Dear men,

We all seek to have as many women as possible but in life it’s not a question of having the greatest number of women, because that’s too superficial a success. Rather it’s a question of cultivating one’s own demanding taste, because in it is mirrored the extent of one’s personal worth. Remember, my friend, that a real fisherman throws the little fish back into the water.

With love,
vC

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Dear women,

I always do this. In all my conversations with females,I always state that the world was coming to an end in December 2012 and thereafter loved the varied reactions on your sweet faces. Some of you state utter disappointment for world deserved to live beyond 2012, some get scared for your unfulfilled bucket list, some get happy for all their miseries would be over, some pity me for believing in such a non-sense, some buy it because u think that an IIM grad could never speak crap, some assume that coming from a Times of India employee it must be trashy. But even after all these experiments I can't break that stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which your (female) soul is made.

With love,
vC

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Dear diary,
After watching Woody Allen’s Paris at Midnight today, I was talking to a friend about how stupidly materialistic the world has become and how the 60’s and 70’s era would have been perfect to live in. And then I went to this crowded place in Chandni Chowk to delve in nostalgia through ancient monuments and savour some good food. It was then that someone pick-pocketed my apple iTouch. It was a gift I had bought for myself from my first salary and on my 25th birthday. I am not sad about the loss of my materialistic iTouch but have not been able to recover from the loss of my belief that I lost things only when I am in love.

With love,
vC


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PS: Some lines in the post have been picked from Milan Kundera's Laughable Loves. Milan Kundera remains one of the most kickass authors I have read.

Dear Diary,

It has nearly been four years since I last wrote to you. I read my last entry and realised how good and virgin my life was then.(Don't laugh on my use of word virgin). But I was a student then and life was like being in the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields where everything was unreal and there was nothing to get hung about . But then I changed three cities after that to finally write to you in this cold December night in the Ghalib's city of Delhi.

I won't bore you by talking about my past four years of life. About how I have grown and matured or how stupid I have become. I will talk about this moment as I had told you before that nothing, nothing exists outside the moment.

I finished reading Murakami’s Norwegian Wood few days backs. You would be surprised to know that there exists a book after the lovely Beatles song but the book is titled such because in the book the protagonist remembers about his girlfriend after hearing to the song Norwegian Wood. The book is good, Murakami is a nice weaver with a good description sense as he makes his characters so uncanny that u start loving them. I loved the character of a girl called Midori the most. She was an outgoing girl, the kind of girls I like, you know. The protagonist asks her about love and what sort of guys she liked. And she replied that she liked being selfish in love. She would ask her boy to get her a juice and he would run down 5 floors of stairs and climb back to get that juice for her and then she would throw that juice down saying that she didn’t need it anymore . And then he would apologise to her for being late and she would ask him to get some coke and he would again run down 5 stairs and climb back again with the bottle of Coke and she would again throw it down and when he would say sorry, she would hug him and make love to him. Such a selfish type of love she needed.

Anyways, I am searching for a new place to dwell in. And it seems like all landlords hate us. They show us the shittiest of places and tell us that thats where bachelors live. And then they hate us further because we have jobs in Times of India. And then Brokers would show us houses and highlight the fact that owners didn’t live in the same building and hence we could bring our girls and have parties with them. We feel so foolish then, I can't even tell you.

Oh okay, you are getting bored so I will tell you a fact I stumbled across. It says that some people actually believe that if they eat makeup they can be pretty on the inside too.

You know I miss Bombay at times. And right now I am missing Bombay and specifically Andheri station platform number 4 and 5 where I used to catch 9:11am train to Churchgate daily. Thats when an old man would play flute on the station and we would throw money on his green towel. I used to board that train but then the wind would still carry those sad lonely notes of that flute. I miss those sad lonely notes of that flute the most right now.

Anyways tomorrow is Monday. You know no wonder how beautiful a tone I set it to, Monday’s alarm is what I hate the most.

I promise that I would write you often and sorry for the dust collected on you.

With Love,
vC

My friend stores in his cellphone only the photographs of his ex-girlfriends. And of only those girls who were externally beautiful (I can't comment on the internal beauty because I am not aware of it).By externally beautiful I mean they had nice features, large eyes, pointed nose, pouted lips, thin-long neck,good jawline etc.
And every time he met a new girl he showed them the same photos of all his ex-girlfriends. I asked him why did he do it? Why did he show those pics to those beautiful girls. Every time he had the same reply that " You fool, Kundera says that girls don't go for guys who are handsome instead they go for guys who once had beautiful women!!"

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I miss my school days- and the part which I miss as well as silently laugh about was being a proud love consultant ..Probably thats wat comes easy to each one of us- love consulting, solving (or further-complicating) friend's love issues (however we may suck when it comes to consulting our own love issues)...And due to absence of phones and e-mails, love letter writing was an integral part of consulting... I, like an adept love consultant, used to imbibe the likes and dislikes of my client's girlfriend in the long letters... If she liked DDLJ i made sure to include quotes like "bade bade sheher mein chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain" or if she had finer tastes like Casablanca I ensured quotes like " Here's looking at you, kid".

But one day, one of my naive friends did not understand the importance of my role (that of a love consultant) and he wrote a letter by himself and that too without consulting me..He pushed down his choice of Titanic down his girlfriend's neck by addressing her Rose..and then and there the "love" ended in a fiasco!!

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Thanks to the corporate life,some people have stopped seeking money or happiness or love or peace or truth..In longer run they might seek anything, but in a shorter time span, they all seek is a Friday evening...Some of them even orgasm at the idea of a Friday evening..If u ask a person abt his short term goals he will pop up the same crap of wanting to go up the corporate ladder by contributing to the organisation but trust me all he will seek is a Friday evening when he can actually go and relish a perpetual escape of Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love....

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Few days back I had blogged about my ideal girl..But that was more in a lighter vein or to say that was meant to be relished by a different target group.
But now the places have changed, I have lost so much and gained so much..my perception about an ideal girl has "evolved" to wat Kundera describes about Eva:
"Eva is a cheerful man-chaser. But she doesn't chase them to marry them. She chases them the way men chase women.Not love but only friendship and sensuality exist for her. So she has many friends: men r not afraid she wants to marry them, and women have no fear she is seeking them to deprive them of a husband. Besides if she ever married her husband would be a friend she would allow everything to and demand nothing from."


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Hailing from a small town is just another thing, but visiting it after long is an experience -a hilarious one though. You witness the slow pace of life compared to the cities, the bondage amongst the people and the vast growing urban-rural divide.
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Everytime I go home, my mom takes me to an astrologer who has a poster of John Lennon hung on a wall. He seems to have lost interest in money making rat race of the cities and chose to follow his passion of astrology. But I donno how correct he predicts things as everytime I meet him, his predictions change and the maximum change occurs in the prediction of my wife-to-be. Earlier she used to be a nagging, arrogant woman and now he predicts her to be a rural simpleton.

Everytime I go home, one of my dad's friends would bring his son for career counselling and I would have to behave all polite and as a genuine role model of the youth of my town. He would ask me open ended questions like "How to crack CAT" or "How to crack IITJEE". And I would start my preachings about dreams and motivation which I am sure would put all the self-help book writers to shame.

Everytime I go home, in a train I would meet certain people who would be more interested in what others are doing. They would come and have a look at my novel and ask for which competition exam I was studying or would comment on the price of the book.

Everytime I go home, one of my dad's friend would get his son to be examined from me as in where he stands on the path to be an engineer. And then I would ask a patented question from him which would be like "A 100-metre runner accelerates for first 4 seconds at the rate of 6 metre per second square and blah blah. Find the distance covered" And he would go all ballistic on the question and use all physics formula and end up with some vague answer or would say the data is incomplete. And I would say to read the question again as a 100-metre runner would run 100 metres. The mantra being to study smart. I know thats a foolish assumption that a 100 meter can only run 100 mtrs, but as long as people buy it, it works.

Everytime I go home, a relative aunty of mine or a neighbour aunty would come and brag about her role in my genteel upbringing and how much I used to loved her when I was a kid. She would say about all the kiddish stuff I used to do when i was little (which I am sure all kids do),making all the faces and would laugh out loud on my otherwise bored face. And now her only dream would be to play with my kids on her laps. Blah.

Everytime I go home, all the uncles would ask for my package. And after listening to my real package, they would comment "so less. one of my nephews is in merchant navy and he earns far more, wat was the use of IIM" or "in the newspapers they say that IIM grads earn in crores, seems like u did not study much"..
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Above all of it, home is the best place to go. The comfort, the pampering, the care, the royal treatment, the role model personification makes it all a heaven.

PS: All the above sentences beginning with 'everytime I go home' has been purposefully hyped to bring some laugh in your otherwise morose life.

So like all other arranged marriage, I have finally unveiled the ghoongat of the city of Delhi. Yeah I have started liking the city. Beneath that too-much-of gaudy and that ugly bridal makeup, Delhi is a beauty. All it needs to do is to shed so much of that cosmetic make-up and try the simpleton way.

On a serious note, I found that beneath all that flashiness, Delhi has a big and tender heart. The people are accommodating and nice. The sense of humor is great here. No city other than Delhi has that a big heart to laugh on itself.

There has been a smooth transition from Bombay to Delhi. Like so many other Delhites, I have also started to love drinking inside the car by that roadside tandoori shop and the loud punjabi music by the car-stereo.I have begun to love the old monuments and the lovely food and have learnt to ignore the errant drivers, the shallow, verbose and insolent fellow city dwellers, the duping rickshaw-wallahs and the lack of sea.

While Bombay was more like a love affair to me, I had to pass thru the tests of all the phases- that love at first sight, then running after her, toiling hard to amuse her, even giving those expensive gifts, proving her that u r the man ready to behold her above all, bear all that nautankis and then u finally get her. But Delhi has been more like a typical arranged marriage,u hate her for all that gaudy bridal make up, and then u slowly unleash each other's beauty, and slowly discover each other types.

As of now i have still not converted from that Bombay-loving-self to Delhi-is-better but somehow Delhi exudes a romance which Bombay may never be able to exude in its money-making rat race.

His life continued getting harder, the corporate world started taking a toll on him. It gets harder all the time, he once said. Harder, yet easier. One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be hard as hard can be grows harder yet.

Every saturday, he and his girlfriend taught some under-privileged kids in a small basti across the river Hindon passing Noida. He used to drive his Thunderbird to that basti and she used to be his hugging pillion rider. A nice couple they were, they looked good together, always jovial, happily ridiculing each other in their own world. He was an MBA and was in the sales team of some fancy beverage company while she was a doctor. But ironically he was more empathetic and social service inclined while she was more nonchalant and corporate types.

Their point of contact in the basti was a small guy who was just 18 years old and was quite talkative. The small guy told them that he was on facebook and that they should add him as a friend and hence cause an increase in his miniscule list of friends. She asked him how he felt about being the only boy in facebook from the basti, and he told that he was not happy. Facebook made him aware of things he could never achieve. It made him conscious of beautiful places in Africa, about posh malls, about gadgets while earlier he was happily ignorant.

The couple taught 16 kids and she mostly taught them English and Hindi while he taught them maths and other subjects and later told them stories to motivate. He used to love their belief that they would one day be rich if they studied hard. The kids liked him more than her because he was a storyteller and could de-metamorphose himself into a kid. He used to enact,mimic, lower his pitch and baritone and do all kiddish stuff. They used to enjoy his sessions and he used to love it. He was never aware that innocence of kids could have such an unwinding effect. It was a win-win situation for both the kids and him.

He loved to teach because it provided him peace of mind; also because it taught him humility, brought it home to him who he is in the world. While his source of enjoyment was direct, hers was moreover indirect. He enjoyed playfully teaching the kids, she enjoyed that bike ride to outskirts but above all she relished that peaceful look in her boyfriend's face.....

Off late, the world has left me feeling stupid for so many reasons that I prefer not to reveal my choices, about what I love and what I hate, about what I enjoy and what I detest. I fear to be mocked down (Of not having liked Bodyguard, of not having watched the Twilight series, of not having followed that American TV series, of not supporting the Anna movement,of not able to tolerate the series called MTV Roadies, of advocating the beauty of not having things than having them).

The recent spate of bollywood hits like Bodyguard and Singham has bestowed upon me me an inferiority complex of not being able to appreciate the beauty of these movies. Probably it hallmarks me of not having quite a taste or not being a connoisseur.So many people watched and loved these movies that I wonder I can openly call them in public as bad movies. I could avoid Singham but I could not avoid Bodyguard just because of the lovely mass marketing done by the coterie formed by all the channels (and the leader being the news channels obviously). My belief of being a a stupid was provoked further when I could not find those jokes funny to which the entire hall was laughing at.

Delhi gives me further more reasons to feel stupid. Why don't I love hanging out at malls? Last time it was raining I took a halt at India Gate in order to enjoy rains with some equally ecstatic people. I used to do it in Bombay. When it used to rain I used to walk on the marine drive and get a heightened feeling at the site of ocean changing colors and simultaneously watch people enjoy rains. But to my dismay I found the entire India Gate road empty although the rain was not in flurry but was just like kissing your face types. The only people I encountered there were cops who questioned me to what was I doing alone in rains in India Gate. I replied that I was just walking by and it isn't that heavy a rain.

Another reason for being stupid these days is people's take on photography these days. When a random cow's portrait clicked by DSLR is considered as good photography. Where the better the camera one posseses, better the photographer one has become.

I hope by now, you must have started sending your bouquet of sympathies to me.

"yun hi rakhte rahe bachpan se dil saaf hum apna....
Pata nahi tha ki keemat toh chehro ki hoti hai, dil ki nahi..."

The problem with her was that her fellow friends, female or male, never realised the importance of her company. But when she was gone, they missed her, and missed her badly. She was adept in filling the gaps in their discussion, the void in their laughter and even the vacuum in their silence. Her presence was negligible but her absence was huge.

He, who was no different than her friends, could not recognize the beauty of her presence but was bulldozed under her absence. He missed her and missed her much more than loved her. Probably missing someone should be at a higher pedestal than loving the same someone.

It was last time he was meeting her, unaware of the transience of their liaison. But she was aware of it, because she knew that she could never hate him. She still loved him, until she figured out that it hurt a lot less to just not care.
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PS: I know the above piece is random and incomplete, but I sat for 3 hours thinking wat to write further but could not think of anything. So I decided to finally publish it considering my absence from this writing world for so long. May be its just the Delhi airspace which hit my writings barren or may be its best to end it this way.



Dear friend,
I had always liked to tell myself that you were something abstract, a legend and a myth, but now I knew that behind the poetry of these words hid an entirely unpoetic truth: that I didn’t know you; that I didn’t know you as you really were, as you were in and to yourself. I had been able to perceive (in my youthful egocentricity) only those aspects of your being that were turned directly to me (to my loneliness, my captivity, my yearning for tenderness and affection); you had been nothing to me but a function of my own situation; everything that went beyond that concrete situation, everything that you were in yourself, had escaped me.

-mE (inspired by Milan Kundera)

Dear friend,

Now that I have reached your city, not specifically your city, but your ugly cousin named Noida, I am sure you would want to read about my experiences here. Well apart from food, friends and winter I have never liked Delhi much but thats ok because I haven't liked any city apart from Bombay. But then it had been too much of Bombay that the nomadic me needed to break free from it.

Here, I don't go out much, I haven't even taken a mobile number here. I don't even like going out here. I tried walking on these roads but I feel lonely. The roads are well built but there are no people but only cars. Thanks to the bundle of books I brought with me that I confine myself to it. I am reading a lot and also playing FIFA on my laptop a lot as well. In my constant attempt to stick to one-touch football, I still lose playing against the laptop.

About my new office, I told you I did not expect much from it. So I would not be able to tell you much about it except that I don't have to wear formals for 6 days any more. You know how much I hated those black shoes and those neatly ironed trousers.

I miss Bombay alot mostly when those auto waalas ask for the fare double the amount I last paid for the same route. I miss Bombay a lot when I feel claustrophobic in Delhi metro with nothing to do footboarding on. I miss khao gali which those bastards so gruesomely bombed. I miss marine drive the most because here after office I have nothing better to do than to return to the same room and go back to reading. Of course I can't go to those malls (which are in plenty here) and sit there and observe people getting a kick out of a 20% rebate on something when the shopkeeper is actually fooling them with a higher price tag.

I am still looking for a new place near my office to rent in. I will prefer living alone this time. I would like to keep my things my way. I will hang that big black and white Gateway of India framed poster on my wall. I will buy some more posters and hang it there.

Oh by the way I am reading English August and its real kick ass stuff. Its pampering me to the hilt.

With love,
vC

Droll thing life is- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of unextinguishable regrets.