Once I came to the “Pleasure of Sleep”, I noticed that I didn’t sleep the whole night. I saw the sun rising, with its red hue, as if it was getting warmed up for the day. I wondered who were the fortunate people, all-nighters or all-dayers? I guess the 12 angry men were still debating about that one.
I thought about the lecture I gave and it filled me with guilt. Here I was, talking about some of the things which bothered mankind for time immemorial, and I was offering solutions, just like free peanuts. The humbler in me nudged me a bit. I like this guy, he provides me with essential amount of humility. Humbleness he provides, made me enjoy the greatness of people I admired, without taking the path of jealousy.
But, the fact of the matter was, that lecture was not for anyone, it was for myself.The whole stadium was occupied by my minime's in a lesser state of mind, listening to their mirror image,but who was in a higher state of mind. It was as if, I wanted to remember and register, all my findings and doubts,because that higher state of mind would not remain forever. When in lower state, the depressive thoughts I get, would seem to be the truths, if not for the registration of those beautiful thoughts. Thats why I call it as foundation to mind. The conclusions arrived on a depressed mind are never right or truthful conclusions.
The lecture was also organic, in the sense that, it was not prepared beforehand and the conclusions in each part of it might not be in congruence with later part of it.That lecture was part and parcel of my search for the truth.
I picked up my mother’s pooja book and wondered why I wanted to read those mindless pooja hymns, which I wouldn’t even understand, or to put it mildly, I abhor them. The trauma of studying in RSS school for couple of years was enough! I guess, I just wanted to see her hand writing, other than that it was a useless relic.
I walked just like a cat to my bed, without feeling any guilt about my last night’s promise to my dad.
White lies are god made. In my view, guilt less sleep is the best sleep. I went into sleep, while enjoying that 2 minutes of pleasure, wondering why I shouldn’t enjoy the whole span of sleep. Sleep is death in a way, because, you become unconscious. May be, that was why, dreams were invented -- to remind you of your existence, even though, I had thoughts about the whole existence being a dream.
I woke up at 1 pm, straightaway went for cigs, which were essential for my morning call routines. When I went to kitchen, I was surprised to find some dosas and peanut chuty, my favorite food.
That sight brought a tinge of guilt, but vanished after the first bite of dosa immersed in peanut chutney. When a person loves you unconditionally and if you don’t reciprocate, all that remains is the guitiness.
My dad was a learned guy and he had an internet connection, even in that small town. I logged on and found the desi gril I was talking to on my IM. Hellos and LOL’s lead to some horny talk.’Horny time folks!”, I said to myself.
Me : I took away her gold plate away from her navel..looks like its fake..
She : and..
Me : "my gold", she said.
"I am your gold ..dear", I said.
and I sat on my knees..and slided the pattu saree and revealed her navel..
beautiful it was and I looked at her..and she was like.."what now" with a tinge of shyness
She: lol..go on..
Me: and then she lol'ed..I was like wtf..who lol's during romance..
I was not concerned about her head...my concentration was on her navel..
her navel was like a 3d picture ..right before my face..
and she wore her saree above her..what do u call "boddu" in English?
She : I donno..
Me : I kind of jerked her saree..and it went below the ‘boddu’..
.I am able to see that..right before my eyes..and I went
and rubbed my nose on then and it kissed...swirling my tongue around it..
She : you are making me hot…
A standard dialogue.
Me: and at the same time..I lifted my head..and now saw her shy red face..
" No body touched here before..baby"
she said, " the nurse touched it when I was born"
I said, " you are srilakshmi"
then see laughed..and then I put my hands around her medium size ass..
I went crazy..because many call me as ass-man..
it was soft and cushy..
She: Stoppppp!
A standard dialogue again.
Me: there is no chain to pull in this train, baby.
After that, usually, in some old Technicolor telugu movies, they show either a flower or horse, and the significance of which I never understood. But, the leaning tower of pisa straightened to unstable position, for the sake of the volcano to erupt and then came back to its former position. I didn’t know if the earth quake happened in America or not, but, my seismometer did register the tremors. Tim berners lee must be one horny dude. Internet, by itself, destroyed many moral codes people follow, by supplying the mankind, in the best possible angles, the sin committed by adam and eve. God watched it, didn’t he? Then, what are we scrupling about?
In the calm that ensued, I wondered why the anticipation of sex was more powerful then the act itself. why men go crazy about certain places of women, the same places they came out to this planet and sucked onto for survival. Only, the dead Freud could answer.
I read somewhere that a doctor prescribed an orgasm every night before bed, to a woman who went to him with sleep problems. Whether it was true or not, I immediately went to sleep again. Bliss.
When I got up at 5 pm, I mentally reviewed the things I did the whole day. Pleasure,Pleasure,Pleasure; without any guilt. The fact that I didn’t feel any guilt made me very guilty. Usually, people has this image of NRI guys returning from Ammeerica as; suit wearing, tie tearing, iphone looking, ical planning, company starting, bottled water drinking, knife and fork using, liberal thinking,prospective bride hunting, busy bee acting, “ I am the best invention since corn bread’; kind of cool dudes. I don’t know if these people get shocked by looking at me or by knowing what these ‘cool dudes’ actually did back in America. Save your drowry, folks.
I was doing nothing and being nothing. But, that was what I intended to do, atleast for some time. Bukowski became my best friend.Even though, I wanted to be nobody, the society gave a word for that. A Bum. It was like the society wanted to have a name and a designation, in the same way they want to know your caste after assuming that you were a hindu. “This guy’s name is so and so, and so and so caste, and he is an American returned, and a bum’. I don’t know if I should be pissed off with the word “caste” or “American returned” or with the word, ‘Bum’. Bum looked fine, as it is just a three lettered word and has many rhyming partners.
I looked at the ceiling and tried to find any spiders, to entertain me with some national geographic scenes of brutality. I didn’t find any, and my thoughts went to my childhood. I got small pox one time and that made me bed ridden for a few days. Even at that time, I abhorred boredom and people do crazy stuff to avoid boredom. I used to look at the spiders, insects and lizards; eaten by one another in the fashion described by the predator pyramid. It was the middle class room ecosystem in its full form. I used to order the lizard and say, “Now, you go and eat it”, after the lizard actually started eating the insect. A boys mind is the biggest library for any cartoonist. A boy always dreams of power, and he instinctively gets attracted to supermans and hemans. He wants to grow very fast, only to get that power, and be powerful to control things.But, I wish, he would know that growing up has its own problems, and that, more you control things the more they go out of control. I wondered, if the same kind of ,’thirst for power’, followed him to his adulthood. Is this what driving the humanity, A thirst for power? Is it an evolutionary gimmick for survival of the powerful? If that is the case, men will forever remain as boys, albeit, with lost innocence.I saw that boy inside me, even though; I was so gloriously talking about being a nobody. The thing was,I saw being a nobody, as being better than anybody. In that sense, I wanted to feel more powerful, even though that power has no physical manifestation. A true nobody would not give a fuck about that comparison.
The nature of thoughts is that, they come in groups, linking each other, and you cannot consciously stop them. A single thought could make your day or ruin it, depending on the links it comes with. The thoughts of my childhood always link with the thoughts of my mother. It doesn’t matter, even if they are repressed and put in the cold storage.
After mother left us, people went totally crazy. They bribed the police to intensify search. They searched hospitals for dead bodies. They even spied and interrogated my dad. Blame games went on for some time. Character assassinations were done. Finally, an ad was placed in all the news papers, in the missing person’s section, among the tens of missing people ads. Where did all these missing people go, I used to wonder. A bigger question was, “Why do missing people go missing?”.
People theorized that, if she is not dead, she would come back at some point, atleast for her son. Mothers love is like that, they said. But, she didn’t come. Not even a word, either. How could a woman vanish in to thin air? The society's pride got hit, and when pride gets hit, they come up with wild theories. One of which was that, she eloped with some young college student. Another ridiculous theory proposed by one of her friend, actually was that, she went to Bombay to become the new dimple kapadia. Her reason was that, my mother watched ‘Bobby’ more than 20 times. My mother’s side blamed my father’s side for ruining their daughter’s life and my father’s side blamed my mother’s side for ruining my father’s life.
A child never understands the adult blame games and their theories. He doesn't know that spurious words can form into ridiculous sentences and, those can form into wild theories. The only thing he can feel is his pain. It was like getting lost among a sea of people for me. The anxiety of getting lost is very powerful. That anxiety is built into nature, I guess, to save the cub from the predators. Anxiety spurs action, But, What could I do at that time…other than cry. My father’s sister looked after for me for sometime. But, whenever she hit me, even though with the same intensity as my mother, I still used to feel much more pain than usual. Emotional dialogues learnt from stupid movies flew, and they always used to work.She was a headmistress and she ran the family in the same way. Strict and Structured. Even though, I was cut some slack, the order bothered me a lot, and I complained. I was a free bird then, and, now. Order and Structure bores me, and boredom, in my case, is not something like the ‘normal’ people’s boredom. It kills my psyche and, it was and is my hell. They sent me back to my father, more because of my monkey behavior than my complaints. I destroyed her order and structure.
A child is like a kid who runs after a butterfly in a garden. When he is running after it, nothing in the world matters. He runs and runs after it, to catch it. Then, he sees something else and runs after it. His whole childhood is all about running and running, for the things which caught his fancy. My dad knew that, and he started buying me toys and what not. First came the toy train, the object of jealousy of the neighborhood kids. Then came many more toys…and many more. I used to bring my friends to the house and let them play with my toys, under my guidance, feeling a sense of power. Life looked static. You lose something and gain something. For a while, it looked like as if I had nothing to lose. Everything was a profit.
I didn’t know what I lost until I started seeing my friends parents, in my 7’s and 8’s of my childhood.
“ He is not coming, the roads are getting dangerous, you go and play” (I don’t care if you die)
“ Why are u teaching my kid to climb trees? Why are you spoiling him?” (I love my kid, who r u?)
The fact that those mothers loved their kids bothered me, much more than that fact that they were so heartless. Those stupid bitches had no heart, but with what heart they loved their kids, I didn’t know.
“You are a spoilt kid. You are a rebel”
Rebel.Rebel.Rebel. I was reminded of that word, by many times, by many people, in different phases of my life. In school, in college, at work, in America..everywhere, everytime. It has lost its meaning for me.
" You are a rabble rouser, you spoil people". Enough!
" You are a rabble rouser, you spoil people". Enough!
I once played a,” show me yours and I will show mine”, game with a girl who was my classmate.I don’t know who showed what, but she started crying and her mother went ballistic. Complaints went to my father, but action was not taken, just like the governmental compliant boxes. My dad pampered me, and he still does that. No matter how much we disagree and how much we fight, I am still a mother less kid for him.
My mother’s side pampered me too. I used to go to their village every summer vacation, till I was 8.
The first scene was always, the sentimental scene. My grandmother along with some other older ladies, used to hug me, kiss me and start crying, as if somebody died. Sympathy, I didn’t like.Hatred, I didn’t like.Normalcy, I wanted and cherished. Then they sit around me, in the veranda, during the hot summer, and talk about, how beautiful she was, and how beautiful her eyes were. Beauty,eyes,beauty,eyes,beauty,eyes….what nonsense! By talking in that way, they killed her and found closure in it. My father’s side never used to mention her name at all, as it was some disgusting topic for them. They assumed that she eloped with someone, and found closure it. Only two people who didn’t find closure, was me and my dad. People closest to someone can never have a closure based on some theory. I wished she was dead, at least that would bring a full stop to the internal drama.
That small village was fun though. The kids befriended me, even though I played arrogant, initially. That comes with English educated kid meeting with Telugu educated kids. They looked at me awe, when I talked some stupid English. All that façade of superiority didn’t go along, when they started catching the crabs.When the crab bit me and I started crying with pain, it destroyed my invincibility. The nature of friendship is such that, it levels the play ground and only then the true friendship starts. What is higher and lower, in the grand scheme of things?
-- continued here
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