It’s a poem he wrote last night after several pegs of whisky and conversation with a fellow literature loving bong buddy. Every once in a while he catches a drink with this pal of his at Suraj bar, the only reasonably nice bar that Gachibowli has to offer. Now I am sure Suraj is quite shady because Gogs says that he’s never seen any women out there. At anyrate, these guys get really smashed on these trips to Suraj, so I guess its a better bet than a bar thats half way across the city. As for last night, they can’t seem to remember who paid, so I suppose they must have been quite done in. My hunch is that they got into a random chat about Samuel  Taylor Coleridge. Gogs must have fancied himself to be in the opium addicted state that Coleridge was when he wrote Kubla Khan and hence the parallels he drawn with Coleridge’s poetry, philosophy and life.

I have always been amused by Gogs’ rather poetic and archaic usage of the english language even under normal circumstances. He actually says things like “lets beckon him here” . And he’s not even trying to be funny, thats just the way he speaks. Apparently things got a little out of hand when he was under the influence. So here goes…

high on booze or high on life?
tell me how to resolve this strife,
i see no dome, nor game of dice,
sorry Mr. Coleridge, there’s so much vice.
in reality, no need of fantastic lands,
where maidens haunt and of shifting sands;
no Xanadu no fathomless sea,
i see the existing misery,
where life and death play a game of dice,
no vision, but a real slice,
of reality, which always tests our might,
and no friendly albatross meets our sight,
blood and warm blood everywhere,
the world wounds us with a knife,
blood and warm blood everywhere,
not a sign of life.
so many have passed and there’s more to come,
we’ve got to pay a heavy lump sum,
for being born and daring to live,
you’re expected to give and not to recieve,
forget benevolence, forget glee,
there’s no use of demand or of plea,
we are all entangled in a hopeless net,
forget the sunrise just see it set,
drag your lives from morn till night,
resigned, with no zeal for a fight.
come back home and hopelessly pray,
for a vibrant sun to herald the next day.

So when my 80 year old grand father asked me to ‘pour some wine for the ladies’, one evening I was more than just a little keen to prove that I could be trusted with such grand responsibility. Off I went to look for the perfect glasses, have them wiped and pour the wine with practiced ease. Now before you draw any final conclusions about my abilities or the lack of them, let me throw in my disclaimer: it was white wine in a green bottle that looked a lot like the green bottle of scotch that my grand father had left on the table so that the men could help them selves to a second fill.

So you’ve probably guessed what I managed to pull off this time around. The point is that when poured in a glass, white wine looks a lot like scotch to the amateur drinker. And the connoisseurs who sat sipping their scotch were probably a little too high to make that judgment by the time I brought in the wine.

When it comes to wine, nobody likes to admit that the drink tastes awful, lest they criticize a really expensive bottle of wine and be scoffed at for their lack of taste. So usually people simply sip on the drink and swirl it in their mouth before gently gulping it down. The ritual is sometimes followed by “Ah, lovely wine!”. This time was no different. The women gulped down the whisky, poured neat, without so much as a wrinkle on their faces. One lady asked for ice, but her connoisseur husband wouldn’t hear of it “wine must never be had chilled!” he exclaimed, eager to cover up for his wife who was preposterous enough to request for ice in her wine. Five minutes into my drink, I realize the scandal I have caused and know that I would be done for if the wine drinking women found out. They’d probably have gotten high just hearing about it!

Frantic calls are made to a friend who seemed to know a little about wines and whiskeys. After having a good laugh he says “Just watch the fun dude. Nothing major can happen, they’d probably just sleep off real early. But if something does happen, make sure you capture it on camera”.

Fortunately nothing did happen. My grand mother seemed a little disoriented, but people insisted it was the toil of getting the dinner together. Another aunt was more chatty than usual. But that wasn’t a problem either. Senior Citizens parties are always about hoping that some one would fill in the silence!

I guess the world of fine dining has always struck me as being stiff and odd. Full sleeved, collared shirts on a summer evening, a bazillion folks and knives and weird rules about when to ask and when not to ask for ice in your drink. One rarely enjoys the evening since they’re so worried about juggling all those rules together. And its always more boring for the ladies, at least in an Indian set-up, since its not socially acceptable for them to have anything stronger than wine. A drink or two would certainly lighten up things I suppose. And I guess I did just that, apart from of course adding another incident to my long list of scatter brained doings!

Here’s what it said about me. Don’t know what to make of it I guess

ISFP – The Artists

The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of.

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

I was therefore a little surprised when she asked me if I remembered the incident. My instant retort was “of course I do”. But on cooler thought I wonder if I really do. I wonder if it’s the memory itself or if its the memory of the stories narrated in graphic detail to me. Interestingly, while I  think I remember the incident, the exact details are just such a haze, perhaps because I’ve heard the story from several people, each adding his/her own twist to the tale. Lets spice it up by adding details about the frock she wore when she was combing her grand mother’s hair, or lets talk about the fact that she herself was bald at that stage, having got her head tonsured at Tirupathi only a month earlier.

I am always a tad bit amused when people tell me that they have a great memory for incidents of the past, the kind that happened long long ago, when they were still children. I now wonder if those are indeed their memories or memories of other people’s memories.

So good memory is such a dicey thing, its seems to be more of a collection of several fragments of memories, belonging to several individuals.

I like to believe that I have met some interesting people, but rarely do I find them interesting all the time. They are usually fun to be with as long as there is a common space that we share. Take for instance my school friends. We were inseparable until the point that we got into different colleges and headed our own ways. Similarly with my group of AIESEC friends. There was a point when my phone wouldn’t stop ringing, thanks to them. And then suddenly, as if the year that we spent meant nothing, we just moved our own ways.

University has been no different. We were an odd group of seven. We probably landed up together because each of us felt out of place in the groups that were formed on the basis of a shared language. I simply couldn’t see myself hanging out with the other tamils on campus; not because I thought they were weird or anything, but because I just didn’t seem to have anything in common with them. At the end of two years, when it was time to graduate, we were just so emotional about moving apart. The class room arguments, the booze parties, long aimless walks across the campus and chai at gops- everything seemed to be coming to an abrupt end. All of us wished that we had more time.

But a year into our respective careers, most of us still in hyderabad, we seem to have distanced ourselves. A certain something has just snapped. Things have just fizzled out in such a lame manner. It’s a bit like a movie with a brilliant climax but an insanely tame ending.

I was speaking to Gogs about it this evening and he seemed to feel the same.  He was recounting our final trip to the water tank on campus. This was right after our final booze party and on the day that Carolyn was leaving. I couldn’t help being a little amused as I remembered the drama of the moment And then it struck both of us that the bunch would never share the same chemistry, would never go on that insane climb up the water tank, dangerously perched at least a 100ft above the ground, just to catch a glimse of the campus in all its splendor, against the backdrop of the rising sun.

But suddenly I am jolted into realizing that these thoughts sully that moment, that memory. I suppose I have learned my lesson. I’d rather remember the moment with pleasure, cherish it for what it was than foolishly wish that things wouldn’t change.

1. I suffer from verbal diarrhea.
2. I know that getting to the end of this list is child’s play for me.
3. I like to think I am quite entertaining…well at least most of the time.
4. I have a bad spelling problem.
5. I used Microsoft word to check the spelling of diarrhea.
6. When I get around to writing a book, I will have to acknowledge Bill Gates for creating a spell check option for Microsoft word.
7. I suffer from a chronic disgust for body hair.
8. I once played a role in a play titled ‘Vagina Monologues’. I played a role of a woman who was angered by her ex husband’s disgust for vaginal hair.
9. While playing the role, I made an honest attempt to feel the same things that my character did- she loved her vaginal hair and believed that without it her vagina would be like a “house without a lawn, a leaf without a flower.”
10. I failed miserably, but at least I hated her ex husband and felt happy that she left him.
11. I am a commitment freak.
12. I take an age falling for a guy, then have commitment issues and then take another age getting over the guy.
13. So most of the time, I am trying to get over a guy.
14. I currently live with my grand parents.
15. Most people think me a loser for it.
16. But I know I’d see myself as a loser if I walked out on them.
17. I love reading.
18. Amitav Ghosh is my current favorite, that explains the title of my blog.
19. I tend to get extremely involved with anything that’s important to me.
20. But that’s not a good thing, I can rarely focus on more than one thing at a time.
21. This is my third personal blog, I created it because I’ve given the link to my earlier blogs to way too many people I know.
22. Chances are that ten posts later, I’ll be trying to create another blog.
23. I dislike awkward situations, even those that don’t concern me. I often have the desperate urge to walk out of a room where two other people are arguing over something that doesn’t concern me.
24. I have a keen sense of smell and can freak out people by telling them the exact name of the perfume/deo they’re using.
25. But this is also a huge draw back, I can’t stand body odor. Smelly  armpits, smelly feet, smelly breath- they’re all a huge disturbance for me.

One of the major constraints of hostel life is the lack of space. The first year at Univ, I lived in a room that’s about the size of the bathroom I use today. And its not like I had the room to myself. I shared it with Deepthi. The room, meant for a single person came with an almariah, a table and a chair. Deepthi, in her effort to play fair, doubled those numbers, so we wouldn’t fight over the rather limited logistics. In the bargain, the room looked more cluttered than other rooms in the hostel. It often struck us, on a lighter chord, that if we both chose to sit at each end of the room, we could manage to pass things between each other, without needing to move!A lot of times, our room looked like a second class compartment of an Indian railway train. And am not exaggerating. Clothes, books, shoes, buckets and toiletries- all of them lost the comfortable hierarchy they had back home. They were all just bundled together, the most important stuff being easily accessible.

I was not one to complain. I was just glad I didn’t end up with some chick with lice in her hair. That was my only major concern really. My sister tried to get me to focus on other stuff while picking a roomie “ensure she’s not a pain” “ensure she has similar sleep timings so you guys dont fight over the lights” “ensure she doesn’t steal”. But none of that worked. Fortunately, not only did my roomie have a clean head, she also turned out to be a freak like me who’d wake up at 4 in the morning to study. And she wasn’t a pain and she didn’t steal.I cant help but feel proud about myself today. I know I had it all figured out when I was on the look out for a room mate with no lice in her hair.

Others had it a little harder. Gogs for instance. He had an entire floor to himself at home, the spoilt single kid that he is. His mom was devastated when she saw his room. He had to share it with three others. But as is it turns out, her ladla beta fit in quite well and had a blast at that. In fact so did all of us. Straight out of home, hostel brought with it its share of discomfort. But those seemed to trouble us only till we suddenly woke up to the space we actually had.

The space to mess up and learn to deal with it, to over spend and be broke, to spend late nights out and sleep through a class, the space to eat shit and have an upset tummy. The space to make a decision. I suppose that’s what it boils down to. The space to decide what’s best for one self, the space to make a bad decision and know that if it went wrong, you’d be the only one to blame. The space to not have to worry about the strings that get in the way of making a decision.

Right now, I am in a dilema which will probably help you see my point. There’s a late night party in the office. I want to go for it, but know that my grandparents, who I live with, will have a problem with that. I can’t decide what to do. Respect their sentiments, their anxiety and most importantly, their age? Or go ahead for the party and have a blast? Strings that get in the way of making a decision.