aditya kumar's weblog

Since I have been spending 15 hour days (or nights) at office for the past month, it was, sort of, impending I post at an unearthly hour and that too from my office. It was sort of impending, that I write about my personal experiences lately — something that I usually do not like to but then again, my “intellectual curiosity” and everything else that makes me think (…think some more and then write) has lately been thrown out of the window. So here I am now, 2 AM, on my work desk at office, waiting for the cab to arrive while I listen to U2’s “Even better than the real thing” and write these, mostly and quite literally, senseless words.

Oh well, just when I had thought I will blabber on, my cab has saved you from the rhetoric.

This has been, again, impending.

…I am so deprived of it. I won’t have dinner tonight unless I get some company. I am so bored of having dinner alone. You can imagine…I am writing it here. Oh yes, this is so bloody personal!

The coach was not where it should have been. B1, B2, A1, A2. But not B3. Not a good thing. Specially when valuable time was spent (and lost, as it would turn out later) zeroing in on where one would expect B3 to be. And specially when buying water was overruled in the favor of the dinner parcel that I carried. Water, afterall, was something that was available anywhere. Five minutes to go and I had to turn back — all the way back that is. Amidst the maddening crowd at Bangalore City’s Platform 8, reaching the other end of the train within 5 minutes — well, that would require some running.

The moment I found B3, I sighed in relief. Once in, I kept my stuff and rushed back to the door. There was this chubby, (very) overweight, middle aged man standing on the door, talking to a slightly overweight, another middle aged man standing on the platform.

“I need water”, I said, hinting him to make way but the train moved instead. The man on the outside volunteered — he was not to be on the train. Chuck it, said his friend. “Achcha kaam karne de yaar, mauka mila hai”, came the reply.

“Water, even I don’t have that.”

“All the more reason for me to get some! I’ve been skipping my morning walk, but thats another thing! Let me try!”

Together we looked on. Another marathon at Platform number 8. A train pulling out of the station and a middle aged man, trying hard to overcome the machine to get a stranger and a friend, a bottle of water. We bid him our goodbyes as he lost out, eventually giving up. The look on his face — he was probably cursing himself for skipping his morning walk.

Though I have my doubts if that really made any difference.

Inside, we sat down. Turned out, his seat was across mine. I asked him how much time would it take to reach Londa from Hubli.

“2 hours and a little more”.

“And from Londa to Goa? 3 more, I guess?”

Problem was, one of my long time fantasies was turning to reality. You ever felt, at the last moment of it all, to discard the plans and doing something entirely new? Like, letting go the idea of going to place X, after you have boarded the train and wanting to go to place Y?

God help you if the place you had originally planned for doesn’t fall in the way of your new found adventure streak.

I boarded this train with a ticket to Hubli. I wanted to go to Londa — so I was to extend this ticket. I had to decide what to do at Londa after I board the train. From Londa, I could go to Dandeli, the place I have been planning to go for more than a week now or I could go to Dudhsagar falls. But now, I wanted to go to Goa.

You see, I had suddenly realized how homesick I had been.

Everyone who has ever asked me why I love traveling alone should get a hint now.

After a talk with this gentleman which lasted more than an hour and which merits its own post on this blog, he volunteered to get me some water. He eventually managed some, courtesy of one of the co-passengers that I hadn’t noticed until then. Some water but not enough to make me last the night.

Meanwhile, my indecisiveness was scaling new heights. I knew I had to go to Londa in the morning and I would need to catch a train for that from Hubli. I wasn’t sure of what would follow after that. Of one thing I was sure though — When in doubt, head home and you’ll never regret it. Never.

Thirst drew me to the coach attendant. It was past midnight. I don’t remember being so thirsty, ever. I asked him if he could help me. He stood up, went to the small compartment he kept stuff in and gave me a bottle of water. Asked me to keep it — he had his own, another one.

“Sure?”, I asked.”Sure”, he said.

It took a large, long burst of water before the first signals of a quenched thirst came from my mind. That moment, I gave a long, hard look at the bottle. “Packaged drinking water; The choice of Goa — Aditya”, it said. I read again, the last statement.

Would it be vice-versa, I asked myself.

You bet — something inside me answered back.

In the three weeks that saw this blog, the writer of this blog and the world’s largest democracy grow an year old there were a few things that we could have done without. To name a few:

1. The bombs in the city were too many and enough to spark a debate, yet again, on how safe we are. A few more days of debates and now we are going back to our comfort zones until the bombs show up again, which will bring us back to square one.

2. The internet doesn’t work at nights. Why? Well, after three successful attempts of stealing the local internet server and numerous unsuccessful ones, the local service engineer had had enough of the robbers. Refusing to take any more chances he decided to do what I thought was strange (if not absurd) but at least safe — he took the internet server offline and shifted it to a safe house every night. That I access internet at night doesn’t matter, of course.

3. My yahoo email spam has increased by more than 10 times. Right, that would be 1000%. I believe this was a “revenge” taken by a website. All I did was unsubscribed their newsletter earlier forced upon me. Now they have forced upon me 10 spam emails everyday. And these are those emails that bypass the spam filter and land in my inbox. Right from “Malasian Lottery” (Not Malaysian) to Microsoft announcing Cash rewards. Whatever it is, it surely exposes Yahoo’s Spamguard’s failure. Yahoo’s yet another failure while trying to get the spammer off its back. One failed attempt worth reading here.

Some more things that I remember(ed) but fail to make the cut now. Too hectic at work these days. I should write more.

Barely 250 meters ahead was the U-turn that would enable the rider to be where he wanted to be. 250 meters the side I was on and 250 meters on the other side — A ride of half a kilometer would all that would take him to respect the law.

But yet he kept waiting on the side of the road, the same side as I was. The problem with this section (on this side) is that vehicles come at a higher (than usual) speed and for the pedestrian, it is quite a challenge to cross the road. This is not so, once you are half way through because the other side has an intersection down the road, which prevents the vehicles on that side to speed up.

So while I waited, and I waited approximately 4 minutes to cross the road, this seemingly well educated man on his bike waited too. Engine turned on and quite ready to put his bike on the divider in the middle and then cross over, at the first opportunity.

Needless to say, a 500 meter ride instead would have taken much less time and given a lighter conscience.

As I arrive in the middle and stand on the little space on the divider, so does this man, on his bike. We wait for the traffic on the other side to ease up.

I look at him and ask: “Why are you doing this?”

The guy is expressionless.

He looks down, then looks behind him and gets his bike on the same side he was on. With that little guilt that I saw in his eyes, he rides ahead, on the way, quite literally if I may say, to follow the law.

I stay where I am. I look straight and there is another guy on the other side. I notice he is trying to say something.

With sign language, he asks me if its okay to ride his bike over the divider.

Copyright Declaration line written on the bottom of the cover of a DVD movie:

We, (company name) have made this video film and are owner of the copyright in such work for the territory of all India including Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim.

Is it only me who finds this (line) strange or is there, indeed, something strange about it?

Comments and thoughts welcome. In fact, required.

I see this guy, has this Johnny Depp kind of a beard and a physique that could make the strictest of gym goers wonder what could be wrong with their workout regimen. Only later do I realize, because of his continued conversations on the phone, that he is a Muslim. He is called Aslam.

So we rode down to the river where the Victorian ghosts pray
For the curses to be broken
We go underneath the arches where the witches are and they say
There are ghost towns in the ocean
The ocean…

He is not a strict Muslim, that much I can see. For he does not do his prayers on the floor but on the train seat itself, with a pillow on his lap. And it is at that moment that the words are spoken to me, the sound in my head —

Gunners in the houses and gunners in my head
And all the cemeteries in London
I see god come in my garden but I don’t know what he said
For my heart it wasn’t open
Not open…

Suddenly it’s all very clear. That very moment, those few seconds, I cease to see him as Aslam. Instead, I start seeing him as a misunderstood Muslim. And perhaps more importantly, a Muslim that has misunderstood it all. I have not come across many defining moments in my life but I sure know how it is when one happens.

A few days back I read it somewhere and I think it was Bono who said — “Generally, religion gets in the way of God.” I know exactly what Bono meant when he said that. Certainly, this is not about U2 or Coldplay’s latest or Aslam. It’s about identities lost, perceptions — both right and wrong, failures to connect with each other at the human level and a broken hotline with God, to top it all.

Suddenly, it’s all very clear to me.