Imperfections, Perfections, And The Glowing Difference Between Them

Three trips to Paris and you feel like it’s your prerogative to get your magnifying glass out and inspect every square centimeter of the pleasantly arresting landscape around you.

Autumn has officially begun. The early morning air is just the right amount of nippy, you don’t have to bundle up in layers of stifling clothing, everything has a light, golden aura around it and the footpaths are paved with red, yellow, fading green and rust colored leaves that crumble like paper bags when you step on them. But, all you really want to know, magnifying glass in hand, something nasty stuck down your throat, is if they are going to clean it all at night. “They have an annual plan for these things here,” my father tells me, patiently and sympathetically.

It’s not your fault. You aren’t an irritatingly fastidious ninety year old woman or a retired Army Colonel. None of that, really, truly, honestly, I promise you. You are just trying to blend in, as stealthily as possible, with the atmosphere.

At a metro station, on my way to a little, second-hand English bookstore in the city, I found myself walking, staunchly, in a direction opposite to my destination. The working class, the students, the intellectuals and the hobos all came out at six p.m in the evening rush, and took me, mercilessly, with them. I loved it. So what if I had to change two metros to get back to where I had to go and that I wasted half an hour on commuting? So what if I got only forty minutes to chat with the ancient woman at “Tea and Tattered Pages” and to pet the strangely oval shaped cat that stared at me intently while I flicked through the pages of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer winning novel? The book was eight euroes, the toillete was filthy and the gramps showed no inclination of giving me the steaming hot cup of tea that the website had promised. I forgave them all. For a brief moment that day, I was a breathing, thinking, fundamental part of a cross-section of the most basic kind of Parisian society and that was enough to convince me that my evening had been cinematic.

When you are at ground-level, a word in the sentence, a line of a poem, it all looks pretty and sequential to you. You explore a little; go on a morning walk instead of your daily outing, and imperfections stick out like flies on a rotting banana on your sparkling clean dining table.

I’m all bent upon proving this theory of perspectives to myself and so I go to the terrace with my periodic drug and buddy, a bubbling cup of filter coffee and look down instead of staring wonderstruck at the stationary scenery right before my eyes. The first scene I chance upon is that of a smartly dressed kid, playing around in the park. His au-pair is tending to five other kids in the background while exchanging notes with an old grandpa who is pushing a little girl on the swing, her hair done up in the cutest-beads-ever. The park is crowded and possibly noisy, but it seems peaceful enough. After a while, the first kid starts chasing a pigeon around, his hands automatically forming the wings of an imaginary plane. One by one, all the kids in the park start running behind him, hands out, engines whirring, moving in a line behind the pigeon which is flying really low now, as if it were purely for the children’s benefit. And then of course, the pigeon flies away and all the kids are left behind, staring at it in absolute shock and despair. I can imagine that some of them might have broken into loud, irritating spells of crying, killing, as it may be, the heartbreakingly beautiful scene that I discovered, a thousand feet from the ground.

I suddenly see the world below clouded in an entirely different kind of light. The two men playing in the tennis court on my right make a series of double faults. On a path lined with full-fledged trees, shedding leaves as I watch, a car screeches to a halt and an old lady gestures rudely at the driver. In the gigantic cemetery on my left, ugly, mean looking, green trucks, clear up space for new graves.

Funnily enough, I find myself comforted, perhaps even a little humbled. I feel like we constantly give in to the insatiable urge to remind ourselves, that the world we live in might not be allowed re-takes or soundtracks, that at times we have to stop and look tirelessly for flaws, even if it was simply to tell ourselves that we live an ordinary life and when something goes out of plan or irrevocably wrong, we are prepared, even if it was by the slightest margin.

Two days before leaving Bangalore, I had to go to Mumbai for a day to get my French visa. I had to wake up at three in the morning and take one of the earliest flights out of Bangalore. I was to be accompanied by my Dad’s colleague from work, Biju Uncle and his charming wife, Geo Aunty. The previous day, my friends and cousins had thrown me a surprise send-off party. It was perfect from the word go. Apparently, I’m the easiest person to surprise and my lovelies are an especially bright bunch with party-planning-tips pumping through the blood in their veins. In fact, I was having a perfect week. My pending departure on Sunday was unknowingly marking everything with a sort of wholesome finality, wrapping up my interactions with old friends and new, in a warm, affectionate cocoon, to be opened at leisure in a bench somewhere in Coventry. The airplane was flying through huge, fluffy clouds and I had only pleasant things to think about. Needless to say, I was in a really good mood and enjoyed my conversations with Aunty and Uncle thoroughly.

But of course, my first application at the consulate office had to be redone and resubmitted at a later time. The visa clearance which usually takes about half an hour, was taking us the whole day. Uncle and I soon found ourselves making allowances for all sorts of discrepancies, the planning forcing goodwill and contentment out of my brain like a living corkscrew with something against me. Finally, it looked like Uncle and Aunty would have to leave without me by the flight at six for which we were all booked. My ticket would be canceled, I would pick up my passport from another office at four and then take a later flight costing triple the price of the first one because it was a long weekend and everyone was flying out of Mumbai that evening. To top it all, there was a good likelihood that I would get the French visa only for three months and not for a year like my parents and me had planned which would mean that I couldn’t go to Paris from Warwick, on impulse.

Four p.m came and went, Uncle and Aunty bade me a fond farewell and handed me a cell phone for temporary use because my cell had died out on me some hours ago. I went to the passport office to find a queue that extended to two floors. I was frustrated and dejected and at that point, I didn’t really give a damn if I just had to stay in Bombay all my life, alone, miserable and most probably utterly broke.

Then a lady came out of the office and said, “Only French passports, please come this way.” It was dramatic. Apparently I was the only one in the entire queue who was going to France. I fought through the crowds, and was out in exactly three minutes, with my passport, stamped cheerily with a visa valid until September 2010. The grandpa operating the elevator must have noticed something in my face because he shook my hand, congratulated me and wished me all the best. I called up Biju Uncle who called up our travel agent and stopped her from canceling my air ticket. All this time, a Kingfisher official was on hold on another line, waiting to block a later ticket for me, costing 14 grand.

Before I knew it, the old, run down taxi I was in, was zipping away on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.

There are times when you sit down with your friends and cousins, jobless, unperturbed, completely cheerful, but debating for at least forty five minutes whether to eat at Subway or at McDs. There are times when your kitchen lies moldy, damp and smells like old cheese but all your pleas to your loved ones about helping with the dishes go conveniently neglected. There are times when you feel like you have something urgent that needs to be done but the people around you couldn’t possible understand its significance and you are forced to postpone your task to a later date.

And then there are times, when you sit on the couch in your living room, surrounded by the people you love and admire and respect and they return all those emotions equally and wordlessly. There are times when your cousins and friends, some of who have never met before blend into each other’s company till all of you are laughing at the exact same thing, with the exact same intensity. In the next two days, there would even be times when I would walk into the kitchen to find a guy I met two weeks ago, scrubbing religiously at a saucepan layered with left-over food. And times when my friends would inform me casually, like it was the most normal thing in the world, that they would come with me to the airport to drop me off at 1 a.m.

This would be later but right now I was at the sea-link and the Arabian Sea smiled at me cheekily from both sides of the magnificent cable-stayed bridge, an ambulance siren cut through the air painfully, and the girl in a car next to mine, rolled down her windows to stare at me. My taxi driver adjusted his rear view mirror for the nth time as he tried to figure out why I was smiling so exhilaratingly but crying at the same time. And I told him, in the best way I could, that the extent of perfection that my life had reached that week, the extent that I knew it was going to reach by the end of that week, had finally sunk in.

At times, when you don’t stop to think about all the errors that can creep in into your unpredictable, asymmetrical life, things do go out of plan, of course they do, but you find that this is because people do things, spectacular, surprising, exciting things, out of character, out of their way, to make you feel overwhelmingly special.

Abhishek, Anirudh, Bhavana, Karthik, Manasa, Rohit, Shalu, Sharadha, Siddhu, Sudhru, Swetha, Vivek, take a bow, please, please ,please. A good, long, memorable one till everyone who’s reading this knows who you are and what you did.

What did they do, you ask, trusted reader?

Not much, I suppose, by practical, technical, ordinary standards. For all the goodbyes I received, I will probably go back home in a year. Right? But even if I do , even if I stay in touch with all these people forever and even if the world gives away, even if it comes to all that, the memory of my last week in Bangalore would still exist and make me reconsider if I asked stupid questions when something lovely and dazzling dangled in front of my eyes.

We’ll go no more a-roving

The pillar ahead looks forbidding and ugly to Priya. It’s obstructing her view from the bakery next door and the delectable young man who lives in her apartment and is buying the blueberry cheesecake on display. She hopes the cake is not for a girlfriend or a wife, but for a sweet cousin or something. She is quick to notice however, that the little girl running around the ugly pillar playfully, trying to hide from her mother’s doting gaze and failing with glee, doesn’t really perceive it the same way. The little girl’s brother sits some tables away, poking mournfully at his cold Chicken McNuggets. His eyes keep moving from time to time to his father who is arguing with the heavily bad-accented helper at McDs because he took more than a minute to serve his family and now they had every right to the free coke. “Sir, the offer expired three days ago”, the bad-acc-helper says. “Why do you still have the poster on then?”, the Dad asks. “S-i-rrr, I am new here”, b-a-h says. At this point, an old woman, the integral part of a long, irritable queue, jabs the Dad harshly on his shoulder. As he looks around desperately, frustration knitting his brows, eyes rapidly searching for a sympathetic soul, Priya, who has till now been watching this tiny scene with the utmost attention, quickly takes her book out and begins to read.

Priya can barely focus on the text in front of her. She’s waiting for her friends to show up. Today, of all the days, they are late. To top it all, the food court seems unusually crowded. Priya remembers with a miserable jolt that it’s a Sunday. The kids are overexcited because McDs, nasty promise-breakers as they might be, are also extremely generous with paper hats, balloons, and neglected Wall-E toys. The parents are delighted and chattier than normal because they have successfully warded off all requests for the latest PS3s or cocker-spaniel puppies from their brats because they are too high on junk food to care. The grandparents are content because they have been allowed the rare treat of not having to watch over their grand-children. Even the severely overstaffed Subway, which usually plays host to the poetic dust ball for the sort of response it gets on weekdays, has four or five people hovering around it. Outside, the lovely young man seems to have decided to add a baguette to his shopping list. Behind him, oblivious to all this carnival like hullabaloo, are couples, sitting warm and close in the sorry- excuses-for-shadows of artificial looking, brightly colored archways.

Priya sighs. She wonders if she should get up and buy herself something from the disgusting Chinese place so she could at least concentrate on the dirt on her half-washed plate. But she feels an absolute lack of interest and decides to focus on something else. She observes, quite victoriously, that the fifteen flat T.V screens placed strategically at several points in the food court, are actually muted. In fact, Priya notices that there’s even a tape- recorder somewhere in the corner, churning out sickeningly sweet love-songs from the late 90’s. “Somehow you got me to believe, In everything that I could be”, Priya hears the singer croon; in a voice she faintly remembers hearing but can’t place for the life of her.

As the mysterious singer spiritedly breaks into a refrain, Priya looks up to see that the stranger from her apartment has finally finished his shopping at the bakery. She wishes he would hurry up and come inside and catch her eye and ask her what she was reading and proceed to analyze the pointlessness of overanalyzing black boys and respectful Red Indians in her book and ask her what apartment number she was in and could he intercom her sometime to buy her some Subway and what was her name? Oh, Priya? Priya what? Priya Raghu? Well what do you do, Priya Raghu? Her joy at this imaginable encounter where her future soul mate would use her full name instead of her common two syllable name is interrupted by the young man’s steady gaze, his expression that of a man trying to remember something of negligible significance just because he has nothing else to concentrate on at the moment. His forehead breaks free of all wrinkles as he recognizes her as the crazy girl who walked around in the apartment at 11 in the night. However, this seems to quench his soul of any thirst for forced mental activity and he walks out of the bakery, into the open arms of a smiling girl at the brink of gorgeousness. As he plants a kiss at the girl’s head ever so fondly, Priya dispels all hope of the girl being any sort of blood relation and gets up firmly to buy herself cabbage and corn soup at the disgusting Chinese place.

Fortunately, from what she overhears, the chef at the Chinese place is having a hard day because his boss is planning to post him to a new branch which would mean half an hour of extra commute time. Priya regains her composure quickly and comes back to her table with her soup in a bowl that seems to be lined with something green and mouldy. She finds her friends waiting for her cheerfully, sitting warm and close, holding hands and as they notice the look on her face and they ask her, “what’s the matter, Priya?”, she begins to cry softly.

The trees around Nanda Park form a suspended cave around the path I am walking on. This causes a light blue sky to be veiled with myriad shades of green.

As I walk, I can feel Oxygen being pumped vigorously into my blood. Mild smells of jasmine flowers waft towards me. At seven in the morning, the old lady dressed in a purple, checkered, pattupodawai, returns my slightly curious and amused stare. A man, who is almost entirely spherical, bounces around with great care. His little, chubby, hands give the impression of determined, intense, exercise. The members of the local laughter club are now proceeding to practice a particularly high pitched version of their Chinese laugh.

Every time I complete one round of walking around the track, I look up to see interrupted streams of sunlight forcing their way through layers of leaves and branches so that anonymous dust particles can give me free dance performances.

These days, the feeling that I have inadvertently exchanged lives with someone else, someone more adventurous and multiple shades cooler than me a-year-ago, rarely escapes me.

In this new, exciting life, I negotiate costume party themes, leech dinners and recipes from best friends’ mothers, make annual trips to Europe, go out of town every two weekends, cook entire meals, hang out with people other than my two BFFs, tell people unflinchingly that I want to do a masters in Writing and take brisk morning walks in postcard perfect parks.

My life, as a matter of fact, has changed so radically for the better, that if someone walked up to me and told me they really hated the guts of Messieurs Herriot, Dickens, Hornby and Salinger, I would chuckle softly and offer to buy him/her a beer, without feeling, if you can even bring yourself to believe it, dear reader, the slightest tinge of pity for the largely misguided soul.

This and the motley group of colorful strangers walking around me in the glorious Nanda Park, assure me sincerely, that my day is going to be comfortingly warm.

I disappoint them all by feeling strangely unsettled. The sense of disquiet I feel is not very different from the sort you feel as a kid when you have just been told off by your parents and imagine yourself exchanging lives with a richer, more pampered kid. You firmly believe that your life will be a lot sunnier with Ashish’s elaborate, do-it-yourself-clay kit-three brand new clays and a mini Diamond comic- completely free. But before you can sulk in greater, strategic, detail, your parents have swooped down on you with abounding affection, planted three warm kisses on your tiny forehead and you have changed your mind.

The problem, according to my God and role model, Buddy Glass, is that " An ecstatically happy writing person is often a totally draining type to have around.'' In his esteemed opinion, I have now “forfeited the much smaller, but for a writer, always rather exquisite pleasure of appearing on the page serenely sitting on a fence.”

The energizing, dance music in the “Groove” folder on my trusted companion and old friend- my broken, morosely cellophane taped, mp3 player- gives way to the surprise of a lifetime -a song I have fixed permanently and without permission, to my past.

The laughter club in the background goes ha-ha-ha. Old wrinkled hands come together and the sounds of claps synchronize, without meaning to, with the dreamy overwhelming tones, ladies and gentlemen, of Pink Floyd’s A Pillow of Winds.

The anonymous dust particles decide to whisper secrets to me, free of charge. So, now, I know the reason for my crankiness.

That evening, like all the other evenings in the past year, I would go back to my house, to the soothing familiarity of the maroon sofa in the living room, the posters on my walls, the comforting beeps of the microwave in the kitchen. I would sip cinnamon flavored tea, entertain myself with Alan Shore’s theatrics in a ludicrous episode of Boston Legal, and then spend rest of the day trying to transfer information about my life that had never, ever, needed transferring before, to my dear, rapidly-evolving-into-a-Parisian-family. My house had been subtracted cruelly and completely from all the elements that used to succeed hour after hour, in making it a home.

So that day, since there was no other way, I imagined a break from the enjoyable, complex dynamics of my recently acquired fun filled lifestyle; a short visit to my old, plebeian life.

I would go back home that evening, whine to my mother about how we had had Rasam Saadam, Thair Saadam and Manga Thokku only the previous day. She would neglect all my ridiculous complaints, offer me an applam with my Rasam Rice and ask me how my day had been. I would give her an honest account-short sentences, minimum adjectives and unnoticeable emotion, without feeling the desperate need to embellish my narrative with rich anecdotes that seem to be a given these days, you know, to make the frequent ISD call seem like it was worth it.

My brother’s problems would be completely two-dimensional. His friends would look and behave more like normal, healthy, hormone raging kids, and less like horny, pretty, intellectual actors from a surreal, Godard movie.

He would complain to me about how his study time was cutting into his FIFA 08 time, how the Apartment Association Chairman pissed him off and treat me to animated imitations of his nose-digging, periodically-burping, absolutely off his rocker, Social Studies teacher- Nagendra Gowda.

After all this, a long, pointless fight would ensue, at the end of which I would mess up his beautifully close cropped hair and his irritation towards me would envelop the entire atmosphere of his emotional world.

My Dad would come back home and we would all sit on the maroon sofa in the living room, half-heartedly watching the news, pulling each others legs, the microwave beeping incessantly and irritatingly in the kitchen.

After a while, I would get up, feeling the need for some solitude, a treasured treat in those days. I would close my door and switch off the lights, the glossy posters on my wall glinting in the semi-darkness. In the background, Leonard Cohen would sing heartbreakingly about his famous blue raincoat, on repeat. I would watch the curtains on my window flutter lightly in the breeze and wonder what it would be like to trade places with someone who had a more eventful life.

Without the aid of long, descriptive emails, or melodramatic outbursts on the phone, my Dad would sense that something wasn’t right in his angst ridden teenager’s world. He would knock lightly on my door, come in, stroke my hair as I pretended to sleep, and I would change my mind, massively content about my ordinary life.

At this point, I decide to take an imaginary camera, shift to black and white mode, switch off the flash and click. Anonymous dust particles congratulate me for realizing that I was stuck with my new life for a long time.

For my part, I hope in all earnest, that perhaps for a few moments every few days, a quick glance at this tiny, simple souvenir from my past will keep me from wanting to just be someone else.

On the 17th of April, at 10:15 p.m, while Bangalore decided to reward us with a surprising spell of drizzle, my friend Swetha and I sat huddled up outside the Symphony-Fame theatre, barely managing to hide our enthusiasm. We were waiting to embark on our first ever trek- a two day trip through a well-known route constituting Mullayanagiri, Bababudhangiri and Kemmangundi.

By a pleasant coincidence, some of our college mates had also registered for the trek. After warm greetings and heavy laughter about nothing in particular, we found ourselves congratulating each other about how we hadn’t missed a single thing on Bangalore Mountaineering Club’s detailed list of mandatory things to carry (sunscreen, whistles, rope, salt, hand-sanitizers, three pairs of clothes, you name it, we had it). We then proceeded to provide customary pats on the back about how we all had such cool, gigantic backpacks and how we were already at the departure point well in advance of the departing time.

After what seemed like hours, wiser, experienced trekkers started trickling in slowly, with miniature sized, extremely comfortable looking backpacks. We wouldn’t really need the rope, or the salt, or for that matter, half of the things on that list, they tell us.

Clearly, the line dividing a regular trekker from a beginner is a long, thick, impassable one.

The bus plying us around was a blue, monstrosity of a vehicle called Hamsa, a close cousin, undoubtedly, of the boisterous, private buses to Market.

After an amazing dinner at a dhaba on the way where we got conned by a stoned looking Sardar and after a terribly bumpy ride in Hamsa, at around six in the morning, we found ourselves in Chikamaglur. We freshened up in a lizard-infested, crumbling, smelly building, called Hotel Woodlands, had breakfast at a nearby restaurant and finally started our journey to the base of Mullayanagiri.

We did a brief round of introductions and then started climbing the twisted, circuitous path (aptly named Sarpadhari) that would take us to the top of Mullayanagiri.

In my excitement, I spent the first few minutes climbing with as much energy as I could muster, without looking to my right or left, concentrating entirely on the path before me. The hill was a little steep so most of the people were concentrating only on climbing without looking around much or even indulging in conversation.
When I finally stopped for some air and looked around, I found myself face to face with a background that seemed like it was out of the sort of poem they taught you in class six where the poet would describe green hills and bubbling streams with nerve-wrecking sentimentality. This was a scene whose magnificence you read about again and again, and yet, contained the sort of beauty you get used to on a road trip. But, somehow, I couldn’t get enough of it this time. I stopped every few minutes to take the scenery in, and every time, I felt like I was being subjected to heartbreaking poetry.

On our way up, we stopped to explore a cave. The damp, musty interior of the cave was a welcome change from the merciless sunshine outside. A bunch of us crowded in on all fours, shining our torches, hooting and making scary noises. We were all in high levels of excitement and felt like established adventurers, till someone pointed out that there might be bats inside and we scampered outside, shouting and nudging each other incessantly. In the matter of a few minutes, our little adventure had become the equivalent to the nauseating chaos of a traffic jam.

As we climbed higher, we stopped taking anything for granted. As we climbed higher, everything started gaining a little more value.

The cold, stream water we drank from a tap on top of the hill, half of a chocolate piece, a bite of a biscuit, half a meal, a toilet break, everything seemed like luxury we could kill for.

We reached the top and surveyed the area around us like we had conquered the place. Photographs were taken, grins were exchanged and then things started going downhill. Literally, even.

Harsha and Janak, our guides for the trek, decided to hire another guide who apparently knew every nook and corner of the surrounding area. Our esteemed guide, Krishna, decided to treat us all to the splendor of the great Manikyadhari Falls (GMF) located on the Bababuddhangiri Hill. The thought of jumping into cool, refreshing water was such an overwhelming catalyst that we increased our speed by at least five times.

We trekked to the falls, hurriedly paid the heavy entry fee (50 Paise), and rushed in to find that the GMF was actually a trickle of water flowing down a rock. We spent about an hour swearing at our guide and cracking bad jokes.

By then, we were nearing the end of the first day of our trek. On our way to the camp site-a place called Galikere-we saw a bird hovering over the landscape, its wings flapping around in harmony with the strong wind. The sun was setting behind it and for about half a minute, we all stood transfixed-a group of twenty-six people, held together by a singularly awe-inspiring scene. At the exact same moment when everyone made a rush for their cameras, the bird flew away and the scene dissolved into nothingness. Funny how in our desperation to capture moments, we allow most of them to simply pass us by.

The BMC website had warned us that we might not be able to pitch tents in Galikere due to heavy winds but when we reached the spot, the air was still, stagnant and buzzing with mosquitoes. There were chicken feathers strewn about all over our campsite. The dramatic ones amongst us claimed they even saw a couple of dog bones. Fortunately, it grew dark before we could conclude our discussion about whether we were camping on sacrificial grounds.

Setting up the camp was a lot of fun. We cooked soup and ready-to-eat-meals. We had trekked for six hours that day so dinner was a long, elaborate, much-awaited affair. We also learnt how to pitch tents. Our guides then found us a mammoth sized log and we built a bonfire.

After the excitement of having a bonfire died down, we didn’t really know what to do next. We were too drained out of energy to sing, too tired to play any game and were far from possessing any sort of enthusiasm to dance. So we did the next best thing-crack extremely bad, murder-inducing-tendency PJs.

A little while later, I crept into one of the tents and slept a slightly disturbed sleep, plagued as it was with patches of some of the memorable PJs and the loud howling of wind, which had finally decided to make its presence felt in Galikere. At around 2:30 in the morning, I decided to take my sleeping bag outside to find that the entire camp had had the same idea. The tents lay empty, and all of us slept soundly under a cloudy, slightly starry sky, the wind going completely wild.

Next morning, we woke up at around 5:30 to find that there were clouds right next to us. And as if such a surprise weren’t enough, one of the trekkers actually made tea for all of us. As we sipped our chai, looks of contentment plastered on all our faces, we caught a glimpse of a large group of villagers making their way to the neighboring hill and squatting down. We opened our mouths to start talking about what they might be doing when right on cue, the clouds descended on them as well, and they were hidden from our view completely. (Excuse me while I say a silent thank you prayer)

By around 7:30, we started trekking to our final destination, Kemmangundi. I enjoyed this trail the most. The scenery was a lot more varied. With lush greenery all around, streams with fresh water and clouds casting a thin veil everywhere, it felt as though we were part of a scene in LOTR. After the previous day, packed as it was with continuous activities, people were more comfortable with each other and some interesting conversations sparked our way.

After some four hours, we reached Kemmangundi. After a satisfying lunch, we decided to visit the Hebbe Falls. The falls were inaccessible by bus so we went by jeeps. The ride was more adventurous than all the trekking put together. The driver of our jeep looked less than sixteen years old and to top it all, seemed to have a keen interest in remixed versions of melodramatic, Flop-Film songs from the 80s and 90s.

The falls were truly spectacular. I haven’t seen anything like it before. The water was clean and welcoming and we jumped in before anyone could say boo. Almost our entire group sat on the rocks while the water fell on us with breathtaking force.

On our way back to Bangalore, our bus broke down and we stopped for dinner in a shady restaurant in Arsikere. The non-vegetarians quietly debated if the meat in their plates was from a chicken or a dog.

After dinner, Harsha entertained a large group of us with hilarious stories about our driver and from his experiences. We laughed heartily and I don’t think any of us felt like ending that conversation. Finally, our driver’s loud honking forced us to go back into our bus.

I couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms after almost three days without the Internet or my phone. Every pore in my body and mind was full of satisfaction.

We were a group of around twenty-six people from various backgrounds, and of various ages. But by the end of the trek, I like to believe that we all felt like we had something in common. I guess it’s hard not to bond and have a colossal blast, when you climb a couple of hills together.

Desperation causes us to brush away the thought of how ridiculously long our train journey to Chennai was going to be. We have never been elaborate plan makers and ten hours in the train instead of the normal six seem to be a small price to pay for our impulsiveness.

The Muzaffarpur Express seems to be a haven for cockroaches, broken tables, rude unreserved public and maapleys. I look out of the window, wave away a mosquito or two, take in the stench of the railway track ravenously and think about how strange it is that it takes about half an hour of small talk for conversation to start flowing even amongst the closest of friends.

As usual, the excuse is a fest in IIT. I conveniently forget to mention that the main event of the fest is a math modeling competition. Not like you need an excuse to do anything in final sem. With freedom and panic as our constant companions, we now do what would have taken us months of decision making and disappointment, in half a day. Emotions run high and even the biggest nerd in class voices her frustration readily at the end of an hour of completely incomprehensible Transport Phenomena.

We tread on everything with the utmost caution. We see potential in every little detail. Every incident, every joke, every photograph, every trip, every experience is a prospective candidate for an unblemished, immortal memory. At times, the pressure to attain perfection is terrifying. Imbeciles that we are, we keep forgetting that like all good things, perfection is attained when you stop trying and give in to spontaneity. So we throw our expectations out of the window and take turns to sit by the door.

Sharadha(IM) tells Ankur(Pink) and me about her cousins with such genuine fondness that we are in love with them even before we meet them . Nameless villages present themselves before us every few minutes, my hair gives in to its alter ego and goes crazy, and as the wind hits our faces, IM paints pictures in our minds with enviable clarity.

Before we know it, Chennai Central is grinning at us as we sweat out of every pore in our bodies.

IM’s grandma greets Pink and me with such familiarity that within ten minutes, she manages to make even Pink the prude, comfortable. IM’s cousin, Hari, is a spastic. He is physically thirteen years old, mentally one, deaf, dumb, epileptic, and recognizes the touch only of his mother who is currently in the U.S. Pink and me bomb down our initial feeling of overpowering sympathy when we see that everyone else was treating Hari like he was a normal child. We realize that our pity isn’t going to change the situation in any way and start talking to Hari like we have known him all our lives. We sit around with our legs propped up on the bed, the fan comforting us just by its presence, and watch wonderstruck, as Hari comes to the room every once in a while to switch off the lights and the fan, waits, looks around happily, and then switches all the switches on again. This, on repeat, innumerable times a day, is his primary activity. His full-time help, Valli, shows the sort of devotion towards taking care of him that makes her worthy of sainthood. Hari stares at the ceiling and walks around with ease in a world far, far away from the one we live in. As he comes back to our room for the hundredth time to hug Pink who he has taken an unfathomable liking to, I think of how I complain occasionally about how no one is capable of understanding the temporary, haphazard voids inside me, the depth of my confused soul and I feel painfully petty.

Gokul, (IM’S cousin-IMC), is having a busy day at work and still manages to patiently answer our repeatedly irritating queries about bus routes to Mahabalipuram and food joints in Chennai. When we finally get on a bus different from the one he recommended, he utters a small sigh and gives up.

The East Coast Road is wide and smooth and we have a pleasant time giggling at the sort of things only maapleys can say(“Samudram paar da. Rajni aaton naanu jump paanutaaa.”- Look at the sea, man. Shall I also jump like Rajni?) Pink miraculously understands maapley speak and we laugh our asses off at the smallest of things.

The Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram is not as overwhelming as we had expected it to be but we don’t really care and heave as many touristy sighs as possible. The beach is calm and soothing, the road side shops are cheap and comforting and maapleys are in great abundance everywhere. We have positively nothing to complain of.

We go back to Chennai in the evening and meet up with Madhu (IMC) and Hari’s dad who makes Pink and I change into a pair of jeans and chudidaar respectively. We mumble a little even if Uncle asks us nicely enough. After Podi dosais at Kayandi Bhavan and a marvelously refreshing Cheeku milkshake, we laugh at all our silly inhibitions. We don’t complain about the weather even once.

The next day, Pink, IM and I meet up with Abhishek, an old school friend now in IIT.

IIT is its usual dreamy self and I feel like I have been transported back into time. We have long forgotten about the fest which was the original purpose of our trip. Abhishek shows us the “sights”- the SAC, the OAT, the stadium, the swimming pool, the deer, and we walk around ogling at everything. The Lake looks very different in the morning, as opposed to the eerie, Edgar Allan Poe-esque, addictive, nightmare that it was the last time I went there. It flows almost like a river and we pelt stones, laugh, talk, and stay silent. IM and Pink have never met Abhishek before and yet there isn’t one awkward silence. In college, back home, we usually stand around shiftily when we meet strangers, struggling to say something clever and funny.

In the evening, IM’s uncle gives us one bike each and we go with a bunch of IMCs to the beach in Besant Nagar. My gaadi is an ancient Kinetic Honda without a horn. I hardly look in the rear view mirror and follow the IMCs blindly. It’s unbelievably thrilling to ride in an unfamiliar city.

The girls in the group-IM, Madhu, Ranju and me, skeptically ask a cart vendor near the beach about how much her ear-rings would cost us. She magically says “Ten Rupees” and we jump at the cart to the sounds of exasperated sighs from Pink and Ashok.

In the distance, orange sparks fly from the butta carts, the strong smells from the fish shops force themselves into our heads, beggars nudge us, and windmills flutter excitedly. We give everything half a glance. The sea is a lot stronger and violent at night and we run towards it as though we are intoxicated. The waves crash down on us, reducing us to squeals of delight. We hold hands, we take silly photographs, and we have the time of our lives.

We go to Fruit Shop on Greams Road, and cheerily destroy the romantic atmosphere the couples there probably spent an hour trying to create. The milkshakes are orgasmic, the laughter thunderous, and the conversation ridiculously idiotic.

The next day, we meet up with all the IMCs and Abhishek and go to a gaming zone at a mall. We play W.W.E and tennis on Xbox. We see the most silent cousin come alive.
IM has a comfort level with her relatives that Pink and I can only dream of. She has hardly anything in common with most of them but they seem to have affection for each other that is beyond unconditional. Pink doesn’t have too many cousins so he isn’t to blame but I don’t have anything that could possibly forgive the distance I have from some of my relatives.

Something about this trip has loosened up all our fixed notions, oiled our perspective so we can think more clearly.

When we finally board the train, IM, Pink and I feel like one unit. The experience of sharing everything, including the space, people and anecdotes that are dear to our hearts, has brought us so close that we can feel our personalities overlapping. We sit on a lower side bunk and talk late into the night.

Suddenly, we have forgotten about going back. Chennai is an amazing city and we feel like staying here forever. We neglect the fact that IM’s cousins haven’t been to the beach in a year and Abhishek hardly goes to The Lake. We are sure that we would be different if we were given the chance.

I feel remorse one moment, and peaceful the next. There is nothing stopping me, absolutely no obstacles in my path which can keep me from appreciating the people around me for what they are and not for what I expect them to be, from treasuring whatever I have, from realizing its importance, its significance in my life, from taking every minute and squeezing as much energy as I can out of it and from forming an unblemished, immortal memory without even thinking about it.

The TUVIM bus in Paris is like any other bus in the city, except that it's free and it takes you about fifty times longer to get anywhere because the driver takes the most convoluted route available and stops every ten feet. But of course, my mum is crazy about the TUVIM. So crazy that she would rather wait for half an hour in the bus stop and get to our destination an hour later than take a normal bus and get there in ten minutes.

Some days ago, I decided to go up the schmEiffel Tower and my mum wouldn't hear of me going alone so she came along. The TUVIM stop was packed that evening and I was putting on my best sulk. Right in the middle of my hundredth whine to my mum about why she had to come with me wherever I went, this gigantic guy came up to the seat and sat on it as gingerly as possible. Then he got up to check if he had done any damage and sat down once again after looking at us apologetically. Across the road, a lady was standing at the gate of a house covered in creepers, talking with another lady at the kitchen window, both clinging on to their coats and unaware of how much more comfortable the conversation might be inside, with a cup of hot tea. Four kids, each of a different color, greeted each other like they hadn't seen each other in years. Mum was sort of speaking-a-blog to me, as she made these observations, each more delightful than the previous. Moments later, two really old, really well-dressed, hip, pattis came and sat next to us. I got up and my mum immediately said, "Oooo Cheeiiyuuu, Yethna ayagzha irruka illa? Muttha kuddukno na arrudu." (Oooo Cheeiiyuuu, So pretty no? I feel like giving them a kiss) I started to laugh because I don't know anyone else in the world apart from my mother, who can get away with making statements like that and the two pattis were really that kiss-able.

Surprisingly enough, we talk more Tam in Paris than in Bangalore even though most people here wouldn't understand if we spoke in English. Anyway, that pretty much broke the ice between Mum and me. Whatever arguments I put forth, there was no going around the fact that on a cold, cloudy day, there was nothing as entertaining as the TUVIM bus stop.

It was a weekday, so the queue at the tower wasn't too long. It was mostly a lot of Americans going on like about how like it was like going to be like such an awesome experience. Unfortunately, I find myself talking in a slightly similar manner on several occasions and so to reduce my pain, I shot a nasty glare at the couple before me.

I wasn't too excited. For me it was just another activity to indulge in. When we got into the elevator we were greeted with an absolute, hushed silence from all the tourists around us; these were people who had obviously never lived on the 25th floor- of- an-apartment before. Then Mum started chanting the name of the guy with a permanent bad-hair-day and murdering the atmosphere so I told her to please-chant-in-her-mind and she humored me without question. ((Every time the recipient of this strong devotion comes up in conversation, Vinnie and I usually go B to the A to the B to the A and make the Rajni movie sign and go into hysteria). At times I think, if I was my mum (and Vinnie's), I might shoot me(and Vinnie). But I suppose it is okay, because if Vinnie and me had been born assassins, the aforementioned recipient of our mother's devotion would have probably topped our list. )

In retrospect, going on top of a thousand foot tall tower wasn't really such a big deal. You know what to expect and you get precisely that. The elements of surprise are non existent, let alone being gracious enough to make their presence felt. But at that time, apart from the general floaty feeling, there was some sort of a protest going on in some corner of the city, in Tam.

To tell you the truth, it was quite unpleasant. I couldn't really hear or understand anything and the loudspeaker was buzzing about like crazy. We might have been in the video of a bad psychedelic song.

We were on top of the one thing that the world considers French beyond doubt. We were surrounded by innumerable foreigners, making-out or taking pictures, talking in at least six different languages, and the only thing that was really, really succeeding in making its presence felt and almost ruining the atmosphere, was some rebellious speech in Tam. It was bizarre. Not in a good way or a bad way but in an interesting sort of way. I turned to my mum and realized she was experiencing the exact same feeling that I was . And then, just like that, our minds were in the same frame of reference.

If I had come alone by a regular bus and metro, an hour ago, soothing, carefully picked music pumping into my ears, I would have gone back home satisfied but bored.

We have our share of arguments, my mother and me. And god knows, we have our share of differences. But I don't know anyone apart from her, who can turn a total cliché into something unforgettable.

So after the nicest, dreamiest four-day holiday-in-a-holiday anyone could ask for, after visiting my first international comic festival ever, attending signings and exhibitions like I had never imagined I would, visiting an aquarium in a small, sea side town called La Rochelle on our way back, (with sharks and oysters and jelly fish and fish who were called hermaphrodites) I woke up next day to snow. And suddenly, my parents and I were rushing into the terrace in our day clothes, the mere thought of which usually takes us a few moments of contemplation because we would have to button up in our coats and shoes for fear of being blown away from the 25th floor. We respectfully stopped at the door for a fraction of a second, afraid of leaving foot prints on the wholesome, thick, white carpeted floor.

Then we ran in.

The landscape below was barely recognizable. The tennis courts and football fields in the distance, looked like barren land. Small, flickering flakes fell on us and around us. For my mum and me, it was the first time we were witnessing an actual snowfall. My dad smiled at our child like excitement. The weather turned our conversations electric, our photography professional, our thoughts articulate. For the smallest of moments, because it was still early then and everyone around us was enjoying the scenery just like us, the city slept below us, blanketed by an icy, untarnished cover.

When I came out an hour later, there were dirty car tracks everywhere, ice melting away sadly, and intersecting, overlapping, unwanted, unavoidable footprints, all around.

I stayed in at home and watched a movie that afternoon. The thought of walking around, in my boots as it may be, in melted ice, was so undesirable that I didn’t even hold a small fight with myself about how I would miss seeing snow fights or kids working at their snowmen.

The next day, I got hold of a book called twenty five great walks in Paris and decided to try out two of them. For some reason, how much ever I randomize my walks; I always end up at the Notre Dame. I don’t like the area too much; especially the area immediately surrounding the cathedral. But on some days, the light dances with so much charm on the river that it make you oblivious of the multitudinous tourists that buzz around the lanes and of the Americans who make you cringe even at the heartening sound of English.
But today, I went to an entirely different street in the island of Ile Saint Louis which houses Notre Dame. I looked at puppet shops and antique shops in glee. The junk jewellery was ten times costlier than in Commercial Street but I guess presentation is very deceptive. Boutique stores have a way of showcasing their jewellery that makes them look ten times more desirable. In one of the shops, an Indian/Pakistani looking guy tried to convince me that a ring that was without a doubt from a place like Comm street, was worth 25 euroes. He weighed it and told me it was calculated per gram. Shove-it-up-your-ass. Bastard.
All the walking made me hungry so I walked into Berthillon which is supposed to have top-notch ice cream and cakes etc . Okay, not really. I compulsively have a coffee and a-little-something- like our friend and role model, Pooh bear, would say- every time I go out. And going inside a café means getting to use their restrooms so forgive me God. The chocolat gâteau was delectable. The café au lait, not so much. But it was warm and comforting and the waiter was speaking in very sweet sounding Swahili on the phone, so I forgave them.
The French think and do everything in their language and this causes me to wallow in despair at times.

I chanced upon a Manga café on my second walk in the Latin Quarter. I walked in, mostly to warm myself up a little seeing as it was -2 degrees outside and I was beginning to wonder if there was a point to the walk. The walk was called ‘Down and out of Paris’. All it did was to show me the Pantheon which I have seen about a hundred times before.

The café was a cozy place. Little kids were sitting around on comfortable cushions reading Shonen Manga while some twenty somethings were sitting in another corner reading Seinen Manga. Without much hope I went to the guy at the counter asking for books in English. He pointed to another guy who knew a little English, with friendly gray eyes and an eye brow piercing who I crushed on instantly. Unfortunately, his knowledge of English extended to “No sorry, no books en Anglais. Only French and Japanese? But we have these pins. (Pointing towards tiny badges on the wall with Manga characters o them) Sorry.” Normally, I would not crush on a guy who just looked pretty. It is very, very rare for that to happen. But goddamnit, as much as I hate to admit it, Paris is NOT a city for single people. It isn’t the city’s fault. Any place is capable of being romantic and this is one among many. And I love traveling on my own. I love good company too but I don’t mind discovering places alone. In fact, I quite enjoy it. I have never felt so bad about being single that it makes me imagine dream sequences (that usually involve me talking in fluent French. (HAHAHAHAHA) )with every second guy I lay my eyes on. But, in India, people don’t make out on the streets and here, they make out everywhere-in the metro, on the bus, on the street, in the metro stations, in the RER stations, in your basement, in the grocery store. They take breaks from making out to live their lives. And not like an intimate kiss on the lips that makes you wistful but not the creep from the 3.4 IMDB rating Hollywood movie you are now a star of. Most of the “couples” are a little short of tearing their clothes off and just doing it on the road. I never thought I would say this but I actually look forward to getting back home to my normal, whiny, low-self-esteem, why am I still single when none of my friends are, issues than this volcanic desperation. My nerves are blowing up, seriously.

The problem with writing graphic novel reviews is that you have to use words like “original” really often. I don’t know why I call some authors original and call the others “unassuming” or “honest”. Frankly, I don’t know what gives me the goddamn right. I guess I’m not very good at writing about the negative aspects of anything which is probably why I suck at reviews. My intention is purely to make someone pick up the book and read it. Or not read it. But I draw very thin lines open to wide interpretation.

At the comic festival, I got my graphic novels signed by Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes. I went to this presentation by Tomine where he talked about his new book and said something very brutally honest. He said, “I know I am not original. I am never going to draw anything original. I tried drawing something different and it just looked like crap. I draw from what I have learned and my sketches are influenced by others.” And then he made a joke about how his publisher was going to kill him for saying that. He said he had decided he didn’t really care what people thought about him. I liked his book a little better after that and him a little less. I talked to him for a bit when he signed my book and I liked his artwork. It didn’t matter to me if it was original or not. Honestly, I didn’t know the difference and I couldn’t care less. I noticed that the queue at his signing was much shorter than for the other two who are well established in the field. He didn’t really seem like a nice guy but at least he made no show about it.

I don’t really like Clowes. I fail to see why he is so popular. His books don’t do anything for me, and that’s that. But Chris Ware was a marginal case. I had reviewed his book some weeks back and decided that it was great but just not for me. I didn’t get his artwork. I’m not sure if many people do. But when I spoke to him, he was the only one who really wanted to talk, he spent ages on every sketch he made for the people in the queue, he shook hands with everyone, asked them how they were. Maybe his publisher told him to do these things but he was just so earnest about doing them that I fell in love with him immediately. The queue kept growing. I noticed several French people who didn’t know English, buying his books in English and getting them signed.

When I came back home and looked at his work, I noticed how different it was from other people’s. There was sadness in his writing that touched me without making me feel sympathetic towards his characters. There was beauty in his art that strung a chord in me without me understanding why.

When I came back from the festival, my head was in a whirl. I had been subjected to so much creativity that my own decaying brain felt like it was going to give out any minute. My own writing felt weak, pointless, and unimaginative. Somewhere in the madness of finding a purpose to my silly little life and getting published in newspapers, I had almost forgotten who I wrote for in the first place.

I say something when I feel the urge to say it. If I don’t have anything to say, I prefer silence.

I was going to start writing unfathomable free verse about my loneliness and pretend I was a disturbed, curious, interesting character from a Wes Anderson movie. Something I have never been even close to seeing as I have had a fairly uneventful, reasonably happy, mostly uninteresting life till now.

And then it snowed.

So I changed my mind. After a couple of viewings, even an apparently perfect movie seems to have hidden flaws anyway.

I decided to focus on the things that mean something to me. Without, you know, worrying about if I was being original while I was at it or anything.