Ya Right !

The precious pearls rolled down her cheeks. As she wept, giving way to her pent up emotions, I thought- ‘he didn’t do the right thing.’ And there it was again…..back like a cyclic redundant error- the ‘Right’ thing!

Right….
a very interesting and versatile word. Its usage as a prefix and suffix is omnipresent and universally abused. We wait for the right person and right job; try to follow the rules right; use and abuse our rights; try to do the right thing in the right way at the right time; wait for the right season to bring out our quilts and right reason to join a revolution. We wait for the right pair of denims and shoes; wait for the nonexistent right to defeat the left in Bengal; the right moment to trip the shutter; the right age to vote, drink and have sex. We also wait for the authorities to take the right actions; fight with a fellow passenger to establish our birth-right over the window seat; ponder about the right way to kiss and wonder at times when the world looks blurred- if our optician got our power right!
In short- we have a right complex. It’s our moral irresponsibility.

The ‘Right’ related obsessive compulsive disorder is as unique as your nose or my bald pate. My cousin once asked his mom, ‘Now that I am in class six, is this the right age for me to use slangs?’A friend of mine with a habit of screwing up often complains, ‘But I tried to do the right thing this time!’ My dad it seems, is obsessed with trying to prove that he is right (and more importantly- that I am wrong). I wait for the right time to do things……(probably a side effect of my romance with the camera). My epitaph should ideally read- ‘And the right time came.’ My friend T, who’s totally in love with her boss, measures the right words for the sweet nothings she exchanges through sms. According to her, she fails miserably.

In Gregory Robert's Shantaram, we meet Abdel Kader Khan who does ‘the wrong things for the right reasons.’ After that introduction, probably for the first time in my life a lot of things fell into place. Morality as preached by the holy scriptures or our elders has a strange tendency to lose relevance in the real world. In antithesis, the words of the wily old don add meaning and purpose. The failure of the proposed morality probably stems from the fact that it sees life in two colors- black and white- Right or Wrong! However in reality, life is all about the multitude of greys. Choosing between right and wrong is easy. Picking the more right from the plethora of wrongs- now that’s the bitch.

As I sat there, trying to console her, I realized I was both sad and relieved. Sad because of the obvious reason…but relieved? Let’s face it, no matter whatever I said, I am human, I am imperfect….I was insecure. So when he bungled….was it too wrong for me to feel relieved? But I also did feel petty for feeling so relieved. And while the devil preached- ‘to hell with it, enjoy while it lasts’; the strange voice that we like to call conscience asked, ‘was that right?’

Photograph : Yours Truly

The Butterfly Effect

“It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the word. –Chaos Theory“

So began the film.
The Butterfly Effect is a movie about a boy played by Ashton Kutcher, who suffers severe traumas while growing up. He blacks out, often at moments of high stress and people around him aren’t sure if he is lying. While fishing for answers to heal his emotional scars, he finds that when he reads from his journals, that he has been keeping throughout his adolescence, he travels back in time, and is able to essentially ‘correct’ parts of his past, thereby causing the blackouts he experienced as a child. However, as a consequence to his corrective choices, when he propagates back to the present: his alternate futures never remain same. His corrective actions influence the characters and they end up being different from where he had started- a hazardous side effect of time travel. No choice is the 'right' one.

Quite influenced by the film which marks a fitting end to my day, I googled up a little about The Effect. Beyond the mathematical psychobabble, what this lesser mortal could grasp in a nutshell is that it is a component of Chaos Theory and is all about the sensitive dependence on initial condition. It states that small variations in the initial condition of a dynamic system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system itself. Eg, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

This theory marks a very interesting departure from the prevalent notions of fate and fortune. Even if we consider the remotest possibility of knowing the future, the fact that we will change our present or near future decisions based on that knowledge to avoid say a problem will create a ripple in the continuum of time, whose magnitude will affect the future that could have been. Hence the only constant that still remains is change.

Today I was woken up by a phone call from this lady that I am quite fond of and developing a great liking for. She asked me to go through the horoscope for the day. Bleary eyed, I obliged. There it was on page 3 of a supplement, written by a tarot and coffee cup reader (whatever that is)!!! Her predictions for the lady were- “An issue concerning love may become a cause for concern as two people fight for your affection. You’ll have to let go of one for the other.” Ooops, I forgot to mention. She also has a second admirer who it seems grew confident enough about his feelings by the end of the day to inform the lady about the seriousness of his intent. It’s a tad interesting to note that I was the one who introduced them to each other. Now the tricky and difficult part…..the questions. For starters-

1. How different things would be if I hadn’t introduced them?
2. If she was absolutely sure about today’s predictions, how different her reactions would be?
3. Was the other guy influenced by the horoscope….influenced even a teeny weenie bit?
4. If the three of us absolutely believed in the prophesy, would we try to avoid the conflict? If so, how ?

Many more corollaries may follow, but answers to them will never be known with absolute certainty. We may speculate, but then they would be just that. And when I was almost tempted to think….I wish I never got them introduced….. the Chaos Theory kicked in. If it wasn’t him….it would be someone else….the space, time and characters may change but life doesn’t magically transform into a bed of roses. And probably this is what makes life worth living.

Image Courtesy :: Stumm47 from deviantart.com

On his birthday

Last Monday we celebrated garndpa's birthday. The patriarch turned 86 and seemed pleasantly surprised with the love and affection we showered on him. Hope we could show him the same respect and love all through the year. My cousin wrote a poem for him, which probably he liked the most. He is a poet and writer among several other things you see. While clicking, I hit on the idea of making a series on him. The lens sure lends some different perspective to the people we take for granted. Tagore was right, first capture the beauty in your own backyard before venturing far and wide.

Photograph: Yours Truly

Ex-(ample) !

Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.
With these words the legendary Yousuf Karsh outlined a strange paradox - the equal importance of shadows and highlights in adding depth and dimension. Too much of one and you are at a risk of becoming too dark or too bland. We need the perfect balance. It’s this magic ratio that bewilders us with choices.
Life is all about choices. Having them, choosing them, living them or leaving them. Some choices like- whom to marry are big, while some like propensity for Calvin and Hobbes or Archies are even bigger. But comic-books or cuisines- the arbitrary constant that remains is the omnipresence of the fourth dimension- time. After a point of time, our present choices are condemned to the past and left to rot in the junkyard of retrospection. And we, their once doting owners, disown them, derogatorily labeling them as our ex-s.
Off late I have been encountering a lot of ex-s- of my friends and my own. Lemme start with my blasts from the past. Things you do and choices you make have a strange property of reappearing more frequently when they go sour. Take my choice of Vodka for instance. The virgin alcoholic started with White Mischief, graduated to Fuel and finally attained nirvana with Smirnoff. But in doing so, he condemned his pocket to some serious pinch and attracted the ire of lesser drinkers! He became the snob who snubbed the White. My second brush with an ex came in the form of an ex- gf (Girl friend for the lack of a better verbal substitute. We are still confused about what to call our old feelings- lost in the twilight of infatuation and attraction.) We got back in touch, smoothed out some old problems, created new ones and revived our amazing professional rapport. In short we became friends, or did we?
Algebra teaches us to consider X as the unknown. A + B = X. Friendship plus commitment equals love. Ok there are lotta defunct versions of that equation and none close to solving the riddle. But what none seem to care about is the possibility of friendship with an ex. While some like me live in the utopia of its possibility, others like my friends G and Max aint so sure. Is it possible that I, by virtue of my three ‘serious’ encounters, am better qualified to comment about it than my friends who work with the serious limitation of just one element in the sample space ? Or is it this single minded surgical focus that separates them from this carpet bombing Romeo? When push comes to shove and it’s time to move on, we deal with our past in different ways. How we do that is up to us- again a matter of choice. So I continue to be her blues manager and she continues to inspire me with her talent. But down the line we both know how incredibly similar we are….. and the thought of spending our lives with someone as imperfect as ourselves scares us. So we play Goldilocks and continue with our search, for the elusive ‘perfect' one.

Photograph : Your Truly

On Vices, Vodka and Vibes.....

Phew….what a relief ! It’s final. Thanks to the global financial meltdown, my first job will not be in the land of shifting sands, moustache and relics of royalty….It will rather be in the city I love so much and have grown to call my home. All this boils down to more savings, lesser responsibility, mum’s gastronomic delights and a new set of old friends.

My bustling city is a place over-populated by 13 million fascinating individuals with utter disdain for traffic rules, united by ubiquitous Bong-pride and a ‘genuine’ appreciation for Tagore, Teresa and Tangra (not the place offering cheap alcohol, but the fish). But lately, it seemed that the city had been magically transformed for two people. Hour long conversations flew by in a space of minutes and few days apart seemed like weeks. Both decided it was time to play Einstein and rewrite the laws of relativity…. include the particularly heady and peculiar affects of infatuation.
But they were the guys…. the lady however,was in no hurry.
She measured her distance in light years and intended to take her own sweet time. Or did she?

Trivia apart…..
Off late I have joined this odd bunch of motley crew for a weekly trip to the watering hole. There, over alcohol, nicotine and spring chicken we try to ‘chill.’ All of us are compulsive about labeling. Be it clothes, sexuality, relationships, even terrorism… we love our labels. It adds order to the chaos. So much so that our actions are often confined by the labels themselves. So clothes can become downmarket, sexuality- confused, relationships- serious, and terrorism- cross-border. It is at this juncture that the intoxicants come handy and help us think out of the box. We gain a perspective of the fly on the wall. We are able to Extrospect- or introspect oneself from outside!

Last Saturday, after two pegs of Vodka and ample samples of salty chicken, I realized that I had committed the cardinal sin. I had forsaken my dreams and morphed them to accommodate the blinding euphoria. A Sobering experience like the hangover headache. And all this, while Darfur starved, Iraq fought, Afghanistan bled, Congo died and a couple mourned with the nation over the loss of their only son in the 26/11 tragedy while our politicians continued the omnipresent mudslinging. That was the day my aspirations resurfaced after I had dropped off the edge of the earth.

Back in my college days when my management prof. harped on the importance of conflict in group dynamics, I would roll my eyes and say - Ya, right… WATEVA ! Turns out the bloke was actually right ! Imagine a piece of CU syllabus actually standing its ground in real world! UNBELIEVABLE!

As I watched the interplay of group dynamics unfold with undercurrents of hope, aspiration, anguish, jealousy and despair- the fly on the wall finally got it.
The equation to the triangle is easy. Its intimacy that’s the bitch!

Photograph Courtesy: James Nachtway

Alcohol Induced

And she went again,
tripping over her feelings;
knocking down and rebuilding
those chipped walls, papered
with faded yellow roses...
and tear stained glass
which encumber countless shattered dreams..

Under those white ivory trinkets
She sat and shivered
sucking every breath in
as icy thoughts hit her heart;
threatening
to paint a snowy white canvas,
bright with life.

Her soul rests in its solitude
warmth wanders in and out
of a home- stranger and friend,
at the same time.
she stares inside for a few moments then keeps
looking out of the window...
Golden gates yearning soft goodbyes


And I wonder...
should I hold her hands... ?
should I...?
But no, I just let her be.
Smiling inwardly
as she lingers for a while before leaving
with a refrain of a peaceful afterglow
in which
I dream freely.

Loneliness…is so beautiful !

Photograph- Yours Truly