The other side of mustache

"Hey, have you heard the song Aaj kal paav zameen par nahin padte hain mere"
"Oh yes! From the movie Ghar. Its a Lata classic. I love it."
"I hum that song all the time these days. It has become my anthem."
"What! I don't understand."
"This place is too large. I wish we had a taxi service from the class to the toilet. Most times, I am worried I will lose control by the time I get to the toilet. There so much running around from class to class, from class to toilet, to the dining hall, to the office and so many other places, which are all a mile away from each other. I am always on the move; running from place to place. So much so that my paav does not touch the zameen at all."
"But its good for the children. One day two fellows, wanted to go to the toilet. They came back 45 minutes and told me it takes that long to go to the toilet, use it and come back. I actually believed it and let me come without uttering a word."
*************
"Please don't draw a mustache on my brother's face tomorrow."
"Why? What happened?"
"Yesterday we spent many hours trying to take it off. Even this morning it was seen faintly."
"But, he is vehement on having the mustache."
"Oh please don't listen to him. I am the one who has to scrub his face to take that mustache off. I spent two hours yesterday and my hands are paining still. So don't do it."
"You can use cream."
"Scream! What do you mean I can scream?"
"Not scream, cream."
"Scream?"
"Cream, C R E A M, cream"
"Oh cream! Which cream?"
"Any face cream. I used it and there was no problem."
"Oh please forget the face cream. Just don't draw the mustache on his face tomorrow. Anyway, you did not draw it properly yesterday. One side was longer than the other. It was clearly visible."
**************
"Hey, you look good with that hair bun on your head."
"Hmmm! Do you know it is made out of other people's hair? They put these beads on the bun over other people's hair."
"Gross!"
"Do you want to touch? Here, go ahead."
"Hey! Go away! Take your bun and head off my face."

Alone you breathe by Savatage

Another song that came up on my playlist this morning is "Alone you breathe" by Savatage (I am come back to the beginning of my playlist and am travelling through the A song). I discovered Savatage through the album "Wake of Magellan", which in my opinion has some of the greatest songs ever. At the end of the album, I found a bonus song named "Alone you breathe" sung not by the singer of the group but by the keyboardist Criss Olivia. The lyrics and the tune of the songs caught my attention, especially these haunting lines

You're thrown it all away

And now we'll never see

The ending of the play

The grand design

The final line

And what was meant to be

The group Savatage was formed in the 80's by two brothers - one took the singing and song writing responsibility of the group and other took care of the guitars. A few years after forming the group, the guitarist died in a car crash. The singer brother was heartbroken and wrote this song in his brother's memory. It is a part of the album "Handful of Rain". It's not sung by the singer brother though. Savatage had a new singer for a few albums.

The words and music are so powerful that almost every time it brings tears into my eyes. A very beautiful song.

Lucknow notes: In the streets of Lucknow

WARNING: The following write-up is based on real life stressful situations and hence contains content that some readers may find confusing. Reader discretion advised.

I have been to Lucknow earlier, more than once, but I had not noticed the traffic in the city. Earlier, it did not seem very different from the chaotic traffic that you find at most places in India. But this time, it seemed worse than chaotic.  It was like watching children run around in a Crèche. No signal or lanes; only random movement of vehicles. If someone feels like taking a left turn, they take just take it. There are no concepts like look left – look right, yield, traffic direction or even U turn. People just do what they want to and the responsibility to avoid accidents is left to others on the road.  My experiences on Lucknow roads during the final seven days of 2017 were a “phantasmagoria of fear, terror, grief, exultation, and finally breakdown” (the quoted piece is from the song Voyage 34 by Porcupine tree and phantasmagoria means a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream). I am not sure if I can illustrate these feelings through words but I am sure these words are good enough to bring back memories many years from now.

The drive from airport to our destination went without incident till we were a circle (or chowk) away from the destination. The circle was choked ... Ah no! I should have said “the chowk was choked”; so here I go again. The chowk was choked to the brim. Vehicles were plying from every side to every other side of the circle. I am sure all of you know that a circle has infinite sides and that gives an idea about the complexity involved in crossing that circle. The taxi driver managed to get the car across the circle but found the left into the service road choked. He uttered a non-profane curse and twisted the steering wheel to the right. He went right around the circle and drove perpendicular to our path from the airport. This seems like one of those problems in velocity and vectors. Now, can you tell me what the driver’s next move would be to get me to the destination? What is it that you say? No idea, is it? Well, go right back and read from the beginning of this paragraph. Go on now and expect me to spoon feed you. So he went a few kilometres before he took that next move (which you should have found by now) and many minutes later we reached our destination which was right in front of our eyes many minutes earlier.

If you found the earlier paragraph confusing and practically unreadable, you have got an idea about how it feels to drive or be driven in Lucknow.  It is like a peaceful college graduate playing a video game in which he brutally kills a million “enemies” to reach level God. There is no reason or meaning to it. Why would a graduate want to kill a million people to reach a level called God? The traffic in Lucknow has a similar meaninglessness associated with it. Why are people stopping when the signal is green? Why are they zipping at great speeds when the signal is red? Why are they so intent on denting other’s vehicles? Don’t they realize their own vehicle will be dented? Why is the whole city swamped with metro construction? Only the side lanes are not affected by it all the main roads are affected by metro. What looked like a beautiful wide road a year back has become a single lane road to hell today! Why can’t people understand that service roads also have directions? You cannot just go in any direction in a service road.

Continuing the story on our journey from the airport, I forgot to mention that the destination I mentioned earlier was not our final destination. We were dropped midway by the taxi from the airport. At the midway point, we transferred ourselves and our luggage to a friend’s car and went to his home in his car. It was not as complex as the sentence sounds but yes, in involved a minimal amount of coordination. This friend of ours, a Lucknowi, is one of the most peaceful persons we know. For the past few years, we have been considering sending his name to the Nobel peace prize committee. We believe he is certainly as peaceful as Obama, if not more. This peaceful fellow gets into the driver’s seat and turns into a monster. He drives his car through every little space is available (and sometimes not available) on the road. He uses the car horn and brake to the same extent. Anyone trying to cross his path is playing with his/her life. When he starts moving the vehicle, it keeps moving. I wish the stereo in the car played “Nothing gonna stop us now” in a loop. The icing on the cake was to hear him yell at a motorcyclist attempting a death across his car. He yelled “suwar” at the motorcyclist. We could not believe he yelled “suwar”. What! Did I hear you say “So what! Its only suwar after all”. “Suwar” means pig, which for genetic reasons is considered an insult by humans. Usually, this word by itself is not a profanity. Let me illustrate - “YOU PIG!” I just called you a pig; are you offended? No, of course not! Some of you might even be amused by this. But I am not talking about me, a usually-normal-but-sometimes-evil person. I am talking about a person who is on par with Dalai Lama and Obama. Such a person uttering “suwar” is an event as disturbing as global warming.

I don’t think I will ever be able to drive through the streets and road of Lucknow. My initial thoughts were that there are no rules in Lucknow. But I was wrong. The traffic in Lucknow follows extremely complicated rules. I am not sure what these rules are. As a matter of fact I don’t think any human being, including the ones in Lucknow, is aware of it or its existence. The rules seem to be wired inside a Lucknowi’s subconscious and he just follows it without knowing what he/she is doing. I am sure aliens a few light years away are observing the traffic and coming up with simulation models and algorithms using a set of powerful super-computers. They would be publishing their findings during the next Intergalactic Mathematical computation and simulation analytics conference.

You might ask how I realized that rules exist and that it is all not chaos. Well, I am like that fellow Neo in the movie “Matrix”. I found a glitch in the algorithm; a blip in the everyday happenings. Let me explain. You are driving through a street and come to a main road. You want to take a right but you find a divider or median sitting right in the middle of the road. What will you do? First, you will curse. Next you will take a left. Then depending on your urgency level you will either drive half a kilometre or ten kilometres prior to finding a gap in the median. You will then take a U-turn and find yourself going in the right direction. This, I believe, is what most of us will do. What? What did you ask? Oh! You did not understand the “level of urgency” bit is it? Let me explain. Say, you have a wound on your finger which bleeds at a rate of one drop a minute. This is enough to get you worried about your future on this planet and you rush to the hospital. Let us say you run into this unwelcome median situation. You urgency to get to the hospital would ensure that the next gap in the median is 10 km away. On the other hand, let us say you are driving to a party with a set of friends who believe they are your friends due to the fact that you are embarrassed to tell them that you don’t think they are your friends. For you this is a terribly awkward situation.  Even the most interesting moments of this party would turn out be excruciatingly boring. You drive to this party hoping to be stuck in a political rally. But the roads are clear and you are ahead of schedule. At that moment, you come across this welcome median situation. Your hopes raise; you pray for the next gap to be a city away. You turn and find the gap in median less than half a kilometre away. The party is on baby! These illustrative examples should clarify the meaning of the phrase “level of urgency”.

Oh god! I am lost! Where was I? Ah! Yes, I remember, the median on the road situation. When a  Lucknowi run into this median, he/she does not turn left and search for gaps in medians to do U-turns. She/he turns right, right into the oncoming traffic and rides on the left edge of wrong side of the road right besides the median till you find a gap in the median and swerve your vehicle to the right side, which is the left side of the road. You might say this happens everywhere. No it doesn’t; not the way it is done in Lucknow. It is done with so much ease that I believe Lucknowi babies are born with this ability wired into their brains. My peaceful friend and a taxi driver did this manoeuvre with the same amount of ease. It had to come from someplace deep in their sub-consciousness. The chaos I perceive is only a cover up for some complex algorithm that is beyond my comprehension.

There were so many incidents on the roads that I have lost track of it. Each incident was more bewildering than the previous and the fact that my peaceful Lucknowi wheels was behind the wheel made the trauma worse. On the final day, hours prior to the start of our journey to the airport, our friend backed his vehicle into another person’s car. We heard the faint scrunch from the kiss between the cars. The two drivers shouted some mild obscenities from within their cages and went their respective ways. This is the glitch I was talking about. It’s not normal; any other city the two would have got out and indulged in verbal diarrhea for hours. But in Lucknow nothing happens. There is something amiss here.

I heard about incidents that proved were bad drivers from a lady whose husband declares her driving rash. At the mention of her rashness, her daughter quips “but her father was worse. He is the worst driver the world has seen. He drives at 100 km per hour within the city and at 150 outside. It was terrifying!” The lady waited patiently for her family to comment on the driving abilities of her family and her and then continued with her story. “There was a ladies night at the club. As I was driving through the parking, a Verna belonging to a Government official pulled into a vacant place right before my car. I let the car pass and once I was confident the car was parked properly, I continued. As I was crossing the parked Verna, its driver reversed it suddenly and rammed into the passenger side of my car. Just like that my two month old car had a dent. The driver turned out to be a lady who got out of the car, checked the cars with a lot of concern on her face and then gave me a sweet sorry. I was furious and had I not been in the club would have clubbed her. Later, I went in and gave her a piece of my mind. How can she drive a Government vehicle? Does the Government not give a driver? She has the nerve to break rules, ram into my brand new car and then say sorry. Surely, she will remember me every time she finds herself behind the steering wheel.”

I have always found taxi drivers to be a great source of information and during many of my travel talk about their lives and get their point of view about life in their respective city. During this trip, I found a gentlemanly sardar, Satnam, driving an Uber. He greeted each of us with a “Good evening” as soon as we got into his clean cab. We were impressed and decided to use his service for our trip to airport for the return trip. I found him to be a careful driver on the freeways but inside city he proved to be a complete Lucknowi. There were many instances when he took a right from the left edge of the road and in the process cut across all the traffic going straight. Curiously, the people going straight seem to be equipped with the premonition about this and to take care of the situation with minimal emotion.

One evening, the fog set in all of a sudden. We got into a shop and fifteen minutes later, when we got out, the whole place was swamped in dense fog. Visibility was poor and the street lamps accentuated the fog’s movement.  Satnam had just dropped a passenger when the fog settled down on Lucknow. According to him, sudden setting of fog is a sure reason for accidents. People drive at high speeds and are usually unable to reduce speeds at the time the fog sets in. This leads to serial accidents, especially on the highways. According to Satnam, there were a number of such cases on the highway leading to the airport that evening too. This was corroborated by our friend’s relations too.  As soon as, the fog set in Satnam decided to stop service and go home. He had another car with Ola. He called the driver of that car to check how he was doing and ask him to go home too. The driver responded that he was already home and there was nothing to worry. Satnam ended the narration by saying “Woh mere se samajdhar nikala” (“He turned to be smarter than I”).

Satnam seemed a happy man who was proud of his sons. He said that one of his sons, studying in an engineering college near Bangalore, had created an app that the police are using to track criminals. His other son studies hotel management. His dream is to sell his flat in Lucknow and setup a plush Dhaba on one of the properties he owns just outside Lucknow. He then talked about his travels once a year from Lucknow to his village in Punjab, 880 km away. He usually goes in the car. He stops at all the Gurudwaras en route. He mentioned that all big Gurudwaras have rooms and dormitories that are available at nearly no cost. These are clean and cosy places that anyone can keep for a night and if you want you can make a donation for the Gurudwara itself.

The roads are filled with interesting events and people. Most times we are so lost in our thoughts that we miss these events and people.

Scccrreeeeeaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmm

I am in love with disclaimers. I have already used them twice in the past few days. Here, I use it for the third time. Though the other times, I used it as a tool for humour, in this case, the disclaimer is a necessity. So here it goes.

The following write-up is written by a person drowning in anger and the author, having last control of his senses and fingers, resorts to the usage of expletives. Unfortunately, at some point in his miserable life the author has been injected with a small dose of grace. Hence he uses only one or two letters from the curse and these appear capitalized in the text below. When necessary, he has added 's' and 'ing' right behind the letter and has not bothered to use the ridiculous practice of using hyphens. As ever, reader discretion advised.

I am angry and there is no better place to let it out than here. Unfortunately, I live in a society where exposing raw feelings is considered shocking and people shun you and say all kinds of S to and about you. So I write here. But I am not going to get into the point directly. I feel like meandering. This write-up exists primarily due to the following two songs. They opened up many wounds that don't heal but lay hidden under the make-up (F, I used the hyphen) called humour, happiness, glee and all such S.

One week of struggling

On the real world is

So you can see!

Feel your soul and,

Shape your mind to warfare

It's all for real

Live your life

Not the way they taught you

Do what you feel!

Survive the jungle

Give me blood

Give me pain

These scars won't heal

What were you thinking

What a wonderful world!

You're full of shit

Leave it behind

They don't care if you cry

All is left is pain

Can you take it?

The only way

To get away

Kill your pride

Attitude

I won't take it

So in the end

I want to see some respect

You better show some respect

Attitude and respect

The Cavelera era Sepultura made some of greatest angry songs. I first heard their album Roots and though was initially shocked by it, got to love them. This song from the album is filled with attitude and I simply love the beginning and the end of the song. This song is enough to stoke the underlying anger in anyone.

King's X resides at the other end of the spectrum from Sepultura. I will copy and paste the reason for my loving this song from an earlier write-up (Hypen Fing hypen).

"I discovered Kings'X late but since then they have become a favorite of mine. There is not a single song in their collection that does not sound good. Their live albums are spectacular too. Doug Pinnick's passionate voice and rants lifts many of these songs to a different level. The musicianship and singing, needless to say, are spectacular.

The song here, Believe, is on such live rendition. I was listening to the version from their album "Live All Over the Place" has these interesting lines from Doug.

You see when I grew up, I grew up in the church and they told me to believe in God. They said believe in Jesus. 

And other people told me to believe in Krishna. Somebody else said believe in Budda. 

Then they said the Indian religion, then they said in the President of United States.

They said believe in the United States of America. They said believe in everybody but myself.

I want to tell you people if you don't believe in yourself you ain't got shit to believe in.

Believe in yourself.

and so on."

Oh yes, I am done with the Fing meandering. If you have made it this far, you should able to get right till the end of this S. Though on reading what I have written below, I believe I should warn you that it is quite insane and might make you wonder "what the F is he saying?"

I am amazed at the number of people I meet who are in control of their Fing lives. They know what they are doing; they have clear idea where they are going; they are working towards their bloody five year and lifetime goals (I don't consider bloody a swear word; its just a word with a lot of blood in it). Now, that per se is not an issue. The Fers even know how I should live my life and are busy telling me to be this S or that S and about doing this S or that S. What the hell! You don't even really know what you are doing. You only think you know what you are doing and so stop being over confident and look at your own Fing lives. To illustrate, let me give you an example.

September 2016, one guy was slogging his Bs off for a company. He is ready to give sweat, blood and piss for the company. Its his life, his passion and his Mona Lisa. One year later (, which is September 2017 in case you couldn't decipher) he barely cares for the company.  He finds it difficult to even visit the office once a month though he had promised to visit it at least once a week. He has moved onto something and is not even sure if the S he has moved on to is his passion or not. I hope you all realize the Fer I am talking is me. 

So I declare publicly, I have no idea what I am doing with my life. There was a brief period, when I thought I knew, what I was doing. But then the bubble burst and I was back to the "What the F am I doing?" phase. I am not ashamed of it. Actually, I am proud of it and say it with pride. This I believe has been my greatest strength. I am unsure of where I am going and so whenever I move, I make progress. I don't care if it is the Fing east or west. I have to move. As I have heard in some song, all I have to tell myself is "Move MF move".

So where is the problem? Why the F am I angry? I live a Fup society where exposing a chink in one's armour is exploited by many Fers. They love to live in their Fing high pedestals and correct you. They love to "tchk tchk" you and shake their Fing heads with Fup concern displayed on their MFing faces. Most times, you quietly laugh and mock the poor MFers. But sometimes, this hypocrisy gets on your nerve and you want to shower the choicest abuses at the Bs. But being cultured and refined, I have to keep my Fing mouth shut and smile. "Smile MF smile!"

You don't have to declare you insecurities but at least look at the Fing mirror and find it out for yourselves. This will at least help when something does not go your way. You will realize that every time something worked, you were lucky. You are not where you are due to your being a Fing genius. That at the very least will keep you grounded.

One more point prior to my ending this masterpiece. Can you Fing forget and ignore all those philosophers and their Fup philosophies? Those MFs were as lost as we are. So please don't mess up your messed up life by making a meaning out of all the S they ejaculated.

PS: I added a postscript to this write-up. For ease of access, I have named it, quite unimaginatively in my opinion, as "Postscript to Scccrreeeeeaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmm" 

Alexander the great: The song and not the person

I was listening to "Alexander the great" this morning and was reminded about my introduction to this song.

We lovingly called him Myrugaru for two reasons. First, he was a hairy monster (when 100 boys are cramped into a small space called hostel, such details come to the fore quickly). Second, he was a myru. The guys rise to notoriety took place right in his first year. He stood in front of the bank on the first of a month and collected loan worth three or four thousand from seniors with scholarship. That evening he had a brand new Phillips stereo in his room. Coincidentally it cost him three or four thousand rupees. 

He introduced me to Alexander the great and Iron Maiden. I was blown away by the song the first time I heard it. The song structure, singing, lyrics and guitars were all spectacular. In the next few months, I collected all the available Iron Maiden material (but I could not lay my hands on the particular song itself till many years later). At that time, I asked him a naive question "Has this group played a concert in India?" He was offended and responded with derision in his voice "India! Are you nuts? They will spit on India". I was in awe of Iron Maiden and went on the collection spree, I mentioned earlier.

A few years later, Iron Maiden was one of the first mega-metal group to tour India.

Mustache

"I want a mustache"

"No one has a mustache. So you will look odd with it."

"No, I need it"

"Try to understand. We don't have the time for this."

"No, no, no. I need a mustache. I will not come out without it."

"Alright! Let me draw a mustache for you."

"I want a mustache like yours."

"This is not a mustache. This is just stubble."

"I want a mustache like yours that goes from here to there before joining here."

"That's a French beard. You cannot have it as it modern and does not fit the situation and times."

"Oh Ok! In that case, it should go from here to there and join there."

"Isn't that too much? Your entire face will be hidden in black."

"No, it will be nice."

"Let me draw you something proper."

"Here! This looks good."

"I want to see it. I need a mirror."

"There are no mirrors here."

"Hey, you look like a bandit with the mustache."

"More like a cartoon bandit. Ha ha ha."

"Oh no! What have you done?"

"Will you guys leave! It looks good and is not cartoon like. Those fellows are kidding."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Is it big?"

"Big enough."

"Ok, but I still want to see it."

"Oh no! Some of the black has spread to my lip. I have to apply lipstick."

Distracted

Off we go to the meadow

Worries dug deep in my mind

Threw it all out of a window

Though a wind blew it in from behind

Momentary joy covers it with a blind

Beautiful green grass

Flowers reflecting orange

Of the sun like a glass

Bliss creeps out of the stage

Worries storm back from the cage

White clouds in a blue sky

Patches of blue; patches of white

Pockets empty; so much to buy

Love's here; with a lot of fight

Deadlines, waistline; everything's a fright

Meadows and clouds recede from sight

All that remains from the day

Memories not so bright

Colours running around astray

Leaving me with only grey