Cash on Delivery

It took six years for my grandparents to get a landline phone. Four years for my grand dad to get a TV. 

My mother tells me there used to be one car- a Fiat- in our neighborhood. And two TVs. There used to be this fascination with the television; the 2 houses with TVs got frequent visitors. After the four years of wait, when the TV finally arrived in our home- black and white mind you- my mom and her sisters used to sit around watching programming as insipid and vapid as Krishi Darshan- which was and still is basically a ‘How To’ TV show for farmers. For half an hour, just switch on Door Darshan for a change; it really hasn’t changed much.

On an average day, I worry about maybe sixteen things in total- on average at least two at one time. The Stock Market. My investments. Home Loan EMIs. My next stint. My current stint. My career. Where my life is going. My current novel. My future novel(s). Delhi traffic. How my illnesses seem to be getting more and more vicious.

I order a watch online and it reaches me in two days flat. Cash on delivery.

I wish I did not have a smartphone. No laptop. No watch. 

I wish I could watch Krishi Darshan on TV.

I wish the damn watch took six years to reach me.

I wish I had a landline phone and a black & white TV and a scooter and a house in a small forgotten sleepy neighborhood and I wish I was twenty years ago.

When anybody can write, anybody will write

The unfortunate truth is that today anybody can get published. That, of course, includes me.

I am now in the midst of hundreds (maybe thousands) of authors- most of whom do not even know the very basics of the English language. English is subverted, perverted, converted by people who, in my opinion, should- be made to stand in one straight line against a brick wall and shot to death- not allowed to write books and call themselves authors. To bend the rules, you have to learn them first, kids!

The sad part of all this is that people today ask me "So, yours is a 100 rupee book too?" Those ruddy 100 rupee books with "Love" in their titles and a picture of a couple kissing/ hugging/ fornicating on their covers with what passes as English today underneath. Smiling pictures of "authors" on the inside jacket, orgasming at the thought of their semi-autobiographical piece of semi-pornographic trash set at large for the whole world to tolerate.

 I am not one of those people who go through life reading books or listening to music just so that they can show off in front of others. I intrinsically understand beauty. I have not read Neruda or Dostoevsky; but I have read more books in my 25 years than most people will read in their lifetimes. But still, I do not speak from a position of authority; only from a position of mind numbing frustration.

You want to write to book?

Go home, kid. Learn some grammar first.

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The Essence of Stupid

This is mostly for me. 

2010 has been the most dramatic year of my life. I found a job, found new friends, then enemies, had my location changed at the last minute to Bombay (I am not calling it Mumbai), found fun, joy, laughter- then anger, bitterness & re-found my sarcasm- something the novel had drained me of, for a few weeks.

I saw new sights, heard new sounds, sweated in Bombay’s (so called) “winter”, ate new foods, fell ill- sometimes seriously, learnt the true meaning of stress, politics; got smarter, sharper, came to understand things I hitherto had never deemed worth understanding; found my heart with hope and then had it bitterly crushed. 

I am amazed at how far I have come, how much I have changed. I still find it difficult to tolerate stupidity, but I am learning to laugh it off. I have realized that the only true friends you will ever have is your own family and then maybe one or two more if you’re lucky; the rest of the world is just mostly a Facebook Friend. I can cook Maggi, omelettes and other semi processed food- progress for someone who was mortally afraid of the stove. I feel wiser, quieter, calmer- yet my quips are sharper, my wit is more hard hitting; I am burning at both ends of the candle.

I am also more & more convinced of the futility of the human race. I meet and talk to several adults a day and I am constantly bored by their unidimensional thinking, put off by their malice coated in a thin layer of concern. I think good writers tend to be good readers of people and sadly this gift puts me at a loss. Every adult I meet is so… predictable, yes predictable is the word. As kids, I remember, we used to ask each other- what do you want to be when you grow up. I remember I once said “Alligator”. One of my male friends who is now a grown man had said “A pair of socks”; another “Traffic Signal”- all of them very seriously and with valid viable kiddy logic. I wish I was any of those things today than an adult human.

Why Bastard Exists

I am in love with Hugh Laurie (no sexual feelings). There might have been no book without him at all. For though Hari is the focal character who drives the book and represents my own anger, disenchantment and confusion during my MBA days, Bastard is the one character who made me enjoy writing the book. 

(For a background to this conversation, please read this http://www.vaibhavanand.com/2010/09/about-bastard.html)

Somehow writing the book was always a chore. Meenakshi was the worst- the most confusing character- whose tricks & dances frustrated me no end. I remember saying this to MG once- “Saalee ko maar hee dete hain.” She was bitching with the plot like hell.

Bastard was the one character I could completely relate to. While writing him, I always had that arrogant, self satisfied face of Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House in my head. Every scene, every dialogue, every sentence with Bastard in it scores (to me)- his bike entry, his vodka flask, his arrogant self satisfied awareness of the fact that he is two notches ahead of everyone in intelligence, his punch(es), his legend(s)… Hari is an everyman- a confused MBA that everyone today tends to be. Bastard transcends.

I had read Sherlock Holmes in entirety much before I saw House (Sherlock Holmes inspired the character of Dr. House). But Laurie was the reason Bastard came to exist and ultimately livened up the book. That cocky smile; those wicked twisted means… God I am so in love!

And if you ever thought Laurie was just a one dimensional actor, sample this- he has a wicked sense of humor in real life, he is a novelist and also a pianist. Below is a video of one of his hilarious performances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAzBa3QSpUY

Poet's Mind

In my mornings
as the sun breaks through my faint,
a tiny hand colors my world
with crayons and paint.

I don’t want to see
I want to be blind
I see the unseen
I have a poet’s mind.

Why is India a Great Country? (Death to Patriotism?)

I wrote this piece 5 years ago. Surprised though I am by my maturity at that time (I am sure I would not be able to muster even a minute percentage of the same arguments today) I am also shocked by the timelessness of this piece. We are still where we were 5 years ago...

I do not believe in history. My having been born in an upper caste family, with sufficient resources, does not make me great. True, India has a magnificent history: the Indus civilization, the Mughals, the 1857 uprising, the Gandhian revolution, et al. But, likewise, that does not make for greatness.

India is a barren naked land without its cultures, its colors, its religions. However, as a person cannot be deemed great for the clothes he wears; his shoes or hairstyle or the fragrance he chooses to spray over himself, I doubt if greatness should lie in the clothes of cultures, color or monuments India wears. Not only is such a statement highly propagandist (like BJP’s “India Shining” campaign), it deems other nations with perhaps equally diverse cultures, peoples and religions un-great. For greatness is a crown for the elite few. In the same vein, I thus ask, “Why is the US not a great country? Or the UK? Or Pakistan?” Being a citizen of India should not and does not make one blind to the world. After all, this is the era of globalization.

And for all its culture, its history, its religion, its minarets, its color, India like any other country is made of people. Human beings. Little pink creatures, with dark hearts. This is again not a license to greatness, because every country I know of, is made up of human beings.

But I do not intend to deny India greatness…Just to clarify the weights and measures of  greatness. The Himalayas, the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, the Qutab Minar with all their quiet beauty and serenity are not the weights and measures of greatness; but of tourism, perhaps. 

The man on the street, the rickshaw puller, the tobacco- paan seller, will easily enter into an animated debate on the issue of India’s greatness. To them, all the corruption, the famines (and the Rs. 3 cheques), the electricity shortages, the broken roads, the stinking sewers, peddled to them by their hindi dailies, are signs of a nation gone to the dogs, faltering and staggering and falling.

But the same paan-wallah, the rickshaw puller, will glue themselves to any available radio set if India is playing hockey/ cricket; will talk in higher, happier tones of Sunita Williams, as if she were their blood sister; and celebrate the Indo-US nuclear deal (without being sure of its meaning). Thus is India great, for its people never give up hope. For all our rot and rust and famine and flood, we never stop believing in the Indian dream. Thus, we call her "Mother India" for its peoples are always expecting.

Heartly Welcome!

Got this in my inbox a few days ago... Too good to be true.

On a serious note, do Contact Please for all Countries, Parties & Governments!

Why they got drunk

If there is one sequence in the book that anyone has to name as their favorite or something that readers will remember it for, it’s without a doubt the drunken night sequence (my favorite is Bastard’s bike entry scene though). It is a set piece that’s so obviously filmy yet incredibly believable that everyone who’s ever had a hangover will believe it and laugh at it with consummate ease.

The sequence is a tribute to the awesomeness of the movie Hangover- a bunch of madcap funny nonsense, which is actually a clear, well thought out and defined sequence of comic events (though no event in the book is actually copied from the movie). When discussing the sequence, we were very clear that this was going to be the book what the Mahabharata scene is to Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. And the scene had more thought put into it than some parts of the book. Consider this conversation for example-

Vaibhav: Yaar bahut serious ho gaya. Abhi tak love scene nai aaya.

MG: (in agreement) Haan haan love/ sex scene to aana hee chahiye. Uss ******* ke novel to isiliye bikte hain.

Vaibhav: Buss iss hafte sex scene hai.

And so it was. The love scene/ interaction between Hari and Meenakshi actually had no thought put into it; nor was it planned to be there in the beginning. It was just meant to be a draw for some of our more perverted readers. However, though its origins might be impromptu it is one of my favorite sequences in the book and in my biased opinion, the most well written. I wrote it in a single shot and knew that it would need zero changes even as I was writing it. And it didn’t.

The drunk night scene however was much more arduous to write. It began with us going forth about what would be the stupidest and most ridiculous possible things to do when drunk. I remember the initial few ideas:

V: Kutte ko tie pehnaate hain.

MG: Chor ko pakadvate hain.

V: Rickshaw!

MG: (who has had a few experiences with policemen) Tango to Charlie!! Alpha to Delta!!

So we had four to five set events and the drunk night story was to travel from the origin flowing through these plot points. I wrote it the very first time as Matar remembering the night and remembering it all because he had apparently been drinking since he was ten & had thus acquired a tolerance for alcohol. This was where I went wrong- introducing logic into madness. MG hated the finished first draft. For one, it had Matar going somewhat on & on about how Hari moaned about Meenakshi when he was drunk.

MG was entirely convinced that that the entire chapter would have to be rewritten. But I believed in the strength of the material- of the little set pieces that made up the big set piece. And with about six changes that removed all semblance of logic from what is best an illogical night the chapter was set.

One of my aunts told me that when she was reading the book, it was like I was talking to her. Cynical, bitter, poking/ insulting, self deprecating and dark humored. But the drunk night scene is not much me. It is more Wodehouse. And the best part is- that unlike the novel itself, it has a perfect ending- a tail ender hitting the very last ball for a huge six.