A self-imposed limit on the size of blog-posts has led to me breaking down extremely lengthy posts into two or more parts, as the occasion demands it.

The story so far documents the highlights of my life and times in the first half of 2010 with the rest to follow here onwards.

July 2010:

• June 2010 made me realize that the feeling of being settled is quite unsettling in itself. The itinerant in me was awakened strongly enough for me to make ad-hoc trips to places that I badly wanted to visit. I made a weekend trip to Kasauli and the mountains once again proved why they are so beautiful, so alluring and so much more better to be in compared to life in the plains.
• Weekend randomness continued as frequent visits to the RSJ office, to some of Delhi’s more popular sights and on the newly opened Gurgaon to Qutab Minar Delhi Metro line kept me preoccupied and sane.
• Hung out at Chandni Chowk enough to realize that the romanticism associated with it is strongly-overrated for a passer-by and that knowing someone on the inside of Delhi 6 might help in relating to all that has been said and written about what a magical place it is.

August 2010:

• The second visit to the ISB campus after graduation. A bunch of us decided to head back to campus to chill out and spend a weekend there. You feel at home, but it isn’t the same when someone else is living in your flat and when other people are calling your space theirs. To everything, there is a season. Ours was over last year.
• The only time that work is mentioned is when the shit hits the fan. So far, I’ve only had office parties and other random things that have made me even think of work outside of the office. Touchwood.
• My fourth trip to Mysore in as many months of living in Gurgaon at the end of August.

September 2010:

• Returned from Mysore, worked for a couple of days and then went ahead to Dharamsala. One of my most memorable trips. Peace and tranquility in the mornings, drinkage and debauchery in the evenings. Five brilliant days that made me feel sad about getting back to work in the hot Delhi plains.
• An email to the ISB alumni mailing list led to the formation of a rock band comprising of the former vocalist, former drummer and former bassist of the ISB class of 2010 rock band, with the new addition being a guitarist whose contact was provided to us by another alumnus. This was the first strongly demonstrated instance of the utility of the old-boy network.
• The full onslaught of monsoon was felt in Gurgaon as people traded in their second car for a kayak during the rainy season. Lots of traffic jams, delays, office shutdowns and a general infrastructure failure seemed to be an ominous precursor to the commonwealth games starting in October.
• Weekend quizzing at MDI Gurgaon commenced, with infrequent visits thanks to a mix of band practice, social commitments and utter laziness.
• The Ram Janmabhoomi – Babri masjid dispute results were announced as I was making my fifth visit to Mysore and the uneventful aftermath of the results were supplemented for by a very eventful evening on the IIMB campus with PGK and co.

October 2010:

• October began with a surprise visit to Mysore. My family got tired of surprise visits and told me not to show up for a while so that they’d be able to appreciate my absence at home. “ Next time you show up, let us know so that we don’t have to cancel our plans to entertain you at home, you idiot! “, or something to that effect.
• The time spent in Gurgaon seemed to be like breaks I was taking in between trips I was making all over the place. The weather improved in October in Delhi and it seemed like Bangalore in the winters.
• I learnt the hard way that Delhi has about two weeks of perfect weather. Otherwise, it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy or too dusty and such. Extreme weather, as I observed, leads to extreme behaviour among people. No wonder the people down south that experience temperate climate seem to be more chilled out on average.
• My long-awaited trip to Israel finally saw something beyond the preliminary purchase of a Lonely Planet as I booked my flight tickets and had my accommodation booked in advance for my three weeks there.
• Went to a resort in Kumarakom, Kerala for a brilliant and highly memorable wedding ceremony. At the risk of waxing eloquent, a massive blogpost would just about begin to do the entire extravaganza some justice.

November 2010:

• Yet another trip to Mysore, this time around for Deepavali. My family became extremely suspicious of what I did in Gurgaon. “You work for a company that has an almost fictitious name, you do something that allows you to pay your loans and make enough time to come back home with irritating regularity. What is the deal? No, really, tell us!” Point taken.
• Wedding season began in earnest in North India. Engagements, marriages,  get-togethers all began in full swing the minute there was a noticeable thaw in temperature.
• My visa application, with all its documents was finally ready as I woke up real early one Friday morning in November to head to Nehru Place to finally submit it. After many years of waiting, I’d finally crossed the Rubicon.

December 2010:

• Another trip, this time around on work, to Mumbai. Flying is fun (for a short while) when you’re carrying a cool brief-case sort of thing and when you’re clad in a suit and there is someone at the arrivals section at the airport with a card which has your name on it. And so on.
• Attended the Jazz utsav (with an All Access Production tag) and saw performances by Larry Carlton, Talvin Singh and others from close quarters. Missed out on watching Meshuggah live thanks to travels.
• I got thrown out of the comfortable residence I was living at and in addition to tackling hectic work schedules, preparing for my Israel trip getting ready for Solstice 2010 (ISB’s annual alumni meet) where the class of 2010 band, Conjoint, was scheduled to perform, I also had to look for new accommodation. Talk about being mentally and physically taxed beyond words.
• A new residence in the second week of December and within three days of moving in, I was off to Hyderabad for Solstice. Meeting old friends was good fun, and performing on-stage yet again with the band reminded me of all the good times we were missing on campus.
• Returned from Hyderabad on the afternoon 19th December and spent 14 hours packing, shopping last minute and getting ready while trying not to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion, only to do so on the Royal Jordanian flight to Amman. The twelve hours in transit in Jordan also gave me enough time to sleep like a baby.
• The last eleven days of a mixed up year that 2010 came out to be were spent in absolute delight, as a long-cherished dream of going to Israel finally came true.
• My longest solo trip for personal pleasure till date, this also resulted in many firsts, including Christmas eve in Bethlehem, Christmas doing the stations of the cross and an entire week spent in Jerusalem, to learn, to explore, to discover and eventually fall in love with the city, more for all its faults and its human side, rather than the eternal and mysterious part that drew me to it in the first place.
• Got two tattoos on two consecutive days. People that know me would know that it is quite out of character for me to do so, but both tattoos will remain relevant in my life until the end of it all. No regrets there. Plus getting it on the left hand can conceal it cleverly with an appropriately worn wrist-watch, so as not to draw attention to it as I go about unleashing corporate whoredom ad infinitum.
• Standing at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem on the morning of the 31st, I was happy that what I’d said to myself last year (next year in Jerusalem) rang true, but was also sad that I’d have to wait until my next trip to come back to this city that I fell in love with.

2010 was a mixed year. But if it all went my way,  it might not have been as memorable as I’d have liked. As Dave Matthews sang,

“Then tell me what in the world would I go on for, if I had it all.“

Here’s to a smashing, absolutely insane, chaotic and unsettling 2011. The way I see it, 1/12th of it is has already been so.

As soon as he began his bonking activities, the bed I was lying in started quivering slightly, despite my not having moved an inch. For a few seconds, I was a bit unsure of what was happening and was partially amused at this coincidence, until I realized that even the clothes that were hung out to dry on the clothes’ stand were also shaking, which is when I realized that we’re experiencing tremors.

I took my cellphone, my passport and my house keys and rushed out onto the road hoping that other people would’ve been as paranoid as I was.

As I got on the road, the only other person I saw was this stray dog who I’ve hung out with before, who came wagging his tail in recognition. Everyone else seemed to be sound asleep.

Just as well, I figured it wasn’t as big a deal as it was made out to be in my head.

The last time an earthquake happened in my vicinity, I was fifteen, on holiday in Mumbai at my uncle’s place and was sound asleep in the middle of the afternoon when there were supposed tremors. I slept right through it and only know of what transpired because someone told me later.

The bedside table had moved and I hit my head on it when I woke up. I am not sure, but I might’ve scolded my poor cousin when I saw him next, assuming that he’d pulled a fast one on me by shifting the position of the table, even though Mother Nature was responsible.

Given how many bumps I’ve had on my head since I was dropped on my head when I was a kid, I’m surprised I haven’t suffered any mental damage till date.

Earthquakes are quite scary, unless they happen in movies. In that case, they look quite grand on the big screen. It would be stupid to hope that they don’t happen, because they’re all part of nature’s way of pruning the evolutionary tree.

I’m just hoping that when it does happen, if I am awake, that I have enough presence of mind to run out with my important documents, my cell phone and my continuously replenished stash of emergency food.

In addition, I was asked to shift out of the house I used to live in for the first eight months of my stay in Gurgaon and the need to move out four days before I was to leave the darn place for over three weeks meant that my entire setup was in shambles.

I am a compulsive loner so far as my accommodation situation is concerned and despite having had the time of my life on my trip, I was dreading getting back home and opening the door to see a house not settled into, with dust and cobwebs all over the place.

The scene that I encountered was no different from what I’d imagined. An unclean floor is always a bitch and a dusty one with white tiles that my landlord placed despite all my protests just compounded my misery further.

The weekend was spent in reorganization of my entire setup and this week has been spent in honing my cooking skills once more. The washing machine, microwave oven and fridge have made my life beautiful and have rendered me fully independent for the most part.

The inconvenience of having to open the door to a maid who might have to be micromanaged has instead given way to a twice-in-a-week cleaning that I will have to stick to. The need to cook dinner for myself, instead of the cook in the previous place who used to give me tasty food on average has also increased the burden on my daily life, while also bringing about a stronger semblance of full and complete independence.

Some of my friends remarked that I was scarily domesticated and that I was almost married in terms of the routine that I follow.

I was unable to interpret it for my mind thought of it in two ways – Am I domesticated to a point where marriage or cohabitation with a partner would not bring about too many changes into my life style? Or was it that the life style changes that marriage brings about in people have already set in within me and therefore the very task of having to “settle down” has therefore been rendered null and void?

In any case, the complete independence and therefore complete responsibility that I last enjoyed in Bangalore before I went to B-school has now once again become the story of my life as I go about doing all that I need to do to get by. I am my own cook, cleaner, washer man and man Friday and the time saved by outsourcing these activities is offset by the convenience with which I am able to work on all these activities, thereby making me more disciplined overall. Or so I hope.

I am still to document my review of 2010, wherein the total distance traveled will feature prominently in my log. In addition, I also need to work extensively on my travelogue to document the fruition of my long cherished and long awaited trip to Israel.

I think travel is my writerly muse and my mojo has returned. Please look forward to a barrage of posts in the days ahead. It will not be too boring, on that you have my word.

Being the former manager of the band, it gives me immense pleasure to inform you dedicated readers (3 of you in all) that the album will be available online in a short while.

In the meanwhile if you are either in Mumbai or Delhi, and wish to attend their album launch in these respective cities AND pick up the album on discount, here is some information that might help you out.

Mumbai launch: Thursday January 8th 2009 at 2030 hours.
Venue: Bonobo, Linking Road, Bandra.

New Delhi launch: Saturday January 10th at 2030 hours.
Venue: Q Bar, Connaught Circus, Connaught Place.

At the time of writing this post, the Bangalore and Pune launches had already taken place, but hopefully some of you who read this might’ve attended the same.

The launch of Swarathma’s self-titled debut album is a result of their having won the Radio City Live competition and consequently having secured a record label deal in February 2008.

The band is yet to update its website following the album launch, and that is quite understandable since they’re busy as hell touring the country right now. From the site, you will be able to gather more details on how to lay your hands on the CD.

In other news, I intend to do a feature and an album review for Rock Street Journal, so watch out for that as well.

Oh, and if the message hasn’t yet been clear, please go ahead and buy the album. It is worth every paisa of the INR 195 that you would shell out for it.

Plus the fact that these guys are still completely down-to-earth and have no pretentious airs about them despite all their success will ensure that you can get your copy of the album autographed without any trouble.

As I type this post out, there are solidarity marches being held in major Indian cities including my very own, with people gathering in huge crowds to march from point A to point B, holding candles in their hands, hopefully with some tissue paper or cloth around it so that the wax does not drip directly on their fingers and then shout slogans and get emotionally charged up for the duration of the rally and then disperse and go back home to paying bills, watching TV and working away.

I’m all for marches and rallies. I’ve been to a gay pride parade in Oslo (accidentally, while walking around touring the city), as the sole representative there of all the straight people on the planet, been involved in a Free-Tibet march in Mysore and attended a protest march to protest against the 85% attendance rule for our juniors under the VTU regime. I did not give a shit about the last ’cause’, but it was either that or sleeping in class.

However, despite being pro-rallies, I fail to see the point of this solidarity march. Not just this march, but all other peaceful protests, and opinions and polls and SMSes that people send to stupid news channels. Heck, I’m even against pseudo-intellectual discources on personal websites regarding this, because I feel it is futile, and provides no value-add save for a marginal amount of catharsis.

As Aadisht summed up in an email discussing the solidarity march, “I think it’s middle class activism masturbation, stroking your ego to feel good about doing something, anything.”

I do not question the noble intent behind which most of my country’s citizens are trying to mark their anger and pain towards the recent events that have unfolded in Bombay, but I don’t see anything beneficial coming out of it.

However, I think we’ve all ended up being much more cynical about the whole issue, and this might be good for us in the long run, because we can focus and concentrate our collective energies more effectively on finding a solution to the best possible extent that we can, rather than being spectators / participants that aren’t accounted for.

Here’s also hoping that our government, that has been so callously sitting on its fat arse, does something to help stop such attacks in the future.

Signing off, on an altogether different note, do check out George Freidman’s piece on the strategic motivations behind the Mumbai attacks. Makes for super reading.

So, on Saturday evening, I left Bangalore for Mangalore via train and returned on Monday morning. It had been almost two years since I had visited Mangalore, and that was in January 2007 for the wedding of a certain friend named Vinayak Kamath, during which time, some of us had walked like Egyptians as the photographer was busy clicking photos of the newly weds.

In the interim thereafter, there were two trips each to Bombay and Chennai, a few to Bylakuppe (as a day tripper), one to Gokarna, one trip to Seattle and I hadn’t had the time to visit Mangalore due to that. My cousin was getting married, and I thought that it was a convenient time to go put ‘O Hai’ to all my relatives.

Little did I realize what was in store for me……..

Sometimes, one gets to wonder what the outcome of these attacks would’ve been had our civilian population been trained in some ways to act in the face of such adversity.

While I am dwelling solely in the realm of the hypothetical, it seems like the right time to be asking such questions. Would it have been possible to apprehend the attackers and prevent them from doing further damage if we’d been trained to respond to such situations? Would they have thought twice about opening fire when they’d have known that their chances of success would be thwarted by some of our actions?

It is in such circumstances that the whole funda of reserve duty, as put forth by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) seems to make so much sense.

If there is some way of ensuring that all able-bodied Indian men (and willing women) undergo some sort of training, either at the city or the community level, and have some sort of law or amendment to ensure that this becomes mandatory, we’d have alert citizens who’d be able to respond to occurences of such incidents in the future.

Additionally, it would also increase our reserve strength (or bench-strength in TechSpeak), to be called upon as and when required.

A weird sense of paranoia had set in, and that walk I took seemed to be among the longest I’d taken. I am sure that a few others walking there that day might’ve shared that same feeling that I felt, and I can only guess. However, I have travelled by BMTC buses on umpteen occasions thereafter and the thoughts of the serial blasts had been relegated to the back of my mind.

It was only the first time that a certain sense of tension was present.

Now, I’m headed to Majestic tomorrow to board a train that heads to Mangalore for a cousin’s wedding. I am waitlisted for both the onward and return journey, and I will receive confirmation about my travel shortly.

After what happened in Mumbai’s CST, I must admit that I am feeling a bit jittery about going there, and that I would be prone to being extremely paranoid and on my guard. I have a strong feeling that nothing will happen, but that strong feeling of being unaffected by events seems to have gone for a toss after what our country has gone through over the past year in particular.

“When all other means have failed and it is necessary to protect one’s borders, wives, children and culture, war can become Dharma.” 

However, once the reality has set in, and we’ve become aware of the gravity of the situation, the customary distance we’d tend to keep from things happening in different parts of the country has not made itself evident this time around.

The terrorist attacks in Kashmir have not made our blood boil so much, or made so many of us spew vitriol in the way these Mumbai attacks have. The various attacks in our country have shaken us up, including the ones that took place in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, in our very own Bangalore as well as in Assam.

What happened in Bangalore was probably the scariest of them all personally, at least when the first reports of the explosions were reported. However, these fears were significantly assuaged when we were made aware of those blasts being low-intensity, and that a few bombs had been defused and significant damage to life and property had been averted.

However, none of these attacks has made us angrier as a collective people, than what is going on in Mumbai currently. No longer is the average Indian, let alone the average Mumbaikar speaking about the resilience of the city, and its ability to weather any storm and the innate nature of its people to be able to pull themselves together in the face of any adversity.

No longer is anyone speaking about how life will go on once these terrorists are flushed out from the Taj, the Trident and Nariman House.

One is under the distinctive impression that the Bombay that withstood the communal riots, the bomb blasts of 1993, the local train explosions of 2006 and the various other sporadic incidents of terrorism and violence has now finally reached the end of its tether. As a city, it is too great to be equated to a camel, and hence I’d like to refrain from using the last straw metaphor. (As a pertinent aside, I was born there in 1983)

What every Mumbaikar, nay Indian is demanding at this point in time is justice. We’re tired of being labelled a soft state, that will withstand the blows that these terrorists keep raining on us. We’re tired of being in a situation where we have to be on our guard at all times, being in fear of our lives at all times.

True, we’ve acquired some sense of bravado within us that keeps propelling us towards doing what we have to, as we go about saying to ourselves that what happens will happen, and we will face it when it does.

However, turning the other cheek just doesn’t seem to cut it. With all due respect to the Mahatma, I don’t think his ideals and principles were developed around trying to provide solutions against radical hardcore religious fanatics who seem to have adopted the motto of ‘kill and get killed’. Ostensibly, Gandhigiri will just not get us anywhere.

This sense of anguish and despair was epitomized by Shobhaa De’s scathing commentary against politicians and her anger at how security is diverted towards their protection while the common people are subject to open gunfire in the streets when they go about their daily activities. Her angry responses towards Barkha Dutt’s quesitoning on NDTV earned her a lot of respect last evening, and in a way, was representative of the feelings of most people in general.

We, as a people need to wake up and get better acquainted with collateral damage. It is not enough to engage in armchair philosophy, while we let someone else take the bullets to ensure that our need to get jungle-style justice is addressed.

When we engage in retaliation against the source of these terror attacks, and I sincerely hope to God that we do, we can expect them to hit back hard at us. Lives will be lost, businesses will suffer, and our general quality of life might take a beating for the worse. People we know, maybe even you and I, might be ridden with bullets or have our limbs torn apart due to explosives.

What we need to understand, and more importantly hope and pray, is that the possible short-term troubles we face due to any steps undertaken in response to the attacks on Mumbai in particular, and the terror strikes on our country in general might translate into the long-term good of all of us Indians as a people.

Right now, one can only wish for the ordeal in Mumbai to end, for the decisive next set of steps to be taken. Respect to those personnel who laid their lives down in the line of duty.