Daylight

Wake up, stormy morning, lightbulb flashing on, flashing off

Flicker, flicker, candlelit mosaic, icy stream, horror dream

Of memory and flashing light, it's light again, night again

Drifting in and out again, round and round, out, about, wait in vain

Shuffle feet and freezing heat and flesh and bone and eye and eye

At your feet, dead and beat, so to live, yet not to die

Broken down, hollow crown, mine again, mine again

Burning down, blinking clown, carven frown

Scratch, erase, and overwrite, way too bright, way too bright

But I don't mind, no, not for you, I don't mind

Not the day, not even the light, no I don't mind

I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind

Livin' In The City

My daddy once he said to me
"Son don't you ever be sad
I know life will be hard sometimes
But it ain't really that bad"
I thought that was pretty cool and I
Even believed him right then
I never knew what a fool I'd be
In the world of wiser men
Until the day I saw those creases
Upon his face like a scar
"It's only just age," he says
But I catch the reek of a war

Well I knew I had to leave then
I never went with the grain
And I sold my soul for a ticket
And took a southbound train
Headed out on the highway
In some last ditch strategy
With two bottles of whiskey
And a guitar on my back
Never knew where I was going
I'd go any way but back
I ended up here somehow
Even I couldn't explain that now

I met a man who says he's from Venus
He says he's been living here alone
He said he came down here with the cleaners
But never took that last train home
I said "Man don't you Phone Home
Aren't you scared to be alone"
He just smiled and he said "No
I got no place else to go"
He said he kinda liked it here
He said he liked this world of free men
Where freedom was all they had to fear
Besides their wives and children

And I knew this woman who's hoping
For the Second Coming this week
She'd like to inherit the earth, she said
That's why she's living so meek
"We're all part of something greater"
She asked me if that was true
I said "I don't know but
I could be part of you"
She thought about it a moment and then
She was off like the wind
I was hoping for something better but
Well at least she got the hint

So I went by the courthouse
To see what flags they had on display
They offered me a job and said
"Hey man you should have come by yesterday"
They gave me a fountain pen
With a golden nib and some ink
But when I tried saying something
I found they didn't care what I think
But they were all so good to me
It's nice to sometimes think that way
And they gave me a chance to speak
Even though they took my words away

So now I write for a living
Things even I don't understand
Making somebody believe in
The splendid magic of his hand
And I live in the city
With the all dirt and the heat
Sometimes I miss the clear water
And the pines under my feet
But I know this is home for a while
At least till Morocco
Selling gin to some lowlifes
Like in that movie so many years ago

Filler: Lyrics

It’s been a long time since I last wrote something thinking “lyrics”. The last one was probably this. Read that one if you haven’t, I quite like it. Anyhow, listening to Neil Young’s Weld very loud just the other day I came up with this. More specifically, it was that insane feedback-laden guitar solo in ‘Fuckin’ Up’ that made me write this. It’s not a sublime piece of poetry or anything, it just makes a good companion to a loud dirty guitar. Besides, with what limited personal time I get on the internet these days I’m just going to have to post these fillers till I move out on my own. God, I can’t wait for that.

Anyhow, in impeccable rock n’ roll excessiveness, this song is called…. 'Fuck You'

Well I got Neil Young and I got John Donne
I had Ziggy too, now he’s gone, gone, gone
I got Nietzsche and I got TV
I got a few rupees’ worth of cheap candy
I got a hundred dreams I’m somewhere in between
I got a thousand lines to never say what I mean
And I don’t need you
No I don’t need you

I got whiskey, ice and rum and coke
And beer and wine, they’re making me broke
I got electric guitar and a million watts to boot
A cold shotgun and a list of who to shoot
I got blistered feet from walking in the heat
I got a hundred phone numbers but there’s nobody to meet
And I don’t need you
No I don’t need you

Well I got Springsteen, yes I’m born to run
I got tambourine, I got Highway 61
I got the Bible and the Gita and the Buddha’s here too
They tell me I’m a sinner but look what they say about you
I got a map to hell and a soul to sell
No direction home and no story to tell
But I don’t need you
No I don’t need you.

Oh, and inseparable from the lyrics is the lead guitar shrieking and whining and wailing all over the place.

The World's Newest Democracy

A quick update: Bhutan became the world's youngest democracy by holding its first general election yesterday. Jigme Y Thinley will be the first Prime Minister, his party Druk Phuensum Tshogpa having won 44 out of 47 seats in the Parliament. He will be sworn in in a couple of days.

A thousand things can be said about all of this, but the media's said and sung it all. Besides, this isn't a political blog. If you're curious, run a search. You'll find a plethora of articles on the subject. Not in the mood for it. Still, just had to let everybody know.

He was the King

I usually don't read that much, or listen to music on my long bus journeys. I like that feeling of blankness I get as I watch the world whizz by, while I'm hurtled down through time and space in a large blue-and-white mass of metal. The random images, memories, thoughts, and lines of unwritten poetry that pop to mind ealry mornings ususally make for a good mental breakfast before my actual idli one.

I do, however, still carry my iPod Shuffle on me because sooner or later I'm bound to walk into a bus armed with FM radio, ready to make an assault on my senses. Like I did this morning.

Grateful for the blessings of modern life for once, I turned on my iPod. Yesterday, while updating the playlists, I had loaded a whole bunch of Elvis songs that I hadn't heard in seven or eight years. And, listening to them this morning, I couldn't believe how incredible they still sounded!

I knew most of the songs almost by rote, still they sounded so fresh, so new, and just so damned great!

A few songs in and I was smiling to myself.

'Hard Headed Woman' and I broke into the largest silly grin.

'Burning Love' and I almost got out of my seat and did a fucking dance!

I hadn't enjoyed listening to music so much in months, maybe years (Dark Side Of The Moon while drunk excepted). Needles to say, I had just the greatest morning at work. Couldn't stop smiling.

So everyone out there busy listening to Radiohead or King Crimson or My Bloody Valentine, or for that matter even Abbey Road or Revolver, chuck all that complexity for a day and pull out your old Elvis records. You'll thank me.

Andhra Style Pizzas and Crap Coffee

For Aditi, Sajay, Saumya and any other ex-Bangalorean friends reading this, here's something cool you've missed- Java City on Church Street. This is my new favourite weekend haunt, and you'll find me there every Saturday.


One of the most interesting things here is the menu itself- a worn and battered affair kept together by generous application of adhesive tape, and prices kept updated conveniently with the help of little white sticker tags. Physical features aside, it also carries some of the most outrageous items I've ever seen on a menu in my entire life. Take a look for yourself:



Enlarge that to read the notes. "Biotech vision"? What the fuck does that have to do with a pizza? Dhaba Style pizza? I mean, really, if you thought paneer masala and chicken tikka pizzas at Pizza Hut were bad, come looky here!

Okaay, so it's a coffee shop. And it's called Java City. Forget the food. You can at least get a nice cup of coffee to kick back with, right?

Wrong. The cappuccino tastes bad, the frappe is like cold sugar water, the espresso is diluted so there's no punch left, and if you ask for Darjeeling tea you get a cuppa hot water with a Twinings tea bag dangling from the side. Yes, the same Twinings tea IRCTC serves on the train, only here you buy it for 28 rupees instead of 5.

So why, you ask, do I go there every weekend? The answer is quite simply, this:




This cool band plays here Saturday and Sunday evenings. Rooted in jazz, on Saturdays they play popular songs mostly from the 60s and 70s, the set usually comprises their jazzy takes on songs by The Beatles, Eric Clapton, JJ Cale, and the lot. And Sundays, they have a saxophonist giving them company and the music turns completely jazz. While none of them are exceptionally good singers, they are darned good at their instruments, especially the guy on drums, who also has the best voice among the lost. Sometimes, as yesterday, an Australian guy joins them on lead guitar and vocal, and the music turns more rock n' roll, playing CCR and the like.


To put things into perspective for readers not from India, this kind of thing is not common here. Fuck common, it's unheard of, unless you're talking five-star hotels. This place is cheaper than all the other glitzy coffee shops, where you're invariably assaulted with loud clubhouse music from powerful speakers. This is a country where the term 'live band' is used to mean dinghy bars where hired girls dance suggestively to Bollywood music, and a jazz market is virtually non-existent. In the midst of all that, it's amazing to find a place like this, where the few people who share tastes can come together and spend relaxed afternoons with the music they like, shit coffee or not.

So the next time any of you are here, you know where we're headed. I pay for coffee, you pay for dinner.

A Softer World

Most days I just live with it, but sometimes it feels like the whole world around me is gradually getting louder and louder by the minute. All the small noises I never paid attention to otherwise ring like gongs in my head. And the louder ones just keep getting louder. Cars, buses, trucks, horns, ringtones, blaring music, yappy people, everything. It's like someone found the volume knob and yanked it up just to piss the hell out of people.

On these days I can't help thinking of the village my father grew up in before he left for the cities and higher studies. Having spent most of my life away from home, and away from Bhutan as such, I rarely had occasion to visit. I finally got to only last year, about eighteen years after my last visit. And this is what I found there.

In a wide, fertile valley in the south of the country, on the hillside opposite the Tsirang district capital Damphu, is Salami (okay, a giggle is permitted to all you westerners. Just one). Most of the population there comprises Nepali-speaking folk like myself. Once among the most thriving districts of Bhutan, progress in Tsirang declined sharply after political turmoil in the area in the early nineties, and then was brought to a grinding halt. Damphu, by obligation, developed into a decent little town with all amenities, basic and non-basic. But not Salami.

As of today, there isn't an asphalt road leading to it and the nearby villages. A large track has been hewn onto the hillside, that is almost bound to damage your car. When you finally do get there, and it's dark, a realisation suddenly hits you- "there's no electricity." We park on the main road, and the walk to our ancestral home is over a kilometre down a small steep trail, and it involves walking on logs placed across a little stream, hearing a deer bark somewhere close by in the shadows, and general fumbling, tripping and slipping. "We should have brought torches."

When we reach, we're welcomed heartily and dinner is around a fire built in the center of the kitchen with an earthen floor, earthen walls and an earthen stove. The kitchen is a separate structural entity from the sleeping and living rooms, as are the toilets. We wash with cold spring water, that feels, smells and tastes fresh. We are provided warm blankets, and the household turns out their lanterns for the night. The day is over. It's a little past 8 pm.

I am mildly insomniac. I have trouble sleeping before 2 am, and sometimes that stretches to 5. And I definitely can't sleep at 8. So I walk out into the open night. And make a memory I cannot shake.

Imagine this: it's dark. Your house is the only one within your range of sight. There is only forest and farm all around you. Two metres in front of you the hill rises, a black mass the colour of the night sky, save for the stars. Oh, the stars! Imagine millons of brilliant diamonds hanging in figures and shapes from an all-encompassing canopy of black velvet. Now imagine that that isn't even a shade as beautiful as what you see before your eyes. Here is a warrior. There is a plow. Yonder is a swan. You've never seen a night sky like it before. The stars shine brighter than you've ever seen them, and the sky is blacker than you've ever seen it. Imagine that the stars are the only source of light around you. A few metres behind you the hill disappears into an unfathomable drop, and darkness hides the secrets below- a Neverland, a Wonderland?

It's cold. You dig your hands deep into your jacket pockets as your breath dances slowly in front of you, only to disappear into the night inches from your eyes. A gentle breeze blows and brings the blood to your cheeks, you feel cleansed as it blows through your guilty heart and your city soul.

It's quiet. There is not one artificial, manmade sound, be it ever so soft. No electric buzz, no mechanical whirr. No music. Nothing, but the deer in the forest, the dog in the distance, the night birds overhead, and the crickets. Crickets singing from afar in unison, a song of the woods, a song of the wild. You can hear the stream rushing down close by, and you can faintly hear the sonorous rumble of the great river far away. Very far away. Other than that, nothing else. Nothing.

Can you imagine it? Can you really, really feel it?

This is no fantasy.. I have seen, heard, and felt each moment described above. I have felt the strange twin emotions of exhilaration and sadness that only true, pure beauty can evoke. I have stood in it. And I have levelled eyes with it.

Whatever has become of our world?

Groan...

Is there anything unrelated to sex that can be more hurtful to a man's ego than looking for a job? It's horrible. The desperation that borders on depression, the restlessness, the having twenty-six rupees in my bank account, the having to share a place with people you can't have a stimulating conversation that lasts over a minute with. But thanks to a good friend who took me in for two weeks and lightened up things for a bit.

As you might already have guessed, I'm in no mood to write anything or post a pretty picture but I spotted this meme at Dive's (the best place to flick stuff off) and it wasn't too brain-intensive so here it is:

1) Are you taller than your mother?
My mother's five feet tall.

2) What colour is your car?
I don't own a car.

3) What is the closest thing to you that is red?
A book called "Operating Systems Concepts"

4) What is your ringtone?
Soft beeps. Oh, my phone came with inbuilt Himesh Reshammiya ringtones, for anyone who might understand the immensity of that atrocity.

5) Are you sick?
Yeah, of my life as it is.

6) What colour is your favourite pillow?
Uh, never had a favourite pillow. "Where I lay my head is home," so.

7) Favourite video game?
GTA (yeah Dive, I know!), Max Payne, Splinter Cell, Need For Speed. Yeah I love games.

8) Nap today?
Three straight hours. Was tired as hell, and in the aforementioned mental condition

9) Gold or silver?
Silver anyday.

10) Is there an animal that creeps you out?
Spiders. The ones with hairy legs. The larger, the worse. Something that looks like that shouldn't be allowed to exist!

11) The last person you rode an elevator with?
Don't remember. Strangers, in any case, me being the Lone Ranger more often than not.

12) Did you go ice skating as a kid?
Nah, ice skating was something we saw on TV and marvelled at.

14) Ever have stitches?
Nope. The idea kinda spooks me out, too.

15) Favourite non alcoholic drink?
Darjeeling tea (Happy Valley Tea Estate, in particular) or strong coffee.

16) How long ago did you kiss someone?
Uh, what, six, seven months maybe.

17) What is something that you want to do before you die?
Way too many things. Travel the world tops it, I guess.

18) Ever caught something on fire?
My stomach, after all the spicy food I have to eat here.

19) Ever seen a ghost?
Nah, the scariest thing I usually see is my face just out of bed.

20) Ever seen the northern lights?
I live at 12° 58' 60 N. Take a guess. The northernest lights I've ever seen are the street lamps in New Delhi.

21) Do you know how to use chopsticks?
Yeah. Used to eat even sambhar rice with chopsticks just to get that hang of it.

22) Something good that happened today?
Nothing. Abso-freaking-lutely nothing.

23) Are you worried about something you can't control?
Heheh yeah!!!

24) Do you take daily meds?
Nope.

25) Ever been in a fight?
A few in school, but recently I was involved in (read: in the center of) a mob-related situation where I was surrounded by these huge guys with sharp darts they damned near blinded me with. Couldn't open my mouth wide for weeks, although I did bust my knuckles upon them too. Thank God for the pacifying forces that arrived shortly.

26) Wearing nail polish?
Hell no!

27) Favourite colour?
Black.

28) Innie or outie?
Innie anyday.

29) Ever used a Ouija board?
Yeah back in school. We used to make them out of chart paper and someone would pretend he's having a major out-of-body experience and everybody would get all excited.

30) Sweet or sour?
Dunno, sweet I guess.

31) Sun or Moon?
Moon. Even astrologically I'm supposed to be a moonchild (no I'm not related to Aleister Crowley).

32) What shoes did you wear today?
Nike sneakers.

33) Favourite eye color of the opposite sex?
Black. Really piercing dark black. Or hazel's nice too.

34) Most important quality in a relationship.
Hard to say. The ability to have an intelligent conversation, maybe.

35) Favourite zombie movie?
Will have to pick something local- something from the Zee Horror show or anything else by the Ramsay brothers. They're awesome.

36) Time of day that you were born?
Five minutes past eleven at night.

37) Do you know your blood type?
Yeah, A positive.

38) What would you spend 500 dollars on right now?
Paying my rent for the next few weeks.

39) Name something annoying in public transit?
Smelly armpits. If the bus is badly crowded, you're very likely to end up with your face buried in one. Come damned near throwing up each time.

40) Did you grow up in a city or in the country?
I grew up in boarding school in Darjeeling, and vacations were spent in Bhutan, so I'm a small-town guy. Have only been living in the city five years now.

41) Consider going on a reality show for a large amount of money?
Right now, I'd sell my soul for money.

42. Flown in your dreams?
No, but have plummeted down cliffs quite often.

43. Hugs or kisses?
Kisses. Nice warm kisses.

44) Ten dollars to spend in a dollar store. What on?
Sauces and spreads, mostly.

45) Slurpee flavour?
Had to look up what a slurpee was, turns out it's what we call a 'gola' here. I tasted my first one last year, kind of liked the raspberry one.

And that's it! And what do you know, I actually feel a little better. Entertained. Anybody else wanna do it?