GIGO

"Are you from around here?" is a stupid question to ask a taxi driver. Let's agree that I am not very intelligent then. The world was from around here. The stars weren't too far off if we only tried hard enough and believe me we didn't. 

"No, I am not from here." 

"Where are you from?" 

"Banaras. Some village near Banaras." 

"Ah, Banaras!" 

My eyes sparkled, not with the shimmer of Twilight fans but with the glow of a wand post spell making. Here was the famed North-Indian cabwallah. I wont lie, I feel a bit closer to them being a quarter UPite myself. 

"Where exactly in Banaras ?" I asked. 

Let me assure you I have been to Banaras once, for 2 days, and that too years back and don't remember a wee bit of that trip. 

"If you take a left from the main bridge near Banaras you'll get to our village." 

"Oh, and since when have you been here?" I queried. 

"It has been ten years. My wife kid stay with me here." 

"And how has the place been treating you?" I had spent a bit more than a year in Mumbai. 

"Its nice. A bit costly though. We spend 4.5k for rent." 

"Where do you live ?" I asked. 

"In a shanty near Lower Parel" 

"A posh place." I remarked. He grinned and said "I cannot stay at Navi Mumbai, its too far off." 

Yes, bloody hell it is. No pubs too. It is one big retirement society. 

"How big is the business then? Earning the legendary dough that salaried middle class thinks everyone (even beggars supposedly) else earns." 

"Oh its fine" he said "We pay Rs. 100 in the morning to the taxi owner. Get this taxi with its tank full and return the same every night. But I am planning on going to Banaras now. Parents want to live with me and I can't afford that in Mumbai. We live in a nice home in our village, stuff millionaires dream of here. I will buy a cab and ply on the roads there."

"But isn't Mumbai less corrupt, I mean if you have your papers correct, there is no hassle. In UP you will have to pay to every guy who demands and further travel on those broken roads. I said defending the city where Half of India earns and three fourths spend."
"Yes that there is. But the tourist thing is picking up there. If I speak English tourists pay well and there is no meter system there so I earn more from them."

At least he knew what he wanted to do. He had plans. I have notions, threads of idea running lose and an absent ambition which could never weave a dream from them.

The night was cold. At least it was not raining. It had been an ugly week. The foreseeable future was bleak. The bridge was approaching. I would soon cross into the cage of this new city now. To keep the Q & A running I asked "Why don't you work for Meru? They pay better." "Nah," he said "the system was same there. You paid 150 there every morning, whether you drove the car or not. So you ended up paying even when sick."

It's a strange thing, this life. Some Fridays you are running around to the nearest pub and others you are staring alone at your laptop with all your friends busy. Yet the world goes on, everything remains the same in both the cases, it only one's personal condition which is different. Our lives are like linear stories which interact with the lives of others sometimes leading to a consequence. To live in the present and starve in the winter or to plan for the future and lose the present. As always moderation is the answer. But what is life if not living in the extremes? The safety of average is the life of most. A life lived more ordinary. Has there ever been a sunset which has not been observed by anyone? The irrational thoughts of a drunk man.

Tu kisi rail si

I remember it was between 10-11am on a sunny day in Gokarna. I know that because I had returned from a minor trek in the morning to a near-by beach. I opened this hardcover thin book. It was a collection of ghazals/shayari by Dushyant Kumar.

This raises a lot of questions. Who am I being the most obvious one. Why was I in Gokarna? Was I alone? Why had I gone for a 'minor trek', if such a thing exists? Why did I have this book by Dushyant Kumar? Why did I have a ghazal/shayari book by a Hindi poet, instead of a book on poetry? Why Dushyant Kumar? And why this post now?

Hi. I am Karn Kher. The author of this blog, although I do not reserve the right to say so with the sparse effort I have put in updating it. I am a lot of things and lot of groups can demand to have or not have me on their rosters. I wish to be more in many senses. There was a time when I was rather interested in writing, but over time I have realised I am not good at it and it makes Ricardian sense to not indulge in it either. And there we go again digressing from the topic of discussion. This is what happens usually. I am moved enough to write about something, I start writing, I digress and I close the article as a draft never to be touched again (like a virgin!).

Yes, so Gokarna. I wanted to run away from society, people et al. I was getting bored of humans, traffic, noise, expectations the whole humdrum existence (not suicidal, yet!). Oooo much smart-ass!!
I was about to embark on this new phase of my professional journey post MBA and wanted to do something I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to do later in my life. (Consider this as a polite search for a female who would let their male partners just go alone on a leisure trip without the torrents of explanations and tears! Not that females do that. Because hormone and biology does not exist and we are all the same.) So yeah Gokarna.

I was alone because the few people I asked didn't wish to come along and I was OK with that. I privately wanted to go alone. People do not understand that one can just sit and read. All day long. Being alone gave me the freedom to do as I wish. Wake up at early hours to see the sun already risen, take a dip in water and go back to sleep. Wake up in afternoon, go out for a stroll, randomly keep trekking and return 5 hours later. Sit at a empty shack at one end of the beach and read/listen to music for 8 hours straight. It also makes you wish you had people along with you. To talk to. To look after stuff while you went to the bathroom. To split bills. To ensure you reach your room post alcohol binge. To let the world know you are dead in case you slip from a hill and die. To push you down that hill and claim a kill without being pronounced guilty. Oh yes I forgot Dushyant Kumar.

Ok, minor trek because i got bored and had covered the same route the day before.

During my internship stint, my colleagues mentor was interested in poetry. I know that because while discussing my interests I had mentioned reading Rashmirathi to her. (If I remember correctly, I had once embarked on the journey to translate Rashmirathi to English. Oh David/Abhimanyu me!) She had then recited the below two lines by a poet called Dushyant Kumar.

पार होगी सेनाएं , विजई होंगे राम।
पुल्ल बनाने वाले पीछे रह जाएंगे , आने वाले युग में वानर कह लाएंगे ॥

Now I read Hindi literature rarely. This is because: I do not know many great Hindi authors. I find them too interested in society and its ways rather than individual psychology. Too dramatic. My hindi reading speed is low. So this name, Dushyant Kumar, stuck with me and the fact that he is a वीर रस poet. Some one like our dear old Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

I bought this book from the railway station stall at Mumbai Central (BCT). This was done to keep up the family tradition of buying a book at any railway station. At least a magazine. If nothing just so that it can be thrown out of the train's window by my sister. So there's this Hindi book stall at BCT which only had this collection of shayari by Dushyant Kumar. No wait, that's not it. I bought this book in Meerut along with many other books (10 to be precise. What? They were cheap!). I selected this book along with Faiz and Rebecca Goldenstein's 36 Arguments for God to be my oeuvre for the Gokarna trip.Why was that Station thing there? Because you had typed something and it made somehow more sense to not delete incorrect information and go Meh!

This post exists because of this song that has been released lately and has a couplet by Dushyant Kumar in it..

तू किसी रेल सी गुज़रती है,
मैं किसी पुल्ल सा थरथराता हूँ ।

The rest of the lines of this shayari don't match up to the greatness of this one line. It was so modern, so mechanical and yet so human. It struck me at once though appreciation for it took a while. To anyone who has ever traveled in a train not the closed compartments of AC but in the excellent ventilation that makes the stinking sleeper class bearable, this couplet makes obvious sense. It is so raw and uncouth like a man's love. I spent quite a few hours repeating it Gokarna, looking at a world changed. Suddenly Wordsworth and his daffodils were crushed while the curves of the rivulet were passed on the bridge. It was so raw and yet there was no nature in it. It was human, all too human.

Then this song turned up today and all these forgotten parchments of my memory which would have withered and lost in the wind returned.