This phase of my life is called monkeying - monkeying around with code. In a world surrounded with yet more false starts and then serious trouble (strike three, four and five) I decided to lavish a bulk of my affections on women on screens, instead.
And in walked in three women - one of them from the past, as if to rightfully stake her place in my head and in my pantheon. Three women whom I have seen in device drivers and manuals, and in kernel source code - much like Neo. No, Deepika Padukone is not on that list. She can go watch horse races and cricket match with that Mallya kid. Bah!
Priyanka Chopra shimmied her way into my thoughts in a silver sari one Thursday night after a day full of meetings in Dostana. Hell, yeah, she was my Desi Girl. And hell, yeah again, in Miami. I have infinitely listened to that song on my iPod and everytime I see silver shimmer somewhere in my vision. She probably has a techie job and then parties on the weekend like crazy - but she is still a good girl and a sweet girl. At 22-23, I was in a techie-job but I never did find my Desi Girl at work - not even when I spent nights there hoping she'd be on the night-shift. I wanted to dance with her. That move looked terribly simple even for a two-left-foot-muscular-miscordinated-movement type of person. I wanted to party. I wanted to dance. I did neither in reality. Still haven't, not yet. I don't know, but my heart know if she were there, then I'd be alright.
But that year, the woman I know want to marry even though she is taller that I am, walked into my life. But I'd like to end with her, so I'll keep that for the end and skip just a little over and skip back here again.
Malaika did make a comeback into my life with "Munni Badnam". I still hum it or listen to it when I am feeling particularly frustrated. The lyrics have me in spilts and Malika reminds me of old days. After kids and a long marriage she still manages to do what actresses half her age struggle to do. That song was all over the place and I first heard it while waiting for a flight in pelting rain on my last trip to Surathkal. I went back and checked that song out on Youtube and it was mountains and steam engines all over. Raw country lyrics, popular references and slugs and 500-million-thousand joules of heat - courtesy Munni. She'd be anything you'd want her to be - atom/item bomb, cinema hall, mango and mostly importantly, dishonourable as well. I saw the movie just to watch that one song one more time again.
But just for a little while, till the lady walks in again - just to tell me that she's there. Katrina knows how to make her presence felt. Brit-accent is the second most hottest language a woman can speak, the first being French. Since, I don't understand French, the Brit-accent is the best. Any woman that can speak English with a Brit-accent has my undivided attention, but if that woman can also speak Hindi with a Brit-accent and look what Aphrodite/Venus/Helen and all those mythical beauties you can think of rolled into one - please please - pick me, pick me.
I like my camera and dabble a little in photography. One place that I really want to go take pictures of are the pyramids in Egypt. Well, that is my most desirable place now on the must-go-someday-list. In came Singh is Kingg and my desired woman was put on my most desired thing to photograph is a stunning black saree with a red-border in a lovely lovely song. I told my sister this was the woman I wanted to marry. She pointed out that Katrina was significantly taller than I am. I said I'd wear heels, stilts, anything. Irrelevant. And I wanted to go to...guess...yeah, Egypt for my honeymoon with her - Egypt - check, Camera - check, Katrina - check, Honeymoon - check, reality - check, #fml. I hate pink - only chewing gums that are pink make sense. Because, chewing gum is usually pink. Pink anything is unbearable. Except strawberry ice-cream. And 1st-standard painting with pink mountains. And, on Katrina. Pink saree, pink lipstick and pink earning are epic wins. On everyone else, epic fails. This isn't even an item number. It is a lovely romantic song with no innuendo and what not. And it is my favorite Bollywood song videos in the past 15 years. I can play the entire video in my head at will. "Sheila ki jawani was hot", baby, but you stole hearts with "Teri ore".
Katrina Kaif, I write code, do research, used to do data mining, I can cook Italian food and I truly madly and deeply love you. Will you please marry me???
Thursday, December 15, 2011
A completely unauthoritative roundup of songs that became anthems - contd.
As, unfortunately, we never got around to discussing the actual item numbers I shall dive right into that topic without fanfare.
My earliest favorite was undoubtedly the epic "Chaiyya Chaiyya" (or "Thaiyya Thaiyya", depending on your language preference). Malaika, glimpses of a seductively hot woman during furtive flipping of channels to catch late night love-advice shows, was the best thing that could have happened to the top of the Nilgiri railways. That was the kind of woman you'd want to meet of top of the Nilgiri railways if they let you on top of it. It got my heart racing and brain was flooded with every neurotransmitter than ever was, and I suspect will be. I positively prayed while watching or listening to music channel for that song. On the radio, I would just close my eyes are picture it in my head. The dance was, no doubt, a raw seductive passion that you read about in words - that was probably what the author was imagining while writing. The only reason I was adamant on taking a trip on that train - in the fond memory of that song - much later in life when I visited Ooty a different person from that teenaged boy that, along with most of the nation, fell for Malika. It is a pitty that Sharukh got so much of his face in that video - a completely unnecessary presence. If I had to pick a moment it would have to be when the train enters the tunnel and Malaika is briefly lit by flashes of red-light with the distraction of SRK in the lower right corner. And then continues on to a windmill-head-bang-meets-forceful bust thrusts.
But, then a moment's reflection and my previous post tells me that Khalnayak and "Choli ke peche" is what started the Rajasthani costume trend. I am, also, in no small measure reminded of this fact by Jammy. Colored sequined elaborate dresses, arms in white bangles, the head covered and black dots on the face - beauty preserving evil-eye warding marks. Considered explicit lyrics in its time, it was a song that was played by people to publicly demonstrate their marginal progressive thinking. It was an acknowledgement of the sexual overtones that a song and the associated dance could convey. It created images in the head of the mass populace - a mental programming technique that was extracted by both Mani Ratnam and Rajkumar Santoshi in the same year.
Ratnam's Chaiyya Chaiyya (also Sukhwinder Singh's big break with AR Rahaman and a source of a controversy in itself) was one, the other was "Chamma Chamma" from Santoshi's China Gate. Yet another Kurosawa-Shinchino-Samurai-inspired offering with a dash of Sholay added for good measure, it saw Urmila Matondkar in the Rajasthani siren avatar. While it did not have the heady appeal of the mountains and a train, it probably was a portent of the setting of the item-numbers that would follow. It was the same Urmila who was generally ignored at the start of her career as the girl next-door with no future, who had shocked filmdom with her antics in RGV Rangeela. Tanha Tanha was a treat on the visual and auditory senses. There was the out-of-bed clothes, flowing satin and flowery skirts and blouses that made the midriff even more desirable that other geography close-by and summer dresses and sarongs and what not. It was an explosion in a apparel shop that kept landing on Urmila and she carried each one of them to perfection. Jackie Shroff's contribution being that of a constipation of a mannequin's face and roughly about the same amount of movement expected of a mannequin. But, I still don't hold it against him - because he gave the world "Amma dekh a dekh" - fair deal. She was the girlfriend that I dreamed at age 10 I would have at age 16-17. My first love and so on. Watching that song after years and the pouted painted lips still reminds of the rains in Mumbai (I lived there at that point of time).
After that, there is a period of confusion that I cannot quite clear up. Flashes of songs come to the mind but nothing sticks as a writable memory. Partially because I moved to Bangalore and life was fairly complicated as such. The buildup to class 10 board exams, and then the harried JEE prep through first and second PUC culminating in Surathkal and my first failed attempt at love. In retrospect, right now, if I'd only raised my eyes in Jain college from in the context of altitude my life would have possibly been simpler and happier. Sigh...makes me wish I'd attended college more than chasing the flimsy JEE dream.
The only reasonably clearly memory that sticks is of Sonali Bendre in "Jo haal dil ka" from Sarfarosh. An excellent movie in itself with stellar performances from Aamir and Nasseruddin Shah with the classis Jagit Singh (RIP) "Hosh walon ko kya". That pinched the deal again with the homely simple girl who turned into a work of art draped in wet sarees in primary color. The same girl who pranced around in chic summer dresses in the Nirma sabun advert. Even after her fall from grace with reality TV shows (which I watched just to see her) I am still in love with her. I think I saw a little bit of Sonali in the first girl I fell for - which is why I probably did. Sonali, Goldie Behl? Seriously? I can understand the money, but my first name is not what you'd call your doll and my second name isn't roadside India-snack. I'll still buy that diamond ring and go down on one knee for you.
Surathkal happened. And, yeah, Yana. And "Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo". A Eastern-European model married to an Indian painter - this was love and quizzing trivia in one neat awesome package. Quizzes had to have one question to which the answer was Yana Gupta and fests had to have one something set to that tune. DDFC made it the norm and the first item-anthem of my university life was born. The rustic aura that Chaiyya Chaiyya transplanted from the north to the south, was being played out much stronger in its most potent form - Bihari. And complete with, what has to be, the world's most luckiest buffalo. It was forays into lurid steamy depiction of a dance who very purpose was that - lurid steamy scenes. A feeling that toed the line at a more Western flavor of pole-dancing and strip-teasing - it was that but with clothes on. Or excuses and handkerchiefs that passed off as clothes. It was what started the leather-latex trend. The first half in "traditional nautch" (with amazingly corny steps - one of which incorporates the Egyptian-hieroglyphic motif for the lesser skilled) and the second in black. Oh, did that baby come back in black or what. Here bang and legal was the first three minutes of a blue-film (yes, ironically or not, that part of the song is blue lit) with some severely nasty foot-fixations. Dum and Vivek Oberoi stopped mattering - you were quite willing to do all that was humanly possible to make sure Yana got into NITK - your year, your branch, your class and on the bench next to you. You promised not to touch - just watch from behind that glass partition. Yana, later in life, did many other things including losing the painter-husband and her panties. And, she tweeted about it. No, not the husband.
In between several flashes in the pan happened. None of which I choose to remember besides the rare moment when the jingling song plays in the background or word triggers associations. I can't even bother to check my time frame for these creatures - Meghna Naidu (an unfortunate attendance of a live performance because Parikrama was playing right after that - the sensation of a beer barrel on stage moving) in "Kaliyon ka chaman" which was cheesily nice number, Rakhee Sawant and Mallika Sherawat (both of which hung around more for their controversy generating skills and silicone rather than for any oomph). That was a hazy year for me - I discovered Floyd, and Zero, and Steve Vai and their dimensions. I fell under the spell of "The Blood and Tears" by Vai at a fashion-show at a college fest. I attended my first rock concert by Parikrama and was somewhere in between the failed second attempt.
When that haze lifted and the monsoons still made the South Canara coast look like heaven despite the dump we lived in came two songs that went head-on against each other. They tore my dreams apart with "double the action, double the excitement" ala Pablo Franceso. My off-and-on crush Aishwarya took the Bangali by the horns - when "Kajra re" faced-off with "Beedi jalile". While "Beedi" came from the more polished and appreciated Omkara and had had a massive fan-following - both of the discerning taste and of the taste of, well, beedis, "Kajra re" came via Bunty and Bubbly. B&B was a canned offering of "Bonnie and Clyde" slathered in overly sweet cream-frosting, frozen and served as desert. The only interesting part was the song - like the flambe sauce the restaurant used to prop the waning interest of the diner by desert time.
Oh, I'd light a beedi/cigaretter/my stove from Bips' heart any day, and every day, Ash shattered all the chains of plasticity with that one song. But, Bips must be given her due in my fantasies before my affair with Ash.
Bips was sultry and she was dusky and had eyes to die for. They could be happy, smoky, inviting, seductive, coy - set in that face that I wanted to be stuck on every available surface. I just googled her name to see her face again - it's the kind that you know you love, but just slips out of your head sometime and you need a glimpse again. Having lived for a fair amount of time in Calcutta and being able to speak (currently degrading quality) Bengali, anything that came out of West Bengal held my attention. Just as Dada did on the pitch and how I cringed when he took his shirt off. Bipasha in the traditional white Bengali saree with red borders, kumkum and kajal was the Bengali bride that everyone in that marriageable age in Bhest Bhengaal and elsewhere across India wanted to wake up to every morning. Her voice was another thing in itself. How I wanted (maybe want to still) bring her home in that dress and tell my dad - "Baba, bou esheche". But, then again, what can I do when Little Johnny want to play...
Ash was on-and-off. I was smitten by her in "Jeans", wondered what the hell was happening in "Josh" and dreamed about her falling in "Mohabatein". But now, I wanted to be there - right there, with a red-towel and with enough rum inside me - up against her husband and father in law. Lucknow - the nawabs and the questionable mujra - and when mushaira met mujra; when sharyari met thumka. Lurid lighting and the raucous pieces of the dehath glossed over in beauty by that one single woman on screen. God made her on a Sunday - he had all time and patience (though, some would say the cosmetologist, but I pass). Hips that were poetry in motion. The innocence girl that was there one moment only to be replaced by that trained tawaif - I cannot find the words to describe that. The song reminds me vaguely of express bus ride between Mangalore and Surthkal - the interiors of these buses were lit like the song. And when, it played once in a thus-lit bus on a return trip back from Liquid Lounge, I could almost imagine and smell the perfume that wafted from that hair when she flipped it around for that signature move - jasmine and attar. The wind played that night strange sensations of soft silk hair blowing into my face. "Dilli mein agar, shayad, hum hote."
Somewhere then Kareena did her thing with a remake of Don. She was and is not among my favorites and could not hold against Helen Jairag Richardson. And, I will leave it at that. Not a big fan - period.
Around that time, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree, torn-and-taped cardiac muscles and four years of training in life at a time in a person's most impressionable period. And, then I entered the real world - and failed miserably.
My earliest favorite was undoubtedly the epic "Chaiyya Chaiyya" (or "Thaiyya Thaiyya", depending on your language preference). Malaika, glimpses of a seductively hot woman during furtive flipping of channels to catch late night love-advice shows, was the best thing that could have happened to the top of the Nilgiri railways. That was the kind of woman you'd want to meet of top of the Nilgiri railways if they let you on top of it. It got my heart racing and brain was flooded with every neurotransmitter than ever was, and I suspect will be. I positively prayed while watching or listening to music channel for that song. On the radio, I would just close my eyes are picture it in my head. The dance was, no doubt, a raw seductive passion that you read about in words - that was probably what the author was imagining while writing. The only reason I was adamant on taking a trip on that train - in the fond memory of that song - much later in life when I visited Ooty a different person from that teenaged boy that, along with most of the nation, fell for Malika. It is a pitty that Sharukh got so much of his face in that video - a completely unnecessary presence. If I had to pick a moment it would have to be when the train enters the tunnel and Malaika is briefly lit by flashes of red-light with the distraction of SRK in the lower right corner. And then continues on to a windmill-head-bang-meets-forceful bust thrusts.
But, then a moment's reflection and my previous post tells me that Khalnayak and "Choli ke peche" is what started the Rajasthani costume trend. I am, also, in no small measure reminded of this fact by Jammy. Colored sequined elaborate dresses, arms in white bangles, the head covered and black dots on the face - beauty preserving evil-eye warding marks. Considered explicit lyrics in its time, it was a song that was played by people to publicly demonstrate their marginal progressive thinking. It was an acknowledgement of the sexual overtones that a song and the associated dance could convey. It created images in the head of the mass populace - a mental programming technique that was extracted by both Mani Ratnam and Rajkumar Santoshi in the same year.
Ratnam's Chaiyya Chaiyya (also Sukhwinder Singh's big break with AR Rahaman and a source of a controversy in itself) was one, the other was "Chamma Chamma" from Santoshi's China Gate. Yet another Kurosawa-Shinchino-Samurai-inspired offering with a dash of Sholay added for good measure, it saw Urmila Matondkar in the Rajasthani siren avatar. While it did not have the heady appeal of the mountains and a train, it probably was a portent of the setting of the item-numbers that would follow. It was the same Urmila who was generally ignored at the start of her career as the girl next-door with no future, who had shocked filmdom with her antics in RGV Rangeela. Tanha Tanha was a treat on the visual and auditory senses. There was the out-of-bed clothes, flowing satin and flowery skirts and blouses that made the midriff even more desirable that other geography close-by and summer dresses and sarongs and what not. It was an explosion in a apparel shop that kept landing on Urmila and she carried each one of them to perfection. Jackie Shroff's contribution being that of a constipation of a mannequin's face and roughly about the same amount of movement expected of a mannequin. But, I still don't hold it against him - because he gave the world "Amma dekh a dekh" - fair deal. She was the girlfriend that I dreamed at age 10 I would have at age 16-17. My first love and so on. Watching that song after years and the pouted painted lips still reminds of the rains in Mumbai (I lived there at that point of time).
After that, there is a period of confusion that I cannot quite clear up. Flashes of songs come to the mind but nothing sticks as a writable memory. Partially because I moved to Bangalore and life was fairly complicated as such. The buildup to class 10 board exams, and then the harried JEE prep through first and second PUC culminating in Surathkal and my first failed attempt at love. In retrospect, right now, if I'd only raised my eyes in Jain college from in the context of altitude my life would have possibly been simpler and happier. Sigh...makes me wish I'd attended college more than chasing the flimsy JEE dream.
The only reasonably clearly memory that sticks is of Sonali Bendre in "Jo haal dil ka" from Sarfarosh. An excellent movie in itself with stellar performances from Aamir and Nasseruddin Shah with the classis Jagit Singh (RIP) "Hosh walon ko kya". That pinched the deal again with the homely simple girl who turned into a work of art draped in wet sarees in primary color. The same girl who pranced around in chic summer dresses in the Nirma sabun advert. Even after her fall from grace with reality TV shows (which I watched just to see her) I am still in love with her. I think I saw a little bit of Sonali in the first girl I fell for - which is why I probably did. Sonali, Goldie Behl? Seriously? I can understand the money, but my first name is not what you'd call your doll and my second name isn't roadside India-snack. I'll still buy that diamond ring and go down on one knee for you.
Surathkal happened. And, yeah, Yana. And "Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo". A Eastern-European model married to an Indian painter - this was love and quizzing trivia in one neat awesome package. Quizzes had to have one question to which the answer was Yana Gupta and fests had to have one something set to that tune. DDFC made it the norm and the first item-anthem of my university life was born. The rustic aura that Chaiyya Chaiyya transplanted from the north to the south, was being played out much stronger in its most potent form - Bihari. And complete with, what has to be, the world's most luckiest buffalo. It was forays into lurid steamy depiction of a dance who very purpose was that - lurid steamy scenes. A feeling that toed the line at a more Western flavor of pole-dancing and strip-teasing - it was that but with clothes on. Or excuses and handkerchiefs that passed off as clothes. It was what started the leather-latex trend. The first half in "traditional nautch" (with amazingly corny steps - one of which incorporates the Egyptian-hieroglyphic motif for the lesser skilled) and the second in black. Oh, did that baby come back in black or what. Here bang and legal was the first three minutes of a blue-film (yes, ironically or not, that part of the song is blue lit) with some severely nasty foot-fixations. Dum and Vivek Oberoi stopped mattering - you were quite willing to do all that was humanly possible to make sure Yana got into NITK - your year, your branch, your class and on the bench next to you. You promised not to touch - just watch from behind that glass partition. Yana, later in life, did many other things including losing the painter-husband and her panties. And, she tweeted about it. No, not the husband.
In between several flashes in the pan happened. None of which I choose to remember besides the rare moment when the jingling song plays in the background or word triggers associations. I can't even bother to check my time frame for these creatures - Meghna Naidu (an unfortunate attendance of a live performance because Parikrama was playing right after that - the sensation of a beer barrel on stage moving) in "Kaliyon ka chaman" which was cheesily nice number, Rakhee Sawant and Mallika Sherawat (both of which hung around more for their controversy generating skills and silicone rather than for any oomph). That was a hazy year for me - I discovered Floyd, and Zero, and Steve Vai and their dimensions. I fell under the spell of "The Blood and Tears" by Vai at a fashion-show at a college fest. I attended my first rock concert by Parikrama and was somewhere in between the failed second attempt.
When that haze lifted and the monsoons still made the South Canara coast look like heaven despite the dump we lived in came two songs that went head-on against each other. They tore my dreams apart with "double the action, double the excitement" ala Pablo Franceso. My off-and-on crush Aishwarya took the Bangali by the horns - when "Kajra re" faced-off with "Beedi jalile". While "Beedi" came from the more polished and appreciated Omkara and had had a massive fan-following - both of the discerning taste and of the taste of, well, beedis, "Kajra re" came via Bunty and Bubbly. B&B was a canned offering of "Bonnie and Clyde" slathered in overly sweet cream-frosting, frozen and served as desert. The only interesting part was the song - like the flambe sauce the restaurant used to prop the waning interest of the diner by desert time.
Oh, I'd light a beedi/cigaretter/my stove from Bips' heart any day, and every day, Ash shattered all the chains of plasticity with that one song. But, Bips must be given her due in my fantasies before my affair with Ash.
Bips was sultry and she was dusky and had eyes to die for. They could be happy, smoky, inviting, seductive, coy - set in that face that I wanted to be stuck on every available surface. I just googled her name to see her face again - it's the kind that you know you love, but just slips out of your head sometime and you need a glimpse again. Having lived for a fair amount of time in Calcutta and being able to speak (currently degrading quality) Bengali, anything that came out of West Bengal held my attention. Just as Dada did on the pitch and how I cringed when he took his shirt off. Bipasha in the traditional white Bengali saree with red borders, kumkum and kajal was the Bengali bride that everyone in that marriageable age in Bhest Bhengaal and elsewhere across India wanted to wake up to every morning. Her voice was another thing in itself. How I wanted (maybe want to still) bring her home in that dress and tell my dad - "Baba, bou esheche". But, then again, what can I do when Little Johnny want to play...
Ash was on-and-off. I was smitten by her in "Jeans", wondered what the hell was happening in "Josh" and dreamed about her falling in "Mohabatein". But now, I wanted to be there - right there, with a red-towel and with enough rum inside me - up against her husband and father in law. Lucknow - the nawabs and the questionable mujra - and when mushaira met mujra; when sharyari met thumka. Lurid lighting and the raucous pieces of the dehath glossed over in beauty by that one single woman on screen. God made her on a Sunday - he had all time and patience (though, some would say the cosmetologist, but I pass). Hips that were poetry in motion. The innocence girl that was there one moment only to be replaced by that trained tawaif - I cannot find the words to describe that. The song reminds me vaguely of express bus ride between Mangalore and Surthkal - the interiors of these buses were lit like the song. And when, it played once in a thus-lit bus on a return trip back from Liquid Lounge, I could almost imagine and smell the perfume that wafted from that hair when she flipped it around for that signature move - jasmine and attar. The wind played that night strange sensations of soft silk hair blowing into my face. "Dilli mein agar, shayad, hum hote."
Somewhere then Kareena did her thing with a remake of Don. She was and is not among my favorites and could not hold against Helen Jairag Richardson. And, I will leave it at that. Not a big fan - period.
Around that time, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree, torn-and-taped cardiac muscles and four years of training in life at a time in a person's most impressionable period. And, then I entered the real world - and failed miserably.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Uno
Most people he knew feared death. They feared it because no one had a clue what lay beyond it. Sure, there were books - several of them centuries old - that claimed different versions of it, but none of it was really certain - simply because no one had come back from the dead to tell what really lay there. What heaven or hell or the 'world beyond' looked like. Was it really that 'Great gig in the sky'?
He did not fear death. Maybe, he was a little afraid or apprehensive about the last few moments or the process leading up to the moment of death, but, beyond that moment it wasn't of any concern to him. Not at least, right now. It was, probably, because he'd had the chance to look death in the eye - come close enough to be certain of that one inescapable event of life - and then have the moment pass by. Albeit, temporarily. It had happened on railway track - a bridge between two mountains - that came out of a tunnel and went into another over a chasm.
He paused to reflect on those few seconds from a long ago for a moment, and then continued sipping his drink. The light in the dimly-lit bar cast his shadow on the grimy wall. Vague enough to be confused for one of those several wet patches on the peeling plaster, yet, a second look would confirm the hazy outline of a human profile. He put his glass down a little too hard on the table spilling a few drops of the whiskey. The drunk at the next table snored on - waiters would rudely slap him awake at closing time like every day and he would stagger out and collapse at the same spot on the pavement.
He turned to look for a waiter. Maybe, to ask for another drink or another packet of cigarettes. The ash-tray in front of him was piled high with butts. The light caught his face and I looked again. It was an unremarkable face - there wasn't anything that you would remember later. Brown skin which was slightly moist from the humidity. A large forehead made distinct by a receding hairline, dry black hair with a few strands of white, an uninteresting nose and mouth with lips darkened by smoke. He had a stubble which was probably a couple of days old that suggested weariness and possible stress. He was dressed in the clothes that one would expect a techie to wear - blue faded jeans, sneakers and a black t-shirt. His black-and-red backpack lay on the chair next to him. "Damn!", he said to me, "These waiters never show up when you need to ask for something, and then when you haven't left enough for the tip, the fuckers will give you a dirty look." I nodded quietly knowing what exactly he meant.
I'd turned up at this bar after work to get a beer. It had been a boring week at work and I was looking forward to a quiet weekend reading books. On my way to catch the bus, I contemplated on getting a beer and walked in into the first bar I could spot. As expected, it was crowded on a Friday night. It wasn't one of those upscale places where they made you fork out a fortune for a beer, nor was it one of those seedy joints. It wasn't entirely respectable - bars in India are not respectable per se, but it stood a rung above being a place where you would not want your manager to see you walk out of. I drank a beer out of a bottle and figured it would be safe since I did not particularly want to eat anything there. Not finding an empty table to myself, I'd settled for the next best option - a table with one other person on it. It was a choice between the techie and the drunk, and I figured if not anything I could at least have a conversation. I'd asked him if it was alright to sit across him and he'd just nodded his head. I slipped into the chair and ordered my beer.
Without warning, quite suddenly, he'd told me about his lack of fear of death and about the drunk at the next table. He spoke in a clear measured tone and used words that were clearly the effect of a solid respectable education. I sip my beer slowly, and I had only finished half my pint-bottle, by which time he'd finished three whiskeys, was on his fourth and wanting a fifth. But, the alcohol never showed - neither on his face or in his speech. It was the impassive face and tone that you'd expect when he was explaining how the operating system booted - a statement of facts that could be verified by looking at code.
"Have you been in love?" That question took me aback and he saw that on my face. "Actually, don't answer that. I'm sorry, it's none of my business and most certainly not something I should ask a stranger".
We'd not bothered with the formalities of identities and names - some meetings, like this, are best anonymous. One never knows what comes out under the influence of alcohol and it's just easier to forget a nameless face that heard it than to have a name associated with the momentary lapse of reason.
I remained silent and took another sip of my beer. He sipped a little more of the whiskey, caught the eye of a waiter hovering nearby and signaled for a repeat of his drink. He looked at me through his glasses and said, "Forgive me, but I need to let this out of my system. I know I have had a little too much to drink. Please feel to stop me if you don't want to listen. It's just that I've had these thoughts trouble me for too long and I am not sure if I can tell it to anyone I know. You don't have to react or say anything, I think I just need to know that someone is listening - that's it." I asked him to go ahead. I had no plans and a story like this would give me something to write about. The beer wasn't expensive and I was okay to drink another since I was anyway taking a bus back home.
"Go ahead...", I nodded and called for another beer...
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