Soul Stripping on the Net

You hurry. You are pursued by the worst of working life’s enemies: Wasted Time. You skip a step or two. What if it catches up? What if you cannot justify to your manager why you are late, because you had to wait for four minutes before the next one showed up? Wasted Time does not tarry. She eats you whole. Her sharp tainted teeth suck up your future. Hollow futures await you in her tainted hollow: Mumbai. Horror futures if you miss your local. You skip steps. You skip beggars. You see your local on platform 3. Sighs of relief all around. There are others skipping steps too. Competitors to enter the door, compatriots fleeing Wasted Time. After twelve hours of shoot, your last muscles press on. Lactic acid and Kreb’s cycle are relics Mumbai discarded long ago. The local has stopped. Will you get on before it leaves? Or will you be a relic? The Devourer Of Work-Life Balance is catching up. It scents stress. You are dripping it. How will you wake up after two quarters of necessary re...

How do you seek Happiness ? How do you make Prosperity ? Do you worship the Mother Goddess ? Or worship the White Constellations – each a Piece Of God ? You find Wealth in the Sacred Syllable – the Loved One Of God – the Chanting of Om .   ______________________________________________________________________________ For Anand, Aishwarya, Aditi, Shweta, Anusha, Debangshu, Aishwarya, Pranav and Debopriyo.

I wonder what a day at the highway food plaza would be like? Will I see illegal two-wheelers tempos carts carrying vegetables and supplies Cleaners trash pickers coming by rickshawloads Will I hear bhakti music or capitalist muzak in the morning Will there be a drunkard groggily stumbling around Will there ever be silence? When will the leftovers be cleaned? When will the leftover start searching for the missed shivneri and asiad? Helter-skelter in the rain outside Crowded covered commerce consuming chicken customers chamberside Tea and wada pav for MSRTC Starbucks and burgers for Mercedes Observe lane discipline on the highway Observe class lines off the highway When will the tyres burst? Tow trucks pull in patients Will I see luminescent leaking coolants and prismatic empty petrol How much will the mechanoshepherd fleece? Sparrow and crow and ant A stray dog here too Will they give me company? Cigarette smoke, tobacco spit, urine stench They will give me com...

Birthdays are funny days. They rarely give personal joy. They just mark a revolution around the sun, of survival. They make you question the purpose of existence and why it would be really funny if the plane carrying you crashes. Because every year after that the revolution would mark the anniversary of my non-existence and the anniversary of if-I-had-been-alive. Would confuse the hell out of people who commemorate such stuff though. How did I spend my birthday? In travel, and making questions. I was forced to cut a cake (I had specifically asked not to have one), I was forced to accept a gift (I had specifically asked not to get one). I did enjoy the puran polis. That was more like it. But as I said, this is not just me. I am sure many people my age have such low-key birthdays, more like they just have regular days. Because it is a regular day which has been artificially given importance in today’s age. Heh I liked that one. When life expectancy was in the 30s, which is probably...