When You First Utter'd My Name

I just chanced to find lying derelict a poem that I wrote as a schoolboy to woo the young inamorata of my schooldays - a girl with double plaits that had just joined my class that I thought I loved. I mention double plaits because it achieved the twain of capitalising on my South Indian predisposition and capturing my pseudo-Victorian maudlin imagination! The first time I saw her, I thought she was the phantom of delight that Wordsworth had felt; the lovely apparition that had been sent to be a moment's ornament. I wrote her this Ode to precipitate my echoing of the Victorian thoughts I bore for her and carried it, pencilled in a notebook of mine. I secretly hoped that the paper would fly out in the class someday and, by a divine intervention, fall into her slender hands and that she would pour forth an overflowing glass of requite to me (That later another piece of paper flew to another girl did me little good. I shall write about it later). Ah! Those mornings when emotions weren't crumpled by creases of pragmatism; when I woke up with a strange synergy veering though my nerves; when I thought there was a strange nip in the cool air and I was summoned by the forces of nature to a higher calling, some heroic endeavour; little did it matter that I did not remotely know what kind of a task it meant! I was a man on a mission, and that was enough to make me feel valorous enough to try and woo a maiden! Those were the days...

NB: Needless to say, the crush was attrited the moment I grew some brains! And, needless to say, the poem in itself is hilariously Victorian!

(This poem which I had so delicately treasured for my fair maiden, my teacher somehow managed to catch hold of! And what's more, to my consternation, she matter-of-factly added that it was a good poem because it was able to inspire these feelings vicariously in the reader (which I presume was her)! And she, without breathing a word, had it published in the Young World in my name under the title 'On Love'! Needless to say, the news was meat and drink to the cannibalistic intents of my classmates! I was torn apart the next day, a slight relief being that the object of my affections was absent.)

When You First Utter'd My Name

When you first utter'd my name,
My heart leapt up above the clouds,
Transcending boundaries attain'd of fame.
All for an utterance- a solitary word.

Ne'er a joy so deep was felt,
E'en when clambered I the Peaks of Fame,
Only your words on my mind dwelt,
When I heard in your voice my name.

Ne'er a tune so sweet was heard
E'en from Temples' Bells of Hope that ring,
By utterances you have my heart endeared,
Tears of Joy to my eyes you bring.

Oh! When has my heart beat so fast
In my dreary life of many a year!
Oh! But only seconds did it last
And I clasp'd it to my bosom dear!

Thus have I felt in all my time,
But how you feel is prime, after all,
My name may seem worthless, funny, a rime,
Or et al, to you, may mean nothing at all.

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:35:00 am

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Of Chain Mails

I have just been left tottering by a chain mail that had royally ensconced itself in my inbox:

You are most fortunate to be a recipient, a link in the world’s most coveted mail chain. This chain mail contains the benedictions of Lord Venkateshwara. Recipients of this mail who have furthered this humanitarian gesture have found themselves miraculously ascending the ladders of success. You can have success on a platter too. Just forward this mail to 25 people and you will strike gold. This is not an exaggeration. People have hit jackpots, won lotteries. If you forward it to 15 people within 10 minutes of receiving this mail, you will find that all your bad days will pass before nictitating an eyelid. But beware! If you neglect the mail, your life will be beset with catastrophes. You will be bitten by a scabbed temple mongrel and will have to stomach 16 injections. You will be reduced to cadging on the street and more terrible calamities will befall you.

Apostles of the Lord

Apostles of the Lord indeed! What’s worse: this mail was sent to my father, a devoutly pious soul, who was instantly petrified by the ominous threats of disaster and promptly dispatched it to a list of fifteen people (which included me), roping us all into the world’s most coveted chain!

Chain mails often have me fuming in exasperation. And what's more, they are from friends in an e-group that I am part of; from close relatives and well-wishers. Something that I cannot even brush aside. I daresay that the mails seem to cause quite a few of us (from what I gather) a fair amount of discomfiture. But of course, before anyone begins to take me amiss, let me clarify that our problems are those pertinent to our own idiosyncrasies on the web and our inability to cope with the impending danger.

For my part, I did not know what to do with the black-mail either; I was equally stupefied. But I was lucky; I had some friends whose contacts I had reserved specifically meting out such special treatment; punching bags, so to speak. I religiously forwarded this mail to the group. Though I realised they would be sufficiently irked, I did not expect the lashing that arrived through subsequent mails. I wonder if the temple mongrel part of the mail bit their conscience; the replies were rabid, to say the least!

I am reminded of a certain friend of mine who used to take these things very seriously; so seriously that he used to religiously make an effort to forward the generically varied chain mails only to the appropriate coteries. He actually enjoyed, more than the mails themselves, tracing out the labyrinthine paths that these mails traversed. Never did he grow to realise that he spent only a tenth of his time actually reading the contents of the mail; he spent eons just peeking into the various people whom the mail had traversed through. Needless to say, the only part of his mails that I read before dumping it in the trashcan is the subject which is highlighted in my inbox!

Chain-mails, though all proponents of good wishes (or bad), are categorically varied. The above mail is a classic example targeted at the middle-aged, pious or expectant lot. There are chain mails that prescribe success in love. Needless to say, those mails are the ones that elicit the most diligent responses! There are chain mails which exhort people to contribute for social causes; the average recipient sees them resolves to contribute, accidentally trashes them and never thinks of them again. There are chain mails for almost every cause. Why, I received a chain mail just before the World Cup finals between India and Australia which prayed for India’s victory. In a burst of patriotic fervour, I ended up forwarding the mail to fifty people! That was just before Australia horsewhipped India to end up at 359/2!

Actually, my own sufferings with these mails are characterised by, more than any vehement disinclination, my inability pick out names from my address book to pass on the mail. If I pass them on to girls, I, an already ineligible bachelor, can sit back rest assured that contacts with the few girls I know will be severed. So I refrain from sending these to girls. And of course, sending these to the boys would make me the butt of many a ridicule and rebuke. So I have to be very careful in picking out mawkish people (either in love or just out of love) like the bloke who sent it. And he, I must admit, is one of his kind (and a rarity), which makes it doubly difficult for me to handpick these people in my address list. So these days I have resorted to sending these mails back to the sender! If I am instructed to send the mail to ten people, I sometimes wonder how it would be to send it back ten times to the sender himself. It would be interesting to note his face all purple with rage when he sees ten more copies of his favourite mail sitting side-by-side snugly in his inbox.

I hope that I am merely echoing the throes of many others who languish in their inability to pick out people to send these mails. I am sure the blessed sender does not wish that ill luck befalls us hapless creatures as do the mails. I feel like pleading out to him that if he feels so beholden about these things or about his role as the custodian of all love interests, let him continue to send them; only I pray that he removes the part which threatens to throw us irrevocable curses if we fail to pass them on!

Today, chain mail is an ineluctable phenomenon. No spam filter can filter them out; they come from known contacts! Everyone wilts under them and grits his teeth but smiles politely and says ‘How do you do!’ when he sees the sender in a get-together. I am waiting for the day when a scandalised philosopher will plaintively cry out: Man, today, is born free but always held in chain mails!

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:17:00 am

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The Song of a Hanging Frame

A serene face
The hanging frame on the wall
A silence envelops,
Stilling the surroundings.
Even as my gaze capitulates
To its inscrutable magnetic charm
She is smiling
In the groves
And so am I!
That song of that day
In my heart unwinds
The birds chirp,
Calls of longing
A soft haunting strain
Of an ethereal connection.
Soft drums
The gurgle of the brook
The abandon in her childish innocence
The melody haunts
The husky voice mesmerises
Flashes of moments scintillate
Through the blur of a clouded past
Soft resonance of bells
A surreal unison
A celebration.

The tempo rises
Reverberations of a thousand voices
Chants pierce the misty air
And the bells ring
The rising cadence
Sounds of whiplashes,
Indelible welts on my scarred heart.
The tempo slowly bubbles forth
Spilling over
In an earth shattering cresendo
The climax
The drums boom
The glass on the table shakes
Her muffled cries for help
Rending my heart
As I rush forth helplessly
Wildly carilloning temple bells
The alarm
The voice quavers at the highest tremolo
Her flames rage
Devouring the home
And the past
Ravaging all but the hanging photograph.
When the earth trembles.
The shattering clap of thunder
Culminating the built-up crescendo
Into a moment's devastating silence
A finality.

Silence.
Soft patters of rain.
Quiet tears stream down
A soft melody resumes in the background
Fading away
Poignance.
The memory of a symphony is over
The song is no more.
Just
A serene face,
The hanging frame on the wall
An eternal silence envelops.

- posted by Dileepan @ 3:23:00 am

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The Bard of all Bards!

Apparently, Shakespeare was born today, though there are few facts that actually conclusively prove anything about him, even his existence:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BORN:
April 23, 1564

According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.

- posted by Dileepan @ 2:46:00 am

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Estranged

Pained lovers, here's a thought for you:

All plaintive rumination is well with a romance that was wiped out by the cruel hand of Destiny; the grief is profound. But what becomes of an illusory one-sided romance that has little to glean; not even moments of requite? It merely wilts under the derision of others at a hallucinatory presumptuous odyssey for self-gratification. All along the pained lover is deluded with thoughts of a Victorian romance that never was and will never be, and when he egresses out of its labyrinthine trail, he is mockingly escorted by merely bitterness and a lingering pain. Pain not at the failure of a love, but of a neglect, the hollowness of chimerical propositions, a lack of direction and consummate attrition of self-esteem. Devdas was better off; he had at least a squashed romance to get drunk with!

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:15:00 am

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The Haircut

Even the Governor of your place does not affect your life so directly as the barber. The barber can radically affect your social prospects. He can redefine your unkempt coiffure to give you the dapper look; he can transmogrify the debonair into a barbarian; he can virtually play with your social life. And all within a matter of half an hour.

The past weekend I decided to experiment at a saloon just round the corner which was receiving rave reviews from my friends. I did not circumvent the change, as I normally would have, because the next day I was to meet some girls after a long time. I needed to be prim and proper. I was ushered in enthusiastically by a rather young fellow who, it seemed, was raring to show his adroitness with the scissors. When the long white apron draped me, I cursorily began to issue my customary instructions. "Medium." I started. Before I could run through with the rest of the customary instructions, he fished out a brochure of sorts. "Sir, which of these heart-ruffling hairstyles would you like to make your own?" And he proudly flashed before me a comprehensive literature of hairstyles, which seemed to have catalogued every possible hairstyle, from the mushroom cut to the David Beckham hairdo; from the luxurious locks falling over the nape to the bald pate. He inquisitioned with supreme nonchalance, "Would you like the Salman Khan crop or the Shahrukh Khan hairdo?" His peremptory intoning drove me into speculation for a moment. Salman Khan's crop is a cover-up for a hairstyle these days; I have some days to go before I need such a camouflaging coiffure. And Shahrukh's hair is too thick for mine; an imitation will only make me resemble the temple priest. So I firmly gave my orders, "Let it just be Medium. And be sure to cut uniformly on all sides." He seemed a tad disappointed but all the same got down to business with a flourish. Cosily ensconced before the mirror, I began to admire the reflection of the pate of a bald man who was sitting with his back to mine. His haircut should cost more, I callowly chuckled; the poor barber actually has to search for strands of hair to cut! Probably he should go to a 'Hair Growing Saloon', I guffawed within myself. My juvenile humour was cut short when a thick lock of hair fell right into my eyes. I brushed it away and refocussed my gaze onto myself and found instead somebody I thought to be a reincarnation of Laloo Prasad Yadav! Shocked! My face had been maliciously maimed, mutiliated by the barber. I now most certainly looked like the priest who has a small portion of his forehead tonsured! And the rest of the hair simply stuck outward like a pin-cushion! My heart sank with the thick locks of hair that tangoed to the ground celebrating their new-found freedom. I do not know if he bore me a grudge. But now I certainly will bear him one for the rest of my life! I had to ignominously remain seated wearing an oversized cap in the sweltering Madras heat in my first tryst with socialising.

I have heard of stories in which the barbers go particularly berserk with some types of hair. The wavy and the curly hair-forms suffer the most. The barber says, the hair looks good only when the curls and the waves are removed. And he snips off all the curls and waves with the ruthlessness of an executioner. And then the half-inch length of hair certainly looks better. Only, what becomes of the face is far too graphic to warrant a description. I know a friend with curly hair who removed his spectacles and sat down for a haircut. He closed his eyes right through the ordeal because he could not descry himself in the mirror sans his spectacles. And when he wore back his glasses, he stormed out of the barber-shop criminating the barber of doing him a nose-job and stretching out his ears so as to make them flap outwards!

Experience has taught me that these Scissor-armed butchers do not display any special predilection for celebrities either. And celebrities, being who they are, throw all kinds of queer reactions to the adversity. The last time the press saw Rajnikanth with a tonsured pate, he managed well explaining that he dozed away while at the mercy of the barber. And when Kamal Hassan's barber pruned everything, he covered up well claiming that it was to get into his forthcoming character for a film that was never released! When Akshaye Khanna's barber uncovered all his bald patches, the hairstyle was made to be youthful, and it became quite a craze too; not always do people get to fashionably flaunt their baldness!

Apart from that one meeting that I was almost bulldozed into attending, I cancelled all my other engagements for the rest of the week and remained a recluse in self-imposed incarceration within the walls of my room. I just couldn't come to terms with my reshaped head. I remember fuming to myself the chant which I intoned to ridicule the other bad haircuts:

I went to him for a hair-cut,
Instead he did a Square-Cut!

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:39:00 am

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As Subtle as a Sledgehammer!

Last Sunday had me playing a cricket match for i2 against Shaw Wallace. Their opening batsman was one Richard Rushton, a South African who sported the Castle Lager t-shirt. He hung on for most part of their innings like a true out-of-form South African. I tried to pick up some casual conversation with him during the drinks break. But all that I was able to elicit out of him were terse monosyllabic replies. I thought then that he was a typical supremacist South African white.

When my opening partner and I went into bat, we found that he was opening the bowling as well. He was a gentle medium-pace seam bowler. He dug in a short one to my opening partner, who prompted swatted him for a boundary through the vacant mid-wicket area. Let me tell you that my partner is an extremely unorthodox; he can get on your nerves with his complete lack of orthodoxy. Richard went up to him and intoned in disgust, "What the fuck was that?" with the emphasis on the enjoyable unparliamentary invective. My partner retorted something that made me guffaw out loudly; he snapped back, "That was a shot!" That reply, whatever it meant, gave me immense enjoyment; the South African was left to tear his hair! I, for my part, proceeded to needle him throughout the over in which he eventually went for 24 runs! The final ball of the over was a juicy half-volley which my pinch-hitting partner slammed straight back for a six. Rushton snatched his hat from the umpire and challenged my partner, "Let's see how you play my short ball! Let me see your backfoot play." to which my partner, a true Thakur, growled back, beaming like a proud lion, "Don’t worry, you won't get bowling!" Richard fumed his way to first slip.

The first ball of the second over was the icing on the cake. It was on the middle stump on a length, just angling in. I played an on-drive on the up, a check drive, left elbow high and all that; a shot that, I must admit, surprised even me. I turned back at Richard and gloated, "That is copybook cricket for you." For my gratuitous bragging, I was rewarded amply; I got out that very over! But we won the match easily and every new batsman was advised to get under the skin of Richard Rushton. After the match, Richard invited us for a round of beer, which we politely declined and instead simply sat round and, though among ourselves we were all a little irritated with this South African whom we thought to be a little too high-headed for his cricketing abilities, we flopped down into a haphazard circle for a light banter. A little friendly banter which simply put the entire of the match and my impressions of it in a different perspective. We asked a player from Shaw Wallace, "How is your company doing?" He candidly quipped, “The Company is looking to expand in India. Our past few ventures have been profitable. Our MD, Mr. Richard Rushton has been a dynamic leader!" And that was when all of us bit our tongues in an enviable togetherness!

- posted by Dileepan @ 6:55:00 am

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6 runs to be added to Sachin's 194

This was a mail that I received from a friend. Well, allow me to add that the date of the Report should lend the truth some credibility :) :

6 runs to be added to Sachin's 194

By Savita Choudhary

MULTAN, March 31, 2004

As strange as this may sound, ICC has decided to award Tendulkar 6 additional runs for his first innings knock of 194 not out. This comes after the Indian team appealed to the ICC match referee Ranjan Madagulle that a four and a couple of runs that were awarded as leg byes actually came off the bat of Sachin Tendulkar. The match referee after consultation with the two umpires Simon Taufel of Australia and David Shepard of England, and the Pakistani captain Inzamam Ul Haq, has decided to award Tendulkar with 6 runs.

The 6 runs came in one over when Tendulkar glanced Shabbir Ahmed in the 96th over of Indian innings for a four of the second ball. He followed it up with a couple of runs on the fifth ball.

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:10:00 am

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Cellular Unplugged!

He actually did it! I could not believe my eyes when I thought I saw him do it. This gentleman seemed one of a perfectly peaceable disposition. Until he walked past me. Well before crossing me, when we casually spotted each other, I thought his countenance wore a rather placid look. Then suddenly, even as we neared each other the blandly tranquil expression segued rapidly, rather a little too rapidly for my comfort I must add, into one of biting ferocity and even as we were about to cross each other, he yelled at me, "You are one of the most inefficient people I have seen on the earth! To hell with you!" I was completely stumped. Shocked. I did not know what to say! I completely endorse the fact, the truism, that I am one of the most inefficient idleness-mongers on the face of the earth. I don't need any telling! But yes, that is precisely the thing. I don't need anybody's telling! To know your rightful place is one thing; to be shown your place in the stable by somebody virtually unknown is quite another. It startled me to say the least! I was left staggering in shock and confused. Until my better senses prevailed.

I convinced myself to turn back and when I did I saw some wireless equipment of the cell phone plugged into his ears. Apparently he must have had a small microphone too. When I came to terms with the whole thing, amused as I was, I felt sanctified, absolved of the guilt of being the main cause for his angst! The incident also reminded me of the advertisement that used to be screened on TV where this elderly gentleman upon entering a restaurant mistakes a svelte woman talking on a miniscule cell phone for her invitation to him for dinner. And when the gentleman, unable to believe his luck, approaches her table to take his seat opposite her, she, having ended her romantic interlude on the cell phone, assumes him to be the waiter and, much to his embarrassment, ends up placing an order for a black coffee!

The incident, nerve-wracking as it was, left me wondering what we would be without the cell-phone. The cell phone has become all-important in today's world. Businessmen striving night and day to seal business deals; stock-brokers closely scrutinising trends at the Sensex; the teenager walking up and down impatiently in an agonising wait for his first date; the girl in the Airtel ad who wants to stay connected to the latest gossip; beggars awaiting the latest details about the day's collection from their Union; match-fixers; where would they all be without the cell phone? Where would you and I be without the cell-phone! Life without these precious little boxes would be as dull as a cycle-stand where the cycles never collapse, a la Sidhu!

I have seen people do strange things with the four inch by two inch contraption. The Short Messaging Service has revolutionised communication a little too much for comfort. The girls that saunter on the MG Road are furiously battling with the keys of the cell phone, while seldom looking up to see what lies ahead in their bovine stroll. The boys inside the cinema-hall are pensively typing out SMSes to their girlfriends who, having entered the hall, are forlorn, unable to locate their guys two rows before. But, as you would have come to expect by now, I have seldom had any luck with my SMSes. Invariably, when I SMS some matter of extreme urgency, Fate fastidiously ensures that the SMSes reach the concerned sender only after I meet him/her. The meeting may be after five minutes, two days, or a week! Or if I am extremely lucky, the SMS may not reach him/her at all sparing me the consternation of having to see the person receive the SMS when he/she is, in fact, talking to me!

SMSes have become so indispensable these days that even the Messenger services of Yahoo and MSN have pandered to peoples' predilection towards SMSes by enabling the option of receiving Instant Messages in the mobile as SMSes. And it has become customary for people to set their Messenger status to 'Im on SMS' when they are not online. Well, while this is an extremely useful option for emergency communications, what happened to the Godmother will always hold me wary. The Godmother had composed a new ringtone all by herself. The very fact she had been versatile enough to compose a ringtone (slightly cacophonous though it was) all by herself made her so proud that she set it as the ringtone that would alert her about a new SMS. And everytime the cell ranted the arrival of a new SMS, she gloated in her self-professed versatility. I am glad life taught her a lesson. When she was in an important meeting with her boss and team, her cellphone began to scream out the raucous melody unendingly. When she checked, abashed and horrified, there were scores of SMSes from the an otiose friend logged on to the Yahoo messenger that read "Why are you on SMS?"! Hard as she strove to delete all of them, the same message just continued to flow in! What a spectacular sight it was to see the Godmother rushing out of the meeting in absolute mortification, the cell-phone hung round the neck resonating a loud clangour like a bell collared to a temple cow! Should I even mention that the first thing that she did was to pulverise her brilliant composition out of the cellphone memory!

And not to speak of this rigmarole of Missed Calls. Missed Call is a term advocated by this group of parsimonious people who habitually deny themselves the liberty to use up their Cell-phone money and deny others the little peace of mind they are entitled to. And they have this sadistic affliction of thwarting the others' attempts to 'Missed Call' them. For my part whenever I have tried 'Missed Calling' people, I have consistently failed to cancel the call at the appropriate time, allowing the recipient to pick up his phone and ending up talking a good five minutes!

My grouses with the cell phone will continue to remain as long as the cell phones themselves remain. But they do not preclude my possessing a cell phone, for without it, I just cannot be! Whether we like it or not, the cell-phone has anchored itself firmly to our lifestyle, and despite the paradox, the mobile is indeed here to stay!

- posted by Dileepan @ 5:13:00 am

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Vibrancy

It is quite unfortunate. Indeed. Had only Shakespeare seen her, he would have mused, "Vibrancy, thy name is Woman!" It is indeed unfortunate that Shakespeare did not see her. Well, I am not getting romantic; I am quite incapable of romance. But the first words that emerged out of the the many rivulets of kaleidoscopic emotions that gushed to my mind (not to speak of my heart) when I first spoke to her were very precisely these. She has simply captured my imagination as a very cheery, bright and enterprising lady.

In fact, upon deeper retrospection, I have many a time relegated her to the status of a very normal woman; diligent, woman-like and conformist. And, at face value, every word of it is true. And you hold fort until you speak to her. In fact, had I been a maudlin romantic, I would have gushed, "Until you are swept off your feet by a voice that gargles like the brook; by a countenance that gushes like the river; by a demeanour that is as pleasing as a lotus; by time that stops like the stillness of the lake." But one thing I will have to admit: had I not given her this reverberating sobriquet, I would have simply called her as the Brook. When she gushes, you cannot help but be swept off your feet. I think she is worth most similes in the passage and probably this eulogy. Again, the Romantic would have mused in nostalgia, "She fleeted across my life for merely a month; and her feet have left some of the deepest impressions in the deserts of my mind." But I merely wish her well and hope she does not end up drifting into normalcy. I'm sure everytime she breezes past in the waves of peoples' reminiscence, the recidivist romantic will jump, unable to suppress an echo: "Oh! Vibrancy, thy name is woman!"

- posted by Dileepan @ 4:21:00 am

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