A portrait...

Its around 0715 in the morning. I sip my tea in a hurry as I have a train to catch at 0815. I reach the station just as the train is backing up on the platform. I purchase two magazines and two newspapers. I board the coach which seems to be completely occupied. The coach is clean and comfortable. After some time the train slowly makes its way out of Madras Egmore. I put down my newspaper and look out of the window.

What do I see?

I see the numerous stations which I used to read about in the Chennai edition of 'The Hindu' back at home. I cross Tirusulam, the airport is barely recognisable with the metro and the new terminal. The train ambles its way past Chromepet and comes to a halt at Tambaram. I see some old structures, must have been serving the erstwhile metre gauge platforms. Memories of names of trains like the Boat Mail, Madurai Parcel passenger scratch the mind for a while. The train pulls out of Tambaram and huffs and puffs towards Chengulpettu. Singaperumal Kovil passes by and I visualize the beautiful temple there. The Kolavai lake or Chengulpettu lake comes on the left. Its a sight to behold with the rays of the sun illuminating the surface. After Chengulpettu the train speeds up.

It picks up speed almost at the same time as Arijit Singh hits the high notes in the song I am listening to. The Palar river is crossed. Most of the bed is dry with sand and a stagnant patch of water towards the end. Stories of how during the days of a good monsoon the water from Palar used to reach Tambaram are part of old reminescenes.

The train steams on, and I cross numerous fields. The highway seems to play a game of its own crossing the tracks to end up on either side here and there. I see mountains in the distance. Some with temples atop them. I imagine trying to walk from a small station to such a mountain and admire the view from there.

What do I see on this normal, ordinary train journey to Tamil Nadu?

I see pictures of Madras as they formed in my mind when I heard stories about my native place. I see and feel the land which is like a long lost relative with a familiar name and appearance, but whose personality I am unaware of.

I see myself excited at the thought of crossing Tambaram, the place where a lot many members of my family spent a better part of their lives. As the train crosses Tambaram I try to imagine how they must have lived here. How they must have walked to school. How they must have led a contented life here, the place they used to know as home.

I see green fields and people toiling in the Sun. I dont know why, inspite of not living here or having grown up here I feel at home. I feel like I am living my imagination.

When I see all these sights outside my window, I keep comparing them to the images I had created in my mind about them.

Images which had my childhood as the canvas, the stories narrared to me by the elders as the brushes and the feeling of affinity to these places as the colour.

When I compare I see two images, the one here and the one in my mind. I honestly cannot say which one seems better. Both seem different but the same.

The canvas has long been dispensed with.

The brush seems to have exhausted all its strokes.

But the colours remain. They are still there, bright, familiar, full of warmth....

Letter to those who judge me....

Today I just stopped for a while to think about so many people who judge me every day. They line up to give me advice. They tell me about how I talk a lot, about how I don't talk enough, how I read a lot, how I don't read at all. They seem to be extremely knowledgeable and symbolise the epitome of intelligence and rectitude.

People who keep judging me and advising me, I feel that you should apply your knowledge to yourselves in the first place. Do not deprive yourselves of your exalted self, standing on a stage and advising people like me on behaviour, intelligence, experience, philosophy, psychology and what not.

If you start doing that you would realise how shallow you are in the first place. All your opinions seem to float on the surface of heresy and gossip. All your experiences would be confined to one event which seems to be extrapolated to reach definite conclusions which you yourself might find absurd.

If you were to make a note of everything that you say; like you make a note of mine so that you can advise, admonish and correct me, of course, for my well being, you would realise that if you had to sit down to correct yourself and advise yourself it would take you all your time to do so.

I would also like you to listen to you boasting about your knowledge, foresight and wisdom and gift yourself a lot of patience which I seem to have acquired having to listen to you and many other well wishers all the time.

One fine day, you are bound to understand that you aren't much except for some comments and opinions which you throw at the drop of a hat to convince yourself that you are something and to help yourself build a facade of personality and wit to cover your attitude built of cynicism, lies, delusion and arrogance.

When you do, you have two choices. The first one, to ignore what has just come to your notice about yourself since it would be difficult to be humble, charitable, mild, pleasant and human. It would be much much easier to be arrogant, delusional, negative and proud.

The second one, to try and impose less of your exalted opinions on people. Letting them live their happy, honest, wonderful lives. To ensure that you are the only one who has to listen to you, hear your caustic comments, cry over your lack of empathy and cringe at your mock sympathy.

Either way, this letter is for you to try and see yourself from your point of view and see if that is what you would want to see.

Mumbai Local Etiquettes

The title of this post talks about etiquette in the local trains that ply in Mumbai, a set of rules which can be learnt only by 'regular' commuters, who brave the ordeal every day.

A journey in a Mumbai local train is an adventure by itself. With thrice as many people cramped into one half of a coach called 'First class', the experience is anything but harrowing.

I am not writing this post to carp on how difficult it is to travel by the Mumbai local, that is a well known fact, especially in the morning and evening peak hours where alighing at your destination safely makes you believe you deserve a prize and managing to get a seat in peak hours makes you feel you deserve an award or honour.

I have been traveling in Mumbai local trains for the past 7 odd years now and somehow manage to survive the ordeal each day. After these many years of travel what I have observed is, local trains have some standards or expectations when it comes to conducting oneself. Most people tend to follow them and the ones who dont are frowned upon or told off by the seniors in the field of 'Mumbai local train traveling'

Some of the observations are as follows.

1.Never get into a Borivali fast if you wish to alight at Andheri and never ever get into a Virar fast if you wish to alight at Borivali.

Now, we might say that this unofficial practice is absurd, but the daily commuters have a reason for the same, which you tend to empathise with. Commuters from Virar have to endure soul crushing hours in local trains. With space and a train both coming at a premium, a commuter who has a lot of Borivali and Andheri bound trains to choose from, but still boards a Virar fast and tries to get down at Borivali, is told off and even reprimanded.

2. Adjust your seating position with the knees alternating.

With the new age rakes being introduced in Mumbai, the area for standees has increased at the cost of space between two seats. In such conditions when you manage to get a seat, your knees are bound to knock on the person sitting across you whenever the train brakes or accelerates. The simple solution to this is, people try to sit in such a way that their knees dont face each other, the seating arrangement is offset a little. Now in such a scenario certain passengers who sit with their legs forming a 'V' in the air are frowned upon and are even sometimes advised to sit properly.

3. Be courteous enough to enquire if the person standing ahead of you plans to alight at the next station.

As soon as you cross the penultimate station before your destination, you are supposed to make your way to the line which starts from the compartment to the door and ask the person standing ahead of you if he plans to alight at the next station. If he does, no problem, since he has already confirmed that the person ahead of him will alight and that person has in turn asked someone ahead of him and so on and so forth. If he doesn't plan to alight then you and him have to practise amateur gymnastics to ensure he takes your place and you his.

4. Always avoid sitting in areas which are normally occupied by groups.

By virtue of traveling in the same local train for a number of years, people tend to form groups, the members of which, might play cards, sing songs, discuss the stock market volatility and so on and so forth. It would be good for you if you avoided sitting in places where such groups normally sit, because if you do, they will look at you as if you have occupied a reserved seat in an express train and talk among themselves with a remorseful face on how the oldest gentleman in their group couldn't sit because you sat in his place. They will ensure that you feel uncomfortable by indulging in their group activities to the hilt.

5. Bags and rules for carrying them.

If you board with a bag strapped to the front of your torso, you are expected to remove the bag and hold it in your hands. This rule also makes sense since the bag seems to occupy the space of one person and holding it in your hands will allow another person to squeeze into the coach. If you dont adhere to this rule, you might be lambasted by the senior local train commuters and some gentlemen may even start pushing and shoving your bag to demonstrate to you how much space it occupies.
If you travel with those bags which hand from your shoulders, your efforts are doubled when you try to alight. One, you have to ensure you try to inch closer to the door. Two, you also have to make arrangements for your bag to follow you.

6. Read the newspaper by folding it twice or thrice.

If you do wish to read the newspaper as the others do, in a train which is packed with people in the peak hours. You must fold the paper twice or thrice and restrict yourself to reading one page, since you anyways will not be able to change the pages with so many people packing the space around you. Veteran travelers fold their newspapers so that they read the editorials which are best enjoyed when read slowly and with some thought.

Thats all for now, as and when I learn more, Ill post....

Analog's the brain

Analog's the brain,

That's the strangest title I seem to have come up with for a blog post in a long while.

Analog and digital, two methods which make instruments work. It can be understood with the help of a wrist watch. A digital wristwatch displays digits on a cold green lifeless screen whereas an analog wristwatch tells you the time with the help of hands pivoted on gears against the backdrop of a beautiful dial.

My affinity towards analog wristwatches is evident here. In a digital wristwatch, the digits change without us even noticing it, they simply seem to flip. Not that we can notice how the hands move in an analog watch but we seem to feel or at least perceive them to be moving, slowly.

Digital means instant, bits and bytes of data, going back and forth over the connections between a control centre or a central processing unit (CPU) and various input and output devices connected to it. Analog, on the other hand, means metallic parts, pivoted on gears and resting on fulcrums which move with the help of several interdependent parts and pieces.

For some time now, I used to think of my brain as some sort of a computer, which stores memories in a hard disk, which processes problems at lighting speed, and so on and so forth. But recently I realized that my brain was more like a mechanical machine.

When I was trying to recall someones name I was finding it difficult to do so. I tried to remember. It did not come to me in an instant. That did not happen. The first thing that came to my mind was an image of an object which helped me get the first part of that persons name. The second thing that came to my mind was another memory which helped me get the second part of that persons name, in a distorted manner. My brain then pieced together these two parts and they did not fit. It then tried combinations, changing the first part a little, interchanging the first and the second parts and slowly after some effort I could remember that persons name.

That is when I realized that my brain does not punch in data in my mind like a Dot Matrix printer, complete with the screeching noise or like words which form on archaic fluorescent computer screens, accompanied by a 'ploob, ploob' kind of noise. My brain processes and delivers like a lathe machine perhaps, first scraping some of the metal piece, then observing the metal piece and again deciding how much to scrape and after some time trying to look at that piece and understand what it resembles.

When that persons name was shared with me, I must have thought of that natural object and that memory in a random manner, in that silly, inconclusive and obtuse manner in which the brain sometimes tends to make connections. Oh your name is so and so, reminds me of so and so, and that no, and ha ha ha ha. Unknown to me these silly observations had been stored by my brain and tagged to be associated to that name. When I wanted to remember or recall that name, my brain followed the same process in reverse. It looked for the tags, replayed the memories, built associations and then gave me that name.

My brain doesn't work in the digital manner, Some people are gifted with photographic memories, sharp memories etc, but I guess they are few in number. Most of us have brains which work in the manner I stated above.

Step by step, steadily, correctly and decisively, in short in an analog manner.....

Mornings aboard a train

Its way past midnight. I lurch sideways and get up all of a sudden. The train seems to have creaked to a halt. I open my eyes and try to make sense of what is around me. Its all dark, slowly my eyes get accustomed to the dim blue light coming from the night lamps in the corridor. I see a tinge of blue and white immersing itself in darkness in the form of the spotless white Indian Railway bedsheets and the night lamp. The next instant I am pushed sideways and I realise the train has started moving. The rhythmic motion, rocks me back to sleep.

Again, I get up and squint. So much of light. The sun's rays bathe the compartment in a golden yellow colour. I rub my eyes, climb down, sit near the window. The train is speeding past fields, rivers and stations, almost everything. I try hard to make sense of what is happening. Someone hollers "Chai Kaapi, chai, chai, kaapiya" suffixing Kaapi with ya every time he hollers so. I order a cup. I cringe when he takes out a plastic cup, fills it with watered milk and sprinkles some instant coffee powder. For a Tamilian, anything less than filter coffee is a mood dampener. I pay him and try sipping the coffee. Ouch! Too hot. I try cooling it and take another sip. Manageable. I again look out of the window, the taste of the coffee is somehow enhanced by the sight outside. Golden yellow mixing with brown colored tress and shrubs. A series of sounds, and the train crosses a river. The sun's rays seem to have built a golden path right in the middle of the river and a sole boatman is rowing towards the horizon. All this seen and admired in a couple of seconds.

The muffled sounds of the train going khatak khatak over the tracks reaches my ears. Every one else seems to be asleep. Its me, the train and the landscape outside, talking to each other without saying a word. For a few moments. Slowly the level of activity in the coach starts increasing. People get up, more tea is ordered, 'Breakfaast' is ordered, the smell of cutlets captivates the senses. I open my aluminium pouch to find two red color discs and a squarish, yellowish piece of bread with a sachet of sauce. The cutlet is placed on a piece of bread and the bread is wrapped around it. Then an effort to take a balanced bite of both bread and cutlet begins. The fast is broken, satiated, a cup of tea is ordered. The morning paper arrives. News is read in the middle of nowhere with a cup of strong masala tea, if I am lucky or an insipid tea bag in hot water. A lot of noise, I look at the window. Many tracks join, the overhead electric wires come closer and closer, a junction perhaps. The train slows down. Sedate, slower, slower, creaks to a halt. A station has arrived.

I alight. Its a cold morning, I put my hands into my pockets. I walk around to feel my legs. I bask in the warmth that a lone patch of Sunlight provides.

These mornings aboard trains in India I am with me. I am not worried, not tensed, not apprehensive. I am not there. I am in that boat rowing towards the horizon, I am walking in those fields in the morning sunlight. I am not there, I am elsewhere, somewhere, where I am me, where I am free...

When you want to write

I want to write.

I need words, I need the topic, I need some inspiration.

Why? To impress people. Because I don't have much to do today. I want to pen down my thoughts and try to think of myself as an intellectual.

A motion picture of a man brooding over some pages with his fountain pen at his desk is what plays in my mind. Intelligence, thoughts, words, pages, fountain pen.

Actually, its all imagination.

A dusty screen, a keyboard with some non-functional keys, a blank mind is all I have.

Funny how imagination plays such a vital role in our lives. When I want to write something I am imagining people admiring me, complimenting my post, (I am even doing that now, imagining posts popping up which say 'Nice read', 'Good one bro', 'Super macha'.) and me grinning and feeling that I have achieved something.

When I think of it from another angle, it isn't a great way to be appreciated by people. Why be appreciated at all? 

Why do people write actually? 

To pen down their feelings, so that they feel lighter or richer when those words are transmuted from their mind to their books?

So that the verse that is in a state of flux in their heads can be worked upon by noting it down and thinking about it.

To try to shift the chaotic sentences forming in their heads to the paper and then try to sift through them, arrange them in order and then understand what they were thinking.

To feel lighter, now that all that was bothering them is now recorded in another medium which they can refer to later on, and hence ensure that their mind is calmer.

Why do people write?

Why do I write?

I write to share. What I feel, what I am going through. Somewhere in the corner of my heart I want to connect with someone reading my blog, through my articles and say 'Hey friend, I empathize with you, connect with you and can relate to you, without knowing you, if you liked what I wrote, if it made you relax, smile or laugh, it made me happy'

I do like appreciation. I feel nice when people compliment me on something that I wrote, but trust me the compliments are few and far apart. The compliments, more often than not, are the reason to sit and write something, like I did right now. I wanted to write something today, to impress someone, to convince myself that I am intelligent, To imagine myself to be that poet or writer who comes home from work and broods over his desk with a cup of coffee and pens poems.

No. Not at all. I am a simple guy who comes home from work, gets his filter coffee, sips it, reads something, listens to some music and writes to share what he feels, thinks and likes with other people. That is who I am.

I write to share.....

Small things

Everyone runs after big things, a house, a car, a promotion, a performance award, victory in an argument and so on and so forth. Everyone is chasing something big. In the process, many of us actually speed through the day. Sometimes that goal becomes so overwhelming, we just don't see and appreciate the small things around us.

I started thinking about this after a chance meeting with a friend for a cup of tea at a thela. I actually felt nice, when I realized I was in the same area as him, when I called him and he was available to have some tea at a tea stall.

Nothing remarkable, old friend, small tea stall, a normal cup of tea with the taste being nothing to write about, but it made me feel nice. Meeting after some time, talking, enjoying the tea.

Then I started thinking a little more and found that when I try to remember all the so called big things I achieved, I don't feel much now. Small things though, if I when I remember them, I tend to still feel nice when I relive those moments.

Mundane things like,

When
A person who is normally rude to me spoke in a pleasant manner
I got a window seat in a crowded bus, by chance after a couple of stops
The fast local train I boarded actually sped past stations
I got a side lower berth or a lower berth without expecting to be allotted one
A person or a service provider actually spoke nicely to me and did my work efficiently
I got some green chilly free when I purchased vegetables
I saw a movie without expecting much and it turned out to be very good
I switched on the FM radio and one of my favorite songs started playing on some channel
A person driving a rickshaw didn't refuse and speed away spewing dust in my face
I got change for Rs 100 at a shop for purchasing a packet of biscuits
I got dry coconut chutney with my plate of Idli without actually asking for it
I find that the coffee filter has some decoction in it, so that I don't have to boil water to prepare it
I get an offer which lets me order two pizza's for the price of one
The ready made garments I purchase for myself do not require alteration and fit me perfectly

And many more such small things in life....

Whenever I remember such things, and they make me feel good, I sometimes wonder how happy life would be if we focused on these small things one at a time rather than rush behind that one big goal.

Not saying that we shouldn't have goals or aims in life, but what if we appreciated these moments as and when we came across them and enjoy them? What if we paid more attention whenever we have an opportunity to enjoy such moments. Like when I used to walk across Parsi Dairy farm everyday and one fine day I went inside and purchased some milk cake and savored it. When I actually spoke to someone I was longing to speak to and enjoyed the conversation. When I made up with a friend I had a quarrel with..so on and so forth.

I am sure there would be many such opportunities and moments to look forward to. Instead of being burdened with excelling, performing, achieving, winning all the time, I could also look forward to enjoying, relishing, blushing, thinking, listening.....

Food for thought....