Return of the werewolf

It feels like one of those days when I didn’t have a job. Mom was exasperated. Dad was quiet. Only the furrows on his brow got deeper as the days went by.
Those days I had a motorcycle for company—a purple one. I had stuck a sticker of a werewolf on the fuel tank and I was happy that I had something to differentiate my bike from others. In a few months, Pulsar became a bestseller and there were thousands of them on the street. But I never noticed the same sticker anywhere else.
I used to have a lot of spare time then. I rode a lot, burning rubber to vent my frustration. I made friends—people I didn’t notice before. I didn’t notice them because when I had everything going for me I rode too fast to even look sideways.
Actually this was after Madhubanti had happened and my heart had sputtered. To tell you frankly, even my bike was for her. I had coaxed and cajoled dad to buy it for me so that I could ‘perform’ better in my MBA classes. But deep inside I knew I needed it desperately to meet her on time. Sorry dad!
When Madhubanti left, she took my job, my education and my parents’ peace. She left behind my bike. She left rows of green trees in front of my house. I left Kolkata.
For months I looked here and there. Then I got a BPO job. Days of nights and a few months of torrid relationships later I started feeling restless again. Money didn’t attract me. Neither did rows of busty girls trying to tell me that I would become a good father.
I spoke to my dad and said that I want to return home.
I did. After trying to crack CAT I came to Delhi. This time I didn’t have dreams. I came because I had felt that I should. Even on the train to the capital (if I remember clearly it was the Kurla Express) a benign pharmacologist tried persuading me against joining a journalism school. He said that I would die.
I think I will. I smoke a lot these days. And a lot of people are also trying to talk sense into me. Leaving ET and joining a new place is a tough decision. Folks at ET tell me that I am a rising star. People at my new place tell me that there are new challenges. The money is the same on both sides. But somehow I am not convinced. I am not convinced by anything either.
But faith is something Madhubanti couldn’t take from me. She had come back later asking whether there was any space left. No, I said gently. She had smiled. Today she is off to Alaska to join her bespectacled husband.
And me? I don’t have a ‘job’ again.

The Next Bend

The weather here has changed quite suddenly. At first, the raindrops didn’t surprise. It was gradual—the way humidity changed clothes. It was proof that Delhi doesn’t fail to shock.
It has been quite sometime that I have been sleeping out the nights here. Even this year, winter came and left, freezing memories in its wake.

And summer is having a terrible identity crisis.

Recently, I had mentioned to Anand that summers here can kill. Interspersed with bouts of mellow rain and lashed by dusty thunderstorms, the city of mughals has been hissing hot steam from its parched cracks. But the rain sometimes manages to hide the sins.

It's quite nippy here now.
Two years might not be a very long time. But guess it has been the most eventful period of my life. When I first came here, I didn’t know what to expect. But now guess it’s time to step out again.

Working for a newspaper as a journalist is not an easy job. Of course, no job is. But then again, words have their place.
Of late, I had started looking at writing as a job. People say that it is actually so. But I say it’s not that easy to just let go.

All of us sin. But the enormity of the crime lies not in the execution but the intention. It is important to know what you want.
In my case I don’t know because I haven’t seen far enough into the future to decipher it. It is important that I want to do it. I feel like climbing up the wall to see what lies on the other side.
The day-me, or anyone stops wanting, will be the end of the road.

Every bend has a new stretch waiting. How much you discover depends on whether you want to take it...

To the one who doesn't breathe

If there was time I dreamt of waking up to the sunlight filtering in through green leaves, this is it. I dream of gurgling water, white pebbles and white mist. I dream of the silence of the chirping birds. I dream of paused moments.
But I wake up breathless. I wake up to harsh sunlight. I wake up to loud phone calls. I wake up to super fast time. But I don’t wake up to sunlight filtering in through green leaves.
My fingers move fast and smooth, their tips connecting me to you. It’s a bit like touching. But the keyboard with which you can touch me is not there. It will never be.
I wish I could show you everything that I see. I wish I could find every pebble on the brown riverbed and show you.
But the trout still swims. And the water still flows. And I can still swim to the bottom to get you the white pebbles, those ones with the smooth rounded sides. The sun still jumps along the creases on the surface.
And tonight the moon will also rise—high above the treetops. The moon will also jump along the creases on the surface. I love the moon. I love you.

Pace

It moves with you, silently. Slithering along the shadows at blistering speed, it stalks you—stopping wherever you stop…waiting, watching and calculating.
The pace of the city is a nocturnal animal. The night is its junge.
Have you ever felt the icy finger of an unknown feeling, play with your spinal cord? It happens to me at times. In the dead of the night, sleep becomes sweat. The machine-like nausea strumming away in my head is disturbing. Sometimes, when that happens—I change into something else.
People at parties, people at office, people at work—all of them surprise me. They are unique and yet they don’t realise it. I try to talk to myself but I don’t find the same me. I try to look into pictures to make myself realise that there is a reason for everything. But suddenly I realise that there is something else that is more powerful…something else that matters more than just finding out reasons.
Why are we doing what we are doing? Questions like that are disturbing. Here’s one more: For instance, why are you reading this? I was bullshitting all this while, trying to tie some knots into my broken strings.
What were you doing?