The Brave Pedestrian

Mumbai, 30 June 2016: Hundreds of savvy and well-educated flat buyers have purchased "luxurious" flats in RNA Exotica without noticing what their sale-purchase agreements clearly says: that RNA Exotica is actually a large and shabby slum rehabilitation scheme with a tiny island of rich flat-buyers. The rich people's housing project is married and tied to the rehab component in the same undivided compound -- a marriage made in hell! Not just RNA Exotica's sale-purchase agreement, but also project layouts and plans presented to MOEF, give a birds-eye-view of this nightmarish neighbourhood. With clever advertizing, a tight-lipped sales staff, and several clauses in the sale-purchase agreements that forbid investors from asking the right questions , RNA Corp has been consistently misleading its investors for many years. A prospective home-buyer never gets to read the true facts before he is inside the builder's trap! So let us take a close look at all the ugly...

My dad was watching Sanskar channel, and the voices from his television triggered a thought within me.  I recognized what it is about godmen or saints that irks me... that has always irked me, and prevented me from reverentially approaching a person. What irritates is that one is required to believe that this person is a "great man", and that his thoughts are somehow a lot more profound than yours or mine... even before one listens to the substance of his talk, let alone know him by his actions! Don't get me wrong... I have respectfully heard a few pravachans in my childhood and youth, and I have learned much from Swami Chinmayananda especially. Ever so often, a pravachan by someone like Bandhu Triputhi or Osho Rajneesh on television captivates me, and forces me to rethink my whole life. But I hear these people as one person hears another. I regard their words with as much reverence as I might accord to, say, the words of a knowledgeable fellow ...

Make haste You're late. The sun has set And the darkness is deepening. The cry that you hear, That you keep hearing, is more distant now And you're beset with Thickets and bushes that grasp At your limbs and clothes, Slowing your every step. Break into a run now If your aching limbs, your burning lungs, Allow it. Because each yard Will seem like a mile After nightfall Each step Will sap your courage. The night is deepening. Fields and forests and rocky outcrops Are now shadows that menace The mind. What do you see? Beware, it is a lie. Each step is a stumbling block. What seems like soft grass Will shred your feet like glass. Yet make haste. You're late. The cry that you heard, that you kept hearing, is but a silence now. Search now in panic. But where? Grope in the dark bushes... but for what? Ah, but you've walked too many miles, Traveller, To hold a cold, lifeless hand And know what you've known all along: You're late.

We are, all of us, two people in one. Part of us deeply believes in social order, world peace, universal happiness, inner purity, karva chauth, 8% GDP growth, India Shining, no chuddies showing, awkward bulges concealed… you know, that sort of thing, which is so important for maintaining law-and-order in everyday life. Coincidentally, this is the part of us that we share with our parents and our children… especially our children. Because there is an invisible yet immutable law that we all obey: In the eyes of the children, thou shalt be squeaky-clean, sexless beings. And this brings on us a great pressure to conform – even more than the pressures of parental expectations of decency, which we all feel free to violate at some time or the other. (The ultimate nightmare of the young couple is not that mother-in-law or father-in-law will open the bedroom door at the wrong moment; it is that little Chintu will wake up one morning and ask, “Mummy, what was papa doing with his susoo ...

Our greatest joy in life can leave the biggest hole in our hearts, she reflected, standing before the mirror, studying the way her saree now draped around her. It looked good. To an outsider, it would look perfect. It would look as though nothing had changed. But everything had changed. Oh God, how rapidly everything had changed! Two months? No, less! Far less. Tears welled up in her eyes. She wept for herself. And then she wept for her husband. Sobbing softly, she wept for them both. Just a few weeks had elapsed since she had felt those lumps near her armpit, while soaping herself in the bathroom. Concerned, she had called her husband in. He had stepped into the wet bathroom, grinning. "So, you want me to help you soap yourself, huh? With pleasure, darling, with pleasure!" Suppressing the anxiety that was already gnawing at the pit of her stomach, she had handed him the bar of soap, and allowed him to soap her breasts, closing her eyes. It never ceased to amaze her how mu...

1.15 PM. February 8, 1965. A boy and a girl, unmindful of the sun, Sought some private moments on A lonely pier stretching into the Arabian Sea. An entwining of limbs, heavy breathing, a cry And millions of enterprising sperms were swimming Upstream in a mixture of viscous fluids. Some minutes or hours later, A hard-working little fellow Impregnated a singularly fortunate egg And I came into existence. From being a nothing, a nobody, I became a somebody. The rest of those millions of sperms… Each of whom could equally have become A little boy or a girl Were doomed at this exalted moment To be flushed down the drains With so much urine. So were these sacred moments or profane ones? Moments of creation or destruction? Were they beautiful or ugly? Were they sublime or smelly? Did my dad talk dirty? Did mom's cries of pleasure Disturb the sea gulls Or cause an unseen fisherman to hurry To meet his own beloved? To th...

Pressing my need into yours I gaze into your eyes Searching in their depths for an answer: a look that says, "Yes... you are deeply mine. We are One." But your eyes smile, and say instead, "This moment is ours. Journey on." And our limbs and our fingers intertwine comfortingly. Heaven is within us, palpable within the rhythm of our fluid molten flesh poised like an ocean wave about to break, waiting to descend like a thunderclap, a cry of migratory birds, a foretaste of eternal sleep. I have but to close my eyes, match my rhythm, submit to its oceanic will, let it take me, crush me into myself into itself into nothingness into allness. It is a breath waiting to be drawn. But I... I will not draw that breath. I gaze into your open eyes waiting for a fleeting affirmation of Oneness. I sense the moment slipping away from us. Your lids grow heavy, breathing quickens. A sigh, gasp, shudder. Molten flesh releases its heat. You ascend to your own private heaven. I gaze...

It is like a song that is sung in the dark. Her voice, rising, falling, rising higher Like waves, like the sea And his low voice as he urges her on. He delights in her cries, And she... She delights in herself, in free-falling Away from herself Into herself Hurtling backwards in the soft darkness Towards herself, arms and legs outspread. And she cries out in longing and the Joy of meeting And he responds to her song With his rhythm, Causing the waves in her belly, In her entire being. Waves that collapse upon themselves In a froth of pleasure And a high note through clenched teeth that trails Into silence And makes itself one with the night. Naked limbs softly twine and intertwine all night Warm brown flesh caressing luxurious cool white flesh Now in sleep, now in wakefulness... Silken smoothness pressed against creamy softness Dripping pleasure slowly like a burning candle all night Melting down but not quite going out before dawn. The song continues to play in the silence And ne...

22 nd June, 2016, Mumbai: When builder Anil Aggarwal's Skyline Construction Co approached Axis Bank for a project loan for RNA Exotica in 2011, the bankers forgot simple arithmetic. On two separate instances -- in 2011 and in 2013 -- Axis Bank's SME loans division gave loans of Rs 75 crore and Rs 100 crore against hugely inflated mortgages of floor space in RNA Exotica. The flat size was inflated by 500 to 700 square feet per flat, and the number of unsold flats mortgaged was inflated by a couple of hundred flats in 2013. Anil Aggarwal, like Anil Kapoor (you know, the chap who sang, "One-two-ka-four, four-two-ka-one, my name is Lakhan") sang a seductive song to Axis Bank executives, who were more than willing to be seduced . The late Anil Aggarwal's version of one-two-ka-four sounds like this: "770 square feet flat ka 1299 and 979 sq. ft. ka 1650... My name is RNA Corp! Jadoogar Anil Aggarwal said 168 sold flats in 2011, but 66 sold flats in 2013. N...

I have passed this way before And nostalgia grips me now Asks me to seek out old haunts Revisit old friends Peer into unknown faces Gaze into their eyes for a mark of familiarity Perchance to say, or to hear, “ I know you, although you Have forgotten me. We have met before And loved When you were someone else And I had a different face… “ And this, my long-lost friend… This is where you sorrowed For your many losses And we shed our tears with you, for you. “ See these trees that have grown so tall Indifferent to your existence or mine… We watered them together In a bygone age When they were saplings. By giving them our tears We gave them life. “ And these stone walls still echo Our whispers, our laughter Yours and mine. The dusty silences still hold Our memories frozen in time Although you have forgotten.” Nostalgia… Memories that are not quite memories But only a place in the mind where memories used to live… ...

It is half filled And it remains only half filled No matter what I achieve Or acquire. It is half empty And it remains only half empty No matter what I fail at doing Or what I lose. (Ah! But this cup feels fuller when I give And when I’m given. And it feels a little more empty When I withhold Or when someone withholds from me!) I keep running everyday Like a rat on a treadmill Hoping that somehow I shall fill my cup to the brim And dance in ecstasy with the gods. I live in the fear that Some act or failure to act Will spill my cup And leave me dying of thirst – A meaningless creature in the desert of existence. Truth is, The cup of this mind that I inhabit Can never be fuller than it is now Nor can it ever be drained. I know this. I’ve known all along... But what to do? The itch of desire The ache of anxiety Demands a response, demands action, Not thoughtfulness, Not wisdom.

I write this tinged with sadness. I feel sorry for us... For the tragic comedy that is the essential human condition. In the midst of a carnival of plenty, Some of us are dying of thirst. In the midst of a deluge of love, Some of us feel left out and lonely. There is no dearth of emotional give-and-take in the crowd of relations that we stand amidst... Father, mother, brother, sister, son daughter, spouse, lover... And yet we suffer bouts of feeling heartsick and unloved. Yes, I feel sorry for all of us. Poor forked animal, whose overdeveloped mind afflicts him, Ambushes him with emotions that have little to do with the present. Poor forked animal, who carries a baggage of emotions from the past, And borrows some more from an imagined future. Poor forked animal, who cannot be simply happy With things as they are. We live our lives with the sour aftertaste of Yesterdays and yesteryears. We live with the bittersweet foretaste Of what the morrow will bring. We live in a world that has...