Bread and Circuses

Hi!

Hi!! How have you been? (Was that overeager?)

Nothing much - just family stuff. Went traveling as well - Thailand is pretty incredible. The water is really as clear as it looks in the pictures.

It’s been some time, right? Nearly a year. (Seven months and if you ask, no, I haven’t been counting)

Yeah. Just came back from a trip home. The niece is growing up so quickly, I totally miscalculated what she’d want.

And then you took her out shopping? (I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I don’t.)

Well I had to, didn’t I? Anyway, how’s work? Travelling?

Work is work. Banking is all screwed up. We are all going to be replaced by machine learning and credit scores soon. Travelled a bit. Nothing spectacular. How’s work going for you?

It’s okay. It a balancing act, but managing it. Let’s see how the review next year goes. This boss is not a complete monster, so fingers crossed.

That’s good news. I had been meaning to message you today actually. So, happy…

Sorry. Someone’s calling. Got to run.

…sure.

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Often, the only way to survive is to keep your head down and the volume high. A good song helps, with syncopated beats perhaps, lyrics be damned. I have learnt to believe in the process. Of clearing your head of all noise and just going blank – focusing simply on the evenness of breath and the fact that the tips of your fingers are a little cooler than usual. Just don’t react, because this too will pass.

And talking of things that pass, we come to the fact that 2018 is coming to an end. I will try to put in my thoughts on that, on another year that passes all too soon, doing too much and showing too little at the end of it. There are a couple of weeks of holidays coming up, leaves not taken, so I will put pen to paper (or finger to the keyboard as it were) to jot things down. Till then, so long.

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Will keep it short. Couple of songs, like I am supposed to:

1.     TV on the Radio - Trouble. Catchy yes, but lyrical as well (Oh, I've changed my number| Wore disguises and went undercover just to| Just to hide away from you| Oh, my ghost came a-calling| Making noises 'bout a promise I had broken| Oh, I'm gonna be lonely soon)

2.   Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You. Very American, jangly guitars and that delicious voice. Became interested in them after watching Dig! - a rockumentary about their rivalry/friendship with Brian Jonestown Massacre. Similarities to Jesus & Mary Chain and to Sonic Youth can be easily found (all pretty decent bands btw).

 

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The reference is to what we, as citizens, remain solely interested in. And Stephen Fry is still the coolest.

A mumblecore haunting

You shouldn’t come around here anymore. I tell you. This way lies heartbreak – that’s what it says in big bold letters on the door too, don’t you see. But then you only see what you want to. I guess that’s what I came to love about you. It drove me nuts sometimes, your short-sightedness, your belief and your passion. You saw things in ultra-HD, even when you didn’t see more than 10 feet in front and five minutes into the future. You were prepared to risk it all, which surprised and maybe even scared the ever-loving hell out of country boy me.

Anyway, its done and you’ve gone moved on. And it’s me that stuck between wanting and just simply being stuck. See, I did something stupid. You left and I couldn’t see my way around the map of happiness I carried in my head.  I got a little pissed (well a lot pissed) and then took a long swim (and you know I can’t swim). And honestly, I was good with that. I was done with this side anyway and I was mostly good, not to you I know, but apart from that. But, you see, the gatekeeper seems to be old-fashioned…  and I need you to forgive me. I have told him (and told him) that you don’t know that I was dead and anyway it does feel like blackmail to say that you are holding me back. But the gatekeeper is stubborn as hell (a small joke, don’t tell him). It been six months and here it feels like forever. I am really getting antsy. You don’t need to write or anything, which would not be possible anyway. If you think it, the gatekeeper will know – he says that and I think he cannot lie.

She woke up with a start. She had fallen asleep on the sofa with the TV running again. Glanced at the phone, it was past one. She really needed to get to bed. Instead she padded to the fridge and took out a can of ginger ale. Sat on the ledge and took a welcome sip. She felt all funny and thirsty. Took out the phone and signed on to Facebook. He hadn’t posted any update for more than seven months. She wished him well, she did. She smiled to herself and unfriended him. Time to move on.

She felt a sigh. Maybe she sighed herself. It was late.

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 I don't know why I listen to these songs. Maybe cause lyrics don't matter sometimes?

1. Soda Stereo - Disco Eterno. The only Argentine band I know. And I freaking love this song. Smooth and psychedelic, kind of how best 'shrooms would feel I guess? Check out the live version as well.

2. Santana - Oye como va. It's Santana of course.

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Prince wrote Nothing Compares 2U.

Canto

Imagine all the people (and this is not John Lennon) desperate for love. The romantic kind, not the kind that comes from family, which is unequivocal and still a matter of chance and luck, but the kind that needs work, and the kind that needs to be earned and the kind that you call all your own.

Now imagine that all of them as motes of dust in a darkened room. Even dust glitters as it floats into the light. And then as the very ordinariness of it becomes illuminated and there are all these speckles of golden wonder, interesting and beautiful and charming and lovable, not all of them, but those lucky to be in the light (A miracle! Can’t believe it!), they notice these other golden specks, and inevitably, as if in a trance, drift toward each other (and then they slowly drift out of the light, but then they are together and it doesn’t perhaps matter).

All of this is to say is that he did believe in the romantic ideal of love. But he kind of despaired of finding it himself. And he also believed that perhaps that idea of love is limiting and while it wouldn’t hurt to have it certainly, there were other things that were as important, or even more important. Maybe sour grapes and all that. He liked to read and write and draw. He enjoyed his own company and he had a good set of friends. He loved his family (parents and brother) and he had a decent job. He had mostly stopped drinking but hadn’t quite lost his rep yet, which meant his friends expected him to drink and he then had an occasional couple of beers (or Old Monk, it still remained difficult to say no to Old Monk). He needed to quit smoking (but he had a hard time kicking habits).

He had not looked for love really. He had found it sometimes, but he was foolish (and extra-ordinarily cautious, which is stupid if you think about it) and hadn’t had the faith (or the character) to really fight for it then and then the love had gone away.  He was past thirty and now his friends were all married, heck a few of them even had kids and their own lives. The parents were understandably worried and had placed ads in the local papers (Anandabazar Patrika (naturally), such a middle-class thing to do) and had set up a profile in a matchmaking service. He had even met a few prospects (and the word ‘prospect’ probably tells you how cold he found the entire exercise), the ones that passed muster with the parents and that he hadn’t outright rejected. It was onerous and dispiriting mostly. And sometimes it was just weird, flipping through the matches, choices determined through preferences, algorithmic certitude, allowing for no surprises.
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He sneaked down to the road, choosing stairs over the agonizingly slow lift, almost imagining before the fact how the familiar acrid drag of smoke would feel after the rich food that gets served in these Bengali wedding receptions. He was at the wedding of one his cousins and between being pulled in to do a hundred different things and needing to be polite and welcoming as part of the hosting family, he had missed smoking. And now he needed one, badly. The guests had mostly left and even the crowd spilling out of the mall opposite had slowed down to a trickle.

He nicked a paan from the serving area and grabbed a water bottle on his way down, patting his back-pocket to check for the reassuring presence of the cigarette pack. The evening had brought one of the first kalboishakhis of the season, showers bringing the unbearable April heat down to manageable levels and the weather outside now was almost idyllic with the stiff breeze almost magical on fevered skin. He took a sip from the water bottle, popped the paan in his mouth and placing the bottle on the hood of a parked car, lit up the cigarette. The first drag was the smoothest and the most welcome.

“Uncle! Uncle!!”

He ignored the female voice at first, he really needed to smoke in peace. And he was not that old yet, surely? But the road was mostly empty, except for a few loitering cabs.

“Uncle!”

The voice was quite urgent now. He looked up, reluctantly. A girl, in jeans and black tee, was walking purposefully towards him. As he stared at her, she got in a good look at him and then said, “Bhaiyya.”

“Which way are you headed?” She asked. A woman, he corrected himself, one of a certain age and a certain flair (he called it shop-girl élite), and one who was used to getting her own way.

“Nowhere really. Just having a smoke.” He said, lifting his right hand with the cigarette, to show that he wasn’t lying and really was busy, smoking.

“Can you just walk me to my house? I am really afraid of dogs and they are really out this time of the night.” She had gorgeous eyes, big and kohl-lined.

“How far is your house?”

“To the end of the road, on the right. Near that Vodafone hoarding.” She said, pointing. It was at least half a kilometre away.

He sighed. His brother too couldn’t cross a road if there was a pup on the other side. He said, “Come on then.”

Well maybe he’d get a story out of it.

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Manna Dey would have been 98.