A page from her diary

I met him for the first time when we were being inducted for the school we had both volunteered to teach. The principal was very vocal about the rules and regulations. In no way, were we allowed to hurt the local sentiments of this small town of Kashmir and hence we were not allowed to drink alcohol. Being a Delhi girl, I was a bit disappointed about this rule.

Initially, I did not notice him much as I was astounded by the beauty of the surrounding hills, the innocence of the kids I had to teach and was a bit unsettled by the newness and change of things around. Hailing from Delhi, I was used to comfort and luxury at my place. I believe not only me but any other girl from Delhi would have been unsettled by such a vast change.

But then I could not help noticing him later, as within few days he had become the hot favourite of all the students. After the classes, all the students ran to him to play with him. Even the little girls went and played with him. I wanted and tried deeply that I was their favourite teacher, their most loved cool mentor, but this bastard pied-piper I am talking about had stolen them from me.

Well, the classes he conducted seemed noisy but if one heard them closely, it was a bit poetical. It was some sort of a music. The laugh of the little students, the giggle, the clappings, the singing it out loud, the stomping of their feet and the banging of their desks. It was all musical. After the class, when I noticed him playing with kids, he let them win. And it was the major trick why all of them loved him.

On one of the sundays, when I was walking with my iPod in my ears around the serene hills, I saw him sleeping with a book on his head. Although his face was covered with the book, but he looked himself, that arrogant swagger of nonchalance. I hated him more at that moment not only for stealing my students, but mainly for  that he did not care.

Every saturday and sunday, he was found there on that spot overlooking the sun and the hills, with his book, reading, sleeping, mumbling to himself. And one day, I could not help but interrupt him and sit near him to ask out that why did he not care. He gave me a crazy philosophy of infinite equal to zero and that he cared infinitely although it seemed that he did not care. I asked him about his family, his upbringing, whether he drank alcohol. To all the questions, he was pretty normal and answered satisfactorily. I asked him whether did he miss alcohol to which he answered that there were so many pure things to get high on.  I realised he was not that bad as he seemed.

I started talking to him more and more. I asked him lot of questions, about the music he liked, about books he read, about places he had traveled to, about girls he had dated. He was pretty open in answering and was a good story teller (no wonder students loved him). But the bastard never asked me anything. I wanted so desperately that he also asked me about my family, my boyfriends.

I started noticing him more: his classes, his teaching style, his books, his ability to change himself as a kid when in class and as a grown-up when with me. Whenever I called my friends in Delhi, I was surprised I could talk so much about him. You know how typical girls are: they all replied the same thing that I was in love with him.

I did not know whether he liked it or not but he was accommodating to me. He took me to the local parents of the students and we had sumptuous dinner and interacted about the local stuff. He even allowed me inside his room, but again I hated him for not coming to my room voluntarily. I realised that contrary to my thought that he did not allow people to come close to him, he "did" allow people to come close to him but did not allow himself to come close to others. He did not choose to be alone, but he chose to be left alone.

During the last days,I realised that yes, i was in love with him. In all my previous affairs, guys had come to me and offered me flowers and an expensive asset and I had condescended. But this time, this guy had offered me zero which was yes equal to infinite things.

On the last day, he came and gave me a big hug and a parting smile. While I was in tears, the bastard had that same arrogant nonchalant smile, he had on day one.

" To love someone who you will never see again is to love like a flame and to cry out for self-annihilation into the bargain. One lives only in and for the moment, in order to achieve the brief and vivid union of a tempestuous  heart united to the tempest."  -Camus

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Recruitments

Recruitment 1.

My friend was called for this interview and later he realised that the person taking the interview was fond of palmistry. To all the candidates, the interviewer would ask some random questions but select only after reading the fittest palm. For the first time, my friend said, that he appeared in an interview where the interviewer was dead sure of what he sought in a subordinate: a palm which had a great brain line and a bad luck line. For he would never choose a reportee under him who had risen on luck but only because he or she had brains. My desperate friend was selected and he even joined the company and now everyday he just curses his luck for reporting into such a boss...


Recruitment 2. 

When he met her for the first time, his hair nicely combed, for they checked on each other's compatibility as a husband and a wife. He asked her whether she would let him travel alone to his wild destinations. She replied that yes she would but only after he agreed to fulfill his one condition. And that he would bring her a gift from whichever place he visited. So that she could live her life away through the previous gift he had got her when he would be busy fetching her another gift in his wild journey. Pppphew! Of course, he did not marry her.

Recruitment 3.

Before Mr. Arvind Kejrival became the chief minister and after my last flatmate left, I had posted an ad for a new flatmate on facebook flatmate-seeking community. And via the same community, one fine guy had come to do a recce of the house and to interview me as his potential flatmate. He was wearing a cap which said "Main aam aadmi hoon (I am a common man!)". He started with first giving his marketing pitch that I seemed to be the right guy as I read books. I could bring about the change in the nation and this new Aam Aadmi Party had come which I could be a part of. "And in this very house", he repeated "and in this very house, would be born lot of ideas to kill corruption and make India a better place to live in". Then he asked me what did I feel about the Aam Aadmi Party to which I replied that I felt it was the new "Animal Farm" in making.
For both of us it was a win-win situation, as in this recruitment of a flatmate, not only I rejected him but he rejected me too....

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Dedicated to immortal James Joyce who turned 132 lately. 
"She asked him why did he not write out his own thoughts. For what, he asked her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for 60 seconds? To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?"

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Republic Day

During his mad school days, Republic Day was one of the rare festivals that he celebrated at his hometown; as during rest of the festivals he was in his boarding school. To describe that day of 26th January as a festival or even as a celebration might be an exaggeration, but yes it was definitely an event of a certain sort for him.

To give you all a background, our protagonist's hometown is a small town in Bihar with a bare minimum literacy rate, sex ratio, human development index and basic issues of good roads, fresh water and electricity supply. Whenever there was an extra hour of electricity provided in the houses, one could easily infer that either there was some minister visiting the town or that the poor Govt. electricity official found in his office would have been beaten by the unemployed town mob.

Anyways, Republic Day celebration in his hometown was limited to a school playground (which was also used as a grazing ground for buffaloes) with a full volume microphone playing bollywood desh-bhakti songs amidst some speeches by the principal and a chief guest (spreading the town with jingoism). He had done his nursery education from the same school which played the host to all this nationalistic pandemonium. He was like their favourite alumnus. An alumnus who now owns a DSLR, a blackberry phone, had traveled abroad (even be it only Bhutan) and wore a sweatshirt with IIM inscribed in it.

So every republic day, they used to ask him or politely and emotionally persuade him to deliver a speech on that same loud microphone. A speech nicely placed between all those Bollywood deshbhakti songs. The mandate given to him was that the speech should necessarily be in English language. Every year he tried to make the same futile argument that he should speak in Hindi as hardly people in the audience knew English and also Hindi made much more sense of patriotism.

But he had to budge and instead go on the dais and throw all English words. The loudspeaker was so loud that the whole town would listen and even his parents sitting on the terrace basking the winter sun were further warmed by the pride of their son giving speech in the English language.

In the midst of his speech, he would look at the blank faces of the students, their parents and the smiling teachers listening to him while he threw at them: words like humanity, democracy, secularism and fraternity. And then to response to such a cold response, he would close his eyes and assume his mother sitting on the terrace, hearing but not listening to her son with that joyous smile of pride and gratification of an English educated upbringing of her son on that very Republic Day of India...

Jai Hind!

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Prepossessing beauty of ordinariness

Dear students,

Welcome to the first lecture of 2014. Lets me start this year by introducing to you, my brilliant students, the concept of "prepossessing beauty of ordinariness".

Now look outside this class into the sky and imagine there was a rainbow. Ok, wait, let us all imagine that it was snowing outside. Wouldn't there be dazzle in your eyes? Dazzles due to beauty outside? But what is the probability for it to snow or rain outside?
It is the very rarity of that event called snowfall which is making it beautiful. Beauty here is something extraordinary, something rare for I am sure that in a class in Antarctica, snow would not be beautiful because it snows every day. A kashmiri student would look down upon you when you guys would all raise that cry on a snowfall because for him or her, his or hers rarity is much more beautiful than your rarity.

Students, that was marketeers and advertisers idea of beauty. Yes, an easy sell. A blackberry was beautiful because it had a blackberry messenger and now it is not beautiful because all the smart phones have them.

Now take a deep breath and look at the tree outside the class. And those students sitting away from the windowpanes please leave your desks and come close to the window. Look at the the uppermost branch. Can you see an equilateral triangle? Look at the branch below that, its the same equilateral triangle, look below it.  Yes? Now look at yourselves, can you see a dazzle at each other. It is the same tree which you see daily outside the class.

Its the mind which is a source of all the beauty. Its the mind which is bored of ordinary and seeks extraordinary. When you train your mind so much that in every ordinary you see extraordinary and  thus the ordinary and extraordinary becomes the same. That sort of beauty is called prepossessing beauty of ordinariness.

Go tonight, look at the stars and pity those cities where the students can't even see the stars due to pollution. Create your own shapes and geometries in those stars. Look for lions, hunters, bears, spoons in them. And then you will understand what did Calvin mean when he said to Hobbes: " If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently".

With this lecture,I wish you all not only a beautiful 2014 but also a life filled with beauty. Yes, Dostoevsky was right when he said "Only beauty can save the world"!

We will discuss this poem "The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider tomorrow:

The Patience of Ordinary Things
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
- Pat Schneider, Another River

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Hiccups in love

Based on Plato's Symposium: "People were initially hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all our halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost...."

There was this friend of mine who was good looking, topper in the class, a great sportsman, an orator, a painter. We all envied him for we believed that God had given all talents to one single person.

But there was one minor defect he had. Whenever he saw a beautiful girl, he would start hiccuping infront of her. His hiccups would never stop and no water or no panacea could cure his disease. It was as if, God would have made a perfect human being but then later he decided to leave one imperfection in him. And that he hiccuped talking to a beautiful girl. Hiccups as heels for my Achilles friend.

He would approach a beautiful girl or a beautiful girl would approach him and then he would indulge in serious amorous talks. And amidst all seriousness of mutual attraction, he would release one blip of non serious hiccup. And then the girl would lose interest.

I even asked one of these girls that why was my friend being denied all the time, despite being a stud. And then she would reply, "Vikas, do you really think that we girls seek studness in love, we only solicit serious, incessant, unrelenting love".

Yes, now I remember once I had drunk lots of beer before giving a presentation for my strategy class during MBA. Initially I was doing well, shedding my inhibitions, describing strategic frameworks, talking more and more (although out of inebriation). The only success parameter in MBA is that you have to talk a lot and fake seriousness. But then, alas lots of beer comes with a side-effect. I burped. That typical beer burp.

Similarly, love has its similarity to MBA. That desire for uninterrupted seriousness. Alas, the curse of my extremely talented friend was proving detrimental in the world of love.

One day, he was passing through the city streets and on pillars, he noticed a poster which said, " CURE FOR THOSE WHO HICCUP WHILE TALKING TO A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. CALL 9811872714."

He was shocked at the exactness of time and the space coordinates of that poster. He immediately dialed the number and there was a beautiful girl's voice who received it. She asked him to come to his flat, giving him her address. When he met her, he realised that she too had the same disease. She hiccuped while talking to any handsome guy. They both talked and hiccuped and talked and hiccuped.

That's how they lived happily ever after.....

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Based on Plato's Symposium, love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

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World of unrequited loves

Dear students,

Imagine a world of unrequited loves. My sample size of today's discussion is the entire universe whosoever is capable of loving. But then today our lecture is about one of the most beautiful concept of "unfulfilled loves". We all love it.  Last evening, I screened for you the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona by Woody Allen in our auditorium . In the movie, Javier Bardem says "Maria Elena used to say that only unfulfilled love can be romantic". I saw the reaction in each of your faces and it was perfect. Half my job was done.

So now, imagine a world where 'A' loves 'B' but 'B' does not love 'A' and rather loves 'C'. 'C' loves 'D' and does not love 'B' back. And so on,.... 'Y' to 'Z' but not 'X'. 'Z' to 'A1' but not Y and so on.....I have bored you with alphabets but I have repeated it so many times that the concept is drilled in your head. And the introduction of A1 is to ensure that I have taken the entire population.

Now, try to enforce one of those characters on yourself. Let us assume that you are P25 in our sample size. You love P26 but P24 loves you.

So tell me, would our world not be awesome that way. We all try to find heroes in Romeo and heroines in Juliet. In our world, we all would be our own heroes and our own heroines. Living a heroic world, hahaha.

Remember I had told you once that there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. In our world, there would be no bad luck but above all no misfortune!

Now Prakriti, I know, you would ask me from your last row seat "Profesor, would there be marriages also in our imaginary world?". See, I saw that coming. I like the way how you add to my ideas from your backbench. But to answer your question, marriages have nothing to do with love. Marriage is altogether a different arrangement, probably to keep this world going. So marriages will be there in our world and few of them might be borne out of unrealized loves.

We will discuss later about marriage in detail. Marriage is a bit of permanent concept (altleast in most of the countries). And that permanence in the world has always had contrary charms for man. It drives him to both despair and hope. It never says but one thing: first it interests, then it bores and then it interests. But marriage always wins out by the dint of its obstinacy*. It is always right.

Anyways, we will do a brainstorming and attempt some roleplay on our concept in the next class. The groups have already been divided. So, just go back and think about this before you sleep tonight. And Prakriti, you are the only student who has not submitted your last assignment on "the state of zero"...

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*Lines twisted and presented from Albert Camus' book

Dedicated to Albert Camus (7 November 1913 - 4 January 1960)

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Ask the Expert

Inspired by Ask-the-Experts columns by Suhel Seth (for Telegraph), Pooja Bedi (for Delhi Times) and several other experts, my friend too decided to try himself on this counselling business. He started the same job long back but then no newspaper or magazine was ready to publish him, so he approached me quite saddened by his failure to launch a life-counselling career. Hence, I am helping him by lending a space in my blog to publish them.
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I am 28-year old guy working in one of the trashy offices (as probably no one else would give me a job). My problem is that there is hardly any intellectual talk in the office. All the time, everyone is talking about how many houses they have bought. They discuss square foot rates of the next coming apartment that they are planning to buy. They earn four times my salary only through renting out their apartments, some from the houses they bought while some from the houses their papa bought. For that large sum of money, they really need not work hard as they already have taken post dated cheques from tenants. 
While I keep sitting spending 70 percent of my salary in my education loan, my parents are also pushing me to buy a house and save a lot of money. While I am able to change topics with my parents, my office colleagues are quite a mess. I try a lot to ignore them but then they are too loud to ignore. Please help.
                                                                                                                        - Gaurav S (Gurgaon)

My friend, I think your problem is not quite unique. Lot of young people like you (who assume that they are intellectuals) render other talks to be trashy. However, if you are an intellectual, you must be smoking pot often. If not, stop considering yourself an intellectual.So in each smoke break in office, try and find a corner where you can smoke up and after that read my columns. You will also start finding rhythm and music in the real estate talks of your friends. This will surely help.


I am a 26-year old Gujarati girl who is currently working in Mumbai. My problem was quite trivial and hence I did not ask bigger experts who are published in newspapers. My place (like all other places in Mumbai) is quite tiny. My bathroom is so small that I can't even open my arms fully under the shower. But then that is not my problem. 
I have two shelves in my room. In one of the shelves, I have kept my books. I treasure that shelf a lot. In other, my mom who visits me once a month has kept some idols of God, a coconut from Siddhi Vinayak temple, a 500 ml coke bottle containing (holy)Ganga water from Haridwar. While my mom is very religious, I am quite an agnostic. My problem is that the bookshelf has been overloaded and I have no space to keep my other books. So I am always thinking of using the religious shelf. However, my mom does not allow me this. I always tell her to take it back to the place where she spends her rest 28 days in a month. Nowadays she retorts that once Narendra Modiji comes to power, girls like me would be behind bars for denying her Gods. I really see that coming and am quite scared. Help.
                                                                                                                                 - N. Patel (Mumbai)
I think only one of the Gods can help you in this. Try sprinkling some Ganga water from that 500 ml coke bottle on you or definitely on your mother. Sense will prevail probably.

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Address your issues to me at ask_the_expert56@yahoo.com. Please remember to add your name and city of address at the end of your question.

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The state of zero

Dear Students,

I have always been fascinated by zero. The state of nothing. The position of zilch. Spanish call it "nada".

I had written about it in one of my previous posts that how life was blissful only in the state of infinity or zero. We all try to chase infinity and are unable to attain it, thats the root cause of all sadness. Hence, zero state is much easier and probably Buddha and many other philosophers prescribed the same.

Now carrying that discussion ahead, there are two ways of attaining zero or rather going back to zero. (Lets be assured that we are all born zero and we all die zero. So today I reveal to you about attainment of zero while we are still alive or say we are in the midst of our lives.)

First way is to stay at zero and not move and the second way is to move and come back to zero. Let me give you an example. One day, you wear your favourite dress and you "think" that you are looking fabulous today (Mind you, its just an assumption of your mind). A beautiful girl comes to you and does not compliment you. Thats the first zero.  Later, another beautiful girl comes to you and says "Hey, you look fabulous today" and then she follows it with a highly sarcastic smile which erases her entire statement. You don't know whether the girl really meant that you were really looking fabulous or was she just sarcastic and meant it that you had overdone it. So its like she wrote a line with her words and later rubbed it with a sarcastic smile. Thats also zero.

Another example, you are a girl madly in love with this guy. You had a void and were zero (relatively). Now this guy has come and filled the void. He is filling your heart with feelings and emotions. And like all love affairs, this also ends. Now your heart aches and is sorry. You aspire to go back to void. You want to take him out of your life, throw away his pictures and gifts so that nothing takes you back to him. You aspire to go back to void/zero. And one day, like we all, you will eventually come back to normal and you acquire that state of zilch. (Mind you , you will still have that nostalgia which will make you happy about the time you spent with him. Thats why Tennyson said that its better to have  loved and lost and that to have never loved at all).

Anyways, think about it. The two examples which illustrates ephemeral zilch (and not a permanent state of zero). The lecture is to attain a permanent one. But like all professors I have started with A B C D and will finally teach you how to dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can*!
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*Expression from Jack Gilbert's The forgotten dialect of the heart.

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The heartbreaker

There is a positioning of every person's life in this world. His positioning was that of a heartbreaker. He did that all the time- breaking hearts. He grew over women and they fell for him like a trap. They were aware that he was a heartbreaker but somehow falling for him was like some subliminal power act and as much inevitable like the birth and  the death. Hence the fall and the pain had to happen. He was a part of the most important learning in their lives. In short, he was not a heartbreaker but a prophet.

The transience of his every act and living-in-the-moment philosophy of his made him what he was. His heart did not lie at one single place. He was a traveler with only his journey being permanent. The journey of his love also had no destination. Like an ideal traveler , he always traveled light. No baggage except only the quintessentials. Hence he reached a place, treasured the sunset, grew over a woman with his charm and moved on carrying no baggage (feelings) but only the quintessential (nostalgia). In short, he was not a heartbreaker but a traveler.

He was not in the realm of happiness and sadness but only magic. Happiness and sadness are always outcomes of ambitions and goals. While magic is altogether a different dimension. When he talked to these women, their pupils would expand and shorten like a magic being run over them. They never listened to him with their hearts and minds but felt him with their spines. And then when he left, a part of them missed him but they were happy as they knew that he was but just a moment of an extraordinary energy which had grown over them. In short, he was not a heartbreaker but a magician!

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