Im looking for a men's salon in Mangalore.
A nice one.

I've noticed, over the years, how hair is the most determining factor for my appearance. If it's not good enough, I end up looking diffident... And strangely, I feel diffident. Even become diffident.

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So, Im generally cautioned about doing my hair good enough...and I keep experimenting the pattern..

It has to suit my stature..

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Like a couple of years ago, when I had relatively rotund body, and relatively pulled out cheeks, I let my hair grow to quite few inches...I'd part them in the middle...and pull them right till the centre of my head.. from where it was allowed to fall unto the neck....with some fringes rolling on my ears in layer..

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But, that was then.

As I grew thin, I realised that profile wasn't clicking anymore. I needed to alter the style..So before I came to ACJ, I chopped them off finally....

I adopted this crew profile...which allows my broad forehead to show, thus reducing the thinness....and drawing attention to my eyes more effectively..

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But, I need a good barber to create the impact..I went to this parlour today near Abhimaan Residency.. While staying there, I had spotted the salon many a time.

I proudly lauded myself, telling that I'd become watchful enough.

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Not exactly...When i reach the salon, the security stops me. He indignantly points to the display, right on the glass door.

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"Ladies Only."

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I keep doing things that doctors would like me not to do.
Reminiscing past moments is one of them.

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Okay, there shouldn't be any issues here...

But, Im doing it to extents where the present shrouds into the past.
People want me do it the other way round.

I would not listen...

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So here I am into recalling things passionately.. Almost visualisng them.. Actually, totally...

I become a part of them again...and re-live those moments again...with as much intensity as I must have done when they actually happened!

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Coming back is difficult.
Coming back to the present..which is barren...and hence, discomforting!

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It feels strange.
It feels desperate.

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It becomes uncontrollable.

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But the prelude to it is tempting.
And certainly worth the pain (which folllows).

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Am I losing composure?
which I have so far retained, despite the panic and thousand worries surrounding me, my world......

Well, not at least in appearance or conduct.

But somewhere within, yes...perhaps at some deeper level of consciousness....at the psychic realm, which pertains outside of science....

My mom's been spiritually enlightened......and I have her genes.....

So is it that I am foreboding?
something sinister???

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Logically, I shouldn't.
My work in Mangalore has just picked up pace.....they're welcoming me to write...although I am a sub.. and my Lawyer also rings up and says, he's filed the suit and mumma's dues would soon be granted..

Then?

Perhaps I can attribute this to my tremendous sense of emotional insecurity..Why, but?

I still feel her, she's with me that's the truth....she even answers my calls to find me a house....everything falls in place, as she would have ensured otherwise...So what it is???

Why the disquiet??

Okay, something is missing. Something which can't be restored.
TOUCH.

Touch is important, I realise only now....
But that doesn't define the uneasiness, which is so much more than just physical...

why, why at all?
especially, when I have her still.

You may not believe this, but that's the ultimate truth.
And that's the palpable truth, too.

Then?

May be I am just longing for home....to be around the bed...the room...the side table, where she prepared tea glued to the TV....

Or the books may be, her treasure trove.

But i am mature...i know i'd be there....sometime sooner....why then, the unrest????

And then it's so more emphatic than just unrest....It feels time is racing ahead....everybody else too...I need to catch up pace....I need to start the novels....I need to finish them, need them published...

I have to find my place...have to make my name....rather than just depend on mom's...she's cared for me enough...its time i payed back...making the name... retaining the legacy...of art, of music, of literature.....of everything else that defines class and its sobriety..

which she had...and which's mentioned in the eulogies the university has sent us.. upon her "death."

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I used quotes. Because i don't believe in death, which is alien concept. In Hinduism, the soul lives on. Beyond perish. There's the etheric body...but that's hard to explain in a blog. So let's chuck.

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Will i just end up philistine.....
won't i become her?

A Learned.

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I have to have the name...i can't be a poor copy of a scholar parent. I need recognition. To match up. To qualify as worthy son. I know it's being desperate...or may be ambitious, which anyway, is defined negatively....by the defeatist world...

but i need not buy that...if humankind bought it always, we would not have rome...we would not have renaissance....we would not have the zest to rise up and fight, and ignite our will..and realise them.

we would be mundane.

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But all this needs time, needs patient endeavour.
I am no work-shirker, even foes would admit.

But why can't i be well-timed, too? Why am i not slowing down. I am saving even pennies. To buy a laptop (which my mother had dozens of times offered to buy. And I had refused, nonchalantly..I guess i dont like laptops). I need laptop so that i may write the novels. Make the name. Qualify.

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Why do I open my blog everyday, and then shy away from updating it?
Strange...writing is in blood....why the sudden inhibition, then?

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May be I get too conscious when ppl read my post and laud the effort....May be I'd like them to always pull in the aaccolades.....and perhaps that somehow obstacles the spontaneity...

I think too much.

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Besides, this was one taxing week of house-hunting ....which first left me listless..... and then lugubrious.... at the FAILED outcomes!

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The depression was persistent. The depression was absorbing.
I dint have the 10-months advance, needed to fish a decent lodging...And I won't compromise with my standards either...

So what do I do?
I am born to well-offs.....I must live with dignity...and mumma must, must arrange it!

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"I'd not live in those hostels, sharing my bathroom with 12 ppl.....troubled by mosquitos and tormented with shabby, make-morose ambience," I protested.

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To Mom.
To the Gods.

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And, they answered.
Same evening.

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Amritanshu calls me up and informs, one of his doctor friends need somebody to share his flat immediately...the co-tenant had vacated the place without notice...

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I happily move in.

And guess what....The 2BHK furnished flat, nestled in a nice apartment in nice localitty, with a sprawling mall greeting us ten steps away, charges just INR 3500!

I pay INR 1750....and at another 500, I get a help to do the washing and laundry, and prepare food thrice a day!

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PS: No advance needed; Arvind has been living there five years already...

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And some ppl still want me to "come out of it"
as if, mumma were gone!

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She answered me the same day.
The Gods did too!

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Two Months

(Nov 12, 4pm)

Tommorow is Chhath,
Sun God's festival!

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Mention the name, and a canopy of happy, vibrant memories come to swamp my mood almost immediately..

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Mom would wake us up very early that day.....and which is certainly not to say, at 7 AM....as we decipher the word "early" nowdays...

Sometime, somewhere, the norms were different....I'm taking you to 1990 or sth, when 'early' unambiguosly suggested 'before day-break.'

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The river bed, dotted with old, thatched houses on all sides, and ornated by dense, old trees, which positioned themselves like monuments at every ten steps, was a nature poet's abode!

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And to make it twice as exciting, the sideways swooping into the river would be full of interesting people and pleasing sounds...

Like the urchins, who would, in whining tones, beg for alms...

The fortune tellers, most of them dark, under-nourished girls, who would begulie my thoughts with their caged parrots and pack of cards....both parrot and the girls stained with dust.... and, reading palms in sing song voices to lure us children..

And the bangle sellers, who spread there bright and colourful bangles on the bank...which was cool and moist, and needled with thousands of foot-prints that the "Chhatis" impressed upon them!

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I waited for this imaginative 'daybreak' every year.

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Mom would wake us up at 3AM, and hurriedly give us steam bath..It was festival, hence washing was a must....the rules couldn't be relaxed for even a four-year old...despite the winter having already set in....and despite a biting feel that early November suggested those days!

Mom herself would deck up.....mostly in that dark-magneta South Silk Sari, which, because of the gaudy border she wouldn't otherwise wear!

She looked pretty.

And Chhath was one of those rare occasions, she'd not refuse to apply lipstick or put on some heavy necklace and stuff....

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Other times she'd not relent.....even if I, who insisted on her to always dress up, had been too demanding..

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I remember how, that morning, I'd be horrified by the idea of mom trying a shawl..Well, nowdays even young girls just wrap themselves and come, but ladies, those days- specially mothers with young kids- liked to be superwomen....no shawl, no skiwis until it was December and unbearably cold..

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Mumma was already 41 when I arrived........and the arithmetic would become only more glaring if she used the shawl. I thought.

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Mom would oblige. Always. In order not to spoil my mood.
Even if it meant falling sick rest of the week.

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I would not be the good son. I wouldn't tell her "Com'on take it, you'd catch a cold otherwise."

Infact, there was this Chhath in 2000, when mom, no longer being her younger self, noddingly suggested if she could put on something...and I immediately shot back, "I'd better not accompany you, then."

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Only if I were little less the bantering baby I am.

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When mom was younger, we would have reached the bank by 4.

Later, she'd take her time getting ready, and I, fretting the sun would have appeared already, would shout. And if that didn't work, would sulk.

Discomforting her, either ways.

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How I wish she'd have known I love her....and only Her........and above everything else.....

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Getting used to office now.....People here are nice.....people of all races are nice....... until honeymoon ends!

Receptionist Ma'am is really what they call Made-of-Milk-and-Honey kind...She'd beam a cheerful welcome every afternoon....

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The Boss is.....should I say 'my dear?'

Well, he may not exactly fit into the idea, although he's cool......

He's one of those Goodies, who, since they have always stayed away from any kind of duels- verbal or bodily- which decorate a fiendish youth, haven't learnt to be tough...

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Good for us........

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So here are times, when he'd see me seriously absorbed in Facebook, and yet not react!

If I cling on, he'd stare from the corner of his specs.....with a supressed grimace that invokes only wry amusement.....perhaps trying to invent ways how to politely ask me stop.....

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The polite ways, luckily for us, would never occur,
and so he has to just ignore.

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Now isn't that a boss you'd go to war for?

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The First day at office was free of any cliches...

There was neither the lousy boss, vexing you with attitude.....or, undesirable colleagues, whose poor humour you're supposed to laud and laugh back at!

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Or, may be, I was much too indifferent to either notice or remember any of that!

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The dinner was less oppressive than what we had in ACJ.

In any case, after bearing with the canteen food for about a year, nothing can possibly nauseate us more..

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I was asked to report at 3:30....but, till 2PM at least, I had been seeking oblivion in idle thoughts, which, anyway, come crowding on in you in solitude..

I had thought of to put on just anything and leave, before mumma's ways prevailed on me, and I felt she'd always like me to be immaculate on such occasion.

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So, I dressed up. And also ensured I didn't appear tepid or humdrum, at least not visibly.

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At about 11 I was back;
the office cab dropped us.

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I have been planning assiduously for my first novel. And, my friends are encouraging laboriously..... and twice as lovingly.

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I'm already through with the concept and a few characters. But, letting them grow distinctly and independently, and in obvious harmony to the mood of the plot, requires an almost obsessive involvement on the writer's part!

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I hope I do.

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And yes, I still want to adopt a baby.

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If you are one of those who dote on nature, and would love it excite the poet in you, Mangalore could be your ideal home.

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I find the place wonderfully inviting, and it also conjures up childhood memories of Swamiji's ashram in Munger, where Mom would take us for spiritual edification....

The ashram too, was nestled in the foothill of high-rise terrains, much like the houses here.

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They have put me in some 3 Star, this time too....Abhiman Residency....But, I feel only the outer ambiance merit the decoration.

The rooms are essentially without ornament......and the hospitality not anywhere close to "winning."

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Mausami came to pick me up at the station...And guided me to the hotel, where we had breakfast together..

So sweet!

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But I'm afraid, in some time she too will disappear.

Like in ACJ, Mr X and Miss Y disappeared... after being such loving friends during all of first term.

Am I cursed?
Do the Gods have ordained me to be alone?

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One of my friends from Bangalore tells me, he's happy to see me recover. I don't contend the thought, but then, that's just a concerned person flattering himself.

My life will never be the same again. I don't wish it to be, either.

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There's tremendous pain in me since September.....sometimes apparent and overflowing... like some flooded river that first strides to the plains, and then seizes the town..

At other occasions, it is muted....silent yet aggressive....and camouflaged with smiles that are broader than usual!

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I think this is the perfect time to begin writing.
I can write provokingly when I'm sad.... and I haven't been sadder in life.

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My friend tells me J K Rowling, too, had been in such circumstances. Divorced and without money.

And he believes, if I muster the courage, I can prove myself only more emphatically.

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So, I met SKM Sir, and told him how I plan to begin it all.
Immediately.

He gave me a patient listening, and advised meaningfully.

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He's such the same gentleman. He wouldn't let me go unless we had had lunch together.

But, all of that I'd write later.
He merits a separate post.

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I want to adopt a baby.
Dunno why, but the thought is becoming more earnest by the day!

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I finally joined work today..........and with such zealous indifference to it!

And if that weren't enough, I was yawning all the time.........outcome of yesterday's night out.....

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This friend of ACJ- not sure if I am at liberty to call him/her friend yet- kept postponing plans for a meeting up all day, till I was tired and really disinclined to meet at all...

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I allowed myself for the hang-out still........as, I really do not have many friends to choose from...and then, irrespective of the involvement that may come from the other side, I am too sensitive, and longing for those I see as friends!

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So, it hurts...At times....when your affection is not reciprocated at....

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This girl/Boy first takes me for dinner, then a movie at PVR...a Ben Afflick one, which, although little known here, was engaging to be fair.

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But, before that we had had visited the play station and tried our hands at games....He/She said, I was to blame for the humiliating scores...

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Can't agree more.
I'm AWFUL at sports!

Even animated sports.

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After the movie, we had another round of dinner....and then home, before the crack of dawn!

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It was good fun.

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Bindoo Ma'am just happened to see me....At the Hindu office, today, where she had come looking for Arvind Sir.

It was a delightful chance meeting!

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Before departing today, I tell this friend, who I may never get to see again, "I'm waiting for the Joining, as a convict waits for the hour of his execution."

He/She seemed to understand....and hence, quite sensibly, shunned from either condoling me, or dismissing my thought.

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Such has my passion for work degenerated!

Yes, I know I still can excel at it, but this attempt, this demeanor at work (place), would be, then, so spectacularly lacking in inspiration.

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He/She felt I had become dangerously thin....and despite a definite indifference that was noticeable yesterday, seemed to be worried at my debilitated body.

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I am worried, too. My weight has actually come down to XY Kgs, which is a five point five Kgs loss in just 6 weeks.

I'm a sensitive person, and this had to happen, hence.

Leave alone the gory things that have happened to me recently, if a friend or relative misbehaves even momentarily, it begins to show on my health.

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And MIND, too.

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