12 Minutes of Mind Parkour

12 minutes. That is how much time I had left in the work day. I had 3 hours of free time only about 3 hours and 12 minutes back. I managed to drink a barrel of tea, read two longform essays and amused myself at reactions from fans upon Fergie retiring from Twitter football. Oh and spent at least one good hour of those three glancing at the clock. Incidentally we have two clocks over here - one that shows desi time and the other American. I keep comparing them, wishing that the American time was Indian and I had less than 3 hours and 12 minutes to wait out.

The abundance of time with nothing to do makes you a fine example of manic OCD. And I admit am a bit cracked upstairs, so... I think of myself being in solitary confinement, with my laptop a window of bleak sunlight . I look at the desk phone as if a lawyer from Costa Rica would call me up and say, "Hola amigo, come down to Mehhiko - you won 20 grande de hombres pal!" I know that doesn't make sense but what can a man with 3 hours and 12 minutes of free time on his hand do?

I swipe away at my phone, hold it to my ear, waiting for it to ring all of a sudden and embarrass me in public. Fucker is Manmohan Singh. I read about a team of daredevils attempting to mount Everest - from the  behind. I laugh at that joke. What can a man do other than laugh at a bad joke when he has 3 hours and 12 minutes of free time and with no Mount Everest to climb? From the behind? HahahahaOK FINE THIS IS NOT SANTABANTA.COM OK??

I switch between tabs and press refresh like Aladdin with a defunct lamp in the middle of an Iraqi street, wanting to be whisked away to Hawaii but the genie is busy working on Excel sheets in an IT firm in Guwahati. I glance at the unopened letters at the corner of my desk with the previous occupant's name on them, imagining them to be love letters from some girl in Libya who wanted to run away from Arab Spring and experience Bengali winter ("Dear, I hate Benghazi. A rocket just blew up my uncle and I think that $20 suicide vest is of no use now. Bloody hell. Why don't you send me my birthday check early sweetie?")

And suddenly just like that, those 12 minutes are up. The day is over. I tuck away my laptop with all its Excel sheets and white papers into the cabinet under my desk, ordering it under my breath into the bug-box and come clean on his friends for a plate of shwarma salad. And then I walk off, hoping that there would be a truckload of work tomorrow so that a man does not go on an insane parkour ride inside his mind!

If The Army Really Staged A Coup….

With all the coochie-couping rumors and Chinese whispers in the press about the Army trying to stage a coup earlier this year, I thought it was a good time to wash my hands in the beheti Ganga of Blogger-giri with an opportunist post. What if these rumors were true? What if this General VK Singh blew the trumpet and made UPMA out of UPA? Well well well……

If the Army did really stage a successful coup then…

1. Mamata Banerjee will instantly stand around a tank and demand a rollback, upon which the tank will rollback on her, thereby ending the insecurity of a whole nation over Didi
2. You can finally stand up to the Missuj and say “Ae, there is no Sonia, Sheila or Mamata in power. Boss you shut up now ok?” {P.S.: The Army isn’t responsible for what happens after this}
3. Manmohan ji will be made the head of all democratic alliances, thereby negating all hopes of anything being done or said against the coup. Ever.
4. All stupid TV shows and docu specials featuring soldiers being forced to dance like retards in sync with horrendous singing by the omnipresent Aamir Khan will be banned.
5. Bobby Deol’s glorious film, with patriotism dripping off like ghee from a Punjabi aunty’s parantha, ‘Soldier’, will be inducted into the hall of fame and the title song as national anthem. Thus will end an era of pathetic “Soldier Soldier, pant ki zip khol kar, **** uraa le gaya” jokes.
6. Arnab Goswami will be sent to POW camps, where he will holler and cross question every enemy espionage element till either Arnab or the whole camp is finished. I am skeptical about the latter surviving.
7. Suhel Seth will be asked to answer every question Arnab Goswami has ever asked his panelists on TV in his HT Brunch column style, ending in him self-combusting and ridding the world of excess baggage and white hair.  
8. Twitter and Facebook experts ranting on how the huge defence budget is hurting the country’s economy will be sent to Siachen with a Swiss knife and a smartphone to carry on their noble effort.  
9. Barkha Dutt will be sent to interview Hafiz Sayeed, where she will ask him inane questions like “How does it feel to have a $10 million bounty and US drones’ crosshairs on your head?” thereby ending in both screaming and then killing each other in a huge explosion. Win-Win for India and the Army.
10. IPL 5 will be cancelled and instead, players will be competing in the ‘International Mine Stumping’ League. Where they compete against a hamming Sunil Shetty stumping out a Pakistani tank aka Gilchrist like he did in ‘Border’. Fun it will be, I swear.
11. Bullets would be made currency, effectively ending all crimes. How? Example -- “Motherwanker, you would be dead by now if I had not been retiring with only two bullets in my account.” (inspired)
12. All people harping on the Armed Forces being nothing better than killing machines will be sent to J&K beside the LoC. Yeah, now you can decide whether you want to shoot a Burkha in boots or take him to the maternity hospital. Yes ‘she’ is a him and will be shooting bullets from an AK-47 into your arse. But YOU are the human rights champion man. You know better than shooting an innocent civilian, of course!  
13. Finally, Sachin will be asked to retire with a posthumous Param Vir Chakra, thus wiping out a country’s hysteria with cricket and turning everyone’s attention back to soccer.  
14. Call of Duty and all other FPS-games will be FREE!

Alright, I respect our democracy. But when the state of democracy is the state we are currently in, you can’t really stop stray, weird thoughts from getting into your head, right?!

Regards,

Core Commander of Useless Frontline Posts

Lt. Colonel DibDib

#KLPD for #KLPD

I was disappointed. Very.

I had waited for ‘The Tree of Life’ to get a wide release here in Kolkata. After all, this was the ‘kaalcharaal capital’ of India. But it was never to be. My hopes did a Sergei Bubka when I heard that the Kolkata Film Festival was to screen the film. Okay, it was a weekday, but never mind. I was ready to sell my soul for this.

I headed to Nandan yesterday to get tickets. And in a massive #KLPD moment, I found out that the film had ‘Press Cards Only’ entry. Fantastic. So you decide to screen a long-awaited film, and instead of letting the public to try and grab a seat, you whore out to the press. I contacted friends who had Press Cards, but as was expected, they wanted to watch the film more than being philanthropic.

Tchah.

I headed to Howrah from there, angry at what fate thought was funny. She was to be back in town after a week-long office trip to Hyderabad.

To cut the story short, I picked her up from the New Terminal, which is as navigable as a JFK Airport in Manila. I think even Harry Potter would have landed on the train tracks had he used the Apparition spell meant to take him to a certain platform.

The only interesting thing that happened was when she informed me that the train had already docked into the station, and she was waiting for the coolie (ref. me). I panicked, because there was no train at the platform where I was waiting. I imagined all sorts of things in a timeframe of 5 seconds, including being sentenced to being the middle berth on Patna-Chennai trains to being subjected to a tirade that will stop only when Frooti plugs the flow. 5 seconds later, I saw the train chugging into the platform, and broke into a cold sweat. “Baal baal bach gaye”, I grinned and muttered to the Bihari coolie standing next to me, who was not Bihari after all and spat out the choicest of expletives at me. Apparently, baal is not a term of endearment here.

A warmestest of hugs later, we set off for a cab back home. By we, I mean me, two suitcases and a bag on me, and her. Well, of course.

After haggling with the cab drivers outside the station, who wear glasses that stick ‘ripe murgi for halaal’ stickers on to young couples coming out of the station, we set off. The plan was to drop her off and then back home in the same cab. So the usual tension and worry had taken a walk.

The usual talk of how the trip was, how she was missed, how a dream had caused her to call at 2:00 a.m. zipped past, quite like the formidable but beautifully lit up Howrah Bridge and the kebab-laden aroma of the biryani stalls at Park Circus. We fell silent after that. Not that awkward ‘soooo-what-else-is-up’ kind, but the cheesy but sugary ‘Words-are-not-important’ kind. The lights whizzed by. A coquettish smile, fingers intertwine and an endless, warm hug cheating out the coming of winter on the highway. Suddenly, four years seemed only like four hours back in time. 

When I dropped her off and headed back home, I finally said it out loud to the flyover pillars hurtling by in the darkness…..

“Dear KLPD, KLPD kaisa laga?!”

Heh!

At The Other End of Extremism

As the barren mountains of Tora Bora saw the dust settle from the rolling away of T-62 tanks of the Soviet army post the failed invasion of Afghanistan, the Peshawar Seven, comprised of seven Mujahideen warlords, capitalized on the vulnerable advantage that the new country presented. The men as well as the Afghan army resorted to killing, raping, looting and plundering whatever was left of the war-ravaged country.

The country needed a hero. A young preacher and ex-guerilla from the ranks of the Mujahideen in Quetta, Pakistan - Mullah Mohammed Omar, answered the call, and formed the ‘Taliban’. His lashkar (consisting of the youth, or the students of madrassahs from all over Af-Pak regions) had high ideals – they did not loot, did not kill the innocents and did not rape. And most important of all, they did not take money for what they did. They wanted to root out corruption that had slithered into the system of the country, and succeeded. Mostly.

That is, until, the lashkar grew, burgeoning well beyond thousands, and then started splitting into factions. Newer heads surfaced, the ones that were not incorruptible and did not even intend to be so. The ones who had forsaken ideals for the means and were well prepared to use the movement to serve their vested interests. And possibly, even the cause of the greater good, the good of the country.

And Omar himself, played right into the hands of whom he had tried to defeat when he had started his fight – hate, greed, avarice and corruption.

What was once respected and just, has now become the very symbol of savagery and prejudice – the Taliban.

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Now take a moment and switch back to the Indian news channels you have been watching for the last couple of months.

How different is the situation of this Anna Hazare & Jan LokPal Bill movement from the Afghan scenario of 1994? How different an extremist hero is Anna Hazare himself from Mullah Mohammed Omar?!

Now before you get your knickers in a bunch screaming “CONGRESS STOOGE!!” I would like to remind you that extremism does not always require a gun. In fact, extremism, as Gandhi had showed through example, could be as little as sitting on a fast and never strike back – thus weakening the authority’s position every time they tried to force you into a compromise.

And how different is a man from an extremist when he imposes his views on an entire village, and flogs drunk men after tying them to temple pillars? Mind you, these men were simply drunk, and had committed no crime before the punishment was meted out. How different is a man from an extremist when he lets schools be vacated to join him on indefinite fasts?

And Mr. Hazare has been doing it with aplomb.     

As for the minions and the comparison with the Taliban, how many of the pople who are waving the flags on the streets and the people screaming “STOP Corruption” know of the weapon called Jan LokPal Bill that they are fighting with? Heck, let alone the people on the streets. I doubt even the leaders and gurus leading the pack know of the intricacies of the Bill and the long-term impact it may have on the democratic structure of the country – the very thing they are trying to cleanse! And as they grow, they will grow factions, one more orthodox and power-hungry than the other – just like the Taliban had!

It seems the whole country has been driven by blind propaganda and a general unwillingness to dig deeper than mass Email-forwards or sending missed calls to unknown numbers – for they do not wish to uncover an ugly truth beneath the carpet, that upsets the steamroller they have in their hands now – fellow Indians seething in misplaced anger with a mass misconception of having shifted the power of balance into their hands now.

Tell me, how are these men different from the thousands of young men being taught the wrong definition of Islam and Jihad and sent to die in no man’s land?! As I had pointed out, extremism needs no gun. All it needs are docile minds and blitzkrieg-like propaganda, made populist by a TRP-hungry media.

I was watching ‘The NewsHour’ and I was shocked at the lack of knowledge and reasonable answers to valid questions on the Bill, from someone who had been leading the protests in Mumbai from the front and egging bystanders to join the ‘Revolution’. What was also a letdown was the host’s inability (intentional or not remains open to debate) to call out the volunteers digressions from the topic and his rhetorical answers to simple questions like “Do you think the Lokpal drafted by the government is a failure?” 

Compounding the whole situation is the inability of the government to put their foot down and take a stand against such undemocratic conduct. Add to this hajaar idiotic spokespersons on behalf of the Congress making facepalmistry an art through their comments - including Manish Tiwari (He is corrupt too!), Mr. Alvi (there is a foreign hand/comspiracy) and the Hon. PM himself (well, he said nothing substantial. That’s the saddest comment right there!).  

As for the Jan LokPal bill drafted by the ‘jan-daradi’ Hazare & co., here are a few details of the bill you would love to do a reality-check against –

• It is being suggested that The Jan LokPal will have a force of 20,000 officers, who will rush to any complainants’ rescue

How are you going to keep 20,000 men incorruptible and resistant to flirtations with money, when you can’t keep a municipality of 30 officers clean?!

• It has been suggested that the Jan LokPal will have supreme powers – ones that can dismiss a case outright to blacklisting and penalizing a firm/individual – all on its discretion.

 How will you prevent such a totalitarian institution from becoming high-handed, or in the least-damaging scenario, corrupt?

• The force of 20,000 Jan LokPal Bill inspectors, including the Chairperson, will be deemed ‘police officers’, with due authority and powers.

Why not do away with the Judiciary and the Police too then?! And coming back to the earlier point, what if the ‘police officer/LokPal members’ not be as corruptible as the police force of now, considering that they are being selected through the same social and ideological rungs that the IPS is chosen from?!

• The totalitarian Jan LokPal will also have sway over the Judiciary and the PM (in its proposed version of the Bill)

Again, why will we want a new and cumbersome body to preside over issues like corruption and allied issues when we already have the Parliament, the investigative agencies and the Police?! Are these to be disposed off as the ‘third freedom struggle’?

And as a final nail in the coffin, Anna Hazare is 73. While I respect his ideals, I don’t respect his way of achieving them as well as his crony followers. When he steps down, which age will force him to do in some time, I would not want insane God-men dangling from the gates of a state penitentiary to take over the reins of an authoritative body that seeks absolute power. Am not sure the flag-whirling you would like it much either.

A more detailed and obviously much better argument against such unrealistic and autocratic pointers from the Bill has been laid out by the good Nitin Pai here. He is someone I have learnt a lot from. And as he so subtly points out, it is economical and institutional reform we need to root out corruption, not blind rage against a mythical enemy that the middle class is being tutored into.

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And it is imperative for us to learn and act against this swathe of emotion. You want change from corruption and similar social evils? Be the change. Stop waving the tricolor and take action. Stop bribing. Stop turning a blind eye to issues closer to you and inside your homes – such as domestic abuse or child labor. Start being the idol you are trying to find in Mr. Hazare. And start it NOW.

As for me, I have already started it. And I hope you do so too.

For in the near future, I would not want these pseudo-Talibs to walk into a pub I am chilling in, with a beer bought with my own hard-earned money, tie me to a pillar and beat me to pulp. The police and the judiciary would be inaccessible, for these people will be THE police then, right?!

As I said, extremism isn’t always bursting out from the barrel of a gun.

Jurassic City

As the bus danced like an angry Obelix through the cacophonic roads, a lonely guard caught my eye. As nondescript as a lonely guard can be, I saw that he was manning a massive gate – that added to his non-existent existence – which welcomed nobody to a place that used to be a dreamland for kids once. Science City.

If you have ever been to Kolkata, and have ever asked anyone about the places to visit, I will be surprised if you didn’t get a mention of ‘Science City’.

When it had been set up in 1997, every single soul in West Bengal descended on it. And if you would had the audacity to say that you didn’t get the time to visit, the rickshaw-wallahs in your neighborhood would waive your fare and would ask you to take science tuition instead!

Yours truly was not one of them. And thankfully so, as one of the fondest memories, etched most vividly in my head, is that of me and Typo going to Science City with Ma, Baba & Chotomashi. What had initiated this trip from the languid, laidback town of Kalyani (almost 60km away from the capital), was a Steven Spielberg film – back in the days when he was the source for directorial-cliches rather than being the one emulating them. Jurassic Park! 

Now the thing is, with path-breaking CGI and a compact out-of-this-world narrative, the film had already blown collective minds. Science City, with a magical swipe of the government hand, pulled off an advertising coup of the decade unlike any other public sector initiatives of the kind before or after – by incorporating the Jurassic Park concept of ‘dinosaurs in theme parks’ in the City itself!

Okay, okay, Enough with the background.

As we entered the huge campus with two fantastic grass Tyrannosaurus Rex-es doffing their hats and ushering us in, I almost had an intelligence-quest-orgasm in anticipation of what lay inside those walled gardens.

There was a bamboozling collection of dinosaurs – right from the massive Diplodocus to the eerily confrontational Stegosaurus – all mechanized yet almost life-size models of the pre-historic beasts. Me and Typo ran from one to the other, taking in all the information from the plaques, displays and the volunteers. There were books, maps, AV displays – it seemed like a poor man’s Jurassic Park itself. We even tried to smuggle out a Dino egg but the genius that my brother is, he decided to smuggle it hiding it in his pants, freaking the elderly guard out as he had never thought that a kid aged five can have such bad man problems.      

There were other super stuff inside too, one of the highlights being the temporarily set-up Room of Mirrors. But we didn’t stay long there, as you really can’t digest 24 versions of an ugly kid with his brother digging his nose in tow. So we left in a hurry. (Did I forget to tell you that Chotomashi passed out inside the room, because she thought from the reflections that the small pimple on her forehead had assumed such gigantic proportions overnight? No? Okay.)

There was also a 3D Dynamotion thing, which let me experience how Harry Potter feels when he is on a crazy broom with shit controls zooming inside a pyramid. I barfed inside the purse of the lady beside me, but she said that it was okay because she had thrown up on Typo’s head too. People used to be so nice and understanding back then. Sigh! After we got out, Typo asked me if I had seen any sign that said free hair gel was being offered with the 3D trip, but I ignored him.

And as a final part of the dream we were living, there was a Ropeway too! There is nothing like being an eye in the sky and checking out every babe in the vicinity of the whole campus. I would have jumped out like a paratrooper if there was a chute in the cable-car, but there was none and so I didn’t. Typo insisted that a real paratrooper needed no chute and asked me to be a man, but I ignored him like always.

As I left the gates and the dinosaurs behind, fully content with the trip and actually looking forward to the 3-hour trip back home, I had already hatched plans to come back here again next weekend.  

That was never to be.

After our entrepreneurial adventures failed, we moved away from Kolkata, and came back only to find myself buried deep in adulthood and cynicism to revisit this place.

I travel every weekday by this giant scientific dream-turned-daydream, and can only see that its grounds now host romancing couples instead of inquisitive kids. Probably they have planned it right – to romance in the gardens of science itself, so that their kids are born Einsteins, Teslas and Edisons.

Science City, for me at least, symbolizes the happy and carefree curiosity I have left behind in time. It symbolizes the Paper Maps and the little World Globes I have left behind on my desk in my search for success in the real orbs of life. It symbolizes the pre-historic times when I used to have weekends that did not reek of work and evenings were unadulterated fun. Maybe, I never visited again because I was too scared to burst those little bubbles of joy, trapped in a head that has turned arid with time.

Science City, as I pass by you in a purple haze, racing to lynch deadlines and back, I find your charm is still the same. The only thing that’s changed is me. But that is the perfect way to be.

I want to go back there, and yet I don’t. In times when every key on every Smartphone is a Science City in itself, in times when you can't read up old books while searching for another one because Google is so accurate, I have kept my dinosaurs safely tucked away in my memories. 

For you are no plain “Science City – Phase I” to me, No.

You are my very own Jurassic City!