That Boy

This is Abhishek Rao, Abhi to those who know him best. He's my youngest brother and boy I've shared all my life with.

He's the brainier of us two, even though it takes a little while to show. He's going to turn 20 in thirteen days and this first time I won't be around to celebrate it, or at least be present for that ritualistic cake-cutting that passes for a celebration in our family. Which also reminds me I've never given him anything close to a decent birthday present. Make do with this little man, till I photoshop something.

He's a bit of a wuss, but I realise now that it's a bit of a good thing and I should have been one too. Instead I neglected him for a long long time, like two strangers living in the same house but barely speaking to each other. That's the story of a lost childhood. Of an asshole of an older brother who was too busy being idealistic and angry at the world while the younger quietly missed his daddy and came out with his head sorted out. Whatever outsiders say, not that I care, he's got his head in the right place that boy.

It's not easy being the younger brother of an asshole, I didn't make childhood a fun time for him and teenage was worse. The hand-me-downs only added to it. Even worse when we attended the same school and asshole hogged all the limelight while he had to put up with being called, 'Aah, you're Srinath's younger brother, aren't you?' by brainless old women who were in the wrong job.

There's no way I can make up for all this and there's no point. Because we're past the apology stage. He's moved on and expects me to do the same, so there's no point dragging a shit-load of guilt around, no matter how human it makes you feel at the end of the day.

I love him not for forgiving me like no one else will for as long as I live (that would be just too selfish) but for not letting me get away with it. We could have drifted apart you know. All he did was stand by the side and make me realise I'd been a dickhead for seven-fucking years, maybe more.

But he never let go completely, he always tried and all I did was go further away. Faith, that's what it's all about.

He hasn't had a lot of moments of glory. Yet. But that's because I know life's saving up something big for him. He's due something huge. The last time I checked being a late bloomer wasn't a crime, although our mother and grandparents think otherwise, but they'll come around. So what if he flunked the second year of his automobile engineering course? Not the end of the world. I love him to bits even though I've spent a lot of my life pushing him away.

The good thing the family got out me moving to Delhi for a year is that the two of us have gotten closer. Bloody impossible I would have thought. In fact I'd lay greater odds on Spurs winning the league. But there you go. I can't wait to be home, can't wait to start afresh.

The other positive is that he's finally grown up, he's the man of the house and no one can dislodge him. He's starting to become reliable and a lesser pain in the ass at home. It had to happen, there was little choice but he's doing good.

I'm proud of him, really am.

I don't intend to get any sappier, I'm sure this far into this he's already shaking his head and thinking, 'yeh toh saala dilli mein pagal ho gaya, that or he's homesick'.

I got news for you boy, neither.

This is the culmination of a process you put into place years ago. Whereby you cured me of my stupidity and get your own back. Mummy's right, always has been. I'm very selfish and you, you that always got the jhaad and got branded the irresponsible kid, you've always been the glue of the Rao family. But you'll always be a pipsqueak that I took by the hand and shoved in the back of our Fiat when neither of us wore glasses and had hair to brag about. We should definitely buy a Fiat when the time comes.

I'll be a good uncle to your kids. 13 days to go!

1599

We're on the brink of history. Cue cliched garbage. I never expected the blog to hit 1599 views. Okay that's a downright lie, I've always dreamt of amassing a few million readers from every continent, even from penguin-land. I've taken a shapath to stay awake until I get to the magic number.

The Black Mamba's gotten pretty popular over the past week, can't understand why. And now some bleeder a few thousand miles is keeping me awake for number 1600. Hurry the hell up! Don't make me rip out the refresh button. 

Cockroaches watch football

Walk into my matchbox anytime after 10.30 on weeknights and you'll hear strains of a medley of item songs. Push open the door and a mind-numbing mix of Sheila, Munni and Jalebibai will tear your ears out. Either that or Tamil films dubbed in Hindi. The television isn't used to quality fare.

So while two cockroaches stare at the violence on screen silently night after night, number three prefers taking his world out into the lobby, where the sounds are only slightly muffled by the earphones. The rare occasion when I need, you got that right, need to watch something is almost always on weekends when Tottenham Hotspur are playing an important, season-defining game.

While the cockroaches aren't exactly the telly's masters, it still is a task to get them to switch from MH One to ESPN. Football is alien to the matchbox, in fact it never played there before I came in. But all the glory of causing a mini revolution was lost when I realised it's impossible to enjoy a quiet match, cuss to my heart's content and whoop and dance at the sight of victory.

Tottenham are playing a stellar season, and I was looking forward to Saturday's match against Manchester City, which I eventually did.

Ideally I preferred to watch it at a restaurant nearby called Rasoi, but they hadn't subscribed to ESPN so I had no choice but return to the matchbox and interrupt the historic 15666667^th screening the Rajnikanth's Sivaji – The Boss. In Hindi. They grudgingly flicked to ESPN where the game was scoreless after 30 minutes played.

What I needed was for them to play a silent audience. What I got instead was two old cockroaches talking about their childhood and their respective disaster stories while attempting to play football. I wish they'd taken it somewhere else because the most boring first half in the history of the league was already testing my patience. Get a load of this, an excited Manipur pipes up five minutes into the telecast, “Aaj toh idhar football hi dekhenge!” (We're only going to watch football today). Yes man, I really appreciate that you granted me permission to exercise my right.

For some reason, they decided to side with City and cheered loudly when they scored two early goals. “Blue team bohot badhiya khel rahi hai yaar,” (Shitty are playing really well) observed Vivek. I'm very superstitious when it comes to football and it's very tempting to blame the senseless chatter of the cockroaches for Tottenham's last-second defeat but I can't muster the heart.

The game ended in scandal and had I been home I'd be tearing paper and beating up the TV, swearing at the top of my voice and throwing darts at the screen, things I couldn't do here. The game ended 3-2 to Manchester City and with me looking for someone or something to pound. Sure I blogged about it later and got it all out safely, but I'll always remember January 21 as the day three cockroaches watched football in a matchbox.      

Meet the Cockroaches

Whichever doofus rated Delhi above Mumbai (which IS the greatest city in the country) on the livability index did not take into account how men live in paying guest accommodations in the capital. The standard is a matchbox-sized room that comprises a double-bed and stale air, with some cupboards thrown in as an afterthought.

I'm better off in Lajpat Nagar's Dayanand Colony. A-178 is a row of rich Punjabi houses on either side of a lane no wider than a rope-bridge. Number 12-A is situated above Powerhouse Gym and its door is always open, save for between 12.30 am and 7 am.

For 5000 a month I am entitled to three meals a day, a bed, a closet, some time in the bathroom, undefined space on the clothesline and a lifetime's supply of aloo. In such a great deal, it's ungrateful to ask for the following - brighter lights in the passages, lesser tel in the subji, a cook that remains on the job for longer than a month, the right to work all night without being told shut the lights and go off to bed, and roommates with an incurable Bollywood fixation.

I still like to think of my room as a matchbox currently occupied by three cockroaches. Just the three of us creatures with our creaking nests lined against one wall, the TV on the opposite wall and three more empty nests beyond it. Without further delay, here's presenting the insects -

Cockroach 1 – Shashikant, Manipuri, software engineer, never seen him look away from his laptop for longer than than five minutes, cool, slicked back hair, built like a footballer, last to rise in the morning, likes soan papdi, has poor taste in music.

Cockroach 2 – Vivek, works in a publishing house in Okhla, carries a helmet and gloves to work but doesn't ride a two-wheeler, gave me a book on Jihad I'm yet to read, annoying when drunk, ringtone-alarm that shrieks “Hello” in varying degrees of banshee-ness at 8 am everyday, snores, intolerable fondness for punjabi rap music played at ear-splitting levels, has the slot in the bathroom after me.

Cockroach 3 - Myself, last to arrive every night, first to leave in the morning, couldn't care less, washes clothes every day, waltzes in and out at ungodly hours, arrival after a week-long disappearances causes no excitement, must get out.

And that's us, three strangers who don't eat, laugh, drink or sing together but get along just fine as long underwear doesn't go missing.

Mario Balotelli is a fucking asshole

one man i intend to flay. such a tool. fucking cheat. 

No doubt it. I never liked that sonofabitch. And it takes a special kind of motherfucker to break my no-swearing rule. Not so much as a rule as simple restraint. But I'll come back to it. Right now it's time to pick up a chainsaw and split his head open. I'm going to get more foul-mouthed as I progress but since there's no punching-bag around, I have no other choice.

By now you'll know that Spurs lost to Man City 3-2 at the Etihad Stadium an hour ago. Balotelli won a last second penalty after Ledley King of all people panicked. I don't have any bones to pick over the decision. It was a clear foul, uncharacteristic though it is of King. Balotelli lined up to take it. He ran a few steps, stopped and stroked it into the bottom-left corner just out of the reach of Brad Friedel's fingertips. He's an amazing keeper but there was something about the hopelessness of the thing that i knew he didn't stand a chance.

After a boring first half, both teams suddenly came to life. In fact, Spurs came back from the dead to make it 2-2 after Nasri and Lescott (another cunt that ought to be hanged by his balls) seemed to have won the game. Enter Stefan Savic. He center-back headed a backpass to Joe Hart and allowed the rat Jermaine Defoe to get to it, round Hart and put the ball into an empty net. City kept attacking. But minutes later, Lennon cut back a pass from the left flank to a waiting Bale. Gareth, in lovely position at the edge of the box, struck it with his left and the ball arched over the heads of City defenders and beat Hart in slow-mo to rest in the bottom-right corner. It was a superb strike, in the class of his goal against Sunderland two seasons ago. After that it was a bizarre game with neither team doing much until Balotelli came on. His first duty was to tangle with Scott Parker and stamp upon him as he lay on the ground and also manage to injure Luka Modric in the process. He stepped on Parker twice, once by pure mistake. But the second was a pure trample. He knew what he was doing and fully intended to sink his studs into the side of Parker's neck. If he doesn't get hauled up by the FA when they review the game tomorrow morning, I'm going to lose whatever little faith still remains in their ability to punish serial offenders. Parker wasn't out for long, bless him.

Defoe could have won the match in injury-time had he been an inch taller. Bale swept in an excellent cross past Hart and Defoe connected with it a second too late. If only he'd run further in-field to keep pace with Bale and dived in earlier, Spurs would now be sitting two points behind City and emerge worthy winners.

The game could have ended in a draw without King's defensive error. We've missed a great chance to catch up and now we're 6 points adrift.

On to that piece of fucking filth, the slime of humanity, the man who thinks he's better than the rest of us. He shoulda been dumped into the nearest river the day he was born or when committed his first act of mischief whichever happened sooner. He's fucking devil incarnate and he's sadly plaguing the world of football. I know that Roberto Mancini lies every time he declares he's losing patience in Balotelli. He was saving him to pull off shit like this, to cheat his way to victory, to maim and mangle the opposition. Why else would he bring the troublemaker to City after the latter made his life difficult in Milan? It's a goddamned conspiracy. I hope he doesn't get away Scott-free, else he's got hell coming. Right now, I'd like to impale him on a icicle, although chucking him in a volcano and dropping him into a piranha-filled tank also seem attractive options.    

My Aahan story

I've never been a gharghusla – Hindi slang for people who like packing up and going home as soon as they can. Still, I have no business sitting in the Express Building right now. Somehow, I can't haul ass off to my matchbox even though I need to pack for Chandigarh tomorrow.

Hanging around places I love after hours isn't new to me, yet I shouldn't be here tonight, I'm morally obligated to stuff a suitcase with woolies right now.

For the first time in three years, I have nothing to do on January 13, a date that's marked some of the most memorable moments in my life so far. This time last year, I was dancing away the last minutes of my final college festival. Aahan 2011 was ticking away to its conclusion. I was hugging my team, almost afraid to let them go. I hadn't planned for the end, it wasn't on the to-do list, had no mention in the diary.

I miss the rush. I miss working towards a cause, I miss the jhing. I miss fighting to stay awake for three days of the showpiece and the last-minute certificate fiasco.

It's a little selfish to write about my time in aahan when the kids have pulled off a great show but it has to be done. I can't think of any other way to acknowledge the festival, no the movement on the one day when the hearts of all of UPG's Aahan-nites will sink and the Aahan-nation weeps out its eyes.

I've stayed back because I miss going back late. I'm nowhere close to drained, don't have a to-do list for when I get back home or the satisfaction of achievement or the spine-tingling realisation that midnight brings the festival one day closer.

I'm never going to experience that ever again. I don't want to either, that'd be corrupting my memories of Aahan, those five months when I walked all over Andheri in a hood that bore the legend – Srinath Rao, Literature Head. I've been wearing it the past three days like I wear my SNIFF pullover every September 16, but the pride's drained out of it. It's hanging limply like any piece of cloth.

I should have been there today, they'll never forgive me for being misssing. But this is their time. I'll go back to being a 21-year-old dinosaur that's retired from college festivals.

He's got jhing

Sagar Mehta isn't a great example to follow but up until now, he's the only person I know who has an obsessive craziness towards his work. I've seen that boy climb ladders, run around ordering people twice his size while burning at 103 degrees. He's never thought twice about skipping sleep when the fate of a college festival is at stake. You can't dismiss this as mere dedication, passion, louuu, paagalpan or any of those halka-phulka words. Which is why he's come up a word himself.

Jhing. Jhing describes and encompasses every emotion an individual experiences when working on something he/she loves. When you're prepared to die to achieve that objective, you've got jhing.

Jhing is contagious, as long as you're receptive. It was easy for him to convert those of us he knows best.

Now I've met another person. His name is Muzamil Jaleel and he's said to be the greatest journalist to come out of Kashmir. I never paid attention to him when he was just a face on Express' prospectus.

He's been brought to Delhi to presumbly work on a big story. I guess when you're an Associate Editor you have the liberty to pick and choose stories. And we've benefitted from that because he started teaching us in December. Not so much as teaching as immediately assigning us a 5000-word story. The objective is to produce a piece that will have publications falling over each other to run it when it's finished. It's a potentially career-deciding story, at least for me it is. The best of the lot will also be compiled into a magazine.

He's promised to give us hell and he isn't kidding. His face is shaped like a lizard, it's sharp at the nose, so when he laughs he resembles a crazed hyena. There is also a darkness about his face, like it conceals bitter memories, the thought of which still keeps him awake at night. He doesn't mince his words, like no journalist ever should. But the ones that pour forth have a certain gruffness about them, like he's barking them out after a lightning-fast observation/thought/analysis. He can make a minor criticism sound like an unbelieveably stupid blunder. The overall package makes him seem like a very scary man and mentor/boss from hell. He's tough on us and can bring us close to tears after he's done but only because he doesn't think we're completly worthless.

One thing I've understood about people like him is that they never waste their breath on those who don't deserve it. They save their best for people they really like and who possess the qualities to do something special.

And not everyone can put up with it. He's an intimidating personality and it's natural to be afraid of a man who promises to unleash physical violence if we produce cliched copy. (Personally, I don't blame him, after all, I've had to stop myself doing the same for about three years now). Those that survive are the ones who don't mistake his deep involvement in each of our stories as the sign of a whip-wielding dictator. I've learnt that the ones who crack it the hardest are also the ones who want you to succeed the most.

He takes journalism to a diffrent level, where the lines between a personal experience and a professional assignment are non-existent. I've learnt to treat the subjects of my stories as people and not sources that feed me just enough to fill a 400-word story.

Now that I'm no longer scared of him, I can finally appreciate the craziness with which he chases stories. Muzamil hasn't pushed me to do the story, he's grabbed me by the neck and thrown me outdoors. He's assailed my brain with “You have got to do it.” And it's worked, the one assignment I dreaded doing just a month ago has turned into the one I'm most excited about. I've learned to respect him and it's come the hard way. 

Medicine

I'm working on a dream project, something I've always only dreamt of. The one assignment where word limits don't matter. The one story that lets me go on and on. Muzamil may not be the greatest instructor we've had so far, but there's no denying his genius.

For everyone wondering why he's such a big deal, he's one of the greatest journalists to come out of Kashmir, he's accessible in the Express Building and is pushing us to produce a 3000-word story on a subject of our choosing. I submitted my first draft yesterday and he replied at 2.39 am, why he was awake at that time I don't know, but he replied.

Great first draft. You are a writer and trust me I have seen it
already. Now think. you can polish your intro and turn it into
something amazing. Please rewrite and rewrite and let me see your
second draft before we meet on wednesday.
Muzamil

I ought to frame it but I'm saving it for the times when I lose faith in myself and need picking up.     This is the most important sign that I'm on the right track. I'm going to read this and kick my depressed self whenever required from now on. 
For all those still wondering why Muzamil Jaleel is a big deal, here you go -

http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/my_lost_country.htm 
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=4818 

Second Half

I should have seen it coming before I left. It's been barely 48 hours since I returned to Delhi and it already feels like I've been here a week. Cheesy as it sounds, I never imagined going home (Bombay) for a vacation, it's just one of those scenarios that you don't ever want to believe. I can't remember much of the seven days I was there, snatches of entering and rapidly exiting home and a considerable amount of hugging flash by. Nothing substantial, nothing to hold on to. And yet, this is a different kind of homesickness, nowhere close to the pining for home on July 31, 2011.

This is bitter, cynical almost. I've taken a bite of the problems the folks have been going through the past five months and it was almost cruel to just leave them to fend for themselves for (at least) five more. I don't know what will change when I do return for good but right now I think that simply my presence could ease things along. I'm not superman but I'm the best they've got now. So I've begun the countdown once more. I have a strange addiction to responsibility.

Arriving in Nizamuddim was accompanied by none of July's excitement, I wasn't happy to come back. I had the worst possible exit last Saturday, I was so glad to get the hell of Delhi. I'd never felt lonelier here than I did that day. Turns out, a lot of that has stayed. I generally don't mind being alone but this is different. The week off didn't do much to lessen the disgust. I know I should blurt it out and quit messing my head over it. I let a great opportunity pass yesterday, but then I'm not exactly great at speaking my mind when I need to the most. There are no points for being selfless when the right thing to do is to transfer your turmoil to the jackasses responsible for starting the shit in the first place.

In some good news, I'm not very angry now and no longer want to kill them. I think. But since my track record at giving people what they deserve isn't great either, it's safe to say that it won't happen. Bless them.

So the anger is ebbing, the loneliness remains but has a lot to do with the fact that I'm still stuck in Lajpat Nagar and haven't worked at all. In my workhorse lifestyle, inertia and general joblesssness is a major cause of short-lived depression. Distractions just haven't been forthcoming, the holiday wasn't a strong enough one. I know that once I begin work on Muzamil's story in a couple days none of this will matter, but it can't hurt to whine until then. In better news, Ardhra will be back day after and then none of this will ever matter.