Cardiology

"I open my eyes, I try to see/ But I'm blinded by the white light/ I can't remember how, I can't remember why/ I am hee..re tonight!"

 So sang Simple Plan half a decade ago. You must be thinking what's with me and punk lyrics. I wonder too. It's a wonderful feeling when you think that an artist has composed something especially for you: when you turn the last page of a novel and go "Hey, that sounded familiar!" or when a stanza from the latest national chart-buster resembles your oh-so-modest life. It's a wonderful feeling. All through high school, I thought I had a secret deal with Green Day to write songs for me. And when the vagaries of love showed its face in subsequent years, Good Charlotte seemed to fit the bill. I found it uncanny - the regularity with which their songs came to mean something more than just a collection of emo lyrics to me.

 But then came college, and life was good and busy. Intellectual even! Punk took a backseat as Floyd, Nirvana and GN'R took centrestage. I was expected to appreciate the 'good' music. Not that I didn't like it. But then, the lyrics always spoke of somebody else. It wasn't too difficult listening to Denver to imagine golden countries and brilliant sunsets. Or to listen to Floyd and dream of smoky Sherlock-Holmesque living rooms and a life bordering on the surreal. Or to sing along with Axl Rose and feel a wonderful high. Or to listen to the songs of a Bengali bard and feel the rustic tension in the air. But somehow, they were never about me.

 At this point, I won't even blame you if you were to stop and impatiently enquire what all the fuss was about and why I even wanted these musicians to sing for "me"! After all, I am nobody. But then, you always have a soft corner for that one book, that one song that you feel is biographical. As such, I would continue beseeching your apologies for the writer's vain narcissistic fancies.

 And then I came home. And things were different. Suddenly, I wasn't in the 'league". All those beautiful memories of lazing down Jacob's Ladder with heavy schoolbags teasing a heartbroken friend how he was "Sorry, I can't be perfect"  seemed but memories. And when I went back to school and stole a quick glance through the window at that bench I once  sat on, and remembered how 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' was such a craze back in Classes 9 and 10, I couldn't but smile at myself and recall all the weird interpretations we made in our attempt to decipher the lyrics of 'American Idiot'. (Those were of course the days when instant Googling of lyrics wasn't yet possible, thanks to our Northeastern status of being disturbed regions where such things as easy Internet access weren't a priority for our Shining India government.) :).

 At once, I came back home, turned my music library upside down and filled my cell phone with all the old favourites. All Black, Everytime, Jesus of Suburbia, Dance Floor Anthem, I Just Wanna Live and similar titles which would make any pseudo-intellectual rush for air, once again adorned my collection. And it was just in time that Good Charlotte released their latest offering in years, "Cardiology".

 It was a happy return to the (g)olden days. As the night lit up with brilliant colours and for once, the stars disappeared entirely from the Shillong sky in a haze of Diwali smoke, I quietly put my earphones on and pressed Play.

 It took a while to sink in. The music was so like 2002. And no matter how much I had changed over the years, there are some things that never do. If the title song was memorable, Harlow's Song  left me utterly heartbroken. And then it came. It almost felt as if the entire vacation had been building up towards this one moment. As if everything that had happened over the fortnight had in one way or another, led to this instant. And with this pagan belief between my ears, Benji whispered those words into my ears that made me look up at the sky and shed a silent tear...

Autumn in Paradise City

There's something intriguing about autumn. The in-between season. Neither here nor there. Neither the warm love of the summer nor the bitter cold thrashings of winter. And especially, autumn in Shillong can be a wonderful treat aesthetically. On one hand, jacaranda flowers bloom along the roadside trees, adding that touch of soothing melancholy to the air. While looking around, there is that sense of apprehension in Nature, the slow giving away of life to the harsh strangles of death and winter. Nature seems to be at war with itself. It is not unnatural or unlikely or even bizarre to go through an average autumn day here where you have harsh sunshine till noon, rain in the afternoon, a gloomy evening suddenly broken in by a brilliant sunset and all this followed by a windy and treacherously cold night. Indeed, the seasons do play out a celebration of their diversity, all in a day's work. What comes out of all this chivalrous and chaotic natural play, is again a wonder in itself. As winter begins to win the battle of the seasons on the battleground of autumn, there is a renaissance in the air. While the ordinary among the beautiful give way and perish, the evergreen symbol of Shillongite beauty, the pines, gear themselves for the rough ride. And indeed, they stand green and bountiful, lending colour to Paradise City (The GN'R number might well have been written for this sleeping beauty of a town!). Then the walk along Ward's Lake becomes all but just a walk, and the greens of Golflink bring more than just the piercing wind to you. Then Shillong becomes a cloudy paradise till Nature wakes from its slumber...

Up, away.

Up, away from the hopping crowd sit I,

Looking down into the merry world. 

A bird of thought in my mind was nigh;

It flew away, its wings unfurled.

Down below, I can see a city

Hop its way from here to there.

Boys, girls wanting to be pretty.

While I sit alone without a care.

A Walk Back...

"Empty spaces fill me up with holes/ Distant faces with no place left to go...."

Unknowingly, this Backstreet number comes up on shuffle on my phone's music player. I'm unaware. I impatiently push the volume tab higher. Alas! 14 is all that stares back at me. Sealdah can be quite a melee at all sorts of odd hours of the day. The blaring horns of the run-down buses above; the colourful, loud shops below - selling anything from a pin to the most outrageous copy of the latest gizmo. People hollering all round - someone running to catch his train, a tired worker returning home, head buried in his chest, a jewellery-laden, not-so-beautiful boudi tripping on a lethargic street dog. Judging by the screams that emanate, it's hard to decide who's the victim and who the perpetrator. A chivalrous dada kicks the bewildered dog away. The boudi walks away without a look. The dada looks disappointed.

All around, a milieu of people engage in a plethora of such incidents. I walk on. I'm unaware. Damn the headset. Wish the volume would blare louder into my drums...

"I tried to go on like I never knew you/ I’m awake but my world is half asleep..."

The orange rays from the streetlight filter through the overhead web of wires - cable wires, electricity wires, telephone wires, wires grey, wire black, wires thick, wires thin, wires that look weathered and old, wires that appear new and shiny and slick. Somewhere in those wires, the light gets trapped.

The traffic signal turns red. Creaking buses with jostling passengers screech to a halt. A hand-pulled rickshaw slowly ambles its way across the street. By the time it has crossed three quarters of the way, the signal has turned green again. The buses roar to life. A young man on the rickshaw looks nervously back towards the buses, pulling his hands in as they speed past him, almost as if reprimanding him "Bloody loser!"

The Surya Sen Street crossing brings with it a handful of dirty kathi roll stalls and even dirtily painted prostitutes...

"Voices tell me I should carry on/ But I am swimming in an ocean all alone..."

I walk on. Dinner is to be thought about. How easy it is, when things are placed in front of you on a platter. For months on end, dinner isn't something to contemplate on. At the stroke of 10, half a dozen fellow hostelers bellow at you to pause the game of FIFA10 and move towards the mess. Then, you amble across the field with badly cut, uneven grass, crossing a couple of rats that look like they would easily gobble down the average cat and make your way to the mess. Yesterday, I was asked why a mess is called a mess. I do not wish to know. You sit down. Reserve a few seats for your friends by keeping keys there. Symbolic. Then you're served the same food that you've eaten for ages. You hear the customary complaints regarding the food. You worry about how the meal rate has climbed by a whopping 20 paise. You try to chatofy everyone around you to prove some silly point. And at the end of it, you go back to your ward, wondering what to do when you wake up hungry at 3 in the morning (that is, if you've slept by then!).

Today, however, is different. The Pujor chhuti have begun. The mess is closed and the famed cooks of Hindu Hostel have taken unreserved journeys home to Orissa. Dinner is suddenly something to contemplate on. An upset stomach traced to Zeeshan means it's a vegetarian night. The corner shop is open. I buy 10 rotis and a bowl of Palak Paneer. But then, what to do about the late-night hunger. I change the order. 15 rotis and two bowls of Palak Paneer. I await my turn.

"...I pray for this heart to be unbroken/ But without you, all I’m going to be is incomplete..."

The pujas always bring imagination and creativity into the air. A para has erected a gate with puppet idols of various gods hanging at different places. :-) The paneer sizzles in the pan. How the festive season can bring people together. Marx had said that religion was the opium of the masses. An oft-misunderstood and oft-quoted line. For, in Marx's times, opium was not a drug of intoxication, but a medicinal drug that brought relief to the people. Two centuries down, I agree with Marx. Religion indeed heals people's sorrows. Alas! I don't believe in religion. My food is ready. I hand over sixty one rupees and get three packets containing my dinner and "after-dinner". I walk on.

I enter College Square, that famous meeting ground of the Romeos and health freaks and intellectuals and everything else of College Street. The puja pandal is almost ready and brilliantly lit up. A couple of interested gentlemen discuss the salient points of the pandal's design vis-a-vis that at Mohammad Ali Park. I glance back at it. I walk on. The university building stares down at me against the glowing sky. There's a giant bear placed at the front entrance of the square. A handful of boisterous children force their way into its arms and pretend to be scared. Kids! I bend down through the small exit and onto College Street. I suddenly realise it's Good Charlotte that's playing now. Strange. When did the last song end? And when did this one start?

"Give me the truth....give me the truth... give me the truth..."

I mime-shout with the lyrics. The cool breeze hits me. I stop. All I can hear is the music. Suddenly, the world seemed to have turned on the mute button. As GC scream their lungs out, I can't hear a thing other. All alone this night, having just dropped a friend at the railway station on his way home, I feel like I'm in a ghost city. A city I can see, but not hear. I suddenly become one of its many unknown ghosts, wandering the streets like a phantom. The lighting adds to the feeling of being alone in a crowd. A tram passes by determinedly. A Toyota overtakes it. With one last look at this phantom city, I turn the corner onto the street on which Hindu Hostel has, for 125 years, stood. It is deserted. Deserted like it's someone's funeral. All brilliantly lit up. And deserted. The end of the street seems like the other end of the river of the dead. I walk on. GC sings on about the truth...

"So here we are, we are alone/ This weight on your mind, I wanna know.... the truth...."

Hooghly Ghat at Shobhabazar

Article in Presidency College Magazine 2010

SIX MONTHS IN PRESI: A CLASH OF CULTURES???

Excerpts from my Mental Diary

Saturday 11 July 2009:

A frantic morning date and lunch with some school friends later, I left my sleepy hometown behind for my initiation in the clichéd “real world”. Finally, after having dreamt of this day almost all my life, it had arrived on me in quite a hurry; I was on my own at last, in what would have been the hero’s voyage for treasures in some of the fairy tales we were introduced to in early life. Like David Copperfield, I was yet to find out whether I would be the hero of my own life, or whether someone else was to occupy that station of honour, or something to that effect. Well, I was to find out over the course of the next three years as an Economics Honours student at Presidency College, Kolkata, one of the premier educational institutions in our country.

Sunday 12 July 2009:

Coming from the serenity and tranquil of Shillong, where vast green expanses were interspersed with oft-painted cottages, velvety hills and style-conscious (mind you, not necessarily fashion-conscious!!!) people, Howrah station was quite a shocker in the early morning gloom. Blank rear-sides of shabby buildings, political propaganda-ridden walls and an unforgiving blanket of heat were the first impressions I had of my adopted home. The idea of a sea of people embarking on their daily chores seemed unfamiliar, yet somehow thrilling as I stepped into the ‘urban jungle’.

The yellow Ambassador taxi was a far cry from their accessorised counterparts in Shillong but they had a sense of purpose the latter lacked and I liked. Within minutes, I was at the hotel, with the prospect of an idle day in the searing heat. All in all, I had mixed feelings towards the city of Kolkata but in my enthusiasm of a new and promising life, I was more than happy to ignore any minor (and major!!!) problems and rather look at the larger picture.

Monday 13 July 2009:

Having attended two Pass classes and bunked the following Honours ones (Huh!!!), I made my way across the street to Hindu Hostel, expecting the usual dry and boring admission process. Instead, the melee I was welcomed with would have done justice to any Filmfare Award winning movie. Like cattle being bid for in a weekly countryside market, the first-years were herded out to the different farms err... wardsJ. And thus, began life in full earnest.

Older or Younger? Which way do you wanna go?

Coming from a culture where everyone at least 5 years younger and older to one preferred to call and be called by each other by their first names alone (with no prefixes and suffixes), calling people just a couple of years senior to me as ‘Dada’ came quite unnaturally to me. Respect demanded according to me, was no respect at all. But I played into the system; rebellion wasn’t foremost on my mind. While my mates had to be coaxed and intimidated into shaving, I found moustaches and beards a disturbance anyway. While everyone else wore formals, I hardly had any of them in my wardrobe, even when I seriously needed them. Now, before you think I’ve lost my mind to bore you with my blabber, let’s get to the point. I had encountered the first of many culture clashes between my old life and my new. With all due respect, while people in the Northeast loved to be young, look young, live young, Kolkata was (in general) obsessed with growing older. On the one hand, I had seen a 60-year old Lou Majaw (a local country musician) walk the streets of Shillong looking like just another music-struck teenager, and on the other hand, I had teenaged Presidencians looking well beyond their prime. Now, I had no intentions of landing home for vacations looking like a 30-year old “Uncle” and so I decided to draw the line. I realised I wasn’t gonna turn into a full-fledged Kolkatan after all.

And even if I wanted to, I would have failed miserably on one vital front. Compared to the loquaciousness of my contemporaries, I was pretty much a quiet kid, more interested in getting the work done than to go publicising about it. And deep down in my heart, I preferred it that way.

Carefree vs. Intellectual

Now, my hero’s voyage in the troubled waters of my adopted home was taking a very ‘ ”We” vs. “Them” ’ turn. But thankfully, Intellectualism came to the rescue like a knight in shining armour. While back home, the world outside was one messy yet promising universe that we didn’t think much about, a few months in Hindu Hostel introduced me to one of the most endearing aspects of Kolkata: The ability of people here to think, and think deep and logical; think intellectual, as it is called. And as I watched my hostel seniors engage in late-night debates on topics ranging from religion to Maoists to communism and back to the latest Bollywood movie, I felt engrossed. If the last six months have changed anything in me, it has surely been the ability to think deeper than I ever have been able to. And for that, I am also thankful to the handful of debates I participated in, in the college. But despite this awakening, the college politics that seemed to capture the imagination of other so-called intellectuals continued to seem to me like a cobweb of personal interests, illogical confrontations and negligible genuine concerns. Maybe, I wasn’t intellectual enough, or at all! Or maybe it was something else I could not fathom.

What mattered was that life that was looking bleak in early days had started to emit shades of hope. And as I started studying and enjoying the Social Sciences like they really should be, with enough references to the real world they are meant to serve, I found time in Kolkata a productive investment.

As for the fun I had so cherished in the hills of Meghalaya, hostel life gave me enough alternatives to be satisfied with. From late-night multi-lingual Antakshari sessions that included songs Hindi, Bengali, English, Assamese, Marwari and Khasi, to wildly celebrated birthdays to midnight walks down the Howrah Bridge to the occasional shopping outings (which ended up being less of shopping and more of dream-shopping), fun wasn’t hard to find, especially if you looked for it! And I looked for it literally all the time!

An Interesting Future Ahead!

Presently back home for an extended winter break, I find the next two-and-a-half years in Presidency and Kolkata as a period of promise and enjoyment. It is pretty much going to be a case of enjoying the best of both worlds! While holding on to my carefree and unique Shillongite roots, a Kolkatan maturity seems like a potent combination. Interesting days lie ahead as my adopted home feels more like a home with every passing day. Of course, there are compromises to make, and frustrations to endure, but there is light at the end of this tunnel of varying cultures, and it doesn’t appear to be that of an oncoming train!!! Signing off from the Scotland of the East, this is Mohammad Waled Aadnan.

Out of Comfort Zone

The last race has been run,

With glory and triumph, the Anthem sung;

The champagne spilt, the accolades deserved,

Humbly accepted the adulation served.

As the curtain falls, the world readies to go,

The celebrations now a receding echo.

The champagnes emptied, the adrenalin down;

Reality dawns with a frightened frown.

Darkness awaits in the unknown future,

Hollow! A vacuum, the heart does nurture.

Through mirrored love and joy have I grown,

But now it’s farewell to my comfort zone.

I cry! I weep! The world disappears.

Oh! What’s to become of this child’s tears?

The empty bottles recall genies of dreams sown -

Empty! For I am here, stranded all alone!

Yet one such genie stands out tall,

And beckons me to spring from my fall:

“It mortifies, but don’t be prone

To weakness; come out of your comfort zone.”

And thus the child grows into a man,

Willing: to voyage for wonders yet in hand,

To start afresh; this time for higher grounds,

For a new romance beyond his bounds.

He moves on to struggle with eager ambition

From the mighty river to the mightier ocean.

He moves out on his own;

Out, out of comfort zone.

- M Waled Aadnan (pH2)