The moment of superstardom

FOREWORD: A tribute to the little one who actually exists …

It was 4 30 PM of a hot sultry afternoon in the Bandra Kurla Complex by the turn of Wockhardt towers. The kind of concretized shadeless place which would send even the toughest of folks packing away.To evade the harsh nature of the Sun, setting away, but making a defining farewell statement with its rays.

She was walking by the signal, the little one, in crutches.Hardly ten, she wondered why she was walking in crutches , considering that the only one she knew who walked in crutches was the old lady who lived nearby who apparently had no legs.

But she had legs. Even then, why the contradicting utility!

It will make you a better actor. In the long term, some movie director from Mumbai will pick you up for your excellent acting ! In the short term, you get to drink cold clean water every Sunday

Chachaji’s  wise sounding words echoed through her head.

Chachaji  is always right !  she thought. He must be . He was a good man according to her though her little heart urged her to think otherwise, of a different possibility of Chacha ji’s character.

Hey here come the people!   she sidelined all thoughts as she saw the vehicles approaching the signal. She dragged herself on the crutches, taking extraordinarily well acted care not to let her feet use their muscles. You have to convince them that you are lame! Chachaji used to advise. She went to a taxi, asked for alms and was shooed away.

She stepped back, waited for a few breaths and went back to the same taxi, but from the other side where the shooing man’s wife was sitting. Maa Bhookh lagi hain! she said with the best expression of grief she could possibly conjure up. It worked … the lady took pity and gave her a 5 rupee coin.

 One more triumph! This Sunday, ice water guaranteed ! She thought. She was about to throw her crutches away and dance like that tall beautiful lady she saw on that thing called TV, while hiding under Chachaji’s bed.  What did they call her? Haan ….Katirna or was it Kartina ?? Well ! who cares! Someday I will beat her level of fame …hmmph!  She was victorious! She need not care about insiprations . She was sure she was an incredibly dextrous actress and will continue for that day. She should not be satisfied with one 5 rupee coin. What if she gets three of them or maybe four???

Then three ice water glasses ???  No! She couldn’t be so ambitious. Become like Katirna ? Maybe! But three ice water glasses in one Sunday is impossible. She bit her lips to stop thinking of what she thought were things only the Gods can get. She cursed herself for thinking such things!!

Then she thought of Chachaji, the person who saved her and many kids when they were babies. She didn’t remember her parents at all. Ungrateful people ! Insipte of having such a talented actress for a daughter, they couldn’t take care of her and abandoned her! Only Chachaji the clever person recognized her talent. So did he recognize the talent of other such kids.

All of them would be actors someday.And all of them were to do different roles…. of a blind boy, of a dumb girl etc. And her of a lame girl. The moment passers by gave you coins…. Chacha ji used to say …. it means one more person could nt see through your acting … see thats the way to do it.

To reward the deserving the 15 kids at chachaji’s place used to get a glass of cold water on sunday if they fooled more number of people that week. Which suffices to say they got Chachaji more number of coins.

Suddenly she had a flash. Why give all these coins to Chachaji ? Are not these coins valuable ? And why did Billu the 8 yr old new boy in Chachaji’s acting school lose his eyes last week, when his collection was low, (like in that stupid but famous movie I heard of ) ? The other kids said Billu was so disappointed he couldn’t act like a blind boy properly and hence, gorged out  his own eyes to realistically get into the role play.  But whosever heard of a 8 year old mustering that sort of guts ??? Rumour has it Chacha ji punished him for notbeing able to act ? Oh God ! Is Chachaji good or bad ? Is he just exploiting us with impossible dreams ??? Oh no …

Just then, a car pulled over nearby. A foreigner  who was very tall and pretty looked out. The girl did the crutch act fabulously , perhaps, in her head, even more tragically than a real lame person with crutches. The aura of tragedy must have been perfect in those moments. And these foreigners cetainly have lots of money. Perhaps   the girl thought, I transcended all the barriers of acting perhaps I reached a God level! Perhaps I actually can wish for more glasses of ice water in one Sunday ! Hahaha ….

At that moment, the foreign lady , for lack of any coins on her and for not being used to the coldness of a regular Indian crowd  (who are used to seeing so many beggars) felt an over whelming pang of pity for the lame kid. She took out a 10 rupee note, the lowest denomination she had in her purse and gave it to her with a smile.

I am a Goddess now  she thought . She never caught a 10 rupee note in her life. She could count 1 to 10 in the numbers. Thats pretty much the extent Chachaji taught her. And now she has the highest denomination she could possibly recognize. Only superstars get highest. I am heavenly. I am immortal. I can get three glasses of ice water. Oh no! I am going to burst … she thought.

Then she saw the foreigner tell the driver.The signal is green now. lets go. And then, in what was the funniest way of speaking Hindi (according to the little girl), the foreigner said, Jaldi !Jaldi !! 

Haha! that was funny! I am a superstar now. my fears are baseless. I have done the impossible with my acting skills. I can mock anyone . I am all powerful.    And then she shouted after the foreigner who gave her alms, mocking the former , with a supremely confident  aura , Jaldi!  Jaldi !! And that moment was her moment of arrogance ! Her moment of snobbishness! Her moment of superstardom…

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x THE END x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The MUMBAIkar saga Episode 9 : A few good laughs

The Comedy Store , Palladium, Phoenix mills, Mumbai 🙂   http://www.thecomedystore.in/

The first stand up comedy theatre in India.With a full fledged bar and restaurant outside . Well established stand up comics who throw you into peals of laughter. A perfect way to celebrate weekend nights. An even better option to warm up your spirits if you are planning to go to a late night party.

The last time the author went there was in the first week of Jan 2011. There were around 4 different stand up comedians with varying styles. But they seemed to jerk up all kinds of real time satires and hilarious sarcasm.

Of course all these constitute mostly degree 10 humour which a right wing person (belonging to the population thats the butt of the joke ) would not take lightly :p That means most of our grand parents would jump across the theatre and throw themselves at the comics to do a wrestling tackle! But well …. saying that itself bears testimony to the effectiveness of the comic act 🙂

Anyway, for the urban population living in or visiting Mumbai, you  should give this place a shot and you would surely think of going there again. Period.

Mischief . Mayhem . Soap

The author has searched for long. rather too long, before he found the legal/legitimate facility for what has been quite the tangible wish for nearly a decade. (Now that, you see, is not one of those other ones of the author’s whims which last for the time duration of a tachyon)

All dust settled ….I am talking about this !  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_martial_arts

And I found just the right place near home. http://www.xtremefightfederation.com

3 sessions down and I seem to have had faced the toughest training regimen of my life in the last 1 week. But its a good endorphin induced feeling at the end of every training evening. And since the whole theme of *learning to fight* is macho in its idea, I guess boys are biologically built to endorse it  (Haha! Did I sound like Freud )

Well ! For me, its much more simulataneously taxing and satisfying than even the running or the weight training at the gym. Period.

So gear up gentlemen! Stretch your knuckles,  shake your feet, rub your palms,  and lets get ready… to fight !          😛

– Ghost Runner

ps: SCMM 2011 !  Two days to go! Lets have some feverishly runnerish fun … shall we .. . hu ha !

Genesis of the rise

“Where is your son?” the underworld don thundered. “Is he scared?”

“I am not aware of anything under the sun my son is afraid of. He doesn’t usually give his word – but if he does, you can take it for granted that it will be done. He will come, don’t worry.” replied his assistant.

A horde of white Maruti vans screeched to a halt and a parade of henchmen, all bearing guns stepped out and assembled in a V-formation. From the center emerged a young but balding man, with black hair and dark sunglasses, dressed in denim and white sport shoes. His swagger raised many an eyebrow, and the men present felt a chill shudder down their spines.

The moon hid behind a cluster of dark clouds.

He stepped up to the older man and said, “Anthony. This fight is between you and me. Between your men and mine. Either you die, or I die. Your men die, or my men die in this war, but innocent people shouldn’t get hurt. I now realize what a coward you are. Seven days, I tell you today, in seven days, you will be finished.”

“Do you know what you are saying and who you’re saying it to?” cried the distraught father.

“I am speaking the truth to an immoral man, father”

Anthony allowed himself a slow menacing laugh. “You are still new to this business, young man. Seven days? I need just seven seconds. Look over there,” he said, pointing beyond the young man’s back where a sniper stood atop a huge tower, ready to shoot on command.

It was now the young man’s turn to laugh a little. He took off his sunglasses, and said, “Look there a little, dear man” he said, pointing to another tower where three snipers were ready to aim and fire.

With his characteristic baritone laugh, he came close to Anthony and said, “Remember one thing. God toys with the good hearted, but never let’s go of their hand. He will give the bad man a great many things, only to make sure his fall is greater and harder.”

With that he swiveled around and walked away leaving behind a shocked and frightened Anthony as the winds whispered in a crescendo – “Baasha, baasha”

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REFERENCE

For those who want to know further, refer here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badsha to understand & appreciate where this was extracted and translated from.

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CREDITS

Starring: Rajnikanth, Raghuvaran

Director: Suresh Krishna

Extracting, Editing and Translation: El Papa

Publishing : blog owner 😛

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The MUMBAIkar saga Episde 8: October Octogenarian

There is this  80-something beggar I bump into everyday as I leave for work. A crude old man with a pretty distinctively long beard Often reminded me of Gandalf when Gandlaf was still Gandalf the Grey)

Anyway, days pass without me ever batting an eyelid or turning to him to give him the alms he asked for everyday . Until the previous day, when at the behest of a particularly good mood,  I stopped and ransacked my bag for some paltry change. Following 2 excruciating minutes of frantic rupee-coin searching, I handed him a rupee. Something, (I thought), that would be treated like the holy grail

But he looked at the coin, looked back at me and said

Abey behenc***d! Itne din ke baad sirf ek rupai ? Isse tho vada pav bhi nahin milega mujhe

(Translation: Sistah-f***er !! After all these days , just a rupee? I wont even get vada pav with this !! )

I kept staring and he walked away …..

Mindset of solitude

****

In a city of mechanical cold

Filled with true facts of old

About unending stuff on a platter

Like weekends, parties and babes

And all  a hedonist could behold

At an annual time of yearly vacations

When you strive on stuff of relations

Like a social being in all bliss

Surrounded by pals, allies and money

And the scorchers you could kiss ….

Yet he sits in a mind set of solitude

All seems immersed in platitude

To stare, frown  and shrink in darkness

Wouldn’t care  if gobbled by a lochness

The only feeling is cold … heavy … numbness

****

Its pretty obvious that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. So said dad during the holidays at home.

So said the legendary El Papa , the flat mate of mine in Mumbai.

The author doesn’t really understand whether its any evil or bad-guy allusion in particular. But the thought flow in fursat (idle state) is certainly chaotic

Anyway, Christmas hols are here and I am stumped with a 3 day long weekend. One does live  weekdays wondering about the relaxing long weekend one would have at the turn of the week. But yet, when it arrives you have no idea what to do other than sleep and eat. And yeah! The thoughts flow uninterrupted by day to day phenomena …

Throw in flat mates going away for the weekend and you are stuck in your huge 3 bedroom apartment all for yourself. Its an amusing kick, the thought that goes the Culkin way , “The guys left me home alone” . Freedom ..pristine, invisible and unaccountable! But yet , the kick is temporary and gets overshadowed by thoughts. Just thoughts …old thoughts which one usually tries to subdue with the weight of your job, your businesses, and living through the present day deliverables.

I wonder if something like The last solace in a Universe of Chaos exists. A romantic would impulsively say that the panacea to this requirement is love! But borrowing from good ol’ Al Pacino from the Devil’s advocate , Insipid! The same sensation that occurs as an equivalent to consuming a buxom quantity of dark chocolate ….

So good ol’ Pacino suggests a substitute that is way cheaper and free of baggage.So I actually tried chocolate and ice cream while watching TV. Nopes! Didn’t really work. The claustrophobia and the solitude persisted. That reminds me of good ol’  Sam , an old friend from IIM-C.

With Sam, I worked out this concept of bliss in solitude . But I guess besides  the kick of a soundingly, apparently , theoritically peaceful approach, it didn’t really work. Perhaps because I am not into being a lone ascetic yet 😉 Or perhaps because all these days, I have been lonely anyway, irrespective of people always being there around me.

So its not even physical solitude that seems to be the problem. Just the thought coming up since I have the time to let it come up for these 3 days. The thought that I have been living  in a mind set of solitude, either dormant or active. all along

I shall then,pump up at the gym a bit, do my twilight jog,  dress up in my funkiest way to date,  and hit the city after the Sun goes down.

Is there such a thing as the last solace in a Universe of Chaos .  . Lets see, wonder and hope an answer comes …

yours truly,

still the dark,fast and fiery,

Ghost Runner

The Marathe Syndrome

Foreword:

The author gives this peculiar thing this tag for he doesnt know what else to call it.

Prof. Lyn Chat of IIM-C psychoanalytical excellence fame would allude this whole state to the shadow concept. An inner subconscious state of oneself which stays away from one’s awareness.

.

Anyway … the introspective blah apart, here’s what happened …

The musings

The path from office at Prabhadevi (Mumbai) to Wadala East (Mumbai) is around 8 KM . Generally  it would be best to take a cab and get back home in a jiffy (well ..around 20-25 min actually! a relativistic “jiffy” , considering the a**-paining Mumbai traffic)

But then I chose to walk …walk back from office. Then  I wondered why I am doing it…

Fitness ?

Not at all! I do go to the gym, run et al, get my share of rationally recommended exercise.

So whats the point in dragging a tired work-beaten body across the polluted , over-crowded roads of Mumbai where every second passer-by makes it a point consciously or sub-consciously to make you think he’s going to spit his red paan on you…

Eye-candy ?

Yeah right ! The path goes via Dadar where you find super-fat aunties in super-fatter dresses wrestling away with the moving vehicles.

Mumbai streets would hardly match upto the Saturday night club areas of Europe, would they ? 😛

Observe the many slums ..social worker style?

I do feel bad for the poor. I mourn their poverty amidst cruel civil disparity. In spite of a growing economy. And Mumbai is full of them. But I am no Mahatma. I confess that I don’t fancy walking along slums. Sadly,at that moment, my instinctive annoyance at the shabbiness of slums along the road and irritation of the stench overpowers any sense of mourning for the poor.

Frugally saving some bucks ?

Hmm ! I can surely afford a cab , pretty far away from bankruptcy at present 🙂

Then why …

The old, wise and slightly twisted English genius, Prof. Marathe, who taught us English when I was 17 , once said,

“Everything seems at least close to “fine” in life. Distant Memories  and unseen paranoia apart, you have no obvious/practical reason at the moment to feel worried. Its all in place But yet, you want to think , think of nothing per se, but think in a way a gloomy worry-laden man would be lost in thoughts.”

That is the Marathe Syndrome! A subtle episode in your cognition which is not exactly explainable by any level of determinism. But when one just prefers to walk because it increases one’s time to think, about nothing yet everything ….

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Dialogue of the day: (from the feature film, Kingdom of Heaven)

Balian of Ibelin: What is Jerusalem worth?
Saladin: Nothing.
[walks away a good deal, then turns back and rolls his slightly raised hands in fists]
Saladin: Everything!