Delhi Diary IV: Guwahati's News of Shame

Delhi Diary IV. 13/07/12

            The conference hall was the sanctum where our documents were being verified before the interview. It was Debashish’s turn. When the officer read aloud, “Gauhati Medical College”, a particularly restive fellow with domineering mannerisms, whose antics were hurtful to all senses, bawled an upsetting truth with lot of malice, “Guwahati! The same place where a girl was molested in the street by a mob!” That made all three of us very angry. Bharat da asserted, “That’s not the only place where this happens. It occurs a lot more frequently elsewhere!”

            The officer was a smart and amiable person who immediately sensed the simmering dissent in our hearts and made some general remarks to promote goodwill.

            However, the damage has been done! Those morons who wantonly perpetrated the crime have sullied the image of our city.

            On returning home, I see that all the national news channels are continuously flashing the incident every hour and I now harbor a feeling of unrest admixed with vexation and sadness that will die down only when I see the evil-doers speedily and harshly punished. I believe that this feeling is shared by everyone who lives or has lived in Guwahati.

Delhi Diary III : The Interview and The Swami's Quote

DELHI DIARY III: THE INTERVIEW AND THE SWAMI'S QUOTE:

Swami Vivekananda: They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

We and that included me, Mohsinur, Gautam and Debashish, read that aloud at 4 P.M. That was written in large letters in the big white-board in the corridor where we all sat, almost perpetually awaiting Gautam’s turn for the interview. Our party arrived there at 10 A.M.!

Debashish: How can anyone be ‘more’ dead? The statement is technically wrong!

Gautam: To be ‘less’ dead is to be in the vegetative state!

Mohsinur: Those alive are going to die some day but those who are dead are dead and so they are ‘more’ dead!

As for me, I simply began to wonder if I were more dead than alive at that point!

Here we were, three surgeons and an orthopaedician, tagged ‘degree-holders’, utterly jobless, trying to squeeze out humour by talking foolishly about a perfectly correct sentence and a deeply meaningful array of words supposedly so intelligently arranged by the master philosopher rocking his own times and standing the test of the times that followed! However, the statement was apparently like a spent unripe lemon rather than a mango!  And no, this simile was not suggested to me by Mohsinur!

The above resulted because we had exhausted every topic of discussion, talking from the time we got there to that wicked hour when our stomachs ached in hunger and our brains were affected by consequent shortage of its fuel, glucose. While three of them went into power-saver mode, the remainder suffered acute dysfunction and went into over-drive! The last one was encased in the sturdy skull of Mr. Singh, that is, Gautam! And thus he mesmerized the interviewer!

E.S.I. Hospital, why the hell call us all at 10 A.M. when you conduct the interview at 3?

I now stumble upon the complete quote of the Swami. “This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”

Yes! Our life is short! We don’t even realize what transient vanities are escaping every moment from our lives! Yes! We are living our lives for others! Yes! We are more dead than alive…

Delhi Diary II: Metro Man

DELHI DIARY II: METRO MAN

I, Mohsin and Gautam are now a pack of three and we are kind of combing the city for senior residency vacancies. We make an awesome team, thanks to the phlegmatic and eagle-eyed Mohsin and the charismatic and the apple of God’s eye Gautam, apart from me, who can also make use of a few similar generous adjectives. I will however skip that part. The point is that the aforementioned awesomeness is diluted within the teeming numbers of the legion of eligible candidates vying for the same prized job. The face value is over sixty thousand bucks! Today the odds were 19:1!

That same awesomeness was again infinitely diluted within the intimidating swarm of busy bees in the Metro train we took to get back. As we headed for the stairs after de-boarding the train, we heard a distinct voice yelling at someone over and above the general cacophony. The words were clear, “Gentleman! You dropped your phone!” and when we all turned our heads in unison to look at the vociferous man, at the same time that we nervously checked for our own cell phones in our pockets, we saw the man, who, even though was partly bald and had grey hair, still qualified under ‘hale and hearty’ and was sprinting forwards till he reached and swung around a diminutive person by his shoulders and thrust into the hands of the latter the cell phone. Then he hurried back to board the next train in the same direction.

I looked with awe at the man! He was like Metro Man of the Megamind movie! He was the hero of the day!

Delhi Diary. 03/07/12

DELHI DIARY I: DELHI METRO

At 11 AM, I and Mohsinur scampered down the flight of stairs to board the Metro train. I, being nimble-footed, outpaced him by several seconds and would have dashed into a group of damsels with a particularly eye-catching beauty in the middle, all of whom were struggling to stand upright being shoved from all sides by people who were getting in and out of that bogey, but fortunately I did not have to do that because I applied the brakes and was thus spared the consequences of such a fateful clash! Rather I chose to board the next compartment and witnessed the wrath of titans! There were two prominent uncouth males with a few side-kicks on either side who were engaging in an epic battle of words. They were howling at the top of their voices, with neither showing any signs of getting subdued by the intimidating decibels of the other, using the choicest, and otherwise widely circulating, slang words and profanities. Scowls like theirs will seldom be seen in the face of any of the top brass of Hollywood villains, because they seemed to have perfected that expression by some regularity, which though cannot be known, can be easily surmised! As I looked at the rest of the crowd, I noticed that it included some who were least bothered, displaying either bored faces or nodding their heads in tune with music playing in their head phones. Another fraction, and mostly a middle-aged and elderly class, all white-headed, tried desperately to infuse reason into the fighting duo, with little success. Their own voices had the strength to otherwise subdue tamed animals and also bore evidence of what terror they were capable of invoking when they used to be younger by decades! The heat generated in the clash rose exponentially and competed to match the sweltering heat that existed outside that air-conditioned train and soon it gave rise to splinters in many others. A few by-standers among the ones whom I had mentally labeled as the petrified class, suddenly barked in unison, to douse that fire only to understand that their voices didn’t match the roaring tenor of the ones in the lead role of that skirmish. They thus retreated unsuccessfully into their own corners!  The two would have been scuffling by now but the compartment was so jam-packed that there was no room for even that! Besides, the other reason was that some restraint was being delivered by the arms of a few bold ones! Thus being denied space for physical conflict, each one of them bellowed to the other the challenge to de-board at places where they thought their powers were sufficient for winning the duel. Their eyes were red with raging murderous intent. Mohsinur and I safely got out of that train in the next station. We were relieved to notice that the two of them did not!

            Similar incidents were witnessed by the two of us two more times during the day at separate places under various setting.

A Tree, Nine Quotes and Nonsense

Rov was at home and felt like writing a great deal but he had nothing to write about and sitting in the verandah of his house he was looking at a tree for a long time. The stout trunk reminded him of G.K. Chesterton’s “The Advantages of Having One Leg” that he read in high school.

He came back to his laptop and typed the keyword “tree” in google search. A few results amused him.

William Blake: A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

Another search led him into “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. He read it and instead of ruminating over it, he recollected that the tree he was looking at had lot of bird shit around it! Perhaps it was not the tree that the wise man would see. Thus being self-labelled a fool, he moved on to the next one.

Abraham Lincoln: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

It was a very hot day. The internet said 39 degrees Celsius. Rov’s tree was a big one and it cast a monstrous shadow. Two pigs were strolling in that shadow.

Saint Basil: A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds.

Rov’s tree was a banyan tree and he saw no fruits. He searched the net and found that the banyan tree does bear fruits but they are very minute and inconspicuous. He attempted to force in a parallel with himself in context and then displeased, swallowed his words.

Joyce Kilner: I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree

There is this great banyan tree,

Posing heavyweight smelling of pee!

The same children run around it with glee,

This gutsy presence of worthy pedigree!

James Douglas: I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree.

Rov’s thoughts were bordering upon insanity. But he continued typing the unintelligible array of words because he thought those were blossoming!

Ronald Reagan: A tree is a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Rov nodded in agreement as he had been looking at only one tree all along. All these years, his tree had been moving farther and farther away while it kept growing. 

Abraham Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Rov’s four hours seem like a never ending imposition. It has been close to a decade now.

Sylvester Stallone: If bad decorating was a hanging offence, there would be bodies hanging from every tree.

This one was a tough nut to crack. He was close to the breaking point. Hanging by the tree was the last thing in his mind.

Jim Woodring: A tree is an incomprehensible mystery

That summed it all.