My own private Narnia

So, do you believe in magic?

There are places that exist. Maybe they were real once, maybe they only live in the memories I have of them, selected, curated, gaps filled in with imagination and dreams, but who's to say what makes them any less real or false than objective, empirical reality?

There is a place like that I'm especially feeling tonight. A place of dreams, of wild imagination that  became reality before the eyes of their dreamers, came out into the real world and took shape and form, grew and flourished far beyond what they had hoped, beyond what they could have dared to believe.

Silicon Valley is a fascinating story, a myth made flesh, a world of games, stories, vivid, crazy, reckless, explosive magic. A place and time that changed the world. I showed us that you can dare to dream, and make new realities the way you wanted.

And yes, it comes with it's share of corruption, of cancer in it's bones and blood slowly blackening the golden sunshine with darkness and sleaze, with greed and lust and envy, a place where a thousand dreams died for every that lived...

But I'm not talking about the semiconductor factories, the garage inventors, the gamers and hackers and cyberspace architects and explorers, even the coders of the dotcom era or the VCs of the last decade past.

For me, it's always going to be a proof of concept, a place even in it's hard, expensive, gentrified avatar, with it's rents and commutes and affectations and cut-throat capitalism, it's still going to be a place where despite itself it can be a place where magic can happen. Maybe not the big, grand magics of overnight millions and free information and universal connectivity and equality, but small ones. Little things that are so huge compared to the realities of other places. Air, water, food. Interests. A chance to explore, to try. Stories and struggles. Not the destinations reached and prizes won, but a place full of the magic of trying, of running, of the journey.

And when you come out of the wardrobe back into your world, even as the past fades like a dream you cannot talk about, and you get back to the grind, you come back changed. You come back touched by the magic, fey, a little different, marked by a sunshine few understand. And even if you can never return - physically, temporally - you will always remember it as your own experience of it, not so much for what it was, but in what you felt there, what it did to you, how it made you feel. How it changed you.

And that's what makes it a magic place. Something that's yours alone, something unexplainable, intangible, yet so, so real.

My own private Narnia. 

Things are never just things

Clearing out a storage space is hard.
If you've been used to moving around, you already have a filter that ruthlessly throws away anything that's not needed any more, unless it has some use or sentimental value.
Things that get used, get used, wear out, get replaced.
But the ones that have an emotional connect - it's hard to see them again, because they're not just things, are they?
A little memory, a little piece of a life that once was.
A little moment in time, inconsequential but for the dreams that rode on its shoulders in the sun, laughing in delight at a bright and happy future they saw coming.
Now the moment lies still in it's bed of dust, crumpled plastic and yellowing paper, fading photographs and retro single... and dreams lie dead, incinerated in the nuclear blast of change, the hurricane winds of time. So destroyed they aren't even a memory anymore, except from the impression they left on these things.
A torn note from the back of a class book.
A receipt, a train ticket, a boarding pass, a membership card.
Things used till they were tattered and lovingly repaired.
Things pristine, never used at all, but bought on the wings of hopes and dreams, waiting expectantly in their sealed plastic covers.

Tiny little inconsequential things that can break you...

A reek of opulence

"Come, let's take a look," he says, striding up the corridor. I'm in one of the premiere, large-scale properties in the heart of the city, within an thirty minutes of most core Bombay and built for luxury. The place is huge, with multiple pools, tennis, gyms, 'library', clubs, cardrooms, restaurant, fountains, and a jogging track in the terraces. It's priced completely out of any possibility of my acquisition. This is just a visit. And though we both know this, the sheer pride and excitement of showing off this - the epitome of the high life, the measure of one's success, a chance to walk in the footsteps of the Rich - adds a spring in his step no expectation of wasted effort can dampen.

Yet.
I look around these mansions of the gods, and I feel - as Arthur C Clarke said - not envy, but pity.
The track is beautifully decorated with vegetation, to hide the ranks of construction cranes standing sentinel over the coming metro trainyard. The pools are long and wide, but only four feet deep. Everywhere. There will never be a cannonball in here, no sink into skullcrushing pressure until all you hear is your own blood. The clubs are decorated with plaster cast corals and random, mismatched brass and glass. There is no story, no ratty souvenirs. I think of the thirty-kilo geode D found in the Sahyadris and carried it for a day and a half down a mountain, taxi, train, and bus back home, that can far outclass anything on display here. These aren't even someone else's experiences, memories or even statements. They're an expression of an emptiness of mind, heart and soul, filled with objects. The library has more sofas than books. The children's play area has a nine-foot ceiling and accented mood lighting, where a single little girl sits quietly with her nanny, frightened by the hushed deadened soundproofing and the random parade of workers and supervisors walking through her play. An attached gameroom has two slightly older children listlessly gunning down faceless soldiers onscreen, unsupervised. The next room is bright, open, and airy... and filled with pool tables.
The rooms are tiny, open to rows and rows of windows and balconies. A chemical plant belches effluvients on periodic gouts of flame into the sky in the near distance. drills, sanders, grinders, and hammers are everywhere, and a fine,dry, powdery white dust fills the air, even if housekeeping keeps it off the floors as fast as it settles. There will never be a pigeon nest in these kitchens, a bat flying in from the ventilator or a bandicoot in the storage. There will be no feral, friendly cats or enthusiastically genial dogs. No lizards will stalk moths around a single yellow lightbulb in the shadow of a monsoon downpour. No cramped, tiny bookshops filled with more books than physics should allow. There will never be a trash leaves bonfire in the cold autumn evening with potatoes roasting in its heart.
I wonder where the kids will be able to get covered in mud. Which of the protected, decorative trees they can climb and brave the lines of red ants to get at semi-ripe, bat-nibbled mangoes. Where they can sneak out for a smoke, a plack-plastic-bag beer, or a sizzling greasy beef roll off the coals. Breathe in the dry, dusty smell of adventure from brittle, yellowing pages dug out of a stack of decades-old classics. Where they will not be under CCTV. Where they will not be watched and judged for their clothing, behavior, words, thoughts. Where they will meet someone who thinks so differently from them that a new side of the universe opens up.

You  will learn nothing here except that the world outside is a loud, dirty, dangerous place to be despised and shut out. The emptiness will grow and hole left by where fun should have been will gradually fill with arrogance, conformity, and entitlement.

And then they will wonder where they went wrong, or mh more likely, pretend it never happened and blame the Other.

We wanted to keep them safe and comfortable, so we locked them in a solitary padded cell.

In building heaven, we have created hell. 

On Bollywood

My relationship with Bollywood's been fairly interesting, I think. 

When I was growing up, Bollywood consisted of this blur of imagery and drama that would happen for a few hours in a week, maybe a Friday evening movie or a bunch of songs in Eastmancolor on a flickering, crackling, bulbous little CRT... but most of all, it was music. Music everywhere, on taxi cassette players, mikes on the corner, brassy, disjointed bands, and everywhere, radio. Single-channel MW bands on battery-powered transistors sitting in faraway corners, singing away in the background. Somehow, always associated with travelling, with holidays and memories, the comfort food of music. 

It's probably the nostalgia factor, but I guess also because I was most of the time too young to really get what was happening. 

Then sometime around Chunky Pandey, I got old enough to understand the stories... and hated them. And the music - however good it might be - was forever tainted from then on with shallow, selfish, misogynistic, boorish, and embarrassing behavior. 

But all that had come before - I think it's pretty much set the tone for what music should be, as far as I'm concerned. There has to be melody. Imagery. Erudition. The ability to paint a lifetime in a few charcoal strokes, just abstract enough to let you fill in the blanks with what you wanted the story to be. Soothing. Distantly on the edge of hearing, yet constantly there. Familiar enough so you can sing along. 

You don't know who's singing, who's composing, who did the music or what film it's from. It's like reading a comic from the middle of a series you found in a box of junk on a vacation afternoon when you had nothing to do. You don't know why they're singing. You don't have any visuals to go with them. 

All you know is - this is awesome. 

And I guess that's why there's always going to be that genre that exists only in my head - the soundtrack to those drives in the dark, the walks in dusty golden winter sunlight, browsing through second-hand bookstores... and sometime between KL Saigal and Baba Sehgal, a little golden RD-Rafi period that's can only be labelled 'the most awesome childhood ever'. 

A single page

As part of a  C E N S O R E D  process, I was quickly scribbling down a brief history of where I've worked - names, places, designation, duration, salary, etc. I have most of it scanned and ready, so didn't take too long... but somewhere, that page started getting heavy. 

It carried over a decade of my life - why wouldn't it feel heavy? Every figure, every word on that page came with days, weeks, months worth of history. The salary negotiations. The resignation dates. The pitifully short breaks between jobs. The names of reporting managers - good ones, bad ones. Months that gave up years' worth of excitement, fun, learning, hard work, heartbreak, drama, action. Years that simply faded away into the ennui of repetition and and boredom and left me with a few months worth of stuff happening. 

Every shift was literally the high point of the year - the reasons that would lead me to quit, the bitter, voluble daru sessions that preceded it, frustrations coming to a head, the interviews, the final offers, the quitting, the new places and people, the learning curve... 

It's just in the last few years that Life has had more to add and contribute than Work. More stuff has happened outside the Office than inside - and I remember the times when the Ofiice was literally all there was, and home was a place to crash and drink, and weekends were for catching up on sleep, getting smashed, recovering from hangovers, or putting in overtime. And maybe the occasional movie. There was no TV, no gaming, no interior deco, no family stuff, no quality time. 

There was, however, the ubiquitous, all-powerful cig break, the glue and the cornerstone of Office life and growth. There were the industry parties and the outbounds. All your friends worked where you did, and traveled together, so there was no 'commute', just extended timepass. Bosses could be angels or demons, but you always had less to worry about than them, more spare time than them, no matter what they did. Little things would be HUGE - road trips for a special tea or dhaba or snack. A weekend trek. A visit home. They'd sustain you for weeks. 

And the learning curve. Everything was new. The admin staff, the networks, reports, presentations, fieldwork, data entry, cold calls, warehouses... it was all a mysterious new world filled with drama, excitement, and above all, something new to learn every day. 

Then you shifted, and suddenly your world fractured into new and old. Then into Work and Personal. Then Work, Personal, Family, Friends, and the To-Do List. You feel sliced thin now, spread out over too many shifting textures floating on an unstable sea, pulling together the drifting loose barrels under your raft. It's more stable, bigger, but... there's something missing. Like a stage-one rocket, the first few career years drove you howling into space, and now, drifting in the silence, you miss that drive. It consumed you, that pillar of fire, changed you, took you into a place you never thought you would reach... but sometimes you wonder if the journey cost you the destination. 

It's strange how all that can fit on one page. 

a moment of perfect clarity

I was driving - struggling - with the return traffic, an infinite vista of reddened brakelights stretching away on the highway, some RJ yammering away about potholes on the radio...
it faded.
I was... still there, in the car, but inside my head, looking out through my eyes... something apart, disengaged from the warm body actually at the wheel. I was looking around at the experiences stacked up around me, the shelves full of memories, and they all looked the same.
Standardized.
Day after day of the beach run, the mindless comedies, the commute and the work
Week after week of the movies, the malls, the grocery shopping
Month after month of the salary, the EMIs, credit card bills
Year after year of birthdays, appraisals

It's all the same. Nothing is changing anymore. All the files are the same size, sorted, categorized, tagged and labelled. Sometimes there are DVD folders with a neat index pasted to the spine.
As I walk down the passage, into the dimness and the dust, this changes. Now they're random, different colors, different sizes, stained, worn, crammed into piles.
And they're all stuffed to bursting. They're filled with photos, tickets, leaves, pebbles and sand, bottlecaps, napkins, handwritten notes, locks of hair, maps, lists, manuals... between the files there are books, comics, scratched CDs, ancient floppies, pizza boxes and balled-up t-shirts, wires trail between them and there are boxes filled with random, rusting junk. There are trophies, too; not the plaques and the framed certificates, but the scabs and the scars, bands and letters.

I turn around, and the road is exactly as I left it.
The newer shelves are silent, brightly lit and clean. The older ones crackle and buzz, drip and creak.

I want to stay here, but I can't see the road from here.
I can see my hands on the wheel. They're driving.
I pick up one, turn it to me. Fingers flex.

There is a decision hiding around the corner of reality, and the corner is close. I can hear it breathing.

How could they leave without telling us??

a little trip down memory lane, tonight. some beer, a lot of remembrance.
it's been eight years, and it's unfair.
we always had boundaries. a clear dividing line. a phase of life ends, another begins, and there's no confusion. an exam, a holiday, a trip, and a complete change in the way life was. it was a clear, simple time.
it all ended in 2002.
the last eight years have been... mushed. slowly, imperceptibly, things changed, people changed, circumstances changed.
people who swore never to be slaves to the cell now own one.
people who were always supposed to be jungli became civilized.
people who were always supposed to smoke, quit.
people who were, were icons, dammit, gained weight, shaved, cut their hair, settled down.
groups fragmented, faded away.
all the things we swore we'd do, became less and less important.
bikes have been sold, or abandoned. cars have been bought. credit cards. emi's.
places that were packed until they threw us out are empty at midnight.
weekends are slept away, the high point being a movie.
slowly, insidiously, time steals it all.
it wasn't supposed to be like this. When something died, we knew it, and we knew what we were getting in return. Every sacrifice came with a reward.
I feel betrayed by time today. it came, and it stole almost a decade of my life and gave nothing back except memories. the good times we had, slipped away in silence, and they never even stopped to say goodbye. tonight, it's just you and me, and a long, long shadow that stretches away behind us, the dark stake that's pinned us to the ground.
I feel... lost, sometimes. where did everyone go? 
is this what it's supposed to be like? wandering about blindly in a darkening room, while everything you love vanishes into the dusk? as dreams die?
I do not begrudge the passage of time. It's natural, inevitable. What I hate, and what I feel shocked, angered, saddened by, is the way it just left without a party, without a whimper, just faded away. I feel emptied out, emptied with the knowledge that something I thought I had all along wasn't there at all for a long time. That I was dancing on a dream, one that softly evaporated in the morning, leaving just a confused sense of happiness and regret.

Where d'ye think you're going? get your ass back in here! leave if you must, but do me the courtesy of acknowledging the time we had, tell me that it had been good.
Let me see what happens next. I'm tired of flailing about in the dark.