Desicritics Author: Deepak Maini

Fly To The Top Of The World

Deepak Maini — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 18:39:56 EST

And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion,
that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into from eating it.
-Neil Gaiman

I’m working in Philadelphia these days and it seems that there is always a reason for the snow to fall here. One week twenty inches of it piled up on the streets and I gingerly walked on it with my feet making dull slushy sound, careful not to trip. But that’s for later. I don’t really hate snow, not really, and hate is a particularly strong word to start with, so why use it? I just strongly dislike snow. And Philly is just another city, one more with tall buildings and narrow streets.

I instead want to talk about my latest travel to Philadelphia, the one that saw me ride in a cab whose driver talked on an iPhone to someone named Tandia, veering off and turning sharply, holding the wheel with only one hand. On most of the cab rides I’ve taken in the last several months, the cab driver has unmistakably talked to someone on the phone. It can be argued that that’s their source of entertainment while they transport people who move in and out of their cab in a jiffy, but all niceties aside one thing that I am hugely concerned with on these rides is my goddamn fucking life. An expensive life it is and I don’t want some Tandia to take it, that too by making an undramatic phone call from god-knows-where. Talking about god, experiences such as this inspire me to start believing in Him. Sitting on the edge of the seat, hands clasped, eyes pinched, face pale, hoping that god whom I had so conveniently denied existence until then might save me this last time from Tandia’s wrath.

Before the cab ride I was squeezed into a window seat a few thousand feet above the ground on a Delta flight. Flights emphasize the fine line between life and death. I’ve so often lend my thoughts to the fragility of human life, how a 40-mph car crash, a fall from a third floor window (I live on the third floor in Atlanta), or too many hours spend at work doing mindless shit, or too much drinking followed by loud singing in a shower, which leads to your slipping on a bar of soap and hitting your head on the edge of the tub and bleeding to death, can end your life without even giving you a chance to say final goodbyes to three or four people you know as friends –lonely you. It’s just this feeling of helplessness that makes flights exciting to me. I feel like Alice in Wonderland where at every step there is a revelation.

Every time I take a flight I’m reminded of my body’s weakness, its dependence on technology to work flawlessly or all will be over all too fast. I’m also reminded of how infrequently, and yet uncannily, things go wrong. Every day we are on roads where a slight misjudgment can short-circuit the circuit of your life, but we don’t really think about it while we are going out to the same pool joint to drink beer and shoot some pool or going to the nearby fast-food joint to get another of those sandwiches that taste like someone used them as a seat cushion on her car. We just live and many times to see our eightieth birthday. It’s amazing.

A particularly definitive moment on flights is when the plane makes its initial ascent and the ground pulls away and the plane bucks to one side turning and climbing up as I feel heady from increased gravity. It’s just majestic. Too many things happen at the same time and the world I know is quickly reduced to dots and soft fluffy clouds. At these times I admire the vast landscape below me, the dimensions of the earth suddenly observable from those heights, and partake in my hobby of looking into the distance. A wise man once said, All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance. I firmly believe in his words and have taken to sitting by the window in my room for hours and looking into the distance, at nature and at people whose unknown lives never fail to make my throat dry.

There are other regular features of flying that work to appease both my body and soul, which include the drumming sound of the engines and the occasional jitters that induce moments of lulling sleep.

This last trip, though, had something else to catch my attention. Soon after I took my window seat a man, a man with a severely creased face, hair white and short, came limping to take the middle seat. No reason for me to me annoyed. Then a flight attendant followed him to hand over a plastic bag full of ice to him. I peeked over Christopher Moore’s novel The Stupidest Angel—my first by him—I had so excitedly started reading. After placing the ice-pack on his right foot, the man started scuffling with his seat trying to backpush it into submission but the seat didn’t budge a goddamn centimeter. I giggled, hidden behind the pages. Around the same time, the guy had his right index finger searching for a treasure inside his nose. I mean, not to sound judgmental here, every man and woman at some time during the day gets troubled with boogers obstructing the air passage in the nose and tries to pry them out – and I do it too but always in the privacy of a bathroom. But when this man didn’t take his finger out for a few minutes straight, I had doubts taking root in my mind: either his boogers were made of steel or he had a raccoon wriggle up his nose that he was unsuccessfully trying to pull out. But that wasn’t annoying either. Nor was his attempt every few minutes to first reach for his neck, scratch it for a while and then furtively move onto his nose, once again at it, trying to take out the Rock of Gibraltar he had by mistake snuffed with his coke in the morning. It was all right. It was all right that the old man worked at his nose as if he were working on his PhD. If someone wants to pick his nose, who the fuck am I to deny him his choice?

The only annoying thing was the volume of his headphones, which had drowned out the coveted white noise of the engines. I didn’t know such a volume was even possible but the man was up to the task. I every so often stole glances at him trying to tell him through my eyes that the volume of his headphones was monumentally loud. But it just didn’t work. So much for my subtle ways.

Later on when the flight attendants doled out free snacks and I asked for some peanuts, the booger man volunteered to take the packet from the flight attendant since I was slightly beyond his reach and hand it over to me, losing his grip on the solitary napkin underneath the peanuts. To make up for the loss, he chose to give his napkin to me. I for the life of Jesus didn’t touch those peanuts or the napkin, fearful of catching his raccoon disease. The old man proceeded to purchasing two big bags of peanut M&Ms which he devoured with his bare hands in a devilish frenzy.

The rest of the flight was a bummer except for the landing, which always makes me wonder how a plane as big as I was on can land on its tires without losing balance. It just amazes me, the sheer speed with which the plane touches the ground and how the plane is decelerated to a comfortable taxing speed. The first impact of a touchdown is what I wait for on my flights.

So I am back in Philadelphia. I hardly have words to say about the city. Well, Philly is, it’s just cold; the city and the snow that covers it are the same to me: quietly foreign, cold, and mysterious.

Cricket and Beer

Deepak Maini — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:56:03 EST

Our hopes had already been dashed when I walked in to bat yesterday. I wasn’t, however, bothered much with the winning-losing aspect of the game. I was already thinking about the succulent boneless wings and tall glasses of beer I had talked to Yogesh about for our lunch. It was three in the afternoon and drinking beer seemed more appropriate than hitting nine runs off one ball—I mean it was outfight unfair. How do you expect me to hit the runs from here? I crooned from the non-striker end to my team that was standing on the sidelines ready with bats to kill me if I didn’t score the winning nine runs off the last ball.

The game was the opening round of the Vibha tournament and we were dressed in red-and-white polo shirts. Our team had exchanged four thousand five hundred and twenty-two emails about the tournament and the game that the top guns of our team had thought, drinking Gatorade, would put us in the winning grove: The beginning of the saga of five games that would turn us into cricketing gods of Atlanta, barring Arpit of course because he didn’t pass the height criterion for becoming a god, he was an inch too short (I’d already ordered my chakra, sword, and mace to match my godly status apart from getting silk pajamas and fancy gold-plated jewelry).

We were set a target of seventy-six off ten overs. I don’t know about others, but for my team, the hard-hitting players we are, it meant hitting just about two sixes every over. But that would mean one hundred and twenty runs at least and adding the two singles Arpit would eke out edging past the keeper, that would be one hundred and twenty-two. Why don’t we just take singles like the other team? I said, and my team called me a mathematics snob and told me to shut the fuck up or they would tie me to a chair and blow cigarette smoke into my face.

As it was already known, Arpit fulfilled my dream and after hitting a few balls with his long and dense polyester bottoms threw his wicket in a smart attempt to edge the ball to the two-run, behind-the-keeper boundary. We still needed seventy some runs and there was nothing to worry about, I thought, because our batting was just getting started.

Surprisingly, the game that should been a cinch and that had turned into a skirmish after the first innings was now becoming a long yawn. I decided, sitting next to Yogesh, who was flexing his muscles for the benefit of nowhere-to-be-seen Georgia Tech sweethearts and saying, “See, see, how big?” that the things the two kids sitting next to him were saying were more interesting than the game of cricket upon us. The kids were talking about how we, the team of Monsters, were not scared of wasps and were instead scared of not hitting enough sixes in the game. They were cute but nothing to keep me from wandering around.

Earlier in the game, everybody except me had bowled with discipline. The faster I tried to bowl, the fuller I got and was thrashed for singles and doubles. It wasn’t new for me to feel frustrated with the way I was bowling, but apart from feeling the constant pressure of self-loathing, I heard Yogesh’s words as he had told me before the game: You need a third man for fuckers like these, that guy can’t even bench press ninety pounds, where do you think he will hit you? Not in the front. It will always be behind the keeper. I had thought of asking him, How many fingers are these?, to double-check if he wasn’t drunk, but when the ball darted past Ninad three times in the first over, it dawned on me that he hadn’t been kidding me, and I was reduced to tears and had to beg Arpit to stand at the first slip.

The opposition had scored in singles and doubles and hit one six and two boundaries in the whole innings. The target of seventy-six was a tad insulting for the first match of the tournament, and I wondered if Arpit had something to say about it, so I asked him when he was busy putting the box inside his pants that if he had any strategy for the chase since the target wasn’t flat by any means. I have to pee, he replied.

Arpit had said the same thing when earlier before the start of the game I asked him to practice with me. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s run around the field once. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s go eat something. I‘ve to pee. Arpit, let’s find out why this chipmunk looks like you. I’ve to pee. Arpit, let’s exchange the batting order. I‘ve to pee. Arpit, let’s go pee. No smarty pants, I don’t want to.

Arpit’s propensity for peeing hadn't stripped me of the feeling that Arpit had a strategy all right. After lingering around him awhile, I sat down and heard him say, A lefty and a righty, confusing, confusing, huh, very important to have a lefty opener, but as always I couldn’t understand the Einstenian logic behind it. My theory: if the opposition stinks and cannot bowl to a right and left combination without getting their heads all tangled up, one can beat them in half the number of overs, and if the team is good enough to take you to the last over when you need nine runs off the last ball, good luck with your stellar strategy because, I guess, they ain’t no bitches. It’s quite evident watching international cricket, though, that this strategy works, and in a subtle way, but not as much as the simple and tested strategy of rotating the strike and hitting the ball on merit does. Apart from the lefty-righty strategy, there was another plan of action that, I was plenty aware of it, would kick in as soon as the first over: driving orgasmic pleasure from premeditating to launch the ball out of the park.

At the end of the game as everybody was shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, it occurred to me that I wanted to drink beer. The game was over. You lose some, you win some, but you always drink beer regardless of the outcome. You cannot let a loss make you reconsider how you go about the game, but for a smart person there are lessons in every little thing that happens to him, be it a missed opportunity to get someone out or a swing and a miss.

God, It's Deepack

Deepak Maini — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:20:39 EDT

Another trip to Seattle. The same long flight across the corn country and over the Rockies, breaching the clouds while the airplane jiggles its butt to reach the cruising altitude, and a whole lot of free sodas, and 10-dollar meals, all that and my true-to-god co-passengers.

It was a couple this time, easily in their seventies, with their snow-white hair and a warm demeanor. As soon as I sat down in my seat, this being my second flight, having flown to Charlotte first, a few hundred miles north- east of Atlanta, instead of going directly to Seattle, the couple accepted me as their lost kid and asked me question after question, checking if the brown skin they saw was just a layer of paint I had put on myself to improve my chances of landing an IT job.

I, to send the couple the right signal, several times, scratched myself for no reason, leaving deep white lines on my skin, and said, in my caramel accent, "These days you know you paint yourself once and the damn thing doesn't come off. Howdy, sir, you seem like my fellow countrymen."

I even said, Hey whaddya doing, over and over again, and messed up my Vs as Ws, but the couple was hard-set on wanting to know everything about me, my shoe size, my favorite sleeping position, which hospital I was born in and if people I knew as my parents always gave me leftovers for dinner. I answered all their questions heroically, pausing for a moment in between to catch my breath and prepare myself for the next question.

Then out of nowhere the couple, first the man then the woman, started telling me how they believed in one god--I don't know what I did to piss them off--about the god who created Earth with all its wealth of plant and animal species, and who after creating everything else created the supreme living form: human being. I told them that I kind of knew about this man who did all these wonderful things, because I enjoyed reading, not just computer manuals, but real books with characters and plots, but they didn't quite seem to understand what I was saying and kept on telling me about how He the all powerful was watching us right at this moment. "He in a solitary action spanning seven days created heaven and earth, man and woman." They said.

The flight was five hours long, long enough to wonder why they had a sheen curtain between the first and economy classes, and what all was happening on the other side and what the flight attendant was bussing empty beer cups for and those sumptuous entrees and yes those sparkling wines in slender flutes.
It occurred to me then that I didn't know the names of the two people I had been talking to. I'd, within five minutes of the onset of the conversation, introduced myself as Deepack, but had not heard anything in return. The couple, it was clear, wasn't inclined to reveal their social identity to me.
"If Jesus Christ comes back, his wrath will strike down the unholy. Are you religious?" the old man asked me.

I don't know when but a long time back I had stopped thinking about religion and god. "No," I replied.

Perhaps it was the sixth-grade at my school - a place where there was no concept of boy's bathrooms and where guys peed in the bushes--a close friend of mine once asked a question on god that shook the foundation of my religious beliefs. He asked, "Who told you that god exists?" Looking into his eyes, I knew it wasn't a rhetorical question, his way of showing amazement at my being stupid enough to believe in some sort of god, but a perfectly reasonable inquiry about how the concept of god was initiated in me and by whom. I meekly replied, "My parents." That was it, a moment of truth, and it was clear to me, clear as the Indian summer sky.

"I don't believe in any gods, sorry," I added, "not the ones we have in India, not yours, or anyone's, but I'm sure He's there somewhere, like he must be there, but I don't think he's looking down at us right now. That would be just too much."

The couple, I realized, while I was having a bit of inner aside, had moved on to looking outside the window, their eyes sweeping the vast expanse of land, and had stopped paying attention to me.

"But what do your parents say" - they had stopped thinking of me as their lost son, it was definite, not me with my religious views --"when you tell them all these funny stories of yours?"

"Well, they don't say much," I replied, looking straight ahead at the back of the seat seven inches in front. "My mother just smiles and shakes her head and goes into the kitchen to make the thousandth cup of tea she has been craving since two seconds back and my dad takes my mother's eyeliner and starts drawing a fake beard and moustache on his face, adjusting his keffiyeh, and mutters unintelligible words, which I believe means he doesn't know who I am," I added, pointing a finger at myself.

The couple sighed; maybe because the drinks trolley was waiting on us.

A wide variety of complimentary beverages were offered. I got a cup of water and a diet coke and the flight attendant didn't miss the opportunity of showing her displeasure at my asking for two cups of ice-filled beverages, with ice being the operative word. I said, "Thank you," taking the cups from her. It was then that the airplane started making a bizarre sibilant sound.

I didn't know how high in the air we were when that sound first started ringing in my ears, but I knew for a fact that we were higher than a five-story building. Your whole life flashing in front of you, the moment, your hair pushed back as you shear the curtain of air, the majestic fall, your limbs stretched out far as if you were a bird, and then that zingo, bingo, bang: The flat merciless earth acting on you as if you were a fucking water balloon. The splashing sound of the brain turning into mush, the veins bursting, the bones cracking, the last ounce of breath stuck in your lungs never getting the chance to come out, that moment of eternal pain.

Nothing of that sort flashed across my mind. I picked up John Fante's Ask the Dust and within minutes was laughing my ass off at the protagonist's masochistic escapades. The couple on the other hand had their jaws stuck in an open position, their eyes wide open and their pupils frozen in time as if they had seen a snow leopard walk down the aisle. "Oh, come on," I told them. "You won't die." But my encouragements weren't helping. They were truly scared of this sound, what if the right engine was dying, and the left engine had already been dead, I thought of telling them, and god's wrath was finally making its long-bidden appearance.

"It's not me," I told the couple. "He ain't coming after me, goddamnit."

The strange sound slowly collapsed into the drone, the grumbling sound an airplane makes that causes my head to do somersaults, and the couple forgot about the unknown sound as if it had never existed. I busied myself with the book and save for half an hour during which I nodded off like an eighty-year-old man, my head lurching forward before my neck catching it, I read and read.

An hour before touchdown, the couple deep in sleep, I placed the book on my leg above the knee, and peered outside the window. The sunlight had dimmed to a smudge of red and dark gray. The outside of the airplane: lifeless, as if stricken with a chilling malaise, cold and barren, a reminder of death. Death looking back into my eyes from just beyond the peephole of a window, and its two servants sitting next to me, unaware of what it all meant. Why is it something to fear? Why would a seventy-year-old couple fear death while I sat next to them searching for something silly, something kooky, something worth living? Maybe it's a sign. I drew out the iPod, about which I had forgotten until then, and started listening to a book I had put on it. And my eyes started to close, they started to close.

Sleepy in Seattle

Deepak Maini — Sun, 6 Sep 2009 02:56:14 EDT

Before I get all lovey-dovey about the West Coast of the United States, it’s worth mentioning that the trip from the East Coast might leave dark red crease marks on your ass. I’m not kidding and more so when instead of the aisle seat, which I wanted, I got sandwiched between two warm southerners, one of whom a y’all-speaking woman, who didn’t stop using her Blackberry to take pictures of the cloud-ridden landscape outside the window, and the other a man, who was overflowing from his seat like water from an already full bucket. He buffeted me toward my female co-passenger throughout the flight without feeling any compunction about it. It didn’t tense any muscle in his body and he flew to Seattle on the furry feathers of snores. A passing-by flight attendant once mentioned his snoring to him, jokingly, I remember, but such is the world we live in, he looked at her, his mouth in a rictus, and nodded as if he had accepted an award but was not feeling up to getting out of his seat to receive it. I listened him shift weight in the seat, the tectonic plates of his bones adjusting to find the new configuration, and then after the tsunami, the silence, which was only riddled by asperated stertors.

Even though it I didn’t particularly enjoy his company on the flight, I was genuinely grateful to him for not farting. He looked many times guilty of muffling one of those silent ones, but they turned out to be false alarms to my immediate relief.

Before I got on the flight from Atlanta to Seattle, I had to get up and ride Marta to the airport, not rocket science I know, but it’s important to know that one thing that I hate more than the feeling that I am not tough, and that I am not performing to my full potential, and all that cry-baby blah blah, is the act of getting up early in the morning. I can do lots of things that many people might find difficult: I can bowl at 80 mph, win half the trophies at cricket tournaments, go to Arpit’s place uninvited and drink his Heineken even when he stares at me after every sip I take, tell my boss that I would have kicked his ass real bad if he hadn’t been my boss, and wear a pedometer without feeling embarrassed to count the number of steps I’m taking every day to monitor my ballooning belly, but I just cannot get up early in the morning, and when I say cannot I mean it’s not funny anymore.

I remember during my IIT days, from Agra to Kanpur, there were trains—sounds like it was a novelty—that took more than eight hours to travel 150 miles (250 kilometers) except for one that took five. It was my favorite train in the world for not being retarded like others, but its arrival time at Agra Fort – primarily a single-platform train station overrun by monkeys that bite and snatch food and frisk people’s pockets when people are busy checking out Agra’s babes (that’s such a lie I cannot believe myself)—was a tad beyond my sensibly-awake hours. One time, during my sophomore or junior year (my Americanism is off the heezy), my dad after wrestling with me for almost half an hour, made me get up and sit behind him on his LML Vespa scooter. Winding through the narrows roads of Agra at five-thirty, past vegetable hawkers, milkmen, and morning walkers, we got to the station. My dad pulled his scooter on the stand and shook me hard, I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me as if I had asked him to give me five hundred rupees for beer over the two thousand he had already given me for living expenses. It took me a few seconds to realize, but it did happen, that the only thing I was holding onto, standing at the station, very early in the morning, was the feeling that I was holding onto a bag, the bag I was to take to Kanpur.

I got into Seattle at slightly past noon. It was cooler than Atlanta, as I had expected, and it didn’t take me more than twenty minutes to reach my hotel in the middle of downtown.

I changed into my new Calvin Klein tee, thank you, and walked a block north and five blocks east, passing as many Starbucks on the way as there are Halwais in all of Agra, to reach my waterfront office. Once I entered the building and the window-less room on the fifth floor, I didn’t get out of it, I mean I did but mostly for going back to the hotel to sleep. They would fly you to the west coast in a cigar of a plane, put you up in a hotel that costs 240 a night and overlooks the nearby building’s cooling system, and then make your work long hours; what’s up with that? A man once said, I lowered my head to increase my salary, I think he wasn’t completely wrong.

Seattle is a strange city, I came to know within hours, the number of hobos it has on the roads pushing their grocery carts. Downtown is their home without doubt. Just like any other stratum of society, the hobos, or more appropriately people asking for change, or alms, I saw, ranged from teeth-less bums – one of whom was holding a poster that said ‘Bush Stole My Dentures’ and another one with Hitler’s mustache on Obama’s face—who sneaked up behind you with their sooty tin boxes and wanted to know, If you had any change, sir, any change will do, sir, would appreciate it sir, just one dollar, to this guitar-welding guy and the violin-sporting girl, with their instrument cases open to hold cash, who wore better clothes than me. I passed these failed musicians several times on my way to get a gyro or guac-tomato-cucumber-mushroom-lettuce European sandwich. It was apparently hard for these people to lead a life similar to mine, I finally decided, and what was he wearing that yellow t-shirt for, wonder where she got her sheen apricot dress from?

The first two days went by in frenzy, nothing fancy. I worked and drank my beer, what else? But then the uselessness of my stay started playing on mind and I sat down on the third day to do some research on the city. At most places I know it rains occasionally or rains during a fixed season, but in Seattle it’s the opposite. Here sunrays, not rain, fall on you. Occasionally. Fifty-four average sunny days in a year. I had a hard time reading this fact. If the sun is too embarrassed to show its face every day, then why should I bother? Who am I to challenge the sun? I felt a sudden pleasure in my brilliance. I decided I wanted to relocate to Seattle. The blues, I’m always in need of some, bring the mellowness in me, and the proximity to the body of water, Mt. Rainier (see how the freaking mountain has a rainy name), The Fremont Troll, Microsoft (famous for its blue screen of death), Pike Place Market, a sweet downtown, a waterfront office, what else could ‘me’ want? Me happy, me drunk here.

Hotel—office—Pike Place Market—office—hotel, the cycle continued for the remaining days. The wind picked up one day, the clouds charged in the other, it stormed for a while, the sun peeked out, and the time slipped through my hands like my monthly paycheck. Once I stood, on my lunch break, in the middle of Pike Place Market, a kick in the air, and saw people move in packs in opposite directions past me. I saw them go, talking about some movie, some show, some artist, what they wanted to buy (iPhone), what they wanted to eat, what their boss was asking them, how big that girl’s tits were, I watched them go, somewhere. Then I moved toward a little patch of sod, where many homeless people had been sitting, talking about god knows what. I sat down with them and just listened, listened to the sound of water against the air and I knew I didn’t want to go back, not to that fucking office.

A Little Happiness, Coffee, Beer, and Lots Of Living

Deepak Maini — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:41:00 EDT

Happiness, I've noticed, depends on what time of the day it is. In the morning, for example, I'm excited about the day, rising from eight hours of sleep. After snoozing for thirty minutes to an hour (depending upon how tired and late I was at the time of going to bed) I roll out of bed rubbing my eyes. I feel light and my mind crazy with the eerie dreams of the night. I lumber off to the bathroom. I see myself in the mirror, my hair mucked up, my eyes half-open, my head woozy, and think: a new day with its promises, yes, a lovely day, but ... damn ... why brush, shit, and take a shower? At this time my head is free of all obligations, like that of a caveman. I lift the toilet seat and stand there streaming, one hand on my hip, the other scratching my head.

The starting of the day is brilliant. I run through the things and get into my car without eating or drinking anything. I reach work and take a moment to soil my appearance. I try as hard as I can to pull up a dreary face before walking past the offices of directors and managers, muttering, Yeah, laugh it up funny boy, under my breath, but I know that my semi-wet hair gives it away. That they know I wasn't doing squat at home and was hoping in earnest that the day won't rise.

I change my gait several times from the car to my cube, moseying, stomping, sashaying, and finally pussyfooting. I set up my laptop and drift to the breakroom. There I eat a biscotti, my breakfast, and fill a cup of dark black coffee, diluted with water, with a pouch of zero-calorie sweetener in it, and walk back feeling up my belly. Not too big, by any measure, I hear myself say, but yes, them beers ... damn. How often do you get back home and find nothing but frozen pizzas in the fridge? I am sure there is a pack of yogurt and a gallon of skim-milk too, but that doesn't count. There is a lot of candy, right behind the rotting tomatoes, the ones with black eyes on them, and fungus-encrusted cucumbers. Love those. But forget to eat them. Don't tell me you can eat tomatoes and cucumber for dinner.

Some days, usually Mondays or Tuesdays, soon after I get in, I receive a call from my parents, which usually starts with my mother complaining that I haven't called them in more than two weeks. I tell her that that's not true, that wasn't it last Sunday when I called them? Yes, I was hugging my pillow at noon crazy asleep when they had called me last, but anyway, that's not the point, the point is that I talked to them last Sunday. No, I hear my mother say, that was several weeks back. Really? I say in response. I hear my father screaming at me in the background. He's talking about some bride-groom show on Star TV, where parents send their kids' matrimonial data and if the kid is selected he has to appear on the show and whatnot. He's threatening me, I feel. I hear him ask my mother to tell me that if I don't start calling them on a weekly basis, he's going to come over to Atlanta and kick my ass and tie me up and take me back to India. Good deal, I ask my mother to tell my dad.

The day regains sanity and progresses as usual from Powerpoint to Powerpoint, with Excel sheets, some additions to the Project Plan, my boss IMing me that I suck donkey dicks and then telling me how these morons are driving him nuts. I join him in griping and drop in a few f-bombs and sing along with him; literally he stands up and clears his throat and sings Buckcherry's Porno Star; Don't you know we fuck for money, I'm a big dick motherfucking porno star.

Then we get back to work, writing nasty emails, kissing ass wherever possible, especially me - we do project management, classy stuff, no seriously -and yell at people on the phone, sometimes until 1:30 PM, sometimes until 2:00 PM, having not eaten lunch, and mind you we work in the US, in Neva York. Atlanta doesn't sound as cool, you know. I just don't feel like saying Atlanta.

I've to wait for work to subside to go out to eat because I don't have a wife to pack my lunch. But what's his excuse? I don't ask him. I am sure his wife gives him the finger when he asks for a lunchbox. Anyway, 2:00 PM is common for me, that too with nothing but a biscotti since getting up. I slip into these monkish states of mental clarity. Jessica tells me that this is because of dropping blood sugar-level, but I think she is just not spiritual. It feels like somebody pumped some air into my head and made it balloon up, a feeling somehow akin to getting slightly drunk, but definitely not like the feeling I dig most: not being able to tell my extremities apart: Is this my toe or finger?

We drive to one of our favorite restaurants. My boss likes Thai. He wants to eat Thai everyday, which scares me a little bit, and I put up a good fight before going his way. So we drive to the Thai restaurant, where Asian waitresses welcome us and always ask us, Two? No, I sometimes feel like saying, three. Because I think they mock us by asking the obvious question, but then what do I know about hospitality? On the way, while driving my boss squints his eyes and then closes them completely, for a few seconds, like five, at a stretch. Why do you do this? I ask him, shell-shocked, gaping. Adventurous, he replies. I realize that he's right and decide to do it myself on my way back home.

We come back. My boss burps. My boss farts. My boss tells me how manly it is to fart and we get into the elevator and take it up; I won't say to the madhouse. The remaining part of the day and a good part of the night is spent on the phone, talking to team leads, trying to figure out why anything can't be done without issues. Just can't. That's IT for you. Cannot work without a million bugs. Ever seen them insects? Noticed that they cannot sit still. Ever. Poor creatures don't have a head big enough to know that it's okay to sit in one place and not to go around dopily. Several times they come back to the same spot without giving a fuck about it. Do I feel nostalgic? I hear them say. Have I been here before? No, I'm not like those other bugs. I think I know where I am going. Yes, let me start crawling again.

I tell my boss that I know why he can't sit still, and giggle. He tells me to get back to work or he will give me another Powerpoint to work on. I'm sure you don't want this one, he says.

The day winds down with me sneaking out the office before the lights are shut off. I slink away, fall through the cracks, get into my car and get the hell out of there. I feel sorry for my boss still sitting in the darkening cube, trying to shore things up. But you know, whatever. I crank up the volume on my car's audio system. The song being Bulla Ki Jaana. I get back home and get to reading.
I change my clothes, tossing the long-sleeved shirt and pants rolled up in a ball into the laundry heap. I sit down in a folding chair and read. I read and forget about the passage of time. I write some days, but it's reading mostly. Many times I keep reading and forget about eating, my dinner. Reading calms me. Makes me forget the world.

Around 11 PM I pour myself a cup of milk and shake some cereal out of the box and sit on the couch and eat, dreamily. I don't think much while eating, not about the purpose of life, or if I'm adding anything to the world. Purpose? I have read enough about it and I tend to believe that the purpose of life is to have no purpose, not finding it, because there isn't one. It's overrated, not to mention. I hear the sound of my masticating the flakes, the sweetness dissolving in my mouth, a little treat to the senses after a long day of work. Carpe diem. It feels like.

I finish my dinner and walk back to my room, my bed an island, the books the water around it, and me thirsty, to lap up some more. I sit right back in my chair and look for a song to play. It's Cat Steven's If you want to sing out: Well, if you want to sing out, sing out. And if you want to be free, be free. Cause there's a million things to be. You know that there are. I sing along and then it stops. I play it again . And then again.

Elegy

Deepak Maini — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:09:10 EST

Holden got up

Wore the shirt

Belted the pants

Tied the laces

And went down

He went down

Holden drove out

He just drove.

Buendia pulled in

Took the elevator

Garrisoned the cube

Fought the war

Lost the war

Screamed and peed

Resigned to shame

He just lost.

Plath came back

Turned the door

Depressed and bemused

Cracked a joke

Opened a beer

Then one more

Drowned the sorrow

Looking at tomorrow

Slept it off

She just slept.

Movie Review: Hancock

Deepak Maini — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 13:44:01 EDT

I’ll rate the movie, just for you, against my will: 3.5/10. I won’t tell you why. That’s for you to find out.

*** WARNING SPOILERS ***

The movie starts with this guy sleeping on a sidewalk bench, snoring, drunk out of his stocking cap, macho-ising big-ass, Burger King’s burger-sized sunglasses. Suddenly, some cops are shot at from a van on the interstate. This awakens the badass superhero and taunts him to save this fucked up world — fucked up at least for me. The superhero clutches a bottle of I-have-no-clue-what and begs his pardon and lets the cutie know to mind his sweet, little ass business. At least, he doesn’t shoot him on an intergalactic trip, as he does later. Now, I could write the whole storyline and bore everyone to chronic constipation, but I know better.

The movie raises many questions. I enjoy questions. There is a delinquent superhero. Fantastic. Many bagfuls of points to the writer. The writers create a superhero, but with a twist. This time the superhero is fighting himself more than any bad guy. The first question is whether he can fight himself better than fighting anyone else. Good. Over this fuming cauldron, they add Charlize Theron and make the superhero like this goddess. He does. He likes her. To connect all this up, they make the goddess’s husband want to change our delinquent superhero’s image and add a little heart shape on his chest. So the story kicks in. Superhero. Goddess. Public Relations Expert.

Flying, bullet ricocheting, wolverine flying suit. All that nonsense. Then, the meat of the story. The superhero gets back with the fucked up world. Truce. Clap clap. He saves people, police officers. He says Goo…d Jaaaab to everyone, several times. Cool. Before that he goes to jail, where he sticks someone’s head up someone else’s ass. Good stuff. There is some cute humor, too, which I liked, at the very beginning of the story, when the Public Relations Expert brings the superhero home, after the superhero saves his life from a fast-moving train.

The first part of the story ends here. Go get some popcorn.

The Goddess is a superheroine. She had lived through ages. 4 BC, too. People came after her with swords, and our superhero saved her, so he did in Miami, the last time around. Confused? Hehe. Ok. The superhero and superheroine are…I won’t tell you, go find it out. They are immortals. They were not alone, once. There were others of their kind, but they all died…because…because they became human. They died because they fell in love, just as humans do, and became mortals. Sorry shit. They were made in pairs. They were love bluebirds, cooing somewhere in the desert. So the deal is to choose between a normal, loving life and wife, and a life full of frolicking, drinking, flying, immortality, over that a superhero status, badass image, and droves of Los Angeles bitches, and truck and whale hurling, and finally a chance of being an asshole. Ooooh. Ooooh. Ooooh.

The second part ends. The fucked up writers of this fucked up world weren’t happy with just one story. I hate it.

Now, the big question. Would our superhero worry about the second part of his name or would he like to stay alive (staying close to the superheroine means death, remember?) and jump in out of the planet and hurl whales and trucks everywhere in the atmosphere? That, my friend, is the question that touched my heart. It has a direct relationship to human life. God fucked this world up by giving two things to men (women bear a similar analogy. Please sit down and keep your gun away, feminists of this world. OK. Write an article and publish it — you know where). First: Brain. Second: Something Hancock has, a man has, the name “Hancock” has, and the husband of a hen has, however small. That’s a fucked up mixture. Right? Why do I have to go after this half-species called women? Why? I spend so much of my time around the two things, of course, only when they work in tandem, not as separate entities, because separately at least one is endearing, I mean the brain is.

So our superhero has to make a choice, which is the climax. The movie starts with our superhero being lonely and shit pained with his bad image and ends with making the choice between “ahem ahem” and flying in the Los Angeles sky. And he makes the choice, as we all make at some point in our lives. Booty or Boom Boom? I say booty. Oh yeah?

A Letter To My Boss

Deepak Maini — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:19:22 EDT

Bob:

I’m writing this to tell you that you won’t find me in the office, today. I’m working from home, just as Lene did yesterday and Kel did the day before, and, yes, you did the whole last week. I haven’t come up with the reason for not coming to the office yet, because unlike Lene’s reasons, my car hasn’t broken down again, in the middle of nowhere, not far from the office, and I haven’t married recently, or unlike yours, I’m not going to the dentist for the two millionth time.

I was thinking of using Kel’s reason of having every phone, every computer, and every Blackberry in my apartment out of juice, so that I could call you instead of writing this and inform you that the phones at my apartment aren’t working. But then I thought otherwise, having not found any relationship between driving one’s car to work and Tesla and Edison not doing their jobs.

I thought maybe I could argue high-gas prices as a reason, just as Kel sometimes uses to go back home early with her husband in the same car, but then I don’t live far from the office (I never told you that…aahaa…wink…wink…I can maybe use it at a later time), so I dropped it.

Yesterday, I drank a complete, 750 ml bottle of the most expensive ten-dollar scotch, without thinking about the Indian rice and chicken I had bought for twelve bucks. I‘ve a puke-inducing hangover now, as a result, and I thought about using it as a reason for not coming, but Greg came in with a similar condition to the office yesterday, and I don’t want to piss him off by not coming to the office drunk. He mustn’t feel left out. It has to be some other reason.

I don’t have three kids—oldest being 12—as Kel has, so I can’t even use that for a reason, because kids help in focusing, I know. And moreover having kids help you learn what they do, all day long, over and over again, and what they are good at and what they aren’t, and who’s the momma boy and who is not, and things that you can use for not coming to the office, simply because you don’t want to fall behind on knowing their patterns. You have to have some stories to tell at work, too, so there.

I don’t even have a wife to take care of, and there is no way I can find one just for today. She could have cooked meals for me as I would have worked from home. She could have even sat in my lap and typed reminder emails to people who don’t respond unless I’ve written to them as many times as you have visited the dentist.

How about my visiting the doctor? I haven’t visited the doctor in a long while, and I feel bad about it. I can make up a reason, just as I did for not coming to the office, and surprise him, even take some red, purple, yellow helium balloons with me. I’ve even forgotten the name of the receptionist, how bad of me. So what do you think I should tell him is broken in my body? Arms? Legs? Nuts? Not brain, because then you will fire me, I know. I remember it feels good to drive to the hospital, pay a fiver for parking in the melting sun, and fill out those disclaimer forms, just to say ‘hi’ to the doctor and his aides.

I feel that sometimes I should be allowed not to come to the office without any reason. Coming up with reasons is harder than doing the job, so if you do the cost benefit analysis, you will know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, we can schedule a conference call and discuss over a period of many long hours the pros and cons of this method of not showing up at work.

Just a passing note, not to keep you in dark, I feel that before writing this I was stuck in a house burning to ashes and nobody was coming to my rescue, even though I had been screaming for help by writing reminder and status emails to everyone, but just as I’m finishing to write this, I feel that I’ve walked out of the burning house, all by myself, on my feet, like a hero, you know. I want you to feel like a hero too, so don’t come to the office again tomorrow and write me a letter.

Your subordinate,
Dee

It's Saturday, So Eff You

Deepak Maini — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 03:14:35 EDT

These people were out there. They didn’t stop. They didn’t know any better than what they were doing, smug about it, and silly too to some extent. These people were outside my girlfriend’s apartment, right there where no one should be at 3 AM. They were awake, smashed, and moreover disturbingly loud. They were loud with their giggles, especially this one girl, I remember the pitch of the voice, who tittered and guffawed in regular intervals.

For holy mother of god Jesus, what were they doing outside? Honestly, I didn’t know. Had I been outside at that time, I would have been moon-bathing, silently, with my lips sewed together, with nothing but the heaviness of the air, the drabness, to unsettle me, because that’s what no one does. But I was inside, in bed, drifting down into my subconscious, oh it was good going down there. It was a good beginning, and as always I was doing well, slipping into sleep. In and out, in and out, yes, that was it. Different corners were approaching in, zeroing in for attention. Oh, it was REAL heavy. And those three glasses of Chardonnay I had drunk before were helping me make peace. It was gently mellow, similar to walking on a beach on a sunny afternoon, ocean waves lapping up and down, the gentle stuffy breeze carrying scorched, spicy fragrances on its wings, making one drowsy, turning in the screw without notice. It was nice, like the first sip of beer on a rough day with no lunch, and it was yanking me down.

Oh, and this voice, the human rendition of fun. Fun at 3 AM.

I was sitting in a coffee store, stealing a glance or two of the girl in a miniskirt. She wasn’t alone, she was hobnobbing with someone, turning her gaze up and down and sideways, writing, reading, and talking, all at once. I was in her line of vision. Once our eyes met, and she snickered, so did other people, in unison, intimidating me. I looked at my watch—3 AM. What the fiddlesticks? Her voice was like the sound of daintily pouring wine, gurgly, splashy, deep.

It was hot inside. I shifted my legs to bring them out of the bedspread. A hand fell on my chest. It was still 3AM. The drone was on. The choices were clear—stay in bed or draw the blinds away and flick at the flock of bozos, the middle finger. Motherfucking bitch raising hell at such hour. Why? Eh! Why? What for? If only I could stomp outside, do my war dance, request a beer, drink it, draw an ‘Z’ like Zorro, cut the strings of her black grape sun dress, stare groggily, yawn, tootle, and come back; but how?

I turned sides. Ku Klux Klan. Get the hollering Jesus back to sleep. McDonald's. Or she will bring her aides to throw Hamburgers at me and my girlfriend, but she won’t mind; she is sound asleep, nicely asleep, and she never snores, nor do I. But this goddamn din, this ruckus.

I lifted my air-gun sized cellphone off the nightstand: 3 AM. Are we standing still in Time? Heh? Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, what the fuck is this? Heh?

Writing, Toilet Seats, and Everything in Between

Deepak Maini — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 00:41:55 EDT

This terrible feeling of never being able to achieve what seems so dear to my heart is pulling me down into ravines of ghastly, sinister, Edgar Allan Poe’s mind-like, darkness. In this jungle of bottomless dross, the struggle between working to pay my bills and doing something to pay respect to my passion seems long and pointless. Can I really write? Or is this just one more dream? With hours dwindling to nothing as my life progresses, how will I accommodate variegated things writing well requires?

I see myself in this world, evolving, learning more, more about the mechanics of this world, which makes me confident about publishing something soon. But then when I see myself having not published anything, having not received any professional feedback, I find myself stuck in a bubble of self-fulfilling thoughts and feelings. Is it not just a figment of my mind, where I’m a great writer and my books bestsellers? So why bother? One moment I’m a writer, and the other, one more of 3 billion people who write and publish, many on them on their deathbeds.

My friends say two-and-a-half years is not long enough a period of time for you to put so much unnecessary pressure on yourself, but what seems pressure to my friends is actually the high standard of reading and writing I seek to maintain, and while maintaining it, I fall into this ditch of excessive dreaming. It hurts me then, and I cry, not always with tears, but with a heart-tearing grunt. Why is writing so difficult? Why does it involve so many dimensions? Why do I have to read The Economist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Sri Bhagavadgita, all at once, in one day, and when finished flitting between these authors and books, listen to my girlfriend’s distress calls that I don’t spend enough time with her? Am I really wasting my time doing something I don’t fully understand the scope of?

Last year, I spent sleepless nights working on English grammar, and this year I spent time filling out forms for writer’s workshops. I got a hang of the language, but I am too fucking old to fully digest something only an infant can swallow: I am too fucking rotten, barren, and hopeless that no crop of structural congruity can ever grow strong. I always run into messiahs of language piety. Between the English grammar and writer’s workshop phase, which was jeopardized by shortage of money and the bitches’ reluctance to give me aid, I found myself seated on the western-style toilet seat (I live in the godforsaken US of A) pushing so hard that my intestines might squeeze out but not turds, reading American Usage and Style books, feeling a whit in comparison to 900 pages of finely printed word-feast.

There, there I stand, on the platform of utter confusion and simple-heartedness, maybe simple-mindedness too, trying to solve this conundrum of life. Why live?—to write? Sure!

It took me 15 minutes to write this piece of crap, and I'm not willing to revise it, edit it. Yes, to hell with it. And It takes me three months to write a short-story, which is read by three people, all friends with a slightly piquant literary tastes. So where is the balance? No balance—just a dream of broken aspirations, or a broken dream of just aspirations. Amen.