while narrating the story did hit home. What is with men? Do they actually want to commit to a relationship or are they just out for a piece of ***? Has the marriage train passed us by? Or is this a station completely off the usual route? Will we ever find someone who appreciates us for what we are? Is the sanctity of a relationship still valid today? Or have people just become too selfish? Am I rambling too much? Has age finally gotten the better of me? :)
So I went and watched the movie “Turning 30” the other day. I had decided to watch it the moment the trailer first came on during a show of Raajneeti way back in July. Finally a movie that appeared to show the modern urban Indian woman and issues!! Of course, it had to be watched together with my best friends. It’s a movie about a gang of girls, so it has to be watched with a gang of girls!!
The movie was altogether no great shakes. A bit silly and mostly pretentious - and it had some really bad acting by several teakwood statues. What it did manage to capture fairly well was the emotional angst of the modern 30-something urban girl. Several lines spoken by Gul Panag while narrating the story did hit home. What is with men? Do they actually want to commit to a relationship or are they just out for a piece of ***? Has the marriage train passed us by? Or is this a station completely off the usual route? Will we ever find someone who appreciates us for what we are? Is the sanctity of a relationship still valid today? Or have people just become too selfish? Am I rambling too much? Has age finally gotten the better of me? :)
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