Except Pentus : Planning an excursion!

Ok, now that I have free time and kitchen duties (yuck), I feel like I should use it to explore travel possibilities. The world is my oyster, not considering money. That's the thing about the greenback, if you're making it you've got no time to spend it and if you don't make it, you have no chance to spend it. You're doomed either way. So might as well fritter away a few more to make ourselves happy. I'm only slightly kidding, I've saved up cash enough to float me for a few months and I'm living in my parents house, rent free, food free. Plus I'm single with no kids or loans. That was some critical on ground planning I've done before taking the plunge off the cliff. Its harder to fly when your wings aren't tied by iron chains.
Foreign travel is out, that's way too expensive from India. Even within India, the topnotch travel destinations like Kashmir, Kerala, Uttarakhand are basically like paying for a foreign trip without a stamp on your passport. So I'm constrained to find a place where I can sightsee, forget that I haven't taken a holiday in like 3 years and just live again. I hit upon the solution. Voila, pick a place where you can go by train only. Find a budget hotel and eat cheap. Common sense right?
Sure, except I have relished the fruits of hard corporate labour in the form of flights, 4 star hotels, chauffeured cars and made to order meals, all expenses paid for five years. No dripping perspiration, no smelly odours, no questionable strangers looking askance at your luggage and most certainly no jostling, fighting or bargaining. I've bitten off quite a mouthful when you consider it that way but my work free mind reminds me that its the price of giving up corporate salaries. So I'm no longer a coddled corporate darling, I'm just the average unemployed, struggling to travel on a budget.
Next up, I'll tell you how the smells and sounds are a lot more different when your mind is open and empty!

Excerpt Quartus : My mom is now my Boss!

The world lies at your mother's feet, its an old Indian saying. Its more or less true since Indian moms indulge and spoil their children, whether one or two to the nth degree, giving them meals to order, keeping clothes washed and arranged in cupboards, calling up to check when they're going to be home and in general, revolving around the spoilt brats, (yours truly) like the sun around the Earth.
They can browbeat with the best though, your boss would blush in embarassment to hear the expert wheedling and emotional blackmail they employ to get their way. Since we're all Mama's boys or girls (99% of people tend to be), we get suckered in too.
So here I am getting used to sitting at home without a useful occupation (read earning) trying to write, when my dearest Mom suggests that after 12 years of sparing me, it might be time for me to make the best of things and at least, learn my way around the kitchen.
Excuse me, the KITCHEN. Are you kidding me? I graduated near the top of my class, in school, in HSC, in college and MBA. I swam in shark infested corporate waters for five years, for what, for this? to land up cooking in the kitchen? Was this what all the effort was for?
Well, pat comes the soothing reply. Its not like that sweety. You're relatively free right now, not that writing isn't the noblest pursuit in the world (read noble = poor) but you need to at least know the basics at some point right. What are you going to feed your husband and children (read you will be a Mom too). I'm not saying you need to be an expert but you need to be familiar.
Hello, why can't my husband cook if that's the case? For all you know, he knows how to and I dont need to learn at all.
That's true sweety and if that's the case, I'll be happy for you. But you know just in case, we should be prepared.
But........
No more buts darling..... You have time right now. Use it well.
I want my Boss back.  

Excerpt Tertius : The voices that can’t be drowned out

Do I miss the ringing phone? The blinking red light of the signal or the Blackberry? Do I miss the chaos, the confusion, the building tension before a deliverable is duly delivered. On some miserable days, God I do. Especially salary day or earlier salary day. It reminds you that the money ain’t coming anymore, wasn’t it worth the sleepless nights. And you still have sleepless nights you remember. You need another job to pay the bills, you don’t know what you’re good at, you’re confused yet again. Isn’t the known devil better than the unknown devil? Wouldn’t it have been a good thing to stay on in the familiar place where you knew all the rules rather than get lost in space?

Maybe, maybe not. The problem with the transition slide is that it conveys generally nothing. It’s a blank slate with a meaningless picture that needs no explanation except to signal that one section is over and another one is beginning. The trick is of the timing. How long the slide remains on before you’re forced to press Enter. There are way too many questions in space, they don’t move and they don’t get answered.

Meanwhile, I feel like Ram in exile. I’m the good one, the blameless one, the guiltless one, why doesn’t the world pay attention? I don’t know maybe because you’re a spoilt, self indulgent brat, says the voice inside me. You took the call, the big step away from the nest, now live with it, comes pat the voice inside my head.  Self recrimination is a terrible thing. The thing is, you can shrug off all the voices except the ones inside your head. The voice of good sense, the one that stopped you from all the foolish impulses, the one that doesn’t sleep or rest. It’s the midnight voice, the one that can’t be drowned out by blaring TV or blasting music.

How I wish for a soundproof room inside my head! Where the voice can be isolated and shut off. Mute permanently.  You know why people dread growing old? I used to think that it was because of the crow’s feet and the sagging skin in various unmentionable places, but that isn’t it. Age makes the voice louder and there’s no volume control button on the remote. In fact, there isn’t any control at all. The dream is ethereal. Its lighter than a fairy’s wing and it seems to be floating out of reach just like the sour grapes, the voice says. And its getting louder by the day.

How do I get there? How do I get to where I want to be? Show me the way. And voila, I’ve discovered God. The real voice inside my head. He’s there for me, inside me, outside me. Guiding my steps even though I can’t see the path. Its not random nor are the odds stacked up against me. I just need to start fighting again.  That’s the other voice in my head. Its weak but its there. And I’m listening.

Excerpt Segundus : Dawn to dusk is a really long time

Cut to the chase. However good a writer you are, and really only the reader can judge that, there are some days on which the words just don’t come. Inspiration is not a bolt of lightning from the Gods. It must be coaxed and seduced before it deigns to hit you. And it metamorphoses into various shapes, ideas without links, stories without climaxes, characters without depth, twists without conclusions, they are all your road buddies. They all frustrate you and mystify you.

So the question is, what do you do on those days when Dame Fortune does not dimple. When the entire day stretches like a dry terrain before you and you have only a single pitcher of Diet Coke. Well, you learn to appreciate the slower things. The occasional blares of traffic, the very slight waving of scanty trees in the breeze, the waves which don’t reach you because of the breakers, the highly polluted and coloured sunset, the occasional gleaming star in an otherwise smoggy sky. Because only films have writers taking off to destinations glamorous to inspire themselves. The truth is that you’re sitting at home with cable television, both companion and curse and using the limited urban landscape to distract yourself.

The other great truth is that most of us today, are products of an urban lifestyle or aspire to be. We would wither without our brands, gadgets, traffic and junk food. We crave these things like glue and we’re all glue sniffers. Show me the guy who would love to take off forever into the small towns or villages and I’ll show you a liar. The problem with the urban livos is that the neighbours don’t care about you. Or maybe that’s just Mumbai. They don’t care what you’re doing as long as you’re not poking your nose in his shit. He’s returning the courtesy, a given in this city. Its really a lot easier to be an aspiring author in a different city from this one, where the contemptuous comments of the neighbours sends righteous indignation flaring into your system, downright daring you to prove yourself. Now that’s what I call inspiration.

That would take away at least a few of the hours.

You sleep more, eat less, spend less because you’re not making any and we should never underestimate the value of retail therapy, its expensive and effective. The guilt from indulging yourself and frantic recalculations of the damage to the bank account and the living budget could eat away a few more hours.

Your real friends call you. This I have discovered in the course of the past twenty days. The ones who care are the ones who remember that you need them. That you need them to make the minute hand move even though they’re frantically busy. The ones who call you themselves because they know you can’t afford to call them. REAL friends. You find out who they are very easily in such periods. They reach out to you because they’re there for you. That’s a huge bonus from this sort of vacation that probably outweighs any credit in your account from your ex-job.

But there’s still time to go, after this too. So you eat, you sleep, you dream and you wait, for the keyboard to move. For the brain to storm and the words to flow.

Excerpt Primus :Short notes from a recent corporate slave and perpetually unsatisfied moron

Learning to Fly

Sabbatical. The ultimate Mecca of every employed nine to X’O clocker.

It brings back fond memories of college life, when we were relaxed and unfettered, unburdened by responsibility. Lodging was dad’s hotel, food was mom’s insistence and exams were the price of living. We yearned for the days of travelling by cabs rather than buses/trains and being able to buy the latest gadgets, travelling to the farthest corners of the world, the sky was our limit.

But the reality is that gravity is stronger than soaring dreams in the market place. It pulls inexorably towards Planet Earth, reminding you in meetings, conference calls, appraisals, mails that you are only as good as you do. If you can’t deliver, timely and accurately, you may not be crushed but you will be lost in oblivion. Being a name that someone cannot remember is every ambitious person’s greatest fear. So he works, frantic and ceaseless, trying to impress senior, impress upon juniors, making friends with colleagues (friends for a common cause naturally). Sleepless nights, endless days, infinite cuppas of chai or coffee, a bulging belly from eating out, jet lag from continuous travel. And what does all this give you, you ask. A generous salary, benefits, perks and the next year’s target,  at least a 100% higher than the one you still haven’t achieved.

So he takes time off, shops until his credit card drops, his wallet screams in protest, plays sports, meets friends on weekends, meets family at late night, holidays in the latest hotspot (where he answers his phone and checks his e-mail, because he can’t not do that) and comes back to feel rejuvenated. Oh yeah, this is good. I can do this, totally conquer every mountain and shut up every competitor. Target, big deal, Everest isn’t high enough for my capabilities.

So why is it that it starts again. The fatigue, inertia, listlessness, the fuss and the cribbing. What is it that drives one to say, “Enough is enough. I need to stop.” Some call it cowardice, rather most do. The ones who got minnnowed away, who faded away in the books of history, the ones who came second, the quitters.

What do I call it? I, who gave up a well paying job in a reputed organization to pursue a dream as insubstantial as a mirage in the desert.  Voluntarily. Well, I could call it temporary insanity but I chose not to.  No, I call it riding a bicycle. This thing, this most basic of motor skills which I never learnt, which nearly everyone knows and which embarrasses me to admit ignorance to. I can’t ride a bicycle but I want to. I can’t be a writer, but I want to. So better late than never. I’m gonna try, give it my all and see where I land. It’s a little like jumping off a plane with a parachute. The landing could be soft, but you won’t know until you land. 

I’m on sabbatical, I’m going to be for some time, let me fly with the seagulls.