Now you are in Madras...(like alicia keys)

A wailing shrieking bawling toddler kept me up all through the flight from NY to Brussels. I was not the only one who was absolutely cold and shaking with fury. There was a man in front of the seat where the baby was sleeping, and he got up and actually asked the baby to stop. That was how non-stop it was. The captain just finished briefing us about the flying time and the weather, as if we were going out for a stroll in the middle of a flight-'wow, such a lovely wind'; thus started the crying menace, its then that i wanted to ask myself this question: why breed?

As much cold-hearted as I appear, given the fact that all babies are supposed to cry and puke a la shakespeare, I could not understand this need to cry for six bloody hours. Ok, you get hungry for a while, you get uncomfortable for a while after you eat, but what is with the continuous wail? On top of this, Jet airways serves paneer with all your meals. I am pretty sure I had paneer in six different forms, with the same taste, and at the end of the last meal, I would have gladly taken off my shoes and eaten them rather than eat that paneer. My stomach was begging me to stop seeing it, I forced myself to eat it.I had to actually lodge the food down my throat using a fork as a shovel. Not that it was bad, just that, I had to eat the same thing again and again. A little more paneer and I would have started to look for the cows and the farmers responsible for the paneer; a earful of my fury and a mouthful of their paneer.

There was a young boy sitting next to me, who looked a little like me when I was his age-plump, glasses, no etiquette to say thanks when somebody helps with your headset etc. His mother was seated in the front seat with his brother(probably). I know parents can be quite irrational. I mean, they are, aren't they? In the name of being concerned, they do the silliest of things, and embarrass the child throughout his life. Some pride, isn't it? When people ask you, is it your son, the parent beams with the widest smile possible, and says yes! oh, god help us mortals and our attachment to life and its paraphernalia(I have always wanted to use this word, yay). Coming back to the story, she asked the boy to actually go to sleep, when he was wide awake watching some hindi movie. Slowly, 'the please go to sleep' became 'go to sleep beta', 'give me your glasses', 'give them or I'm going to smash every bone in your little face'(ok, that was from me), and the boy handed them over finally. He fell asleep, and he started to snore. Yes, one more reason to keep me awake. Yes, I need to know what sleepless nights are, after working with a jackass of an advisor and bed bugs, now it was the turn of a toddler and a juvenile brat to keep me up. All ages, both the sexes will keep you up at some point in your life, let's just be prepared was the message. Great.

Back in Chennai airport I felt primitive, disconnected, lost, enigmatic, furious, disturbed, dysfunctional and chaotic all at the same time. I was back!Haha, Madras. It took the baggage conveyor 90 minutes to tell me that one of my baggage was missing. I went out of the airport to a blast of hot air, the stink of urine and god knows what else. Truly, I had arrived. The first thing I noticed in my house was-high ceilings! I had forgotten those rooms! Of course, the truly beautiful journey of using the Indian style toilet: ha, the amazing concept, which so many people fail to understand and appreciate. Its a beautiful construct of the human imagination. Thanks to whoever created it. Screw toilet papers. Yeah baby.

What else is beautiful and disturbing? The advertisements on the crumbled buildings right next to the sewage river, the street corners being turned into public restrooms, complete disregard for pedestrians everywhere, the joy of walking over the garbage bins on the side of the roads, and the sight of betel leaf stains in every single wall on the city. This is what I saw when I left, and somehow, I thought India would be developed in the two years gone by. No, I was an idiot. But, it will become beautiful. It will be a great place.(Not because I am back, but partly could be!)

We need to give ourselves some time.

what could be the most boring act that you had ever performed in your life?

stared at your computer screen mindlessly till you wait for the internet connection to resume? what is it, your eyeballs have the power to plug fibre optic cables across the atlantic?

waited for a bus that will be here any minute now? The minute they talk about, is pure evil. It hides, elusively, preys on the human mind, making him weak and feeble until he realizes that he should give up, and kill himself.

spent hours and hours trying to clean up the toilets when they have molds which would require any human to possess the strength of three hundred whoppers to clean them?

Sat there all day, looking at the ceiling fan, complaining about life, talking nonsense to self, making very poor jokes about everyone else, mocking everything else on the planet, I am sorry, I think that was my usual routine...got carried away.

This one is what comes to my mind, as the daredevilry, a mindblowing and phenomenal act of boredom, the master of all boring acts, the king-if you will:

Cleveland, on a weekday.

Its such a small sentence, but you would see that everything is wrong about this. Almost everything. Cleveland, is the biggest mistake. The next one, is of course, weekday. It is a pardonable offense, and pales into insignificant insignificance in comparison to the first c word.(shhh....)

Its like saying Voldemort(wince) out loud. But voldemort is the most handsome and chivalrous gentleman when compared to the cleveland torture. Its a place, for all those who are not familiar with it. Its a place, that is probably the worst thing to have ever happened to human kind, after sarah palin. Its located in American mid-west, which by itself is gloriously dry and boring, unbelievably sparsely populated and has 0.1% of the sensation that Venice has. What is fascinating is, there are people living here. Real people, like you, like me(ok maybe not me), and they live here. You know, live.(laughing, very very hard, going to throw up now)

The first thing that captures your attention as soon as you enter the city is, it is a son of a b**chy bore. The downtown, boasts of some beautiful sights that are hardly worth remembering, so I am not going to go into the details. I cannot even if I want to, because that is how exciting it was. Next must visit, is the Cleveland's rock and roll hall of fame museum of crap. It has some of the most exquisite nonsense about rock stars-people who had no idea that they would be commercially exploited in the name of tourism couple of years down the line when they were living in s**t poverty, trying to sing their butts off for living a decent life.

Weekdays are fun. Everybody else totters off to work, spending time usefully, contributing something to the taxes, making the planet a better place to live, exerciseing their brains lest they become defunct, making more social contacts, on the whole, they do something with their lives.(There I go again). I went to cleveland, because my roommate had an interview. I know, can there be any more worse excuses? I mean, this must be the worst of the worst of them. This is bottomline insult to the basic reasoning pattern of the human adult. This is ignorantly being arrogant of the dangers of no thinking, or some people would say this a the 'dimwit revolution'. People like us, should not be allowed to think and take decisions, it might prove to be very dangerous for the society. Much worse than those gun waving, hate speech shouting lads, or those three piece suit wearing, policy making, cigar smoking blokes.

Slowly, life unfolds. And folds again. and unfolds. and I will keep writing this, because I have time, but for the sake of the reader's patience, I will just say this-Life is unfolding, and all that we get to see is a either a beautiful canvas of hope, dreams, joy, fulfillment, and magic, or a tarnished, derelict grey hued, bleak and foreboding picture of styx. Its the mind, that understands that the portrait is not of these dualities, it is a portrait of us, a portrait of our strength, endurance, humility, perseverance,humor, of our belief, and of our ability to look at ourselves as a human being, rather than as a marketable product-only they have successes and failures. As human beings, we must be something more than that. That's enough philosophical nonsense.(if my repressed emotions dictating me to write nonsense qualifies as philosophy).

Cheers. See you all in the next post then.

ps:

#1

none of the he/she stuff indicates my chauvinistic tendencies. Anything that is applicable for he is also applicable for a she, in most of the cases(pregnancy, menstruation etc.)

#2

No gender discrimination, we are an equal opportunity blogger A/F/V/T/5/O/X/"/D/tongue rolling out/screw you we don't hire you/

#3

also, read the post below if and only if you want to read some foul mouthed comments on Indian politics, very foul language.