The village that was not..

To my undeniable charm,

Few of my friends who read my blog on you had some interesting questions to ask me.

Is Nandini your wife?

Does Uma know about Nandini?

Is Nandini comfortable with her subject being discussed openly on the public space?

Are you cheating on Uma?

Huh… several doubts over the only truth.

I simply smiled at those questions and maintained silence just the way you always did, whenever I asked you a single question; do you truly love me?

Kusha --one of my closest friends, called me up today and we conversed about the blog on you, again.

He lives in Paris working for a software company and doing very well in life.

Someday he wants to make a movie and become one more Nagesh Kukanoor of Bagewadi, our village.

The theme Kusha is looking for is ‘things that money cannot buy’.

Hence I suggested our love story.

Imagine about the movie title ‘Nandini’; Chopras would contest for the theme and the name.

***

Kusha and I have many things in common.

We grew up in the same village, went to the same school, taught by the same teachers and did experience identical upheavals all through our childhood.

Born in a lower middle class family, we did not have inherited fathers’ businesses, nor had the agricultural farms to flaunt. The pigmy money as small as Rs.10 per day that our fathers (both have been doctors) deposited into a local bank, provided us a true meaning of money and its importance, quite in an early stage of our lives.

The paisas that our moms gave us were wisely spent over the puffed rice that a vendor sold during the school lunch break. As school going boys, I do not remember either of us carrying rupees with us, any day. The food that we bought - out of the little money we had, though was inadequate to feed us full; but we lived a wonderful camaraderie and had a grand joy that money could not buy.

We learnt simple philosophy at an early stage of our lives; making money is easy but earning it is difficult.

Dealing with Paisa helped us respect a Rupee , while it arrived in plenty.

I believe, we are in good times today.

Our parents do not work for money, anymore.

Mothers make meaningful spending out of the interest that their postal deposits earn.

They also give away some money for religious purposes and feed the poor.

Sons now eat spaghetti, miss the puffed rice, though.

They respect the education that they received in Bagewadi that made them what they are today; men who regard simplicity and poverty.

The grandsons are arguably getting better education than their fathers.

Daughter in laws are merrily making home with the maids around them helping them have plentiful time to relax.

Thankfully the little riches that we have accrued over these years have never denied us an appreciation and affiliation with the life we once frugally lived as underprivileged boys.

In wonderment, we look back and see loads and loads of amazing memories racked on every lane of the little village that is currently being coerced to be some other place than what it was originally designed to be.

As Einstein says, there are only two ways to live the life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

****

Change is always an interesting subject to write upon.

Bagewadi has always been a sleepy village and my impression about the village hasn’t changed much, over these years.

While mud, farms, wells, religion, bullock carts, food, fairs and festivals continue to help the village preserve its superb splendor –unemployment, politics, caste, poverty, sloth, slavery, debt and dependency have collectively pushed the village back into the ages.

That said, there also have been changes-mostly the changes that the digital divide has forced.

I see an emergence of a debatable Xgen today, in Bagewadi.

The Xgen boys do not play Chapa, Vattha, Gothi, Chinni-Dandu; they are hung on the mobile games.

Every 2 amongst 5 boys in Bagewadi own a mobile phone that also has pre-loaded games, besides many things that it needn’t have.

Unlike ‘who got the highest numbers of Chapas’, the Xgen boys enquire ‘who got the ‘Final Fantasy VII’ without saying so as they cannot.

They do not run behind the sugar cane lorry anymore, nor do they run away with fistful groundnuts stolen from a nearby farm. They have sufficient pocket money that they do not know what to do with. Hence they end up buying what they are not supposed to; ringtones, tobacco, beer and sometimes condoms.

As far as education is concerned, I do not think that any boy or girl has a correct answer for a simple question as to why are they going to a school or a college, everyday?

The house making Xgen women are glued to television soap opera that by far is the best thing that has ever happened to Indian womankind besides the clearance of a Woman’s Bill in the Indian parliament. The daughter’s story at nine, mother’s story at nine thirty, uncle’s story at ten, neighbor’s story at ten thirty – and she has her day’s last television show at eleven ; the mother in law’s story. This is the most prevalent kahani in many houses at Bagewadi today that has pushed even many sober husbands to sleep in denial of sex.

Our Xgen men are no less culprit.

20 acres of land is not a hygiene factor for men anymore because the land is divided between three brothers and one of the brothers is most likely bankrupt since he has sold half of his share to spend on his ‘good’ habits.

But the Xgen bankrupt brother would still have few things to flaunt on; gold rings in his fingers, a thin gold bracelet on his week wrist, a gold plated Sonata watch on his other wrist, Charlie scented white cotton shirt with a Reynolds pen and a set of Ray Ban glares define the attire of the Xgen broken guy.

Unfazed with his tobacco stained teeth, his swollen cheeks, his puffy eyes and his pot belly - the Xgen bankrupt brother doesn’t mind writing off a part of his left over property to by few more bottles from the vineyard and a company of few more young girls.

It is just that he doesn’t know how to say ‘my name is Bond.. James Bond’

While one HIV patient in the making is guaranteeing himself an ICU in the near future, his Xgen elder brother is busy working out an association with a political establishment. He is busy in rallying, lying, lobbying and talking. He too has mobile phone with dual SIM cards but has no time to speak to his wife and children. His children go to English medium schools and he proudly defies all his friends who left Bagewadi in search of a good life.

Bagewadi is changing, but it is changing for bad.

Mansions are rising, meaning is disappearing.

Walls are getting erected, fondness is dipping.

Farmers are there but the farms are depleting.

Schools are there, but are reduced to mere political dens.

Teachers are teaching but index of their books is thinning.

Students instead of the school notes are exchanging the latest sleazy MMS clippings.

The temples are getting renovated, but the gods are being driven out.

The whole new generation with no quest for knowledge and with no zest for a wonderful life has turned Bagewadi into a hopelessly muted village.

***

I and Kusha can only pity the decay today and sigh with a vacant note ‘things that money cannot buy’.

Our fulltime engagement with our own lives has undoubtedly made us selfish. Our cynical standpoint on people has certinly reduced us to a set of perfect hypocrites with no power to reverse a change that has swept our village in a wrong direction.

The only sob is, the good that has come to us did not go to many.

Do you know Nandini.. what has not changed is my fascination for you.

I’m glad that with the changing time my relationship with you only got constant and better.

A tale to tell

This is my fourth attempt to liven up my spirit of writing - and possibly the last one.

I was 10 year old while I wrote for the first time. My mother cut all the written papers and kept them to bundle the tablets for the patients that my father has treated.

Second attempt to write was relatively easy. I wrote after life’s biggest infatuation came to an end when a girl whom I believed in love with, dumped me off by giving me an honor of ‘younger brother.’ Moans of a broken heart have an evocative depth that I simply romanticized and produced some unpublished poems and novels before I stopped writing again.

I stopped writing because another woman came into my life to heal the bleeding heart; heart stopped moaning and so did the writing of a pen.

Third attempt was stopped as recent as 2 years back, someone suddenly appeared to object my writing - and I was off from it till today.

For the last few months I have been constantly thinking of writing again and wondered who is that woman I need to knit my writings around this time; thus Nandini was born.

***

After all why do I need to write?

Write again?

What is the motivation.?

My answers to the above questions are illogical and here is the story.

While majority of men near their forties, they become dangerously real and honest.

They realize what an ugly animal one is in the mask of a man.

Their hollow beliefs, ambiguous values, depleting lust and altering priorities - invariably reintroduce them to a world where reality alone prevails; nothing else.

It is this phase where men are not afraid of confronting with the truth.

There comes a lurking dichotomy; in the name of truth they find many things inconsequential to their lives. The rising cholesterol, falling stocks, growing wealth, thinning spirit, irritating politicians, over weighing women, useless neighbors, grinning strangers.. reality becomes so routine to men.

Hence they get into a constant search of something that excites them.

And that’s how new hobbies pop up; F1 race, grandslam, golf, god, philanthropy, clubs, religion and many things.

Some succeed. And some fail just to rediscover a new hobby.

And they say ‘possibly the last attempt’ precisely the way I admitted in the beginning.

For those who aren't attracted much to sports - either reading or writing comes as a default hobby.

I find writing as an interesting hobby since writing warrants the writer to deal with truth as truth, a phenomena that men at forties are comfortable with.

That said, I’m never making a statement that men become icons of truth. But in this phase of life, even the most celebrated liars become a bunch of respectable rascals.

I think I’m precisely at a stage where I want to tell some truths allowing all my unexpressed feelings, the unwritten words and those untold tales through a medium of an iconic character called Nandini.

Hence the writing.

Do you now understand as to what I meant by a lurking dichotomy?

***

Nandini … you are the central theme of my writing and I now need to pull you out of the closet to tell the world who you are? But how would I articulate our relation to a world that treats love as an affair? How would I convince the world that insanity is the best form of being in love with someone, eternally?

You are someone whom I know since my formative years; I have grown old with you while you have always stayed young with me. And that makes two of us; incredibly intimate souls in an enduring obsession for each other, forever.

Amongst several women that I got myself attracted to, none could arrest me in their emotional prison the way you could.

Not all the time you undressed before me - merely to arouse me; you were so gentle and graceful that your taught me to appreciate all that is naked and true.

You are the first woman I made love to without being watchful of your nude body, yet experience a finer contours of your softest body. You taught me what to expect out of a woman’s body as well as how to respect it.No wonder why woman’s body is a temple that men surrender at.

You are the first woman who made me kneel down before your compelling womanhood allowing my manliness to celebrate its loss.
And what a festivity it is?

Victory after a defeat with a woman is such a divinely experience ; but alas… most men refuse to acknowledge a simple truth.

You are not a gorgeous woman that every man aspires to have. That said, you are certainly not an ordinary woman whose company that any sensible man can afford to deny.

Foolish are men if someone tall, lean, fair with a very clean and a shining skin cannot captivate them.

Nandini..your only projection is grace.

Sensuality is not in your large breasts; it is there in your wide eyes.

Spirit in you is best seen not when you vivaciously fill words in the small sentences you make; but in the curt silence that you observe for a long time.

You look profusely desirable when you look at me with those deer like eyes and just nod to say something by saying nothing at all.

Nandini.. here is yet another attempt to indulge into something beyond the business called life; an effort to tick the weakening ribs of my romance and restore the glory of small things that I undeservedly missed while walking on the smallest lanes of my life, without you around.

This is one more try to rekindle a dying obsession for someone who never existed for the world, yet lived within me as a semblance of a killing grace and finesse.

You are the soul of my future writings and thus a sole addressee too.

Whenever the winter places the silence sleep next to me, whenever the autumn wets the long roads and whenever the summer empties the notes out of a song – I would write… I would write to bring you back to take the lurking sense of emptiness away from me.

My letters to you may sound contentious for few.

Don’t worry much; think that some odd people just do not have a sense of appreciating the odes.

Don’t worry much; this is not going to be a disclosure of our private association but a celebration of life that we have not lived.

This is going to be an attempt to relive an eternal bond with someone who has never been mine.

Join me to celebrate an occasion called life.

I'm beginning again.