Two Eagles

Two Eagles soar across the sky

Amidst rainclouds, thunder and wind.

They circle through the stormy gale,

Drawn to each other in flight;

Bound together by a cosmic plan

Journeying for love and hope.

Then Time rings the bell,

The weather gets rough,

And each must go their way.

So they sail fearlessly one last time;

They dance without care as time tolls by,

Holding each other tight, till they must let go;

Sighing in peace, finding themselves again;
Waiting for the stars to be right again;

Holding on to memories, they leave an empty sky,

Their souls richer for having loved again...

Abandoned Ruth

She sniffs about on the dusty road
Where the tread-marks still lie fresh;
She runs along the busy road,
Her pink paw-pads tarring black
Wandering about with pitiful sighs,
All that mattered seems lost;
Screeching tyres and blaring horns
Winnow her to the sidewalk.
Something aches deep inside;
And it isn't her beating heart; but
It's a deeper kind she's never felt before,
With pangs as strong as love.
She licks up scraps and left-overs
From a garbage pile she finds,
She whines and frowns and looks around
Then turns twice to make her bed.
She's awakens to another pain
As a stone catches her ribs
Whimpering with pain, she flees,
Her tail between her legs.
She suspects every movement now
And fears the cruel world;
Her home, her comfort, her master gone
And now her self-esteem.
She hasn't eaten since the day before,
She's unwell and no one cares;
She's clothed in mud and can barely walk,
Just look around, she's there...

Tales of Moni - Chapter V

He walked with the vigour of a Sepoy, and the caution of a spy. He walked till he could see two silhouettes in the distance, walking slowly, the girl holding on to the guy's hand as she staggered and walked like a deer just shot with a tranquilizer. One look and Moni knew it was them. Naina was now walking with her head on Andy's shoulder and her arm around his waist, and Andy had his arm around her back, his palm resting on her shoulder. They walked till they reached a bench on the far corner, barely visible to anyone, unless someone knew they were there and therefore made an effort to see. They sat there, looking at the mighty sea, all powerful and enigmatic, probably more so than any other creation on earth. There are few other bodies that hold the power and the might of a raging ocean, but it wasn't the ocean that was throbbing that night; it was the blood in Moni's veins as he stood against a tree, smoking his last cigarette and looking at Naina and Andy in the distance, mere shadows that could vanish any time, like an awakening from a dream. "This was before Clinton's visit, and they hadn't cleared out the beaches and there were huge spikes and piles of stones strewn all over the beach", said Moni. The government had been making an 'effort' to clear all of that for the last six months, but not a single stone had budged an inch. "Once they knew Clinton was coming, the entire stretch was cleared out in two weeks flat!" said Moni, emptying a packet of Shikhar into his mouth back in his flat in Safdarjung. As he saw those spikes, it felt like they would pierce through him any minute, as he felt himself drawn closer and closer to them and the sea, till he refocused on the purpose of his mission - his main agenda - doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani! For a long time, they were just holding each other and she had her head on his shoulders, and Moni thought that he was right about her - that she wouldn't cheat on Jigme, not her, not this fragile creation of God, this fine piece of art, no, she couldn't be so heartless. As the tide receded that night, though, it took along with it Moni's belief in this lady on the pedestal, as her idealistic sculpture in his head melted much like cheese on a sandwich being grilled, as her hand first went from Andy's shoulder to his head, as he pulled her closer and she looked up towards him, and they looked into their eyes, the moon shining right behind them, between their faces, illuminating their silhouettes just enough for Moni to be able to see them clearly; and then there was an eclipse, as their faces came together, blocking the moon, and at the same time bringing mountains of chemicals swirling into Moni's head,  clouding it and beating a thousand drums onto his dumbstruck ears, as the shirts came off and the double-backed beast was created, before the slenderer back slid down the bench and her head disappeared, while  the other beast had his head thrown back in throes of passion.

Moni did not know how it ended, for that is all that he could take, as he looked at the cigarette that had  burnt itself to the butt, leaving a long trail of ash that still stuck to it; he had forgotten that he even had it in his hand. He could barely feel his feet as he looked around, with the look of an abandoned dog, a similar vulnerability stamped upon his face; and then the blood gradually started flowing back to his head, as he flicked the cigarette with a sense of vengeance he had not known since school days as he walked off, even as the first rays of the sun were just about beginning to show and as people started climbing out of bed for their morning walks and jogs. He could not take his mind off what he had just seen, and did not know if he would ever be able to face Jigme again without betraying himself, especially if he were sitting arm-in-arm with Naina, with that look of Achilles upon his brow. He did not know how he would react when Andy came back and boasted about his 'feat' in the hostel the next day, the way most guys did, using the most demeaning terms about the girl they had successfully managed to get cozy with. He was furious and thought he would shove Andy's head down the shit pot and press it down with his foot, like he had done once during his school days. Yes, that is exactly what he wanted to do right then, venting all his fury till Andy choked and coughed and begged for mercy; like he had then with Rakesh, in St. Paul's Darjeeling, an event in his life that defined his life in a way. This was before he was lured to the charm of Bombay, the very charm that he now cursed as he walked back to his hostel, defeated at the sight of his friend's girlfriend cheating on him. This was way further back in the reaches of time, when he still had hair on his head, curly and thick, almost Afro-like, except it was thinning even then, during the days when all the big boys would come back for their vacations from their public schools and play golf and tennis in the tea estates, have mad cocktail parties that Moni used to go for, parties where bands from all across the north-east would come and play - bands like Mojo & the Great Society (the erstwhile name of the Soulmate singer-guitarist Rudy Wahlang), Shiva, Crosswinds, Skinny Alley - Moni used to hang around with girls from Sophia's, guys and girls from Xaviers and Elphinstone. "They were pretty cool in their own way, back in the day. It was nothing compared to what happens in parties nowadays, but it was pretty cool for the 80s" Moni mused, and then he briefly paused his story as he went to spit the Shikhar into his white wash basin that was now a Shikhar-stained maroon in the centre with a white halo on the periphery. These parties were where he had learnt to love Bombay - the city that never slept; he was awed by the mere possibility of such a city's existence, where people went out at night and there were cars and auto rickshaws on the street till the wee hours of the morning, that there was something like that out there to look forward to - the neon lights of Bombay had spun a web around his imagination. As he looked at all the college-going crowd smoking cigarettes, going to pubs, and dancing to songs like Glenn Frey's 'The Heat is On', Moni's notions about life were just beginning to form, lost without a care, being pinched on his cheeks by girls he would spend endless nights dreaming about, dancing with them and living a surreal life, complete with the sprawling solitude of the tea gardens, broken every now and then by the sound of a solitary elephant searching for its pack; and then school would begin again, and he would head back to Darjeeling, a beautiful town situated in the upper reaches of West Bengal, almost cut-off from the mainstream culture of the state and turbulent in its own way amongst slogans and protests of a separate Gorkhaland.  "I left school after tenth, and never went back". Moni now had his head comfortably perched on a pillow, as he seemed to fade further and further away into his memories, going over the prints ever so carefully stored in his dark room, cleansing them, processing them, picking the best ones out to be shared. School was a lot of fun for Moni, as it is for most others- an age without care, where the smallest of emotional bumps felt like avalanches, bringing down mountains of beliefs and reshaping them into new ones. There are indeed few emotions that can stand up in stature to the chemical imbalances in an adolescent mind.

One such character that seemed to have left a prominent mark in Moni's life was Ian Myers, the rector of St. Paul's, Darjeeling, whom Moni had called a motherfu**er on the day he had last set foot on the campus, before he had turned his back on the campus forever, to never go back, and thereby closed a beautiful chapter of his perpetually adventure-filled life. Ian Myers was a very 'proper' man. He would smoke a cigar during his classes, wear a tweed coat all the time, and was good at dramatics and phonetics and all those things Moni used to run away from. His class was where Moni first encountered the phonetic symbols of the IPA, and where he was forced to articulate the phonemes of English properly, like a gentleman ought to. His batch at St. Paul's was, though, one of the most notorious and yet one of the most united batches ever, and Dr. Myers would urge them to let go of their bestial characteristics and learn to transform themselves into gentlemen from the 'ragtag population' and the 'chokra boys' that they were. Moni and his  friends, though, had no intentions of becoming gentlemen, since they knew this would involve becoming a reflection of Myers himself. His friends were mostly guys from Nepal and Sikkim, and were always like wild horses in their school days - they fell, they fought, played in the mud, cut themselves just to be able to skip PT, and so on. They would, understandably, also always get into trouble. Hira was the only exception. He was an all-rounder, always good at everything he did, the best spinner in the school cricket team, an excellent swimmer, a part of the school football team, and also one of the toppers of his class. With this exception, all the other 'chokra boys' were always either kneeling down outside some classroom or being put through some other forms of what the teachers thought was teaching them a lesson, but what for them was just another means of amusing and entertaining themselves, calling each other names and cooking up stories about which teachers had affairs with each other, and which of them had incestuous relationships with their mothers.

Niranjan Sharma was the pick of the lot. "He was the craziest amongst the whole gang", in Moni's words. Niranjan was a Meitei guy with his hair grown up to his ears, was athletic and had an entirely whacky sense of humour. He was always making people laugh and pulling tricks on the unsuspecting, and was always entertaining to say the least. They used to enroll themselves into the chapel choir and the prayer group in order to be able to miss the morning assembly, as they could just go and kneel down on the chapel benches and fall asleep for half an hour, pretending to be in deep conversation with the Almighty. This was infinitely better than having to stand in assembly and follow the everyday drudgery of speeches and rigorous drills. They would have turns at the chapel, where each person had to go and read out verses from the Bible and talk about what it meant to them. This usually was only a check-mark activity with nothing special to look forward to, and most of the students would just spend it kneeling and dozing away as the poor soul with the task to deliver his speech would grunt and groan through the sermon. However, once it was Niranjan's turn, and he spent an entire week rehearsing his verses, from section to section, imitating various personalities - from Elvis Presley to Clint Eastwood - no one was spared. They used to be in three sections - 8 A, 8 B and 8 C. "8 C was the naughtiest, since they were the farthest away from the staff room. 8 B was kind of moderate, and 8 A were the watchdogs, and they always had a couple of sentinels posted to inform the others of when an ill-fated teacher was to come and try to educate us." said an enchanted Moni, his eyes still far into the story, as if he could still picture Niranjan prancing around and performing in front of him while they waited for the teachers. He would go from section to section, standing on the teachers' tables and jumping on to chairs, reading out verses from the Bible, making sure he was perfect for his turn at the altar the following Wednesday. He was an awesome impersonator and did a really good job of reading out the verses, as he would start off with his "and the Lord says..." delivered like Elvis Presley's spoken lines in the middle of 'Are you Lonesome Tonight' or like Eastwood in 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'. People expected him to be quite entertaining when his turn actually came, but they were nowhere close to expecting what actually transpired when that Wednesday finally arrived. They were made to wait about 5 or 10 minutes before Niranjan finally decided to appear, walking in impersonating the bursar of the school, his hips moving forward and backward as one foot dragged behind the other. the students muffled their laughters and Moni literally had to bite into the song book to prevent himself from bursting into hysterics right there. Niranjan had parted his hair in the middle, like the bursar did, and wet his hair with a liquid that was still dripping from his head. They thought it was water, maybe oil at best, but it was only when he came closer to them, as he gyrated up the aisle, that they realised that what was dripping from his hair was the liquid from a bottle of Camel Glue (the one that is available in those blue bottles with black caps)! Niranjan Sharma walked up to the pulpit, cleared his throat, and started off, "The Lord said... hahahhahahhaha" No one knew what he was tripping on that day, and no one knows yet, but what happened there made the entire chapel burst into a chorus of laughter, Moni being the first one to explode! Niranjan would say a few lines and then start laughing hysterically, go on a little further and continue guffawing away, till the chaplain actually got up, pulled out a can stick and thrashed him till he realised he just couldn't bring him to stop laughing. Moni got a piece of the cane too, as he was rolling on the floor of the chapel, in between the benches, holding on to his aching abdominal muscles as he laughed away, even when he felt the cane on his buttocks, for that didn't make a difference at all... (to be continued...)

Musings of a Desi Dog

I am that dog round the corner of your house you may have seen for years, hanging around the garbage dump, licking scraps from your left-overs, cleaning up some of the mess you have made in your surroundings. Yes, I am it (not he or she, for you don't care about those details). I know that some of you might actually notice me for the first time, although I may not, even now, be worthy of being considered an entity. I know you have never considered the fact that while you switch on your air-conditioners and can't stand a moment without your instant power back-up, I am panting around the street just looking for some water to drink. What I get is mostly water contaminated with the filth you throw around, or the sewage you have failed to treat, and I often fall ill despite my robust immune system created by years of eating from your very own neighbourhood garbage dump. Yes, I'm that creature that you kick every time you are walking on the street and have nothing better to do, or hurl a stone at just because you saw one lying around. There are many like me. Some of us live near garbage dumps, the lucky ones near restaurants, and the really unlucky ones on the highways. You may have seen a shattered skull or some pulled out intestines on your way to work, or maybe not because you were too busy formulating that report you had to send to your boss before 10 AM. There was a friend of mine who lay there on the street, with two broken legs, run over by a car driven by someone who hadn't woken up on time and hence was rushing to work. He lay there whimpering and trying to crawl to safety, lying there on the highway for almost twenty minutes. Some of you swerved, some of you braked and changed lanes before you drove on, until someone had had enough of the traffic jam being caused by this broken-legged nuisance lying on the road and ran over his head, putting an end to his misery. Maybe I should be thankful that he did that; it may have been better that way.

You love your speed, but we love our lives too. I'm sure your drunken driving can be kept under control if you really care. I saw one of you, who had run over my sister and my mother together when I was very young, as he was zooming by in his BMW on MG road, and he pulled up a little further down the road and got out. I was naive then and thought that he would call for some help, as my mother lay thrashing about on the road - she could have been saved if help had been called, but he got out, walked around to the other car,and said to his friend, "Oye Baench*d Bumper Thuk Gayi Yaar! Insurance bhi nahin milega". He then glanced towards us angrily, hurled a few more expletives about how we had become a menace everywhere, climbed back into his car and drove on, as I ran about helplessly, witnessing death for the first time - merely 3 months old. Some of us die and remain bloated on the sidewalk for days or weeks, eaten by the vultures and crows, till some day a minister or a VIP is to ride down that road and hence the rotten carcass is lifted from the road and thrown into the nearest garbage dump. Some of us are left on the road, run over again and again till our bones become the road and our fur becomes the carpet. There are still some dog-made carpets on most highways you will ply on. You just need to look closely; not all those bumps are made of tar. The next time you're stuck in a traffic jam, look and maybe you'll find one of us, identifiable by some faded fur sticking out of some mud in the middle of the road. You say there are too many of us, but then there are too many of you as well. Do you deal with our issue just like you deal with yours? We have babies too; yes, we have many of them and we can't help it; they're not in our control. We don't know how to use birth control pills, we don't know how to control our urge to procreate. Yes, we have babies who need to be fed. While the mother goes out hunting for food, sometimes you chase her away, sometimes you beat her with sticks, sometimes you scare her onto the road, where she is run-over by a car or a truck. The babies cannot feed themselves. Their eyes and ears don't open until they are two weeks old. They die without their mothers, or they die without food. They did not choose this life; it was thrust upon them. Does this mean anything to you, you who cry looking at 'cute' pictures of puppies on your laptop, and press 'like' on almost every picture that might get you some attention from some pretty girls or just to feel a sense of self-esteem?

Some of you are nice to us; you give us food and water, and most importantly, you give us your love. We like that the most of all; to be loved, to be petted, to be cuddled. Some of you even take us with you and give us a home - god bless you guys, but there are so few of you. The rest consider us too dirty, but they don't bathe us, or even give us an environment to keep ourselves clean. They think that all of us have rabies by default. Sometimes, that's a good thing, because at least that fear keeps them away. Some of you come and spay us. When you spay the males, you're actually chopping their balls off, and thus taking their manhood away. When you spay the female, you take away her uterus, but at least leave her ovaries behind, so that she can mate again! And then you chop off a part of our ear just so you don't catch hold of us and spay us all over again! A lot of us are taken to animal shelters too. Yes, a whole bunch of us live there, mostly in conditions so despicable that we'd rather be on the street where we were born. At least we're free to run around and to fend for ourselves, and not locked up in cages where we barely have enough space to turn twice before we lie down, something we love doing all the time. Some of us are locked together with others, where we fight for space and territory, wound and sometimes even kill each other, till we're tired and fall asleep in the pool of our own shit and blood. Sounds sexy, doesn't it? Yes, this is the life we live. What can you do about it? Well, for a start, think about it. Turn your attention away from whatsapps and the facebooks and the twitters and your androids and your iphones and your blackberries and your PPTs and your excel sheets, and give us a second glance; think about what the solution is. We don't want your food, though a bone every now and then would be awesome! We would love to have your time, but I know that is too much to ask. All we need is some respect, something we feel we deserve as fellow denizens of this planet. We know we don't have your IQ and your nuclear bombs and shit, but maybe that's because we never wanted them. We take one look at your lives and we are sometimes glad that we live a dog's life and not a human's!

The next time you see one of us, we'd like it if you don't kick us around. If you see some of us living in deplorable conditions because of the mess you've made, try and do something about that if you can. The next time your son or your daughter or your aunt or your uncle or anyone asks for a dog, instead of calling up that cocky breeder from Chattarpur for the super-expensive Dalmatian or Retriever or Terrier, try and pick one of us. We are just about as intelligent and will probably be more loyal to you. We may not be as 'cute' and 'cuddly' but we are sturdier. We live longer and we don't fall ill, because our genes and our immune systems have not been artificially messed around with. We don't have breathing problems like Boxers, back problems like Dachshunds and Alsatians, and don't suffer from obesity like Golden Retrievers. We don't shed as much hair as Pomeranians or Spaniels and can survive on roti and milk or even dal-chawal; yes, we don't need to be fed Pedigree or the likes of them! We know that you're going to take a huge hit in your social circle because Mr. Sharma is going to look down upon you and say that your desi is no comparison to his Rottweiler, and Mr. Singh from Punjabi Bagh is going to smugly point towards his chained up Bull Mastiff and talk to you about the benefits of having a big dog like that, chained up and without exercise, depressed and without company, and Mrs. Chopra, Chihuahua in hand, is going to taunt your wife that you guys don't have a Pug or a Spitz, but if you can for once in this lifetime look past the superficiality of your oh-so-lovely social circle and look at the real benefits of having a pair of loving eyes looking up to you, waiting eagerly for you to come back home, the wagging tail welcoming you with a happiness neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bhatia can fake when they see you, when you hear us bark at night and gladly put our own lives at risk to protect yours, when you truly witness that true love that only a desi dog can give, you might change your opinion about us and tell Mr. Iyer from Defence Colony and Mrs. Bose from C.R. Park, that if you yourself are a desi, then why can't your dog be one too?

Words

Time propels itself forward,
Word after word,
From cause to effect,
Stimulus to response,
A flickering freedom wheezes away
With every gasp of breath
That unveils the sentence.
Confusion guffaws
At a crucified will that merely dents
The overall frame of things -
A restless soul,
Copulating with a restless mind,
Spewing out thoughts
From a different universe,
Seeking order in a pragmatic chaos,
Choosing words carefully,
From those that remain
Licking leftovers
From the previous word's supper.

A brightness blinds the Eye,
Demeans it, tortures it,
Just like absolute silence does,
Deafening the senses,
Whipping it with a sense of solitude -
Unmeasured, unmeasurable,
Stuck & carved in it's own demise;
Motion sculpted in concrete.
Till the muse lends a hand and
Chemical waves erupt, engulf,
Like a squeezed out peel of lemon,
Washed ashore, gasping for breath,
Escape isn't an option
But in the surreal;
Words are the only way out
Till the final release,
Into the next stage
Of this eternal video game.

There is a greater light,
One that frees mind & soul.
The end of the search -
A surge that swells and dips,
The thirst that can't be quenched,
Borne not of excess,
but by a constant seeking,
Through a funnel that empties as it fills,
Invading the bones,
The very grains - the whole;
In search of that which completes, confirms
This claustrophobic world, the blindness
That stifles the mind's eye,
Which cannot open but in another world.
It beckons the truth - the elixir
That key to the grand exit.

Meanwhile inside, the shapes get longer;
Shadows darkening the twilight;
A solitary soul cloaked in flesh
Awaits sunrise and unexpected horizons,
Deviant paths unforeseen -
A blind man groping his way
Through the cosmic web, the labyrinth
Woven by destiny, peppered with freewill,
Incentives for an imbecile consciousness.
What can a word choose, except it's own existence
Willed by an alien soul,
Tethered to its position?
Bound to the horizontal by gravity
The search never-ending;
A scarf flying a million miles,
And another million - till eternity,
Never reaching its goal,
A cosmic soul wandering in search of its creator
In the eternal cycle of birth and rebirth;
A speck of bloated identity
Here to play it's part;
A cog in the wheel of timelessness.

How can it cease to be,
Except by being one With the whole,
That insatiable void?
One with existence, truth and meaning;
That infinitesimal black hole
Where there is no thirst,
Meaning itself dissolving into inconsequence,
Devoid of doubt,
That eternal freedom, peace and bliss,
Motionlessness as stone;
The only thing turning
Waltzing with time
At peace with longing,
The source and purpose of meaning
That unknown quantum of solace
To which none but a few have transcended;
To that which is and will be,
Forever and forever
The I beyond the I
The One and the Only
The Uni Verse
So be it...

Tales of Moni - Chapter IV

We were done with our food and decided to go up to Moni's room to complete the conversation. Just as we were about to exit the place, a group of really cute Manipuri girls walked in, and Moni's face changed shape - his eyebrows went from straight to parabolic, curving to form two little question marks above his eyes, what began as a frown progressed into a look of complaint and dismay, and a whine escaped his mouth before he said, holding on to my arm, his fingers digging into my flesh and his face buried into his own arm, "It's the story of my life man!" he groaned, and kept groaning and whining all the way back up to his room, refusing to even look at the several cute girls who passed by, till one of them actually stopped and said hi. She was an old friend of his from school, a cute Assamese girl who lived two rows away. They had a brief conversation as I went to the grocery store to buy some Hajmola, and when I returned, there was another guy with them. The girl introduced him as  her boyfriend and said that they were going out for a movie and left. Moni was even more heartbroken now; "Why can't I find a good girl like her, man? All the losers on this planet have girlfriends and the only girl I love doesn't even want to talk to me!" He hurried into his lane, opened the lock on the iron gate downstairs, and walked upstairs with heavy footsteps, still groaning and complaining and mumbling something that only he could hear. "It always happens with me man. Everyone gets the girl, except me! That's what happened in Bombay too!"

Andy stayed had studied in Welham boys. He was a good friend, was a lot of fun, was always partying away, running after women, and was a total faff. "He could lie till his pants fall off; he used to talk absolute crapshit, and he used to get all the girls, man!", Moni said, all of this in half a groan and half a whine. Andy was actually a Bengali guy whose actual name was Anand, but people called him Andy. Andy stayed in Moni's room for all three years of their graduation, and loved organising parties and was always the life of get-togethers. If anyone wanted to score some hash, or coke or anything else, he was the one to go and get it for them. He would organise everything and do a good job of it; all people had to do was give him the money.  He used to be found stoned in someone or the other's car most of the time. He was a fun person to be around, except when Moni was broke and did not have enough money to buy some beer or score some hash, Andy would just not be around anywhere; plus he got all the women. So Moni was not particularly happy talking about him. "Crapshit!", he he exclaimed, clenching his fist at an imaginary collar in front of him, a look of anger and misery coupled with a smile on his face. Andy was known to be a smooth talker and could talk a whole lot of nonsense about anything under the sun. "He could talk about the Indian Army and their deepest secrets, about the CIA like someone from Langley had actually called him and told him about them!" That night he was hanging out with Jigme's girlfriend, Naina, who like we have mentioned earlier, was a beautiful girl, much like Aphrodite. She had curly hair that ran up to her shoulders and was an Indian version of Demi Moore, and like with Medusa, one look at her was enough to make most men hard as stone. Andy was hanging out with her and Moni, having heard stories about Naina, wanted to put an end to all speculation and figure out if she really was cheating on Jigme or not.

"Let's go for a walk", she had come and whispered in Moni's ear that night, but before Moni could respond to the request, Andy volunteered to pitch in, so all three of them went for a walk. They were drunk and it was 11 PM, and most places had shut by then. Naina was wearing white that night, a sleeveless dress that hugged her as the sea-breeze blew against her, defining her well-formed contours that Moni couldn't stop looking at. She knew the attention she was getting and would smile each time she caught Moni staring at her dress with that puppy dog  look on his face, like a dog who just spotted the juiciest bone, only to see it being licked and taken away by a faster and smarter dog. Then it started raining. They got a little drenched as they stood under a tree for a while before they ran into the Oberoi and sat in the lounge area till the rain stopped. Naina was quite drenched by then, but since it was summer time, she just let it be, enjoying the effect she was having on the men, with her white dress drenched in the first shower of the monsoon. By the time the rain stopped, Andy and Naina were pretty cozy on a couch, looking at pictures of each other on their phones, while Moni sat on the couch opposite to them, and flicked through a copy of a travel magazine and a couple of other coffe table books kept over there. He didn't know whether he should hang around or if he should leave. Finally, he decided to tell the two of them that he was sleepy and wanted to go back to his hostel. Andy did not insist, but Naina did. She wanted him to hang around, but Moni was in no mood to stay; hurt as he was witnessing his close friend's girlfriend leaning over Andy's shoulder, scrolling on his touchscreen phone. 

As Moni walked back, he thought about the previous night, when he had had his first encounter with the Bombay cops. They had just left Aby's place, a guy who had messed up his life completely by getting addicted to Spasmoproxyvon and Nitrosun. "If you're on Spasmo and Nitro, your life is ruined. If you're hooked on to these, you're like the biggest loser on the planet", he said thinking about Aby. "He was so messed up that he was scared of leaving his room, man!!". They had gone to check on him - five of them. Andy, Wang, a couple of other guys from college and Moni. They tried to convince him to go see a psychiatrist, but he was adamant that he was okay, and wanted them to leave immediately. So they left him at his house and went back to their bikes. Those were the days when petrol used to be 20 rupees a litre (1998/99). Moni, Wang and Andy had come there on Dorji's Yamaha RXZ, which had a flat tyre when they got out of Aby's house. The other two friends (Riz a Maurtian guy and Alok from Bangalore) had their own bike, so they decided that they would ride back while the other three would walk back to the hostel, enjoying the evening breeze over some whiskey. They were carrying Wang's pocket music system and had a bottle of Royal Stag which they purchased from a theka nearby. they walked past the Tower of Silence near the Walkeshwar Hanging Gardens, and tresspassed intro the forested  areas there, walking around the forbidden zone for nearly two hours with a bottle of whiskey. He kept telling Andy to not make much noise, but Andy was the carefree type except when actually in trouble. He behaved like he knew all the powerful people in the city and that no one would dare to even come close to him if he didn't want them to. Thus he sat there making a racket, singing songs, talking out loud, shouting and yelling. He even broke the bottle of whiskey on some rocks near the stream they were sitting next to, their feet dipped into its cool water and enjoying the joys of a forest in the heart of Bombay! 

When they finally got out of the enclosure, they were too drunk to want to keep walking any more. Plus they were walking uphill for a while. They trudged on for a couple of kilometres when they saw two bikes parked on the roadside - a BSA Bantam Sports and another dirt bike, and both of them had their handlebars unlocked. Moni doesn't remember if it was Wang or Andy who had that idea, but they wanted to  ride the bikes downhill, which was about another three kilometres, and then leave the bikes there and carry on. Moni kept dissuading them saying that one can't just take someone else's bikes downhill and leave them there, but they called him a chicken and asked him to build some courage and and take things on when life gave him chances. They told him that's why he never got Naina, because he was always worried about what was right and what was wrong and would never take the practical way out. That was it! Mention a pretty girl's name to a drunken man and any remnants of reason, caution and common sense fly out the nearest window available. Wang and Andy got on to the BSA and asked Moni to imagine that he had Naina with him on his bike and to just take her downhill because she was tired and her feet were hurting. Moni could not let that happen of course, the chivalrous knight that he was - the eternal Kshatriya. They got onto the bikes and started pretending they were racing, with their feet still on thee ground, making vroom-vrooom noises with their vocal chords and tilting the bike left and right. They still hadn't taken the bikes downhill, when two men came by,and asked them what they were doing on the bikes. Fearless Andy got off and asked them if the bikes were theirs. They replied in the negative, but told them they weren't supposed to just sit on someone else's bike. Moni, who didn't want the imaginary Naina to feel that he was chickenshit, got off and hurled a bunch of abuses on the guys and asked them to disappear before they made him angry. He also caught hold of one guy's collar and was about to push him when he produced his identity card - Jadhav Waghmare - Constable,   Malabar Hills; and then the imaginary Naina flew away, and so did Andy's confidence. All three of them started apologising to them, but the cops asked them to come with the police station. "Police pe haat uthata hai? Bike Chori Karta Hai? Bhadve Saale!" Turning to Moni, he said, "Tu hai inka Ring Leader?". All the three of them could do was apologise and call him Mama throughout the journey to the police station. Moni had another friend whose local guardians stayed right opposite the police station at Malabar Hills, and he started thinking of how he could get in touch with him in case things went really out of hand. "He was calling me a ring leader, man! What Crapshit!"

Malabar Hills was one of the areas where Mumbai's elite stayed, and Moni was confident that the policemen stationed over there would at least know how to deal with educated folk. He was hopeful that he wouldn't find someone who was an encounter specialist or a totally uneducated rascal just out there to vent his frustration on criminals.He hoped he would run into a kind and loving soul. When they walked into the police station, the officer in charge there "looked like Kumbhakaran, with curly and oily hair; a saand of a character, like a character from Durga Pooja!!", in Moni's words, as he lay there on his bed in his 1 BHK flat in Humayunpur, wrapped in a towl, wearing a VIP baniyaan, trying to decide if he wanted to have a bath first or complete the story first. He decided to go on with the story. They frisked all of them, confiscated their phones, and asked them to produce their wallets. The other guys' wallets were clear, but Moni's wallet produced certain questionable substances, and the following scene took place, which can only best be described as a one-act play. Moni, throughout this conversation had a look on his face akin to that of a dog that has just been caught tearing apart his master's favourite shoe, and is being questioned about it - droopy eyes, wrinkled forehead, plaintive tone, etc.

Officer in Charge (OiC): (Pulling out a pouch with some powder inside) Yeh kya hai?

Moni: Yeh Kumkum powder hai

OIC: Kumkum powder? Kahan se aaya?

Moni: Woh Tirupati gaya tha darshan ke liye, wahan se leke aaya, Meenaxi Temple se

OIC: Tu Brahmin Hai?

Moni: Nahin, Kshatriya

OIC: To Tirupati kyon gaya tha?

Moni: Darshan ke liye gaya tha

The OIC gave him a bemused look, still stern and angry though, and pulled out the next item.

OIC: Yeh kya hai? (Pulling out a dried stem of marijuana that Moni had kept with him just for a rainy day, when they couldn't find any hash or weed to smoke.

Moni: YEh Shivji ka prasad hai

OIC: Bahut prasad khaat hai tu haan? tirupati jaata hai, Shivji ke paas bhi jaata hai! Hawalaat mein jaega kya?

Moni: Nahin sir, sahi mein prasad hai

The OIC continues diggin into Moni's wallet, and this time pulls out a condom

OIC: Yeh Nirodh kay ke waaste?

Moni: mmmmmm

OIC: Randi ke paas jaata hai?

Moni: Nahin randi ke paas nahin jaata hun

OIC: Phir yeh kay ke liye hai? 

Moni: Woh mere gaon mein meri mageytar rehti hai

OIC: Toh? Yeh kay ke liye rakhta hai tu?

Moni: Woh men kabhi gaon jaata hun to usse milta hun

OIC: Kay ke waaste milta hai re Nirodh leke?

Moni: Nahin sir, waisi baat nahin hai

OIC: Bhadwa saale! Chutya banaata hai? Bol, Randi ke paas jaat ahia ki nai?

Moni: Nahin sir, Randi ke paas nahin jaat hun

OIC (Slaps him on the head): Bol. 'Jaata Hun!'

Moni (his hands on his cheek, speaking in a really low volume now): Haan sir, jaata hun

OIC: Gullfreynd hai teri?

Moni: Nahin hai, sir

OIC: (Another slap on his head) Bol, 'Hai!'

Moni: Hai sir

OIC: Jinz pehenti hai teri gullfreynd?

Moni: Haan sir, Jeans pehenti hai

OIC: Tu park mein jaake taple dabaata hai uske?

Moni: Nahin sir, nahin dabaat hun, (As the OIC raised his hand again) Haan sir, dabaata hun.

OIC: Syaana hai re tu! Kahaan ka rehne waala hai tu?

Moni: Sir Assam ka

OIC: Baap kya karta hai tera?

Moni: Tamil Nadu mein chai ke bageeche mein kaam karta hai

OIC: Tu abhi toh bola mereko to Assam ka hai? Tu Taamil Nadu ka hai?

Moni: Nahin sir, mere pitaji wahan kaam karte hain

OIC: (looking at Andy) Tera baap kya karta hai?

Andy: Mera baap bhi iske baap jaisa hi hai

OIC: Iske baap jaisa matlab?

Andy: Chai kle bagaan mein kaam karta hai

OIC: Taamil Nadu mein?

Andy: Nahin sir, Assam Mein

OIC: Tu Assam ka hai?

Andy: Nahin sir, Tamil Nadu ka

OIC: Saala, khopdi phirata hai! (then looks at Wang) Ai, tu kahaan ka hai be, Assam ki Taamil Nadu ki Nepal ki Nagaland ki kahan se hai?

Wang: Sir, mein Bhutan ka hun

OIC: Woh kahaan pe hai?

Wang: Nepal ke baaju mein

OIC: Baap kya karta hai tera?

Wang: Woh aapke jaisa hai?

OIC: Mere jaisa? Kya matlab?

Wang: Sir, woh police officer hai

OIC: (In a harsh and sarcastic tone) Kahaan pe? Taamil Nadu mein?

Wang: Nahin sir, Bhutan mein

Then the OIC went to the barrack room inside, a room that looked straight out of the 18th century, with canes and batons kept in a rack along one wall, a wooden chair with straps on it, reminding Moni of torture scenes from several movies, a bench, a light bulb dangling over a solitary table, and a drunk constable lying on the bench with just a shawl for a mattress. The OIC and woke up a constable who was sleeping there. The constable was drunk and reeking of alcohol, and came outside, extremely pissed about the fact that he had been woken up. He came out, folded his shawl and threw it on a vacant chair, scratched his hairy chest through his unbuttoned shirt first, then his armpits, and then ran his hands down his pants, scratched his balls, sniffed his fingers and then pulled out a pen from his pocket. They made them write a confession stating that they were walking around drinking alcohol in public and that they were a ring of thieves and that Moni was their ring leader. they slapped them on their heads a couple of times, as they laughed and joked amongst themselves. They made them re-write their confessions six or seven times, a they did not like the way it was worded. Wang was also behaving like it was all a joke, laughing and talking to them even when they were slapping him around, but  the situation got a little tenser when Moni refused to write a confession stating that he was the ring leader. "Saale day time student, night time ring leader! Encounter kar dun kya tera yahin pech?" They made him confess a whole bunch of crimes orally as they laughed about, slapping him on the head every now and then to ensure that he didn't forget that this was still an interrogation, and this went on till Wang distracted one of them, who saw him standing and staring at the photographs of wanted criminals in a board near the entrance of the police station. The OIC walked up to him:

OIC: Kya dekh raha hai be?

Wang: Yeh photo dekh raha hun

OIC: Inmein se dekha hai kya kisi ko tu?

Wang: Haan, isko dekha hai shaayad (pointing at a guy who it turned out had an amount of 1 lakh rupees on his head)

OIC: (getting a wee bit excited) Kahaan pe dekha tu isko?

Wang: Chowpatty mein dekha

OIC: Chowpatty mein? Kya kar raha tha yeh chowpatty mein?

Wang: Pani Puri khaa raha tha

OIC: (Turning around when he thought he heard a stifled laugh emanate from Moni, and then back to Wang) Kaise pehchaana tu isko (Now looking closely at the guy's picture, considering the possibility of Wang actually having seen him)

Wang: Iska Moonch hai na, usse pehchaana

OIC: (Looking carefully at all the pictures on the board, slapping Wang on the head) Abbe, Moonch toh saare photo mein hain sabke!

Wang: Haan, woh toh meine dekha hi nahin, shaayad galti ho gayi

That was it! Kumbhakaran's hand came down with all its force on little Wang's cheek, and it brought tears to Wang's eyes, and when the first tear drop flowed out of his eyes, almost magically, as the last falling leaf of Autumn beckons the song of the cuckoo, the teardrop brought a loud guffaw out of the officer's mouth. The cops spent the next 3-4 hours lecturing them about morals and cultures, joking and finally let them go at 6 in the morning. All this flashed by in front of Moni's eyes as he walked back towards his hostel by himself, while Andy and Naina were headed towards Marine Drive. "It can't be. Naina is not that kind of girl, man. I can see love in her eyes!", he exclaimed to himself as he decided that he had had enough. He did not want to be in love with a girl without finding out who she actually was. Were all those rumours about her true? He decided that he must find out right then, as he turned around and walked back in the direction Andy and Naina had taken, as a cocktail of fear and hope enveloped him, running through his veins and making his heart race and his blood boil (To be continued...)

Tales of Moni - Chapter III

Bombay, the fourth most populous city of the world, is the city of dreams, a city that can make a millionaire out of a pauper, and yet a city with an underbelly that can swallow you whole without even belching after ingesting you, as the locals put it, "Khaake dhakaar bhi nai leti!" The city that never sleeps, a sobriquet earned on account of its fast paced life and the ever-bustling crowd, no matter which hour you happen to chance upon it, has been a fatal attraction for many and also been the elixir that made several non-entities a part of day-to-day folklore. Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan & Sachin Tendulkar are only a few examples in this star-studded city that smells of fish at any point of time in the day or the year.. Yes, that is the first overwhelming experience people get when they visit this city - the smell of Bombil - or the Bombay Duck  - a fish that is dried and salted before it is consumed, and hence fills the entire city with a pervasive stench, along with the other varieties of sea-food, and especially if you are anywhere near Crawford market, it is so strong that you can get high on it. Be it through Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena, Dawood Ibrahim and the underworld, or Govinda, Mithun and the other film-stars of Bollywood, Mumbai, as it is now called, after the Koli goddess Mumbadevi, has always been a constant source of enchantment for people all across India. A city that is made up of 7 islands and is the commercial and the entertainment capital of the country, Mumbai could well be the most sought-after place in this country for all, from the eager, bursting adolescent raring to take on the world to the drooping middle-aged man whipped by the rigours of time, an eternal lure for many ambitious millions.

"Call it Bombay! It will always be Bombay for me!" said Moni, full of passion and emotion, like someone who has been greatly wronged in love. He landed there for the first time in 1996, the year it was re-christened as Mumbai, by the Shiv Sena. There were anti-British sentiments involved in the re-christening, a pan Maratha sentiment, in that Bombay needed to be eliminated, as it reeked of a smell worse than that of fish - that of colonial residue, although it originated from the era of Portuguese colonisation  (meaning the good bay in Portuguese). "Call it Bombay, or you're not getting my story!". Hence, we will call her Bombay from here on. He first heard about her when he was really young, playing in the tea gardens of Dibrugarh, he would meet older children who had gone to study in public schools. The tea-garden employees and their children were hardly in contact with the locals; and they had an entire social set-up of their own. There was not many really good public school in Assam (Mount Carmel being the best), so most of the kids from the tea-estates went to Public Schools like St. Edmund's Shillong, St. Paul's Darjeeling, Lawrence School Sanawar, BCS Shimla, Doon School or Mayo college Ajmer, where they stressed the importance of social etiquette, forms of ball-room dancing, and dressing  appropriately by wearing jackets complete with a cummerbund around their waist. The girls were taught several skills as well, like tatting with buttons, cross-stitching, embroidery, etc. Thus it seemed like it was a complete colonial set-up oozing with colonial residue! Once they completed their schooling, the would go on to good colleges in Delhi, Kolkata, Pune or Bombay, and it was when they came back for their vacations that a young Moni would meet them and interact with the culture they had assimilated while in their respective cities. "I always found the Bombay crowd to be the coolest", said Moni, reminiscing about the first time he had heard tracks by Queen and some of his favourite bands, Radio Gaga and Walk Like an Egyptian in particular. They would throw pool parties at their houses, and a 12 year old Moni would go and hear these songs and be really impressed, aiming to go to Bombay to study some day. Whether it was the song, 'Ai Dil Mushkil Jeena Yahan' or all the Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar movies aired all across India on DD - 1, the only TV channel in operation then, Moni was always fascinated by the idea of being able to one day visit Bombay, so when he actually got a chance, he just took his back-pack, booked a train ticket, and went! It was for his graduation, for which he did not even have a confirmed seat in a college when he reached there. After running around for a week, he realised that it was too difficult to be able to get admission in Sydenham, or any other college without knowing someone powerful or influential, since he was already late in applying. So, he sat there on a bench in Marine Drive, looking at the sea trying to climb on to the land, its tentacle like waves just not influential enough to climb on to the land and take possession. He decided to walk up to a minister's office and take an appointment.

He got in touch with the then health minister's office and went in and waited there for 5 hours. He sat on a bench in the corridor outside the main office, as the khaki clad peon with a khaki cap on his head and a white handkerchief sticking out of his pocket walked in and out of the office. He was offered some tea, which he accepted, and then got into a conversation with the peon. After almost 2 hours of talking, the peon told him that he would get him an appointment with the minister, which he did a couple of hours later.. He entered the room, which had a red carpet with patterns of grass embroidered on it, and a table in the far end, where a bespectacled guy in his late forties was sitting, reading some files and drinking a cup of tea. It was around 4 o clock in the evening when Moni entered the room, asked if he could walk up to the desk, pulled one of the wooden chairs with the nylon crisscrossed pattern netting for a seat, and explained his situation. The minister looked at him, his spectacles at the end of his nose and still pointing towards the file he was reading. He took them off, wiped his lips with the back of his palm and listened, increasingly amused at the fact that a total stranger had come all the way from Assam and come to him to seek help with admissions. He wanted him to get him a seat in any college in Mumbai, just like that! No contacts, no references, no relationship - just walked into the office with a file full of documents and a heart full of expectations. The minister took his papers and said he would look into the matter when he had the time. Within two weeks, he got a call from Sydenham, asking him to submit his documents and pay the fees. Thus begun his tryst with that wonderful city, with a small yet the first of his many adventures in the city.

His Thukpa had arrived in the meantime, extra soupy as he had ordered it. It was May and the Delhi heat was getting unbearable, with people dying in the heat wave, with even some air-conditioners giving up in despair. Thankfully, the one at Rosang was quite effective, although customers kept walking in and out, letting the heat in, swirling in and entering us through our nostrils, the first organ to sense the invasion. When the door opened again, Moni looked towards it to check if a cute girl had walked in, and was disappointed that it was only a guy with a laptop bag on his shoulder, who was there to order some momos His focus went back to the Thukpa as he continued his story. He had been in Bombay for a year or so when he met some juniors from Bhutan, a tiny country to the north of India well known for its picturesque landscape, peace-loving culture, and their king Jigme Dorji Wangchuk, famous for his coining of the term ‘rgyal-yongs dga’a-skyid dpal-‘dzoms’, which translates to Gross National Happiness, a term he used to evaluate the quality of lives of his subjects, as opposed to the GDP, which was his way of showing his his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. Moni used to hang out a lot with the Bhutanese crowd, and was quite comfortable in the city by now, and used to show the guys around and take them to his favourite hang outs around Colaba. He used to even stay as an illegal guest in the International Students Hostel, as he used to pass himself off as a Tibetan or a Bhutanese student. Once they were sitting at Gokul - Asia's largest selling bar at that time, opposite Bade Miya. There were three of them there - Jigme, Dorji and Wangchuk - along with Moni. Once they had had a few beers there, they picked up 5 bottles of beer and started wallking toward the Gateway of India. The sat by the sea near the gateway and started rolling a joint and drinking the beer, when some cops arrived at the scene. Moni was done with his beer by then and rolled his bottle towards the sea, but Jigme and Dorji still had their bottles in their hands. The cops started asking them where they were from and what they were doing there. "Charas peeta hai?" they asked them, noticing the joint that Wangchuk was holding in his hand. "The sad part was that none of us had any money in our wallets except me, and even I had only 50 rupees", said Moni, chomping away at his Thukpa. This essentially meant that they couldn't pay their way out of this mess.

Wangchuk was a cute looking guy with an innocent face. but known to do crazy things like smashing an aerosol can and asking his friend to light a fire as soon as he smashed it. He nearly burnt his eyes as the flame erupted and went straight for his face. He put his hand across his eyes just in time and ended up with a burnt forearm and a thin horizontal burn mark on his forehead that didn't go for many months after that. His girlfriend was a petite Sikkimese girl whose local guardian was Danny Denzongpa. She was Hera, the faithful, always by Wangchuk's side, waiting for him, tolerating all his nonsense; she loved Wang, as he was called by his friends, very much. Dorji was a stout guy, about five feet eight inches, almost as tall as Moni was, but was built like an ox. He could bench weights of 100 kilos, worked out regularly and played football. Although all the Bhutanese guys played football, Dorji had played for his school and for the university. He was never with the same woman for more than three months and loved rising bikes and cars. He had a CBZ that he would rip down Marine drive in the evenings, along with some of his racer friends on their bikes. Jigme was the quiet one. He never spoke much, except when he was required to, and would sit and read philosophy books, and had read everything from Plato to Derrida to Wittgenstein. He had an extremely well-endowed girlfriend from Chandigarh who was quite his opposite. She was Aphrodite, about five feet five and with a body to die for, and she was a complete flirt. She dated Jigme, but rumour had it that she had been around with almost everyone in that group, except Moni. Moni, of course knew about this, but since Jigme was not very appreciative of any conversation that portrayed her as a flirtatious character, he never brought up the topic when he was with him. He did find her attractive, and all his friends would often tease him as the only guy who hasn't been with her, but Moni had his principles, or at least he had a few of them. "I am a man of few principles, but when I have one, I have one!" he'd say, even as he watched the other guys take turns taking Jigme's girlfriend out, while Jigme stayed seemingly oblivious of this, immersed in his books. Moni even suspected that he knew, especially when Jigme sometimes spoke about Kierkegaard's ideology about women, that it is only in a negative relationship with a woman that a man can truly arrive at the realm of essence and ideality; of how if you got a woman, then you became the general of an army, but if you didn't get the woman you loved, or especially if she cheated on you, you became not just a mere general, but a hero, much like Achiilles or Alexander!

There were two cops, one fat and chubby with a pot belly that made it impossible for him to look at his own toes without bending forward, and another malnourished looking guy with a lathi in his hand. It seemed like one ate all the food while the other just sat and watched, by the looks of it. They looked a lot like the ghati version of Laurel and Hardy, and Moni would have laughed out loud if the situation had been any less serious. They put all of them in the patrol van, which Laurel was driving and drove them all around Bombay that night. they even picked up a petty thief on the way, slapped him on the head a couple times, because he had been pick-pocketing a lot of late, and then let him off at another gully nearby. "He must have been a local informant or something", said Moni, checking to see if a cute girl walked in this time. It wasn't this time either. It was just one of the cooks coming in for his shift. "Nepal ke ho?" Hardy asked them, taking them around the red light areas, inside the network of small roads and by-lanes, as the prostitutes stared into the van, looking at who these oriental guys in the van were, throwing kisses at them and biting their lips, trying to entice them. One of them even pulled her blouse down a little bit for a better view. Wangchuk's father was the police chief of Bhutan and he knew how to deal with cops. He had also studied in Calimpong during his school years, and could therefore speak good Hindi too. They asked him if he had ever been to one of these brothels, and he said he hadn't. "Randi ke paas nai jaata hai toh phir kya karta hai? Gullfreynd hai kya?" Hardy asked. They somehow managed to answer all the questions without being able to piss the Hardy off. They drove around all night, patrolling the city, and then dropped them off at daybreak. They still had one bottle of beer in their hands, and the cops wanted them to throw it away. Moni asked them to keep it if they liked, or to let them take it with them, as he did not want to waste it. "Paisa bhi nahin hai. Jugaad karke khareeda. Phenkne mat boliye. Aap hi pee leejiye chahiye to" he said. "Padhai karne aata hai aur jugaad karke daru khareedta hai binechot! Pee isko abhi! Gatak daal saara ka saara abheech!" Hardy made Moni gulp down the entire bottle in one go, and whacked him on the butt with a lathi while he did it, before they let them go. This was Moni's second encounter with the Bombay Police. (To be continued…)