Warning: Rambling. All Ages.
At this point in time, it is fifteen minutes past seven on India's eastern seaboard, which doesn't make a difference time zone or any wise, the train has just left Jolarpettai station, I'm in the gap between the 2nd and 3rd AC compartments trying to dispose off a three quaters consumed dosa-vada combo which I had bought with some relishingly primitive instinct of hunger that I possibly generated after all those drinks in a bar in Mylapore but arguably let me down with the hard texture of the dry dosa, in the gap there are three other people including a middle aged man on the phone on one of the doors, my brother texting with one hand and clutching the other door and the ticket examiner wasting space checking his long long printouts in dot matrix paper right in the middle of all this. And the moment struck me as I had this powerful surge of sneeze that generated somewhere in my sinuses and then moved down into those still unnamed areas around the nose and plunged and crashed onto my nasal passage, but with four of us in that small space in the middle of two bogeys I suppressed the sneeze, and suddenly tears welled up in my just awaken eyes and through the corner of my eye, I noticed that the sky was deep red with a brownish tint and all of tamil's land was dark. Like another good bye.
At this point in time, I know I am aging, that which I knew when I started having grey hairs about two years back, but now I'm dead set that I am aged as I've started showing the most sinister sign of aging - a deep irritability to the ways of the next generation. The main bone is my bro's texting. He texts while he sleeps, while he clutches to a superfast train's door (though I do the phone on the train door as a habit and often leaning into the tracks at about sixty degrees to the horizontal to get the waft of Indian rail's smelly air on to my waving hair, I get a bit concerned when he is there. And then I understand dad), while we were carrying fragile and heavy china that we gifted to our tamil cousins, while watching Naked Gun, and even while I am not getting sleep. Yet another sign of aging is looking at birth dates of colleagues with horror - now this is totally new. Because in the team I work it's always been the other way around. We used to make fun of people born in the late seventies, like one of mine - '...three days after Sashi was born, Jinnah called for a Direct Action day'. And that me recruited two more guys to the team yesterday, and one of them was born in 1987. See 1985 or 1986 is fine - I don't do 1987. Thats beyond the generation gap.
And today, while waiting at the consulate, there was this fair chimp sitting next to me -
"Where you going', asks Chimp
"USA",says I
"Oh that I know", he beams, "I'm going to University of PHILORIDA"
"Oh great" says I "You meant Florida right? nice place. Been there couple of years"
"So where'd you study?" says I again
"PBHITS PHILANI" he beams
"Oh cool man" says I "great college"
"Why did you come back from PHILORIDA, you could have stayed there right" asks the Chimp
I mumble something about I wanted to, all the places I've worked, my whole career in one place.
"OH", says Chimp, and a pretty big oh at that "Cool! You have so many years of experience! so many years"
He is talking age, another 1987 bugger. He seems happy he does not have so many years of cool experience. I know this because I do this, I do this trick with army guys I meet on the Guwahati-Trivandrum superfast. "Oh you served in Kutch! cool. In Dras sector! cooler. In Siachen! coolio". Siachen man! freezing balls andfrozen dal. Thats frickin uncool, and that too in the army where you should be ready to die but still salute other people.
"Yeah man" So with the chimp I'm like,"I'm like your dads...forget it...lets keep it at dad"
I didn't say this. No my parents never brought me up this way.
The Visa was done in a breeze, "Michigan is cold, so take a coat" said the lady at the counter.
At this point in time, I know which side of the age divide I'm in. My airline refused to give me the extra baggage offer, as I'm overaged for a student. For Gods sake! that's how bad things are. And I know the risks attached here, and I know that in a few more years that dreaded number three will fall in place at the ten's digit and I'll have to answer things like what have you done? I have decided not to answer any of those questions.
Rather I asked Ladoo which is the best bar next to the consulate, but my auto guy didn't know the location well. So I asked him to take me to his favorite bar, and so he drove all the way to Mylapore and gave me all the details to catch my train on time. (he said "you have to leave koncham early, as after drinks you'll most probably take half an hour to locate the plaform in Central"). And there we are, bro and I (which if my bro leaks to Mom in the coming weeks, I'll have to give him another round of pep talk about how men conduct themselves and also rethink my plan to buy him a new mobile) in a cool lounge bar with vegetarian food. Oh yeah, bar with vegeatarian food. Sometimes I feel like kicking Madras on its veg-fucci-eaterian ass. Btw, on the way there was a boutique called FCUK(and had some weird full form as if the owners where apologetic), and I thought that was cool. Like hey we just went to FCUK this afternoon, and everyone will think we went to get involved in the act of sex while actually we did not. That sounds cool! And then they call from office.
"Hey about the new guys..whats the plan for scaling and upgradation" says Dilbert's boss
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" says I
"Drunk?" asks DB
"No, but where'd you learn these new words?" asks I
"PCQuest magazine" says DB
"Yeah! Hey I'm not sure if we can use the same terminology on human beings" says I
"What's that?" asks DB
"You mean the terminology?" asks I
"No....Human being" says DB
"Oh...sorry dude...I'm a little drunk...I'll give you a detailed report on curvability and bentability by tomorrow"
"Works for me" says DB, and then it closes all applications and shuts down. And then it flies away. I'm drunk.
At this point in time, I know I'm leaving a lot of things I've got so accustomed to - like my team for six years with all its mirth and stupidity, like these long train journeys with books and movies (and stupid compartments with no good looking girls, like where are the chicks gone?), like the Indian summer and the goodness of our people which only a constant traveler will know.
You know I'm bored on this train now. My bro bought two tamil movie dvds and I bought six theatre plays of Shakespeare in one DVD. After that I gave him a two minute talk on how intellectual I am, and I extolled him to emulate me. Now that Shakespeare is such a, such a bore, bro refuses to share his dvds with me. And I'm entertaining myself with a notepad. Oh a scholar's lasting struggle. It's a rambling diary entry, and added to that this train is shaky so I'm not able to collect my thoughts and write a coherent post. A post in diaries was long overdue, and I thought that I'd let you know that I'm on the move again. But right now I'm moving into the train's western style lavotary to smoke a cigarette to my heart's content. Yeah, I'm the guy who does that, now go sent a text message complaint to Indian Railways you frickin text generation.
At this point in time, it is fifteen minutes past seven on India's eastern seaboard, which doesn't make a difference time zone or any wise, the train has just left Jolarpettai station, I'm in the gap between the 2nd and 3rd AC compartments trying to dispose off a three quaters consumed dosa-vada combo which I had bought with some relishingly primitive instinct of hunger that I possibly generated after all those drinks in a bar in Mylapore but arguably let me down with the hard texture of the dry dosa, in the gap there are three other people including a middle aged man on the phone on one of the doors, my brother texting with one hand and clutching the other door and the ticket examiner wasting space checking his long long printouts in dot matrix paper right in the middle of all this. And the moment struck me as I had this powerful surge of sneeze that generated somewhere in my sinuses and then moved down into those still unnamed areas around the nose and plunged and crashed onto my nasal passage, but with four of us in that small space in the middle of two bogeys I suppressed the sneeze, and suddenly tears welled up in my just awaken eyes and through the corner of my eye, I noticed that the sky was deep red with a brownish tint and all of tamil's land was dark. Like another good bye.
At this point in time, I know I am aging, that which I knew when I started having grey hairs about two years back, but now I'm dead set that I am aged as I've started showing the most sinister sign of aging - a deep irritability to the ways of the next generation. The main bone is my bro's texting. He texts while he sleeps, while he clutches to a superfast train's door (though I do the phone on the train door as a habit and often leaning into the tracks at about sixty degrees to the horizontal to get the waft of Indian rail's smelly air on to my waving hair, I get a bit concerned when he is there. And then I understand dad), while we were carrying fragile and heavy china that we gifted to our tamil cousins, while watching Naked Gun, and even while I am not getting sleep. Yet another sign of aging is looking at birth dates of colleagues with horror - now this is totally new. Because in the team I work it's always been the other way around. We used to make fun of people born in the late seventies, like one of mine - '...three days after Sashi was born, Jinnah called for a Direct Action day'. And that me recruited two more guys to the team yesterday, and one of them was born in 1987. See 1985 or 1986 is fine - I don't do 1987. Thats beyond the generation gap.
And today, while waiting at the consulate, there was this fair chimp sitting next to me -
"Where you going', asks Chimp
"USA",says I
"Oh that I know", he beams, "I'm going to University of PHILORIDA"
"Oh great" says I "You meant Florida right? nice place. Been there couple of years"
"So where'd you study?" says I again
"PBHITS PHILANI" he beams
"Oh cool man" says I "great college"
"Why did you come back from PHILORIDA, you could have stayed there right" asks the Chimp
I mumble something about I wanted to, all the places I've worked, my whole career in one place.
"OH", says Chimp, and a pretty big oh at that "Cool! You have so many years of experience! so many years"
He is talking age, another 1987 bugger. He seems happy he does not have so many years of cool experience. I know this because I do this, I do this trick with army guys I meet on the Guwahati-Trivandrum superfast. "Oh you served in Kutch! cool. In Dras sector! cooler. In Siachen! coolio". Siachen man! freezing balls andfrozen dal. Thats frickin uncool, and that too in the army where you should be ready to die but still salute other people.
"Yeah man" So with the chimp I'm like,"I'm like your dads...forget it...lets keep it at dad"
I didn't say this. No my parents never brought me up this way.
The Visa was done in a breeze, "Michigan is cold, so take a coat" said the lady at the counter.
At this point in time, I know which side of the age divide I'm in. My airline refused to give me the extra baggage offer, as I'm overaged for a student. For Gods sake! that's how bad things are. And I know the risks attached here, and I know that in a few more years that dreaded number three will fall in place at the ten's digit and I'll have to answer things like what have you done? I have decided not to answer any of those questions.
Rather I asked Ladoo which is the best bar next to the consulate, but my auto guy didn't know the location well. So I asked him to take me to his favorite bar, and so he drove all the way to Mylapore and gave me all the details to catch my train on time. (he said "you have to leave koncham early, as after drinks you'll most probably take half an hour to locate the plaform in Central"). And there we are, bro and I (which if my bro leaks to Mom in the coming weeks, I'll have to give him another round of pep talk about how men conduct themselves and also rethink my plan to buy him a new mobile) in a cool lounge bar with vegetarian food. Oh yeah, bar with vegeatarian food. Sometimes I feel like kicking Madras on its veg-fucci-eaterian ass. Btw, on the way there was a boutique called FCUK(and had some weird full form as if the owners where apologetic), and I thought that was cool. Like hey we just went to FCUK this afternoon, and everyone will think we went to get involved in the act of sex while actually we did not. That sounds cool! And then they call from office.
"Hey about the new guys..whats the plan for scaling and upgradation" says Dilbert's boss
"Hey! Hey! Hey!" says I
"Drunk?" asks DB
"No, but where'd you learn these new words?" asks I
"PCQuest magazine" says DB
"Yeah! Hey I'm not sure if we can use the same terminology on human beings" says I
"What's that?" asks DB
"You mean the terminology?" asks I
"No....Human being" says DB
"Oh...sorry dude...I'm a little drunk...I'll give you a detailed report on curvability and bentability by tomorrow"
"Works for me" says DB, and then it closes all applications and shuts down. And then it flies away. I'm drunk.
At this point in time, I know I'm leaving a lot of things I've got so accustomed to - like my team for six years with all its mirth and stupidity, like these long train journeys with books and movies (and stupid compartments with no good looking girls, like where are the chicks gone?), like the Indian summer and the goodness of our people which only a constant traveler will know.
You know I'm bored on this train now. My bro bought two tamil movie dvds and I bought six theatre plays of Shakespeare in one DVD. After that I gave him a two minute talk on how intellectual I am, and I extolled him to emulate me. Now that Shakespeare is such a, such a bore, bro refuses to share his dvds with me. And I'm entertaining myself with a notepad. Oh a scholar's lasting struggle. It's a rambling diary entry, and added to that this train is shaky so I'm not able to collect my thoughts and write a coherent post. A post in diaries was long overdue, and I thought that I'd let you know that I'm on the move again. But right now I'm moving into the train's western style lavotary to smoke a cigarette to my heart's content. Yeah, I'm the guy who does that, now go sent a text message complaint to Indian Railways you frickin text generation.
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