aditya kumar's weblog

Do you know what happened on 9-11-2001?
Me:No

Two planes crashed on the Two towers, America

Me: I see

Do you know what a human bomb is?

(I am startled but I want to continue the conversation)

Me: No, what is it?

It’s when a man tries to touch the feet and then presses a button and blows himself up with a bomb. Thats a human bomb. They did that to Rajiv Gandhi…

Me: Who told you all this, beta?

My teacher.

…Conversation with my seven year old cousin, who happens to be studying in second standard (grade) in school. Is this what they ought to be learning in school, seven year old kids? Do they need to know how a human bomb works, what a human bomb is? Is it required, they know what happened on 9-11, in America? Forget 9-11, do they need to know America? Until they are not told about India, no, they do not need to know about America.

And which school is this? Frank Anthony, Bangalore. A wee bit too ‘frank’, dont you think?

…And Truman turns 25.

You could term this ‘silly’ but she is the most beautiful woman in this whole wide world :)

This blog, in its present form (this website and all) is one year old today. In the Indian Blogosphere, I have had the opportunity to read some very good writers, talk with some very interesting people and got to meet a few of them too. Most of them have inspired me in their own little ways, some of them have inspired in big ways.

On the other hand, a few friends quit blogging, but they had their own reasons (some quit without one, interestingly). But on the whole, I think, as bloggers, we are going in the right direction.

On second thought, there is not a ‘right direction’. There is only write direction! :)

I also managed a little audience on the way. People who comment, a lot of people who do not comment. I have said it before, I say it again, thanks a lot :)

Someone once told me, you can’t write until you need to write. The same person was the only one who had approved my choice for the name of this domain. If you still read me, thanks a lot. And that line you told me, it was the best piece of advice I have ever had on this subject.

Here are some pictures I took on a days trip to Goa, two weeks back. They are not great, but they should be enough to give you an idea of how Goa looks like in the monsoon!

Yachts from France, in Panjim



Shipyard off NH-17A



Sao Jacinto Island, off NH-17A



Another Shipyard off NH-17A



View from my home

I feel for Bombay. No, let me call it Bombay, for once. It is this same city that I have felt for, in the prose of Rushdie, Mistry and Suketu Mehta. It is this city, Pankaj kapoor called his mehbooba, so aptly, in the movie Maqbool.

I have sailed the rough waters of Bombay, I have travelled in the trains, those which were ripped apart yesterday.

And they have done this to it.

Via Uma’s blog, I came across a very simple but moving poem this morning. I wish to post it here. Along with that, my own poem, titled “Red”, I had written back in 2001 on one lonely night in Pune, after the 9/11 attacks.

In Goa, for a day.

During the bus journey, a KSRTC Volvo bus, they started a kannada movie starring Upendra. It should only be obvious to expect a Kannada movie being played in a Karnataka state transport bus. Sadly, one north-Indian didnt realise it. Came forward, talked to the driver and asked him to change the movie. Of course, the driver frowned and uttered a few words that bounced off me.

The “change-the-movie-because-I-dont-understand-kannada” man was wrong. A mistake most of us make. When you are in a different land, it is actually not the land or the people that are different. It is you, who is different. So the question of them changing for your convenience should not even arise. So what should you do? as they say, Adjust madi. Not much, but swalpa. And if it is that inconvenient, learn the language.

The man should have realised, a little waiting could have done him good. As it turned out, the Upendra movie turned out to be a true copy of the Shahrukh Khan starrer, Baazigar.

In one of the narrow main roads of Vasco, Goa, our car driver tries to unsuccessfully overtake a van. While doing so, the car is high on speed and on the wrong side of the road. The driver brakes hard and in the process gives a “Stop/Slow down” sign to the car fast approaching towards us. The other car slows down and in a few moments we are back on the correct side of the road. While crossing each other, the two drivers, in a seemingly rare gesture smile at each other and show a thumbs-up sign. Our driver, as if, thanking his counterpart on the other side, for his patience.

God, will I ever get to see something like this in Bangalore…or for that matter, anywhere else in India?

By the way, its a delight to be here at this time of the year. It’s green all over!

A little more than 3 months ago, the company I worked for, had worked for since I started working, filed for bankruptcy. The organization was based in America and we had a setup in Bangalore which allowed us to work from here.

Sitting here in Bangalore, I was told, in a chat window, that the company had closed down. Everyone had resigned there. As I said, we had an arrangement with a company in Bangalore, a rather complicated one, though I could not care less about it at that time for I still could come to office. The new thing, of course, was that I had no work and no salary. With me, in the same boat was another friend. Our lives, as they say, were screwed up.

And so began a new test of our lives. A test that would go on for almost two months. We had no money. We had no savings, surprising since we were never the pub-going kinds. And its hard to ask cash from home once you start maintaining your own life. Movies came and went but we never visited the cinema. We spent our weekends at home. We delayed all our bill payments as much as we could and sometimes it got embarrassing. I had no money to pay for the hosting fees for this website. I did not pay my cell phone bill and I used to get those messages — the one which threaten disconnection with nice words (“The amount due is xxxx, we value your association”).

A few cheques got dishonored and so did I.

I could never imagine that all I had worked for would go down like that. Who would have thought that an association spanning more than a couple of years would be terminated in a chat window? And that one day it would be an unending source of embarrassment was unthinkable.

That was the hardest thing to swallow. Not the money, not the absence of work. It was what we got in return for our loyalty.

Some people who knew about it helped me with their soothing words at that time. They did not know the exact picture, they don’t know about it even now but they knew I was in deep trouble. That they were concerned about it was evident in their emails, their phone calls, their text messages. I want to thank all of them for that. To everyone who emailed, to everyone who paid for the coffee. They know who they are.

Things changed for the better after some time. But, for my vocation, it is yet to recover from this debacle. Maybe now, a part of it is my fault. Things are yet to be in total control but I think it would be okay in some time. This time, though, I stand alone.