Mumbaichya Mulga

I will begin by stating unabashedly that I was a blob of butter on a plate of pav bhaji in Bombay. Correction: Mumbai. I had to say that, or some people-who-must-not-be-named will eat me alive. I was that nascent, untouched, hopeful globule whose doom is both inevitable and glaringly obvious to everyone staring at it in drooling anticipation. Shady connotations aside, I arrived like a breath of fresh talcum powder, a guy crazy enough to believe he could stay alone in this city and live to tell the tale.

Frankly, the BEST bus gave me a scare the first time I saw one. No, I hadn't been living under someone's rickety floor tiles, so the concept of transportation wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me. It was just that the little town I came from had neither the good fortune nor the adventurous inclination of hosting these 'bus-ke-naam-pe-dhabba's which looked like their singular ambition was to cheerfully burst apart at the seams.

This great metal survivor had in it about a million brave people battling either to stay upright (swaying like pendulums, their hands glued to hand rails), or to not get squashed under the tremendous pressure most of their fellow daredevils were subjecting them to using various parts of their bodies.

The bus conductor was very busy ordering this horde to 'pudhe chala' so he could furtively try to sit on someone. His look of utter disgust at being addressed in any way was only rivaled by the bus driver's one of complete triumph when he managed to leave a huffing, sweaty chaser far behind, enveloped in a cloud of smoke. He then smirked widely at his pitiable million-strong audience via the enormous dusty rear-view mirror. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the sole purpose of its dull existence. I witnessed everyone from poor bespectacled students to ancient grandmas pressed up against the red beast's innards like peas waiting to burst from their pod. I was nearly launched out of a window myself, but a kindly stranger's shopping was wrapped too snugly about my ankles. And the bus conductor was furtively trying to sit on me.

This was just the start. I hadn’t been to the local train yet.

You’ve probably heard it all before. But if you haven’t actually experienced it, you have no chance of even beginning to appreciate the fact that if you survive the local trains in Mumbai, you’ve conquered the planet. The first time I was on one, in the second class compartment, any vestiges of wide-eyed belief in the good of humanity remaining in my twenty-eight-year-old head were promptly shaken out of me and left behind somewhere on those long, winding tracks.

One of the first to climb into my compartment, I was the lucky guy who gets to stand right in the center of all those bodies, getting sprayed from all sides alternatively by dripping red paan and oh-so-fragrant sweat. I also happened to be the guy who was obviously a stranger to the lifeline of Mumbai. Don’t get me wrong: even if you were born on one of these locals, you could be robbed of everything you hold dear. I was just easiest. I felt a hand groping me in unmentionable places, and thought with a jolt that I was being molested by some sick psycho. Then I felt my wallet slipping out of my pocket and twisted around, determined to catch the idiot. I found my face inches from a pimply innocent-looking teenager’s. His hands were empty. Next to him was a paan-chewing, mustached, red-faced, hostile-looking fellow about three times my weight. All around me were close replicas of this guy. I sighed in defeat. I knew a lost cause when I saw one.

My station finally arrived. I longed for the fresh air outside which I was close to believing had been a dream. I tried to push my way out of the solid, indifferent paan-people’s wall. Milliseconds later, I heard the familiar rattling of wheels beneath me, and every nerve in my body screamed in protest. This could not be happening to me. A few stations along, I was gradually pushed out, and fell on all fours on blessed solid ground. I was lost, hungry, and worse, had no money to buy a ticket back to Andheri. Not that I ever wanted to see another local again in my life.

I saw the train pull away from the station, taking with it the hanging-by-the-tips-of-their-fingers mass of people who gambled with their lives every day. I groped inside my pocket for the phone they'd spared, and called my only friend in all of Mumbai. He sighed, said grudgingly that he'd come fetch me, and muttered some nonsense about how someone called Dadar would have swallowed me whole.

For A Lady

Well, this was written to help a couple friends with their tentative love lives. Yes, I've been courting women.

Here I am, with a heart beating fast,

Staring at these blank pages,

Thinking, wondering, debating just how

To pen what I’ve felt for ages…

A rush of emotions, so far unknown,

And a million thoughts leap to my mind,

But my ink and pen, they quiver so,

As the perfect words they try to find…

My senses wage an internal war,

But I had better initiate a try,

To make a start, a little beginning,

Before my head asks too many ‘Why?'s…

But a little voice utters in a whisper,

How can I possibly describe thee,

And capture that enveloping radiance,

Of the being who is an angel to me…

With that unique delicate beauty,

Your hair is like the twilit sky,

Mysterious, exquisitely compelling,

A potent sight, but always shy…

It shimmers like a curtain of gold,

Its dance is both mesmerizing and bold,

Your smile has the glow of a thousand suns

Your eyes, the life of a thousand more...

Your silent laugh, it delights me so,

Your lovely face half-hidden,

In your tresses flying high and low,

The sight enchants me, unbidden…

Splendid as God has made you outside,

I admire you a whole lot more,

For what you’ve made of your soul,

That deep, selfless, thoughtful core…

Your vividly strong personality,

The dogged persistence of your mind,

The intensely alive curiosity,

That is a jewel, so rare a find…

Your particular way of facing any situation,

With a true, brave sparkle in your eye,

Handling it all with a soothing calm,

And a hidden subsurface fiery fire…

That perpetual, alive, simmering heat,

That intense passion of your will,

Your simple, sweet, charming grace,

A thousand stories beneath a façade still…

Your voice’s brilliant complex melody,

Tells an ancient romantic tale,

The feelings the strains invoke in me,

Are matchless, as are you, my nightingale…

Now I hesitate and pause, yet ache to say,

To be with you, to never be apart,

To feel for you as I do now, forever and always,

Is the dearest darling wish of my heart…

Rebecca Black Named Prime Suspect in Mantralaya Fire Case

Disclaimer:  None of it's true! Seriously, this isn't serious.

The Mantralaya fire that broke out at 3 p.m. on Thursday in Mumbai was horribly mistimed, according to reliable sources. Startling news yet to be revealed as part of the CBI’s, in their own words, “unbiased investigation” was related by a CBI official to this news body.

            “We have strong reason to believe that the infamous Rebecca Black is the mastermind behind this entire thing. However, we are yet to figure out jurisdiction problems.” He secretively revealed after much persuasion.

            Black’s single “Friday-the worst song ever” is speculated to actually be a coded message to her cohorts in India. “It was not supposed to go viral!” is what she is alleged to have said exasperatedly to the friend who’s by her right, yeh-eh.

Read: right-hand-man.

            An intricate plan of deception and greed is revealed on digging deeper into her would-be secret message.

“It’s just so obvious!” is what Mr. Prithviraj Chavan, CM, Maharashtra said, throwing his hands up agitatedly while giving us a statement. “How the CBI missed it until now is mind-boggling.”

            What they missed is Black’s brazen words. “Which seat can I take?” says it all.

“She wants my seat!” Mr. Chavan said, close to tears.                                                  >>>                                         

                

            The Adarsh Scam, which was the reason for one Chavan’s accession and the other’s ouster, seems to have been targeted in an in-genius plan to wipe out all relative documents. The sheer stupidity an over-optimism of the act seems to have led CBI directly to Black.

            

            “Na rahega baas, na bajegi bansuri” seems to have caught the musical Black’s fantasy. Allegedly a die-hard Ashok Chavan supporter, she figured that once the documents were gone, Prithviraj’s seat would be hers to give to Ashok.

            

            But everything did not go as planned. The fire was premature!

            

            The fire was supposed to break out at 7 a.m. on Friday, the 22^nd of June, it has been confirmed. Black’s first line, “7 a.m., waking up in the morning,” implies a desire to wake the city up with a bang at the indicated time.

            

            The bomb is yet undiscovered at the Mantralaya, but then, perhaps her friends did not adhere to her every direction rigidly. “Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushing” seems to very obviously point to an explosive with a timer.

            

            “It’s Friday, Friday, getting down on Friday,” is directly indicative of getting him down on Friday.

Black seems to have been big on numerology. The 22^nd was fixed because of his being the 22^nd CM of Maharashtra. 6+2+0+1+2 (June 2012) = 11, which is the exact half of 22! And of course, it’s Friday.

Ironically, this song was blaring out of the CBI official’s radio as we asked him for a statement.  “Kicking in the front seat, sitting in the back seat..”

What remains to be seen is the actual prosecution of this ‘singer’. Meanwhile, the CM lives in fear of his seat being sat on, or worse, kicked. 

Image in the Glass

             I turned this way and that, admiring my heavy dress in the mirror, its swish-swish sound perfectly in time with my sway. The intricate embroidery was a silver mystery on the cream satin. A smile of wonder started at the corners of my mouth, and abruptly stopped as something odd caught my attention. I had thought I was alone, but suddenly they were all I could see in the darkened reflection, right behind me.

I stared at the bloodshot eyes in the mirror. The sight sent a tingling chill up my spine. They widened and the black irises enlarged to fill the extra space. They narrowed as the pupils became vertical, cat-like. The irises turned green. A piercing, unsettling, irradiant green. And the colour began to fade…began to reappear as a brilliant, bright, terrifying scarlet. The colour began to overflow, slowly trickled past the lashes as tears of blood fell on my neck. I could not move, not even to release the shiver building in me, not even to look away from the compelling, accusatory expression in those eyes as my sight blurred, my eyes filling with tears. I raised a shaking hand to wipe them away. I stared in horror as my fingers came away covered in a viscous, rich red. Those eyes…they were mine. Those bone-like fingers covered in rotting flesh…they were mine. That dead, gray, matted hair covered in seaweed…it was mine. My lips curled back to release a horrified wail, and no sound escaped them. I had no tongue.

I could only watch in silent, screaming terror as my full cheeks receded slowly, so slowly, as the tears continued in a shower of hot bullets. I blinked and there was nothing in the mirror but a gaunt skull-like face grinning back at me with a perfect set of dazzling teeth.

-----------

                I woke with a start, sweat covering my neck. My hand frantically groped the bedside table, and found the tiny mirror. I lit a candle and desperately stared at the reflection. My terrified eyes were bloodshot and my hair matted alright, but there was the rest of me – complete, whole. Full cheeks, full lips, straight nose, long lashes, whole skin. I sighed. The nightmares wouldn’t stop.

                I knew exactly why I was having these dreams, but would not admit it to myself; could not admit it. Because that would mean I was weak, and I was not. I refused to believe I was. It was not possible I was. Was it?

                My mind was trying desperately to tell me something, and I was fiercely denying the situation. Even my subconscious knew I was in trouble. Enormous trouble.

                I was eighteen years old, and I was going to be married. My mind was a strange place to be in, aflutter with so many varied emotions as it was. Doubt, anticipation, anxiety, and happiness – above all, swelling, glowing happiness – seemed to be swirling around in my head like light wisps of silver steam. But there was a dark, gray, thick smoke of another situation entirely that threatened to smother all the lightness, present at the very edge as well.

                My fiancé was a powerful king of a distant land. I knew not what he was like, not even how he looked. My people had heard only that he was thought of as handsome, shrewd, and merciful. He was twenty eight and looking for an alliance with my father. I had been trained all my life to be a married woman. I was ready.

                But I held a secret that I could not even admit to myself. The nightmares had started two months ago. And the cause for them four months previously, when I had stuck two fingers down my own throat.

                I had always had an extremely light, dainty figure. But I had recently gained some weight, and it showed. It was not much, only enough for everyone to comment how becoming I had started looking, how ready I was now for marriage to the king, how much rounder my already round face seemed, how my figure also had filled out and looked more womanly.

                I started hating myself. I felt like a fat old slave woman, and became paranoid about everyone’s attention. It seemed like they were all staring, whispering about my horrid looks behind my back, cackling about how I was lucky the king had never laid eyes on me. But I loved food, and could not get myself to give it up.

                I started thinking about food more and more, and all I wanted to do was eat. Eat everything that was unhealthy. Because I had weakly tried to forbid myself from these very things, my naturally perverse mind craved them more and more. And I lacked the will to stop myself.

                Five months before my marriage, I was desperate. So I excused myself from the table one day and made myself throw everything back up. I thought I had found the solution to all of my problems.

                I now gorged on anything I wanted and simply threw it all up. And I think it started having an effect on my weight as well. But with it came a price.

                A couple of months into my ingenious plan, my teeth felt weaker, and even if I had a small meal that I did not wish to get rid of, my body automatically made me throw it up. I could keep nothing down any longer. I was growing weaker. And I was having nightmares.

                My subconscious was telling me I was killing myself, slowly and surely. It was accusing me, showing me what would happen to my body. Of course, imaginative as I naturally was, it was dramatizing the entire thing to scare me. But one thing it absolutely had on the gold – I had to stop before I seriously damaged myself.

                My parents grew worried about me after they found me throwing up one night. They thought I had some serious, rare malady. One month before my wedding, I sat my mother, the queen, down and told her the truth. She was disappointed, and sad. But she helped me.

                The doctors had never heard of my condition. They were unable to do much. But Mother knew what to do. She helped me overcome my self-doubt and paranoia. She helped me realize my own inner-worth. She instilled in me my lost self-confidence. And I started eating small meals, and keeping them down.

                She kept me distracted. We played games in the gardens, took walks, read books, and ate freshly-picked fruits. And I started recovering. The paleness vanished from my face, and I was a strong, glowing bride on my wedding day.

                Before I departed from my palace room forever, to start my new, glorious life with a kind king, I asked Mother how she knew exactly what to do about my problem. She smiled that sad, knowing smile, gazed at an old portrait of my maternal grandmother and said, “Because there was a time… I was just like you.”

Lotter's Dilemma

Long slender fingers ran through the silky ginger hair, caressing, loving. She stretched, arched her back, with those beautiful eyes serenely shut to enjoy his touch with undivided attention, a low moan developing in her throat. He sighed and thought of yesterday, when his fingers were exploring fine filaments the colour of the darkest purple night. He had loved both his girls, and they practically purred at his touch. He half-smiled and waited. It was always the wait that nearly drove him insane.

She sensed a change and nudged him, finally opening those sharp green eyes. Her throaty purr was replaced by a low voice of appeal. Still he waited. Finally she said the one word he was waiting for. Instantly his hand flashed to her throat and squeezed ever so slightly, with ever increasing pressure. He looked into those wide eyes of alarm, those flailing nails trying to scratch his hand away. He looked, with an increasing delight deep within him, till the arms fell limp, till the eyelashes drooped, till the magnificent eyes of green lost their brilliance, till the last light went out of them.

He huffed out his held breath, happiness filling him, every inch of him, till he felt he could walk on air with his new emboldened spirit. He grinned like a maniac in his empty hostel room, until someone banged on his door screaming ‘Lotter!’ and damning in select words his lack of action just five days prior to Saarang. He gave back a few of his choicest words, and felt the effects draining out of him, felt himself sink back into an empty shell, a mask of his former self, into the Saarang 2013 Cultural Affairs Secretary, lit. Covering her up in his red bed-sheet, one by one Cul Sec Lotter put on twenty rings on his ten slender fingers and slowly opened his door to face the latest we’re-so-screwed story his remarkably unobservant Co-Cul Sec had managed to come up with.

Lotter was literally LOTR, or Lord of the Rings. He was a member of the rarest species at IITM – his name’s funda was neither uninteresting nor related to twisted guy fantasies. He had the courage to leave his room without disguise and fingers weighed down by twenty gold rings for twenty different gods. He locked his door behind him, a secret smile on his face and a plan for the dead he left in his room.

He had been in ‘love’ once (Why all IITians are delusional enough to think their fickle, mechanical, and entirely and selfishly RG-max hearts can experience anything of the sort is probably beyond anyone!). She was the prettiest freshie girl he’d seen last year (the mention of a freshie girl works like magic on IIT’s guys – they are more than likely to step ahead and slip on their own drool). A Tam Brahm to her very soul, she had a 9 point CGPA and the most goody-goody reputation in the Institute. At least she had had, until she was driven to insanity by her Sponsorship Creative Coordinator, Shaastra interview and subsequent rejection for the very year he was to be Cul Sec. She now spent her days in a straitjacket, bouncing off padded walls in the asylum she had to be packed off to, to avoid endangering herself and other students and further endangering the wildlife at IITM.

Her pitiable condition changed him in much the same sense Bella Became Bloodsucker. He became a ruthless killer, vowing revenge on the Sponsorship Core, Shaastra 2013. Five days before Saarang, Shaastra was underway. He’d already had his revenge. Now was the time to display it. 

       Evolve’s Shaastra Hacks had another weird run-down plane to display (their lack of originality, perhaps). Quietly in the dead of night he made his way to it with his strong arms weighed down by the two girls he dragged, and left them in there. The next day, all hell broke loose when a kid broke all the administration block windows with his single high-pitched screech on discovering it. In the KV grounds, Lotter’s eyes gradually met the shocked ones of the Sponsorship Core’s across the plane, and held them. His mouth slowly curved into a smile while the Core looked puzzled, and then alarmed as realization finally dawned on him. While his expression started turning into outrage, Lotter got lost in the memory of the silken cats in his hands the last two evenings, and the exhilarating moment when they had each finally uttered, “Meow?”