Ab Bus!

How do you spell a sound?


That was the first question I asked myself this evening as I boarded an air conditioned bus- Vayu Vajra -loosely (and badly) translated as 'Throne of the Wind'- at the Bangalore Airport. Clutching Cool Blue- a drink I'd long coveted but never got down to having, I settled myself in a window seat and wondered. Words like tch, humph, duh, tut- tut, eh- all sounds we make to express ourselves- are perfectly captured in the spellings of those words. I remember marvelling at tch in particular- whoever came up with that spelling did a wonderful job in adding the t. There must be a method to coming up with these spellings one would think.


No one has yet managed to spell the sound one makes while sucking the last drops of liquid from a glass of crushed ice. A sound that never fails to annoy and frequently infuriate, for people of my ilk who love that sound, we do not have a properly spelt word for it. And that was the task I set myself aboard BIAS 11.


One never really gets used to buses I think. Being cooped up in an enclosed space with utter strangers and sharing a common destiny until you or they disembark, or the bus blows up, or has an accident where either all live or all die or some live and some don't, never quite weighs easily on anyone- no matter how nonchalant they are. And especially if it is air conditioned and comfortable, one's thoughts invariably turn to different things.


Shhh! could be a possible sound for it I propose to myself. Eh. It does not accurately depict the gurgling noise water makes when it is pulled by vacuum through a straw into one's mouth. Besides it is an exhaled word which could not possibly capture inhalation.


I watch as an interesting mix of people tumble into the bus. First up is a girl with someone who is presumably her boyfriend. They have the hesitancy of a new romance- not without charm in its naivete. As there are no other seats, the guy sits down next to me and the girl in front of him.


Now to most guys- barring the ones who have attained sexual sainthood at 24- the sight of a couple stirs up a curious mixture of thought. There is a moment of wistfulness- memories of past glories, flashes of what could have been, what should have been - all pass by in a blur of images- a moment of weakness we hastily chastise ourselves for. This then gives way to scorn and superiority- pretending we have more important things going on in our life and that women are naught but a waste of time right now. All this while we know that deep down we want what they have with a girl we'll never get. That last sentence is a betrayal of my race- by acknowledging that guys too are privy to flashes of envy when it has nothing to do with our careers. Because NEVER do we acknowledge this feeling- not even to ourselves.


Swiiissshhh? Tch! That does not seem to work either. At all. Too disconnected from the spirit of the thing. Besides it is a word that already exists, so it will not be recognised (by whom is a question that we won't ask right now).


There is a cacophony of sounds in the bus. A middle aged gentleman has just discovered the joy there is in rhythmically slapping one's hand against one's thigh while listening to music. Either that or he is practising some masochistic ritual listening to adult erotica. I really hope it is the former. From behind comes a loud snore- like an elephant with its trunk blocked with mucus. There is the beep-beep of someone getting a message. It goes in an astonishing rhythm- Snore-clap-msg-snore-clap-msg-snore-clap-msg. On and on till the regularity is broken by the sudden cutting of of a snore- like when you realise in your sleep that you're snoring and try to stop suddenly.


An air hostess sits with perfect posture in one of the seats- her eyes full of nothingness.


The bus conductor comes to collect ticket fare. The guy next to me knows only Hindi and in a hesitant low tone asks for a ticket to Sadashivnagar. The conductor's eyebrows disappear into his hair and with a faint curl of the lip he answers. What I wonder must go through his mind when he has to use Hindi or English. Does he inwardly laugh at the pitiful tourists lost in the maze of another tongue twisting South Indian language? Does he shake his (figurative) head at how Kannadigas are being depleted from this great state of his? And does he plot that one day he will reclaim his state from the invaders?


By which time he has moved on to a nice old man in a beige shirt talking on the phone. I'm cringing listenting because he is valiantly ploughing thorough 'the Hindi', in the process conforming to the worst South Indian stereotype there is- the Southie who speaks bad Hindi. Through endless maine bukaar ta and maine jaldi aaya, he finally ends with a triumphant humma gar ko jara hoo and puts me out of my misery and my clandestine South Indian hating self breathes a sigh of relief.



Sheeesshh? Tut-Tut. Pitiful. There has to be a 'c' somewhere I think. The spelling does not work without a 'c'.


Particle physics is being discussed at length by two guys right in the front. They seem to be good friends.

In the reflection in the window to my left I see my neighbour leaning forward and whispering something in his girlfriend's ears. She throws her head back and laughs. A twinge of envy notwithstanding, I force myself to read my book- Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle.


Finally my stop arrives. The particle physics blokes and I get off the bus. As I get off and the bus passes me, I see the girl's face in profile- in my vacated seat. She's laughing again with her head thrown back- with the guy's hand around her shoulder. And next to me, the particle physics blokes have reached some sort of agreement to the problem they were discussing. Raising a mock toast, 'To Hari and Ehsaan, best friends forever!' they shout in corny fashion.


And I realise- to my self loathing embarassment- that even in an unremarkable, soon-to-be-forgotten bus trip, some things strangely never change. That even in today's cynical, modernist times, the same old love and friendship are merry flags on the arctic wilderness of our calendars.



Schwirrsch. I think that's it.

Humping Her Highness

I am Thomas Cromwell, Ist Earl of Essex- advisor to that oversexed lump of a man called Henry VIII. It is 1535 and sitting in front of me is that androgynous daughter of his- Cate Blanchett- oops- Elizabeth.

'Tis a furious arguement that hath ramifications so vast that they shattereth the most profound Shakespearean monolgue.

Liz/Cate- Tom, I cannot say I care for your technique. You don't lift your leg at the right time and it comes banging me in the midlands.

Thomas Cromwell/Me- Midlands?

Liz- You know, the foliage.

Tom- Your Highness, I fail to comprehend.

Liz- You fool- down there. The south pole, the netherworld, the antarctic- you pleibians have so many unsavoury words for it, I never know which one to use.

Tom- Ah, your Highness I understand. But all that is too complicated. It is a new age now. An age of sophistication and discovery. Now we call it- dramatic pause- 'the pussy'.

Liz- A cat? Why?? -long pause- Well my cat doesn't like the way you ram your lollipop into it. You need to learn how to lift your leg when you feed the cat. Let me show you how to hump the hostess.

And she lifted up a stubby leg to demonstrate- and it was unusually short, disgustingly hairy, with blue veins all over it- which was strange because Cate Blanchett- who is also Elizabeth- shaves her legs and armpits.

Ah- there is that John Webster dude behind the Queen- He points at her and whispers- Mine eyes dazzle she died young...- which is peculiar because he was born in 1612 and wrote The Duchess of Malfi in 1623....

Now I see KD standing there shaking his head in disgust. And this girl's smile over and over again, which is decidedly odd because the Queen of Hearts had thundered Off with her head! long ago. Ah yes. I remember now- the Parisian guillotine still had Marie Antoinette's hair sticking to it- what with the slow drip drip of blood falling to the wooden planks below, it aimed wrong and cut off this other girl's head above the smile.

But that smile- haunting, beautiful and forever real- doesn't leave my head. It keeps bothering me again and again.

And now I'm on the floor of the bathroom- violently vomiting into the toilet- there's undigested food, bile and blood. And all the while that smile in front of me...

Then there's a vibrating noise. Which is odd 'coz my sex toy cabinet doesn't have a vibrator. Duh- only women and Bobby Darling use them.

It's a phone.

And then there was light. It came flooding back to me. An explanation even Freud couldn't have given. I know what this is.

A dream I had on 24-02-2010 at 11:00am.

Almost Orgasm

I was 12 when I first saw a woman naked.

In 1997.

And what a woman she was. My jaw dropped and stayed open.

Today, my jaw dropped again. The difference? I'm 24 and it takes a whole deal more than a naked woman to stun me. No- that isn't quite true- I take that back. Some things never change.

This isn't going to be a post about how a mysterious heavily accented woman seduced a 12 year old innocent and taught him the 'ways of the world'. I was 12 and to most guys of my generation, Kate Winslet in all her glory in Titanic remains an enduring figure.

So yeah- Kate was the first woman I saw naked in James Cameron's Titanic.

I still don't know how that scene wasn't cut in a U/A movie. And I watched it with family without any qualms.

And today I saw James Cameron's Avatar.

I cannot remember when I last sat open mouthed through a movie. The massive hype notwithstanding- Avatar was an experience I not bloody likely to forget in a long time.

It isn't really about the stunning 3D effects alone. Or the predictable romance. It's about how to take all the cliched elements of the movies and present them as if they're totally new. And when Sully's Avatar sits on a dragonoid and soars up in the air making eyes at his to be girlfriend, it really is the stuff of dreams. Face it- a wild, unconventionally sexy nymph of the woods tamed mid air- haven't all guys dreamt of that atleast once?

And oh what a battle it is. The mother of all battles. I couldn't decide which was more stunning- the crazily evolved machines or the brilliant Na-Vi creatures. And here's a secret- I never cry at the movies. But today, when one of the Na-Vi warriors was shot and fell to the ground, with a plaintive cry in the background, that scene is of such aching beauty and power that I did tear up a little.

Many blogs and comments I've read have dismissed it as another special effects movie. As if there was no skill involved in that. And Oscar for this? Heaven forbid they say. But if creating something huge, if imagining and executing a whole new world- even a making up a new language and just having the sheer vision to think this big isn't up Oscar's alley, then Peter Jackson better return the statue he got for creating what is only the greatest movie of all time. And as much as I admire Cameron, Jackson's winning work was really one of the greatest movies. Ever.

One of the things one learns while dating a film critic (besides getting beaten up after a post like this) is that they're notoriously obsessed with the 'small movie' genre- you know- the Sophie's Choice or the Piano Teacher (ahem) kind of movies. Which are brilliant no doubt. But when all is said and done- on a big screen, an Avatar dazzles- inspite of a done-to-death story and occasionally clunky dialogue. Because it isn't trying to be profound. It isn't trying to showcase a Meryl Streep. It is making its point in a different way- by being in-your-face and brazen about it. Respect indigenous populations. Respect the environment. The US is the enemy (Gasp). And yeah- commercial cinema can be great cinema too.

That lack of subtlety is oddly refreshing. Not getting bogged down in the withertos and the whyfors. No cynicism. Not reminding us of the innumerable complexities that exist. Allowing us to believe that atleast in the movies, things can be resolved by some good old fashioned valour.

Its only when you come out that you realize that your life is actually in a shitty place.

Because for those two and a half hours, you're transported to a different place. Where as Ciara put it, there's only Love, Sex and Magic. Plus cool machines and beautiful dragons. And the triumph of good over evil. Infact, the very existence of a world where things can be- dare I say- as black and white as Good and Evil.

And that for me, sums up the perfect movie.