Into the great wide open...


"Let me take you far away,
You'd like a holiday.
Exchange your cold days for the sun,
Good times and fun..."

Over the hills and far away...


"And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand..."

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.
Black mole-like thing on my right wrist. It's an embedded pencil lead. Don't ask how...

2. What is on the walls in your room?
Nothing. Used to be a coupla posters of the Murcielago and the Brera, and a Ninja vs Busa race.

3. Whats your phone like?
Cool symmetrical, rounded yet angular, chrome, matte, satin finished, black, powerful, useful, Nokia.

4. What music do you listen to?
Anything. English, Hindi, Swahili, French, house, techno, rock, metal, hip-hop...

5. What is your current desktop picture?
Dodge Viper, and my bike.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
To be happy

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Stupid and illogical question. If you mean do I support it, yes, I do. People should be allowed to do what they want.

8. What time were you born?
3.53 am.

9. Are your parents still together?
Yes.

10. What are you listening to?
The sound of the fan. Fatboy Slim - Don't Let The Man Get You Down. Tomorrow, Aerosmith.

11. Do you get scared of the dark?
No.

12. The last person to make you cry?
Me?

13. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?
I'm bad with names. Most of them smell good, though.

14. What kind of hair/eye colour do you like on the opposite sex?
Anything. I'm not one for stereotypes or fetishes.

15. Do you like pain killers?
Never tried them.

16. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
I don't know. Haven't tried it in years. Maybe. Depends. I'm full of ambiguities.

17. Favorite pizza topping?
Chicken of all sorts. Ham. Bacon. Pork. Pepperoni. Extra cheese.

18. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
That bloody pizza question did it. Extra cheese and pepperoni for me. Chocolate shake, mousse, HCF magnum too. With some biriyani and Pepsi. How about a Subway sandwich?

19. Who was the last person you made mad?
Me?

20. Is anyone in love with you?
I hope so. I need it.

"And the sign said, long haired freaky people need not apply..."

The problem is blame. Who do I blame? I blame myself. I blame my parents. I blame my friends. I blame my lack of friends. I blame myself.

I hate the rain. I love the rain. I don't know anything. My thoughts are random and scattered, and I am losing my grip on reality. I would call it dropping the ball, but I suspect I've never held it in the first place.

When it rains, it pours. Like it has over the last few days. Nothing seems to be going right. I wish things would go right and I didn't have to fight to get my way all the time. I wish people cared. I wish I had someone to talk to. I wish I could stop wishing for things I'll never have.

It is such a wretched feeling to be held prisoner to others' whims and fancies, to others' wishes and vagaries. I detest the feeling of powerlessness that pervades my days. Held prisoner to the whims of my parents, the BMTC, the rain gods, the garage mechanics, the college idiots, I hate it all.

You lose track of who you are and what you want. Sometimes it's too late. I've discovered this.

I'm sorry. For not being there. For not being on time. For not taking time out. For not thinking. For not caring. And now I will live with the guilt to the day I die.

This was supposed to be longer. But the words won't flow.

Speed speed speed, I NEED SPEED!

"We hold each other closer, as we shift to overdrive

And eveyrthing goes rushing by, with every nerve alive..."

"...I am a traveller of both time and space"




"All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground"




"My shangri-la beneath the summer moon, I will return again"


"Oh let the sun beat down upon my face..."

Choices. I make them, and they all seem wrong. I hope they turn out right. I hope I turn out right.

"Time have changed and times are strange
Here I come, but I ain't the same..."

There are the sort that you meet, hit it off with, and lose touch with. Then there are the other sort. The sort that you call at 3 am. The sort that you miss when you move away. The sort that you wouldn't think you'd ever miss. The sort that make that leap of faith, to keep in touch, when you won't.


Mohit: It all starts here. The kid who broke his hand and borrowed my homework. Mr Bhalla's birthday party: the social event of the 3rd grade. Learnt to play cricket, rather badly, with him. Funnily, he plays rather well. Mr Perfect Host. Mr Perfect. Probably won't remember, but he knew Malkit Singh's Gur Nal Ishq Mita before it became famous. Now an investment consultant in his own white Accord. Always unflappable, always sophisticated, always Mr Mohit Bhalla.

Prathap: I only met him because his was the bus stop after mine. And my teacher thought since my English was good, I could decipher his accent. After all these years he still calls when he's in town. Standing invite to Chicago, IL. Near-doctor, tennis ace, sometime businessman, one-time best friend.

Dhruv: Maadu-man will always pull you down. You reach out for a high-five and he stares at you. Joke's on you suddenly. He's the guy that went to the P.Ed coach for 'maths tuition' and ended up captain of the cricket team. Lars Ulrich wannabe, though I suspect he likes John Bonham more. Always calls when he's in town. Makes that extra effort. I wish I did.

Namratha: The caterpillar that metamorphosed into Ms Reddy. Full-too, as she would say. Makes me laugh uncontrollably when I try to be nice to her. Has a surprisingly sharp eye for a good photo. The next Howard Roark, standing naked on the edge of the cliff. Lives here, lives there, keeps trying to go clubbing with me. Never happens. Well, she tries.

Mahua: Funnily, she finds her way into this list. Her presence is disarming. I see shades of myself in her, down to the dislike of parents and the life full of lectures. Her driving escapades are the stuff of legend, as is her relationship with Obata-san. Not sure what she wants or how, but like Baz said, some of the most interesting people never do.

Swati: I don't know what I did, but she's stopped talking to me, or so it would seem. Oh well, can't do much.

Anu: The person who calls on the last day of her holiday and then shouts at me for not calling her. Another architect, with another good eye for a pic. Current self-portrait in shades, fur and bling makes her look like gangsta.

Rahul: Another surprise entry. Wild-card seems more appropriate. Driving skill of a pro, mental state of a 13 year old. Well, physical state too. Ultra-loyal, and you always know where you stand with him. Just don't do business with him!

Revati: It all ends here.

"We've seen our share of ups and downs
Oh how quickly life can turn around
In an instant
It feels so good to reunite
Within yourself and within your mind
Let's find peace there
When you are with me, I'm free
I'm careless, I believe
Above all the others we'll fly
This brings tears to my eyes"

It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.

Things move uneasily beneath the surface. I know now how mute people feel. People who have no idea of the concept of verbal expression. I cannot express what I cannot comprehend. Nameless, shapeless, dark fears. Bright sunny days. Long dark nights.

I used to think I wrote well. Now I realise I'm full of (sh)it. Good writers are those who can portray their emotions through their words. Whacked by my own yardstick.

I wonder if this is how it feels when your world begins to crumble. All the truths and the lies swim together to make a large collage. It's tough to separate them, you know. Live the lie. Truth be told, I don't know what the truth is anymore.

Help.

"You ask about my consience
And I offer you my soul
You ask If I'll grow to be a wise man
Well I ask if I'll grow old
You ask me if I known love
And what it's like to sing songs in the rain
Well,I've seen love come
And I've seen it shot down
I've seen it die in vain"

TFU.

It waits patiently in the night. All is black, save for a few blinking lights. Others buzz about, near, yet wrapped in their own worlds. Shrieks rend the air, and the din is ear-splitting.

It though, is still more silent than not. A gentle hum. It looks down the pathway, and steadies itself. Signals course up and down its body, as it prepares to hurl itself forward. It is now ready, ready as it will ever be. Slowly, it moves forward. It shrieks, a scream of pure primeval agony, enough to turn the hardest man deaf in an instant. The shriek rises in pitch. Slowly, with a grace that defies its bulk, it climbs into the night sky. Pure white against inky black.

I know I am supposed to be an engineer. I know cars and engines inside out. But nothing touches my soul like seeing a few thousand pounds of metal climbing into the sky under its own power. The miracle of human flight is truly awesome. A century and some ago, the richest man on earth couldn't get up there, and today it's yours for Rs 324 plus taxes.

"High, higher than the sun..."

Amey is nice. He gave me chocolates. I have started to think kindly of him now. May his tribe increase (Hebbars are not too virile).

When I'm gone, who will miss me? Who will stand at their wedding and wonder how it would feel if I were there? Who will miss me at birthdays? Who will think of the way I did things? Who will look at something and say, damn, reminds me of him?

Today I learnt that no one will. If no one remembers you, for who you are and what you do, when you are around, who will remember you when you are gone?

"Everything I am,
And everything in me
Wants to be the one
You wanted me to be
I'll never let you down
Even if I could
I'd give up everything
If only for your good
hold me when I'm here
Right me when I'm wrong
You can hold me when I'm scared
You won't always be there
So love me when I'm gone"

I wish I knew how this felt...

http://cjcphoto.com/can/

"...it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not.
We've got each other and that's a lot, for love,
We'll give it a shot."

The return is hardly triumphant. I find myself with no one to talk to. Ironic, given the date.

It's all falling apart. The days, the daze. Nothing makes sense, it's like running in place. Chasing the horizon on a treadmill. Except I'd be a lot thinner.

To experience true loneliness is something no one should ever undergo. Darkness, thick like a blanket, pervades the soul. Sense turns senseless, and the mind is with fear. Thoughts struggle to form, and words struggle to flow. Thick, like snakes coiled around each other, they writhe, sticking to the roof of the mouth and the mind, reluctant to morph into shapes more recognizable.

I. A single character, alone. Surrounded by space and a period.

The experiences over the last few weeks have been varied. Tri-state all-night drives. Rendezvous in distant places. Wake-up calls, both literal and metaphorical. A sense of impending doom. Hilarious laughter. Wracking sobs.

The hardest thing you can do is make people believe. To believe in you. To believe in themselves. To believe in the truth.

"...And I wish you could know how it is to be me
Then you'd see and agree that every man should be free."

After years of exhaustive research, I have decided that the position of India's top mass-produced chocolate ice-cream must be shared between Dairy Day, and Amul. Both, in their own way, are mindbogglingly good.

Dairy Day brings to the table (and the bowl) a very deep, dark flavour. Dare I say it, a South Indian interpretation of chocolate. The underlying current, though, is rather shallow. The knockout punch is seemingly delivered in the first bite, but then it falls flat on itself. Yet, it is the sort of ice-cream that you will not hesitate to rob small children of. Cheap too.

Amul. That very word brings to the mind's eye countless Gujarati ben-folk massaging bovine udders, dressed in all manner of shiny colourful mirror-festooned lehengas, singing "Jahaan doodh ki nadiyan behti hai...". Unfortunately, chocolate is something that comes from Brazil. And messrs Kurien, Modi, Patel and Anand haven't quite mastered that yet. It tastes like Amul milk chocolate. And that was more milk than chocolate. Amul chocolate was for the cheap parents who wanted to make sure their kid got his share of doodh and did his bit for the poor. And it still brings those feelings to the fore. But still, a very very good ice-cream.

Unlike our friends from Kwality Walls. I mean, what sort of a name is that anyway? Is Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y such a tough ask? And walls? Don't they hold people in, like in prison? Or school? What sort of kid wants to be reminded of school while eating ice-cream? AND IT'S NOT EVEN ICE-CREAM!!! It's low-fat frozen yogurt slim light delight CRAP. We want FAT! We are Indians, we don't do diet! Go away! And don't give us the world's favourite bloody dessert, the Youbetta!

Blech.

But I hear Mother Dairy is coming to town. That means a whole new review system in place, for 3 separate competitors. It's a tough job...

I'm still alive. Barely...

My head is empty. Full of shit, and so empty. Much like my life. I don't know what the fuck goes on everyday. I live in some crappy place now, where the sun don't shine. It's like living in someone's ass. It's gloomy and dark and my floor has shiny white tiles and I have a fluorescent tube on my wall. It's a lot like something from a bad sci-fi movie, except I don't have a tri-phase module to blow my enemies up with. And I can't talk to Scottie, because cell-phone reception is zilch. My computer is back online, and it's only now that I remember how much it SUCKS. It's like a zoo of viruses or whatevers, and it can't get through a single porn movie without shutting down or rebooting or hanging. And these are only 10 min movies.

I'm done complaining. Oh, and I'm really fat. But the fat is good, because putting on it is so pleasurable. Cheesecake, mousse, biriyani, pizza, burgers, chocolate, hot chocolate, hot chocolate fudge, ice-cream, chicken, cookies, 'Appy fizz, cake, gulab jamuns, Pepsi, Coke...the list goes on till dawn, and it rocks rocks rocks.

Like that northie haracry said, I'm fat and sad. Time to hit the gym.

Yeah right.

Anyway, looks like track day has either been cancelled, or at best, postponed. So I guess we have to stick to street racing for now.