Passerby

I was but a passerby

I saw you but from a frosted window pane,

A city came alive

You never let me in,

Into your many lives

I stood looking at all the things you were,

Your beauty mesmerized,

And just when I felt I knew you,

You left me again surprised.

 

I was but a passerby,

When you pushed past me to get to work,

And when you sat staring at the distant tide,

When you aimlessly walked home

 

I was but a passerby,

When you cruelly crushed dreams everyday

Of a million hopeful eyes,

And weaved new ones every night

 

I was but a passerby,

When you stayed awake all night,

In the alleys that breathed a different life,

Of the underbelly of dark, dark lies

 

In a million ways, in all these days,

I hated you with all my heart

Till now no more hate remains

And I leave now simply because,

I’m no longer just a passerby.

There’s something wrong with this city

This morning I saw something disturbing while on my way to work. Just before Lower Parel Station, I man lay on the tracks. For those who live in this city and travel often by train, this isn’t an unusual sight. We accept it as unavoidable accidents in a system that takes so many people to their destinations everyday. We deposit any feeling of discomfort to the almighty repository of fate and move on, station after station.
But today was something different. I said a prayer in my mind, so did some others who saw him. And then we got off the train as usual and went our way. But little did I know that a far more disturbing sight awaited me at the station. On the railway bridge, flocks of people gathered, craning their necks over each other and squeezing into the gaps to get a better view of the gore.
There was no sympathy in their murmur. No shock, not even discomfort at seeing another human being’s lifeless remains pecked at and scavenged by opportunistic crows. They just stood there, staring. It took me about 10 seconds to cross the bridge and all along the grilled fence, people stood, quietly absorbing the scene before them. Scavengers of another kind.
I don’t know how many of them realised that this was a human being, just like them. I don’t know if it entered their consciousness that what they were seeing was not just a murder of crows (I just realised the irony in that collective noun) feasting, but they were seeing the end of a life, much like their own, in the most disgraceful fashion possible. I wondered what was wrong with this city that I loved so much…
As I walked out of the station, into the scorching sun of the city, there was a world just like the one standing on the bridge. Only this one was speeding by. It was rushing about, feeling important. But both these worlds were deeply voyeuristic. Both these worlds had seen so much hardship and had survived it every day, that death and tragedy were but a spectacle, seen and forgotten.
Maybe then, this isn’t whats wrong with this city. Maybe this makes this city what it is. It gives her the strength to live through the gore and the scavengers, live through the hardships and eke out an existence, and again wake up in the morning, take the train, and live another day.

IPL…yes, me too!

Well, I tried. I really did. I hid, I ran, I did everything I could to escape the IPL monster. But no matter how hard I tried, it eventually caught up with me after two seasons and swallowed me in its big mean branded teeth (Ranging from Adidas to Goa Pan Masala!).
But that doesn’t go to say that IPL is a bad thing, necessariy. After all, it did make me angrily swith off the TV last night when Mumbai Indians lost the cup (yes, I even ended up taking sides…dont judge me!).
But nevertheless, I’ll try to make the best of the situation and finally, voluntarily, submit myself to the monster. By this, I mean that I have seen enough matches to provide my very own set of comments on the teams (well if Navjot Singh Siddhu can, so can I!). So here goes!
Mumbai Indians: Sachin! Sachin! Sach…..no wait! POLLARD! POLLARD! POLLARD!
Deccan Chargers: Who?
Chennai Super Kings: They should have won another cup- IPL’s biggest fashion disaster uniform!
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Yawn……I mean seriously bored-to-death-test-match-in-T20-yawn!
Kolkata Knight Riders: I guess they would play better if SRK was actually on the team..
Delhi Daredevils: Ok bye!
Rajasthan Royals: Crass Quotient- Shilpa Shetty
Punjab Kings XI: What’s the point?!

Another FYBMM…

Another day will dawn and Wilson College will throw its gates open.

ID-cards in their hands, dreams in their eyes and not a clue in their head, they’ll step in.

Another FYBMM will embark on their journey just like we did.

They’ll have that first lecture with Sudhakar Sir again and they’ll be scared of him…

They’ll make those quick friendships, those sudden ‘love’ affairs, started by some teasing…

They’ll spend rainy afternoons by the beach and of course,

Click those pictures…

They’ll have fun through their first Polaris, the ones in Security…the ones in 104…

They’ll discover themselves as they discover projects

The first night up before Suddhu’s (that’s what they’ll learn to call him) submission

It won’t help really. They’ll come five minutes after 7:30…the train was late of course!

Then they’ll spend the next two days getting him to accept the project.

Phone bills will shoot up, hours spent at home will plummet.

Parents will worry, wardens will warn and they’ll be at this one’s place…chilling…

The fights will happen too, big ones, small ones, i-can’t-do-another-project-with-him ones…

The breakups will happen too.

Bitter and frivolous…and we’ll be friends again

They’ll be divided and united…and maybe someday, they’ll boycott an exam of their own…

All this, before the first I.V.

Another FYBMM will embark on their journey just like we did.

I don’t know if this is their story or ours…

But it sure is one helluva story, isn’t it?

Zhop Aali!

This is an ode to all my friends and colleagues who burn the midnight oil to work and then are back again in the morning all week long. These non-voluntary workaholics are the poor sleep deprived souls who have eyes set in dark circles and look at least 5 years older than they are. For lack of too much else to do, I dedicate this piece and a few minutes of googling to you.

Sleep defines everything we do…or at least when and how we do it. Technically, an average human being must spend 1/3 rd of their lives sleeping. But that is clearly not the case. We spend either obscenely more or excruciating less time devoted to this blissful activity.

To put things in perspective in the bigger picture of a human lifetime (which isn’t so big after all!) we may make a few assumptions: 

• Childhood and old age are the only time when people are only glad to find you asleep. They tip toe across the room and are completely paranoid about waking you. It is also the only time when you can cause a lot of trouble when you’re awake.
• Most women sleep when they are tired. Most men sleep when they are bored. Children sleep whenever they want, except when they want to cry. Working people sleep more peacefully during work hours than at home.
• Lew Wallace was the one to invent the snooze button. Why? He was supposed to reveal the reason at a press conference, but he didn’t make it because he over slept.
• The world record of maximum time spent without food is actually longer than the world record og maximum time spent without sleep. So we can stay hungry longer than we can stay awake.
• Man is the only animal who goes to sleep when he’s not sleepy and wakes up when he is.

This list could go on. Sleep is one of the most interesting subjects of study. But what makes it more interesting is how it affects me. The time between childhood and old age, is the one where life is what happens to you between telephone calls, Facebook friend requests, tea breaks, sutta breaks, time-pass breaks, lunch breaks, simply-need-a-break- breaks and a few random breaks thrown in. in short, this is a time when life is a synonym for work. And at work, there is no time to sleep (official) and it is unthinkable to sleep in any of the breaks mentioned above. Lose a nice little chai break to sleep? No way!

Instead we pore over computer screens, down caffeine/ nicotine consisting substances and slowly go from happy, healthy, smiling, fun-loving, living people to sleep deprived zombies. But this really could be a good thing in someway (being the highly optimistic person that I am!). Because all this work pays off…most of the time! So the less we sleep, the more toppings we get on that pizza. So my grand hypothesis of the day is that sleep is inversely proportional to no. of pizza toppings!

It is truly wonderful to observe how our twisted brains actually manage to mess up nature that had been getting along fine until then! We have actually managed to pit food against sleep!

There is a lot more I want to say about sleep. It is something I truly miss these days. I would probably have typed it. But what to do…zhop aali!