Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Operation BB - A Story - Episode 1

'Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', I waved my arm like a flowing river to signify girl's harmonious, rhythmic walk, while singing this beautiful song loudly.

'SHUT UP, you discordant ox', Professor thundered back at me.

'Udaake Nindiya....Kahan Tu Chali...', I shut my eyes, as if totally engrossed in its melody and moving my arm rhythmically,started singing even more louder.


'Aashiq, kick this idiot Jogi so hard, so that he forgets to sing for the rest of his life', Professor shouted, looking towards Aashiq but pointing towards me. 'I can't tolerate him raping such a beautiful, romantic song, so badly'.

Aashiq folded his leg to mock a kick, just to satisfy Professor.


The three of us, Aashiq, Professor and me[Jogi] were coming back home, after watching 2-5 pm show of Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan starer, latest movie - 'Main Khiladi Tu Anari'. Ritz cinema hall - where this movie was showing, was a good four-five kilometers away from our homes and we were leisurely walking back home, side by side, through the Forest Road that connected the Shimla's major hub [where cinema hall was located] with our smaller township.

Silence prevailed for a while. We could hear the faint murmur of a distant bus or truck, somewhere in the lush-green, densely populated, cheel and deodar trees' forest below, using all it might to slowly move up on the steep uphill national highway.


Then, ''Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', now Aashiq started singing it loudly. This is the trouble with catchy songs, they are highly contagious. Once they enter your head, you can't help but keep singing or humming them all the time, until a new one replaces it.


'Now the ugly crow has started his cacophony, which is even worse then the fat ox', Professor shot back, getting even more angrier.


I burst out laughing out loud. Seeing it, Aashiq also joined me and we both started laughing - uncontrollably. Professor was trying his best not to laugh, by keeping his mouth tightly shut, but you can't remain poker faced, when you are seeing your buddies laugh out mad, unless of course, the joke is on you.

'You can also sing it, man.... No one expect us.....will hear you', I tried to cajole him, while speaking in-between bouts of laughter.


More roaring laughter.

'Ok, we will close our ears, now sing', Aashiq tried to help and placed his hands on the ears.

I followed, and placed my hands on my ears.


'Churrake Dil Mera,... Goriya Chali...', finally the hyena aka our Professor sang in such a inharmonious tone that even frogs started to run halter-shelter. .

Roaring hysterical laughter. All three of us burst out laughing so loud and so uncontrollably that our stomachs began to ache. We had to sit down on the slanting slope of a nearby tree trunk and stop looking at each other, because that was inadvertently leading to even more laughter.


After laughing out guts out, I gave my hand to Aashiq, to pull me up from the sitting position.


We started walking again.

After a while.

'What was that Take-Take scene, yaar?', Professor inquired.

Aashiq came forward facing Professor,'What did you come here thinking?', mocking anger. 'That its a film shooting going on and you can take as many re-takes as you feel like?'. Aashiq paused for the dramatic effect and made an imaginary gun by joining and folding both hands. With first fingers stretched forward like a gun's nozzle, he placed it in the middle of Professor's forehead. 'We get only ONE take in real life and if there's even a slightest mistake....thiskau, thiskau, thiskau...'. Aashiq fired three shots from his imaginary gun.


Professor pretended to be getting three shocks, limped his body, took out his tongue and dropped his head, pretending to be dead.


More laughter followed.

'Oh man, Did you see Akshay Kumar. How he fights?', Aashiq made a pose like that of a warrior in a battlefield and started talking excitedly. 'What amazing body.man. If you have a body, it should be like Akshay Kumar, else you shouldn't have a body Did you see his flexibility, yaar'.

'If you have flexibility it should be like Akshay Kumar, else you shouldn't be flexible - just like a electric pole'. I pumped him more.

'Exactly. Man, how he fights?, Round kicks, side kicks, jumps,somersaults, there he goes sliding on the floor and kicks two guys five feet away and then rotates legs and two more and then two more and then he just puts his feet on the floor and gets straight up without even using his hands. In like 5 seconds 6 guys are on the floor and he's the only one standing. Just wow man', Aashiq started talking enthusiastically. Once he starts that, the best way is to just shut up and listen.

Professor and I nodded in agreement.


'Did you see his flexibility', Aashiq joined both his arms from hands to elbow and then moved them outward and bent them horizontally while keeping them joined at the elbow. 'He stretches his legs sideways at one eighty degrees, forward stretch - one eighty degrees - just awesome, yaar. Have you seen, Chetty?', Aashiq inquired.

'Who the hell is this Chetty?', Is he related to Shilpa Shetty'. Professor asked, genuinely concerned.


'No yaar, nothing to do with Shilpa'.

Professor breathed a sigh of relief. His Shilpa was safe, for the time being, at least.

'Chetty is in fourth year of Medical College, and is in the same fourth year since three years', Aashiq explained.


'Wow man, what an intro. what a great man he is?', I mocked Aashiq by showing four fingers to Professor and then displayed three fingers, 'In fourth year.... three years...Shall we go and put some garlands on him for his mighty achievement?', I asked Professor.

'Shut up, you idiot. First listen to the whole thing. Don't open your filthy mouth until I say. Understood?', Aashiq shouted back.


'You should see his body yaar. Carved out of stone. Muscles just ripple over and his terrific flexibility. You know, a guy was standing just one or two feet away from him and Chetty moved his leg so fast, round kick, that his foot just brushed past the guy's nose and the next movement Chetty was standing normally and talking as if nothing had happened. I tell you, if he wanted, he could have just easily kicked the guy's head and he would have been lying on the floor without even knowing what actually hit him'.

'Wow, yaar', Professor exclaimed, looking impressed.


'That's not all. Eight-ten beautiful girls, medicos, that will become Doctors soon, come to him for training.', Aashiq fired his most deadly salvo at the very end.

'Really', Professor was now bowled over by Mr. Chetty.


'Forget it Aashiq. Even if you become Mr. Chetty, no girl will come to you', I exclaimed with a wicked, satisfactory grin on my face.

'Dog, you started barking again. Didn't I tell you to keep your mouth shut. Why wouldn't any girl come to me?', Aashiq placed both his hands on the sides of his waist, stood in front of me and demanded an answer. 'My face is very photogenic and people tell me I look like Salman Khan', Aashiq added emphatically.


'Because...you always start the story from the wrong end. You'll go to a girl and say - Hey, I am Mr. Chetty and I am in fourth year since THREE years. Hearing this, the girl would run away ten km from you, much before you could even start showing some of your style to her', I mimicked a few boxing punches towards Aashiq to infuriate him more.


Professor started laughing out loud.


'Dog, donkey, monkey - forget about me. You tell me about yourself. At least, I will go and say something. What about you?'. You can't even open your filthy mouth in front of a girl. Just like a big idiotic dodo you stand there and the girl laughs and giggles at you and goes away, Can't even croak out a monosyllabic - Hi....Ugly, mute frog.Tell me', Aashiq counter attacked.

'Its nothing like that. I just get mesmerized by her beauty and keep on thinking - which nice words to say to her', I tried to explain.


'Yes, you will keep on thinking for the rest of your life and by then she will get married, have two kids and then you can go and play with her kids and she will say to the kids - see your maamaji is there, play with them and I will go to shopping', Aashiq stressed the words maamaji to sting more.

'Shut up, you idiot. Next time you watch....', I got worked up by his abuse.


....................................................
To be continued....

Friday, June 17, 2011

Souvenir 1999

Quick Post....
A batch mate of mine just got hold of scanned copy of Souvenir.
Here I am sharing two pages of it.
Click on the images to read text....

Exactly twelve years down the line, I would like to say to her - 'Yes Mam, we have achieved all that. Thank you so much....'

See what was written about me - ha ha..


Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Phantom Menace Over

We are taking a break from the series - Collections. Rest assured, we will be back on track - after a while - just a few diversions along the way.

I was reading my old posts and stumbled upon this post - http://navjotkashyap.blogspot.com/2005/11/phantom-menace.html - written back in 2005. Please do read it, before moving forward on this post, so that you can understand the full context.

Phantom Menace was tamed longed ago. The book I was referring to was - Phantom by Susan Kay. My younger brother had gone to US sometime back and I had asked him to bring it for me from there. Although it cost me a bunch, but that was immaterial.


Last week, I read it again and have penned down all the beautiful lines, I could come across. I might have missed a few as I was skipping paragraphs while reading it.


My suggestion to you would be to make Patiala Lassi [Recipe here - http://www.indobase.com/recipes/details/lassi-patiala.php] and pour it in a big silver glass and drink it slowly, while reading it. Do not rush. Read slowly, Read a line. Take break. Think about it. Let your vivid imagery draw up anything that it feels like. Then move forward. Enjoy it maximum.


Enjoy.

Cheers



None of us can choose where we will love. -Erik


In that last, lonely moment of thrusting anguish, it seemed to me that there was no one left alive in this world but me, that I would be shut up for all eternity in this black poison of pain. -Erik's mother


But music was the keystone of his extraordinary genius. Music welled up from some bottomless pool within him and flowed like a ceaseless fountain through his fingertips, making an instrument of virtually every object that fell into his inventive hands. -Erik's mother


The words were for God, but the voice, the acquisitive, irresistible voice, was for me and it pulled like a magnet somewhere deep and unseen inside my body. Erik's mother


There was no plan, no coherent thought, in my head, just a deep instinctive need to get away, far, far away. -Erik


There was no better way to raise a demon in my brain then to tell me a thing could not be done. Impossibility was not a concept that I acknowledged. -Erik


POWER. I was beginning to acquire the taste of it, to see it as a very satisfactory substitute for happiness.... for love. -Erik


Creation - and destruction - were the only lusts I would acknowledge henceforth, I would be like God, an absolute force, beyond question..... beyond restraint. -Erik


There is nothing, I cannot do, if I choose. -Erik


Perfection, always perfection . . . nothing less would ever do in anything to which he set his mind. -Christine


My mind has touched the furthest horizons of mental imagination and reaches even outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain.....For as long as I live, no women will ever look on me in Love. -Erik


I wish I could hate him, but I couldn't. He was still my conscience. -Erik


I'm beginning to realize just how much of a child she really is, how terrifyingly immature and vulnerable . . . even unstable. There's a fatal flaw running though her like a crack in a Ming Dynasty vase, but that imperfection makes me love her with even greater tenderness. -Erik


Even in silence there was music in his hands, a cadence which seemed to flow irresistibly through his fingertips. -Christine


I hated broken promises and dishonored pledges; I hated going back on my word. Disappointment is such an exhausting emotion- all that energy dissipated first in painful hoping and then in futile, hopeless resentment. -Erik


I was alive, and I had never lived. Erik


Like a house with no foundations, unable to resist the first tremor of an earthquake, my existence had tumbled all around me to ruins. -Erik


Hell is not a place, its a state of mind and body, hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name....-Erik


I was obsessed with Christine Daae, irretrievably and disgustingly fixated with the desire to possess which I knew I could not have. -Erik


I punished myself without mercy for the wickedness of wanting. But still I wanted her.... -Erik


I began to lie to myself, to cheat and deceive that other half that cried out that this could not be, this must not be. -Erik


But his voice is my inspiration and my reward. It lifts me from my earthly shell and carries me to the very edge of the universe, a wondrous flight of body and soul that leaves me utterly exhausted. -Christine


I am living in a dream. There is no reality, no existence, beyond those fleeting hours in which I teach her. The time between her lessons is a meaningless void, and the nights when she does not comes to the theater are one long, unending fever of anguished waiting. It seems to me that I do nothing but sit staring at the clock, willing time away, so that once more I may be close to her. So near, so near ....and yet so far away. -Erik


The calender tells me three months have passed, but they could be three seconds or three centuries for all the difference it makes. -Erik


At length I carried her through to the second bedroom and lay her down on my mother's bed, covering her tenderly with a shawl and watching the pale material slowly settle and cling to the outline of her form, enveloping her with the warmth and intimacy that I could never share. If its possible to be jealous of a shawl, then I was wickedly jealous. -Erik


Her head drooped lower and lower until it almost rested on my knee.... almost, but not quite. -Erik


To every tear that went down her cheek, I have shed hundreds. -Erik


I won't beg. Not even for your love. I have asked you to marry me, but I don't want your answer now. I would like you to come back tomorrow evening. Will you promise me to do that Christine, Will you promise to come back and tell me.....even if the answer is no. -Erik


Twenty four hours I had given her because I did not yet have the courage to face her answer without making a disgusting spectacle of my grief. -Erik


But, as I looked at the ring, I knew without question that I was going to have to find that courage and let her go with dignity. She did not love me, but respected me enough as a man - a human being - to honor me with a decency of a considered reply. And, I in my turn, must honor her decision. I would keep my pride, this time, no tears, no degrading groveling to make me burn with shame at the memory. Pride was all that I would be left with to sustain me through the ordeal of her refusal, pride would make me wish her well and let us part with civilized curtsy.....-Erik



Such a little thing really, a kiss .... most people don't give a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right. I have lived on this earth half a century without knowing what it is to be kissed ... and I'll never know now. -Erik


I'd totally dismantled this child... taken her to pieces in my crazed determination to make her heart tick in harmony with my own. I'd taught her to sing like one of God's angels, I'd loved her more than anything else upon this earth... but my love had destroyed her, reduced her to a pitiful creature barely aware of her own actions... made her as mad as I was myself. -Erik


He had given me the wings of an angel and taught me how to fly. -Christine


Slowly, hesitantly, as though fighting against the wavering instincts of a lifetime, he offered his gloved hand to help me ascend the carriage step. It was the first time he had ever directly invited physical contact from me and the moment was fraught with tense significance for us both. My fingers had only to close that little distance between us and I would be a child to him no longer.

In the moonlight his gloved hand was elusively normal; it looked warm and strong and quite curiously reassuring, the hand not of a monster and a murderer, but of a gentle, loving man, who waited with infinite patience for one little sign of hope . .-Christine


I want to build something
beautiful... something in this world that he would have been proud of. There had to be a purpose in being in this world.... There has to be some purpose in living... -Erik

My voice was my only one beauty, my only one power, my only hope; my voice would open a magic pathway into her life.


I realized that his voice had become, for me, a drug as powerful as morphine, necessary to my senses, vital to my existence. His silence was a punishment beyond my strength to bear. -Christine

This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex. She had dropped one pearl of purity into my soul, and even now, after all these years, it was still there, displacing a little of the dank, disgusting sludge of depravity. I had done many terrible things, but I had never harmed a helpless woman. -Erik


There's so much darkness in my head, sometimes it frightens me too... but it need not be like this, Christine. If I could just live like other men, walk through the Bois in daylight and feel the sun and wind upon my naked face... Oh Christine, I would be dare to do so many things if you were there beside me as my wife. -Erik


She was a lovely, wilting flower that I longed to rescue from the strangling creep of weeds. I wanted to plant her safely in the labyrinth beneath the Opera House, to hide her from the world so that no one else should ever find he, hurt her . . . take her away from me. I could make her grow . . . I
knew I could make her grow . . . if only I dared to reach out and lift her from the barren, acrid soil that was stifling her natural talent. -Erik

Guilt, I thought, with a flicker of remorse for my heartlessness ... guilt is surely the saddest of all human emotions. But guilt is not love; it is a fire that consumes without giving warmth to those not embraced in its tangled coils. -Erik


He moved with a slow majesty, as though his whole body was informed by the rhythm of a music he alone could hear...-Christine


The thought of that white rose filled me with bitter shame... Yearning to turn and reach out to him, I remained unable to conquer that inner fear; it was a chasm I dared not cross. And so I sat there, like the little mouse in Aesop's fable, not daring to look upon the lion bound by cruel ropes. Chained by fate and shackled by pride, he starved in silent pain; and because I lacked the courage of a rose, I could not set him free. -Christine


Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine. It doesn't last very long. -Erik


I do not languish in his power like a pale prisoner, denied the light of day, but I grow ever upwards beneath the benevolent sun of his genius. Where once I was content to be a wilting marigold, I now aspire to the glorious height of a sunflower. He has captured all the wonders of the universe, enchanting baubles that reflect shafts of incandescent light. And like the child, starved of toys, I reach out eagerly with both hands, turning my back gladly on the world I left behind. -Christine