Goal-den Moments

A friend of mine and I were drinking tea the other day and I happened to mention that I had a strange journey towards understanding football in my life. As I elaborated on my statement, his laughter bubbled up every few minutes, interrupting my stories with loud bursts of uncontrollable giggles. At the end of it, he was so thoroughly entertained that he suggested I go to tell the story to other people too. Hence, this blog post. Now, many of you may not be football-inclined or literate (you'll see that I'm not either) but the experiences will be relatable, I'm sure.

My journey with football began with a game. No, not running around, but a computer game. Every time I came down to Bangalore for my vacations, we'd visit my grand-aunt and while everyone were busy talking, I would go sit in front of the computer. Now, we're talking about almost 10 years ago, so when I say computer, I'm talking about the large, bulky grandfather of our sleek laptops: the desktop PC with a Pentium 2 CPU, the computers they still use in government offices (because the government office is the land time forgot; a place so slow, even Internet Explorer would fear to ask to be the default browser). There was only one game on it, FIFA 98. Now, this wasn't even the whole game, just the demo. Hence you were only allowed to play one game, which turned out to be Arsenal vs. Manchester United and you could only choose to be Arsenal. As a result of all this intensely one-sided time spent, I developed a hatred for the name Manchester United even before I knew what football was and what the Premier League was.

Later, when I joined school, I met another friend who was a big Manchester United fan. But by this time, I had completely forgotten all my football knowledge gained over playing that one game over and over again, so he was successfully able to convert me into a Manchester United fan by shoving information at me at breakneck speed. Also, he took it upon himself to educate me about the Premier and spent hours quizzing me on the teams and their home grounds. Suffice to say, I learnt all I could simply because it was impossible to hold a conversation with anyone else in an all-boys school without being interested in football. A similar scene saw me develop my tennis knowledge and favour Nadal and hate Federrer, but that story is for another day. My interest in the sport on the field, however, did nothing to help me curry favour with my classmates and hence I was relegated to be the goalkeeper, where I could do minimal damage to the team. I have no qualms in admitting that I was terrible at it, refusing to dive and dirty/tear my pants. I constantly complained about it too, so much so that one day, the class acquiesced and let me move beyond my restricted area to be what they call a 'floating goalie'. We lost 5-0 that day and I stopped one person from scoring, mostly because I crashed into him. That pretty much put an end to my dreaming of doing more on the field than move my hands around. Soon, on the sports day, I won a medal for the relay race, something I still can't believe to this day. I guess I know where my love for running came from.

With time, I learnt more about football, culminating in me watching my first full match on TV (the 2006 WC final). Even then, I missed the one event everyone spoke about after match, the Zidane headbutt, because I decided that I was hungry. Just bad luck, I guess. The Premier League is no longer a mystery to me and I can contribute certain inputs when needed, though for the longest time, I though Arsenal was named after Arsene Wenger, because he seemed old enough to have been with the team since its inception. But I learnt from that mistake soon enough and become proficient at contributing to discussions with my meager knowledge. The WC this time around was a better experience and I got through it with no major incidents. But I still wonder sometimes what would happen if I took the field to play the game. Injuries are immanent, I think...

Ciao!

Lazy Afternoons

Laziness is something I'd like to say is inherent to all of us. Of course, that is something I'd only 'like' to say; it doesn't make it true. But based on what I've seen over the years, I think it would be safe to assume I'm right to say so. More than any other time, however, it seems to be that magical few hours in the middle of the day that seems to personify this quality more than anything else: the afternoon.

My family has always been one for great energy and vigour in terms of work to be done, things to be cleaned and furniture to be rearranged. But everything always fell silent the minute lunch was over and the clock struck 1. The house seems to slow down along with the world itself and soon, all you could hear was the gentle snoring of my grandfather or my father (they were both quite heavy sleepers). All was quiet and lazy. Till I knew the coast was clear, of course. I've never been able to sleep in the afternoon, something my mother never seems to get tired of telling people. What this afforded me, fortunately, was a free reign to the house to get up to all sorts of mischief without anyone to stop me. I'd climb the granite top of the kitchen to see what I could find in the upper shelves, roam in the garden around the house looking for things to dig up with a trowel I had found behind the fridge and open the cupboards in all the rooms as quietly as I could to see what was inside, while keeping a constant eye on the sleeping individuals in the room. The smells interested me the most around the house, seeing as I've already established my olfactory tradition throughout this blog. It was this smell of jeera rusks mixed with yellowing newspapers, that kind of dusty, nostalgic smell that made you hungry and sleepy at the same time. But despite all these nice memories, I still have my share of mischief to counter these impressions.

Pocket money always fascinates children and I was no different. It was a joy to get a few coins just to be able to put them into my piggy bank and hear it jingle. Though I never really had plans for the money, it was nice to have it. One afternoon, I climbed the granite in the kitchen as always and while scrounging in the cupboard, I found a small box of coins. Assuming they'd be given to me eventually, I took the box and emptied it into my piggy bank. Suffice to say, when my mother found the box empty and I, in my dutifully honest-under-pressure self, told her I'd taken it, the piggy bank was taken away and I never got pocket money after that. Another time, I found a small tube on top of the fridge filled with small white balls while looking in the freezer for ice-cream and I decided to try one. Finding to to be sweet, I emptied the entire bottle into my mouth and savoured the taste. When my grandmother woke up later and found the tube empty, she automatically turned to me ans asked me if I had eaten it. To this day, no one in my family ever stops thanking God that it was all just homeopathic medicine and that I wasn't found foaming at the mouth and convulsing. I guess the whole concept of  a 'keep medicines away from children' warning on the containers has some validation behind it...

Most of the other incidents involve me spilling things on the floor, trying desperately to mop it up before anyone finds out and still being found out in the end. My grandfather's box of powder (which I deliberately spilt in order to create a makeshift ice rink to slide on), salt, pepper, jam, green gram...the list just goes on. But I never stopped exploring the possibilities as a child. It was a magical time, really, with the sun shining bright and a warm glow to everything around the house. Recently, I've found out that entire cities can just shut down in the afternoon for a well-deserved nap (like the government employees take on a daily basis) while the world comes to a standstill. It's nice to know I'm not alone sometimes. For now, I sit back in the same easy-chair my mother kept catching me in during my childhood after my afternoon escapades and think about life, the world and what I have to eat next. Time for another trip to the kitchen, I think...

Ciao!

(It just happens to be coincidental that I decided to update my blog on New Year's day. Fate, destiny or whatever. You decide. Happy New Year everyone!) 

So, I’m going to construct a story for you. No, it doesn’t involve walls and stuff, just….a structure. You know, like Saussure said. It has characters, just like any other story and it involves two people. Or maybe some more people….. But there’s definitely people in it. Yes, like every other story there that exists. There are scenes that keep shifting, a little mind playing around and in it all, some comedians who keep the audience distracted while other stuff goes on behind the stage. Like changing and rehearsing and doing people in small rooms, made even more cumbersome by the tight spaces and tight clothes and loose morals. But that’s show business. The lights are supposed to come on, the guys are supposed to come on and the women have to play their parts, just like any other play you’ll see in the world. The trees are all green….too green if you ask me, but that’s okay. Nature takes care of the rest. Everyone just sits back and watches the show. Eats some popcorn and laughs at how stupid people look doing things that they wouldn’t do in real life….unless this is some realist drama, then people do exactly what they do in real life, but the stage just gives them some glamour while doing it. That guy in the big wig was right, even if he did dress like he was going for some flower show, “All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players”. The curtains will fall all you’ll all go home, sit with a bottle of scotch and stare at the glass while thinking about life. That’s how all stories are created, right? With a little time alone and a mind that roams free and without fear, like that old guy from India with the long beard said. You’ll keep refilling the glass and with every new one, you’ll see another story. Soon, the glass will be put back and you’ll rest your head back and start dreaming. There, the stories will start constructing themselves and become more you and you could ever be. That’s how stories happen. Wake up, pen it down and you’ll have a masterpiece. Till you drink it away and burn it all when you go mad that is. Never really trusted that pen and paper anyway….

The Window

It’s a window. A perfectly placed window that wasn’t designed to be so perfect. But it was. It just somehow ended up being there. We chose her room for her, because it would be on the ground floor and close enough to everything she could need. Self-sufficient and all. But I wasn’t bothered about that because the house never interested me. She and I are actually quite similar, in the sense that we both love our own space and we’re happy to stay there and not go anywhere else. We build worlds for ourselves and we could only do that because we were allowed to. I think Amma and Appa never thought this would ever happen and thought they could bully us, guilt us and just somehow get us to change that part of us. But no, we just didn’t care and they accepted it and grumbled about it.

I have my room and my window. My bay window. Now there’s tin-foil in front of it but it is there and on sunny days, the light is just perfect to relax and think and feel and just be. Filtered light, light that wanes and light that just feels like it was for me. A little gift from the outside that wanted me to come find it. But I won’t leave. The inside is me and the outside is boring. Not true, never true. It is what it is and I’m too scared of my restrictions to find out. But I’m going to. I will. But that isn’t the point.

Today, I sat there. I sat in her room in the one place I’d never dared or just thought about sitting before; the chair beside the window. She went on with her work and I sat there. I looked out and it hit me how similar we were. Two souls separated by two generations yet the similarities were uncanny. I knew why she sat there. I knew why this room was hers. I knew why she doted on me. We were the only ones who could live together and not be bothered about the world. I looked over to her, saw those hands work their magic just like they had over the years. I thought about her life and the things Amma had told me about her and the life she had led. There was no one else I knew who could relate to my feelings like she could. But I knew I’d never tell her this. We were just like that. We couldn’t, just couldn’t. Similarity had torn us apart in a way that it had brought us together too. We were one, but never the same for the world to see. I turned back and let my mind wander again to the mundane things we think about when the world lets us do so.
 

It’s a strange thing to know you resemble your grandmother so much.

Scratching, scratching, scratching. In front of him and all around him. The shuffling and rustling of cloth on skin, a faint odour of perfume for reasons he knew not. It couldn’t help in any way with thought but then, it’s always nice to look your best when facing a challenge. The heat of the day was gathering its little storms around his head as he waited for ideas to form and march down his veins into the canvas he held before him. It had been a long day and more than ever, he wanted to just stare into space, looking for a small sign of what he once was and could have become before the infinite blackness and sludge of the everyday put him down, grabbed his creativity and smothered it like chocolate sauce on a piece of brownie cake. He knew there was more to do, more to see and more to describe but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Life was pulling him into a cycle only it knew how to break. A fickle master or mistress or everything in between. He couldn’t help but smile at his turn of a phrase. It had been what had got him so far in life, made him different from the world around him. A spirit in chains that broke free only to return to the shackles. Keys lost to the winds long ago with locks made of similar sands. It didn’t matter anymore what he felt, because he had learnt he couldn’t control it, couldn’t make himself feel something he had never learnt to. The world in flux had seen him and nurtured him and cut him in so many ways, his wounds looked like the very map he thought he would need to make himself. Maybe it wasn’t the signs he was supposed to look for but the ideas that made him think of those signs.

In all this, the light dimmed and outside, he saw freedom. In its freedom, he saw the drops of glory, of everything he had ever dreamed of pouring down in torrents, the rains of his ruin and his ecstacy. He couldn’t help but think of her and how much she would have loved it. He loved her, knowing he shouldn’t, knowing he couldn’t. They could never be and never would. Stolen kisses and hugs meant only so much now. More so that the things he could think of. It was a fact of life, a lesson he had to learn, tears he had to shed like the heavy clouds that eased their burdens like a pregnant woman on a countertop. He couldn’t think or speak. He knew he had to stay away. He knew he’d break her without meaning to, simply because of his love. The power he put in could never be matched by anyone ever. And that was exactly why he could never love fully. Because if he did, he would shine so bright, love so deep, that the world would be rent in two, along with his own heart and and the one who had the honour of having stolen it. It would be the end of life as we know it, more dangerous to love than to hate, that to even imagine. The doors of the Department of Mysteries could only imagine what lay behind his heart. The power of love could easily be underestimated, taken advantage of. But he could not help it, he could help but love the world in his innocence and depth. She was his world and he could not show her that. He dare not for that would break her beyond repair. Power does strange things to the world and his infinite control was needed beyond anything else.

Suddenly, the bell rang. Papers were strewn and the wood reverberated for minutes before the room was empty again. In his place, he slowly opened his eyes and stared out at the sun, his liquid black eyes simply looking, looking beyond…   

Welcome to the Barbershop

Music is something that is important to many people. The ways in which they pick up their tastes are controlled by a million different things, mostly by their friends or their parents, sometimes through experimentation too. But for me, music has been a discovery in certain other senses. My tastes have been conditioned by what I've heard during my monthly visits to that gardener of the cranium with a lawnmower of vibrating steel: the barber. You must all be tired by now of trying to understand how this even makes sense but I shall attempt to clarify.
My earliest memory involves my grandfather escorting me to the local barbershop in the basement off a busy street in Madras. My initiations to Tamil music began there as I attempted to doze off in the seat just so that I wouldn't have to think about anything while waiting for the trim to get over. This, of course, was the days when I actually had something growing out of my skull, in contrast to my follicular state today. I didn't really know how long I sat there since no child has any sense of time at the at age but I clearly remember coming home humming a tuneless ditty in my head. Today, of course, my Tamil heritage is reiterated every night as my Dad listens to the black and white odes to MGR and his ilk. Telugu music somehow never made its way into my head as my visits to the barber when I lived in Hyderabad were more brief and also owing to the power cuts at the time. But I did get the idea of a barbershop as a place where people met and spoke about all sorts of things while waiting for their turn.
Hindi music was more of a television phenomenon, since no barber of mine ever spoke in Hindi or listened to the radio in his shop. And I'm glad too, looking at the furor a single song can create in the midst of a biased public. No one wants the only man in a shop with two weapons in his hand angry over the depiction of a certain sensibility. More recently, my introduction to Kannada music has set me wondering as to this set of experiences of mine. What makes a person part of a city where they don't belong? Embracing the music of the city does afford them a path to integration but is that enough? It's surprising how deep your questions can become when you have to sit absolutely still in a chair while someone holds a razor against your throat and the back of your neck. But then, most of them disappear as soon as you leave the chair and pay the man responsible for them. It's also fun when they assume you don't know their language because they see you as an outsider. Recently, during one of my visits, the barber struck up a conversation with his assistant mocking my lack of hair at such a young age, among other jokes about me in Kannada, assuming I did not know the language as I had given him my instructions in Tamil. The shock on his face when I handed him his cash and replied to one of his queries in Kannada was compensation enough for the insults.
My choice of barbers is now multiple due to their ability to set up shop anywhere around, though unlike most people, my choice relies solely on my mood to listen to a certain language at that time. Maybe it's time to visit Calcutta and see how 'intellectual' the barbers can be... ;)

Ciao! 

The Auto-man Empire

Life in any city can never be complete without a travel story; one of epic proportions or of incidents that stay indelibly in one's mind. And no such story can ever disregard that one vehicle of all that is not reasonable or relatively fast: the humble auto-rickshaw. Many have travelled by this princely pauper of a vehicle but few have ridden to tell tales worth knowing. Now me, being fresh out of my cast but still chained with a brace, I had to take one everyday back from college for an entire month. Exorbitant fare non-withstanding, I found out that my affinity for strangeness follows me even here. Also, taking an auto instantly classifies you as a 'rich bastard' (though I prefer the more unheard of term 'Chutney Bastard', courtesy a certain son of an English teacher). But more than anything, my auto rides helped me find out more about the their drivers than any newspaper article or assignment ever could.
Let's begin from Day 1. Me being the bargain-challenged kid that I am, I waited for hours for an auto-driver who would agree to my reasonable price without argument. Suffice to say, I got enough dirty looks from the auto-drivers to last me the week. Now, in my desperate state of mind, I began to walk towards a parked auto a little distance from where I was standing. As I reached the man, I saw him quickly draw his hand away from his nose and as he did so, I notice a white streak on his palm. Of course, I thought nothing of it...till he started weaving through traffic like he was playing Roadrash. To add to this, he began talking about how he would disfigure the campaign posters of candidates for the Karnataka elections, while also laughing maniacally. I presume the white mark had something to do with this. Fortunately, I got home safely, though I wasn't sure about two other people crossing the road at the time.
A few days went by without incident. My next encounter was with another one of them, sporting brilliant white sneakers and speaking perfect English, though he had an affected Rajnikanth accent. Along with the ride, he also gave me a bunch of stickers with a cartoonised version of Rajni on them. But the most shocking part of this journey was that I found out he was Bihari....as a friend of mine would say, "Tamil has no boundaries, though it tends to weird you out sometimes".
But more than all of this, I also saw the other side of their lives. Three of the drivers all began to pour out their life-stories to me, of their problems with educating their children, old men being thrown out of homes and even deeper understandings of politics than any journalism student would envy. Some of them were even top rankers during school and college but couldn't continue, either due to a lack of funds or bureaucracy.
Angry old men as auto-drivers are never a welcoming sight. But I'd just like to say that maybe, just maybe, people will be considerate enough to know that they have something to be angry about...

Çiao!