It happened one afternoon

The incident I am about to narrate took place earlier this week and could happen only to someone like me. And I say this with just a little pride. But before you misunderstand me to be talking about the vice itself, consider what I am about to say.

I was supposed to appear for an interview at a certain company whose name I shall not divulge simply because it is inconsequential to the narrative. I was to carry with me a copy of my resume for that grand meeting, which was to take place in the afternoon. I did not have a printed copy with me and, as is my style, I intended to get that done before I left. This, I discovered, is always a mistake. But we live and learn.

So, the Karnataka Electricity Board decided to take it in their hands to teach me this small lesson. That day, the papers carried a small horizontal column on page 3, of all the areas where the Board planned to cut the power supply. They call such announcements 'scheduled power cuts'. But what we Bangaloreans have realised with time is that they are actually a lot more unscheduled than the other variety. They always begin on time, but their scheduled conclusion almost inevitably gets prolonged. At times, you sense a certain reluctance on the part of the Board when it's time to switch the power back on. Around the appointed time, there is a flash all round the house, and a whirring as the tubelights struggle with themselves. But then they're out again, only to switch on many hours later.

Imagine my dismay when I got up that morning to discover the power would not be back until 1 pm that afternoon. But I dared to hope. If it did indeed return, I would be able to quickly take a printout, and rush for the interview, which was scheduled for 2.30 pm. I would therefore need to get everything else in order, right down to my underwear. I needed to get a set of black formal pants for that and all such interviews to follow, so I headed to Commercial Street and got what I needed without too much trouble. But then I encountered another distraction, whose details I needn't bore you with. Suffice it for me to say, I got back home by around 12.15 pm. It was then time to get ready.

When I was finally about to get into the bath, it was 5 to 1 pm. So I decided to wait a bit for the hour to strike and the power to return. Precisely on the dot, the hour struck (on our grandfather clock, which is fairly advanced in years, it rang 12 times). Even after the last echoes of the last chime had faded away, the house still remained plunged in darkness. Never mind, I thought, I would head in for a bath anyway, and hope the lights returned by the time I was done. I'm not one to be stingy in the bath department and each such cleansing takes a good half-hour. That would give me enough time.

Around the time I began soaping my last shapely leg, I began to get nervous. The bathroom was still in darkness. I began to pray hard, and opened my eyes each time hoping to see the light. But all that would enter would be the soap.

I was then on the verge of threatening God - not the wisest thing to do. "Lord," I prayed, "my faith is on the verge of total collapse. You are in danger of losing me forever." But I was greeted by silence... and more soap! God was smiling indulgently. "Foolish kid," I think He said. And just when I had begun to stop praying, and soap myself with increased vigour, the lights came back on. Just like that!

We'll skip over the rest of the gory details to the time of my arrival at the interview venue. This was not before I had got my precious printout. In my hurry, however, I had chosen not to look up the exact details of the person I was to meet and her phone number. How hard would it be, I had asked myself very briefly, to go up to the reception and ask for Hemalatha?

When I arrived, however, I realised, to my dismay, how much more challenging the situation actually was. The company I was interviewing for was, no doubt, huge, but this was only a branch office. How was I to know it would take up six whole floors in the building - floors 2 to 7? I walked in anyway and approached the reception.

Could I meet Hemalatha, I asked the man at the desk. Not without giving him a phone extension number, I was told. This I could not produce either, so I decided it would be easier to start at the top floor and work my way down.

This was easier said than done. The guy on floor 7 could not help me either. Could he look up the records at least? The time was already past 2.30 and was ticking away fast. The man accessed the records, only to find there were seven different Hemalathas in the building! And what was the likelihood of that happening, I mused ruefully!

So I sat down on a nearby sofa and filled my face with self-pity, which wasn't very difficult considering I was feeling just that. It was nearing 3.00 and I could pretty soon bid the job farewell. After running a string of hopeless schemes through my mind, I slowly, very slowly, decided to make my one last inevitable stand. I called up my sister and gave her my e-mail password - the only completely private thing, or so I thought, in my life! She was precious, as always, and helped me out by opening my mail and giving me the details I needed. I trusted her to let the secret of the password die with her when the time came - God-willing a thousand years hence! But why couldn't I change the password, you might ask. A matter of sentimentality, I say. I had created this password in my college days, when as a young lad! One day I would have to pass on this sacred knowledge to my wife too, and by then, I would imagine, my sister would have forgotten it. But I think that hardly likely. She is after all my sister!

To end this happy tale, I did manage to write the test and even pass, as I discovered later. My handwriting though, not being too great to start with, took a real beating and relived in its nightmarish scrawl the horrors of that afternoon.

My quotes

Once upon a time, I worked on the editorial page of Deccan Herald, a newspaper in Bangalore. While this is no achievement in itself, it serves as a context for what is to follow.

During this time, I worked on a section wherein you had to select and print a quotation made by someone famous. This was the most fun part of the page and I made sure I selected quotes that had a certain 'quality' about them that would either make you smile, sit up and think, or get provoked. This exercise had a kind of sub-conscious effect on me, as I discovered later.

One day, a good friend of mine - Leslie Vincent I might add, for posterity - found it advisable to counsel me in a most loving, friendly manner on a certain matter. He said, "You know Prem, I learnt things the hard way." In my trademark fashion, I was adopting a certain lightheartedness throughout the conversation, while digesting the salient points. So I replied, "Actually Leslie, the easiest way to learn anything is the hard way," or something to that effect. It suddenly struck me that I had said something quotable. At least I liked it. So from that day on, I began noting down any bit of witticism that crossed through my mind. These quotations, some good, some not equally great, grew into quite a list. So I have decided to put them down here, and update them as time goes on. I will even try putting in a background for each one, wherever possible. So here goes...

The easiest way to learn anything is the hard way.
(The first in the series...)

I don’t like wasting time with people who don’t like to waste it with me.
(When mulling on the problem of fair-weather friends)

Cardiac arrest is the old-age cure for living.
(Written soon after news of former Indian Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's death came in)

I have more fashion within me than without.
(My reply when asked by a friend, jokingly, if I could write a report on a fashion event for her)

Some people can’t make up their minds so they make up their faces instead.
(In conversation with a reporter)

Almost everything is good in moderation, except goodness itself.
(One of the many thoughts I have in the bathroom)

Some people are too good for their own good.
(Followed the previous one)

Passion is the root of all irrationality.
(Just like that...)

Anyone can be generous if he has a generous income.
(When pondering on low salaries in the newspaper world)

The less meaning you might make of a saying (unlike this one), the more profound it invariably becomes.
(Just a wise crack)

Not all men are snobs. Some are only shy.
(Written soon after a girl, who became my friend, told me that she hadn't done so previously because she thought I was a snob and had deliberately avoided her. To which I replied the above)

Baby girls
Baby girls are such a treat
With their wavy curls and dimpled cheeks.
But let them grow
And then you’ll know
How baby girls can really be.
(When dropping off my mom at her school once, I saw a small girl on the street, and the innocent sweetness of her face set off a chain of philosophical thoughts in my mind, which I compiled into a limerick, which didn't really rhyme as it turned out later...)

When it comes to using the honeyed word, there’s no better one than ‘honey’ itself.
(Just nonsensical)

Law of the canteen: It takes two upseated butts to move a bench.
(Speaks for itself)

The trouble with cliches is that most of them are actually true.
(No real memorable background)

These days you don’t kiss and make up; you kiss and make out.
(After a friend of mine shared a piece of her love life with some of us)

Calculated risks are fine provided you don’t calculate them too much.
(Bathroom wisdom again)

I’m prepared to form an enduring friendship with anyone, provided that someone is prepared to endure it with me.
(Same as above)

A husband and wife are like the two parts of a bottom: although there are two, it still is one.
(This is private...)

The one generalisation that men love to make is that women love to generalise.

I’m not afraid of dying; I’m only afraid of the way it might happen.
(When contemplating, with some seriousness, on the promised persecution for Christians in the last days)

The reason why many people don’t dream big is that they don’t sleep enough.
(I sleep a lot... apparently)

The only trouble with desk jobs is there’s a greater likelihood of you developing boils on the bottom.
(I developed one myself...)

A corollary is a scientist’s way of saying, “On the other hand.”
(When on a holiday. The exact context I can't remember)

I like winter simply because it is the opposite of summer, and I would’ve liked monsoon too if only it didn’t rain so much.
(I hate summer, and I thought bringing in the monsoon too would make it more humorous)

The reason, I think, the love between man and dogs is truest is that there are no hormones involved.
(When walking my dog recently, I recalled a movie I had watched that talked about hormones and romance)

The only problem with long hair is you cannot scratch the back of your neck too easily.
(A practical problem I discovered recently when at work)

Having a sympathetic friend around is like visiting the loo. There is great relief when you unload.

(Guess where I discovered this one? In the loo of course...)

Nowadays, 'earning your daily bread' literally means being able to afford a pizza every day after work.

(I was nibbling away at a rather large pizza after work when I got 'inspired')

Last night I had a nightmare! While this might sound redundant, I see no other way of saying it. It was most horrific - that was its most salient feature. However, like most other nightmares, once I had been through its throes and emerged from sleep shaken, I still ended up like one of those earthlings in those movies in which the alien, when sending them back to earth, tell them with a snap of the finger, "You will remember nothing."

There are only two points about it that I remember most vividly. One was that the chief villain (maybe the only villain - I can't remember) was a most cruel woman who awakened more than the usual fear of God in me! In fact, I distinctly even remember saying at one point to myself, in one of those weird inexplicable phases in between consciousness and unconsciousness, but closer to the latter, that I never would have imagined a woman could scare me so much (feminists might find fault with even this, but that, sadly - for their sakes - cannot be helped).

It was truly a strange state of consciousness. I distinctly remember it even now, even though I cannot recall any other point about the nightmare (oh yes, to be absolutely honest, I also remember swimming at one point in a really dark pool outside an even darker house - the whole scene having a total sense of dread and grim foreboding about it - and waiting for impending doom). I was quite conscious at this point, from even an external point of view, that it was a nightmare, and a most terrifying one at that, but I was being dragged by a current too powerful to resist, sweeping me along in its deep dark churning. When I awoke, I know not when, I know I was relieved it was over.

Contrast this to another nightmare I had many nights ago, when I actually took the reins in my hands and turned the fast rolling nightmare away from its obvious grim inevitability, towards a safer - and happier - conclusion. I did this consciously, very much in possession of my faculties, yet I was in a state where I could not awake and break the dream abruptly. I will never understand completely how dreams work, but I will never cease to marvel at their mechanisms either.

My own humble explanation is that dreams and nightmares are a result of a heady combination of conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious experiences, and you have only a very minute control over them, through monitoring to a very small extent your conscious experiences. The fact that people generally cannot remember many of their dreams - though there are exceptions - is testimony to this. I have heard of an author who used to keep a pen and notebook by his bedside, and when he would awake, he would immediately note down what he had just dreamt, and use it as a plot for his next book, or maybe for the one after that .

My point though is, if only it was possible for nightmares, such as the one I had last night, to be directly transplanted from the mind onto the reel - just as it is and with no human editing involved. The nightmare I had last night had all the makings of a classic horror movie-cum-thriller, yet it was more classic than any other, and had a quality that cannot be described in human words or imagination. Such a movie would be a raw, unedited, truly surreal mix of the human with the supernatural - of the rational with the irrational - of things that can be explained with things that cannot.

I think illness is sometimes God's way of telling us all to slow down... a bit. Especially for those of us who are fresh into the world of work. That is, after spending all those years educating ourselves with so many things, most of which we tend to forget soon after, keeping only the useful bits for ourselves.

During our student days, most of us look forward to the time when we can start working. When we finally do begin, we cast sympathising glances every now and then at younger (or sometimes even older) relatives or friends or just that general class of studying folk. We then breathe deep sighs of relief, or sometimes pain, when we recall the trauma especially of examinations and other fruitless endeavours that only end up in making your handwriting worse than what it might have been in pre-school.

But at least these student days had that quality that can be described in the words: "after the darkness comes the dawn". Soon, the exams are a thing of the past and students are rewarded by holidays.

You might have fallen ill during the exams, but you generally tend to suppress any feelings of out-of-sortness, with a titanic resolve and an eye on the inevitable vacation to follow, be it winter, which has the promise of the yuletide spirit and the turn of the year, or the summer, which is absolute paradise on earth.

But the working man has no such reprieve. He works on and on, relentlessly, through sun, moon these days, and rain. He can suffer no break, and prays for such occasions as when a kindhearted relative or friend closes his nose and dives into marriage, or, when he just decides to pack up and head away somewhere - anywhere - with his family. But even at these times, he finds his mind almost inevitably heading to matters of work, or sometimes, if he takes his mobile with him, he even receives business calls from bosses or juniors who suddenly feel like eliciting his advice on all matters large and small.

Soon, he's back at work, and feels like he hasn't been away at all. But now, at least he's not torn between pleasing both colleagues and family. Then, when he's least expecting it, he falls ill. At first, he fights the feeling to stay back home, keeping an anxious eye on his leave situation and thinking he could manage to work, despite his body telling him strongly otherwise. But the illness is not going to leave him so easily. Soon, he makes the daring decision to stay back.

He's tentative at first, but slowly, as time passes, he crosses the danger mark, and begins to realise, "It's not all that tough after all." If it's a viral fever, he's even luckier. I say lucky because fever is generally not fatal and anyway I'm not talking about the fatal variety. The fever just brings a man back to his senses.

I mean, all along he's been working, shunning the blessing of leave just because he has been sucked into the vicious stream of the constant grind that offers little relief. It's like a constant twilight zone. Once a week, the moon shines through the clouds in the form of the weekend, and then it soon disappears behind the clouds again. In the case of a profession like mine - the media - where you're given only one day off from work every week, there is only so much moon and a dashed sight more of clouds.

Anyway, as I was saying, if it is viral fever that the worthy working man is experiencing, he'll find it has this peculiar teasing quality about it, whereby, it allows you to think you're improving by night, but the next morning you feel worse than ever before. So you decide to stay back home again. Gradually, it grows on you and you make the decision with a lot less trepidation than at first.

Soon, you don't want to get back to work. And the rest and relaxation you experience is unparallelled. Confined to bed for the most part, the only drawback is when you are forced to eat something gruelling like porridge or cornflakes by a very loving, well-intending mom, aunt or wife.

There is scarcely anything more addictive than playing minesweeper at 2 am, with heavy metal throbbing lightly in the background for the sake of saner people who choose this hour to sleep. Suddenly, you're all alone in the world, only your light is burning, you can scarcely hear your own breathing. For all practical purposes, you might be asleep yourself.

You don't feel like jumping up and doing a waltz with the dog like you might do when the rest of the world is buzzing around you. You don't even feel like head-banging. Your fingers just keep mechanically clicking, the mouse seems to take on a life of its own, the only sounds you can hear are the soft strains of some of the loudest music existing today, with the knocking of the keys faintly reaching your dulled senses in between tracks. But you scarcely notice it.

The mouse keeps sliding, your eyes preserve their glazed expression, the clicks on the minefield keep opening up new boxes. Then there's a deafening blast of silence as the field dots itself with that evil nefarious sign of the civilian's nightmare - the bomb. But the mouse mechanically continues to slide upwards, as your face registers no surprise, or shock, in fact, nothing at all.

The glaze across your eyes is still there. You don't even seem to blink. Your mind is dead, your hands are dead, the only living creature around is the mouse dragging your hand with it towards your next great tragedy that night.

It clicks softly on the face above, that seems to beckon with an innocent smile that beneath lies the most sadistic of lies. Numbers begin to light up the screen again. Then suddenly it strikes you, and you leave the game halfway to write this blog...

Welcome to my dark world, as I plunge into the depths of my own soul and come out trying to force myself to look happier. It's not that dark actually, it's just a darkly sardonic look at stereotypes that people like to force on others, and to prove in the words of Obelix, who had travelled extensively around the world and therefore knew what he was talking about, that people, generally, are crazy. But once we realise we're part of this world, and, as my brother loves to say, we all have our own brand of eccentricities, we will be forced to lighten up and treat the general universe with an abandoned indulgence. We're all crazy after all, so why not make a party of it! Once you start judging others you're doomed. It becomes an addiction. Judging oneself, however, while a most necessary exercise and highly recommended by mental health therapists - a most noble breed - should be done on one's own time. Live and let live! Don't even try getting sane. Such a concept exists only in an ideal world. I guess what I'm coming down to are two words - practical insanity! Get a life!