Oh Kolkotta!

Many of us in the right side of 80s, (i.e.) the side in which I was born, have fond remembrance of Doordarshan.  DD was the king of entertainment in the 80s.  Visual entertainment reached our drawing rooms and we felt we could be entertained anytime.   No longer were we required to plan, book, travel and keep a big chunk of our time assigned to visual entertainment.  We just switch on the TV and we are entertained with movies, songs, information and news.  What fun!  The only issue was that we did not have the choice of time or content.  We were entertained only when the masters at DD felt so and that too with content of their choice.  So we waited a whole week to see the latest movie songs only to be given a load of patriotic songs from many years prior to our birth,  At that time, we did not have the taste to enjoy such classics from the past.  Even so, many of us look back at those days with a nostalgically satisfying sniff and tear.  I guess one of Bruce Springsteen's songs tell us why those days were better than today, at least as far as TV was concerned - those were not the days of "56 channels and nothing on".

Among all these programmes, the Sunday afternoon regional language movie held a special place in our hearts.  The excitement of finding which language would be shown, the thrill on learning that a movie from your region has been selected and the pleasure of having tears steam down our cheeks non-stop for two hours made a lasting impression in our heads.  There are a couple of things that I remember about these movie.  First, Oriya directors made the saddest movies on Earth - Even at that tender age it took a lot of self control for me not to kill myself at the end of an Oriya movie.  Second, Calcutta (as it was called then) is the most fascinating place on Earth.  The trams, the people, the language, the Rosgullas and Satyajit Ray made the movies and ultimately Calcutta the most fascinating place on Earth - a place to visit.  

Many decades have passed since those days and we have leaped across a century.  That brilliantly futuristic 21st century we envisaged is here and yet visiting Calcutta (or Kolkotta as it will be called from now on) did not take place.  Once I had the good luck of visiting the airport en route to Guahati,  I peered out of the airport and the flight as it took off and landed in an attempt to see the Howrah bridge with disappointing results.  A few years back an opportunity came by for me to spend a week there but another plan interjected to ruin it all.  Thus the wish remained a wish for a good part of my life.

A good 14 years into the 21st century the day finally arrived.  The tyres of the plane rudely smashed onto the earth and our belted bodies felt force in many directions.  The plane took a left off the main runway and the belts started clicking open.  A few souls in hurry to get out of the steel tube, got up and started opening the overhead lockers.  The hostess came online to remind everyone that "we are taxiing still" and requested everyone to continue to be seated.  Then the pilot came on and assured everyone that he planned to reach the gate safe.  He promised that everyone would reach their home in a short while and that no one would be left back on the plane.  "So sit back and enjoy the final moments of this flight" he ended.  The mobiles started ringing and many voices said similar words in many language "Yes we have landed and would be out in a few minutes".  

Kolkotta airport seemed much better than the Calcutta airport I visited a few years earlier.  It seemed spacious and more international.  It did not look as though parts of the roof would fall on our heads. I looked down at the baggage carousal hall from the arrival gate and saw that parts of the hall were not complete yet.  My colleague pointed at a few flower pots placed at a corner.  They were in the shapes of frogs, spiders, mushrooms, elves and other such  fancy creatures.  For some reason, these fancy creature-ish pots caught his fancy and he whipped out his mobile to click pictures in five different angles.  His embarrassed companion tried his best to keep away and act as though he had no idea who this naive picture taker was.  But there was no escape; the company logo proudly beaming out of t-shirts clarified to all the relation between the two people.  

The queue at the taxi counter was long.  I remembered the omnipresent yellow taxis from all those Bengali movies and saw a few of them outside.  But not enough of them were around for the passengers inside.  A Volvo bus came by and picked up a few passengers.  By the time, we decided to move out of the queue and get into the bus it had moved on.  My colleague called some expert on Kolkotta who said that we had to only get out of the airport to catch one of the many buses that went very close to our destination.  We got out of the queue and airport.  The only way to the road outside was through the car park.  We maneuvered through cars of many sizes and shapes eager to get out the of the lot.  In the process, I experienced a few "near death experiences" - my whole life started playing in front of my eyes - I got as far as my first day at school.

As we walked up the ramp of the parking lot, we saw a yellow cab slow down at some distance.  The cab stopped and the driver waved at us.  We increased our pace of walking.  Our luggages struggled to keep up with us.  As we reached the cab, the driver waved us into the cab with a few words of Bangla. We got in and uttered the name of our destination.  The driver uttered many words in Bangla and started the cab (he probably said "Ok, I will take you there.  Now sit back and relax while I take a few twists and turns to take you two to your wonderful destination").  As we got out of the airport, we saw the bus stop.  As the guy had said there were many buses.  Each of them had more than a hundred people in excess to its capacity.  The bus stop itself had many more hundreds of people trying to clamber into the buses.  We gave thankful looks at the cab driver and God (though lately God's performance in the area of looking after us was way below our expectations).

Kolkotta is a city of building (not buildings for I use that word to mean "in the process of being built").  Every where I looked something getting built.  Skyscrapers, apartments, flyovers, metros, bridges, houses, offices, malls and many such incomplete whatevers watched us pass by.  Many of these incompletes did not have anyone around. It seemed like they would continue to be in this state for many more years.  The few lucky incompletes had two or three people walking around carrying rubble on their heads.  

The road leading from the airport were wide and the traffic free flowing.  Some amount of landscaping was done on the stretch from the airport to the city.  Many of the crossing were marked with large statues.  The two owls looking down at me with their large questioning eyes reside in my head still.  Among the partially and fully completed structures that lined the road were a few lakes, fields and marsh land.  These came out as a surprise in the least expected of the places.  While the right side of the road was filled with humanity, the left was left open to fields, lakes and marsh land.  The landscape on either side of these stretches seemed to belong to different centuries.  

One hour into the ride, the taxi driver said something, in Bangla of course.  I responded with a brave "Kya app hindi mein baath kar sakthe hain?" He seemed to hesitate for a moment before asking, in hindi, the exact address of the place where we would alight.  I looked up the address in my phone and said it out.  He said he did not know how to get there and that we have to ask someone.  I called up "someone"and passed the phone to him.  Many Bangla words were exchanged through the phone before it reached my hands again.  The drive continued but now we moved out of the highway into some bye-lanes.  I looked at the houses and buildings that lined these lanes.  They were nondescript and were just like the buildings and houses that lined the lanes of any city or town in India.  In a few minutes, the driver stopped the vehicle with a sudden jerk.  He then pointed ahead and mentioned that our destination was the fifth building on the right.  I asked him to go on to the building.  He said he cannot proceed anymore; a cat had crossed the cab's path.  On further inquiry he said that a cat crossing your path brought bad luck.  I said "nothing of that sort, go ahead".  He then got onto a long story on how a cat crossing his path had brought terrible ill luck.  As a matter of fact, he had nearly been killed in that incident. Apparently, his car fell into a pond soon after the cat crossed his path.  He lost the car but was able to save his life "thanks for Shibji's kripa".  So there was no way he was going to move an inch ahead.  We got out, paid him and saw the taxi zoom back at an inhuman pace.  In the process, he nearly ran over a couple of people; maybe the cat crossed their paths too.

We spent the rest of the day in the office indulging in a lot of this and that activities.  At the end of the day, one of our hosts was kind enough to offer a spin around the city.  We were shameless enough to accept the offer without any display of hesitation.  The next two hours were spent surrounded by a million people walking, driving, shouting, spitting, honking, running, teasing, etc.  Even in Mumbai, I had not seen so many people.  In many ways, Kolkotta seems like an older but poorer brother of Mumbai.  The Esplanade area with many of the buildings from the British age still standing, though barely, reminded one of the Colaba area of Mumbai.  Though in this case there are many more people and the British age buildings in Mumbai are much better maintained than the ones here.

Kolkotta is very famous for its Maidans.  These are large spaces in the centre of the city left open for people to play, run and relax.  Right across one of these, is the famous Victoria memorial.  It was nearly 9pm when we reached there and we looked at the lighted memorial at a distance from the gate.  The gate was guarded by two majestic lions in white stone.  I am not sure how the place looks in the morning but at night with the lights focused on the lions and the memorial, in the distance, the sight was simply magnificent.  Through the day, we had heard of the wonderful puchkas (some kind of pani poori apparently) you get in the Victoria area.  By the time, we got there all the puchka sellers had called it a day.

Now it was time to get to the river.  We started off with an average but expensive dinner in a ship docked at the bank of the river.  The ship has been converted into a hotel and restaurant.  From the top deck of the ship you get a good view of the river and through the foggy night we were able to discern the vague shape of the Howrah bridge.  The sight on that foggy night made it seem like a painting by some famous painter whose name I should remember.  Unfortunately, the food was less than an average affair and the cost was much more than an expensive affair.  Fortunately, for us our host vehemently insisted on paying the bill and we obliged very willingly.

On the way back to our hotel, which was quite a distance away from where we were, our host decided to take a lengthy detour to show us the new (relatively speaking that is) rope bridge across the Howrah river.  He claimed to have an uncle who was involved in the building and the maintenance of the bridge. This uncle had taken him to the top of the column that held the ropes and that the view from the top of the column was better than spectacular.  The drive across the bridge felt like a drive across any bridge.  The massive ropes that held the bridge were a sight though.  At the other end of the bridge were the toll booths, which we were not able to avoid.  We had to travel further for another couple of kilometres before heading back to our hotel.

The next day, was spent in the office with nothing spectacular happening except for those fantastic Rosgullas and sandeshs that entered our digestive system every hour of the day.  The drive back to the airport was a nail biting thriller though.  We did not realize that the evening traffic would be such that getting out of the office two and a half hour prior to the flight was barely enough to get us to the check-in counters 45 minutes prior to the flight.  Fortunately for us, we were not travelling Air India and we were able check-in.

A very happy end to 2014

Ah! A new year is here

To rejoice the end of a year

Miseries of hope unrealized

Resolutions unceremoniously dropped

Relationships distancing a little more

Promises gone sour

Come to an end, I hope

Should I say a very happy new year?

Might be just words, I fear.

Rider with a storm

The drive was taking longer than I expected.  I plan to be in the office by 10 but office was still 30 KMs away.  I had reached the outskirts of the city and with the increase in traffic the speed had reduced considerably.  I estimated that the remaining distance would take more than an hour.  The journey that started pleasantly as I had thought it would had by then turned grim.  Early morning sparse traffic and the smooth highway ensured that my speeds were in the three figure mark most of the time.  The loud music screaming out of the speakers enhanced the experience.  Many would not have termed the situation as pleasant but for me it was good enough to scream out a few lyrics.  

The traffic increased considerably when I was about 70 KMs from the destination.  It is at around this time that my abdomen informed me that the fluid pressure was building up.  It had not gone above the danger mark but it was something I need to take notice of.  I thought of getting out of the highway and letting go in proper Indian style.  But I had long passed the bushes and fields part of the highway.  Now it was all factories and offices that preceded the city.  I could not possibly let it out on a factory wall; the security might kick my butt.  There were a few ideal vacant spots but by the time their existence registered in my head I was a good 500 metres away from them.

My head requested the abdomen to hold on for an hour and ordered the body not to generate fluid for the same amount of time. Though the abdomen responded positively the remaining part of the body turned down the request summarily by letting me know that it was all my fault. "You did not take heed of our order to avoid washing down 500 ml of coke over and above the unaccountable ml of water" was their charge.  All this liquid cannot be assimilated by the already flushed up cells and had to go someplace, which was outside.  So the pressure continued to build up.  The road took my attention off this build up.  I ran into a traffic jam, right at the entrance of the city.  I cursed and craned my neck attempting to see something.  I could only see the tops of many stationary cars.  I cursed and fell back.  That is when the realization of the unbearable pressure build up hit me.  I was in the center of the road and there was no spot for me to relieve myself.  I cursed again.

From then on thing became hazy.  I could only remember a few things between that time and the time I reached the office.  Every time a vehicle ahead of me slowed down, I cursed every ancestor of all the persons in that vehicle.  Every time a police man stopped my car to let some pedestrians cross, the ancestors of the policeman and the pedestrians were affected in a similar manner.  Every time I remembered the existence of my abdomen, I felt like the Mulaiperiyar dam in monsoon.  One time I parked the vehicle on the side of the road, picked up the empty bottle of coke and considered using it.  But I was not sure, if the contents I planned to pass into it would be less than 500 ml.  I threw the bottle away, cursed my ancestors, pulled the car back on to the road violently and in the process nearly ran over a pedestrian who cursed all my ancestors too.  I continued on and with every passing KM tightened the muscles in my pelvic region.  I am sure that region must have reduced in size considerably due to all the tightening.

Finally, the office was in sight; just one signal to get through.  I had to cross my legs while waiting the signal to turn green.  My control seemed to slip away now that the destination was so close.  I rubbed my eyes and looked again to ensure that this was no mirage.  Nope, the office remained there.  I started off with a "come on" and made up a sentence with many combinations of the F-word - the intent of the sentence when you removed all those words was "Why is the signal taking so long?",  God, I guess, responded by turning it green and soon I was pulling into the parking lot when the bloody watchman put up his hand and stopped me.

"ID card please"
"Aye, move away.  I need to go urgently."
"ID card please"
"Bloody hell! Where the hell is it?  Ah, here it is.  Are you happy?  You bloody fool."

The actual words used were not as innocent as the "Bloody hell" and "Bloody fool" but for the sake of readability I choose not to put those precise words.  I guess this reduces the authenticity of this write-up and I have to probably put a rider "based on real life events".  To cut short story short, I reached the restroom.  Contrary to my expectation, I found the restroom unoccupied, ran into it, opened the zippers and LET GO.  An amazing amount of liquid started flowing out at an even more amazing speed.  Its landing was so noisy that the Niagara falls would have hung its head in shame.  I am not sure how long the flow continued but it was long enough to flood the area around the office, that evening.  Of course, the rains that day might have helped but I carry the guilt that I am the major contributor.

Shabbaaaa ABBAaaaaa

The meeting did not turn out the way we thought it would.  We thought the customers would jump out of their seats with a pen in hand and demand a place to sign the deal.  They had shown a lot of interest and enthusiasm during the presentation and ensuing discussions.  But at the end of the show, they requested, very enthusiastically, another meeting to discuss the details.  Except for our boss all of us were disappointed.  He thought the meeting went exceptionally well.  The customer had expressed interest and that was good enough for him.  He had a smile on his lips and as we went down the elevator, a whistle started blowing out of it.

The lift journey lasted for ever.  The boss' elevated mood further depressed our already depressed feelings.  The whistles and hums in that small space racked our tender nerves.  To stop this joyful outburst I put forth my disappointment about the meeting.  Boss looked at me amused and said "did you expect him to sign on the dotted line by the end of the first meeting itself?"  "That's what you said prior to the meeting" I retorted.  "Yes, but I said that to keep you guys motivated" boss retorted back. "You should be happy; he asked us to come back right?  Show they are interested."  "So when will he sign?" asked I naively.  "Next meeting definitely" was the response.  "You say that to keep me motivated, right?" was my exasperated response.  "No, no my dear.  I got the vibes today.  Next meeting is the one, we go to Leela for dinner after that.  Its party time my boy" came the comforting response.

I hated it when the bugger tried to humor me with "dear"s and "my boy"s.  Unfortunately, he is my boss and I have to put up with this nonsense.  A few minutes later, we were in the car and my dear boss was revving up the engine as though he was at the start line of a race.  I had chosen the back seat to keep my distance from him.  Also, I did not like to wear the seat belts and so I thought the back seat fit my bill.  But when I heard the engine rev up I changed my mind about avoiding seat belt .  I had just about enough time to buckle it on; the car literally jumped out of the parking spot and sped towards to the spiral ramp.  We hit the ramp at about 40 Kph, I think.  I was pushed to the door and was stuck there as we went up the ramp - round and round and round.  I prayed hard and promised a visit to Tirupathi if I got out of this car alive.  Finally, we reached the ground level alive.  Three floor of spiraling hell came to an end with a hard hitting of the brake. Thanks to the seat belt I did not fly our of the wind shield.

I prayed to God again and requested him to put some sense into my boss - "Please let him not drive recklessly through the roads.".  But my prayers went unheeded.  His trademark style of driving continued.  The road was teeming with people and vehicle but our car bull dozed on.  It was like one of the scenes from the comics wherein cyclists, hens, dogs and cows jump out of the way as a car zips by with the driver peeping out of the window waving his hands wildly at the people and the animals.  I had a good mind to ask him if he thought the accelerator pedal had dual functionality.  The first press accelerates the vehicle and the second press brakes it.  Someone had to tell this guy that it accelerates more when pressed the second time.  But that cannot be me - he does not like to be corrected by his subordinates and so I kept praying.  By the time, we covered two kilometres, I had promised visits to most temples in the state of AP.  I could not afford further promises and so decided to distract myself.

"Sir, don't you have any music."

"Oh yes! A large music collection.  I love music.  Do you want to listen to something?"  As he was saying this he dove to his left to get out his CD pack.  Along with him the car turned sharply to the left.  I did not dare to look out but I heard a lot of noise and commotion from that side.  Boss straightened, threw back the CD pack and continued driving as though nothing had happened.  "Go on, select something" he said.  I opened the pack and found the pack had about 10 CDs.  All the CDs had ABBA written on top and the numerals 1 to 10 written underneath.

"I love ABBA.  Select the CD that you want from the pack." he insisted.
"I don't listen to ABBA." was my response.
He turned around, looked at my face and exclaimed "What!".  I am not quite sure what happened to the car in those few second (or minutes or hours, I am not sure which).  But we seem to have again left behind a chaotic scene.
"Pick up CD four or five, whichever you like best.  Both of them are good." he said.

I had no idea which songs they contained and as such I did not know anything about ABBA.  I have always preferred the number five over four and so I picked it up and handed it over.  Soon our vehicle was filled with the soothing sound of the ABBAs.  I am not sure why I had not listened to them but now they seemed to be the best sounds I have heard in my whole life.  I closed my eues and let my body rock to the crazy rhythms of the car as the beautiful music filled my ears and head.

Where is the ice bucket?

Wash away with ice
With glee lights a face
Supporting a suffering
Inflicted are feeling
Giving away money
While pictures come out funny
Making all aware
How much I care
Something I know not
Little more than naught

Book Tales

So i am going to tell you 10 book writers and name of the book and here they are:
THE NUMBER DEVIL  HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER,
CONNECT THE DOTS RASHMI BANSAL,
 THE  OATH OF THE VAYUPUTRAS AMISH,
 ROOTS ALEX HALEY,
 ASHOKA CHARLES ALLEN,
 BLINK MALCOLM GLADWELL,
THE TELL - TALE BRAIN V.S. RAMACHANDRAN,
 THE WORLD OF MALGUDI R.K. NARAYAN,
 THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL ANNE FRANK,
SCENES FROM A WRITERS LIFE RUSKIN BONDS






BY DWARAK KRISHNA

Anvil's made out of metal

My Facebook was filled with entries from the night.  Many from one of the community pages I like - 80's The Golden Ages Of Metal.  Usually it was filled with YouTube links to songs by groups like Poison and Warrant.  These were not my favorite groups and I usually browsed on.  For the past few days, the administrators of the group were throwing in songs by some of the lesser known groups of the 80s.  That morning, I ran into an entry on a song by "one of the lesser and most under-rated metal groups of the early 80s".  The group was called Anvil and the song "Metal on metal".  The thumbnail of the song showed the face of the lead singer singing into the microphone.  His expression had an interesting combination of mean and mischief.  It reminded me of Eddie Vedder's expression in the video of "Ten" - A bit of mischief with an overwhelming dose of meanness.  

I clicked on the link and the song came up.  Crunching guitar, pounding drums and a mean voice - the perfect combination of heavy metal cliché.  The song was loud and heavy with a lot of chunka-chunka guitaring.  The singer sounded like a cross between Scorpian's Klaus Maine and AC/DC's Brian Scott.  It sounded like a classic thrash metal song from the mid-80's.  But this song was from the early 80's before the big four of thrash came by but this group was hardly heard of.  So I opened the Wikipedia and searched the group.  Anvil is a group from Canada formed in the late 70's and sure enough they influenced the big thrash groups of the 80's - Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and Metallica.

Anvil with "Metal on metal"

The site also mentioned that there exists a  documentary film, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, about their career.  I have been a sucker for movies on music bands for some time now - Woodstock, Doors, The last waltz, Rush.  Fascinating movies that described the route a set of people took to reach the pinnacle of rock's Mt.Everest.  So I got this movie and watched it.  It turned out to be more than fascinating.  The movie starts off with the statements "In the summer of 1984", "Some of the biggest rock bands in the world toured Japan together", "Scorpians", "Whitesnake", "Bon Jovi", "All these bands went on to sell millions of records", "Except one", "Anvil" and then band comes on stage to sing "Metal on metal" .  The movie goes on to tell the struggles that the lead singer and drummer goes through to keep the group kicking.  Rockers in their 50's trying to make that one record that will take the world by storm while driving trucks for Children's Choice Catering.  

A very emotional movie on the sufferings that the group had to undergo touring Europe, making an album and trying to sell it Music executive.  There are a lot of arguments and tears in the movie.  All seemed genuine and did not seemed staged.  A brilliant movie that brings out the passion these two people have towards their group and music.  A passion that started almost four decades back and continues till date.  I am so glad I came across Anvil and will be their fan through my life.