A SWAN

My first attempt at a picture story.

These words were told to me by a very close friend of mine almost 6 years ago. I can still feel the depth in them resonate all around.

THEY WAIT NO MORE

Painting: Narcissa (oil on canvas) by Sai Harsha; Photo by Aersh Danish; Location: Manipal

They wait no more…

Time and tide has gone by,

The feeling has gone too.

The people have changed.

Like seasons change.

Now… they wait no more.

The joy of being together,

The fun of companionship,

The trust… the bond…

It’s all gone.

First it used to be us.

Now it’s just me

For they still linger together

But… they wait no more

The pain of being alone

In a crowd of people

In a crowd of stone

The pain is beyond all

When you have people,

But all friends are gone.

And when I wonder,

Why is it so?

It’s because they wait no more…

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Its been really long I tried my hand at poetry. In fact, this poem was written by me almost 2 years ago and I had to rummage through my documents folder to get to it. 

I really don’t know how good I am with poetry, and perhaps the one reasons why I put it up is because my blog gets hardly any visitors. But if you are reading this, do tell me how you feel.

SOME THINGS YOU CAN THINK ABOUT DOING IN FRANCE… BUT YOU WON’T

Photo Courtesy: depositphotos.com

If you have ever done content writing in your life you would know that it is nothing like it sounds. Not only is it an enormous waste of time and energy that could have been well spent lying around perhaps snoring, but it also kills creativity after a point! Nonetheless, there are always some moments that make up for all the time you spend writing those pedestrian and tasteless articles.

Now, it’s been very long since I left this business of content writing, but a call from a friend of mine this afternoon made me a take a detour from my otherwise lazy afternoon that would have been spent playing a computer game. Since my friend was busy, I agreed to help him out by writing two pieces for him. The topic of one of the article was “Top 10 things one can do in Paris” and I was asked to write an original article of 500 plus words.

It is very difficult for me to write on such a topic, because my experience with Paris is only limited to the Plaster of Paris cast that I had to wear when I fractured my right leg! So I had to depend on the Internet for my research and I wondered how could I ever write anything original by referring to already existing articles!

In spite of that obstacle, I did manage to churn out a mammoth piece of 1374 words! But it gave me an idea of some of the things I would love to do… or rather I want to but would not! So here they are:

#1

Get drunk on French Red Wine, White Wine and Champagne and when I say drunk I mean drunk as a pig so you end up puking all over the lovely place called Paris. Now, this is a situation that I am quite familiar with, as I got sloshed on red wine once and ended up waking up next morning without any memory and looking like a body stabbed brutally, thanks to all the red colored puke that stained my shirt blood red! So folks… bring forth your favorite Bordeaux!

#2

Go to a French man say “blaa blaa bleu bleu blaa.” If you have seen Friends, you will remember Joey trying to learn French from Phoebe. And however hard she tried, she could never get him to say “Je m’appelle.” Whatever he said sounded like a dentate gibberish like some oldies sound when they have lost their dentures! And although I have studied French for a year, I have to say that it still sounds like an eloquent whisper to me!

#3

While going through my research I found out that the Great Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral has got 9 bells in it and they all have names!!! NAMES!! SERIOUSLY!!! I was reminded of Enrique singing, “Ring my bells... Ring my bells” which always sounds hilarious if you ask me! Imagine the same thing in Hindi… a guy comes up and says “Mera Ghanta Bhajao!!!” Thanks to the French, I now wanna go to Paris and Ring the bells of Emanuel, Gabriel, Denis, Marcel, Benoit-Joseph and Maurice… or rather ring the men themselves! The remaining names being names of girls – Marie, Anne Genevieve, Etienne and Jean-Marie, which makes my wonder. “why female bells??”

***ooohh! Let me apologize right now for hurting any so called religious sentiments by ringing some man bells! ***

#4

Visit one of the many art galleries in Paris and attend lectures by artists and shout “Oui Oui” (Oui : Yes in Fench) after every word spoken by the artist. For some obscure reason, I could never understand how to pronounce that one word! Is it supposed to be: W-aa… or is it: W-ee? Either way, if you say it loud in the Desi-English accent, it will either sounding as if you are yapping like a crow or you are squealing like a drunk kid!

#5

And I love this one… More than often, I have found myself drawing moustaches on pictures of celebrities published in the newspaper. What could be more horrifying and equally impish… and oh so delightful to the devil… if I could go and draw a nice pair of handle-bar moustache on the most famous portrait of all times… The Mona Lisa! Or since she is protected behind a few inch of bulletproof glass, I will just draw it over the glass with a nice thick, black marker!

#6

And this one is rather distasteful… How about skydiving off the most visited monument in the world – the Eiffel Tower! Now I am wondering what are the chances of the parachute getting entangled in the iron framework, leaving me dangling in the air?

#7

The French are highly polite and gentle souls and they are so adorable when they get angry! All red in face blasting off abuses that would still sound like whispers! So I  amwondering, would it still be funny if I go watch Pink Panther in Paris with a crowd of French people? I can certainly try saying “I waouuuld laaike twa bwawoy a hambwahwah,” (I would like to buy a hamburger, for those who did not understand) and who knows? I might actually be successful to buy a hamburger while in Paris!

All this… I will think of doing if I ever get to Paris… because as the great actor Steve Martin once said… “Fwance is Fwance!” And because I love it when French pronounce Paris is Parie!

Vive La Français! 

FOOD FOR A THOUGHT

This article was written on 15^th July 2013, a day after the last telegram in India was sent. Also at a time when I was head over heels in love with the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise. In fact, I still am very much in love with them. 

It was posted live from Bangalore Airport on that day itself at ManipalBlog.com

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Picture Courtesy: livingwiththemagic.com

Once again (and after a very long time) I find myself “trybbling” (typing|scribbling) at Bengaluru Airport… or as I often say, the airport without a name! I really wish I had something else to say about the airport, but apart from the fantastic steel and glass structure with the shiny stonework and everything else which makes one go gaga, the one thing I really wish is that they gave the airport a name apart from calling it simply as Bengaluru International Airport Ltd. We have an enormous treasure of great leaders and people who claim themselves as great leaders and I am sure none of them would mind lending their good names to the place.

On a second thought, maybe it is better just this way! Imagine all the names that could be given… *wink*wink*

Ahem! So lets see…

A casual observance, led to a profound thought this morning. As I was enjoying a pleasantly overpriced breakfast, I observed how well we have adapted to the self service system, where one pays at a counter then moves to a separate counter to take our food, place it on a tray and then carry it on our own to a table and enjoy the labor which we just undertook.

A few years in the past, as short as 8 years ago, this would have been a practice that would have been looked down upon strongly. One just did not carry his/her own food then. It had to be served. We pride ourselves in our culture where our food is served, drivers (chauffeurs for the elite) drive our cars and maids clean our homes, while some cook cooks our food. All this while… we do… I don’t know… What do we do???!!!

But coming back to what I was saying… yes… we eat our food… then we most pleasantly leave the tray on the table, for a cleaner to come and remove it.

C’mon, lets accept it. We have adapted ourselves to serve our own food. But throwing away the leftovers… Naah! That is just beneath us! After all, we are Indians. In the words of the former Chief Justice whose name I cannot recall anymore, we are a culture where throwing garbage is a work for the elite while the people who keep the city clean are the lowly ones.

How ironical!

And then I noticed another strange behavior. This one gentleman dropped one of those flimsy plastic spoons on the floor while carrying his tray to his table. He made an animatedly flustered face which was a complex mix of surprise and shame…quickly looked around to see if anyone saw the spoon fell… did not noticed me staring at him… then did a swift about turn to get a new spoon and quickly rushed to a table.

Now, this is a behavior that I noticed is pretty common. I really do not understand why we behave so whenever a spoon or a fork or anything similar falls down in a public place. Our faces emanate a look as if it is completely the fault of the spoon... how dare it fall down!

What I mean is that is it so difficult to just pick it up and throw it in the trashcan instead of going through such an enormous charade of emotions?

Once again I realize we Indians have weird social inhibitions.

We are trying to slowly ape the self-dependent society of the west where one does all their work on our own and although we haven’t achieved that status completely but somewhere someday we will do so… hopefully! *Sigh*

Before I end, a couple of things that I must mention…

Yesterday, the last telegram of the country was sent as India officially terminated the services owing to the change of times. In the words of the headlines in the DNA:

Telegram expired. 9pm. Sad.

The other point is regarding The Minions from the Despicable Me series. I feel they are the most adorable entities of this decade. If you still haven’t heard their own gibberish versions of “The YMCA song”, “The Banana Song” and the most amusing version of “I swear”, then I must say that you YouTube it at the earliest. And then you can consider using one of them as a ringtone… a thought you will regret as soon as your phone rings in public!

  

Now, I don’t know how to speak Minionese but let me give it a shot!

Papadom Papoye Bo Deep!

**Interestingly, the government of Karnataka renamed Bengaluru International Airport as Kempegowda International Airport just a few days after this post was published** 

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This article was first published in ManipalBlog, titled as "An Indian at the Airport." ManipalBlog is the largest and oldest multi-author blog based out of Manipal, for which I happen to be a contributing author.

WHY MUMBAI HATES DELHI AND DELHI HATES MUMBAI AND THEY BOTH HATE BANGALORE

Picture Courtesy: Wikipedia.org

The idea behind this article is not completely original. It rose from a comment made by Manu Joseph, the Editor of the Open Magazine when the veteran journalist and the founder of India Today, Madhu Trehan was interviewing him. It was there that he commented on how much he liked Mumbai and how much he has always hated Delhi.

I got his point of view pretty well. Since Manu had spent his teens and tweens in Bombay (he refused to call it Mumbai) it was pretty natural for him to say he loves Bombay. But his extreme dislike for Delhi was pretty uncalled for! But he did go to explain that as well. Now, as someone who is from Kolkata, I found the entire conversation very amusing. I decided I could be an impartial judge of this situation and taking into account that I have friends from Mumbai and Delhi, I decided to do a bit of background research by organising a discussion among all of them. The conversation between all of us twisted into another direction when Bangalore came into the picture and it was even more amusing for me to watch my friends forget their hatred for each other’s city and turn unanimously against Bangalore!

With a teensy bit of consideration and in good taste, I pen my observations not to start a war, but because maybe we all can learn something from this mindless bitter-batter and because it cost me a few cups of coffee and a night’s sleep as my friends kept fighting till four in the morning.

Mumbai and Delhi being two very old cities have developed a heritage. With time each city grew its own character and spread its wing into different direction. The core point upon which the intellectuals from Delhi and Mumbai fight upon are that Mumbai is natural city where as Delhi is a created city. Mumbai like any other great port city has developed gradually. Taking its own time to turn from a fishing village to a port to a Cosmopolitan hub. Delhi on the other was created to be power center. Delhi was created from scratch as a capital city. It was created to be the center of governance. It was a planned (I mean created) city unlike Mumbai, which turned into a city from a fishing village.

Due to this very basic difference, there rose a change of mindset among people. According to Mumbaikars, Delhites are too used to having things done their own way and are obnoxiously arrogant. The capital makes all its residents feel that they have a natural right to look down upon everyone else. Everyone from Delhi thinks that he/she is an intellectual and has a right to opinionate. Then comes the mindless boasting. Delhi has lots of pretense where everyone has to support a cause or behave as if he/she is next big social activist. You have to be political in Delhi or at least have an opinion. The power center makes all its residents to be drawn towards power. They keep announcing how one had dinner with that personality and met this other big shot and no one knows how much it is true! 

Delhi, on the other hand, hates how Mumbai is too casual on everything. They hate how Mumbai loathes Delhi and the fact that Mumbai laughs at anybody who calls himself/herself anything remotely serious. They feel Mumbai, for some reason, is too shabby. People in Mumbai discuss the prices of vegetable more animatedly than pondering upon the power plays of politics. Delhites hate how Mumbaikars make local train timings more important an issue than nuclear bombings. For Delhi, the entire attitude of Mumbai comes down to one fact – “I don’t care.”

My friends from Delhi pointed out that how Mumbai lacks style. They felt that even though Mumbai is highly fashion conscious and is always tuned to the latest pulse of fashion, but for some reason all this is done too mindlessly. Mumbai fashion starts from St. Xavier’s and even before one can wink, the look is copied by the entire city. Delhi on the other hand has a sense of selectivity. They don’t wear everything and are proud of the Delhi style of dressing… the kurtas, khadi, heavy eye makeup and junk jewelry. Where as in Mumbai everyone is in tees and jeans with a backpack! 

This bickering went on forever and with each point I could see the fierce pride in their words and faces.

Then most carefully I mentioned Bangalore and when it came to Bangalore, they both hated everything. They felt that Bangalore has nothing if you remove the shiny malls. The only big city from the state of Karnataka has no landmark and no history… as a result no heritage. Overnight, it has become the silicon valley of India and people from the rest of the country rushed in. It turned into a city filled with outsiders who are too modernized but the local population still copes to deal with the modernization. They agreed that Bangalore turned into a city too quickly and the people are too nouveau riche.

With that loathing of Bangalore, I realized how satisfied Delhi and Mumbai felt! These older cities always enjoy brow beating anyone else when they can’t really win against each other. It’s a general human psych. What I call years of frustrations venting out!

Anyway, amused still, I was wondering if the next time, I would invite Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai too into the conversation. Maybe I will… But in that case, I will surely have the police and ambulance pre-informed… Because you never know!

:P :D


This article was originally written by me for ManipalBlog, the largest and oldest multi author blog based out of Manipal (Karnataka), for which I am a contributing author.

If you like this post, please do read my other articles at the ManipalBlog.