Life comes a full circle

This night is different from all my previous nights. Tonight I’m unable to sleep; I’m forced to ponder over my life.

It didn't take long for my mother to realize I was a different kid. Barring the physicality, I didn't have anything in common with the girls of my age. I was born a tomboy.

At an age when girls loved decorating their dolls and dressing them up, I took sadistic joy in crushing and dismantling them. While the other girls would raise their hands and ask parents to lift them while crossing a puddle in our street, I would slap any hand outstretched to help, and jump and cross it myself. That would give my ‘boyish’ ego, a smug boost.

But I wasn't different from the girls only; I was a rebellious kid even by boys' standards. I felt that every societal rule was there to curb my freedom. So I would break them at the drop of a hat. At times, I would even search for societal conventions to commit my faux pass.

I have always been a nightmare for my mom. My antics never allowed her to sleep peacefully, more so after she discovered the real me. I found archaic, every word of caution that came out of her mouth and every rule of discipline she laid for me. No amount of chastening would ever work on me. I was an undisputed apotheosis of a spoilt brat.

“Don’t sit that way”, “Behave yourself”, “Don’t stay out after 7”, “Learn to cook”, “Don’t wear shorts; wear frocks”, “Don’t play with the boys”, “Why can’t you play with other girls of the society?”, “Why can’t you behave like a normal girl?” and so on. My life was a constant questionnaire I preferred to tear apart with my actions.

The only time I behaved like a girl was when my mother was seriously ill. I took to doing the chores and taking her care, something totally unexpected of me. That was the only time I patiently listened to what she said.

“You’re a little girl, so gullible. You don’t realize that the outside world is very bad. You’ve to be very careful with the company you keep. The bad people will use you and throw you away. Why don’t you obey me my child?”

But soon after she recovered, I returned to my old ways.

Life went on, punctuated by altercations with my mom. I was tired of cold stares and loud rebukes that had become an almost daily phenomenon. So, after my schooling, I chose to go abroad for graduation. The move was more to move away from the prying eyes of my mom than for my love of foreign universities. The thought of freedom from having to justify my every action was too mouth-watering for me to feel the pain of separation from my spying but caring mom.

College life, away from home, was fun to say the least. I could mingle with friends of my choice without any botheration. Even here, my coterie had few girls. With my group, I was party to all kinds of outings; even to places considered to be guys’ bastions. I had gone crazy with my newfound freedom and enjoyed it to the hilt.

One such day, feeling groggy after the previous night’s drinking binge, I went to meet my friend. That day, he had not gone for lunch with the rest of our gang. We were not doing anything in particular: watching TV, gossiping and pulling each other’s legs. Suddenly I picked up a magazine with no particular intention of reading it. He snatched it immediately from my hands saying he wanted to read it first.

“Why should he read it first?” I thought.
“How could I let him snatch something from ‘my’ hands?” my alter-ego was too bruised to let him win the physical challenge, even though I was no match for him.

That gave me an instant kick and I snatched it back, for I saw, in his snatching of the magazine, a rule I had to break.

He jumped to grab the book but missed it. I ran and he followed. After a few missed chances he grabbed me from behind. He held my arms and turned me around with such power that I couldn’t do anything but face him. He held my elbows tightly; so I turned my hands with elbows as hinges and secured the magazine behind my back, holding it as tightly as I could. His hands, groping for the book, ran through my forearms, then wrists and reached the magazine. In the ensuing duel, I found myself kicking and pushing him, but in vain. In my efforts to relieve myself from his hold, I tripped and fell on the bed and he - not one to let go off the book - fell on top of me.

We were still fighting for the magazine. During the duel, our eyes met and I chuckled smugly at not letting him take it. Taking this as an insult, he did the unexpected. He planted his lips on mine and my hands that had, until so far, firmly held the magazine released it immediately. My eyes bulged out in shock at the sudden development. I tried to bring my hands out from under me to stop him, but our combined weight was too much for them. He won the book from me; but today that was not enough. He wanted to win me over.

Shock turned to anger at my inability to be in control. Anger turned to exasperation as I squirmed under him in frantic attempts to release myself. I somehow managed to release my hands and held them against his muscular chest to break the lip-lock. But the bitter-sweet sensation of the kiss had started playing its hormonal games on me by then. For the first time in my life, I didn’t mind being forcibly controlled and subdued. And I decided to go with the flow; force of my hands against his chest reduced and I found myself opening my lips in response to his. The inevitable happened.

I had made a life out of breaking the rules. However, in this quest, I didn’t realize that I made “breaking rules” the rule of my life. But someone, if not I, had to break this rule too for me. The self-imposed rule of my life was that I was to behave like a guy. Someone had to bring out the girl from the façade of a guy.

The next day, I found myself changed in a way that would make my mother proud. The sudden realization of being a woman was too much for me to be the same once again. To my surprise, I drastically reduced the frequency of meeting my ‘boy’ friends, except for him. The two of us had always been the best of buddies; that incident promoted him to a ‘special person’ in my life. I fell for him, head over heels. We met each other quite often and made out occasionally. Those were the best days of my life.

To my shock, I missed a cycle for the first time since puberty. But he, to my obvious consternation, refused to marry me and suggested instead to abort the baby; he then started ignoring me completely. I was staring at the prospect of becoming an unwed Indian mother - a social stigma of the lowest order. I felt that my fate had given me a very crude choice on the same rules that defined my life. Another rule of society was inviting me to break it and yet, I couldn’t find myself amused at the prospect of doing so.

But the recent realization of being a woman and the unexpected, yet pleasant, longing for motherhood made me take the choice of my life. I decided to become a single, unwed mother.

A few months down, I delivered an angelic baby girl. All my worries of societal stigma were drowned in her pleasant countenance and infectious innocence. I wanted to protect her from everything bad on earth. I told myself, ‘I will protect her from bad company, never let her be misguided by people like her father who could use her and throw her away.’

For the first time in my life, I could relate to my mother; I was thinking like her, and I suddenly realized, she wasn’t out of her mind in looking after me the way she did. For the first time I felt, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

My last few years have been wonderful with my little angel around me. She has been the centre of my universe ever since she was born. She has given meaning to my aimless existence.

Last night it rained heavily. This morning was so pleasant that I took my little angel out on a ramble. On the way, we reached a puddle left behind by the overnight showers. I crossed over in one big leap but my angel released my finger just when I was to cross. From the other side, I extended my hand.

She slapped my hand and said, “Mummy, I want to jump and cross it myself.”

No wonder, I can’t sleep tonight.

Memories

Like the fragrance of flowers, I waft.
Never to return, I had left.
Still clinging to time's breweries,
never to let go the hangover of memories.

I want to ...

NDTV selected this poem and published it on its site. Check out

********************
I wanna be the fragrance of flower;
powerless, and yet full of power.
I wanna be the song of a bird;
singing, and yet never heard.
I wanna be the sigh of wind,
to help tired souls unwind.
I wanna be the hiss of a stream,
to push their hopes upstream.
I wanna be the smile of an infant
and the untiring spirit of an ant.
I wanna be a kid's mirth from its toy
and its parents' tears of joy.

I wanna be the crescent of the moon
and the warmth of sun on a cold noon. 
I wanna be a star in the skies,
and a soaring eagle as it flies.  I wanna unload my past
and truly live until I last.
I wanna live in the present
and make most of every moment.
I wanna get rid of my fear today.
To all, I wanna be near and dear today.
I wanna be the quenched thirst today
and the soothing shade of tree today.

I wanna stretch my limits today.
I wanna break the rules today.
I wanna be everything that is good today
and make the world a better place today.

Godspeak on His Return

I visited the earth as Christ
and they formed Christianity.
I came down as Mohammad
and they became Muslims.
I incarnated as Zoroaster
and they followed me as Zoroastrians.
They then found excuses to divide
and smallest pretext to fight.

Every Divine intervention
is followed by a crude division,
wherein my doctrine of 'follow my path'
is mistaken for 'follow my religion.'

Ram, Krishna, Christ and Mohammad are the same,
separated in time and space.
But man can't fathom their oneness,
for he's bound by his limiting consciousness.
They really want me to return,
but only under their own names.
They want their messiah back
but only to play their own games.

The Christians want their Christ,
the Hindus hanker for Kalki.
The Jews wait for their messiah
and Muslims for Imam Mihdi.

Born in their faith, if I call myself Christ,
of blasphemy they'll blame.
If born a heathen and then enlighten
they'll call me a trickster and ridicule my name.

It all began with vibration
and will merge in perennial reverberation.
But even while seeking permanence in "The Absolute",
man yearns to glorify his 'ephemeral' religion.

Still, I will be back to restore
'The Divine Plan' upon every region
for I'm bound only by faith,
yet, I'm beyond every religion.

My Reservations against Reservations

Every now and then, the Indian government keeps pulling out the reservation rabbit from its magic bag. This time they're gunning for reservations in IITs and IIMs; that too for an appalling level of half the seats. This divisive politics –in the name of secularism and socialism- is getting too hot to handle now.

Unlike most of the writers criticizing the proposal, I'm going to deal with this in specifics rather than generics and cite instances out of my personal experiences to show how reservations are not only detrimental to the so-called general class but also to reserved categories – the very people in whose favour the whole policy apparently is. Not to mention, India is paying through its 'bleeding' nose for this.

I'm an engineer from one of the reputed National Institute of Technologies (NIT) of India. I belong to the general category of students for whom there is no reservation. I completed my engineering in the allotted four years and passed out in 2000. I know some of my batch-mates and seniors who're yet to clear all their papers. Almost all of these people are from our so-called 'reserved categories'. Every year during the university exams, the hotels surrounding the colleges fill up with all such candidates once again trying their luck at clearing the exams. I marvel at government's ingenuity in boosting small scale hotel industry at the cost of large scale industries that are crying foul over lack of skilled engineers. Consider this incident. One such 'privileged' senior, who had failed to become an engineer even after a decade of taking examinations, urged one of my friends to help him clear the exams, for he felt ashamed when his kids asked where he was going. The difference between the open and reserved category students is obvious from the very first exam. Since they lag behind in their grades, they end up developing an inferiority complex over their abilities. Over the years, this complex worsens to broaden the psychological divide between the castes. Scratch the surface and chances are you might find a caste-fundamentalist in the very person apparently benefited by the reservations. Not to mention the growing resentment among the general category students when they see some worthy individuals losing their seats to someone totally undeserving in a merit based selection. Our caste based reservations are thus dividing the nation psychologically, while they're not reaching anywhere close to the apparent aim of social upliftment. Although there are students from the reserved category who do well academically, they are more of an exception than a rule.

The reservations do not end with the education. These candidates have reservations for jobs and promotions as well. My dad used to work for the Railways. During his working days, he wasn't promoted only because one of the reserved category candidates had to be promoted to be his superior. Now this gentleman didn't have the prerequisites to man that post. He couldn't do a single important task without asking my father. We frequently used to get his calls from office and my dad guided him even when on leave. An inspection or audit would see him malingering through sick leaves. Already, corruption has eaten into our work ethics, reducing our efficiency way below acceptable limits. To add to our woes, our flawed and illogical policies are not letting honest officials make the most of remaining work opportunities.

If reservations are so justifiable, why don’t we have a fifty percent reservation in our cricket team and the film industry in the name of social upliftment? How many of us would then go to watch the matches we won’t win or movies with mediocre performances? A simple truth of market is that customers want their money's worth. When companies go to the IIMs or IITs offering high salaries, they demand nothing short of brilliant work in return. Can the reserved candidates, chosen inspite of less than desirable credentials, do the needful? And when the companies find that they're not getting their money's worth, wouldn’t they stop visiting the brands we're so proud of?

My sincere question to all those politicians - where are we taking our nation with all these? It has taken years to build the brands that IITs and IIMs are. They demand high standards. How could we enforce reservations that dilute these very standards and favour mediocrity over meritocracy? Our policies make economic backwardness look wholly irrelevant while that should be the only criterion for reservations - if at all. We should rather ensure that everyone gets equal opportunity. A deserving candidate, irrespective of caste, should not remain deprived of higher studies for lack of funds. A specific number of seats should be reserved for such candidates.

It is only human not to value things you get for free. When people realize that they get the best without much hard work, they’d, but naturally, be inclined to relax. And only a fine line separates relaxation from laxity. Standards of performance are lowered and promotions reserved for them inspite of mediocre performance; who wouldn’t relax under such a luxury? The sad thing about the whole policy is that in the guise of reservations we’re inviting the socially backward classes to become lackadaisical and non-performing. Is it really going to benefit them or our nation in the long run? The answer is anybody’s guess.

I don’t hold anything personally against anyone from these reserved categories. Some of my very good friends are from these castes and I try my best to help them in whatever way I can. But when such policies on the whole negate our nation’s progress, I’m forced to speak up.

While Cadbury's Dairy-Milk might do great business when a not-so-good-at-studies 'Pappu' passes the exam after many trials and tribulations, IIMs and IITs might run out of business very soon, forcing brand India to nosedive, if we allow such Pappus to proliferate.

The Irony of Love

We seek love in her enchanting smile;
in the process, ourselves we beguile.
We seek love in his fingers running through our tresses,
and miss out on enjoying our soul's caresses.

We find life incomplete without him,
but never grope for completeness within.
We feel life is nothing, if not for her;
and seek our happiness in another.

Caught in the shackles of possessive vanity,
lovers link joy to their mate’s proximity.
Their sorrow, they feel, they can beat,
only when the twain shall meet.

We give our lovers the key to our passions,
and live our lives under self-imposed illusions
that they've the power to affect our emotions
and, for better or for worse, control our reactions.

Man has a lot to learn from a child,
the fount of mirth, so pleasant and mild.
Its joy is unconditional and within;
if not a toy, sand is a play-thing.

For a kid’s existence is rooted in the present,
he is a joy so pure that is born to last.
We limit ourselves in conditions of possession
and are bound by the future, burdened by the past.

Free mind of a child breaks its aviary.
Man is but a slave to idiosyncrasy.
He pulls love from unbound divinity
and restrains it in parochial conditionality.

When we fathom that happiness is our slave,
we will not in ‘normal’ ways behave.
Our love will flow from us forever,
whether our love is with us or another.

Mirth is the essence of existence.
This joy is the divine fount of love.
Man, in his quest, mortalized it
and bore what I call the irony of love.

Love Unbound

Wrote this story on 18th Feb 2006

When Cricket lost to Patriotism

The ongoing India Pakistan cricket series was touted to be the mother of all rivalries. The media spared no stone unturned in cashing in on the hype. The Indian and Pakistani scribes went gung-ho glorifying their respective team's credentials and analyzing the rival team's weaknesses. They went overboard putting the tournament at the top of cricket's pyramid while relegating the Ashes to a second rate competition. Reviews, previews, talk-shows and in-depth analysis gave some long-forgotten-heroes and some not-so-successful cricketers a second chance to recognition. On the ground, the two teams are arch-rivals; outside of it, the two nations are sworn enemies. Cricket thus becomes a virtual war as bats and balls replace F-16s and Sukhois.

A much-abused cliché calls cricket a second religion in the subcontinent, a religion very unkind to losers. History is a proof that the losers in India Pakistan matches pay heavily. At times players' careers were ended; they felt unsafe returning to their own countries and hometowns after their teams lost. A win in these matches could put you on the peak of fame and adulation while a loss would take you to the depth of lifelong ignominy. Ask Chetan Sharma and Javed Miandad to describe what it means to be on either side. The sword of job-loss swings tantalizingly close on top of everyone - from the pitch curator to the coach. The mentality is thus to be safe than sorry. So the captain would rather be safe and not lose than go for the kill and invite public wrath if the plan fails.

A look at the statistics reveals how brazenly biased the wickets were in favour of the batsmen in the first two tests. 1089 runs were scored for the loss of only 8 wickets – a whopping 136 runs per wicket – an ignominious world record. In the second test both the captains delayed their declarations until they made sure that the other team can't even hope to win, an ample evidence of their defensive attitudes. Batsmen broke world records; captains saved their resumes from smudges of defeat, but cricket was the loser. Their focus is how not to lose and not how to win.

Compare and contrast this to the recently concluded Ashes series. England beat Australia after 18 years; nail biting test match finishes brought a lot of lost fans back to cricket. South Africa's Captain Graeme Smith surprised Australia by his sudden declaration and brought the dead test and the lost series to life. Can this be expected from either of India-Pakistan captains? Not until we give them the freedom to lose following a daring gamble to win.

A deeper look at the evolution of sports would help separate sports from its misguided connection with patriotism. The evolution of sports lies in man’s need for entertainment. All the sports started of as simple fun acts and evolved into community events before businessmen saw opportunities and expanded the scope of these sports. As the earning potential through sports grew along with the fame factor, more and more sports personalities emerged. But playing a sport is still a personal thing. A player is happier if his team wins because of his pivotal contribution than when his performance is forgettable in his team’s win. The sport is his means of livelihood no less than our work is for us. And we don’t go around doing our daily job with a streak of patriotism running in our veins right? Nor do we always succeed in doing our job. And when we fail, we don’t fear a public backlash. So why should a cricketer’s inability to do his job invite crowd demonstrations and violence against him?

What happens when a simple act of playing a game is wrongly associated with patriotism? Losing a match makes you a traitor who deserves to be lynched. Let cricket between the arch-rivals be played like a sport. Cricket was meant to entertain; so let us allow our cricketers to be players and refrain from making gladiators out of them. Only then we’ll see test matches between these two nations yielding results and drawing crowd due to their result producing ability and not just the hype. Let us not dump our brand of patriotism on their shoulders. Let us give them the freedom to win or lose. For as Walter Reuther once told, “If you’re not big enough to lose, you’re not big enough to win.”

An Ode to Failure

In success, others discover me.
In failure, I discover myself.

I party in success.
I introspect in failure.

When I succeed, I discover my limits.
When I fail, I stretch my limits.

I relax when I succeed.
I toil when I fail.

Success makes me happier.
Failure makes me tougher.

With success, I cross a milestone.
With failure, I build a stepping stone.

Success is sweet, when I simply succeed.
Success is sweeter, when I fail and succeed.

Success tests my boundaries of happiness.
Failure tests my limits of resilience.

I forget God in success.
I remember God in failure.

My success is my failure if it goes to my head.
My failure is my success if I learn from it.

New Year Bash in Dubai

It took me five shirts, ten pants and quite a few hairstyles to be satisfied with how I looked that night. The sigh of chilling breeze at 10 pm unnerved us when we friends left for our New Year party at a hall close to the World Trade Center in Dubai. That night all roads led to Dubai, an oasis of forward and broad minded atmosphere in the desert of conservative Gulf countries. Murphy’s Law was working at its best then; the normally ubiquitous Dubai taxi was suddenly the rarest thing on earth. We had to go far and there was no vacant taxi in sight. After a long anxious wait and some forced but sincere prayers, we found two unoccupied taxis and latched onto them as a hungry predator would on its prey.

We reached the discotheque soon thereafter but not before 11 pm. The make-shift hall was turned into a disco for the musical extravaganza on the New Year eve. Some of the biggest DJs of India namely Aqeel, Suketu, Nasha and others were invited to enthrall the crowd and usher in the year 2006. Our pulse went up as we reached closer to the entrance of the hall and heard the faint foot tapping remix music through the well guarded walls of the hall. The crowd gathered outside the entrance could compete with the best in the fashion world. My heart skipped a few beats as I saw quite a few exquisitely beautiful girls dressed to kill. One of the best dressed girls we saw outside was a fair girl in complete black. She wore a seductively low-waist skirt, a backless top that was tantalizingly low even from the front – all to our ‘lusty’ delight. This only got better as we went inside the main entrance.

We had started dancing even before we entered the hall. We just couldn’t stop the dance bug from taking over. Hard and soft drinks flowed in the air. People were guzzling them while dancing with their partners and making the most of the moment. The disco lights, the laser beams and the sound system worked in tandem to mesmerize us. In between our dancing, we went around to survey the crowd (read gals). And what we saw simply left us dazed. Gurrrlzz were dressed in their glamourous best. I’d never seen so many scantily clad ladies under one roof, grooving to the dance beats. Girls and guys here have an amazing dressing sense and they carry it all off quite well. Guys shined in ‘Eminem’isque trousers and T-shirts combinations and dance steps that matched their sartorial skills. Girls wearing Capri pants, camisoles, tank tops and minis with competitive hemlines were gyrating sensuously to the beat of the music. One girl in particular had forced everyone dancing around her to stop and simply watch her in awe. She started dancing very slowly and yet suggestively. And by the time she hit the peak, she had a lot of us gasping for breath. She danced like a professional stripper gyrating on the pole. She left us as awestruck and wanting for more as a stripper would. And she did that without taking off a single piece of clothing from her curvaceous body. Anyway, there weren’t many of those to be removed.

I took a break from dancing to catch my breath and observe the whole crowd from a distance in the intermittent darkness. As it often happens with me, I started thinking about the whole event that was unfolding in front of my eyes and a thought crossed my mind. I was observing the big screen showing DJ Suketu totally engrossed in music, changing his CDs and enthralling the crowd, the crowd that was lapping it all up. The crowd was his slave that night. I started wondering what it takes to reach a stage where people would be ready to pay even a penny to come and watch what you do. The DJs of the night had reached a stage that probably none other in the crowd did. And that is why, we were the crowd and they ruled the crowd. Think about any famous personality in the world of sports, music or movies and you’ll realize that the ones we pay for have really paid with their lives to reach there. Success and fame doesn’t come easy. You’ve to pay with your life through single minded devotion before you command a crowd that pays to see you perform; a wonderful thought to begin the New Year with and to follow if one wants to rise above the crowd.

The New Year had arrived long before and we were still dancing. Exhaustion was setting in and we could see more people on the sidelines now grooving slowly with their dancing partners. They hugged and danced in loving embrace, mumbling sweet nothings in each other’s ears, cuddling and kissing in the winking lights, looking into the partner’s eyes with kinky and lovelorn smile on their faces. Call it the effect of drinking binge or whatever, the temperatures were rising as the couples slowly forgot they were in public. Mild and short kisses turned into prolonged ones and progressed to deep smooching. These loving couples turned to love-making couples and promoted us from mere observers to voyeurs.

Our New Year party began with excitement, only to end up with s-excitement. We all came out satisfied and yet exasperated; for we got more than what we had bargained for and yet we were disgusted at being single.

This article is a tribute to the indefatigable spirit of ‘stag’hood. For had we not been there as stags, we would never have surveyed the crowd to find the best of the lot. And being a stag is like being in an eternal state of hope; hope that we will someday have someone for us. And we, the stags, keep trying – irrespective of umpteen setbacks – to reach to the hearts of that special lady who we envisage dancing with us. It is this hope that keeps us afloat; the hope that we will someday cross over to set our feet on the grass that is on the other side of the fence.

Three cheers to the spirit of the stags wherein you’re for all and all are for you. How close you’re to divinity when you’re for all than when you’re for only one and that only one is for you! ;-)

Trilogy part 1: Demystifying Fame

My vacillating mind gave me all kinds of ambitions in life at various stages of childhood. I wanted to be an actor after I saw heroes pulverize the baddies to dust. A heroic inning by Kapil Dev left me yearning to be a cricketer. During a visit to a doctor, I was impressed by the plush interiors of his clinic and the respect he commanded from my parents; I then wanted to be in his shoes. Other times saw me dreaming of becoming a scientist, a contortionist, a circus joker and God knows what else. An overwhelming similarity in all these ambitions was a feeling of being recognized by others and of becoming so good at my work that people come to see me perform and appreciate me. Money, until then, wasn’t quite a parameter for the ambitions. Finally, I took up engineering. It was something I never dreamt of or understood as a child and doubt whether I still do. I am not an exceptional engineer. Other than my superiors, nobody comes to see me do my work. So do I sulk that I’m not living any of my dreams? Not quite. For I know better.

Fame is but a simple arithmetic. Simply put, it is a subtraction of the number of people you know from the number of those who know you. People spend their entire lives in pursuit of making this difference positive, and once there, they sweat to magnify this positive difference.

The problem with fame is that its entire perspective revolves around ‘others’. Fame ceases to exist the day these ‘others’ become inexistent. While the entire inspiration or idea that leads to an invention or a masterpiece comes from within, it invites problems when the fruits of the act are sought from without. Fame is like a sweet poison. You taste it once and you’re hungry for more, but at your own peril. You get addicted to it before you blink. Shahrukh khan, the Bollywood superstar, is a self-confessed addict of adulation. A beautiful and sensuous Indian actress of the 80s was so enamoured by the fan following she had that she became eccentric when the fickle fans dumped her for younger actresses. She couldn’t get out of that comfort zone. She then ended up ‘demanding’ compliments from the washermen, milkmen and other vendors. Fame is good to vie for, especially when it is a by-product of success, but it needs a mature head to straitjacket the mind from over-indulgence.

At times, people go to any extreme to achieve this. A teenager called Saurabh Singh took the whole of India on a flight of fancy by claiming that he had topped a NASA exam. The shrewd boy added a pinch of realism to the whole story by saying that even the current Indian president Mr. Abdul Kalam had taken this exam during his student years. And the Indian press went gung-ho glorifying this teenager’s unsubstantiated achievements. It was only later when the president himself denied having taken any such examination that sleuths woke up and burst the balloon. This was the boy’s quest for becoming famous in his country and a nation’s quest for becoming famous in the world. Both of them were in a hurry. While this might sound like a harmless April fool game, such quests often take ugly turns and ruin people’s lives when their lifetime’s work is plagiarized by treachery.

So is this quest for fame and recognition such a bad thing? Not quite. Historically speaking, fame, as an ambition or an incentive, would not have existed until the development of human civilization. Nomadic man probably had more similarities in lifestyle with the animal world than differences. And fame has no value in the animal kingdom. So, the earliest discoveries of fire, agriculture and primitive weaponry were more out of survival instincts than anything else. But having formed the civilization and having mastered the survival instincts, man probably would not have progressed further had it not been for his quest for fame and recognition, among other things. The later discoveries and inventions had fame as one of the pivotal incentives. True, from time to time, rulers waged bloody wars and mercilessly killed millions when greed combined with this quest for fame. But the entire process was a churning to reach an end that we see today. The churning is still on - for fame and greed still rule the psyche of quite a lot of us.

Fame is but a necessary evil for humankind. It needs to be nurtured with the right moral fabric within the society, for, after all, it is one of our primary causes for progress. A good way to start would be to develop an emphasis on ethics during early education of children. Success should be emphasized; fame should be exemplified, but the innate human tendency of taking vanity too far should be nipped in the bud.

My Best Friend's Wedding

The wheels squealed lazily at being forced to move after a short but a well deserved halt as the train chugged painfully, fighting the inertial resistance, to take its first 'steps' out of the station I boarded it from. I pushed my handbag up on the top berth, settled quietly in my seat and surveyed my sleeper class co-passengers: A sexagenarian man gazing blankly through the window, a family with two kids; parents too busy teaching their kids how to enjoy and the kids too busy doing what they do best - flouting those norms, and a young lad; unabashedly staring at me as if I was the only existent key to solving the Bermuda Triangle mystery. It didn't take me very long to get talking to them. An enquiry about their destination was all it took to be a part of the group. A couple of hours later we had discussed most of our nation's problems, almost solved them along the way, shared our lunches and had become a family. It was so easy initiating a conversation with sleeper class passengers. Compare and contrast this with a reaction from a co-passenger in an AC compartment. A similar enquiry would fetch a suave verbal reply masking a curt non-verbal expression overtly portending of a cold shoulder of non-reciprocation for any further attempts at initiating a conversation. The puffed up egos actually keep the AC compartment, which is otherwise cold, quite cozy.

I was traveling by train after a long time. The recent nose-diving of flight fares made them affordable to us lesser mortals. That, coupled with the traveling allowance provided by my company, made traveling by train not just unenviable but also unglamourous. And yet, there was something about trains I missed while flying. Although flying has its own share of ecstasy in take-offs, landings and God's eye view of earth, a train journey is about a different romance altogether. The snail-pace of Indian trains affords us the luxury of sliding open the window and enjoying ourselves in the unadulterated countryside breeze in all its glory. Watching the scared cattle fleeing, the confused dogs barking, the kids cheering and the adult males leering has its own beauty when viewed from inside the fortified window of a train. Sooner or later, our quest for speed will introduce faster, new state-of-the-art trains. But then, we won't be able to stick our necks out of the door and experience the gush of wind slapping our faces. In our hurry to reach the destination, we miss out on enjoying ourselves through the journey. Ironically, while technology helps us connect faster to far off places, it disconnects us from our immediate neighbourhood.

The absence of time zones in India sets you up for some really pleasant surprises as you travel eastwards. A normal day in Bhuvaneshwar, located in eastern part of India, dawns at 5 am. I reached there slightly before dawn. To my relief, it had rained the previous night, forcing mother earth to show its more pleasant face in the midst of scorching Indian summer. A pick-up auto was arranged for me. It seemed to glide over the broad, clean roads of Bhuvaneshwar. Being engrossed in the surreal morning experience, I failed to notice when the smooth boulevards segued into potholed bylanes and brought me to my destination.

I stood in front of a big main gate guarding a small bungalow. The gate was high enough to keep peeping toms at bay. An average Indian would not be able to see through its top; its bottom, however, was considerate enough to give enough space to show ankles. I rang the bell and a known voice answered. It ordered me to hold on lest I wake others up; I forgot, out of excitement, it was still early morning. As the voice came closer to the gate, I started drawing her picture. My mind immediately left for dreamland; I thought I heard a barrage of instructions, I had so gotten used to, coming out of her mouth. She reached the gate and started opening a chained lock at the bottom. I saw only her palms and feet, for the miserly gate would let me see no more. Mehendi, a mark of celebrations in an Indian family, adorned her hands and feet. She opened the door and we were face to face after more than three years. That night was her wedding.

We began our professional careers together in Pune. Fresh out of college, we had a mix of childish enthusiasm for life and a queer anxiety about our first job. We clicked almost immediately and have been the best of friends since then. We've shared some of the best days of our professional lives.

Her house was full of guests but it didn’t look congested. As her only friend to attend her marriage from out-of-station, I was accorded celebrity treatment. We chatted for a couple of hours before we got up to move on with the chores. “Could you tell me how you feel?” I asked her, curious to know what a girl feels on the eve of her marriage. “Don’t ask that;” pat came the reply, “I won’t be able to control myself.” The only child of her parents, Amrita, my friend, would not have been able to control her emotions had she let them flow any closer to that thought. The pain of separation from their loving daughter, in spite of the pleasure of her getting married to a worthy individual, was giving her parents a torrid time. Amidst her parents’ frequent breakdowns, she was the only one who composed herself and kept the situation under control.

I went to the terrace of the bungalow where the ladies of the family were performing some rituals. They were chanting some mantras and intermittently making surprisingly loud noise just by oscillating their tongue left-to-right; an act supposed to ward-off evil. Amrita had called her gregarious friend, Debasis Patel, to keep me company. Thanks to his famous second name, he often had to follow his introductory statement with the explanation that he was not a Gujarati. Amit, Amrita’s cute little cousin, took a special liking for me. He would excitedly share with me all the good things he could lay his hands on. Unmindful of his broken Hindi, he would sing all the Hindi songs I taught him. These two companions made my sojourn worth its weight in gold.

Towards the evening, Debasis took me to the marriage venue. A hall was booked in one of the better hotels of Bhuvaneshwar. The route from home to hotel was marked with pot-holed roads devoid of street-lights. But the cool, unpolluted breeze made the journey exhilarating and refreshing. The sigh of untamed breeze of Bhuvaneshwar, a city with less concretized development than in other cities of India, could only have invigorated my spirits. We reached the marriage hall excited and ready to tidy up things, and ourselves. The bride arrived later, looking exquisite in the bridal wear and totally different from what she looked back home. Debasis and I took the job of welcoming the guests at the main entrance. Then we enjoyed the sumptuous dinner, peppered with ‘bird-watching’. The groom, his family and guests arrived much later. There was excitement all around as the groom’s procession arrived in the hotel. We were running around, hankering to catch a glimpse of the man-of-the-moment. Finally, I found him in a hall of the hotel. He was dressed in cream Sherwani with a traditional turban over his head. Amrita had told him about me. So we chatted for a while after I introduced myself. He came across as a simple, shy and a mature person; quite different from the bubbly Amrita but someone who I thought complemented her well.

The marriage rituals started around midnight. By that time, Debasis had left and Amit had slept in one of the small sofas, big enough for him. Alone and tired, I followed the rituals with intermittent naps. But I was lucky to be awake at the most important moments of the marriage. I saw the groom tying the mangalsutra around the neck of the bride. I saw them exchanging their ‘Varmalas’ (garlands) and taking the rounds around the holy fire. I got goose-bumps as I watched them doing that. A passing thought came across and got me introspecting at the sanctity of those moments. The Vedic mantras that were being chanted during those actions are known to be powerful enough to celestially bind the couple. The bride and the groom affect each other’s lives much more powerfully, astrologically -- and not just because they live together -- after the mantras bind them. It was an act of giving the other individual the control of your life; the key to your emotions. You then give that person the power to make you happy or sad, to make or break your life. Can such a moment of entrusting your life to someone be anything less than sacrosanct? The modern priests chant those mantras perfunctorily for it’s a daily business for them; the bride and groom can’t be more mechanical about following the instructions for it’s too tiring for them. The couple, however, should stop before these acts, take a moment and talk to themselves; think for a moment about the other life they’re making their own and the responsibilities that come with it. To enjoy the good times of married life, they should be good enough to face bad times.

Real life marriages, unlike those in movies, are directed by actors themselves. So, almost every task is a touch-and-go action. Murphy’s laws work at their best here. Things would go wrong or disappear when you least want them to. We had our share of such anxieties, before and after the marriage, the worst of which was after marriage when the rusty lock at the main door of her house just wouldn’t open, all in the wee hours of the morning when we returned from the marriage hall ready to flake out.

That morning was her Vidai. Knowing Amrita, who, while in Pune, used to cry at the slightest thoughts of missing her parents, I expected the Vidai to be an emotional catharsis. But the brave girl that she was, she defied all expectations and didn’t let a single drop of tear come out of her eyes. Quietly, she sat in the car and didn’t look at anyone for a long time. Our eyes met only once after that; I could see the pain of separation from family waiting to explode but marvelously controlled. The car left, unsettling the dust of the road and leaving everyone’s heart with an emotional void in its wake.

“Why is it that Indian girls leave their families after marriage? Why is it not the other way round?” I asked myself. The answer to this is not simple. An average male has much bigger ego than an average female. Due to this, a girl is much more capable of accepting the new family as her own than her male counterpart is. She can take in her stride the complexities of adapting to differences with less difficulty. Spiritually speaking, the ego is one of the root causes of distancing yourself from God. Being born a woman is hence a mark of spiritual upliftment. And only a spiritually higher being can make bigger sacrifices to keep another family happy. Unfortunately, the feminists, thanks to patriarchal zealots, take this as another form of female discrimination.

Thanks to Amrita, my trip to Bhuvaneshwar was an experience worth living. I came back with quite a few memories to cherish and thoughts that probably made me a bit wiser.

Relations of life

Life and its myriad hues,
the joys and the blues
colour our bland lives,
build the staff of agedness.
Expectations make relationships dear;
soul's desire, overpowered and left unclear.
Blossoming kinships marred by the ego,
"Why should I always bend, forgive or let-go?"

Thoughts like these,
don't let people meet.
Even friends in deed
disappear when in need.
Some day in retrospect,
as we sit in tranquil solitude,
we realize our follies and wonder,
"If only, we had a different attitude."

For our self-respect is a euphemism of egoism,
for our love is a function of reciprocation,
for our happiness is a slave to response,
for our vanity we can't forego,
our relationships we let go.

One Day Mataram

The hair-raising patriotic rhapsody sung in the immortal voice of Mahendra Kapoor goes “Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle heere moti.” Translated strictly, it means, “My country’s land produces gold, diamonds and pearls.” This song always fills me with a sense of pride for being born an Indian. My chest spreads twice as much; fists clench themselves and I get restless with almost an insuppressible urgency to do something worthwhile for my ‘great’ nation. The song gets over and the goose bumps settle back to slumber. Suddenly my ear starts itching. So I pick up a ear bud, use it and throw it out of the window only to hear an uproarious expletive from an unintended victim of my can’t-care-less attitude. With the bud, I also threw my wish to do something for my nation “out of the window.” My Patriotism existed for the duration of the song. Once the song got over, my sense of urgency evaporated into thin air. Forget about doing something for the nation, I changed things in my immediate neighborhood for worse.

Every year, we Indians celebrate 15th of August as our Independence Day. People show their love for India in various ways on this day. Government offices, schools proudly unfurl the tricolour on their buildings. Individuals stick the flag on their vehicles. People wear ‘Patriotism’ on their hearts and sleeves. The national flag becomes so valuable a commodity this day that it sells like hot cakes. The day gets over and by evening all the excitement gets petered out. By the next day, you can find flags wallowing in dirt like waifs and on manholes, being overrun by the same vehicles that still proudly bear the flag on their embodiment. The previous day’s pride becomes the very next day’s burden. Three cheers to our “One Day Patriotism.”

Our whole idea of Patriotism needs some revamping. Is it actually enough to stick the tricolour on our peripheries and sing the national anthem with gusto while standing in attention? Even here, there are so many prejudices playing their hidden roles. Those who stand in attention while singing the anthem deride those who don’t. But the former are blissfully unaware of the fact that by doing so they’re actually approving the very act that they choose to disapprove. Independence Day, then, stood for freedom. Freedom, not just from the British rule, but also from our pique of being ruled by ‘others’; freedom from everything that was ‘phoren’, be it product or system, to things that were more Indian. Standing up in attention, as a mark of respect, is a British relic we’re unable to throw out of our psyche even today. Eastern culture, be it Hindu or Muslim, doesn’t decree the same. Unlike the western culture, it allows us to stay seated while praying. Reciting an anthem being an act of professing your allegiance could hence be done staying seated. Ironically, the British left India long back, but they still rule our psyche. This knowledge does nothing other than further deepen our prejudice against the British. While that is one aspect of patriotism, elucidating that is not the purpose of this write-up.

Why have patriotism at all when all it does is divide humanity into superior, loveable, smarter ‘us’ and inferior, hate-worthy, uncivilized ‘others’? Why should one man’s fight-for-freedom be another man’s terrorism? Technology, especially Internet, is erasing the borders. Politics needs to open-up to embrace this development. The world is at a crossroad now. Terrorism has never been more powerful and is threatening to engulf most of the world. It knows no boundaries of nations and is bent on destroying the same. Technology is also doing the same but is the obverse side of the same coin. The solution doesn’t lie in guarding our borders even more zealously. The solution lies in melting our borders and making ourselves more inclusive of the ‘others’ than we’re now. We need to wisely use technology to send across the message that we care to the nations that feel relegated. Foreign policies of nations need to be more ‘foreign’ sensitive from now on. The Independence Day should now symbolize freedom from ‘Patriotism’. Pablo Casals put in succinctly, “The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?” Let us aspire for a world order where patriotism is not haute. I won’t be very comfortable when my kids would ask, “Who draws lines around the countries?”

Stranger on the shore

A hastily written poem on my last day with Oracle.
Wanted to write more.
--------------------------
With the passage of time
and the intake of breath,
older we get
and experiences we beget.

People we meet,
tricks of the trade we learn;
priorities get changed,
societal wisdom we earn.

Work makes us.
Work breaks us.
In the mad quest for survival,
thirst for mammon and fame rules us.

The same quest rules me
someway or the other.
Every move I make for my happiness
thrills one and betrays another.

But I've to move on,
whether it gives joy, or causes uproar.
Hope you folks remember me,
this stranger on the shore.

The Editorial

I am a member of the editorial committee of an internal magazine of Oracle. It's an online magazine we plan to release soon. This is the editorial I wrote for the inaugural issue which was accepted wholeheartedly. I think it's an honour I want to share with all. There you go.
--------------------
A wise man once proclaimed that man’s greatness lies in his relentless quest for improvement. First he does things well and having done them well, he tries to do them better. This quality of his ensured that he ruled the earth and every being on earth.

His quest for improvement started with his primitive survival instincts. None of the rival flora or fauna, no matter how fit they were for survival, could use anything other than what they were physically and instinctively endowed with for protection. Man, on the other hand, turned stones into weapons and invented fire. Having developed reasonable defenses, he gave up nomadic life to settle for an agrarian one. The discovery of agriculture led to the development of human civilization. Societies developed and with them took shape man’s wants and necessities. Inventions were made to increase comforts for man; processes were streamlined. Barter system gave way to monetary exchanges. Money, in turn, gave a totally new dimension to man’s existence. It started making the world go round. Soon the pursuit of money became the aim of many a lives. Industries evolved to design new tools for comfort and entertainment of man. Corporations spawned and competed for the market share. Companies, through their employees, started working harder and harder to increase their bottom-lines. In this complex society, any given person became a customer to someone and a vendor to someone at the same time. The increase in options made the customer more demanding while every increased demand meant someone had to slog at work someone. The vicious circle ensured that almost everyone worked harder, as a vendor, to meet those never ending deadlines. Man’s progress – that started as a creative streak has brought him to a point where the very existence of this creativity is threatened.

We, at Oracle, are contributors to and at the same time victims of this phenomenon. Have we not questioned ourselves in the recent past as to where have we lost that creativity? “EBUZZZ” is a modest attempt to invite all of you to search your soul and rekindle that creative fire of yours. It is an attempt to unravel that undying human spirit of yours that has been buried under work pressure. It is an attempt to help you express yourself in ways more than one. It is an attempt to help you stand up, be counted and get known for things other than your good work. Let’s raise a toast to this endeavour.

Divide and Survive

As a newborn baby, I communicated in only two ways. I cried when in any kind of discomfort and slept blissfully in its absence. As a newborn, I came as close to desirelessness as any person could possibly dream of. Barring my physical needs to satiate my hunger, I had no known desires. Slowly my cognitive senses developed and I began to identify sounds, people, and things around me. My first fascination was with sounds. I was surrounded by all kinds of sweet sounding toys. I would turn, stretch my hands and try to grab the toy whose sound lured me most. I wanted those toys to be in my hands, as they made me feel good. I would cry if the toy I held was taken away. Those were my first visible signs of desire. From then on, my body ceased to be my only source of discomfort. My fast developing mind had started giving me factors, external to my body, through which I was to feel pleasure or pain. My sense of "I-ness" was developing. Anything that wasn't in my hands was not mine. So, I wanted, in 'my' hands, anything that lured me.

As my mind evolved further, I started identifying people. My parents and siblings, owing to their frequency of meeting my eye, were the first ones I recognized. They expanded my emotional boundaries of I-ness. My house and its now familiar surroundings expanded my physical boundaries of I-ness. I still wanted in my hands anything I liked. But if I couldn't handle it for any reason, I wanted it within the familiar boundaries of my home, or in the familiar hands of my family members. I would feel uncomfortable if anything that I thought was mine went beyond this physical and emotional boundary. My first sense of partitioning my world was slowly shaping up and gaining ground. The irony of the whole development was that nobody taught me these things.

As I grew, this sense of I-ness and its related boundaries also grew but only so much to serve my purpose. In the school, the boundaries included only my closest friends. I still wanted the best of grades for myself. I would then expand my I-ness to get the next best grades for my friends. I soon learnt to make this I-ness very flexible and expanded it only if it suited my purpose -- my selfishness. The essential pattern of my existence was slowly developing. At any given moment of my life and under any circumstance, I needed those boundaries to exist and separate me from the rest of the world. The defining factor of this boundary was that I wanted it to be the smallest possible coterie of homogeneity to share my I-ness with and yet just large enough to get my job done.

A dog doesn't let another dog intrude into its boundaries. This is true for almost every animal. Man, having evolved with and from them, is also bound to have such boundaries. Man has evolved enough to proclaim himself a social animal. But those primitive instincts are still deeply rooted in him. Man needs an excuse to shrink these boundaries and a reason to expand them. Caste, religion, patriotism, racism and others are such excuses. Development, well being and protection are the reasons that force man to expand these boundaries. The very fact that patriotism exists means a country exists. The very existence of a country entails a division of land. That essentially is another fallout of separating the world from your collective I-ness. Patriotism is but a hypocritical and celebrated form of selfishness. This essentially makes a traitor a person who prefers a more conventional selfishness to the covert selfishness that is patriotism. Are we then justified in punishing him for treason?

What would happen to our petty excuses for dividing humanity, if entire earth were to be attacked by aliens - a la the Hollywood movie "Independence Day"? Would Al-Qaeda, whose entire existence is a consequence of this exaggerated I-ness, still go on with the terror strikes? Or will it welcome the aliens with open arms? For, after all, aliens are doing its job for free! Wouldn't our petty squabbles on caste, religion, land, patriotism and others lose their prominence when our very existence is threatened? Wouldn't we expand our boundaries to make the whole earth and 'humanity' a part of our collective I-ness and separate the rest of the universe, aliens included, from us? But that essential boundary would still remain. It is this boundary, this division that separates man from God. "The body has fewer inhibitions than mind", said Dr. Victor Frankl in his masterpiece "Man's search for Meaning". The day the mind successfully overcomes these inhibitions and breaks this boundary, man would knock on the doors of divinity.

Road

I'm the road.
Now, I'm the road.
I was once, not the road.
I once dwelled on the road.
I once had life, unlike the road.

A lively kitten, beside the road.
I lived, foraged and played around the road.
A jaywalker that sometimes crossed the road.
My instinct was my 'Oracle' on the road.
It once ditched me, when on the road.
A car ran over me, on the road.
I wasn't a human dying on the road,
so the traffic didn't stop on the road.
A trolley then crushed me on the road.
My eyeball popped and rolled over the road.
Only to be sandwiched, between a tyre and the road.

I soon resembled a torn leather on the road,
as blood stains mixed with the dirt on the road.
Now, I'm one with the road.
Rather, I'm the road.

Man didn't let me live around the road.
He didn't let others scavenge me from the road.
Nature's law of "nothing to waste" -
is itself a waste, when on the road.

Kaanta

My mother bore me,
but parents couldn't afford me.
So they sold me,
to these "good samaritans"
who proffered to take care of me.

Dangling the carrot of city life
over and above the paltry aid,
they beguiled my poor parents,
and bought a dirt-cheap maid.

Now, I must be seven or eight.
In this city bustling with people,
I 'work' as a live-in-maid
and foster this toddler so cute and supple.

Guests come and guests go,
wonder if they even notice me.
When they dine together,
I sit out in the balcony.

Unaware of the ways of the world,
the kid thinks I belong to the family.
In the bliss of mirth or tears of sorrow,
she simply toddles over to me.

Slowly, the garb of innocence will wane,
as societal wisdom the kid will gain.
Then I won't belong to her family,
joy or pain, she won't hug me.

Her mother is her good weather friend;
she keeps the kid when neat and nice.
I get to keep her rest of the time,
whether she is busy or otherwise.

I've this house, but I need a home.
I get food, but I need some love.
I've a life, but I don't live - I exist.
I yearn for that one hug,
the touch smeared in affection,
a lap to put my head on,
a shoulder to cry on,
a face that lights up on my glimpse,
hands that beckon me, not just in my dreams.

In the ever gnawing loneliness,
grew my precocious seriousness.
The burden of this responsibility,
crushed my budding childishness.

I must be seven or eight.
I work as a 'live-in-maid'.
My name they say is Kaanta,
Waiting to be rescued by my Santa.

The Black Magic

As the carousel rolls and the projector throws the beam of light, the dead, bland, blank, abstract and emotionless screen comes to life and through the chiaroscuro of the projected rays, it emotes, taking the audience with it, in an otherwise dark, often faceless, hall. The usher guiding the latecomers, with the only other official source of light, through the aisle becomes a nightmare for those sticklers of time, who restlessly oscillate to see through the silhouettes as if their very life depends on seeing every inch of the screen. The ease with which the inanimate screen catapults the consciousness of hundreds of people, which normally revolves around their individual selves, to itself, is nothing short of a miracle. For the duration of the movie, the individuals cease to exist and the screen becomes the centre of their collective conscious universe. It almost enslaves them. They smile, sigh, sob, shiver with fear; all in unison -- so uncanny of individuals when they form a crowd -- and yet we fail to notice that single most radical change a movie screen entails in the crowd behaviour. The degree and smoothness of such a magical shift in the centre of consciousness of the audience is proportional to quality of the movie. Black, the recently released Hindi movie, is an undisputed apotheosis of such quality.

What would it be like to be congenitally- visually and audibly challenged? Being surrounded by vast oceans of blankness; a blankness consisting of eternal and ubiquitous 'blackness'. And a perennial deafening silence accompanying that blackness. You're left to perceive and identify the things around through their shapes; a practice not vastly different from what the majority follows, but the means to that end is touch and not vision. The very thought tingles our skin to discomfort. And where does this handicap leave the individual in the omnipresent nothingness? Would the people, who move and talk, be any different from the inanimate furniture when you just can't see or hear them? How would it feel to be happy and yet not be able to wrap it in the package of words or feel sad and be hysterical about it? How would it be to not know that there are more colours in the world than 'Black'? How would it be to not know that sound can also be heard and not just felt with the hands? Our life, in contrast, looks like an unending honeymoon. For so long, our film industry has fed us with the strong, smart, successful, larger than life, Adonis and Aphrodite image of lead actors that we forget there are people, for whom success isn't about saving the world or about winning the love of a nymph but about taking their first step towards a dignified living and being recognized as equals despite their preordained shortcomings. Michelle McNally, played by Rani Mukherji in Black, is one such character. Her deafening shriek of ecstacy, on realizing that her mentor Mr. Debraj Sahay is back, sets the tone of the movie and portends what is in store for the audience. Rani, through this movie, has put herself in the league of Nargiz of 'Mother India' fame. The mesmerizing performance is sure to make her the toast of Bollywood. Rani, you're the Queen.

The Academy awards committee that claims to be the foremost representative of the global cinema has actually never done justice to its own claim by restricting the global cinema under the "Best Foreign Language Film" category. Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize. Leo Tolstoy never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet, one wonders if the mortal prizes like Nobel could've done justice to their immortal contribution by merely recognizing them. Amitabh Bachchan has also never won an Oscar. Need I say more? Or shall I say, with a movie like Black under his belt and having acted in it the way he has, he probably stands the best chance, he ever had, of leaving the distinguished company of those immortals? As he rightly conceded, his performance in Black effortlessly relegates his past and future performances to mediocrity. Not that he is to be blamed for that. Thanks to the parochial Bollywood film-makers, who cannot think beyond the much clichéd romance and the nauseating melodrama, Amitabh Bachchan, the colossus that straddles Bollywood, seldom got roles that could make him stretch his own limits. Until that practice is ameliorated, he will be wasted in utterly forgettable roles.

The very thought of Ayesha Kapoor, who plays the young Rani, scares you to death. Assuming that actors mature with age, I fear Bollywood might not have enough roles to even scratch the surface of her potential when she finally ripens. Her performance is the result of a child's energy channelized in the right direction by the director. I also wonder if there are enough directors good enough to tap her incipient potential.

There are moments that make you laugh. In 'Black', such moments come as often as oases do in a desert. But when they come, their innocence, simplicity, naturality and spontaneity give you a relief comparable only to the relief you derive out of oases. It forms a lump in your chest; a lump so full of emotions that you almost choke with suffocation and yet so empty that you fail to react in words. With his vision, Sanjay Leela Bhansali has created a song-less wonder, in an industry where songs, beyond anything else, are the USP. Inspired by "The Miracle Worker", "Black", with its power packed performances, riding on mesmerizing, almost magical play of light, gives any sincere watcher, a punch of conscience. It hits you hard, where it hurts most. In our daily selfish existence, it makes you wonder whether there could ever be people, except the "Indian house-wife mothers", who dedicate their whole lives to others' cause so selflessly. It makes us wonder, when was the last time we sweated for others? When was the last time we dedicated a day for others; for someone, who couldn't in any way, have returned the favours? It gives you a void of conscience, and then fills it with a thankful realization that you are blessed; blessed that you can see with your eyes and listen with your ears. As for the feelings, well, the heart can never be a vestigial organ.