Reality has limits, imagination has none

Mahhhennnndra Baaahubaleee… that’s me 😊. When I was small, I knew I was some kind of a miracle child. When I came out, I didn’t cry like other babies. They all cry in minor scales. I cried in ekdum sharp F-Sharp. That’s the same scale in which Sunny Deol cried mai nikla gaddi leke and Sunny Leone cries when she’s not faking it. Mosquitos miss the scale by half a key. All babies smiled for 10 minutes from the moment I was born, and everyone at Surya hospital knew that something significant had happened.

I grew up not quite liking where I was. Bilaspur was a small place for my huge thinking. I didn’t feel challenged enough killing mosquitos and catching dragon flies. An occasional snake didn’t excite me enough, as someone told me most of them didn’t have any venom. Then I watched Jurassic park one day, and instantly realized that’s where I wanted to be. I would often sit in the little pani ka tanki in the pichwada of our railway quarter, close my eyes and imagine sitting on the head of the largest dinosaur, holding its horns and riding it like a pony. It was pure joy. Closely matching in degree of joy to an occasional fart while I was inside water as a giant bubble rose up brushing my back.

I would flap my hands while in the tanki and pretend to swim. I was preparing myself to swim in the sea someday, as that’s where I could catch the whales and sharks. I would not tell anyone any of this. These were my secret goals – to go where nobody else dared to, to do what nobody else dared to.

I grew up to know that Jurassic Park was fiction, and dinosaurs didn’t exist any more. But I thought they meant it’s scientifically possible to make them like they did in the movie. I decided I’d learn to make them, so that I could kill them. So I wanted to study biology after 10^th, but they decided my IQ wasn’t high enough for learning science. I landed up in arts. I didn’t care what history, civics, economics or political science meant – how are they ‘arts’ anyway? I decided I wouldn’t lose sight of my goal.

Shah Rukh said if you want something deeply enough, the whole universe will help you get it. Sheela said she knew you wanted it but you were never gonna get it – Sheela ki jawaani. She was wrong, you needed to want it deeply enough. I was going to reach my secret goals. If reality had limits, my imagination had none.

It grew more and more interesting now. Riding dinosaurs started to seem like child’s play. I could make myself small enough to sit behind a butterfly and tickle its ears while it flew in the garden. Once a butterfly sneezed and the jhhatka threw me on a heap of cow dung. It didn’t taste like palak paneer like I had thought. I once ate a green chilli and bit a nasty dog on its tummy. It ran towards the honeycomb on the nearby tree, barked at the bees and they dropped some honey into its mouth. The dog never took panga with me again. I created a python in my mind, held its mouth while the tongue was out, and dipped the tongue into cheezy dip. She rolled her eyes, she wanted jalapeno dip instead. How dare she? I ate the chocolava cake all by myself, to punish her.  In my love for F-Sharp, I once took on myself the mission to fix the hum of mosquitos. They needed a messiah to elevate their scale to that of the enlightened ones. I turned myself to 3 millimeter long and held on to the tail of the biggest mosquito I could find at home. After flying for 10 minutes in random places, she started hovering around my dad’s ear. She started her hum in F. She went on for a minute, and I could not take it any longer. I jumped and held her neck and pressed the right node, and there she was doing F Sharp. My dad sensed something was unusual. He farted it out – no sound, no whistle, only gas. So boring. I said my byes to the mosquito and jumped into my dad’s shirt. His farts needed fixing.

Originally written by me at Pagdandi during the Pune Writers’ Group meetup on 26th May 2019. It’s based on one of the themes given on the spot – “An unemployed millennial chooses daring quests and giant slaying over yet another 9-5”.

Sun, moon and the twinkling stars

Aadya met him just a few days back. She wasn’t in love, she told herself. After all it was just a few meetings. And they can’t be called ‘dates’, right? ‘Arranged marriage is not about love’ her friend Riya would often tell her. ‘You have to be practical, find a guy that you can settle down with’. But Aadya could feel a heartbeat inside her that she never had before. She had earlier met 9 guys, but with Aakash, it was different. She wanted to meet him again and again. She enjoyed hearing his infectious voice, seeing his smile that would take her breath away, and most of all his eyes that wouldn’t stop gazing at hers. She was clearly attracted to him.

Riya had got married a year back, and was already expecting a baby. They had a house in the most posh locality of Pune. Her husband was the CEO of the most well-known start-up in Pune… a 40-under-40 sort of guy. She had no mother-in-law. There were 3 maids, 2 nannies and 2 drivers. Everything was taken care of. What more could she have asked for, Riya would often say during the once-in-a-week phone calls she had with Aadya.

Aadya had a gift. She could hear a voice and grasp the joy, pain and every emotion in it. She could look into an eye and notice the smallest tear hidden somewhere deep inside, and find the infectious trace of a little smile within. And even though Riya tried hard, she couldn’t hide what her voice gave away. Yet, Aadya never commented on it. But last week when they met, Aadya let her eyes talk to Riya’s and within moments, Riya was in tears. If there is beauty in pain, Riya personified it. Her lips had the dryness of a desert, her gray hair looked burnt – dead yet burnt many times over. Her eyes were screaming for help, yet the emptiness within was scary – as if it had accepted defeat, lost all hope of a better life. Her skin, which once was like a feather of the most precious and rare bird that existed only in heavens, was empty, dull and lifeless.

Aadya was sad to see her friend so much in pain. She was also scared of her own future. Was she making the right choice? She wasn’t marrying for love either, she thought. Then, what was she marrying him for? It was a question that was bothering her a lot, literally giving her sleepless nights. She was constantly in debate with herself – ‘Could it possibly be love? Or attraction? What is love, anyway? How does he feel about me? What if it is temporary – whatever it is?’ She knew he was genuine, his smile was genuine and his eyes didn’t lie. She admired his hesitant touch when he shook her hand. She admired the nervous twinkle in his eyes when he tried to figure out whether she liked the dish he ordered. Most of all, she loved how he sought to find out how she felt about every plan he made, whenever he made one. And that he was willing to make amends when she didn’t like something. She felt guilty that she wasn’t equally collaborative when she took the lead. ‘Am I as right for him as he is for me?’ ‘Would he eventually understand me?’ – well, she knew that understanding a person is a pursuit which can take a lifetime. Even she was a puzzle to herself at times. And what if she couldn’t connect with his mind in the true sense, what if her instincts fooled her? ‘Marriage needs work, I am willing to do it’ – she told herself. ‘But, is he?’

But most of all, there were the what ifs that scared her to the core. ‘What if some day I see in his eyes what I see in Riya’s? What if I hear in myself the pain which says I no more believe in life, its joys and its possibilities? What if my skin pales with each cell screaming that it can’t hide the sorrow within any more?’

Riya controlled herself, and in a minute her tears went away. A few more moments later, she smiled at Aadya, followed by the same familiar, naughty giggle that they continuously shared at the back bench in college a few years ago, over little things that nobody else understood besides them. Aadya smiled back. Riya turned her eyes towards a handsome young man on another table, probably on a date with a pretty girl laughing in a flirtatious way. Riya gently whispered – ‘Bitch!’. And they both laughed louder than they ever did before. Aadya was so overwhelmed that moment that tears of joy trickled down her cheeks. And suddenly she noticed that Riya, at that very moment, looked totally transformed – as if they went back to the old days when life was care free and fun. Her eyes were glowing with pure happiness and her skin had the moist luster of a baby. And Aadya realized yet another truth about life – it always has its ways to offer happiness and hope.

And she decided to jump right in!

Originally written by me at Pagdandi during the Pune Writers’ Group meetup on 19th May 2019. It’s a short story based on one of the themes given on the spot – “Every emotion a human feels becomes written on their body. One day a woman is found with empty skin”.

Warm gas takes you higher... May be not.

There's no saying like this, but I would say it - "Warm gas takes you higher". This is true for a lot of people - especially the MBA sort. Although these days MBA is increasingly becoming a redundant degree, and MBA's are increasingly becoming redundant in organizations, a lot of people still spend loads of money to get the stamp of stupidity to get valued among the stupid peer group. I don't deny there is tremendous amount of learning packed in the rich curriculum of a B-School. But the irony is that out of all that can be learnt, very little is really of interest to anybody except the professor. And for those who do take active interest in learning, their worth is only in helping others pass exams in case the prof is too crazy about his shit. Coz the jobs don't need any of that. So even if you've learnt all the fancy stuff, you'll have to trash it to get something else into your head once you start working post the degree. And that something else is usually the kind of stuff you could have done better when you were younger and sharper, and had no fire in the ass to become a leader. Or the kind of stuff that anyone can do, but just that you have a degree and the role is made to require the degree, you sit there playing the role. It's all bizarre, but money has strange ways of finding the kind of people who deserve it. In other words, you need the degree to get that job. As the world is designed and run by human minds, some of which created these crazy degrees. And powerful people tend to pull up other people who share the same madness as they do. Powerful indeed depends on the limited environment and context. That's how networks of similar individuals get formed who together play the game if it is mutually beneficial.

Things are changing though, at least in the tech world, but the network phenomenon still has its traces. People with certain skills do get paid a lot, often many times more than MBAs. That may be coz a lot of these companies are owned by non-MBAs. So the network effect I mentioned may still be working to some extent. However, there's a much more prominent demand-supply factor at play here. And definitely warm gas can hardly take you very high here!