The Exchange

I had a quick exchange of emails with my 'believer' friend...
me being a devout 'non-believer' thought I had her wittily cornered, but she managed to out wit me in under ten seconds...something which I have become quite accustomed to (and also thoroughly enjoy) when it comes to her.

me: He who never knows love

Lives peacefully and in happiness

  If one is lucky, he stays that way
Believer: He who never knows love has never lived. His luck lies in that he perhaps never realizes how unlucky he truly is...

The Frayed Shoelace

The shoelace is frayed
and the sole is worn out
I still can not get myself to throw it out

The laces come undone every ten steps
and the soles do nothing for my sore feet
I still can not get rid of them

The funky silver and purple has now lost its shine
My sock peeps out through an emerging hole
Still, I can not chuck them as yet

They've gotten soaked in the Mumbai rains
and dried in the Mandalay sun
How can I even think of letting them go

They have been with me on the grimy floor of Stansted
and tripped me throughout Mahabaleshwar
These shoes are never leaving my side

From Prague to Pune, these shoes have seen me through quite a bit
No wonder the laces are frayed
They have been soaking in memories all this while

The Underground Jungle

I sit on the train and watch a blur of buildings float by, soon the descent begins. The train starts burrowing underground, deeper and deeper, the blur of buildings give way to a dust crusted brick walls replaying the same monotonous pattern again and again giving the illusion of absolute stillness, broken only by the loud clatter of the train as it goes deeper underground (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtLatRbCo8&feature=related  - jump to 1.31 seconds).

The brick walls soon form the backdrop for the sea of wires and pipes. As I sit in the train I watch as the piped waves continuously rise and fall – rise and fall – rise and fall, quickly realising the need to snap out of hypnotic trance, my mind shifts to the people on the train. This is where I discover the underground jungle.

Train (from now on shall be referred to as the tube, quite fed up typing tube each time and then back spacing to replace it with train) rides are quite dull, one has little else to do than observe your fellow passengers or risk being hypnotised by the wired and piped waves. On this particular tube ride, everyone seemed to resemble some sort of animal – whether it was the puma in the overcoat standing near the door, quiet, unassuming, but as soon as a as a seat opened, he would pounce on it – only to succumb to British politeness and offer his seat to a slightly older lady behind him.

Or it could be chimp in the school uniform who is flinging himself from the hand bars only to settle down when handed a banana (seriously!) by his mother. Then there was the squirrel in the tweed coat, a small little thing, with eyes which darted all over the place – scanning the name of station stops and then eyeing the map, re-confirming the name of the station and then counting down the stops to her actual destination. She sat nervously on the edge of her seat for a good twenty minutes, until her stop came and she shot out of the train. Next I spotted the giraffe with the briefcase, gripping the hand rail and stooping to fit into the tube, didn’t observe him for much longer, my height insecurities seemed to creep in.  

As I reflected on my five foot two inch self, I also caught my actual reflection in the window, and realised I was also transforming into a tube animal – and it got worse – I truly and most sadly resembled a bespectacled cow!  I was sprawled in my seat, had the most uninterested expression pasted on my face and was chewing my gum in a cud like fashion! That’s when I decided to do what I did in Mumbai locals, listen to my music and stare at my frayed shoelace (More to come in my next blog post “The Frayed Shoelace”).

 Of course in Mumbai locals - sigh, how I miss them, one has little choice, when one is tucked neatly between a moist arm pitt and an oddly angular hip, but to stare at one’s shoelace – assuming that your lucky enough to see it!

Expressway to Hell!

After readings this blog post, I am sure that you would realise that the title is not quite indicative of the content of this post. I have been clever enough to pre-empt this incongruity – of course I am not nearly clever enough to actually come up with an apt title, so perhaps I should put my intellectual pride on the back burner for a while. Regardless the title is irrelevant, you have obviously started reading and have continued till this point, so now that I have your attention, you might as well trudge along and read the rest (if you have time on your hands, if you don’t I suggest you do not put yourself through the duress I had to endure) – the following is the ranting of a very very disgruntled being.

About a week ago, a very dear friend of mine – AP (yes yes if you know me, you know who that is, now stop mocking my brilliant code in your mind and read on) came to visit me in this oh so grey city. She had some relatives in Edinburgh so we decided to make a weekend getaway of sorts to north.

We booked our tickets on a the national express coach – was our most reasonable option – and well I could do with something reasonably priced in this blindingly expensive city. It was a night bus departing at 11.20 on Friday night and reaching at 8 am on Saturday. I had made grand plans to nap through trip and wake up fresh and ready to explore Edinburgh – but of course like all my other plans this one too fell flat. It was the most ghastly trip ever.

For starters, the bus arrived an hour late, which sent AP into a tizzy, enquiring about 3 times every 40 seconds whether I was sure we were at the right place. I of course, refused to ask anyone for directions or even confirmation – this is one of the many reasons I think I have the mental constitution of a very stubborn man. After getting highly nervous for over and hour, the bus finally arrived, I was expecting a flurry of apologies from the driver, but instead I got a rather hoarse yell “Edinburgh Passengers here!”.

For a country which spends most of its time apologising for things both in and beyond her a control its rather amusing that this particular bus driver had no intention of apologising. In my two years here, I have been sent numerous apologies – we are sorry we are unable to call you for an interview, we are sorry to inform you the post went to a more deserving candidate, we are sorry to inform you that your payment is overdue, we apologise for severe delays on the Northern Line (More on that on my next blog post, the underground jungle.).

Just as we stepped on the bus, the only words I uttered to AP were “Make sure we don’t get seats near the loo” and of course much like most of Karan Johar’s movies (long time fan, first time referred to in my blog!) the end was most predictable. There we sat, right in front of the loo, inhaling the vilest of fumes and listening to the mechanics of every visitor’s bladder. As I complained relentlessly, for some reason AP was most not bothered, her concern seemed to be directed towards the men – sorry boys in the next row who were gulping down a bottle of rum. She turned to me and said that the smell of the alcohol was most noxious, as I stared at her incredulously, I wondered how she could even smell the rum above this stench and besides that the smell of rum was currently far more appealing to me then that of urine and other unmentionables.

Regardless  of all the above, I decided to get some shut eye – I wrapped myself up in my shawl, and put my legs on the foot rest, I realised there was no foot rest and micro seconds later this realisation was passed on to my feet which came crashing down. Shaking yet another incident off, I sipped some water and placed it in the pouch behind the seat in front of me, once again, much like my feet, the bottle also flung itself on the floor and rolled into the sea of feet ahead of me. The bottle would be lost until it decided to come slamming back into my foot in the middle of the one hour of sleep I was able to catch on the 9 hour trip.

As I groggily woke up to a cankerous noise of the overhead luggage shutter, I found AP wide eyed and well rested. I on the other hand was sleep deprived and oh so cranky. The trip went off brilliantly, except for my quite frequent narcoleptic behaviour – the cause of which we all know by now.  

The much dreaded return trip went off brilliantly, I felt I was in a 5 star hotel suite compared to the last journey. However, it was also an eye opener of sorts, I realised that the on our inbound journey our seats were actually missing seatbelts, heating and the consumption of alcohol was banned (AP was quite happy with this bit, I was not, I could have used a drink to get through the first trip)! A quick point which I had forgotten to mention earlier, I had sent a text messaging complaining about the service or lack of it to the good people at national express – of course needless to say, I got no reply. This only roiled me up even more and I wrote a 9 point letter to the complaints department, describing my rather colourful journey. Within 24 hours, I got a reply from a Vivienne or something with V, saying “MR. D…We have registered your complaint” – talk about adding insult to injury!