Birthday parties. If you are a parent in this generation, you are either going to one or preparing to host one. Such is their frequency.

Read my latest publication in Spark magazine about how birthday parties are not the memorable occasions they used to be.

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/the-birthday-party-juggernaut/

The Birthday Party Juggernaut

I am a child of the 80s who grew up in the middle of middle class India. This naturally meant that the things that today’s generation of kids take for granted was an exercise in extravagance at that time. A birthday was an occasion where you would mandatorily visit your local deity and garner some blessings (and perhaps a gift or loose cash) from your elders. The only party we knew was a political entity who came around the time of elections every five years to garner some votes.

I remember my sixth birthday celebration vividly. In Kodak Eastman color. I say so because the celebration was the only one I had in the first decade during which I also got the chance to take some lovely pictures with my parents, friends and family. It was truly a momentous occasion, a rare one.

Three decades later, while the earth has been quietly spinning around the sun, life has come a full circle for me. I am a parent of two Gen-Z boys. Parenting does not come with a manual, but does come equipped with a to-do list. One of those activities is chaperoning the children to birthday parties.

The math itself is intimidating. Both my children have twenty kids each in their class. Even if ten kids from each class invited them for a birthday, that takes away twenty weekends of the year. Add to that friends from the building and you realise soon enough that you can’t buy gifts at a pace that matches that of the party requests.

In full disclosure, everything that I state below will be applicable to me as well since I too host two of these birthday parties every year.

It doesn’t matter when the birthday actually occurs. The celebration is almost always pushed to the weekend. Months before the birthday comes about, parents have to pick the place of the jamboree. Should it be a new gaming zone or a new restaurant? Do it at home or in an indoor sports place? It can’t be too far, it can’t be a repeat of another birthday party, it has to be something your child likes, it has to be something the other children like too. Once you navigate the labyrinth of choices, the booking is made. Just as you heave a sigh of relief, you realise that only half the battle is won. The food has to be organized, the return gifts have to be bought and in today’s hyper-connected world, a WhatsApp group of all the parents who are bringing their tots to the party has to be created.

Note that it isn’t that simple though. There are people who aren’t able to confirm until much later and that dreaded head count that you need to provide to the place hosting the party isn’t ready until much later.

The day of the party nears. You have done your due diligence. A Ninjago cake has been ordered (because Mickey Mouse is so yesterday) and is set to be delivered at the right time for the party. The caterers have been told the menu and you hope and pray that their output matches the recommendation that led you to them. Everything is set. The birthday child, the siblings and the parents.

You arrive early at the venue to receive everyone. No one arrives on time. You wait, and still no one arrives. The birthday boy is getting fidgety. Hungry. And then they come. The swarm of parents and the attendees of the birthday party.

A birthday gift is recklessly shoved into your hands by the child as you are greeting the parents. The child attending the party has most likely got no idea what he or she is gifting. It doesn’t seem relevant to them.

“Come, let’s play” is the call, and off they go into the rumbly-tumbly world of bouncy balls and places.

An hour later, the famished masses are dragged away from the play area by their parents and the children are gathered for the most-awaited cake-cutting ceremony. The cake naturally tends to be the center of attraction and it requires an exceptionally focused adult guarding it to ensure that the cake is not squished before it is cut. The Happy Birthday song is sung with gusto, the cake is cut, pictures are taken and the children are distributed on the chairs in anticipation of the food. Most rookie parents make the mistake of giving hungry children the cake before the food. Sugar on an empty stomach for the little brats simply spurs them to more devilish deeds. Food is brought out but not all children eat the lavish spread well. The hosts generally always order more than what is needed because who wants to host a party with insufficient food? Birthday parties are a great example of how good food is wasted inconsiderately.

Eventually, when it is time to say goodbye, the return gifts are brought out. Kids are so used to getting one that I have had many a kid walk up to me at the start of the party itself and ask me what the return gift is going to be. The goodie bag with the little trinkets is one that all parents hate and yet they impose it on other parents.

The party ends and parents of the birthday child pack their cars with all the gifts and head home. The children open their gifts and enjoy them, but not with the same sense of awe and gratitude that we did. Often, when we celebrate my boys’ birthdays, we ask the guests to not get gifts but instead donate that to charity because the act can go a long way in instituting a higher sense of compassion in children.

The dauphins of France might not be as spoilt for choice as today’s children are. Which naturally means that they will be more dissatisfied than the brats of French royalty ever were. The ease with which they get everything also breeds a sense of entitlement.

Birthday parties have become an obligatory celebration for the parents because of peer pressure and an entitlement for the children because they know no better. Perhaps it isn’t too late for parents to stem the tide. To realise that hosting fewer but more meaningful parties is a better choice. That the yearly journey of the earth around the sun for your child can be special without streamers and a gathering and return gifts. The choice is ours.

It is Alright

Read my latest publication in Spark. Their topic for the month was 'Night'. I have written a poem about the succor it brings, for those who dread it. 

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/it-is-alright/

It is Alright 

It is alright for your night to arrive
You have been embracing this world
Since the sun’s first surreptitious rays
Losing charge as the hours go by
Like the million devices you command

It is alright for your night to begin
Its cloak trailing in the gentle breeze
Gently concealing the world around you
The gains the city made
The losses its inhabitants suffered

It is alright for your night to pass
For what is night but an egress to many worlds
Where your rainbow tinted dreams
Meet your uninhibited thoughts
Under the canopy of closed eyelids

It is alright for your night to end
The first moments when your eyes open
Are your bulwark against reality
When you are neither awake nor asleep
And life doesn’t feel insurmountable

The Story of Our Lives

Read my review of the docu-drama based on the cricketing journey of Sachin Tendulkar published in this month's Spark magazine.

Or as I called it when I saw the movie - a pilgrimage

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/the-story-of-our-lives/

The Story of Our Lives

Sachin Tendulkar tickles the ball to the fine leg boundary. He completes a century and India completes a famous win in Chennai. It is not just a victory. It is a balm to the nation after the horrific attacks in Mumbai. It is December 2008.

I turn to my son and whisper in his ear over the din of the movie, “Do you know what’s so special about this match?”

My eight-year-old shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly.

“You were born that day.”

His eyes light up. I have just given him context.

It is a fleeting moment in a movie filled with many such moments. The movie is ‘Sachin: A Billion Dreams’ and it is a documentary drama based on the life of the legendary Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.

I took my sons (8 and 5) to this movie so that they could learn about their father’s favorite cricketer. That was the purported reason and yet, it turned out to be a movie where they learnt a little bit about their father. They saw me animated, engaged, emotional. That is what context does. That is why the children of the 80s and the 90s have warmed up to this film.

This is not a story about Sachin. It is a story of our lives.

For many like me who have followed his career since we first heard of him as a precocious cricketer in 1989, our lives have been dotted with one Sachin innings after another. They ceased to be just runs made in a cause. They were milestones in our lives.

The movie lays them in our path within a span of two hours.

A young Sachin, born into the middle class household of a sensitive poet, a hardworking mother and loving siblings puts aside his love for mischief and discovers an undying passion for cricket when his brother takes him to the famed coach Mr. Ramakant Achrekar.

The movie traces these moments in Sachin’s life through the wonderful enthusiasm of the child actor portraying him. The movie takes you in through the journey of the little boy who combined his precocious talent with a formidable work ethic and a strong support system to make it to the Indian cricket team to tour Pakistan at the age of 16. The message that talent alone is not enough without the will and hard work to see it to its logical end is there for everyone to grasp.

Tendulkar narrates most of the movie himself, with his family members, his teammates and opponents all pitching in.

As the years roll by, his pursuit of the World Cup gives the movie its rhythm. Through this turmoil, the rise of Tendulkar paralleling the rise of India in the 90s is shown. His great innings start rolling on the scenes and I could hear knowledgeable people in the theater nod their head when he carts Caddick for a six or smashes Kasprowicz in Sharjah. Don Bradman makes an appearance when he talks about how Sachin reminds him of his younger self and Akram chimes in to say that their strategy to win against India was centered around getting Sachin out.

Sachin lays clear his self-doubt when playing his first test match, his frustrations at being dumped as a captain, his thoughts on the the match fixing saga that enveloped cricket, the pain of the many injuries he suffers. But those looking for spicy tidbits or controversy will be largely disappointed. To that end, the movie panders to the non-critical fan, not the neutral observer who might be expecting to hear about the Ferrari controversy or the famous 194 declaration incident.

We get a glimpse into the partnership that makes him tick – that with his wife Anjali. We get to see him as the goofball father who regrets not getting enough time with his children but makes every moment count when he is with them.

I sat through the movie absorbing this life story even though I knew everything there was to know about it. I could recognize every statistic that was mentioned. I had reveled in all the victories that were shown and I had felt heartbroken at every defeat that we had suffered with the little man at the center of it all.

And yet I stayed glued. A.R. Rahman’s pulsating background score with chants of ‘Sachin, Sachin’ remind the viewer of what stadiums felt like when Tendulkar was in the middle. James Erskine does a good job as a director and his most important feat was getting Tendulkar as a narrator to very simply and effectively tell his own story. Special mention must be made about the editing of the movie for it could not have easy to walk through hours and hours of footage and pick the right gems that people could relate to.

The movie rides on nostalgia. It rides on emotion. And that is appropriate. For calling Tendulkar a mere batsman, however good he may have been, does disservice to what he meant to people. There is a poignant moment at the end where Ramesh Tendulkar says with pride, “The thing that gives me most satisfaction is that people think of Sachin as their own. As part of their family.” That sums up the reaction to this film. That sums up my emotions as I sat through this.

Even die-hard Tendulkar fans accept that post retirement, his aura has dimmed as he tries to find a footing in the world outside cricket with constant product promotions and social media pandering. This movie can either be viewed cynically as another rung down the ladder for him or a sincere attempt to share his inspiring journey with the world. I chose the latter.

I have never cried in a movie theater before but found myself welling up quite often. My sons will grow up in the age of Kohli and in the razzmatazz of the IPL. And yet they’ll have known now that Sachin is special. Because the movie said so. Because their father was teary eyed.

Sachin wistfully says in the movie, “Cricket is like oxygen to me.” Surely he must know that for the India that witnessed his growth and continues to shower love on him despite him struggling to find a way to stay relevant post retirement, he has been like oxygen.

At the end of this very subjective review, I can only ask you to watch this movie in a theater. You’ll not be disappointed.

Kishori Amonkar: A Tribute

We recently lost the great classical vocalist, Kishori Amonkar. A lot of more knowlegable people have written about her singular greatness as a singer, as a true genius, of her dedication to her craft. I'll talk about my personal connection with her.

This is a small anecdote from the early 90s. Her son used to live next door to me in Andheri, Mumbai. She used to often come and stay with him on weekends. She would get up early on weekend mornings and do riyaaz. At that stage, I had no idea who she was, but her singing was so stupendous, so special that even to my untrained ear, I knew something special was afoot.

I have put together a sampling of some of her work that I have enjoyed. Hope you enjoy it too.

1. 'Sahela Re' - One of her most famous renditions in Raag Bhoop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipauyMfVYso

Sahela Re Kishori Amonkar www.youtube.com Mesmerizing song by Indian Classical Singer Kishori Amonkar

2. A beautiful song in the raag Sindhu-Bhairavi (many have heard a famous version by K.L. Saigal)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WdH5u0cWEg

Hariprasad Chaurasia-Kishori Amonkar Jugalbandi www.youtube.com Eternal Jugalbandi. Raga Sindhi Bhairavi--Thumri in Kaharva Taal. By Hariprasad Chaurasia (flute ),, Kishori Amonkar ( Vocal )....

3. A beautiful rendition in the raag Yaman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpEFP0Ws8Y8

Raag Yaman by Kishori Amonkar www.youtube.com

4. A tarana in Raag Hamsadhwani

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJnjyN-n_zE

5. Raag Miyan Ki Malhar. You can almost 'feel' the rains around you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EhA7Xm3_M0

6. Raag Malkauns 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JF9EBTpni4

Smt. Kishori Amonkar - Sampoorna Malkauns www.youtube.com Smt. Kishori Amonkar - Sampoorna Malkauns from the album 'Maestro's Choice'

I am not a foodie at heart, but when I had to write for this month's Spark magazine issue themed 'Food', one dish that truly touches my heart came to mind. The sweet, delicious, sinful Gulab Jamun. Read my ode to it.

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/an-ode-to-the-gulab-jamun/

An Ode to the Gulab Jamun

There you are, just a foot away from my restraint
You, floating like heaven suspended
Imperfectly spherical, like a hand-crafted ball of snow
Light as the feathers of an Indian bustard
Smooth like the marble of the Taj
Levitating, like a yogi in bliss

Caressed, cajoled, nourished,
by the sweet comfort of sugar syrup
Indeed, there you are, an orb ordained
Shades of red in a sea of brown
Like the glorious sun, overcooked

You are but a sweet, they say
A dessert just like any other
A messenger of decay, a sweet harbinger of death

To them I say, that is not true
For you are not a mere gulab jamun
You are the memory of my mother’s love,
A treat of joy for my limited glory,
A taste of the homes I have been in,
The shortest path to my heart,
An adjective I use to describe my children.

When all else fails and the day is
But another one in a quotidian life
You are my guiltless pleasure
My one act of bravery
That one thing I steal
From the confines of the refrigerator
When the night has gone to sleep

There you are, my sweet taste of heaven,
waiting to be consumed,
Completely missing the irony;
You have already consumed me!

Talisman

Amitabh Bachchan. Haji Ali. A perfume maker and his son. A talisman. They all come together in a story of hope, prayer and unexpected miracles.

Read my latest short story in Spark

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/talisman/

Talisman

The red thread was an innocuous-looking object.

“The object doesn’t matter”, his grandmother said. “It is just a vehicle to carry your prayer”

“No, no, it does. Why do you think I went all the way to Ahmedabad to get the right one?” argued his father Salim, who believed that the quality of that vessel was critical to the transference of the appeal.

“Look at Rafiq”, he said, “Didn’t you see his new Maruti? How do you think that came about?”

In the corner, Iqbal sat on his haunches, his back gently touching the wall which was adorned with framed pictures of his family. There was one enlarged close up of his late grandfather looking soullessly into the camera. There was one of his parents, stern, yet resplendent on the day of their wedding. And then there was him riding a bike with Taj Mahal in the backdrop. This was taken when he was three and they had gone to the fair and a photo booth using India’s most famous mausoleum proved too much of a temptation to resist.

“But isn’t there another way? Why send the boy all the way to Bombay by himself?” His mother Sultana’s voice, dripping with concern, floated into the conversation.

“Arre, the boy is 22 years old. Don’t you think he can go there by himself?” Salim said, irritated by Sultana’s petition.

The 22-year-old had resigned himself to the fact that he had no say in this matter. How did it come to this, he asked himself? Everyone wanted a solution out of this mess and everyone had their solutions for it.

You see, Iqbal was in the possession of a completely ordinary fate. He was failing again and again to clear his B. Com. By making himself the first person in that family to have made it to a college, he had set up some rather false expectations from his family. There were visions of great successes that everyone from Salim to Sultana to his girlfriend Meher had claimed. Yet, Iqbal did not seem to be blessed with any penchant for education or enterprise.

Iqbal’s father had a shop handed to him by his father who in turn had received the key from his father and so on. They were dispensers of Ittar, the perfumes that were bottled up in the smallest of flasks. It was a business that spanned generations but in the age of deodorants and bottled perfumes from various companies, this was a dying art. Their fortunes had shrunk, mirrored by the smallness of the bottles in which they poured their art. There had to be another way forward and Iqbal was going to lead the charge into a new future for the family.

****

Salim, was an optimistic man. He was once pragmatic too. But dire times call for dire solutions. Having hedged his bets that Iqbal would change their fortunes, he was now shackled by his son’s lack of progress. Salim resorted to the one thing he would have labelled as superstition in his heydays when he had youth and money at his disposal and a reputation as a wild stallion in his circle of friends. His remedy was a prayer.

And not being of the religious dispensation, he sought to seek inspiration in the only higher power he believed in. Amitabh Bachchan. You see, Salim had little faith in the conventional Gods. He had instead decided to place his loyalties at the feet of the superstar. Lost in the wilderness of faithlessness, Salim had turned to the one true hero in his life. He never missed a release of his, and so inspired was he by the actor’s turn in the movie Coolie, he even named his son Iqbal after Amitabh’s name in the movie. In fact, Coolie had more than a fleeting influence on him. When Amitabh was injured during the shoot of the movie, Salim had, in a state of extreme delirium and desperation, gone to Bombay to stand outside the hospital where he was admitted. To make things right, he went up to the Haji Ali dargah and tied a thread in hope of a speedy recovery for AB.

That tide passed and as he grew older and got married and suffered the consequences of running a household, Salim never revisited that state of mind again. Until now. His favourite actor might not have been dying, but his family’s future was. So, Iqbal was sent to Mumbai, red thread in hand to the Haji Ali dargah.

****

Iqbal did not believe in his father’s fantasy. What possible powers could that little thread, which was ready to unspool into its constituent parts, hold? And yet, the lure of visiting Mumbai on his own was too much to resist. So, off Iqbal went, by bus to the station, by train to Mumbai, and by his own two feet onto the railway station where thousands milled around him minding their business. Once he got out of the station, he caught a taxi and went straight to the home of his maternal uncle in the suburb of Borivali where he enjoyed food and rest. Without any consideration for his exhaustion, he disinterestedly set off straight to Haji Ali in a local transport bus.

He had visited Mumbai twice in his life but this independence was a revelation to him. He kept admiring the chaos, star struck, until the bus came to a grinding halt. A film shooting was being set up. Iqbal got off the bus on a whim. Surely, Haji Ali could wait. The pull of curiosity was too much to resist.

“Who is the actor?” someone asked.

“Not sure, bhai.”

“Bachchan sahib!”

“Really??”

“Pakka. I heard someone else say that!”

The rumour spread like wildfire and sure enough, the crowd grew exponentially in the next fifteen minutes. Iqbal found himself being absorbed in it, blown like a feather in the wind.

A Mercedes Benz appeared from the corner of the street.

“Bachchan,” whispered the whispers, loud enough to be a collective voice.

The crowd started pushing and shoving, trying to get a glimpse of the star.

Iqbal leaned forward too. The masses were being held back by a few security men and a frivolous rope. They should have known better. As the car hurried through the road, Iqbal felt the hand of fate on his back propelling him forward. He fell. He stumbled. He rolled on the road. The car came and hit him.

Bleeding from cuts to his forehead and scrapes on his arm, he looked up with a flash of anger, and had he paid attention to Coolie with any amount of diligence, he would have known that the passion of his namesake in that movie was evident in his face.

The car stopped, a towering man looked from the back seat, and in a baritone asked his driver to take Iqbal in. The next few moments were surreal for Iqbal as the man his father idolized took him into his trailer, had him patched up, spoke a few kind words of inquiry and got him a seat to watch the shooting.

The hours rolled on and the mission to go to Haji Ali faded in the distance. The shooting packed up.

“Take care of yourself,” said that baritone again and started to walk towards his car.

Iqbal had a vague recollection of having nodded and then the car became a blip in the distance.

He took out the red thread from his pocket and took a good look at it. That little object had borne the weight of his father’s hopes and had decided to reward him in the most unusual of manners. Iqbal’s destiny would not be fixed for the prayer had been answered with an unexpected blessing. A smile the size of a half-moon crossed his face and he hailed a taxicab.

“Kahan?” asked the taxi cab driver.

Still grinning, Iqbal replied, “Haji Ali!”

Good News

"Good news". A term of endearment and celebration sends Vibha down a path she has been trying to avoid.

Read my latest publication in Spark magazine to know how a couple deals with a difficult situation in their own way.

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=10562 

Good News

The lamp at the end of the street flickered as if it was about to be snubbed out. Vibha walked briskly towards the house that was standing as a sanctuary right behind the lamp. She was walking quicker than usual, the thoughts in her head prompting her to take her strides at a faster clip. Her job wasn’t much to write home about and it was her well-cultivated habit to leave out any thoughts of work once she took the train back home. She was however finding it difficult to do that today.

“Good news”. The phrase was ringing in her head with a volume larger than the combined sound produced by the bells of the local Shiva temple she visited every Thursday because she had been asked to do so by her mother-in-law’s sister. Vibha was in a foul mood.

It all started with a team meeting at her office in the morning. Her boss had walked up to the front of the room, addressing his troops as he did each Monday. After the initial hurrahs and reprimands, the weekly summaries and salient points, he decided it was time to celebrate some individual triumph and turned his attention to Vibha, who was halfway into a yawn she could no longer contain. He gestured and said, “Vibha has some good news to share with us.”

There was a moment of audible silence and then a deafening roar broke out. Vibha, whose yawn was in its waning phase, was caught unawares like a cartoon character who had been flattened on the middle of a road by a fast-moving truck. A poor choice of words by her boss had obliterated what could have been a moment to celebrate on her successful delivery of a project.

“Good news”. In an office where the boundaries of humour were always stretched thin, this was a red carpet laid out with an invitation to come and join the party. Vibha had no children. That little fact was wrapped up in the guise of a guffaw and presented to her by people who she wouldn’t normally term as malevolent. Through the entire day, they ribbed her and she had taken it on the chin the best she could, but now that she was on her way home, a storm was simmering in her chest.

She walked in the door, turning an errant key with great force, flinging the door open like a hurricane, disrupting the peace. Kavish came running out of the bedroom. Manchester United was biting the dust for the fifth match this season but his devotion to the team had him glued to his television. He was so startled by the noise, he assumed a burglar had broken in.  A burglar was something he could handle. Vibha in the mood she was in was a much tougher proposition.

He circled around her cautiously and wordlessly, waiting for her to settle. Vibha washed her hands and came and sat on the table.

Nervously, he asked, “How was your day at work?”

There was no answer.

A query for “Dinner?” was followed by silence.

The lack of clarity meant that he had to take the safer option. He brought the dinner out. He breathed a sigh of relief when Vibha started eating. The silence was punctured by the scraping sounds of spoons and forks on the plates.

Twenty minutes later, they were both in the bedroom, leaning against their pillows, laptops propped in their laps like mollycoddled children. That analogy occurred to Vibha and instantly she regretted it. She shut her laptop down.

It had been seven years since their marriage and every cosy nook of her house reminded her of the lack of a child who could have made it his or her own. It wasn’t for want of desire or trying. However, by now, her fatalism had convinced her that some things were simply not meant to be.

She wondered whether she should tell Kavish about what had happened today, but seeing him staring at his code on his laptop with the intensity of Arjuna trying to hit the eye of the bird made her change her mind. It wasn’t going to do either of them much good anyway.

She reached to the drawer in the night stand by her side and pulled out the novel she was reading. Books were her refuge but on days of dull despair, nothing brought her out of the troughs of depression than stories of a dystopian future where robots or zombies or aliens had taken over a post-apocalyptic world in the throes of a nuclear winter. The despair of the stranded humans gave her an odd sense of sadistic pleasure. She wanted them to lose, for the race to be eradicated, for them to suffer the ignominy of childlessness and then vaporise away without a trace.

Vibha read fifteen pages of the book and decided that the day was beyond salvaging. She shut down the book, closed the lights and tried to go to sleep. Kavish got up from the bed and left. She noticed his absence. A series of lights leading up to the kitchen went up in the house. Attributing it to his sweet tooth and a propensity for a midnight snack, she closed her eyes and continued her attempts (in vain) to fall asleep.

“Vibha?”

“What is it Kavish?”, she asked squinting her eyes against the light projecting from above his shoulder from the kitchen.

“I got us a cake.”

She realised in that moment that it was past midnight and that the clock had turned over to signal the start of 4th of January. That epiphany punched her in the gut, knocking the wind out of her.

Kavish added with a dreamy smile, “She would have been four today.”

A tear rolled down her cheek, encroaching on the little space between her heavy heart and her denial. She had tried to lock away the date she had lost her child, a premature baby lost to the wiles of illness. She had tried to consign that memory to the fires of a monotonous life, but Kavish brought it up each year like the blessing he believed it to be.

The irony of this did not escape Vibha. No one at office knew about her past tragedy and they brought up this topic. Kavish knowingly drudged it out for her to endure. Vibha could not fathom why he thought it was a matter of celebration, but had resigned to the fact that he saw a way forward in his healing by doing this. And oblivious to her disagreement, he expected her to heal the same way.

“One day at a time,” he said to her, his optimism and hope only matched with her resigned acceptance of that. Through this veil of pain of the past, he saw some hope.

His hope perplexed her. His hope strangled her. And yet, his hope bound them together.

She cut the cake with the butter knife he had brought along and fed him a piece. Kavish smiled. In between munching the piece, he repeated his question, “How was your day at work?”

“Oh, nothing special,” she said.

The smile that he expected to see was reluctant to come to her lips. The cake looked ready to crumble but had miraculously held on.

After a few eternities had passed, staring at the ceiling, she muttered, “I had some good news to share.”

Breaking Free

I don't always write science fiction, but when I do, I publish it in Spark.

A Rockstar dies, except that he is not allowed to. My sci-fi story tackles life, death, rebirth and the challenges of encashing one’s karma and the Rockstar’s gambit to escape it all!

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=10511

Breaking Free

The music crashed. The women slept. I died.

I would have raised an alarm about such a drastic outcome for an evening had this been unusual. I had however died many times by now. What was the point of being dead if you could never truly die? It took away all the excitement of having the heart stop beating.

You see, my problem was not that I couldn’t die. My problem was that I wasn’t allowed to stay dead. As per my contract with the Committee for the Restitution of Extraordinary Souls, I had to perform my duty as a duly deranged Rockstar until such a time as I turned 27. By a random circumstance, I had come to be among the chosen few who were considered extraordinary – malleable, durable, receptive, high quality souls. The contract allowed me to live the life I wanted to and die the way I wanted to as long as I committed myself to fulfilling the conditions of the contract.

I spent considerable time thinking of the way I wanted to die. There was always the overdosing on drugs, a traditional manner of passing away. Or the touch of martyrdom in being shot by a deranged fan. I was imagining something different though. A spectacle to mark the end of my days. With a crowd of mad cheering listeners holding on to every note that I played, I would pull the plug in the most unexpected manner. I wouldn’t consider that a success unless at least ten percent of the audience fainted with shock and at least a few would join me in the afterlife, their hearts having come to a complete halt.

How did I, Viral (the name I chose for my current life. Quite clever if I may say so myself), get to this stage, you may ask. Don’t trust all the stories you hear about the purgatory and the saving of souls. There is no one to do that. There is no God. Maybe yes, if you could call that organic network that spread its tendrils all over space, and by space, I don’t mean the atmosphere, but the area behind the curtain from which all of life on earth is being observed. In the beginning, there were a trillion souls, all at a time. No one knows where they came from or if there was ever a first soul. You can’t have a trillion souls and not have them do anything and so everyone existed in this charade of well, existence. You earned karma by being, by breathing, by killing and maiming and providing for others, whatever your deigned role may be. And based on how much karma you had earned, you got to select what you wanted to be. And so on and so forth the wheel would turn.

The chances of me meeting my fans in the afterlife were of course very faint. As soon as my soul would leave my newly deceased body, I would be whisked away into the changing rooms of the netherlands, what with my extraordinary soul needing to be nourished and rejuvenated for its next turn. Those ordinary souls would be staring at the board where the choices for the next life would be highlighted. all they will be able to do is sigh at the category that says homo sapiens. In fact, if their karma was exhausted, they would have to keep scrolling down that list. The tigers of the world, the blue whales, the elephants and the pandas would also be out of their range. No life as a dog or a cat such that they would be petted and taken care of, no existence as a beautiful flower (yes, yes, you could be reborn as those as well) or a coral settling into a life of relaxation at the bottom of the ocean. The choices for them would be none of these. They would be left to choose from the life of cretins.
I used my privilege of being an extraordinary soul to choose the life I wanted. Of all the things I could have been, I chose to be a Rockstar. Of all the human professions I could have chosen, I chose the one where dysfunction and by nature of that, excitement would be the name of the game. How hard could it be? And yet, by the time I was 23, I knew I was done. There however was no release. So, the music crashed, the women slept and I died and yet I was alive because I hadn’t fulfilled the contract.

There must be a way out, I thought to myself, even as the needle marks on the vein vanished magically. There must be a way to break this cycle. I had heard whispers of a way out, a dark deep secret hidden away in the vast recesses of ether. It wasn’t as if everyone was queuing up to break free. Most people were happy with this cycle of rebirth. Even biting a human being as a mosquito gave them a sense of purpose that they cherished. But I was done.

I decided to use the night for something better since I was now alive again. I suddenly remembered that within my drawers was a card with a symbol of a mandala that a man in a cloak had handed to me in one of my Wednesday night orgies. The text on it was “Mocksha – Follow the light within!”. For days, I scratched my head through my ecstasy-induced haze to figure out what it was. One day though I held it up against the light and there it was – an address to a third-rate pawn shop in the decrepit part of the city of Varanasi.

I journeyed up to the place and when I got there, I walked in gingerly, laid down my bag and said “hello” in a timid voice. Salvation was within reach. I could sense it. And then a white light came on. And a booming voice spoke, “Your participation in this program has been terminated for breach of contract. Please proceed to the gate.”

The promise of deliverance was a trap and I had fallen for it. It was when I was being led out the gate that I realised that the promise of release was but a ruse by the administrators to fool the masses. I walked out the door and felt my body wither away. And suddenly, wings appeared out of nowhere. I found myself right outside my house. My former house. I flew in unnoticed. There was a condolence meeting going on for the deceased Rockstar. Everyone was sad. No one noticed the fly on the wall.

Annus Moviebilis part IV

Year four of tracking movies seen and I am happy that the #100moviepact that I signed up for was met. This was my highest score in recorded years.

Scores:

2008: 99
2014: 86
2015: 105
2016: 116

The full list of movies can be found here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AsQ_MU1XkvrDiLUY9rmoBJQRL5Tz0A

Antakshari

Who doesn't love Antakshari? Read my latest article in the Spark magazine about the beloved movie song game that is a ritual whenever a group gathers for a long bus ride or simply has time to kill.

http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=10389

Antakshari

The hero wins a bet and places a condition to the girl that she must confess her love to her with the words “I love you” in front of everyone, which, when one realizes is a spectrum of random onlookers to the hero’s parents to his nosey relatives, is a big deal. The heroine has a gargantuan task in front of her. Luckily for her, a brilliant idea from the movie’s director, Sooraj Barjatya, comes to her rescue. An Antakshari ensues. To the uninitiated, Antakshari is really an amalgamation of two words: anta (meaning end) and akshari (meaning letter). The game is fairly simple. A participant sings a song and the next in line has to sing a song that starts with the last letter with which the previous song ended. Back to our heroine in distress. An Antakshari ensues and like a truly competent family, everyone in the group belts out Hindi numbers, passing the baton so to speak from one person to the other. The songs range from ‘Hum to chale pardes’ to ‘Hothon pe aisi baat’. The clincher however is that the heroine ends the Antakshari with the song ‘Kaante nahin katate yeh din yeh raat’. Why was it a great choice? Well, it ends with the words, “I love you”. With a deft move, the heroine meets her challenge and everyone gets a happy moment to remember the movie by.

In retrospect, the brilliance is not the lead-up to the Antakshari or the heroine’s confession. It is the director’s nod to a very popular game that is embedded in the psyche of the average Indian. A game to pass the time. A game to relive that which comes to the tip of their tongues. Movies may be integral to the Indian landscape, but the music of the movies is even more so. It can be argued that the quality of the music in the early decades (40s-70s) exceeded that of the films that they were a part of. More people remember ‘Mahal’ for ‘Aayega aanewaala’ than the plot that drove it. Rafi’s rendition of ‘Chaudhvin ka chaand’ is the best part of the movie of the same name.

Antakshari as a game has been around for a while now. It consisted of singing folk songs and the like once upon a time. My anecdotal learning is that it was around the 1970s that Antakshari of Hindi film songs became popular. For as long as I can remember from my substantial years on this planet, every road trip, every college gathering, every dull moment in search of an inspiration found an outlet in this game. Form two teams (generally divided along the middle road of the vehicle being traveled in), sing the Antakshari kick off song (‘Baithe baithe kya kare …’) and off you go.

The first thirty minutes of the contest clears up the most common songs of the ground. Everything from ‘Na na karte pyaar’ to ‘Nanha munha rahi hoon’ to ‘Dum dum diga diga’ and ‘Lekar hum deewana dil’ get out of the way. It is as if everyone is wired to sing these songs up front. As if these are the most obvious conclusions one can draw to the puzzle of what to sing when a common letter like ‘Na’ or ‘Da’ is presented to them. The length of the game of Antakshari before someone struggles to come up with a song is directly proportional to the number of people in each team. The most beautiful part of the game is the fact that it encourages even non-singers to channel their inner Kishore Kumar or Lata Mangeshkar. It essentially takes the singing out of a competition that is all about songs. The most reluctant of people find the first three bars of a song and someone else will readily join him or her. An hour or so down the line, the repetition of “Na” might put someone in a spot. It could also be that some Hindi purist might start differentiating and insisting that the songs start with the right letter. I have never seen an Antakshari contest end in blows, but it does tend to get heated occasionally.

A striking part of this is that almost everyone universally gravitates towards old songs. And while I agree that the definition of old varies depending on who you ask, I’d wager that anything pre-1995 qualifies. ‘Ghum hai kisike pyaar mein’ comes to mind a lot quicker than ‘Ghumshuda, ghumshuda’. I have often wondered why that is the case. Why is it that even popular Rahman songs don’t strike me as easily as a Usha Khanna composition? Is it the fact that I grew up with these numbers, passed onto me like a family heirloom? Is it the fact that these compositions were inherently very simple and melodious, where the words mattered and did not dissuade? Or was it the case that the words simply got to the point? It was perhaps a mixture of all of them. Think about it. Take the case of the title track of “Rock On”. Now quickly try to remember how it starts. Do you remember the first word? If not, you aren’t going to sing it in an Antakshari. One of the thrills in Antakshari is to focus on what your opponent is singing and jump to the last word even while they are in the middle of the song. With limited time on offer, you are not likely to sing songs whose beginnings aren’t at the tip of your tongue.

Antakshari hit prime time on TV when the contest aired on Zee TV with the very knowledgeable Annu Kapoor enthusiastically hosting the show. Its form has evolved from the humble contest to a game with complicated rounds and variations. Its rounds span anything from identifying a song from its video with the sound off to singing only duets in a given round to singing as many songs as you can where the given word occurs in a mukhda (the initial lines of the song)

No matter what shape and form it takes, the simplicity of the game is never lost. Without any electronic device, without a pen or a paper and without a high degree of intellectual involvement, one can play Antakshari. It is the way a long lost song finds its way back into your heart once you hear it in an untrained voice singing it with enthusiasm. It is a game that gives you the impetus to go to the Internet and seek that long lost song again, for your heart now calls out to it.