My Publicized Life

Man, as a species, always seems to have had a fascination for quests. History and fiction both, are replete with stories of men boldly venturing out into the great unknown and facing untold dangers in search of the one great thing - be it an artifact, a lost land or even a woman - that would soothe their souls, quell their fears and lift their hearts. From King Arthur's (and Tom Hanks', in more recent times) quest for the Holy Grail and the Jews quest for the Promised Land, to Frodo's quest for Mordor and Jack Sparrow's for Davy Jones' Locker, these are tales that tell of great courage, valiance and a reckless defiance of the greatest odds, that serve to highlight the steely resolve and indomitable spirit of Man. All of these pale, however, in comarison to My Quest For Holy Matrimony. The start of very quest happens with a wizened old mentor instilling the germ of an idea into the dashing young hero's mind, which until that precise moment is happily immersed in ...

A man walks in to a doctor's office in deep pain. His problem - his left hand is clenched tight and is seemingly clamped in that position. Its not just a normal closed fist either, the fingers are curled up so tight that his fingernails have dug halfway into his palm, causing him unbearable, excruciating pain, pain that you or I could never normally experience. He's at his wits end because nobody he's seen so far has been able to alleviate this condition...his fist simply cannot be unclenched, even the slightest bit. The pain cannot be numbed. So why is it that painkillers or medication, or even surgery doesn't help? Because, bizzare as it sounds, he does not have a left arm! He only developed this condition after his entire left arm was amputated several months ago. Now wait a minute, this is nuts, you think? Pain in an arm that doesn't exist? A clear sensation of a closed fist biting into a non-existent palm? But no, the patient isn't crazy. These are, apparen...

What I really want to do at this point is pen an outstanding composition, something that'll have me marvelling at my own talent - a brilliantly refreshing, thought-provoking, original piece of text that'll leave my readers gasping for more. But that's way too much work, so I'm just writing a sequel instead. Therefore, here's presenting...Teenage Tales - II, Learning To Swim! (To see how it all began, click here for my original Teenage Tales story) Oh, wait...in the interests of accuracy, I guess this is actually a prequel, because I'm almost sure I learnt swimming before I learnt riding. Hmmm...no wonder I always flunked my history exams. But anyways...enough with the mindless drivel, and on to the narrative! It all started when I was a very little kid...a tiny schoolboy...about 9 or 10 years of age. A tender loving boy who would look up at the world around him with wide eyed innocence and greet each new day with a sunny smile. Why someone would want to take th...

Prediction - This will probably be my most boring post ever. Rather indicative of my life at the moment, actually. You ever have that feeling you're on a perpetual treadmill? You're not actually sitting idle, literally, you do the things that allow you to lead a mechanical sort of existence, and you get absorbed in them for a while, but then you glance up and look around you and notice you're at the exact same place you were last week, last year, your whole life and everything around you is exactly the same as it has ever been. And you ponder about it for a while and get back on the treadmill with increased gusto until you stop for your next breather and realize you still haven't moved an inch. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, they say. The mind is a muscle, they say, exercise it or you'll lose it, they say. Kind of contradictory, don't you think? Unless, of course, the devil has a mindless workshop. Do workshops have minds, anyways?? Lets look at thi...

There was a time in the not too distant past, when I happened to be rather overworked. I guess that was probably my strongest opening sentence ever. Judging by the fact that it would have caused anyone who has a vague recollection of me to immediately keel over and swoon to the ground, all the while vigorously shaking their head in disbelief. But yes, miracles do occur at times. Now I can't exactly vouch for that since I haven't seen any in my short life, but I can vouch for the fact that I was overworked. Unused as I am to this concept, and not knowing how exactly to cope with all this work that was falling around me like snowflakes on a cold wintry night, I took the counsel of my friend Kalpana , who's off late made it rather a habit to be overworked. Ghastly habit if you ask me, but to each their own, I guess. Well, anyways, I took her counsel, and she advised me to give Red Bull a try. Apparently she'd used it to good effect during some of these aforementioned work-...

A world of smooth grey concrete beyond the glass walls...a forbidden, mysterious land, stretched out as far as the eye can see. The lanscape punctuated by brilliant, flashy red, yellow and blue lights. A world inhabited by men and women in bright flouroscent jackets scurrying about on their business, mumbling furtively into their walkie-talkies. A bewildering array of vehicles ply here - sleek, multi-coloured buses, seemingly made partly out of glass, that run noiselessly letting people in and out of automated doors, huge white trucks that elevate their carriers high up above the ground, vehicles that seem to be nothing more than moving platforms on wheels carrying an assortment of goods, staircases on wheels, and the more ordinary vans and jeeps of all sizes. However, all of this takes a backseat to the huge, 3-storey behemoths that stand motionless in the foreground like slumbering giants, while the assortment of smaller vehicles go fussing around them, like servants getting a warrio...

It seems so long ago now. Those years of blissful freedom, when my days were filled with fun and laughter and I used to revel in the simple pleasures of life, like sharing a cup of Irani chai and 'biskoot' at Paradise with three other classmates, footboarding on an RTC bus all the way to Charminar, only to footboard all the way back on the next return bus...those prof-teasing, college-bunking, basketball-playing, watching-blue-film-at-Lamba-theatre days. All thats left now is slowly fading memories and long lonely hours of wistful yearning. It is in an attempt to relive these fond memories of an innocent childhood, that I embark on a series of 'Teenage Tales' posts, each of which will serve to highlight a significant episode of my adolescent days. The first in the series - Learning to Ride. The first unsteady steps As any boy worth his salt will attest, his first bike-riding lesson is one of the most enthralling events that life has to offer. It is normally preceded by ...

Funny when I look back...my only intention in starting this blog was to maintain a travelogue of sorts. To have something to show the grandkids many years later, when I become a doddering old wreck and they keep stealing my dentures repeatedly. Then I'd point a bony, trembling finger at them and say "Yesh, I may need denturesh now, but when I wash a young man, I did sho many thingshs...conquered the highesht peakshs and shwam the depthshs of the oceanshs" and then point them to http://kaushik578.blogspot.com so they would be suitably humbled, and creep back to my room with a heavy heart and replace the dentures. I am, of course, making the obvious assumption here that I will at some point, before I produce grandkids, graduate from gallavanting around the neighbourhood to doing some serious travel. All for the sake of my dentures. Well, that was the idea when I started, but soon decided to move on to ramblings of a more general nature...and I enjoyed doing it. Always had ...

A cockroach is stuck in a washbasin. The cockroach expends all its energy trying to get out. Runs around blindly at the bottom feeling the porcelain with its antennae, trying to identify a climbable substance but faced with an impenetrable, impregnable wall, wherever it goes. The harder it tries to climb out, the more it slips back. If only it could understand the fact that the washbasin curves in an increasingly convex gradient, so that the farther it reaches, the greater are the forces pulling it back. Cockroaches, simply put, are not designed to get out of washbasins. But of course, its only a simple-minded cockroach that doesn't understand all these mysterious laws. It just knows that it wants to get out. So it keeps trying. And then, at one point, it seemingly defies the laws of physics and refuses to slip back as it reaches the edge. Or perhaps its just pure luck that it hasn't slipped yet. At any rate, it works its six legs hard, pushing, pushing with every ounce of stre...

I want to write. I really really do. I, however, seem to have been afflicted with this sudden and rather severe case of blogger's block. Not a serious malady to most, I know, but anyone who's read my previous post will readily understand my subsequent empathy for the Rani Mukherji character in 'Black'. There I was, several weeks ago, happily swimming through a pool of ideas, where words would go floating past, so I could grab them, sample and savour them, and let them swim through my fingers only to see 2 or 3 more appear in front of me. In short, I was in pure unadulterated bliss, when...WHAM! The evil hand of fate pulled the plug out from beneath me. All my wonderful text went gushing through the drain, and I was left scratching and clawing at the bottom of a bone-dry pool. So, it is with an effort to awaken my slumbering literary genius that I embark on this post. It is in the absence of all ideas that one turns to desperation...and thus it is, that in my deepes...

I suppose everyone’s heard of writer’s block right? That mysterious psychological ailment that strikes the Jeffery Archer types, making their normally fluid pen-wielding hand go all limp and lifeless….in the process causing the masses untold misery in waiting for the next publication? Ok….so obviously you have, but has anyone ever heard of a much more infrequent ailment…speaker’s block? No, I don’t mean the stage-fright induced cant-open-my-mouth feeling, the one that causes your mouth to go dry, your knees to become wobbly blobs of jelly, your body to go all aquiver, and having that general feeling of wanting to sink beneath the podium and die greatly enhanced by the fact that your heart has miraculously transformed from living tissue to a ball of lead…..no, I don’t mean all of that, although as you can see I have had some considerable experience with all of the above. I mean the equally upsetting but less talked about one, of your desperately wanting to say something but your brain g...

In a phrase, the death of serve-and-volley. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. To give a long, winding introduction to the topic, this resentment crept into me while watching Wimbledon 2006. I have traditionally been a big fan of Wimbledon…it ranks right up there, along with ‘Friends’ as a must-watch feature….but I ended up being very disappointed this year. Somehow, though, the idea of penning my thoughts down never occurred to me until a few days ago, when I read on a friend’s blog his views on World Cup 2006. Ok, ok, I admit it….I copied (not plagiarized, mind you) his idea and used it for my own selfish purposes and I’ve never had an original thought in my life! So what?? I’ve always been a firm follower of the ‘Copycat award’ policy. For those who’ve never heard of the copycat award (Shame on you! Shame on you!), legend goes that it was originated in GE, and is an annual award given to the employee who takes another person’s idea and makes the best use of it for his own (synony...