Motorcycle Diaries

We were like the travelling Saints - Param, Sri Kanta and Me.

We would move from shrine to shrine, singing bhajans for 10 mins wherever we stopped, mesmerising the gentlefolk of the sleepy town of Kaivara and bringing some smiles on our faces. Actually, spirituality was lost on me - I was just a chronicler, I took snaps, recorded videos on my mobile and reflected on the moment and the experience that I wished to chronicle somewhere. Param and Sri Kanta did all the chanting.

It was the night before that Param rang me up and asked me whether I wanted to join him on a bike trip. He had some work in this place called Kaivara, some 50 kms outside Banglore. I was just back from my Diwali break to Goa. The temptation to answer a blind call, the impulse, is exciting - reminds me of days back in college when we would on the spur of the moment decide to go for a movie on the eve of an exam. I'm glad some of that madness is still left in me.

We ate our home cooked food. We were spread-out on the grass near the road eating rice, dal and beans. We had clocked some 2 hours on the bike. We had almost 20 kms more before we reached our destination. The dog sat patiently behind us. Every now and then it would just get up and nudge a bit closer checking out where we were with our lunch. Its turn would come. I had tried shooing it away. It just jumped back a few steps confused why I was doing what I was doing - couldn't I see it was hungry and following us around for food was a natural thing to do. I gave up, I did not have whatever it took to pelt it with stones and drive it away.

Wind on your face at 70 kph, a machine that responds to your slightest whims between your legs, smooth grey roads scampering into a horizon of overcast sky, rocky hills and green flora that has taken its true colours from the slight drizzle that is falling around, and the thought of seizing the moment. Life!

There was this place in the mountain where they were cutting shrines in the hill. There was this hall in the womb of the mountain which shouted back at us when we called out to it. Param and Sri Kanta ran towards the podium shouting the Lord's name. I looked around taking in the moment, we were actually INSIDE the mountain! Forgetting for a moment our angst and our cowardice to solve it, we ran into the warm and protective cavern of nature.

We will emerge one day, stronger, resolute, free and ready to be scarred again!

Lines that Stuck

The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owe's to oneself

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


Show some respect to your time on this Earth - Paulo Coelho, Zahir

Life is Serious Business - Param (Friend)

Give Life a Chance - Akshay (Friend)

Word Play

Happy Onam.

Happyo Nam. (are we happy?)

An interesting message I received today.

By the way I have not quit blogging. Just took an extended break. Hope to be back to active blogging soon.

Recent movies I saw,

1. Lage Raho Munna Bhai - Very Enjoyable. Arshad Warsi as Circuit steals the thunder. The idea of Gandhi-giri is also good.
2. The Tenant (Roman Polanski) - Waste of Time. Have watched Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and now this. What is all the hype about I fail to understand.
3. Vettayadu Vilayadu - Very slick and enjoyable. Production quality is great, but an overdose of violence. Watchout the lead dancer in the last song.
4. Achan Urangatha Veedu - Highly reccomended for performances and treatment of a new subject in Malayalam cinema (one of the many sex scandals that have rocked the state).

Ogden Nash

This Is Going To Hurt Just A Little Bit

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self-possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.
And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn’t a nerve in your head thatyou aren’t being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.

And the circumstance that adds most to your terror
Is that it’s all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won’t get mixed up, the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn’t because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse’s hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it’s all over now and afterall it was only this once.
And he says come back in three monce.

And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest,
That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition
is so that he won’t have to go to the dentist.

PS: Not sure about the line-breaks as this was picked from an unofficial site - is probably still under copyright. Please feel free to point out a 'proper' version if you know one.

Whose line is it anyway?

Interesting link about the 100 Best 1st lines from novels!

(link from Jabberwock's blog)

Ennui

The pages of the book had turned yellow with time.

I turned a leaf against the wind blowing through the window, careful not to disengage it from the bind.

Heat rays of the late morning sun lashed at me from all sides. Its blinding light enfeebled the already weak contrast of the print.

The skin on my cheek stretched and pricked itself awake as I closed my half open mouth - dry tongue on parched lips! Itch, scratch and micro flakes of dead skin on the forearm - a lone hair on the sleeve dispensed off into the wind.

Frantic winds howled in through the window in an attempt to run away from the smoke and dust, pushing through my hair and deafening my ears, that when my friend asked me what I was reading, I prayed he’d have partaken in the charade.

Camus' characters too were plodding along in his Algerian desert. A tale of shriveled dreams and enervated lives - not so impressive!

Then, the microphone of our Taxi crackled to life, blurting out incomprehensible phrases in a background of static. Cracker-candy pop in my head - as if a mosquito had made its way to my brain through my ear, and suddenly realizing it was lost had started pricking all around.

The driver spoke something into the handheld and the next instant the machine went dead, on command and respectful of its master’s voice.

I tried to find the spot in the book where I had left off.

As I grabbed the Arab in mid-sentence, the machine crackled back to life. The static once again contaminated the air, like a burst of itchy pollen. The prick went about its work all over again in my head - live, contained, its unique presence quite unlike the everyday pervasive head split. I would reach in and rip it out.

I grimaced and banged shut my book.

The shrill of a female voice floated over the noise of my thoughts - a rather animated critique of the guy on the wheels followed. Soon other drivers chipped in – little soprano, more tenor. A rally, and then, the microphone went dead again. I wished he had been a bit more assertive – “SHUT UP YOU FILTHY ANIMAL!!” or something like that.

I frowned and complained to my friend, he blamed his manager, and the machine came back to life, yet again.

Both of us jumped on the lad at the wheels as the cab raced through the clear and endless stretch of my ennui.

ഞാ൯ കഥ എഴുതുകയാണ്....

(Translation: I'm writing a story....)

In case the above letters appear in Pali change your Browser setting
View -> Encoding to 'Unicode UTF-8'

Finally some headway in 'Unicode' !

Some helpful links,

1. For Malayalam fonts
2. Installation instructions
3. Change Browser settings
4. Character picker

I copy-paste from the 'Character Picker'.

Keen to know more efficient ways of doing this!

Sideways

Miles Raymond: Well, the world doesn't give a shit what I have to say. I'm not necessary. I'm so insignificant I can't even kill myself.
Jack: Miles, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Miles Raymond: Come on, man. You know. Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can't kill yourself before you're even published.
Jack: What about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Dunces? He killed himself before he was published. Look how famous he is.
Miles Raymond: Thanks.
Jack: Just don't give up, alright? You're gonna make it.
Miles Raymond: Half my life is over and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. I'am thumbprint on the window of a skyscraper. I'm a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea with a million tons of raw sewage.
Jack: See? Right there. Just what you just said. That is beautiful. 'A smudge of excrement... surging out to sea.'
Miles Raymond: Yeah.
Jack: I could never write that.
Miles Raymond: Neither could I, actually. I think it's Bukowsky.

I was LOL and rolling in my bed at 2:00 in the night when this sequence played out.

Paul Giamatti, I wonder if the role is slightly autobiographical - such talent! Even the support cast does a fantastic job. Watch it!

The Man, The Machine,

It was New Year's eve and I was at the Dentist's to sort out some of my teething troubles.

I was in the waiting room expecting to be called anytime then. A lady and a small girl sat on my right, the bigger woman murmuring something to the other, and a guy and girl probably in their late teens sat to my left. The girl was talking to the guy who was toying with his mobile. The place was rather empty inspite of it being a saturday.

This was not my first time there and I looked at the now familiar walls, walls covered with colourful charts describing preventive measures for tooth decay, cavities and other such ailments. There was one particular information board that always caught my fancy. This one displayed a new technique developed by my Dr. for artificial tooth implantation. The technique, to put it simply, was to 'screw' in place the artificial tooth where the old or broken one previously stood. The information board carried end-to-end illustrations of the transformation - toothless gums, gums with the screw in place sans the tooth - boy, that was gory, the final effect after implantation and even the cross section of a jaw showing that strange apparition of 'screw-tooth' - the last one being a model ofcourse.

Pictures of doctors turning screws into the cartilage (or so, I think, is what they call the bony part of the jaw where the screw is locked) flashed through my mind, the images quickly changed to those of humans subjected to experiments during the development of the technique and finally to thousands of blue collar workers going for work feeling the steel under their gums everytime they felt around their mouth - the utility of the experiment outweighed all these I reasoned. My imagination was perhaps emaciated due to lack of knowledge on the subject.

Every now and then the door to the clinic's operating room opened giving me a glimpse of reclining patients and the equipments around them. Inside the drill was on, in more ways than one, and the low sound reminded me of times when in school our teacher wrote with new chalk on black-board creating that creaky sound that ever so often made me bite my teeth hard and grimace with repulsion. A kid suddenly screamed from somewhere inside. I thought of a poem that we studied in school by Ogden Nash about a trip to the Dentist's.

The TV at the center of the room was switched on, serving as a distraction from all that described so far, and was set to a prominent Malayam Channel. The channel was doing a 30 min recap of all it's episodes in the year 2005 - a Mega Serial, one of those emotional drivels that run at primetime, Mon to Fri, year after year. They were probably trying to show users the evident connection between the story at the beginning and end of the year.

Then, something happened.

Prof. P.C.Thomas walked in.

There is a saying in malayalam that goes 'idi vettiyavante kaalil paambu kadichu ennapole' (like someone bitten by a snake soon after he is struck by lightning). Now I don't intend to potray myself in such a light and capture the pity of the knowledgeble reader - he who knows about Prof. P.C. Thomas. For the unitiated, let me introduce you to the Teacher, Preacher and shrewd Businessman that is Prof. P.C. Thomas.

Prof. P.C. Thomas single-handedly runs and has been running for years the largest coaching center for the Engineering & Medical entrance exams in Kerala. Spanning 2-3 decades (Once he told us that one of his first students had approached him with a request to enrol his son under his able tutelage), the Prof's institute continues to churn out the largest number of Engineering and Doctorial candidates - all the top ranks in the state come under his name, always. A strict disciplinarian - a terror actually; stories abound of him abusing, both mentally and physically, pampering parents and their truant children - Thomas 'mashu', expanded his organization from a single room outfit to an enterprise with branches in Dubai and other Middle East countries. PC (that's what his students call him out of fear and respect) also now expanded his classes to cover IIT-JEE & Civil Services Exams with commendable success (the Prof. eventually told me that 2 of his students cleared the Civil exams that year). One can see the employment generation due to his work in my home-town by just looking at the no of PG apartments that have sprouted in and around his coaching center (I noticed around 5-6 notices right outside his gate - from Eve's Garde to Angel Valley). I always consider myself fortunate to have been tutored by him and the rest of the illustrious teachers at his Tution center.

Coming back to where I left off Thomas mashu walked in and briskly made for the Doctor's room. The years had hardly affected his appearance.

I jumped from my seat, more out of respect this time, and called out - "Sir". He turned, saw me, stopped in his tracks and smiled. He put his hand over my shoulder and enquired 'How are you faring?'. I replied 'Good'. Brief inquiries were made about career and well being. Soon he started to move on. I bid adieu.

He seemed to be in a hurry.

As I turned away, the lady sitting next to me slowly stood up and said - 'Mashukku enne manassilayo?' (Sir, did you recognise me?). PC gave a questioning look, but when prompted by the woman recollected her identity and started exchanging pleasantries.

The Lady soon bid farewell and took her seat.

As PC turned to open the door leading to the Dentist's, the guy on my left stood up and blurted, "Eh..Sir".

Recommended reading

Recommend Dilip D'Souza's blog. Writes, without pretence, about social issues.

http://dcubed.blogspot.com/

The following article was written by him explaining his real life act of child adoption - very interesting.

http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2004/11/why-shes-here.html

This following link gives a glimpse into his Mid-day columns

http://web.mid-day.com/columns/dilip_dsouza/2006/january/127462.htm

Season's Greetings

Have a Great time this New Year's!!

Time well spent: Books in 2005

After 2 years in a B-School, during which I managed to read just 5 books ('The Goal', 'Cuckold', 'Ravan & Eddie', 'The Rainmaker' & 'The Firm'. This excludes the many management novels that I left mid-way - Akio Morita's 'Made in Japan', Iacocca's 'IACOCCA' & Sculley's 'From Pepsi to Apple'), there was a conscious effort to spend more time with a book this year.

Starting April, these are the books that I read in 2005.

1. Chain Reaction by Eliyahu Goldratt
- First book on the job. Sequel to the much acclaimed 'Goal' by Eliyahu Goldratt, 'Chain Reaction' tries to apply the concepts of 'Goal' in Project Management. I was facinated by 'Goal', but 'Chain Reaction' goes one step further in terms of applicable take-aways. A really Good read.

2-4. The Murakami Novels

a) Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the world,

b) Dance Dance Dance

c) The Wild sheep chase

- Kraz and George raved about Murakami, but I was sceptical - from the Name, to Front cover to Story summary everything looked weird. Decided to check it out anyway.

Started with 'Hard-boiled Wonderland' and the style gripped me instantly. His is the kind of writing you can depend on when you want to re-invigorate your reading habits. 'Dance, Dance, Dance' proved he had a consistent style, though, he was probably not at his best in 'The Wild sheep chase'.

Have already bought his 'Norwegian Wood', 'Kafka on the shore' & 'Wind-up bird chronicle'.

If you thought the names didn't make sense, wait till you read one of his works. It hard to explain the plot and I don't want to try.

5. The Bhuj Story - After the quake by Rishi Sanwal
- Nice to see a friend publish.

6. 3 Men in a boat(Nothing to say about the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
- Witty, humorous and tiresome in parts. Good but not a classic. He has a largely funny and consistent screwball style that may at times make it a bit laborious.

7. 3 Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
- Continues where 3 Men in a Boat left off. Better than the previous one. This one is not so much about the cycle ('bummel') and their journey as his first work was about sailing. Though, his style remains consistent.

8. Seven sixes are forty three by Kiran Nagarkar
- Highly non-linear narrative. A coming of age, autobiographical work. Better than 'Ravan & Eddie' but does not have the Magnum Opus feel of 'Cuckold'. Though, we get more than a glimpse of the talent for intricate character studies that is so glaring in Cuckold. To be read again sometime.

9. 1984 by George Orwell
- A classic that triggerd my interest in Orwell. The explanations on why Anarchy and Class distinction are here to stay is outstanding.

10. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
- Like they say, 'A classic account of what it is like to be Down and Out'. An account of Orwell's tryst with poverty. Convinced me to explore lesser known works by popular authors.

11. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
- Short and 'sweet' read. Have to see the movie to find out why they cast Johny Depp as the free spirited Willy Wonka.

12. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
- Not as great as they have made it to be. You don't have to do a Ph.D and conduct research for understanding many of the day-to-day phenomenon described here. You can ask your Dad for a change!!

13. The Outsider by Albert Camus
- Classic. Nietzsche said,"God is dead" - Outsider will help one understand what he meant. On the lines of Fountainhead in terms of style - conveys a philosophy through stark characterisation. But unlike Fountainhead Camus does the job in around 100 pages.

14. Fear and Loathing in LA by Hunter S. Thompson
- One helluva Joy ride - 'Road Trippin', literally. The damning 'high' of a drop of live human adrenalin.

15. The Talkative Man by R.K. Narayanan
- Average. Fails to inspire one to read more of RKN's - something that 'Swami and Friends' achieved quite easily.

16. The curious incident of the dog in the night time by Mark Haddon
- Amazing work.

17. The Big sleep by Raymond Chandler
- Awakens a genre.

18. Intimacy - Hanif Khureishi
- Fascinating account of one man's arguments and counter arguments for leaving his wife and children. Spiced up with recollections of a troubled life and some interesting couch philosophy.

19. Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Some interesting theories, but an average plot. I will be surprised if the movie survives the opening rush and interest.

20. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Last book I read in 2005 (to date). Failed to understand why this is a master-piece in American Literature. Interesting in parts and long-winded most of the time. Summarises a man's struggle to reclaim lost-love; a story of imperfect characters and the rather realistic decisions they make in life.

Should try more Non-fiction, some of the long pending classics (e.g. Catch-22, Catcher in the Rye, Walden) and inspect some of the younger writers (e.g. Zadie Smith) in 2006. 2005, seems to have produced some interesting books in both Fiction & Non-fiction. Should check them out too.

Recollection by Kraz, Nakul ,Vinod , DSine, Sluggard , Ubergeek , Mridul , Param & Moon Jungle should make a very good compilation.

Times We Live In

Male Voice: " Good Morning Bangalore! The time is 9:56 a.m. and this is Christopher on Radio City.

(Sound of Girls wooing)

Male Voice: "Thank you Girls. Now, it's a sunny morning, great weather and we have just the right mix of programs for you on Radio City.

Bangalore, if you are stuck in traffic call us and tell us where you are. While you are with us, you can grab some fabulous prizes by taking part in the following poll.

Tell us what the most common form of public waste in Bangalore is.

Is it

A. Household Sewage

B. Litter

C. Vehicle Pollutants or,

D. Industrial waste

Call us and tell us what you think and win LOTS of Exciting prizes"

(Breaks into Ads)

The Common Man

MG Road, Bangalore - yet another weekday

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"

There was the cream Maruti-Omni, the fat lady in her late fourties inside, and the cop running from one door to the other to either get-in or pull the lady out. The lady was agitated and the cop, confused, but furious neverthless.

Then it happened. One of those gems that one loves talking over and over with friends.

The lady slammed the door wide open, the cop took a step back in surprise, the lady hurtled herself forward. Arms flailing, face contorted as of a woman possessed, tounge lashing like a whip taming a wild beast, she confronted the man. After shouting something at the cop, she swore not to follow his command; two-hoots, that what she claimed she cared for the dictum of his ilk. She got back into the vehicle.

As the play had already begun by the time I stepped out of Higgin Bothams I was unaware of what caused all the furore. Carpedium!!

The fellow, regained his bearings all of a sudden and, started running again from one door to the other, this time more confident and sure of his actions. He barked,

"I public servant. You call me...IDIOT!!.. get out woman.

I public servant. IDIOT eh...I show respect because you lady...GET OUT!!!

You call me IDIOT!!...I Public Servant"

The fellow was trembling with rage by now and his face had definitely taken a darker shade. To the woman's credit though, she was still persistent with her barrage. But I thought, the bit that went "I public servant" helped the policeman score a moral point over the lady; I for one thought it made the woman a bit doubtful. But, she was too deep in it to back-off now and tried to hold fort very stoically.

All of a sudden, one puny little man wearing a T-shirt and cap appeared out of nowhere. He had an impish smile on his face. He watched the proceedings for a few seconds and, unnoticed by anyone (I saw this becasue he made the move right in front of me), took his huge video camera and set about covering the circus. He ran with it to the driver's side of the Maruti, stood with the cop in profile and the woman staring straight at the lens.

A large crowd had gathered around the van by now and some 'elderly citizens' were pressing forward towards the policeman. Then, one man, quite bald on top and wearing a thick black spectacle spoke, in a rather conscientious manner,

"Madam, it was your fault. You shouldn't have..."

I decided to take a walk.

Focus...Stiffen...Click...another one for the album.

Reader's Bloc

Vikram Seth released his latest book and I decided to check him out through 'An Equal Music'. After a point I gave-up on the same - the reading got a bit too laborious and I was in no mood for reading about someone in a mid-life crisis. My friends, though, tell me that if one is willing to plough through the same one is rewarded with gems of musical prose and prose on music. Another day, another place (2-3 years on a 1000 page book - just that and nothing else!! Baffles me, the sense of purpose of a writer of fiction. I guess that is a mould one is born into).

I decided it was time to try something light. I decided to read my 2nd Agatha Christie novel. I had read 'And then there were none' (or 10 little niggers) years back and was rather impressed by it then. On a friend's reccomendation, I decided to try 'The Hollow'. I did not get past the 5th chapter.

One thing that I notice, and have thereafter confirmed as a recurring phenomenon in Agatha Christie novels, is the character study that the author ventures into at the start of her novels. For a novel in the 'who-dunnit' genre, character study of about 5-6 characters for about 60-70 pages right at the beginnig of the novel can be rather frustrating.

I moved into the children's section; picked up my first Roald Dahl novel, 'Charlie and the chocolate factory', and thankfully, finished it. Very light and hilarious read and definitely of the children's section. Though, I felt the book ended rather abruptly and a bit too soon. Guess 'Charlie and the Great glass elevator' takes-off from where this left.

Tried reading comedy of Spike Milligan. Did some cursory reading. Found it 'OK' - nothing to spend too much time on though. It's time I tried something concrete in the non-fiction genre - Guns, Germs and Steel,maybe.

O Captain, my Captain

" I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
- Dead Poet's Society (Quoting Henry David Thoreau)

The Bhuj Story ( After The Quake )

My colleague just published "The Bhuj Story ( After The Quake )", a book about his experience during the relief work he undertook at Bhuj after the quake in 2001. The book focuses on the people he met there and their resilience to the tragedy. Rather, it does not churn out a grim narration of the catastrophe.

Short and light reading by an aspiring writer. Requesting all to grab a copy of the same.

PS: This is not a selling strategy to take advantage of the recent earthquake; he had finished the book months back.

One Saturday morning in July..

I was in Coimbatore, en-route Bangalore to my home in Kerala; I was on the lookout for a quick connection home having already lost two precious hours of the weekend. As soon as I had set foot in Kovai, an agent of one of the local Private Travels had approached me, and on knowing my destination promised me a seat in a bus that he said left within the next ten minutes. The bus was already late and I didn’t have another idea to toy with. The Travel Agency had more than one agent, obviously, and the crowd gathering around that morning meant that some promises were sure to be broken.

Coimbatore was shaking dreams off and waking up to what looked like a bright sunny day. Shop owners who had hurriedly closed shop the previous night were cleaning their place before the first customers arrived. There was hardly a soul on the streets except for the occasional newspaper boy and the stray dog.

After a while the bus appeared in the distance, a good twenty minutes late. Right from the distance one could make out that the Cabin was already full. The bus ground to a stop ahead of us as many a sojourner dropped his plan - much to the chagrin of their respective agents. I decided to try my luck and took a cabin ticket – my agent definitely had his luck running for him that morning. One more desperate soul joined me.

At this point it is essential to write a few lines about ‘Cabin Travel’. In a semi-sleeper (Cabin Travel, as a practice, does not exist in Sleeper buses. Though one sure can let one's imagination draw out a desperate traveler sleeping foetus like on the floor next to the driver during a mad-rush), a cabin ticket would fetch one space enough to rest the upper part of one’s arse right under the rear end of the protruding TV, kinda back-to-back you could say. This came, of course, for the price of the regular seat. It gives one an excellent view of the hamlets, hillocks, paddy fields and palm trees that pass by – the catch being it is meant to be a play in one act. After a point, you'd rather meditate on the wonders and mysteries of nature with your eyes closed, coddled in the luxury of a cushy push-back seat with hands clasped over your tummy, than sit chin in hand, elbows poking thighs all over and your arse discovering bones that it never new existed till then. Basically, Cabin Travel, is for people who have bosses who wouldn’t let them know if they can take the weekend off from work till within hours of departure.

So there I was, standing on the foot-board, waiting for some divine intervention, tectonic or not, to shift the masses that were so precariously filling up their allotted spaces. All eyes were fixed on me and my gaze shifted from one face to another, pausing slightly to see if there was any space that could be usurped in between. As I stood there, waiting for something to happen, something did happen, to my surprise - a man got up from his seat and offered me the same! As he perched himself on the edge of an already occupied seat, much to the evident discomfort of its occupant, I, after a moments pause grabbed onto the seat that was offered, my bag thrown somewhere in the main seating area. Just for the record, the seat that was offered to me was the top of the gear-box right next to the driver - the Good Samaritan (GS), was obviously someone of importance in the scheme of things. The chap who got in after me made his way back to sit on the floor.

The GS gave me a benevolent smile and queried – “Bangalore?”, to which I replied, “hmm”. Guess I forgot to thank him then.

Tickets were paid for and the bus started its journey.

I was seated in a way that I had to turn 90 degrees to see through the windscreen, sliding myself further down in the process. My co-cabin travelers looked very distraught and the sight of me moving back and forth over the box, thereby polishing its surface, I thought caught their fancy. The seat, the edge of which the GS usurped, belonged to a teenager who wore a t-shirt that went “Nobody is Perfect…I’m Nobody” – for some reason he looked a bit more morose and grumpy than the others. Guess they contracted Cabin fever in Paradise also.

I started looking around and my eyes soon fell on my fellow travelers, the lucky ones seated on push-backs, who were catching up on dreams still undreamt of. As I let my eyes laze around the bus my vision suddenly fell on an empty seat right at the end - straight ahead of me. I quickly turned to the GS and asked him why we had a seat empty right at the back. He gave me that benevolent smile, yet again, and answered – “ Athu saar Walayar Check-postilindhu officer varum. Avarukku reserved” (It was reserved for the Road Transport Officers from Walayar Check post).

Though, at that moment, I was more concerned about getting myself a seat and was entertaining thoughts of occupying the seat till Walayar – what if they did not turn up, what if they had caught the previous bus, what if their work was delayed so that they had to catch the next bus – What the hell, I was in no mood for debates. I went back to my book. I was reading Orwell's 1984.

After a while, when the strain of reading fine-print in a moving vehicle began to tell on my eyes, I casually turned around to glance at the empty seat. To my surprise an old, frail lady was dozing off on the same. As a result of some seat adjustment that had taken place while I was engrossed in the novel, the chap who had boarded the bus along with me had got a seat for himself. He seemed quite pleased with himself, nestled in a push-back listening to his walkman. 'Wait for Walayar', I tried to justify some vague act of inaction I had committed.

As we approached Kerala it started drizzling. It was the kind that left pearly beads on the windscreen - beads with just enough water to form a drop, but not enough to overcome the surface tension and trail down. Soon the wipers were switched on. The wiper squashed the beads, mixed it with the thick layer of dust on the glass and left a wide sweeping trail that made it even more difficult to see what was coming toward.

We crossed the Kerala border sometime then and approached Walayar checkpost. The site of Kerala during monsoons had still not wiped the moroseness from the face of Mr. Perfect. As we approached the check-post, the bus started to slow down. The cleaner boy, who was coiled up on the footboard for a quick nap slowly stirred up.

The bus came to a stop at the check-post. The driver searched around and gathered few sheets of paper and put them into an already full file. After this he had a small chat with the cleaner boy, as if he were clarify what was to be done one final time. Then, as if by habit, he slid a 100 rupee note (or did I miss a few?) under the sheets of paper. The cleaner boy collected the same and made his way towards the office. After about 10 minutes, I heard voices outside the bus. Two middle aged men made their way in followed by the cleaner boy. The men carried a plastic bag filled with something I couldn’t see. They had a smile across their face and walked in as if it was their domain. They knew exactly where they had to go and made their way over luggage and cartons lying all around. I looked back through the hole in the wall. As they reached to their predestined seating location they saw that their seats were occupied. Nobody wakes up an old sleeping lady. All of a sudden two other men got up – guess they had been given the seats on the condition that if need be, they had to part what was dear to them – and offered their seats to the new travelers. The men with the plastic cover gladly accepted the offer and sat down. The stranger, who had boarded along with me, was still sleeping, quite unaware of all that was happening around him. The bus started and we moved on.

That weekend, a close friend narrated to me the troubles he was facing dealing some of the corrupt bureaucrats in the State’s public offices. How bribes were a norm than something shunned as immoral. How bribing was a part of his life and how he made officials feel indebted to him by bribing them than sprouting a grudge by turning them down. Yes, it was immoral, but that was the order of the day, or so he made me believe then. Also, some prominent Malayalam newspapers carried the following headlines –

· 8 (or so. I’ve lost count) MLAs quit ruling Congress party and join ex-Congress leader Mr. K.Karunakaran in his new formed Indira National Congress (Karunakaran) Party.

· Student activists charge the police in Calicut Medical College as a part of their protest against policy changes affecting the backward communities

· Hartal to be declared on someday the subsequent week to protest against the rising petrol, diesel prices

· National Survey rates Kerala as the least corrupt state in India

Guess, All’s well when Gods own the country.

Sin City

Comic to Screen comparison of the movie.

Chandler, Marlowe & "The Big Sleep"

“So you're a private detective,' she said. ‘I thought they only lived in books. Or else they were fat little men looking through keyholes in hotels."

There was nothing in that for me, so I didn't touch it.

Raymond Chandler created Philip Marlowe sometime in the 1930s, thereby creating a stir in the detective genre of fiction. The incisive and streetwise character that Marlowe is stands on his own in a genre already filled with creations quite distinct by their nature and modus operandi - from the broody and analytical genius of Sherlock Holmes to the womanizing and daring James Bond.

"The two rooms showed lights on the ground floor and a car stood on the drive in front. That must be Mr. Canino's brown car, I thought. He lets her drive it sometimes. He probably sits beside her with a gun. The girl Rusty Regan should have married. The girl Eddie Mars couldn't keep. The girl that didn't run away with Regan. Nice Mr. Canino."

He is probably one character, that I know of, who does it for the money – unlike Holmes whose reasons are more pedantic and have a lot to do with improving once trade, or Bond, who did it for the Queen or just for the thrill of the chase. Like Marlowe puts it in 'The Big Sleep',

“I have no feelings, I only want money. That’s why I work for twenty-five dollars a day, I do my own thinking. The police hate me, and so do Eddie Mars and his friends. I try to miss the bullets and stay alive. It’s difficult. I ask for trouble. I do all this for twenty-five dollars a day. And perhaps I feel a little sorry for an old man as well.”

Though, if you thought Marlowe was all work and no play, then you would be wrong.

“Her face under my mouth was like ice. She put her hands up and held my head. She kissed me hard on the lips. Her lips were like ice too.

I went out through the door and it closed behind me. The rain blew into my face. It wasn’t as cold as her lips.”

He does play the hermit quite often though.

Though, the main attraction of Raymond Chandler is not the character that is Philip Marlowe, but, is his style of writing. It’s made for a movie, this one. If Robert Rodriguez made 'L.A. Confidential' with Frank Miller’s dialogues and the scene templates of 'Frank Miller’s Sin City', the result would be the cinematic recreation of Chandler’s narrative. Philip Marlowe could very well be Jack Nicholson out of Polanski’s Chinatown, a Jack who spoke much lesser of course.

'The Big Sleep' is short, just like its style, and comes across as very refreshing to someone trying to discover a new style or character in the genre of “who-dunnits”. The story comes with the usual set of Rusty Regans and Eddie Marses, twisted plots and sub-plots, crisp action sequences and an always on the move feel. It’s like the experience of watching Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952) - a story that has been done a lot since but a narrative and a central character that stays as new now as it was then, yet.